The Locust and the Bird

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Meanwhile the dresses kept piling up on the table, tempting me to try them on. I kept telling myself not to do so. I contemplated stealing them and hiding them at Fatme’s house; that way, when I married Muhammad, they’d all be mine. In the end my resolve was broken when I heard a particular song I loved on the radio. I selected a loose-fitting silk dress and spun around, watching the dress move with me, just like a plant or a sunflower. I gazed at myself in the mirror and remembered my forced marriage. Suddenly I was in a scene from a film: I was gripping the black wrought iron on the window and shaking it as if trying to break open the bars of a prison. I twisted and turned, shouting in a mix of classical Arabic and Egyptian dialect, ‘Save me, ye people, save me!’ And then quietly I pleaded, ‘Muhammad, where are you? I need you.’

  Unfortunately the salt failed to have the same effect on the two men as it had on the slugs; they didn’t shrivel up and burst. One morning I awoke to find the white wedding dress with an artificial rose tiara laid out for me. I ran to our neighbour Umm Fawzi and begged her to keep me hidden in her attic and bring me food and drink. She wept along with me, well aware she could do nothing to help.

  ‘I feel so sorry for you,’ she kept saying. ‘You’re just like the fly running away from the spider, not knowing it’s already doomed.’

  ‘“I don’t want him. Please help me!” ’ These were Raja’s words to her father in The White Rose. They came rushing back to me: ‘“I don’t love him. Please help me. I don’t love him!” ’

  In the film, Raja’s father says, ‘I made a promise, and that’s it.’ My brother Ibrahim’s only response was to beat me. I don’t know how many hands it took to get me into that white dress, which was made of Atlas material – soft, shiny satin – and yet it scratched like pins and needles. But I do remember how I managed to slip from the clutches of those hands, run to the kerosene primus and smear black soot all over my face. Next I got the saucepans and smeared even more soot over my neck, exactly as I’d seen a mother do in Nabatiyeh when she lost a child. I tore at the dress and wrenched it off. I hurled myself at a pile of sacking we used to wipe the floor and wrapped myself in a sack, screaming and weeping. I rolled around on the floor, and then leapt for the kitchen window, but they pulled me back. All I could do was scream and cry as Ibrahim dragged me towards the room where Abu-Hussein was waiting. I shook him off and ran to Mother’s mattress, clinging to her and weeping. In a rage, Abu-Hussein gathered all my beautiful dresses and tried to set them on fire. I heard Mother and Khadija promising him, as they snatched the dresses back, that they would make me behave.

  On the third night I capitulated. I stood still, like a tree, as they forced me into the repaired wedding dress. But as soon as they’d brought me back to the room and I set eyes on my brother-in-law, I began screaming and pushing him away.

  ‘Bring me some rose water!’ I yelled. ‘Bring me some rose water before I pass out!’

  This time Ibrahim was waiting for me by the door as I tried to escape.

  ‘Cut it out,’ he said, ‘or people will be saying that cousin of the seamstress has been playing around with your mind, or has done something worse to you!’

  I didn’t understand what he meant, but I was scared that he might know about my friendship with Muhammad, or have discovered that I kept his photograph in my bra; that I’d gone to the cinema with him; that he’d urged me not to get married; that he’d asked me to wait six months for him. I was terrified they might harm Muhammad in some way and so I went back into the room. When I saw Abu-Hussein sitting on the mattress in the middle of his bedroom, waiting for me, I let out a wail and tried to open the door again. But it was locked from the outside.

  ‘I beg you, bring me some rose water. I’m fainting.’

  No one answered and the door remained locked. My brother-in-law stood up and walked towards me. I screamed as I shoved him away. I struck myself, I cursed him, and hit myself harder. Then I held my breath, clutching my dress, as, undeterred, he lifted it up.

  I felt an intense pain in my throat and between my thighs at the same time. I sank my teeth into my arm so deep that I struck bone. When it was over, I saw blood between my legs. I pushed Abu-Hussein away and rushed back to the door and began pounding on it. To my amazement it opened.

