I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops (4 page)

I used to be possessed with a desire to be near him even when he was already holding me. I anticipated his kiss while he was kissing me. I was overcome by a longing for him so powerful that it distracted me from enjoying the warmth of his hand as we walked together. I used to wish nature would find a way of joining our two bodies even more closely than when we made love. Sure enough, there came a time when I only had to recall his voice to feel him touching me, or his smell to tremble with pleasure. One bright sliver of thought opened my body to love.

The two women continued to strike their faces imploringly, while I was planning to stay at the table. I would lie on it, near the cup. The night was long and the voice of Umm Kulthum would ring out after a while, strong and yet delicate: I would play it to him as he had played it to me. The wailing of the two women engulfed everything in the house, and wound its way in between my clothes and my skin. I would pick up the cup and hold it tight and press it between my breasts.

Almaza worked hard
throughout the year for the sake of two and a half days. She devoted all her energy to growing bamboo and weaving it into baskets, only pausing occasionally as she worked to glance at her face in the tin jug that she always had with her. It fulfilled many functions: among other things, she used it for performing the ablutions required by religion, milking the animals and watering the potted plants.

Every time she confronted her reflection in the jug she whispered, “Deliverance is on its way.”

The deliverance was the marriage fair: Almaza’s whole wardrobe was acquired with this in mind, and all her money earmarked for it. Her tiredness slipped away as she sat with her hands steeped in oil and clay, her hair in rosewater and
ghassoul
, or surrendered her body to the masseuse in the public baths and lay back as the henna artist drew beautiful patterns on her hands and feet. She spent the whole year’s savings on her clothes: the straw hat, headcloth and the silver jewelry through her ears and around her head and neck and wrists, the little patterned scarves and the new dress. She didn’t forget the incense and perfumed herself with it until it breathed from her eyelashes.

Almaza threw herself into these rituals, which she had perfected instinctively, before setting off for the marriage fair with no inhibitions and no fear of failure, even though she always returned as she had set out, a single woman, unlike her companions, who returned triumphantly with their official promises of marriage, happily discussing their wedding arrangements.

Almaza found herself as usual strolling among the tents where the single men and women gathered, making her way through the sea of penetrating eyes, as prospective husbands studied every eligible young woman, or waited impatiently
for the sweethearts they had arranged to meet there: marriages contracted at the fair were lucky, unlike those contracted elsewhere, which were destined to break up.

The marriage fair took place at the same time as a religious festival when many families came to celebrate the memory of a saint buried in the region, and pray for blessings at his tomb and for the warm sun of prosperity to shine on their lives in the coming year. Apart from this there was much fun and entertainment to be had during the three days; the fair included a market selling everything from wheat, barley, animal feed and sugar to luxury goods brought in from the cities.

Almaza never remained with the single women for more than a few minutes. One of the men would pick her out and she would walk with him and sit with him, their hands almost touching. But they never went to have their photograph taken together, like the couples who had decided to marry and rounded off the religious and legal formalities with a visit to the photographer; they never went to put their thumbprints on a wedding document, and Almaza had never worn the black wool cloak striped with red and yellow that her future husband was supposed to give her. She walked back home with the group from her village, alongside laughing women who had won their lifetime’s companions and prospective bridegrooms whose chests swelled
with pride, all of them thinking about the weddings to come, while she thought about working hard, and preparing herself for next year’s fair.

Almaza would cast a last glance over the tents as they were taken down, the revelers and pilgrims gathering their baggage, ready to depart, the vendors loading their unsold goods on to donkeys and camels, and the tears would run down her brown cheeks like little white rabbits. She would murmur to one of the new brides-to-be who was consoling her, “Never mind. God is generous. There’ll be another year and another fair.”

She knew that she would repeat these words often over the next few days—to her old aunt whom she lived with, to the other old women and young girls in the village and anyone else who noticed that there was no striped woolen cloak around her shoulders. She realized that behind her back they all discussed why she was on the shelf although she was pretty, with a good figure, a beauty spot by her mouth and a nice smile. There were those who believed she had the eyes of a flirt, and men feared a woman who looked as volatile as a hive of discontented bees; others just thought it was her lot in life to remain unmarried.

Almaza could have kept going to the fair year after year, until she was approaching her thirties, and still come back with no woolen cloak, a few more lines on her forehead and whispered comments flying around her ears.
However, this particular year a young man saw her among the hundreds of single women, lost his heart to her and ran after her. But it was the mischievous eyes that had captivated him in the first place, their restless expression throwing him off balance and making him seek refuge in the dark beauty spot on her chin, until that had gathered him up and thrown him into the waves of laughter, which revealed even white teeth like pearls.

Almaza swung her hips gently as she walked with him, and laughed; she was silent or whispered shy words, touched his warm hand, let him put his arm around her and draw her close so that their hips were touching. She listened carefully to all he said, learned his name and what he did, looked at his brown hands and touched them and craved the cigarette he held tightly between his fingers. She asked him for a drag but he offered her a whole cigarette and she puffed on it contentedly.

Nobody looked at them; people were attracted by the crowds in front of them, the market stalls, the sweetmeats, the mothers with their children, while the single men and women were in twos in every corner, leaning against the trees, sitting on the rocks, happily conferring.

