The Locust and the Bird

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  I decided that, for all their sophistication, his family were the same as Ibrahim and my husband: people who didn’t believe in love.

  When I criticised his brother for writing to me, Muhammad defended him. I was flabbergasted. Suddenly he had become critical of me, just like my husband or Ibrahim. He started blaming me for the most trivial things, which left me feeling he couldn’t stand me any more.

  I tried to ignore his depression, even when he began to curse his luck. But then he accused me of only being capable of flirting. It was true that I sang to him, but only as a way of showing my love for him. Gradually I realised that what he really wanted was a wife. I had noticed that, when he saw me taking his freshly washed and ironed clothes out of a small bag, his eyes would glisten and he’d sigh deeply. I asked him if this was what he really wanted, and he confessed that he was desperate for a wife who’d do those things for him.

  ‘But don’t I wash your laundry for you?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, not really,’ he answered.

  I resolved to leave and not return till he started behaving as he used to, comforting myself with the proverb that said that every beginning must have its end. Testing the water, I asked him if his mother still disapproved of our relationship.

  ‘Yes, she wants me to marry and have children,’ he replied. ‘Poor Mother, I can’t go on upsetting her when her health’s the way it is.’

  And so I suggested, pinching my thigh all the while, that we should separate.

  He snapped back, ‘How can we? You follow me about like a shadow – how can I meet anyone else?’

  I wanted to scream at him, but I swallowed my words, blaming him for not appreciating the danger I put myself in each time I visited him. I left, putting his keys on the table and swearing by the Prophet and all the Shia Imams that I’d never set foot in his room again – and comforting myself that it would be for my own sanity. I’d had enough of plots and lies and deceits, enough of dragging people with me as chaperones in order to meet him without being caught. I’d even used my own two daughters. I’d had enough of entering his room like a fugitive. Enough of racing home before Ibrahim and my husband returned from work.

  Maryam did her best to console me, to help me understand Muhammad’s attitude, but I could only wait for the next day to dawn, to find out if he really wanted it to be over.

  I went to his room as usual, this time with my brother Kamil – who knew all about my relationship with Muhammad – bitterly regretting having dumped my keys the day before. I made a small heap of sand on the windowsill to signal I was there, but no response followed. Kamil left me and I wandered around the streets for some time before returning in the afternoon and piling more sand until there were veritable little pyramids of it along his windowsill. All to no effect.

  That evening I thanked God for having created darkness, exhaustion, drowsiness and drooping eyelids. I fell asleep in bed between my daughters, thanking God once again for the two of them. But as soon as the clock showed one o’clock the next day, there I was again, hanging around outside Muhammad’s room. Yesterday’s pile of sand had disappeared, so I placed another on the windowsill. I returned an hour later to find it still there. Either he wasn’t at home, or he didn’t want to see me. A little girl watching from a balcony across the street asked if I was building a house with the sand. I ignored her and then someone began calling to her. Without even turning round, I knew the looks I felt burning into my back were her mother’s. Then I heard a loud slap. The mother had hit the little girl because she was talking to me. I was, in her opinion, a fallen woman.

  At that moment, Muhammad opened his door. Sheer delight overwhelmed me and, when I stepped inside, my anxieties gone, I joked that neither of us could stand being apart for even a single day. He didn’t laugh with me, and I sensed he was very low on energy. A strange feeling of sorrow came over me, because I was imposing myself on him yet again.

  He broke the news that his name was on a list of people being sent by the government to the Bekaa Valley to eradicate hashish production. Once again my heart sank; he really was leaving me. I demanded to know where our love had gone.

  Before he had the chance to reply, I spoke to him in classical Arabic, which I’d learnt from listening to the radio and from films so that I would sound literate.

  ‘The day of reckoning is at hand, that day when the lover loses patience; the day when the lover stands with open arms and says, “Either my beloved will come at this moment, take my arm and hug me to her as I hug her, or else I will uproot her from my life. She is that molar without which I cannot eat, but which causes me pain, day and night.” ’

  Muhammad wept when he heard me use these words, because he could see how much I loved him. He pleaded with me to divorce my husband and marry him. But I blocked both my ears and my heart.

  As I leaned over to kiss him, he pushed me away.

  ‘Kisses are a soothing balm for pain,’ he said, ‘but only for a little while. Their effect soon wears thin.’

  I tried to tell him that we would be free to marry one day, because my husband would die. For just a moment, it was as if Muhammad had discovered the meaning of life. Why, he asked, had I never told him that my husband was suffering from a terminal illness? No, I said, he would die sometime because he was older than us. Muhammad let out a derisory laugh and so I told him instead that we could marry when my daughters were older.

  ‘And how long will that be?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten years,’ I replied.

  He turned my face towards him, forcing me to look him straight in the eye. We were not acting out parts in a film, he insisted. Our love must lead to marriage; we must stop telling lies. Spending a couple of hours together here and there was no real life. I was deceiving myself, just as I’d done when I used a razor blade to scratch my two daughters out of the photograph of me and Muhammad under the walnut tree. Left in their places were two blank patches, like passing clouds, so no one would know I had taken them along with me.