  I ran to Mother’s bed, where I found her sobbing. I huddled close to her, wrapping my dress around me, weeping and moaning as she wept and moaned with me. I made no effort to avoid staining her nightgown with blood. Nor did I say, ‘I want to kiss you before I die,’ the words I’d used once when I’d smashed a jar of quince jam, cutting my arm and causing Ibrahim to mutter under his breath that he wished I were dead. This time, when I emerged from Abu-Hussein’s room, I was truly slaughtered and the blood on the white dress was the proof.

  11 Hind bint Ataba, who chewed upon the liver of the Prophet’s uncle, Hamza, to quench her anger at the death of her father and brother who were killed on the battlefield of Uhud.

  How I Came to Be Married

  to Mr Watch-out-or-else

  AND THAT WAS how I came to be married to Abu-Hussein, a man eighteen years older than me, who had criticised Mother for still nursing me when I was more than one year old. I used to think of him as Mr Watch-out-or-else. Every time I ran or jumped or burst into fits of laughter, the other adults would warn me. ‘Watch out or else,’ they’d say.

  The man I married loved cleanliness and would repeat over and over, ‘Cleanliness is born out of faith.’ I would lift up the carpet and shove the dirt gathered by the broom underneath, rather than collecting it with the dustpan. He’d summon me and show me how to search for bedbugs in the mattress, squashing them between two fingers to demonstrate how it should be done. Seeing the blood oozing, I would defy him and turn away, holding my nose.

  He searched for cockroaches in drawers and cupboards, in the kitchen or under the sink. He’d ferret out their brown-coloured eggs, which looked like bean kernels. Sometimes I thought of taking some and putting them in a box to see if a cockroach emerged with its body first or its moustache. I was convinced they knew he was their number one enemy and that they hid until they knew it was safe to come out. They concealed themselves from him everywhere, even in the pottery water pitcher. ‘Good grief!’ Mother screamed when the pitcher broke. The tiny baby cockroaches hadn’t even drowned; they simply scurried away and hid somewhere else.

  I was married to a man who watched over me while I did the washing, demanding that I take extra care to scrub the three children’s clothing. He rubbed his fingers on the outside of the pots to make sure there was no trace of fat or oil left on them. Nor was he satisfied with that alone; no, he also had to put his nose to them and sniff them. But all that paled next to the way he would conduct an inspection of my feet before he went to sleep. I still shared a mattress on the floor with Mother, but he’d lift the coverlet, look at my feet, and spit on them if he thought they weren’t clean enough. ‘Ugh!’ I’d hear him say, after he spat. I neither moved nor tried to wipe off the spittle; instead I pretended to be asleep.

  All his efforts to teach me how to clean and be a responsible housewife came to nothing. I would sweep the bedroom half-heartedly with one foot on the floor cloth, pushing it wherever was convenient. My husband would check whether I’d swept the floor under the chair, under the settee, and gone into all the corners. He soon realised that I never did, so he would move the furniture around piece by piece and watch as I swept. When I put the blanket and coverlet back on his bed, I didn’t bother to rearrange the sheets. If one of my dresses fell off its hanger, I left it lying at the bottom of the wardrobe. If I had to peel potatoes, I’d find myself peeling halfway to the centre. When I cooked, I’d burn the food. My husband could be under no illusion: I was cut from an entirely different bolt of cloth from the one that produced his first wife. I had none of her traits: patience, cleanliness, industriousness, composure and housekeeping skills. The reason I so lacked those virtues had nothing to do with my youth; it was because I was just li
ke Father – at least, that was what everybody said. I’d inherited his comedian’s temperament – ‘A bird-brain, just like your father,’ my husband used to tell me. As for my capacity for stubbornness, my husband had seen nothing yet.

  He got an inkling of my iron will after a relative from the south brought him a pail of yoghurt. When he caught me pouring out a glass of it, he scolded me and called me greedy. In fact it wasn’t simply greed that had made me want the yoghurt; it reminded me of Nabatiyeh, of our house, of the cows, of the fig trees and my friend Apple, whose mother had given me yoghurt to drink. Not content simply with scolding me in front of everyone, Abu-Hussein got up on a chair and put the pail of yoghurt on top of the cupboard.

