Behind the Veils of Yemen (11 page)

“If you are not nursing him, then he only needs formula. Maybe you should try a different one. Some babies have allergies to some formulas. Have you asked a doctor about this?” I immediately regretted asking.

“The doctor said ensha’allah he will be strong and healthy.” Her voice was a monotone. “He said I drank cold water when I was pregnant. That is why the cord wrapped around his neck. The doctor said that is why he cries.” She glanced down at her hands again.

I gritted my teeth, wishing I had accompanied her to the doctor. There were things I would have said to him.

“Fatima, that is not true. It was not your fault.” I lifted her eyes to mine. “The doctor is wrong, Fatima. American doctors would not say this.”

Her eyes searched mine, and she smiled a little. “Audra,” she paused. “I want to take him to my family in Aden.” She straightened the band on her ponytail. “They want to see him. Maybe there he will not cry so much. Maybe he will get better.”

I waited for her to continue. She looked at me and looked away. “The trip is long, more than five hours. Ahmed cannot go with me, and I cannot travel alone.” She smiled tentatively. “Audra, will you go with me?” She was almost whispering.

I tried not to show my surprise. “Me? When?”

“After one week. Now it is not too hot.”

“In one week? That is soon.” I thought of my children. I had been away from them overnight only once before. “I don’t know, Fatima,” I hesitated.

“Please,” she urged. “I must see my sisters, but I cannot travel alone.”

I sighed. I longed to be inside a Yemeni home for more than an afternoon visit.

“I could not stay long,” I said cautiously.

“One week only.” Her eyes were pleading.

“Maybe. I will ask my husband.”

She clapped her hands with excitement. “I will tell my sisters we are coming.”

“Fatima!” I exclaimed. “Wait! How do you know my husband will say yes?”

She smiled. “Because you are Amrekia [American].”

A week later we were on the bus. The security guard in his olive green suit almost passed my seat as he walked down the aisle to check tickets and travel papers. To him I was every other black-shrouded woman. But I made the mistake of glancing up as he passed, and my blue eyes caught him. He whirled around and asked for my passport.

I handed it to him grudgingly. I knew he would add it to the roster of foreigners traveling in the country. Security forces maintained surveillance on all foreigners and their activities. Some of it was for the foreigners’ protection.

I smiled at the alarm in Fatima’s eyes. She jostled Qasar in her lap and started to protest as the man walked away with my passport.

“He’ll bring it back,” I assured her. But I was annoyed. I had wanted to blend in and be insignificant, like any other Yemeni woman.

After the guard returned my passport and the bus pulled away from the curb, a steward passed out bottled water, mint candy and green plastic bags. I returned my passport to my purse and tucked the green carsick bag into my seat pocket, chuckling. “That is not encouraging.”

Fatima nodded. “The roads through the mountains are difficult. Many curves.” She bit her lip. “I get sick in the travel,” she admitted sheepishly. “Do you have medicine?”

I immediately reached for my purse. I handed her a tube of motion sickness pills. “Have you taken this before, Fatima? Are you allergic to it?”

She gratefully took the tube. “These are good,” she said. She opened her water and swallowed two pills.

I soon regretted giving Fatima access to more than one pill. Within thirty minutes she was fast asleep. She did not stir for the three hours that Qasar wailed. She never moved during my multiple attempts to soothe him. She missed hearing the man who threatened to harm the driver if he did not stop the bus. She slept through the driver’s laughing refusal and the man’s subsequent upheavals into his green plastic bag. She also missed the smells as other passengers followed suit.

I fanned my face with the book I had hoped to read and rocked Qasar until his screams finally softened into exhausted sleep. A gory American horror movie played on an overhead video screen. I turned away to look out of the window.

“Lord, help me get through this,” I sighed and practiced reading Arabic billboards. It was a long trip to Aden.

When we finally arrived and stepped off the bus, the heat sucked away my breath. Within seconds sweat trickled down my chest.

“It’s hot.” I wiped my forehead on my balto sleeve.