  Muhammad demanded an answer. Did I want to be his wife? If I said yes, he would seek a divorce from my husband. If I said no, he’d know I was wasting his time.

  Divorce my husband and abandon my daughters? I could see Ibrahim nodding his head. He’d been correct all along about me: I was a flighty woman without dignity or scruples, and a liar completely lacking in character. All I could think of was Abu-Hussein, seemingly unaware of my deceit, complacent in his piety.

  I remained silent, and so Muhammad answered for me.

  ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘You’re just frittering away time with me, no more, no less! Well, now I know.’

  I went home on my own, without trying to find someone to chaperone me. As our house loomed in the distance, I felt as if it had two arms reaching out to grab me by the neck and strangle me. I could see only darkness ahead of me.

  Ibrahim was waiting. I knew I was late, but I hadn’t realised how late. He slapped me hard, then shook me, demanding to know where I’d been. In the end my husband came to my rescue. In despair I hit my head on the wall with all my might and went to bed alone, while my two daughters clung to Maryam.

  Next morning I got up and headed for al-Rawche, the suicide rock for jilted lovers. I thought of Umm Fawzi and finally understood how she could have ended her life three years ago without giving a thought to her daughters.

  Umm Fawzi was the neighbour whom I had asked to hide me in the attic so I could avoid getting married; the one who had unwillingly conned the Haji into giving her money so I could buy stockings. She was my friend, but since she rarely left the house, I would visit her and tell her the stories of films I’d seen.

  She was Abu-Fawzi’s second wife; his first wife had died and left him with a daughter. The girl lived with Abu-Fawzi and Umm Fawzi for a short while, but then Umm Fawzi’s brother fell in love with her and married her. Years went by. But the girl regularly fought with her mother-in-law – Umm Fawzi’s mother – and once, when her own husband lifted his arm to strike her,
she doused herself with kerosene. Her husband tried to save her, but she died in the flames.

  Abu-Fawzi blamed his son-in-law and his wife’s family for his daughter’s death.

  ‘By the right of the Prophet Muhammad,’ he cursed them, ‘may their daughters be consumed by fire in this world and the next!’

  He had forgotten that his own wife was one of their daughters. From the moment he uttered that prayer, his wife began threatening to kill herself. It happened whenever they had an argument, however trivial. Her husband ignored her threats; after all, they liked each other and had three children together, all paragons of beauty and good manners.

  I went into Umm Fawzi’s house just a few minutes before she doused herself in kerosene. Her door was wide open; nobody in our neighbourhood closed their door. I saw her stretched out on the sofa, her face turned to the wall. Assuming she was sound asleep, I crept back out. I was halfway up our stairs when I heard her screams. The neighbours tried to put out the flames with blankets, coverlets and water from the pond.

  I stood there, in the middle of her sitting room, shrieking. I blamed myself.

  ‘God strike me down!’ I cried. ‘Why didn’t I speak to you? Burn me instead. Please, God, do it to me!’

  How could Umm Fawzi do this to herself when she had three children, when she knew how much I loved her? How could she? For days afterwards she battled on with her painful burns.

  It frightened me that her husband’s prayer had been granted, just one year after he’d uttered those dreadful words, ‘May their daughters be consumed by fire in this world and the next!’ Umm Fawzi lay dying, like shining tar on the ground. I collected the scattered remnants of her singed hair, weeping as I gathered the strands into a clump, vowing to take them to Sitt Zaynab’s shrine in Damascus.

  Were people’s prayers really answered in this way? Was someone out there praying that Muhammad would leave me, or that God would make me die?

  Frustration and despair had taken control of me. They were my left foot and my right foot, giving me resolve, and providing me with the necessary logic and desire to kill myself. I left the road and walked until I reached a small cliff overlooking the sea. I would not self-immolate like Umm Fawzi and so many other women in Lebanon at that time. I did not want to die from my burns or, if I survived, live with the scars of my failure. My hope was that, through suicide, I’d cause a huge scandal, something to make people point their fingers at Ibrahim and hold him responsible. He’d slapped me, hadn’t he? I wanted to die so I’d be free. It would be a death that brought shame on my family. Therein lay the source of my strength, just as Umm Fawzi had taken revenge on her own husband by committing suicide.

  And what of Muhammad? He’d realise I’d finally given up. All my energy had been exhausted: energy for living with or without him, with or without my daughters. The love I felt for him could never stagnate; it was like a tempest, a hurricane, something I couldn’t contain.

  I looked down at the surging roar of the waves and stared hard into them. It was as if the sea was calling out to me. Just then a hand reached out and pulled me back. Still speechless, hearing only the roar of the sea, drowning in my sweat, I turned. A young man had been watching me. He pulled me away from the rocks and then insisted on accompanying me home, even though I told him I’d changed my mind and had no intention of killing myself. Despite my protestations, he remained unconvinced. I swore by God and the Prophet, but to no avail. Eventually I confessed to him that I was really more scared of my brother finding out I’d tried to commit suicide than I was of death itself. Hurriedly I fixed my hair under its black scarf and checked my clothes. I started to run, as if I were shouting out, ‘Let me show you how beautiful life is.’ I raised my head to the skies. I thanked God that I was in Beirut, the city of Yagog and Magog, and that no one knew about my foolishness.

