I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops (21 page)

That night Qut al-Qulub’s goat disappeared again and she shut herself away as she had done before. This might have been forgotten within a few days if the goat had not appeared the next morning streaked with henna. Layla examined it and informed the other women that it had a different look in its eyes from before. The women did not inquire further or comment on the goat’s transformation. Instead they increased the number of
basmallas
they said when they found themselves face-to-face with Qut al-Qulub or caught her looking in their direction. They had instructed their children from an early age to say “God protect us” to themselves whenever she came in sight.

When the goat disappeared and Qut al-Qulub shut herself away for the third night in a row. Layla and Raifa hurried to her house. They had been delegated by the others to go alone, as it would have made too much noise if they had all gone. They searched for any traces of the goat, keeping their movements restrained so that not even a small exhalation of breath escaped their lips. They clung unblinking to the wall hour after hour until they heard the goat making a commotion inside the house as if it was kicking its hooves against something. Minutes went by. Nothing but silence and waiting. Raifa looked at Layla as if she hoped she too was having second thoughts about being there. When Layla
did not respond, Raifa motioned with her head that they should leave. Layla moved her head slowly from side to side in a gesture of refusal, then looked in front of her, making her eyes soft as if begging her companion to be patient. Silence. Silence. Silence and then the sound of a throat being cleared in the still air, deafening them and making their hearts stop beating. It was not Qut al-Qulub or any other woman, nor the goat or any other animal. Was it a spirit? Then there was Qut al-Qulub saying, “Bless you.”

The two women shook their heads in horror. Qut al-Qulub would never talk to a spirit in such a homely way, as if she was sitting beside it. Confusion, fantasy, conjecture and logic mingled wildly in their heads, and without saying anything they slipped away back to the others to receive confirmation and reassurance that they were still sane, for they were picturing the strangest scenes. The other women believed them without much hesitation. The two of them had become like bats using sound vibrations to construct a detailed image of their prey and its whereabouts.

They pictured that Qut al-Qulub had changed the man she loved into a goat—for she had sworn when news of his marriage reached her that she would have her revenge on him even if it took years. They also pictured that she had managed to change the goat into a man who was a replica of her beloved. Then they reverted to the first version and decided that, having bewitched him, she had forgiven him and
turned him back into a man, or that she had tried before and had succeeded only in the past three days, or that she was still in the process of bewitching him. Was the village not already familiar with the story of the magician who used to turn her lover into a donkey in the day and back into a man at night, all to avoid the talk and the violence of the men in her family, since her lover was from another tribe?

There was no other explanation, for even though the two women had been certain that it was a man they heard coughing, there was nowhere in the village she could have found one. In the graveyard? In the photographs in pride of place on living room walls? In the worn clothes left hanging on a nail because the men had to be dressed in their best when they went away to work? In their voices sent to their families on cassettes because they didn’t know how to write and their women didn’t know how to read? There was no trace of them there except in memories, and can a memory give birth to a man of flesh and bone?

So the two women slipped away from Qut al-Qulub’s house like hairs from flour and gradually fear began to take hold of them, despite their curiosity and the shock of discovery, and they repeated
basmallas
and recited the prayer to drive away fear, only to ask God’s forgiveness again for it was a prayer composed by Qut al-Qulub.

The village rapidly became like a watermelon being tapped to find out if it was red and sweet-tasting inside.
Layla’s daughter was the only one to remind them that Qut al-Qulub had tried to explain what was really going on when they asked about the goat. As soon as she began talking about the silver moon and the way it worked miracles for her, they had walked off. The women listened to Layla’s daughter for a moment, then went back to their noisy debate. They wished there were just one man in the village, somebody’s husband or brother, whom they could consult. They had wished this often before, when one of the children or animals became ill, or the traps they set for the birds that ate the seeds failed to work. Then they said they wished their village was close to the other villages, instead of being up in the clouds, so they could seek help from a man of religion. The fact that the mosque had no Quran reciter and no muezzin must mean that there was a way for magic to interfere with religious belief. Then once more they blamed the location of their village—the influence of the moonlight must be twice as strong as in other villages.

They thought again about hiding from the moon, out of range of its bright beams, but quickly put the thought out of their minds, not wanting to hasten an eclipse and bring bad luck on themselves. All these fantasies were little more than ways of dulling the persistent notion that they must see what was really going on in Qut al-Qulub’s house.

So moving forward like a column of black ants, their black shawls covering their heads, their black dresses raised
so they would not impede their progress and the henna on their dry feet hardly touching the ground, they passed through the main gate in the wall and on through the other entrances so they could go to her on the rocky track beyond the village. Then if the dogs howled and Qut al-Qulub looked out, she would see no trace of them. They went by the pond and the moonlight made the green moss on the water’s surface look like strange insects. Then they encircled Qut al-Qulub’s house, which fitted into the circumference of the mountain like a silkworm wrapping itself around a mulberry leaf. The dark windows surrounded by white plaster looked like watching eyes.

The sight of the closed door and the high windows discouraged them, but then a light shone suddenly in a window, their eyes fell on the goat’s empty patch and they felt a renewed surge of curiosity about what was taking place in the house.

Each woman had a different image of what she was going to see inside: a goatskin lying on the floor and the man whom Qut al-Qulub had loved standing there as large as life, imploring her to turn him back into a man for good, kissing her feet contritely; a man’s head on a goat’s body or the other way around; a goat begging her not to turn it back into a human being because it did not like dealing with humankind: “I’ve had enough of their evil ways. Especially yours.”