“Yes, but it is cooler now. In the summer it is quite hot.”

I nodded. Compared to the low seventies we had left in Sana’a, Aden seemed hotter than its humid 95 degrees. But I knew the coastal summer could top 115, so I tried to be grateful.

We flagged a taxi to Fatima’s house. I lugged our duffel bags while Fatima carried Qasar, who was still sleeping. We arrived at a two-story row house, painted the same peeling yellow as the houses on either side. We opened the rusted gate to a tiny courtyard shaded by a gnarled tree that dripped yellow leaves into a dry stone fountain.

“
Ahlen!
[Hello!]” Fatima called.

The scarred wooden door flung open. Three women stood behind it, straining around each other to see us. With wide smiles and gleeful shouts, all three fell upon us. I was smothered by gripping hugs and profuse kissing. Qasar blinked in a sleepy stupor.

The eldest and widest of the three sisters was introduced as Aisha. She wiped damp hands on her cotton housedress and took Qasar from Fatima. She cradled him in kisses and disappeared into the house ahead of us. Fatima and I followed in the vise-grip of the other two.

Inside a small living room, we took off our baltos and hejabs and sat on a fraying blue mufraj. Yasmine, the youngest of the three, sat with us. She was beautiful with bright eyes that flashed and thick black hair clasped at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a peach rayon dress so wrinkled that I wondered if she thought it was fashionable. Yasmine held Fatima’s hand, asking questions too quickly for me to translate.

The shortest of the sisters, Zahra was twice the width of Yasmine but not as large as Aisha. She had sad eyes and gray peppered hair. She smiled and took my face in her cool hands. She kissed my cheeks repeatedly before moving to slide a large white fan into the room. She placed it to face us a few feet away and turned it on high. I gripped my ponytail to keep it from whipping across my face and tried to follow Zahra’s Arabic. I responded to her questions while trying to keep hair out of my mouth.

Aisha returned from the back with Qasar, who was asleep again. Wisps of graying hair escaped from the bun knotted on the back of her head. She was frowning. Her light brown eyes were fixed on Fatima. She sat heavily on the floor, covering the baby with a thick fleece blanket as a shield against the fan. Worry rippled across her face.

“He is so thin, Fatima. What is wrong with him? Is he eating?” Aisha asked.

Fatima had not told them about his birth. I waited for her to explain what had happened and how far he had come from his critical first days, but she did not. She gushed light prattle, holding her chin high as she talked. I said nothing.

Aisha jiggled her legs as Qasar began to stir under the hot blanket. “Bas [enough], bas, habibi [my love]. Bas,” she crooned.

“Ma’a sha’allah [What God wills],” Zahra whispered. “Ma’a sha’allah.”

The doorbell buzzed from the front of the house. Zahra ignored it as she squeaked a toy in Qasar’s face. His fretting developed into a fussing cry.

“Bas, bas,” Zahra said firmly, repeating, “Ma’a sha’allah,” as she kissed the baby’s damp forehead.

The doorbell buzzed again. Qasar’s cry evolved into an angry scream. “He is hungry,” Fatima explained to her sisters’ worried looks.

She rummaged in the diaper bag for a clean bottle.

“I will feed him.” Aisha rose to take the formula, but Fatima held it away. Clutching it close, Fatima gripped her wailing son and pulled him from her older sister.

“Asalam alaykum. [Peace be upon you].” A woman entered the room and handed her heavily embroidered balto to Yasmine, who had answered the door.
“Kaif halikum?
[How are you all?]”

Her words were scarcely louder than Qasar’s wails. She made her way to each of us, kissing our cheeks twice before mopping the perspiration from her face with a wadded tissue. She thumped heavily down in the space Fatima had left behind.

Fatima smiled apologetically as Qasar screamed. “I must feed my son,” she told the woman and left the room. Aisha frowned.

“His cry is strong, ma’a sha’allah.” The woman nodded approvingly. Then she turned to me. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Audra,” I answered. “And you, what is your name?”