  Silk Valley

  SOON I LEARNED from Miskiah, Muhammad’s sister, that he was engaged. The films I’d seen helped me understand his reason for marrying: he had given up hope that I would ever become his wife, and was eager now to build his own future, to have children. This logic calmed me briefly; then anger and jealousy took hold and I became determined to see his fiancée. Miskiah told me a time when I might glimpse her walking past Muhammad’s house. As soon as I saw her, I prayed silently, ‘Thank you, God, for helping me in my struggle!’ The fiancée was nowhere near as pretty or fashionable as me. I could tell that she never went to films, wouldn’t sing and certainly never flirted. Another thought occurred to me: Muhammad didn’t deserve me. If he did, how could he possibly contemplate having such a woman as his wife?

  Before he left to take up his new post in Silk Valley, a remote region close to the Syrian border full of smugglers, Muhammad and I met one final time. He handed me five addressed envelopes with postage stamps stuck on them. I had to promise to send him letters so he’d know how I was. I was to put them in the letter box in the street opposite our house where an army commandant lived; that way, the letters would be sure to reach him quickly. When he gave me those envelopes I knew that he wanted to keep in contact with me.

  Yet again, we regretted not having been more serious about his promise to teach me to read and write. We shared the blame for squandering our time together.

  Less than a week after he’d gone, I dictated my first letter to Fatme. I told him I thought of him every time I saw damask roses in bloom or passed his house. How I longed to see his window half-open so I could rush in to him! I closed with the words of the song, ‘You’re on my mind, and I can’t stand being apart from you.’

  A letter came back from Muhammad via Miskiah, and Fatme read it to me. He’d written out Umm Kulthum’s song ‘Write to me, write to me’:

  Write to me and explain to me

  About a heart and its fixations,

  About your absence; for how long?

  Enough of suffering, the result of your being

  Far distant, and of your own choice.

  Write to me of a time when we may meet,

  Write to me morning and evening.

  I asked what the other words were on the page, and Fatme read, ‘Lyrics by Bayram al-Tunisi and music by Zakariyya Ahmad.’ I was more touched by that than by the song itself: he was treating me as his peer, someone who would want to know a literary source.

  I had noticed how much Fatme enjoyed reading out Muhammad’s letters. She relished the atmosphere of conspiracy, as we drank coffee and took surreptitious puffs on cigarettes. Tears would well in her eyes as she read.

  ‘I’m telling you this without the slightest bit of jealousy,’ she once said, tapping the wooden table for good luck. ‘If you travelled the entire inhabited globe in quest of another man, you’d never find one like him.’ I expected her to add, ‘A person who worships you the way he does.’ But instead she said, ‘Someone who’s a decent person, not a thug or a womaniser.’

  I knew what she meant. I was married with two daughters, and married women inevitably attracted men who wanted to spend time with them for only one reason. All of that was utterly different from the love that Muhammad and I felt for each other.

  Fatme couldn’t write back to Muhammad for me on that particular day. It had grown dark, and she was scared that her brother, who was visiting her from the south, would arrive home and find her writing a love letter. I had to resort to taking my own daughter Fatima into the bathroom with me, with paper and pencil hidden in my dress pocket. I sat Fatima down and dictated the letter, watching her sound out the words as the pencil moved under her childish fingers.

  Kamila, what are you doing, asking your eight-year-old daughter to write your lover a letter? I asked myself.

  But Fatima adored Muhammad. She would watch for him to appear at the top of the alley, where he’d wait for me, and when he saw her he’d give her a little pink rubber doll or a wooden figurine of a gazelle. She was used to seeing Muhammad around in the neighbourhood or at Bhamdoun. When we went for strolls, Fatima listened as we sang songs to each
other. She was well aware that he was the ‘big secret’. She kept it to herself, out of her love for me, though she was also devoted to her father. As Fatima wrote my letter, I was aware of her pride and sense of achievement at being able to do such a thing. Once it was done, I folded it and put it in my bra.

  This is what it said:

  My dear Muhammad,

  I love you so much! I shall follow you wherever you go. Love of my soul, all I want is to please you. I’m longing to see you and afraid for you. What am I to do with this love of mine? I want you here, close to me; it is torture when you’re so far away! Your kisses tell me you love me, so why did you leave me? When you are near, my dearly beloved, you can console me. Come back to me here! Oh letter, winging your way to him, promise me, by the Prophet himself, to say hello to him. Oh letter, how lucky you are, winging your way to him; soon you’ll be in my lover’s hands.

  I grew very bored, especially during the middle of the day, when I would have been with Muhammad. But, determined not to make Ibrahim suspicious, I set off out when my various women chaperones came by as usual to get me. Since Muhammad had gone away I had nowhere to go, so I would walk around aimlessly before coming back home. I was tempted to get on a bus and visit Muhammad for the day, but I didn’t, because Ibrahim had given me lots of leeway recently and I didn’t want to test it.