by Kim Barnes
“I cannot drive,” he said. “I have never learned.”
“I could teach you,” I said. “Ruthie would let us use her car. Just around the compound.”
He pinched a smile. “Let us not forget our experience with the polka.”
I rested my arms on the counter. “I wish I could explore the desert like Lawrence of Arabia.”
“Ah, you want to go native,” Yash said, taking care as he salted a pot of water. “It’s like an illness among white men of some privilege. T. E. Lawrence, Sir Wilfred Thesiger. They see themselves as golden-haired gods, I suppose.”
“Thesiger? The explorer?” I asked, remembering the rain. “Abdullah told me about him.”
Yash lifted his eyes, blinked slowly. “An interesting conversation for you to have with the Bedouin,” he said. He took out a knife, began slicing a carrot. “Did he tell you about the women who have mapped this land?”
“What women?” I asked.
“Gertrude Bell was one of the greatest Arabist explorers of all time and single-handedly drew the boundaries of Iraq.” He raised his knife like a pointer. “Did he tell you that Dame Freya Stark trekked the terra incognita of Iran and was the first to locate the fabled Valley of the Assassins?” He flicked the knife. “Of course not. Women have no place in his history.”
“It hardly matters,” I said, “if I can’t even leave the compound.” I snorted and dropped my chin. “I just love learning new things,” I said, then tipped my head. “Tell me about India. All I really know is that is where Gandhi is from.”
“That may be all that you need to know,” Yash said, then lifted his head and scowled at the sound of someone at the door—maybe the shrimp peddler again, thinking me a soft touch. I hopped up to answer it, found Faris clutching a sheaf of dry weeds that he held between us and rattled meaningfully, his wizened face half-hidden in the folds of his ghutra. Yash listened and translated as best he could.
“He has dreamed that a swarm of locusts will come from the west and descend this evening.” Faris swept his hand across the yard, uttered a few hoarse words, and Yash nodded. “He says they will take everything.”
Seeming satisfied, Faris returned to his weeding. I hesitated a moment, then followed Yash out to the back patio, where he had taken the chicken he had gotten at market. I saw that Faris had covered the vegetables with buckets and boxes—anything that he could find.
“You really think the locusts will come?” I asked, wondering whether Faris was only trying to scare me off my garden.
“They always come. If not today, then tomorrow.” Yash motioned at the chicken. “You can help me. It will occupy your time.”
I sat down and began plucking. “My grandfather said the locusts in Oklahoma ate the feathers right off the chickens.”
Yash smiled, making quick pinches with his thumb and finger. “My father said the same of Punjab.”
When the feathers stuck and matted, I wiped my hands on my pants, but Yash remained pristine, his white shirt crisp and unblemished. I thought of my mother sitting on the porch, doing just this thing, how it was in the concentration of chores that she told the stories I remembered.
“What about your wife?” I asked. “What happened after the fountain?”
“I asked that I might marry her.” He dipped his fingers into the bowl of warm water at our feet and went at the pinfeathers. “We lived with my family in a top-floor room. My mother would stand on her bed to slap the ceiling with her slipper. ‘Enough!’ she’d cry. ‘Enough!’ ” Yash’s face broke into a grin with the memory. “We found an apartment, very small, but one window looked out over the gardens of an old woman from Goa. She gave us guavas from her trees and bottles of fenny made from the cashew apples she distilled on the slope of the courtyard. We would wake in the morning and know she was brewing by the sweet juice smell. It made us happy and want to make love.”
I blushed in spite of myself, but Yash kept plucking. “I was not a temperate man,” he said.
“You were young,” I said, “in love.”
“Young, yes, and in love.” He rinsed his hands, dabbed them against the towel on his knee.
“And then what?” I asked.
Yash looked up, his eyes dark, then stood, taking the chicken with him. “I will start the stewing.”