After a day and a half, Almaza was turning into a beautiful flower, because of the faint blush always on her cheeks and the fragrance constantly around her; she was a butterfly, tipsy from the excess of the sweet words he spoke to
her, a bee drowning in the nectar of intimacy. Nevertheless, on the third day he went away again, and she was left alone with no cloak and no marriage document, to walk home with tears in her eyes. But she was unable to bury the memory of the two and a half days in her usual way, by working, pausing to sigh from time to time, and listening to her aunt shouting that there must be somebody who wished her niece ill, since the young man, who had chosen her and thought she had chosen him, followed her home. He was almost out of his mind because she had cooled toward him when he had tried to take her off to the marriage clerk. He didn’t understand her behavior. She had told him during the fair that she was certain to inherit the blood disease that had killed her mother and grandmother, but he had been quick to reply that it didn’t matter, he was happy to take the risk.

She had burst into tears at intervals and said it was impossible for them to be together, and he had repeated that he wanted to marry her and would always be by her side. But she had not been convinced. She had asked him to think carefully, not to have any illusions about a houseful of children, rather to prepare himself for a lifetime of sitting in doctors’ waiting rooms in the city after a tiring journey over rough mountain roads. His money would go on doctors’ bills; she would be cut off in her prime, leaving him with a
babe in arms or no heir at all. However, there had not been a flicker of doubt in his eyes; taking her hand and drawing her close, he had assured her of his devotion. When he held her tight, she had burst into tears and finally confessed to him that she had the illness already. Even then he had not flinched; he had continued to breathe evenly and assure her again in a controlled but slightly raised voice that he meant what he said.

While she had composed herself and tried to make him take in what the illness would mean, he had been unable to take his eyes off hers: they were coquettish, tender, sincere, beautiful. When she wiped away her tears, lowering her eyelids for a moment, he had known he had to be at her side always. He had gone on trying to persuade her; she had resisted him, insisting that she was acting out of concern for him.

Eventually he had grown angry and asked her why she had responded to his looks, his gestures if she was unable to marry. Why had she let him hold her hand? Surely she had known that holding hands meant acceptance, covering them refusal? If she had kept her hands covered to prevent him from touching them, he would have gone to look for someone else.

He had begun to question her relentlessly and Almaza, in floods of tears, had told him why she had given in to him:
love had struck her like the sun flooding over her naked body. She had not been able to escape it: indeed, she had let herself be carried along, enveloped in its heat, from one delicious swoon to another, and had only been roused by him thundering out the conditions for marriage.

Then she had run away from him.

When she saw him coming toward her house she was at a loss and cowered behind her aunt. She pinched the old woman hard so that she would back her up when she told lies, but her aunt cursed her and called her a flea and an armpit louse.

Before Almaza had the chance to work on her further, the young man was standing right inside the house, proclaiming that he had come to marry Almaza, and that illnesses were acts of God, and that in any case he would take her to the city and spend all his savings on finding a cure for her.

During this speech, Almaza had rapidly regained her composure and armed herself with the basic weapons of her defense, chief of which was presence of mind. She began distracting him with details that she knew were unimportant, such as how would she be able to pay him back for the marriage document, the photographs and all the expenses she had involved him in if she were laid low by illness? But she hadn’t prepared herself for his reaction. He loosened the sash he wore around his waist and emptied his pockets
of old and new notes, scattering them on the ground as if he were feeding hens.

“All this is your dowry for the time being, and there’ll be more to come. If we split up, it’s yours to keep.”

Whereupon Almaza buried her face in her hands and wept and shook her head, disregarding her aunt, who had risen up from her seat on the floor and was crawling around on her hands and knees like an old tortoise, collecting the money, and intoning, “It’s not right. Money on the floor is bad luck. It shows ingratitude for God’s gifts.”

The young man then turned to address the aunt, and told her that he intended to marry Almaza, regardless of her illness. But the aunt insisted that Almaza was no better than an attack of fleas or lice under the arms, an unkind niece whom God had decreed should never marry because she didn’t deserve anything good in this world.

He gave up with the aunt, although he couldn’t help watching her as she started gathering the money in her skirt as if she were picking fruit. He turned back to Almaza to tell her he had decided to marry her and nothing would make him change his mind. Almaza was silent; she was disillusioned by what was happening to her and gazed abstractedly beyond him. She had expected anything but this from the marriage fair: he hadn’t run away like the others, he hadn’t flushed or turned pale when she told him about her illness, stuttered with embarrassment, shaken his head
regretfully. Instead it was as if she’d opened her arms to him, said she was in the best of health and promised him lots of beautiful children.

He was urging her to say yes, but she said nothing and stared fixedly at the dried cane stalks stacked at the far end of the room, hoping to make him think that her illness was preoccupying her. But she was afraid that her patience was wearing thin and she might blurt out the truth: that he had guessed right and she was not ill but had decided never to get married years before, when she had realized that marriage poured cold water on the excitement and strange, special nature of a relationship, and love froze over. The longed-for, lusted-after sweetheart became the traveling companion who smoothed out the bumpy road, a cow with milk exploding from her udders, a pair of hands to wash the sheets and make the bed ready, not for uninterrupted intimacy, but for sleep as heavy as a temporary death, and a husband snoring after a heavy meal, his sense of smell gone now that he had stopped sniffing out women.