“
Om
Hamid,” she responded, dabbing the soggy pink tissue again.

I cringed, regretting how easily I had given my name. I had forgotten that a woman’s personal name was not freely distributed. It was considered disrespectful. In public a woman was referred to as the wife of someone or as the mother, om, of her eldest son. I should have responded, “Om Jaden,” until I knew the woman better.

Yasmine saw my discomfort. “Audra has three children, she told Om Hamid. “Two sons and a daughter.”

The woman nodded approvingly. “Ma’a sha’allah.” Qasar wailed in the background. “Ma’a sha’allah,” she repeated softly.

“Does the baby always cry this much?” Aisha asked, her face a wave of concern.

“
Ahyanun
[Sometimes],” I answered, thinking it best not to add, “You should have heard him on the bus.”

“I think he has colic,” I explained.

Om Hamid asked Aisha a question I did not understand. She asked if they had done something to the baby. “What does that word mean?” I whispered to Yasmine.

“It is a special pouch with writings from the Holy Quran and special herbs to keep away the Evil Eye,” Yasmine explained.

“Oh, those.” I kept my voice even. I had heard about the pouches mothers trusted to protect their infants. Without them compliments could not be given. But with the tiny pouch dangling from a cord around her baby, a mother felt confident that her child was safe from the Evil Eye. She could proudly receive praises for her baby without fear.

Fatima returned to the room with a half-empty bottle and a contented Qasar sleeping in her arms. She squeezed between me and Om Hamid on the mufraj and tossed a sideways glance at Aisha.

Om Hamid began a volley of admonitions. “You must feed your son biscuit mashed in tea. It will make him fat. And stir honey in his milk. It will make him strong. Ma’a sha’allah.”

“You must feed him many times in the day, even when he is not crying,” Aisha scolded. “He is too thin.”

“And put honey from Zabid into his water,” Zahra added. “It will give him good health.”

“No, Fatima,” I whispered in English. “Babies should not have honey. It is dangerous for them when they are small.”

Fatima took each comment, including mine, with a tolerant smile. But she rolled her eyes when we took our bags upstairs to our room later. We would sleep in the room she had slept in as a child. It was tiny, with twin iron cots, a small cupboard spilling over with clothes and a sliver of yellowish rug. A single window with a rotting seal was open and unscreened. It was next to a warped door that led to the flat cement roof, where laundry baked on a wire clothesline.

“My sisters think I am their baby still.” Fatima scowled. “They think they must take care of my baby and me. I thought it would be different.”

She frowned as she fanned herself with a square of cardboard. “It is hot,” she said.

I agreed. “Maybe we can bring the fan upstairs?” The room did not have a ceiling fan, which was good since I could touch parts of the ceiling with my hand.

Fatima wiped her face and neck with the hem of her orange dera. “I have become spoiled in Sana’a.” She grinned ruefully. “This was my home, but now I do not like the heat.” She wrinkled her nose. “Who can sleep in this heat? Qasar will be crying all the night.”

I thought about the women who were passing him around downstairs. I did not think the heat would be the problem.

Fatima sat up abruptly. “Wait. Mabrooka has a flat with an air conditioner. She spends most of her time in Taiz. Maybe we can sleep at her flat.”

“But your sisters are expecting us to stay with them. Won’t they be offended?” I asked.

Fatima shrugged. “I will explain to them about the heat. They will understand.”

I realized whom Fatima would say could not tolerate the heat. “Fatima, I can sleep here.
Mosh mosh kila
[No problem]. I am fine.” I knew Fatima would use a foreigner’s discomfort rather than her own to appeal to her sisters.

“Please, Fatima,” I repeated. “I don’t want your sisters to think I don’t want to stay with them.”

Fatima had made up her mind. “After maghreb we will go into town. Then we will sleep at Mabrooka’s house.”

I hesitated. Sweat trickled down my damp T-shirt. The prospect of air-conditioning was appealing, but I did not want to be the reason we needed one.