The Locust and the Bird

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  The coin I hadn’t thrown into Sitt Zaynab’s shrine was still in my pocket and I considered running away. But the idea of revenge was sweeter, so instead I ran up to Abu-Hussein’s cousin’s husband and asked him to consult the beads ‘for God’s will’ on something I had in mind.

  ‘Of course, right away!’ he replied, closing his eyes. When he opened his eyes and saw the bead indicating good luck, he smiled. ‘The result is fine!’ he declared.

  With that I pushed him into the stream. The abrupt movement caught him off balance and he fell into the water. When he stepped back on to dry land his trousers were dripping wet. The women laughed behind their black veils.

  ‘The girl’s a menace!’ my husband exclaimed.

  ‘So whose idea was it to bring children along?’ the man muttered.

  ‘I made a secret vow to push you and God answered my prayer,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t want me to offend God, would you?’

  On the train back to Beirut, Abu-Hussein’s cousin and I laughed over the trick I’d played on her husband. I began to sing for her. Just then a tall, handsome army officer walked through our carriage and stopped to stare at me.

  I pretended not to notice him as he addressed my companion.

  ‘Is this your daughter?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ she replied, enjoying the joke. ‘She’s the apple of my eye!’

  ‘You’ve a really pretty daughter!’ he said with disarming candour. ‘My intentions are honourable and I’d like to propose.’ He asked her for our address so he could call and seek my hand.

  As she hesitated, I plunged straight in and told him my name and our address. I also give Abu-Hussein’s name as my father. The officer bade us farewell, placing his hand on his heart, and smiled at me. How I wished that my husband really was my father and this officer was someone who could come to seek my hand! I thought of Muhammad. The six months had passed and he must have graduated and heard that I’d got married. I imagined he hated me for not waiting for him as I had promised. I wondered if he would forgive me if he knew what had happened to me after he’d left.

  The officer took us at our word. The following evening there was a knock at the door and there he stood with his father. In a moment the entire household, old and young, men and women, had gathered around the prospective groom. Maryam and I hid behind the kitchen door, listening. Abu-Hussein and Ibrahim greeted the visitors. Everyone assumed the officer must have come to ask for Maryam’s hand, but then he gave my name.

  Abu-Hussein briskly corrected the officer’s misapprehension.

  ‘Kamila’s my wife,’ he said. ‘It must be her niece you have in mind.’

  ‘So who was the girl in the train from Damascus yesterday?’ the officer asked.

  ‘God damn your treacherous heart!’ my husband swore at him indignantly. ‘That was my wife!’

  I hurriedly locked the door and begged Mother to protect me, though she was trembling with fear too, at what Ibrahim might do. I didn’t wait for a scolding, or even a beating, before I burst into tears. I wept because I would never be engaged to this handsome officer. I clung to the window bars and screamed. When I noticed the handsome boy next door watching me, I screamed even louder.

  12 A sacred black stone at the centre of the holiest place of worship in Islam.

  13 Known for her lasting sorrow after her brother al-Hussein, her two sons and all the men in her family were massacred at the Battle of Karbala. She took charge of all the women and children when they were in captivity, defying the enemy with fury and courage. She then devoted her life to the memory of Imam al-Hussein and became the narrator of the tragedy of Karbala.

  14 Meatballs made from minced beef, lamb or veal and onion, garlic, herbs and spices.

  Fatima

  SUDDENLY THE WORLD turned dark. I’d been skipping with the neighbourhood girls when I began to feel sick. I rubbed my eyes, but the world grew darker still. I collapsed and, as so often when I was frightened, I cried out, ‘Help, please! Some rose water. I’m feeling faint.’

  One of our neighbours guessed I was pregnant. She took me by the hand and led me downstairs. Despite the fact that she was a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, her curses and imprecations against our family came bursting out in a steady stream.

  ‘God damn the beard of the sheikh who married you off!’ she fumed. ‘You’re just a child. What a scandal!’