I followed him into the kitchen, trailing downy tufts that floated aloft in the slightest movement of air. I stood for a moment, hoping for more talk, but Yash busied himself with sharpening the knife to a fine edge. I sighed, then moved into the living room that felt like a cavern, dark and cool. The house that had once seemed enormous to me now felt small, each room too familiar. I lay on the couch with my book, trying to forget that it was my second time through, that I already knew what came next, and felt the drowsiness of an empty afternoon coming on.
If I dreamed, I don’t remember, except when I woke from my nap, it was to what I thought was the static of the television or maybe the radio. I lifted my head and realized it was the sound of the wind rising, sand pelting the house. I moved into the living room and pulled the blinds. The sky was a blur, the light filtered to gray. And then I understood what I was seeing: not the common swirl of dust but the bodies of insects, thousands and thousands of them, a storm of locusts brewing the air.
I knelt on the couch, fascinated. I’d seen the hordes of grasshoppers descend on our neighbor’s corn and mow it clean, had swept them into piles on the porch, but I had never seen anything like this. The lawns, the sidewalk, the asphalt—all boiling like lava pouring down the streets. No sun, the streetlights muted, not even the houses next door were visible. The locusts popped against the windows, held for a moment, then fell away to be replaced by a dozen more, their sound a frenzied murmur, like the june bugs I used to catch, tie to a string, and let fly around me, their wings beating up, dipping, beating up, a rhythmic rise and fall, an openmouthed zip of sound. But it was larger than that, a noise that swelled to fill the sky, more like the tornado that had touched down outside Shawnee, when my grandfather had taken me to the dank root cellar. Where the corona of the candle’s flame fell away, I could see things moving, spiders, scorpions, snakes. “Just sit still,” he had said, “and let me listen.” He was waiting for that sudden quiet that was the heart of the tempest, the train leaving its tracks. I fell asleep against his shoulder and woke up in my bed, the morning sky clear as rainwater.
I slid to sit on the sofa, wondering whether Mason would make it home. I went to the telephone to dial Ruthie, but the lines were already eaten through, and I began to feel a creeping terror, as though the locusts might gnaw their way right through the walls.
“What are we going to do?” I asked Yash. He was tearing up over the onions, wiping his eyes with a sleeve.
“I will bring your tea,” he said.
I hesitated before moving back into the living room, working hard to stifle the sense I had of the air closing in. When a pair of headlights broke the false dusk, I stood at the door, afraid to open it too soon, afraid to wait a second longer. Mason hit the porch at a dead run, Abdullah close behind. We laughed together as they pinched the insects from their clothes.
“It’s like a plague,” I said, “a biblical curse.”
“Locusts are common enough,” Abdullah said. “If Allah were truly angry, there would be no mistaking it. As-sahara,” he said, plucking a locust from his neck. “That is the desert.” He seemed happy, more like I’d first seen him, as though the hardship of the locusts whetted his good humor.
I gathered the bugs in a paper bag, where they rattled like a sack of snakes, and pitched it out the back door. Yash brought coffee while I stood awkwardly until Mason indicated that I should join him on the couch. Whatever had been their business before they came home, Mason and Abdullah’s conversation now moved from the locusts to the prospect of the Dhahran Little League team going to the World Series in Pennsylvania. There was something about keeping quiet, feeling invisible, that caused me to think I might really be, and I half
listened, less interested in the details of the discussion than Abdullah’s gestures, the way his long fingers articulated the air. Ever since our talk after the emir’s banquet, he had seemed different to me, someone I might like to know.
I kept my eyes low, examining his leather sandals, the strong tendons of his feet, then raised my gaze to his shoulders, the place where his collarbone ridged the yoke of his thobe, where his ghutra hid his plaited hair. I’d seen enough Arabs to know that the drillers’ locks were shorn so as not to become tangled in the machinery, but still they wore their ghutras tucked or kept their heads modestly capped. Abdullah’s long hair set him apart, as though he weren’t quite willing to give up that Bedouin part of himself.
