Henna House (12 page)

That's when the henna dyer came to perform her role. She brought with her a waxy aromatic mixture of resin, myrrh, frankincense, and iron sulfate. She heated the mixture over a small fire and then applied it with a stylus in intricate patterns. Then came the darkening of the henna with a caustic mixture of ammoniac and potash called
shaddar
. The henna dyer spread the shaddar. When it was removed, after an hour or two, the henna had turned a deep greenish-black, while the areas protected by the aromatic mixture retained their orange-red shade. The end results were elegant red designs on a background of very dark, almost black, skin. This was different from what occurred in the nonbridal henna house. When women met to adorn themselves for the new moon, for holidays, or for other special occasions, they didn't use the aromatic mixture or the shaddar. They simply applied henna with a stylus, left it to dry, and then sealed it with a coating of lemon sugar water—a much simpler process.

*  *  *

I shouldn't have wasted time wondering about my aunt, but since my mother was so against Rahel Damari's coming, she rose in my estimation and I imagined that she had special cosmetic gifts—like Viola, the wife of the lampmaker, who distilled the most potent perfumes, or Mary, the wife of Tomer the Scribe, who purchased only the finest imported malachite from the Timna valley, ground it into kohl, and then showed ladies how to outline their eyes to their best advantage.

The next morning, I went to visit my sister-in-law Masudah, who had recently given birth to her third son. When I came, she put an older baby, Shalom, on my lap and opened her dress to nurse his new brother. Her breasts came tumbling out, and the baby fussed for a moment
before latching on to an enormous brown nipple. The baby on my lap reached for a clump of my hair. I let him curl his little fingers and tug so hard it hurt. I kissed his little upturned nose, and breathed in deep the yeasty, milky smell of him before I asked Masudah to tell me something about Aunt Rahel.

She didn't answer me immediately. She bit her lip, let out a big sigh. Then she looked at me intently. When she finally spoke she said, “Your Aunt Rahel was the most famous henna dyer in Aden. And not only in Aden. When she and Uncle Barhun were first married, they lived in Sana'a, so she is famous there too. She did the henna for so many brides that they used to call a bride she hennaed ‘one of Rahel's blooms.' Your Uncle Barhun not only permits but also encourages her to practice her craft. She is even known to henna Muslim brides—the daughters of sheiks and the daughters of Turkish functionaries.” Masudah knew this because she too was from a village near Aden and had grown up in the same community where Rahel attended brides. “Why, I had hoped she would do my henna when we were wed, but of course, I was married here in Qaraah, so it was not to be.”

As for my girl cousin and the threat she posed to my brothers' morals, I had to laugh at the thought. I was sure my cousin was an elegant, sensitive creature and would want nothing to do with my brothers. My brothers were the real animals—goats crossed with gazelles, hairy beasts that rutted in the fields and grew skittish at their own shadows. At least this is how I thought of them when I was just a girl and they were already men.

Over the following days, I continued on my quest for information. My brother Aaron was thick, short, bucktoothed, and irritable. He cracked his knuckles and sneered at the mention of Uncle Barhun.

“Uncle Barhun is coming here to mooch off our father. You'll see, he'll sponge Father dry. And with all those daughters, there'll be nothing left for your dowry.”

“But why are they coming?” I probed for answers. “I thought that Uncle Barhun's business was profitable.” Of my father's two brothers, I knew that Uncle Barhun was the wealthier—at least he had been before the current misfortune, whatever it was.

“Umph . . .” Hassan was a taller, uglier version of Aaron. He had a finger in his mouth and was working on dislodging a piece of candied ginger from his molars. He gave up and wiped his fingers on his dirty
shamle.
“He's a coward and a simpleton, almost got himself killed in Aden, and is fleeing like a ratty dog.”

Hassan had a tear in his left nostril, from an accident when he was a boy. While playing with some boys in a quarry, he had tripped, fallen, and ripped his nose open on a sharp piece of volcanic rock. The wound festered and had to be excised. When it healed, he was left with only half a nostril, and people called him Half Nose.