  ‘That yoghurt’s only for cooking,’ he said, wagging a finger at me. ‘I forbid anyone to touch it for any other reason.’

  I swallowed the insult, pretended I didn’t care, and busied myself with something else. But as soon as he left the room, I got up on the chair, took down the pail, helped myself to another drink and poured it over my head so that it dripped down on my face and clothes. Then I rushed out into the lounge, licking my hand like a cat. Everyone in the family gathered around laughing. The sight of my husband’s mournful expression as the yoghurt dripped off me on to the floor made me laugh so hard I almost wet myself.

  He mumbled over and over again, ‘There is no strength except in God.’

  He looked so miserable that I felt guilty and promised myself not to make fun of him any more. And yet he didn’t realise that I was taking revenge on him; instead he blamed himself for not making sure that the pail was out of reach.

  Snake Pit

  THE NUMBER OF people living with us grew by the day, until our house resembled a snake pit. Everyone was crammed in, head to tail; each person skulked in their own domain. Everyone foraged for food or went to war to gain access to the only toilet, or hunted for kerosene to light the primus stove and warm up some water so they might take a bath – after which they’d need to track down a towel. By this time Ibrahim had brought Raoufa’s two daughters, Maryam and Inaam, to live with us. The two brothers stayed with their father the gambler, while the third, the one with the wooden leg, became estranged from the family. He developed a cocaine habit and started consorting with lowlifes.

  Once he boarded the tram Ibrahim was driving and asked him for money.

  His uncle pushed him away as though he were any other scrounger.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘get lost!’

  When Mother heard what had happened, she burst into tears.

  ‘Why didn’t he give the poor boy even a piastre?’ she demanded. ‘A mere piastre won’t buy you much!’

  With the arrival of my two nieces, my life changed for the better. Maryam, the elder of the two, was just a couple of years younger than me, but much taller, fine-featured and extremely calm. She was so grateful to Abu-Hussein for giving them refuge that she obeyed him without question and worked hard: cooking, washing and ironing. My husband nicknamed her Sultana, or Princess, and she called him Uncle. I felt as though heaven had sent me an angel who would laugh alongside me; someone who would love me as I loved her.

  With so many mouths to feed, my husband brought home a large black box in which to keep provisions. It looked just like the Kaaba12 in Mecca. He locked it with a large key and opened it twice a day. Before he went to work he would take out enough sugar, soap, oil, rice and lard to last us for the day. In the evening he would stand before the box again and, reciting the phrase, ‘In the name of God,’ he would call each of us by name and hand out dates, dried apricots, biscuits, Turkish delight, and occasionally baklava.

  Sometimes I would take my rations and then go to the back of the queue as though I were lining up for the first time. When my husband insisted that he had already given me baklava, I would deny it vehemently. I wanted him to see that I was, after all, his wife and not just another member of the household. I demanded this privilege, but I would not allow intimacy between us. Respect and fear; that is what I had in my heart for my husband.

  If he called for me in the night, I recoiled in disgust at the very thought of going near him. I would stay huddled on the mattress next to Mother, curled up like a frightened worm. I tried to forget what had happened on my wedding night and even managed to convince myself that the nightmare was over and would never return. Things between us were better during the day, although we seldom went out together. He didn’t leave the house on Sundays, his one day off; he didn’t like strolling like everyone else along the seafront or in the Beirut pine forest. When I watched him pray, stretching his hands up to God, eyes closed, I was sure that his prayers would immediately reach his creator and that God would guarantee his wishes. But no matter how many times I told myself I must not tease him or I might incur the wrath of God, I couldn’t help myself. I was especially bad when we went to Damascus.

  Because we so seldom travelled, I was utterly astonished when Abu-Hussein agreed that we could go to Damascus. He did so because he saw it as a religious pilgrimage. I didn’t mind this; I was simply delighted to be leaving Beirut. The plan was to visit the shrine of Sitt Zaynab,13 the sister of Imam al-Hussein and the granddaughter of the Prophet.