Their curiosity rose to delirium, increasing their strength and eagerness, and they formed a pyramid, each on another’s shoulders, until Raifa reached the window and saw the lamp lighting up the room. But it was really the moon that illuminated the room, making it as bright as day, so that Raifa could see Qut al-Qulub lying on her side, smoking a cigarette, her hair spread out around her. Most of her flesh was exposed and beside her was the man who had brought back the body of Batul’s husband.

The following
is an essay I wrote describing a day in my school holidays.

That day was different
from the rest of the spring holidays. The rain came down in torrents, the grass was sodden and my grandmother stood at the window examining the sky, waiting for the clouds to break and a patch of blue to appear. When this didn’t happen she took off her
black coat and went back to bed as she nearly always did when it rained. I opened my mouth and started to cry, only stopping when my father said impatiently. “Come with me, then!”

My mother tried to step in but I was too quick for them. I sat in my father’s car, chanting, “My dad loves me. We’re going for a drive, and he’s going to buy me lots of things.”

But as he drove along, cursing the traffic and the hole in his exhaust, aiming straight at the puddles, ignoring the people on foot, the picture I had in my mind of him taking me shopping disappeared fast, although I continued my song until he stopped the car suddenly at a row of food shops.

“Don’t you dare move. Be still as a statue,” he instructed as he left me.

I wound down the window and stuck my head out, looking at the things on display and wondering why each shopper bought something different. When I was sick of watching the people, I started to observe the drops of rain and decided that they had no idea in advance where they were going to fall. A traffic policeman stood staring at the car but didn’t come up to it until my father reappeared holding a plastic carrier bag that contained a freshly slaughtered chicken with blood still drying stiffly around its head.

The policeman nodded his head knowingly as he told
my father off for displaying his doctor’s permit and parking where he wasn’t meant to. My father fished his card out of his pocket and answered, “Twenty-four-hour service. If you need a checkup, any pills, just call me.”

He tore off along the side streets, ignoring my song, then crossed a little bridge and plunged down a steep road, making my heart miss a beat, before he stopped finally and said, “Here we are, Layla. Now the nurse’ll give you a sweet.”

We’d only gone a short distance from the car when my father remembered his white coat and went back, holding me firmly by the hand. He let go of me while he unlocked the car and rummaged around among old newspapers and plastic containers for urine samples and different kinds of medicine until he found his white doctor’s coat at last. We entered a building that didn’t even smell like a hospital. My father went up to a man sitting at a table in the corridor and introduced himself with pride. “I’m the new public health inspector. Here and in the red light district. Every brothel in town.”

I hadn’t heard the word
brothel
before, but I felt pleased that my father was a public health inspector, and then ashamed all at once when he put on his white coat and I saw that it was covered in stains. We went into one of the rooms off the corridor and a nun came rushing after us.
“Where are you going?” she asked my father, with a disapproving look in my direction.

He repeated what he’d said to the man sitting at the table, and she seemed satisfied and greeted him, and then turned to me and asked me if I was still on my school holidays. And she took out a brightly colored boiled sweet from the pocket of her white habit.

The room was cold, and empty except for some iron bedsteads without proper bedding on them, and a little girl with gold teeth who was washing the floor and looking in my direction. My father spoke to her bossily. “Wash it nicely. There’s a clever girl.”

Then he opened his bag and took out some medicine, which he pressed into the nun’s hand. “Here are some vitamins for her. She’s such a skinny little thing. These’ll make her stronger. Put a bit of flesh on her legs!”

Then he began talking to the beds: “Come on! Up you get! This isn’t a hotel.”

The faded blankets stirred and several women’s faces emerged from them, opening their eyes blankly, reminding me at once of the chicken in the plastic carrier. I stared at them, fascinated by their sickly color, which matched the blankets. I supposed the women must be very ill, because they looked like Hassan’s mother, who used to be lying in bed whenever I went to play with Hassan. He was proud of having the only mother with a face that color, but in the end
she died from being so pale. When the women in the beds closed their eyes again I stood fidgeting, feeling bored, then I heard the nun saying in an Armenian accent, “There were five of them, Doctor. One escaped.”

For a moment my father didn’t speak, just nodded his head, but then he said, “Where did she think she was going? They’ll pick her up again straightaway.”

He bent over his bag and selected an instrument like the tongue of a shoe. I had often seen it before and played with it sometimes when I found it lying around. He seemed to be holding a conversation with it as he wiped it on his dirty white coat: “Let’s have a look. Slip your pants off.”

I stood rooted to the spot in disbelief. “Have you been examined before, or are you new to the job?” he went on, still wiping the instrument. I didn’t know who he was talking to as none of the women moved. Then one turned her face away and looked as if she were trying to burrow into the wall.

The nun went over to the first bed and ordered its occupant to hurry up because the doctor was very busy. The woman shifted in the bed but her lifeless eyes never changed, as if her head were not connected to her body. My father marched up and pulled the cover aside like he did when I was hiding down in the bed. The woman tried to arrange herself, tugging her nightdress down over her thighs, but my father was shouting at her: “So you’re acting
like the Virgin Mary now! You should have done that yesterday when they caught you with your heels in the air!”