Women of Sand and Myrrh (18 page)

The telephone rang. I hurried to lift the receiver and replied with a smile, ‘Yes, we do henna patterns. No massage. We
can
do it. Of course, I’ve a Filipino who knows how to do it but it’s prohibited. We’ve got facial masques. Egg and milk, yes. The Filipino girl knows how to do it all. She’s specially
trained.’ I replaced the receiver and announced proudly, ‘That was the daughter of the Shufan family. Her mother want a massage.’

When one of the Filipino girls brought two cups of coffee, Nasab refused hers. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said. ‘I’m hot.’ In English I asked the girl to fetch her a carton of juice and my mother exclaimed delightedly, ‘You’ve got a place of your own
and
you speak English? God is great, Tamr of Tamrs.’ But my aunt refused to let the Filipino pour out juice for her, and she wouldn’t have any tea. She drew me close to her and whispered something to me which made me laugh. ‘O Aunt!’ I chided her playfully. The Filipino girl went off into the sewing room and so my aunt spoke out: ‘Tamr, listen,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing unclean about her sewing. When the other one washes hair, the women should say, “In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful”. That doesn’t matter too much, it’s a minor uncleanness. But to take food and drink from an infidel like her is a huge uncleanness. It’s forbidden. We’re in Ramadan.’ ‘Never mind, Aunt,’ I replied, irritated.

She interrupted me: ‘I know. Ask any man of religion and he’ll confirm what I’ve said, word for word. When I came into the town from the desert I wouldn’t drink coffee or tea, or eat town bread or meat. My husband and his family didn’t understand why. They felt sorry for me and thought I was shy. His sister Zaynab said, “Your wife’s growing weak. She won’t eat.” My husband replied, “She’s weak, is she? Every time I get into bed with her she throws me out. And when I pick myself up and try and huddle up in the bed with her, I find myself back on the floor.” ’

The women laughed loudly, while my aunt arranged her plait of hair. She sighed and put a hand down to her leg. ‘Where’s that strength gone now?’ My mother reminded her of another story: ‘And when they brought you a nightdress …’ She seemed to be encouraging my aunt, so as to make it an entertaining evening. Nasab laughed and picked up the
story: ‘And when they brought me a nightdress I left it where it was. Zaynab said to me, “Put that on.” “Why?” I asked. “Put it on and you’ll see,” she said. So I put it on, and before we went to bed she asked me what had happened to it and I said, “I’ve got it on.” She didn’t believe me and began to look for it under the bed. I lifted up my dress and said, “See. I told you I was wearing it.” She started to laugh. “Take your dress off,” she said, “and just wear the nightdress.” When I asked why that time, she just said, “You win,” in a weary voice.’

‘What did you eat and drink in the end?’ asked one of the young girls. My aunt drew herself up haughtily, seeing that she’d become the centre of attention. She struck her thigh with the flat of her hand for emphasis and replied, ‘I saw Indians and Ethiopians and I was afraid that the animals hadn’t been slaughtered according to religious law and that the bread had been baked by an unbeliever. I got hold of more flour and made dough, and cooked the bread in the frying pan myself, and I didn’t trust the coffee unless I’d ground the beans. I knew that they were lying to me when they said that my brother-in-law had slaughtered the sheep. I ate it the first day, but not the second, and I told them that meat wouldn’t pass my lips again unless I saw the animal being slaughtered with my own eyes.’ An old woman who’d accompanied her daughter and granddaughter was listening to the conversation. She took out her dentures and polished them on her dress and remarked, ‘I said to my son to get me a human cat like that one there,’ and she waved in the direction of the Filipino girl who was bending to pick up the tray in front of them. ‘He said to me, “What use would she be to you when you won’t even take a drink from her?” “Turn her loose in the valley,” I said, “and she can work the land, use the scythe, and harvest the crops.” ’ ‘What did he say?’ asked my aunt, annoyed at being interrupted.

The old woman didn’t understand; she didn’t even hear the question and went back to shifting her gaze around, intently studying everything that was going on in the shop.

My aunt was playing with the coral in her necklace; between every coral bead silver coins were threaded. She continued, ‘We came from the desert, your father and I,’ and she turned to me. I was busy trying to add and subtract on my fingers. ‘We didn’t know any sweet things except dates. When we saw grapes and oranges we burst out laughing.’ Then she began to laugh and slap one palm against the other. Every time she tried to stop herself she only laughed more and curiosity spread and mounted among the women around her and they begged her to tell them what she was laughing at. ‘Next I found out that the drainage holes in kitchens and bathrooms weren’t for squatting over and doing your business. I was visiting the sheikh’s wife and they showed me the bathroom. There was a white seat in it. I lifted its lid and saw water in the bottom of it. I said to myself, “That’s to protect it from flies,” and washed my face. Thank God I didn’t drink from it. Then I looked around for the lavatory. I got out of the place and went to ask again. They took me back to the bathroom, but this time the Ethiopian maid came in with me and opened the lid of the seat and pointed.’