  Abu-Hussein, who never even rode in a tram, bus or car, took us on a train away from his daily routine of house, shop and the mosque. We were accompanied by his female cousins and one of their husbands. In the women’s carriage of the train I told Abu-Hussein’s cousins the story of The White Rose. I was the heroine, riding the train as it raced against the wind. I leaned my arms and head out of the window and, when the train lunged into a tunnel and everything went dark, I cried out to scare the women. They laughed among themselves, whispering, ‘She’s still a child, a mere girl.’

  At the shrine to Sitt Zaynab we had to push our way through the crowd. I went straight to the shrine itself. I wanted to beseech Sitt Zaynab to intercede on Mother’s behalf and ensure she wouldn’t have to face any more disasters after the deaths of my two sisters. But what took my breath away, and made me gaze in wonder, was the gleam of the jewellery and bracelets thrown into the golden shrine as offerings. Would she arise one day, I asked myself, and put on all these jewels? I closed my eyes and prayed to Sitt Zaynab, weeping as I told her how Mother, Father, and Ibrahim had married me off to Abu-Hussein; she would understand, I thought, as she had experienced great tragedy in her lifetime. Drying my eyes, I opened my purse and took out the coin our neighbour had given me to make my devotion to Sitt Zaynab. But just as I was about to throw it in, I hesitated.

  ‘Forgive me, Sitt Zaynab,’ I entreated her. ‘You’ve so many jewels here. Let me keep this coin. Let’s pretend I’ve put the coin inside the enclosure.’

  After leaving the shrine we headed to a nearby park to eat lunch. On the way we passed through the famous Hamidiyya Market. I desperately wanted a gold bracelet in the form of a snake, its head encrusted with two diamonds for the eyes. I begged Abu-Hussein to buy it for me, but he only quickened his pace. So I asked him instead for a golden Quran, dangling from a gold chain, thinking he might buy me something connected with religion. Running behind him, I promised I would say all the obligatory prayers, but he only walked faster. And then the gold market was behind us.

  Before the sheer disappointment of it all could hit me, we reached another market, where everything gleamed and glistened: embroidered scarves, black silk fabric printed with silver polka dots, colourful clogs, nightdresses of smooth pink, blue or ivory silk.

  ‘Good heavens,’ I cried, ‘look how gorgeous they are! Oh please buy me one.’

  But he refused, saying he could buy one in Beirut from a fellow merchant for half the price.

  ‘But,’ I protested, crying, ‘the merchant might not have exactly the same.’

  My husband stared at the ground. As we came to the end of the market I redoubled my efforts.

  ‘Please, please!’ I begged, though by now I’d almost forgotten what I was begging him for.

  I kept i
t up until he turned and shouted, ‘What’s the matter with you? I wish something would freeze the tongue in your head!’

  We passed a little beggar boy, who stretched out his hand and asked us to spare a coin. Realising I was no different from him, I burst into tears.

  Finally we reached the famous park near the shrine. People were picnicking on the grass under the trees, barbecuing meat and Kafta.14 The wonderful smell lessened my misery a little, until I remembered that all we had to eat was boiled eggs and potatoes that my husband had brought along in a bag. We stood under the trees opposite the stream with its waterwheel, while I longed to sit down like all the other people who were smoking hookahs, cracking jokes and singing.

  By now I was used to the way my husband would say, ‘Oh God, Your prayers be upon the Prophet Muhammad and his family,’ if he smelled something really nice. If ever I expressed delight at a bar of scented soap, he scolded me and made me repeat the correct invocation.

  Now, looking at the stream and the waterwheel, I exclaimed, ‘God, see how beautiful it is – just like the River Litani!’

  He rounded on me, telling me I must say instead, ‘God is powerful over all things. He is the Creator of the heavens and the earth.’ I was angry. Now I couldn’t even remark on the beauty of something without being told off.

  Abu-Hussein huddled with his cousin’s husband, ‘consulting the prayer beads’ to determine whether we women might sit down beside the waterwheel, or whether we’d have to move further away from the stream where no one could see or hear us. I was bitter and resentful when the bead consultation came to an end. ‘Ask for God’s will’ indeed! It worked out very nicely for the men, who got to sit close to the waterwheel, while we women had to retreat to the very edge of the park and eat our dreary lunch of boiled eggs and potatoes.