I tried to get more information out of my brothers, but they either knew nothing, or refused to satisfy my curiosity. When I asked Auntie Aminah why the other Damaris were suddenly descending on Qaraah, she just shrugged, and answered with uncharacteristic defeat. She was usually chock-full of information, but now she confessed to being left in the dark.

“Who tells an old woman about business dealings? No one. If you find out, little girl, make sure to come tell me.”

It was my father who finally explained it to me. My mother had sent me to his market stall with a lunchtime bowl of stew. We sat together as he ate. The market was quiet, as it typically was in the middle of the day. My father's stall always smelled of cured calf's skin, shoemaker's pitch, beeswax. He had been working on a pair of
ghof
sandals for one of the Muslim town councilmen. The sandals were stitched with turquoise and silver threads. Stitching the leather was not difficult work, but it made my father's fingertips burn from pushing in the thick needle. I knew because when I helped him, my own fingertips stung and sometimes they even cracked and bled from the effort. When I arrived, my father was rubbing beeswax on his hands. I sat on one of the big leather pillow-stools, waiting for my father to finish his lunch. I must have felt very bold that day, for I opened my mouth and asked why exactly it was that the other Damaris were coming to live with us. My father looked at me the way I imagined a teacher must look at a boy in Torah school when he asks for knowledge reserved for others. He made a sound as if he would speak, then he stopped. When he opened his mouth again he spoke to me in a way I hadn't heard before, as if I weren't just a child, or a young girl, but someone who actually deserved answers to big questions.

“It's like this, Daughter,” he began. “In Aden, the coffee-export trade is ruled by a few foreign establishments, most notably the Barde et Cie corporation from Lyon. But the foreign traders mostly concentrate on
the larger business of exporting beans to Europe. It's left to the small merchants, like your uncle, to perpetuate the petty trade among the Red Sea dhow captains who buy and sell coffee in between Aden, Djibouti, and Berbera. Your Uncle Barhun was one of these petty traders, with a stall in the market in Little Aden and a connection to a small but profitable interest in the Barde et Cie domestic coffee exchange. Just after the New Year, Barhun was cheated by a customer, and when he lodged a complaint with the British customs functionary at the port, the cheating customer hired men to beat Barhun, and to destroy his small warehouse, torching it in the middle of the night. He was lucky to escape with his life,” my father said, exhaling. The look on his face was terribly pained, as if he had witnessed the beating himself. “And of course he will be welcome here. He can depend upon us for refuge.”

I had no idea what happened in the next month to change my mother's mind. But as the date of the other Damaris' arrival approached, my mother not only agreed
not
to leave my father but also roundly declared to the women at the well that she knew it was her duty to greet the Damaris and treat them as kin. Another child might have thought this about-face strange, but my mother was temperamental, and it was not uncommon for her to swear one thing and do another.

T
wo weeks after the arrival of Uncle Barhun's letter, Mr. Musa came to Sabbath lunch. I served him his jachnun and
hilbeh
and precious hard-boiled eggs. For the entire meal, he spoke in proverbs. By the time the coffee was served and the men began to chew their khat, he had already proclaimed, “Work like an ant and you'll eat sugar”; “Who dies today is safe from tomorrow's sin”; and “A monkey in its mother's eye is like a gazelle.” He picked his teeth as I cleared his dishes. After I was done helping with lunch, I went out back and sat underneath our frankincense tree. In no time at all, Mr. Musa found me. I tried to walk away. He followed. I slipped through the opening in the wall leading to the dye mistress's yard. He followed me again, and I looked over my shoulder, surprised that such a fat, decrepit man could fit through the narrow passage. I'm sure he would have continued to chase me, but instead of going farther, I turned to face him.

“Mr. Musa,” I said, “please leave me alone. I am unchaperoned, it is unseemly for you to—” but before I finished my sentence, he grabbed me by the crook of my arm and began to paw at the front of my dress.

“Let me go,” I hissed, but he pulled me toward him. I smelled his foul onion breath. My heart raced in my chest. I noticed a wart on his right cheek, white hairs sprouting out of his nose. He bent toward me, puckered his gray, flaky lips, and almost pressed them into my own. But before he could force himself upon me, he screamed and fell cursing into a big trough full of purple dye.

