Behind the Veils of Yemen (7 page)

I looked at their faces, artfully painted with makeup. I wished Kevin could see how beautiful they were. He knew them only as they appeared in public: dark eyes in narrow black slits.

I noticed Fatima and two friends whispering together on the mufraj. They were all looking at me.

“She is a
mussihiya
[Christian]?” The girl’s surprise had raised her voice.

Fatima nodded, arching her eyebrows at me and folding her arms across her chest. All three girls stared at me with equally lofty eyebrows. They straightened their backs and lifted their heads. They seemed higher as they looked down on me.

One girl’s smile turned to a sneer. “Mussihiya,” she repeated.

The other girl seemed perplexed and agitated. “But she is friendly and nice. She is
habooba
[lovely]!” Her bewildered whisper was loud in the room. I smiled appreciation at her, but my smile faded at the other girl’s haughty eyes.

That girl leaned closer. “Islam is
hallee
[sweet],” she said loudly.

Conversations between the women around us grew silent. They nodded their heads vigorously in agreement and focused on me, waiting collectively for my response. I looked to Fatima, but she was waiting with them. I grappled for words and wrestled with pride. I had never before been treated as inferior because of my faith and nationality, especially by the people of an impoverished country.

Lord, help!
I prayed inwardly.

Out loud I slowly responded, “The way of Jesus is sweet. It is enough for me. Jesus is all that I need to walk with God.”

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

The girl protested. “But we have
Isa
[Islamic name for Jesus] in our Quran. He is one of our prophets.”

She was interrupted as two of the bride’s sisters entered the room carrying trays of perfume. The women turned from me to the perfumes, eager to spray their necks, arms and dress fronts. The room had grown crowded, and the smell of perspiration had risen with the heat. Now heavy perfume saturated the air, intended to cover unpleasant odors.

I squelched my urge to cough and sneeze as my eyes watered. When the tray reached me, I declined the heavy dousing. I had spritzed myself earlier with a quiet, feminine scent. I did not see it among the ornate bottles on the tray.

Fatima touched my arm, her eyes full of concern. “You must wear perfume for your husband, Audra. It will please him, and he will love you.”

“I am already wearing perfume,” I answered.

Fatima leaned closer to sniff. “It is not enough. Here, you must wear these.” She handed me a little red bottle and a large purple one. “Yours is not strong enough.”

I did not want more perfume. I knew what Kevin’s reaction would be. It would not be
amore
. He would wrinkle his nose, hold me at arm’s length and push me toward the shower. But I sighed and turned my neck to let Fatima spray one scent after the other.

A woman I had met at Fatima’s house came over to greet me. She kissed my hand in a tradition I quickly learned to repeat. Holding my right hand in hers, she kissed it and with her hand thrust it back to me. I kissed her hand and she pulled it back to kiss mine again. When she had both given and received adequate kisses, she smoothed her pink dera to sit beside me. Her neck was heavily laced with gold chains. A circle of jasmine buds was pinned around her curly black hair.

“
Intee Amrekia? Kaif al Yemen?
[You are an American? How (do you like) Yemen?]” A gold crown flashed on a front tooth.

“Hallo gidan
[Very nice],” I answered.

She asked me how many children I had, and I answered, but then her next question confused me. I thought I had misunderstood, and I turned to Fatima for help.

Fatima quickly translated, “What kind of birth control do you use?” and turned back to her own conversation.

I sat silent, staring at the woman’s kohl-lined eyes. I tried to smile. I leaned back to Fatima and whispered in English, “Do you really talk about such things with strangers?”

Irritated by my repeated interruption, Fatima responded sharply, “Of course, why not?” She turned her back to me and resumed her conversation.

I thought over the rules of conversation Fatima had taught me. I was not to discuss politics, wars or any unpleasant subject while visiting women. Those were considered men’s issues and bad manners for women. I chewed on the inside of my lip, struggling with my own definition of bad manners.