  After that I had to be more careful. I sat and watched the other girls skip. My stomach had not yet started to swell and I found it hard to believe it ever would. As the woman had said, I was still just a girl; surely God must realise it. But God didn’t help me. Instead my stomach grew rounder by the day. I overheard passers-by say, ‘So a mere baby’s going to have another baby!’ It didn’t help that I was so tiny myself.

  At least my pregnancy meant I could sleep without fear. I ate what I wanted and went out whenever I felt like it, so long as I was back before dark. I got to watch every single film that came on, and for a while I was accompanied by my rich older cousin Mira, who was visiting Beirut from Nabatiyeh while her husband was away in West Africa. In spite of the age difference, our friendship soon deepened. She was like the film stars we saw on the screen: the dresses she wore, the cigarette constantly in her hand, her crêpe-soled shoes and the crocodile-skin handbag that made a clicking sound when she opened it – all of these things made her seem from the world of the cinema. A wonderful scent of cologne would waft from that handbag and I’d glimpse the coins within. Her stay gave me the strength I needed to defy Ibrahim, who was still watching me, disapproving of every move I made.

  Mira took me to see the film Long Live Love! When I found out that Abdal-Wahhab was playing the lead opposite a different actress from the one in The White Rose, I was upset. But as soon as I saw the new actress, I fell in love with her and forgot all about the other one. Mira and I also went to see Layla, Daughter of the Desert. In this one, Layla, a beautiful Bedouin girl, was in love with her brave cousin who came to rescue her from the Persian King Chosroes. After attacking the King’s fortress, her cousin saved her, brought her back to her family, and married her. Until then I had been trying to shut Muhammad out of my mind. Now I wished he could have saved me!

  As I watched the film, I began to see that love was the most important thing in the world – more important even than money and food. The heroine wasn’t living in a palace, but in the desert in a Bedouin tent. Mira said she too longed for the Bedouin desert life, but as soon as we left the cinema we were back in the modern world, stopping at shop windows to look at clothes and buying ice cream and chocolate, forgetting all about desert existence.

  When Mira was with me, I wasn’t afraid at home. We would listen to the radio, and I would turn the volume up. Ibrahim was in awe of Mira’s sophistication and confidence and so all he did was frown; he didn’t dare insist that I turn it down. I whispered to my cousin that we were like butterflies, while Abu-Hussein and Ibrahim were hornets trying to sting us. But after Mira rejoined her husband in Africa, the hornets were back in control in no time.

  At the first sign of my contractions, Khadija did as my husband asked and hurried me to the American University Hospital. The doctor measured my waist, stomach and feet as if I were a piece of cloth and he the tailor.

  When he asked my age and was told I was fifteen, he could not disguise his contempt.

  ‘Is it because your family cannot feed you,’ he said scathingly, ‘that they had to marry you off?’

  The doctor asked where the baby’s father was, and Khadija told him that my husband was afraid of hospitals. Abu-Hussein had only visited a hospital once and that was after Manifa had died. He had rushed to his dead wife’s room so he could recite the Muslim statement of faith and turn her bed to face Mecca.

  ‘I wish he was here,’ replied the doctor with disgust. ‘I’d like to give him a piece of my mind for marrying a child!’

  My daughter stretched and yawned at our first meeting. Her arrival added to t
he power I’d gained while she was still in my womb. Because of her, I got to sleep in my husband’s bed while he slept on a mattress on the floor. I stayed in bed, leaving it only to take a bath or use the toilet. And Abu-Hussein began to respond to my requests. He got me a nightgown of pink natural silk and I put a carnation of the same colour in my hair. Each morning I ate a chicken – not just a thin slice of meat but a whole chicken that had been slaughtered just for me. This went on for forty days, as the custom dictated, to provide my body with the nourishment it needed while I was nursing the baby. I would eat every bit of the chicken, both breast and thighs. I sucked on the bones like some fierce carnivore, making a huge noise. With the chicken disposed of, I would wait for the meghlie, the sweet pudding of hazelnuts, walnuts and pine nuts that was offered to visitors when a child was born.