“That's right, little girl” the dye mistress said. She was standing behind Mr. Musa with one hand on a hip. “You tell that horrible man to leave you alone.”

She had come out of her house, snuck up behind Mr. Musa, and hit him over the head with a clay pot.

Mr. Musa dragged himself out of the trough. The dip had dyed his earlocks—dripping bruised wormy streaks on his pouchy cheeks. His shamle was dyed purple, and his huge belly looked like a swollen eggplant over his pants. As he slogged out of the yard cursing the two of us, I couldn't help but laugh, covering my mouth with my hands.

“Remember, it is no shame for a girl not to be wed.” The dye mistress put down the pot next to the trough. She came and stood next to me, and patted my forearm. “There can even be happiness in a spinster's lot. Look at me.” She spread out her hands, gesturing to the kaleidoscope of troughs and to the many-hued pieces of cloth hanging from lines around the edge of the yard. “If Jacob our Father asked, I could make Joseph another coat of many colors. I am blessed with my work. If you ever need a profession to earn your keep, you come to me and I will teach you my craft.”

People gossiped about what had happened. They said that Mr. Musa had imbibed too much Sabbath arak at lunch and mistook the dye mistress's yard for ours, tripping on a crack in the path. Only I knew that he had followed me there, and that the dye mistress had saved me from his thuggish advances. The day before the other Damaris arrived, I left her a small basket of aromatic soap in between her troughs. Then I sat for a little while, losing myself in the colors of all the drying cloth. Saffrons and blues and reds and yellows and, of course, purples. I looked at the vat that had proved Mr. Musa's undoing. The deep purple was almost black, so dark that my face, reflected only barely, seemed to float on the surface of a starless, moonless sky. I felt so melancholy and filled with longing for Asaf. I wondered where Asaf was at that very moment. If he was on land or at sea. In Africa, Arabia, or Asia? If he was eating or praying, or striking a bargain with a purveyor of rare perfumes. I wondered if he knew that I still slept with his little amulet under my pillow. I thought about what the dye mistress had done—how she had protected me. I saw myself. I was wearing Jacob's coat of many colors. I lifted my arms and every tint of the rainbow shimmered down from my arms. I was cloaked in glory like a bird with incandescent wings.

My father called for me.“Adele, where are you? Adela, Adeellla . . .” I dropped a little stone into the trough, breaking the taut canvas for my visions. I left the sanctuary of the dye mistress's yard just as her father was coming outside. A cheerful little green bird perched on his arm
twittered and sang as the old blind man whistled—the two seemingly engaged in a very pleasant conversation.

When I got back home my father was standing by the rear window. My mother was sitting on the low stool in front of the hearth.

It was strange to see her sitting in the middle of the day.

“What is it, Mother?”

“You should know, Daughter . . .”

“Know what?”

“Mr. Musa has graciously agreed to marry you. You will be formally engaged before this coming Sabbath. And he will marry you two Sabbaths after you first bleed. You are already eleven, almost twelve, so it can't be long hence.”

His onion breath. Those fat, flaky lips. His hands pawing at me. And who was the wife at home? I had never seen her, not once at the market and never at synagogue, but I had overheard my brothers cawing that Mr. Musa's wife was an invalid and that he married her because her strange infirmities inflamed his nighttime sorties, his elephantine thrusts.

“But . . .”

“But what?” My mother's voice was gritty with impatience and frustration.

I spoke so low it was almost a whisper. “But we are not suited for each other.”

I heard a sound come out of my father's throat. A cross between a gasp, a cough, and a sigh. He walked out the door, and I heard him saddle up Pishtish the donkey.

“What did you say?”

“Mr. Musa and I. Surely you know that we are not the least bit friends.”

Did she laugh? Or did she cry with me, her sobs watering my own? Is this a chronicle or a parable? A history or a heartbeat?
Sha, sha, little girl. Sha, sha. Don't cry. Crying will not change your fate, now, will it? Will it?

*  *  *

It happened, as she said it would, just two days later.

“Don't cry, Adela. Do you think you are the first girl to be promised to a man she doesn't favor? Such is the way of the world,” my mother hissed at me, tugging at my gargush; then she spit on her fingers and dabbed at an invisible spot on my right cheek.