Tired of waiting, the woman moved to a new line of questions. “Where does your husband work? What is his salary? What do you pay for your house?”

I straightened my dress and adjusted my legs to mask my discomfort. I feigned a lack of comprehension, stumbling around in Arabic to avoid answering. I was spared when two girls entered the room with a large CD player. The women began to clap, and I sighed with relief as rhythmic male crooning poured into the room.

Two teenage girls stepped into the narrow strip of floor as the rest of the crowd clapped and yelled. One of the girls tied her long black hejab [head scarf] around her hips as a sash and faced the other girl from the opposite end of the floor. Both began to shimmy and step toward each other with the music, their hips shaking and their arms and hands moving in rhythm.

I was amazed. I had never seen such a beautiful harmony of hips, hands and feet. I could not keep from gawking. Girls as young as ten began to dance and swivel their hips with amazing skill, shaking things I did not know could be shaken. In pairs, girl after girl, woman after woman sashayed across the floor as others clapped and yelled a high-pitched, curdling trill.

Then one young woman danced up to me and pulled my arms to join her. I pulled back, shaking my head with an emphatic
no
. I wanted to learn each fascinating step, but I wanted to learn them in front of the mirror on my closed bedroom door. The girl would not accept my refusal. She continued to pull me up to dance.

When I reluctantly stood, a sea of clapping erupted. The women called out encouragement, trilling me forward. I moved my gold sash from my waist to my hips, wondering if I could make it sway at all. I swallowed and took my place on the floor, closing my eyes as the music played.

I stepped to the music, feeling like my hands had become my feet and my hips had become immobile. I curled my wrists in and out as I tried to sashay, wondering if everything was moving at the same time but not daring to look. Painfully I made it across the floor, grateful when I reached my partner and the dance ended.

Applause thundered from the crowd of women around me. I was startled by it but smiled my appreciation as I sat down, my cheeks flaming. I mopped my sweaty forehead and neck with the handfuls of tissues that had been instantly offered. I looked around at the women. They were beaming at me. I realized they were pleased more by my willingness to dance with them than they were by my skills in dancing. I smiled back at the faces smiling at me. I felt like I had danced over the threshold and into their lives.

We continued to wait for the bride. I fanned myself with a flimsy square of pink tissue. More women had squeezed into the room. Younger girls were shuffled off the mufraj to the floor. I guessed there to be seventy bodies in a room built for thirty.
Kirkadey
, a dark red drink made from hibiscus leaves, was served around the room by the bride’s mother. I downed my small glass and set it back on the tray to be refilled for others.

Sweat trickled down my chest. The heavy scent of perfume no longer lingered. It had failed to mask the odor of hot, sweaty bodies. I looked longingly at the four tall windows behind me. They were latched tightly closed to shut out the danger of peeping males. Water beaded on the glass, dripping down in rivulets. I fanned myself faster and tried not to think about the fresh breeze that had also been shut out. I turned my eyes away.

For the first time I noticed the dancers were all girls and women under thirty. Women my age and older were seated on cots in the outer reception hall. They seemed disinterested in the dancing. They shared apple-spiced tobacco in a water pipe and chewed skimpy leaves of qat while talking about the eight or nine children they had birthed and the years of hard work they had survived. I looked around at the young women dancing and chatting in the crowded room. I wondered if they would one day sit with water pipes and chew leftover qat in outer halls.

The room had grown hotter. Boxes of tissues were passed around again, and each woman took several to dab her face and neck. I was honored as a foreign guest and offered a lone bottle of water, which I promptly shared with Fatima. I looked at my watch. It was after eight o’clock. We had been waiting three hours for the bride.

“Fatima,” I touched her arm. “You must not get too hot. It is not good for the baby.” I patted her bulging abdomen. “You should get some cool air.”