  My baby was the soft toy I’d never hugged or played with. She was just like the dolls I’d seen in the Beirut shops, the ones made of flesh-coloured porcelain that squeaked when they were laid down to sleep. But the day arrived when I got out of bed and gave my baby to the many hands ready to help me look after her. In fact, they took over completely, worried that I’d drop her or let her swallow some water when washing her. Mother put her in a cradle, which she moved from room to room. My husband insisted on calling her Fatima, after the Prophet’s daughter. I had wanted to name her Raja or Samira after my favourite film stars, but I didn’t object for fear of making the Prophet angry.

  For all the pampering and luxury I received after Fatima was born, I couldn’t forget how she had come to grow inside my womb, on that night when my husband had straddled me like I was a little donkey, and I’d bitten my own arm down to the bone.

  Nadia’s Nightclub

  ALTHOUGH I LOVED my daughter dearly, there were still times when I managed to forget her presence in my life, particularly when I was listening to songs on the radio. Even before the customary forty-day lying-in period was over, I was longing to get out of the house, go to the cinema, and enjoy the bustle of the city again.

  Shortly after I left my bed, I was invited to my first coffee morning at the house of a neighbour’s sister-in-law. There I met a group of ladies like me, who enjoyed singing and going to the cinema. They shared my sense of fun and love of beautiful clothes.

  The idea was for each hostess to designate a day towards the end of the month when the other women would show up wearing their fanciest clothes. Then we’d sit chatting, drinking coffee, and eating bonbons and chocolates. My husband didn’t like these social occasions and was especially opposed to drinking coffee and offering it to others. He associated it with time-wasting and tittle-tattle. But I soon plucked up the courage to hold coffee mornings of my own. I managed to persuade Abu-Hussein to bring me a particular type of chocolate and white bonbons filled with almonds. I preferred the pink and blue ones, but he wouldn’t buy me those; in Abu-Hussein’s mind, white sweets were less frivolous than the coloured ones.

  On the days I held my coffee mornings, I’d secretly buy some flowers from a peddler, who would also surreptitiously sell me coffee. As soon as our gathering was over, I’d distribute the flowers among the neighbours so my husband wouldn’t see them. He would never buy flowers, believing it to be wasteful to spend money on something that died so quickly.

  One morning, my husband felt unwell and was late leaving for work. I waited anxiously by the door, listening out for the peddler’s footsteps. When he knocked, I shut the door in his face. The moment my husband went into the kitchen, I rushed back to the window and asked the peddler to come upstairs again. Then my husband appeared just as the peddler knocked, so I closed it in his face again. As my husband went into the lounge, I rushed to summon the peddler a third time, but he merely shook his head in disbelief and went on his way. I was sure that he’d tell everyone what a shame it was I’d lost my mind while I was still so young.

  At one of these coffee mornings, I met Fadila, who came from a highly religious family of prominent merchants. She was a few years older than me, and like me she loved to sing and to watch films. She told me that her real ambition was to become a singer in Nadia’s famous nightclub and made me promise I’d never tell a soul. She seized my hand and took me into the kitchen, where she began singing in the style of one of the famous female singers of the day:

  Liar, liar – they all say that about me:

  You’re a liar.

  Never, never, never, no liar I.

  I stood watching Fadila as she swayed, pranced and gestured with her hands and fingers. I tried not to laugh. She looked just like an ape who had eaten something sour. But I promised I’d go with her to speak to Nadia at her nightclub.

  So one morning Fadila and I went in search of Nadia, flitting through Burj Square as quickly as we could, lest Ibrahim spot us from his tram. I tried to give my new friend some advice, suggesting it might be a good idea to try singing somewhere other than Nadia’s, especially when I saw she carried a bundle, like a peasant. In it, she had everything she owned: dresses, underwear, scarves, as well as a small mirror and eyebrow tweezers. But she wouldn’t listen.