I raised my eyes to see Mason watching me, heard my grandfather’s voice: It’s not what you’re looking at but what you are wanting to see. I straightened, brought my eyes to Abdullah’s face. “When will it stop?” I asked.
“As Allah wills,” he said, and canted his head to acknowledge my distress. “It is said that when men were given the gift of song, they forgot to eat and drink and sang themselves to death, so were changed into locusts so that they might sing from birth to the grave.”
“That’s cheery,” Mason said.
“Maybe we should all tell stories,” I said, “like in The Decameron.”
Mason kicked back and crossed his fingers at his chest. “You two go ahead.” He yawned and closed his eyes. “I’ll just listen.”
Abdullah’s face opened with pleasure. “Who will go first?”
“I will,” I said.
“Will this be a story of love or morality?” he asked.
I thought for a moment. “Love.”
“A cautionary tale or an adventure story?”
“A cautionary tale,” I said, then changed my mind. “No, an adventure story.”
Abdullah nodded and sat back with his coffee.
“I once had a horse,” I began. Abdullah looked up, surprised.
“You?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Where I’m from, women ride horses like men.”
Mason opened one eye. “Ride them right into the ground.”
I shot him a warning look. “I mean we sit them like men sit their horses.”
Abdullah furrowed his brow. “But you said ‘I.’ Is this a true story?”
I considered for a moment. “It’s a tale,” I said. “It’s not me but a girl.” Abdullah seemed satisfied, so I went on. “There once was a girl whose mother had died and who lived alone with her father. They were very poor.” I glanced at Mason, but his eyelids didn’t flutter. “Every night before she fell asleep, she would ask God for one thing.”
“She wants a friend,” Abdullah said, “because she is lonely.”
“Yes,” I said, “she wanted a friend, but not like the girls she met at school, who teased her about her tattered clothes and laughed when she cried. She wanted a special friend, the kind who would love her no matter how different she was. So she asked God for a horse. She would sleep in the hay at his feet, and he would watch over her and keep her safe.”
“What about her father?” Abdullah asked.
“Her father … her father was very sad. He didn’t know how to raise a daughter and wouldn’t let her go into town where the other girls were. And so she prayed for a horse. Every night she would pray, and every morning she would wake up and look out the window. She believed that if she prayed hard enough and had enough faith, the horse would appear in the old pasture where her father’s mule grazed. But when spring came and the horse had not appeared, she began to believe that God needed a better pasture to put the horse in, and so, as soon as she had finished her other chores, she would go to work mending the fence as best she could with pieces of old wire and rocks around the rotted posts. She pulled the pokeweed and nettles that the mule had left uneaten. She worked each afternoon until her father called her to prepare his supper, and as the days got longer, she went back out after washing the dishes to work until dark. Her fingers were festered with thistles, but still she worked.”
“She will conjure the horse of her very will,” Abdullah said, admiration in his voice.
“She worked and she prayed and she tried to be as good as she could so that God would answer her prayers. She cross-fenced the pasture to keep out the mule, brought water, and sowed the soil with the ryegrass seeds she had stripped from the stalks of nearby fields. Soon, the dirt sprouted green, and she was happy. She sat in her half of the pasture and read her books and dreamed of the horse she would have.”
Abdullah lifted his fingers. “Has this girl had her first blood?”
I hesitated a moment, unsure of what he meant.
“Yes,” Mason said, never opening his eyes.
“Then it is a husband that she truly wants,” Abdullah said, and winked. “She only imagines him as a horse.”
Mason’s mouth twitched at the corners.
“One morning,” I pushed on, “she woke as she always did and looked out her window. She blinked because she couldn’t believe her eyes. The mule was gone from the pasture, but there was the horse she had prayed for.”
Abdullah sat forward, intent. “It may be a djinn,” he said. “She must be wary.”
“It was a horse,” I said, unsure as to whether Abdullah’s concern was genuine or if he was teasing me, “a tobiano paint with a black mane and tail.”
“A stallion?” he asked.
“A gelding,” I said.