Fatima’s cheeks were flushed, her forehead shiny and beaded with perspiration. Her handsome makeup had become splotchy and dull. The black that had outlined her eyes had become crescent smudges beneath them. “
Momken
[Maybe],” Fatima agreed.

We passed through the reception hall and greeted the elder women politely before entering a large room on the other side sparsely furnished with two thin pads on the floor. A single fluorescent bulb pretended to light the room from its perch on the wall. Pink curtains fluttered in open double windows where a group of young women hovered on the sill.

Fatima introduced me to one. Mona was curvy, dimpled and dressed in heavy makeup that had not yet smeared. Her hair was a crown of soft black ringlets. She wore a cobalt miniskirt with black fishnet stockings trimmed in crocheted roses.

“
Helwa
[Pretty]!” I complimented her stockings as we pulled a pad to sit near the window. “Did you find them in Sana’a?”

Mona stretched her legs for me to see her stockings, careful to cover her feet with her scarf to keep from offending with their bottoms. I smiled at the polite Arab protocol, which prohibits showing the bottoms of one’s feet to another. Fatima whispered something to Mona. I was surprised by Fatima’s stern look to her and Mona’s rebellious one back. I was about to ask why when a little girl rushed into the room.

“The bride is coming! The bride is coming!” she cried.

Mona and I scrambled up from the pad, offering our hands to help Fatima. Fatima brushed away the pumpkin seeds she had been eating and hurried with us to squeeze into place in the mufraj room.

A wicker chair with a high princess back had been placed at the front of the room. It was decorated with garlands of white and blue silk flowers. Shiny white ribbons curled down the sides. I craned my neck with the other women, my eyes glued to the entrance. The women began to yell shrilly, vibrating their tongues to make their yell loud and piercing. They clapped rhythmically as the bride entered the room. Two small girls in blue satin dresses walked behind her, carrying her train.

The bride was a masterpiece. Her heavily sequined gown shimmered in the light. Her curled hair was beaded with satin roses, cascading to her puffed satin sleeves, and her makeup was flawless on her placid face. She lowered herself stiffly onto her wicker throne, her mother smoothing her train at her feet. She raised her eyes to gaze upon her audience.

Women and girls called greetings to her, filled with Mohammed’s name. I did not recognize the words. “What are they saying?” I whispered to Fatima.

“They are giving blessings for a good home and many children.”

Suddenly and without warning, the bride rose abruptly from her chair. The women continued to call their blessings, but the bride ignored them, dabbing her face with a damp tissue and exiting the room almost as quickly as she had entered.

I was stunned. “Is the bride supposed to leave that soon?” I whispered to Fatima. She shook her head and went to talk to Huda.

Fatima tried to keep her answer quiet when she returned. She chuckled in my ear. “The bride felt hot. She did not want her hair and makeup to be ruined by the heat.”

I was astounded. “Will she come back to her guests?”

“No,” Fatima said, rising from the mufraj. “Come, we can go now. The bride will not return.”

We said our good-byes around the room to women who pleaded with us repeatedly and traditionally to stay. We repeated our good-byes to the older women in the reception hall. It occurred to me that they had not come into the room to welcome the bride.

When we had given adequate compliments to the bride’s mother and sisters, we dug through the mounds of shoes piled by the door. We eventually found ours, and Mona handed me a package wrapped in torn newspaper. I raised my eyes in question. She smiled and walked away.

Outside, Fatima and I walked down a bumpy dirt alley to find a taxi. Unable to delay my curiosity, I opened my package under a streetlight. I stopped still in my steps.

“No!” I exclaimed. “I did not mean for Mona to give me her stockings. We must take them back.”

“No, Audra,” Fatima answered. “Mona has done what is right.” She looked pleased.

I wanted to bite off my tongue and with it the words I had spoken to Mona. Too late I remembered that to compliment something was to obligate its owner to give it as a gift. I said nothing more as we walked toward the main street. But I felt as if I had failed.