  We saw a man hovering at a door to the club with a cigarette in his mouth, his hair slicked down with brilliantine. We were sure this must be the entrance to the famous nightclub, which was talked about by everyone who loved entertainment and singing, especially my brother Hasan. I felt a pang of jealousy at Fadila’s absolute conviction that she would be a singer even though her family would disown her on the spot if she succeeded.

  I felt as if, by entering the club, we were crossing a line from which there could be no return. Even a man would risk his reputation by entering: ‘That guy’s no good, going from one dive to the next!’ people would say. I pictured drunken men standing in front of us, making rude gestures with beer bottles and then forcing the contents down our gullets. Then I imagined Nadia rushing up to me and seizing me by the hand, filled with sheer delight at having finally discovered me, just as the prince of poets, Ahmad Shawqi,15 had discovered the Egyptian singer Abdal-Wahhab.

  We had to convince a woman cleaning the floor that we urgently needed to talk to Nadia. Then we waited for half an hour until she showed up. Around us there were many chairs and wooden tables, just like the ones we had at home. Suspended from the ceiling was the notorious swing on which Nadia would perch to sing, swooping backwards and forwards.

  Finally Nadia appeared. A famous singer she may have been, but she looked just like an ordinary woman to me, wearing a dressing gown rather than the floor-length dress I’d imagined. Fadila rushed up to her and told her how she wished to become a singer, but without even hearing her sing or giving me a single glance Nadia chucked us out.

  ‘Go away!’ she said. ‘Go home! Please, I don’t want any trouble. Please go home before your tribe comes up from the south to close my place down.’

  Obviously she’d recognised Fadila’s southern accent. Although Fadila was disappointed at being treated so rudely, we couldn’t help giggling at the phrase she’d used – ‘tribe from the south’ – as if she was referring to people living in the deepest jungle.

  Despite the brush-off from Nadia, I found myself longing to visit the nightclub again and started dreaming up ways to make it happen. Then I had a truly wicked idea. If it worked, I’d be in seventh heaven; if it failed, I’d be doomed. When my husband’s devout women cousins arrived from the south to visit, I told everyone in the house that we’d been invited to the home of a woman from a very pious family. But I took them to the club instead, telling them that it was a secret and that I was taking them to see some wonders. When they refused to take off their sheer black veils I realised they hadn’t understood what I meant by Nadia’s nightclub. They hadn’t a clue what a comedy sketch was and they’d never even heard of Umar al-Zooni, the king of comedy.

  We took our box seats just as the music began and all of a sudden one of the women lifted her veil. The other women followed suit, laughing and shrieking at the clown as he went into his comic routi
ne on stage. ‘Wow, this is great!’ they yelled. They’d never known how singing and dancing, music and comedy could be such a tonic; or how time could pass so quickly in such a happy atmosphere.

  We watched a dancer. Then Nadia came floating down on her swing, clinging to its ropes that were decorated with jasmine flowers. She scattered petals on the people below, and the singer Fouad Zaydan, a friend of my brother Hasan, appeared on stage wearing a wonderful jacket with white and brown checks, his brilliantine-caked hair gleaming in the lights.

  ‘The ship has left the shore of my heart, where has it gone?’ he sang. ‘The ship has vanished with my loved ones.’

  This was 1943, when there was a compulsory blackout each night on Burj Square. All the windows of the nightclub were painted black. No one was allowed out on the streets without a club or cinema ticket. We left the club, terrified that we’d be arrested. But no policeman bothered us; in fact we were in luck because, although it was almost eleven o’clock at night, the trams were still running. The women kept swaying to the rhythm of the songs they’d heard, swimming their way through a world they’d never known existed. For my part I was relaxed: Ibrahim only drove his tram during the day.

  Once we got home, they were starving. How was I going to feed them when we were supposed to have filled our stomachs at the house where we’d supposedly been invited? I sneaked into the kitchen in the dark, stole some bread and meat, and warned the women to chew silently. They followed my instructions so well they looked almost like film stars, eating their food with their mouths clamped firmly shut.

  ‘I declare,’ one said, ‘this sandwich tastes better than a whole lamb.’