Abdullah sat back, smug. “Then it cannot be her husband,” he said, and I heard Mason snort. I looked from him to Abdullah, feeling as though I were on the outside of some kind of joke.
“He was an old horse,” I went on, “she could see that right away, and a bit bandy-legged, but when she ran to the pasture, he came to her and laid his head on her shoulder, and she knew right then that God made this horse just for her. His mouth was broken, and his hooves were split, and she worried he’d been hurt, but she washed him and brushed him and told him his name was Sonny and then she fed him the rind of a watermelon.”
“And now he loves her,” Abdullah said, real kindness in his voice, and I smiled.
“Yes,” I said. “She had forgotten to pray for a bridle and reins and a saddle, but she found an old rope that he didn’t mind, and when she jumped one leg over and hitched upright, he held like he’d been a good horse all his life.”
“This is why he was chosen,” Abdullah said. “Allah is merciful.”
“And so the girl and her horse rode the small pasture, and when she asked her father whether she could ride to school, he said yes, but no farther. She picketed the horse at the edge of the playing field, and he was happy to eat the grass and doze in the sun. The girl knew that she, too, should be happy, but the road to and from school was never long enough, and even with the horse, she was still lonely.”
“She desires a husband,” Abdullah said, and I was sure, now, that he was feigning earnestness. “Her aunties must find her one.”
“She wants an adventure,” I insisted. “At first, it was enough for her to explore the nearby fields and farm roads, but in the opposite direction lay the town, where she knew the girls and boys were gathering to drink sodas and listen to music. One afternoon, because the air was warm and all the birds were singing, she let her horse continue past the crossroad. She thought she could deceive her father and tell him she’d stopped to help a neighbor pick plums. She even knew the tree, where she would be high enough on her horse’s back to reach the highest limbs, and she would stain her fingers and her mouth with the fruit to convince her father of her lie.”
Abdullah’s face took on a truly troubled cast. “The daughter who disobeys her father in this way, she will be in trouble.”
“This is in America,” I said, even as I realized that what he said was true.
Mason sang under his breath, “ ‘How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?’ ”
“Listen,” I said. “It’s just
a story, and I can make it whatever I want. Forget that she’s a girl. I’ll make her a boy. So now the boy has a horse, and he is the one wanting adventure, and so he goes to town.”
Abdullah relaxed back and nodded at Mason, one corner of his mouth lifting. “It is better that she is a boy.”
“Fine,” I said. “It’s a boy. So the boy disobeyed his father, rode the horse into town, and went to the soda fountain, where the other teenagers were. He had a Coke and listened to the music on the jukebox and didn’t talk much, but at least he wasn’t alone. When it started to get dark, he realized how late it was, and he rode the horse to the plum tree and rubbed his mouth and fingers with juice and dropped a few in his pockets. He put the horse away and did his chores before making pancakes for dinner and doing his homework and going to bed early so his father wouldn’t ask any questions.” I spoke quickly, the impending lament I had felt when first telling the story turned to frustration. “When the boy woke the next morning and looked out his window, the horse was gone.” I heard the blood rushing in my ears and remembered it was the locusts’ endless chirping. “And that’s the end,” I said.
“But it is not the end,” Abdullah said, and cast a conspiratorial glance at Mason. “Along with adventure, you promised a love story.”
“He loved the horse,” I said.
Abdullah slanted his mouth. “A man might write a poem of praise for his horse, but he would not write a poem of love.”
“Finish the story, Gin,” Mason said. “I bet the boy meets a girl.”
“Why don’t you finish it?” I said, sharper than I meant to.
“Please,” Abdullah said. “I want to hear what happens to this boy.”
I set my jaw. “Even though he was punished, the loss of the horse only made the boy braver. He began to wait for his father to fall asleep before slipping out and sneaking into town, where he met a girl and fell in love and lived happily ever after. How’s that?”
Before they could answer, Yash appeared in the doorway as though he knew I needed intervention. He bowed slightly.
“Your dinner is ready, sahib.”