The women laughed briefly, then were distracted by the hairstyle on Jameela’s daughter. But my aunt didn’t want to be quiet, so she found herself having to direct her conversation to me. ‘Your grandmother wouldn’t leave the desert except on my wedding day, and when your father married Najeeya, poor mother, the heat was enough to dry a gazelle’s tears and she wouldn’t leave the desert. Your father and I looked for her and when we saw that the water had dried up we went from oasis to oasis. She didn’t realize this. She sent us messages – desert lavender and camels’ milk. She didn’t like townspeople; when we were having an argument she would scoff at me for sleeping in a bed, using electricity, letting my voice be carried in and out on a telephone, not knowing the difference between a lizard and a gazelle, nor how to stop a locust sliding around in the cooking fat. “O mother,” I would ask her, “who married me to someone
from the town? Who said that she wanted Nasab to live in a house built of bricks, with a television, and to buy seeds and chewing gum from the shops?” ’ Nasab took a deep breath and continued, ‘Even when my father, your grandfather, came into the town complaining about his gut and your father took him to the Sultan’s doctor – as he and the Sultan had become like brothers – your grandfather wouldn’t leave his camel. Your father agreed to tie the camel up at the door of the house. Your grandfather fled from the house whenever Najeeya turned on the radio. He didn’t like sitting at the table to eat: he would put some food on his plate and go and keep the camel company.

‘Poor thing. He didn’t like Najeeya going into the room where he slept; your father had to give him a clean towel and sheet and do his washing for him and bring him his food. Whenever Najeeya wanted to go and visit relations your father lied to him and told him that Najeeya was ill and was going to the doctor, because as far as your grandfather was concerned women were forbidden to leave the house.’

One of the women opened a bag of ear-rings and bracelets and combs which she’d brought from Beirut. I was glad for her to display them in my place. The women and children fell on them and they were scattered, some on the floor, some picked up by the children, some stuck in hair, or hung on ears. In the twinkling of an eye the women had bought everything in the bag. My aunt was plainly irritated: she wanted to say a lot and found herself with no one to listen to her. So I said to her, ‘And what next, Auntie…?’ and she took a deep breath and laughed loudly to attract attention to herself again, then continued: ‘We missed the desert, the smell of sand and goats and coffee and roasting meat and fires being kindled. But I liked the easy life in the town and quickly picked up the ways of the people, and my mother-in-law was happy with me because I had an enormous capacity for hard work. Although I must say, at the beginning I thought the people odd: they liked useless things and put
them in their houses. It was hard for me to eat three times a day, and as for the amount of meat they ate … I refused to take hold of fish without covering their eyes with the edge of my handkerchief. I used to say, “There is no strength and no power save in God,” to allay my scruples whenever my mother-in-law took a needle and thread and sewed up the chicken’s backside after she’d stuffed it with breadcrumbs and rice; it surprised me to see them cooking tomatoes when they were so precious. I’d never imagined that one day I’d move freely in town dwellers’ houses even when my father married me to one; I thought that he’d live in tents with us. But I went back with him, and I could have gone back with one of his friends instead, except that when my father told the two of them that he had a girl of marriageable age it happened to be him who shouted first, “I’ll marry her.” ’

The women were bubbling like a hive of bees. My mother and my aunt laughed secretly at the hairstyles, comparing them to goats’ horns, bananas, roosters’ crests, especially when the woman covered her head and the cover was raised up high. They signalled comments about the Filipinos to one another, wiggling their eyebrows about every time one of the girls passed in front of them. ‘That one’s lust incarnate,’ remarked my aunt, ‘because she hasn’t had a taste of her husband for three months; she’s got children of her own. Every day she has a fight about something. She wants to go out to the shops and Tamr knows that it’s to chat with men of her own type and religion. Tamr said to her, “You’re not going out except with me.” Anyway the neighbours and the shop owners round about are just waiting for a sign: they don’t want a woman to start up in business and they’re watching for evidence in any shape or form to use against her. The Filipino girl knows that.’

I shut the ledger and locked it away in the drawer, then moved my chair round until I was facing my mother and aunt. ‘Guess who came this morning!’ ‘The men who close down shops owned by women,’ surmised my customers.
Laughing, I replied, ‘No. Not this time. They came the day before yesterday and asked if we had any men in here. I said to them, “Can’t you read what’s written on the door?” but they asked me again if I was quite sure. So I said to them, “If you like I’ll open the door for you. Wait a minute while we get veiled.” But they didn’t come in.’ My mother and aunt couldn’t guess who’d come to see me and they began to look impatient, so I said enthusiastically, ‘Reehan, Ibrahim’s mother, with her granddaughters. They were going to a wedding. If you’d seen her clothes: they were all silk and her jewellery was Italian and her handbag was real leather. But she was still mean: she asked the price of henna and when I told her she said, “Hell!”, and wanted us to use some that she’d brought with her, but I refused. The Filipino gave her granddaughter a facial – what’s the girl’s name? I remember, Khulood – and for a whole hour Reehan didn’t stop cursing and complaining that the prices were too high while the girl tried to make her be quiet. Anyhow, those are days I’d rather forget.’

It was all quiet in the room except for the sound of my mother’s voice as she spoke to the old woman: ‘And Mauza said, “You can have contact with this other man, Antan, as long as there’s a door between you and he doesn’t see you and you don’t see him. Nobody’ll know and you’ll become a Sultana and your son will be a Sultan …” ’

I rose and went over to my mother, annoyance showing on my face. But the old woman looked confused and I felt reassured; it appeared that she hadn’t understood a single word of what my mother was saying. ‘Would you like to have a dress made, Taj?’ I asked her, relenting.

6

I became irritated every time I was with my mother in a gathering of women, and could no longer bear sitting like a shepherd, frightened to close his eyes even for a second in case his flock should stray. Taj al-Arus could never resist telling the story of her life, and I’d threatened more than once not to accompany her over the threshold of a house.

While she sat waiting for my aunt and me to come home, she would think in anguish how I was no longer a sheikh’s wife, remembering how my aunt Nasab had brought embroidered cloth back from Iran to make a nightdress for my wedding night, and how she herself had insisted that the cloth be cut in the shape of a big heart at the navel and a little heart at each breast, and then that there should be henna patterns in each of these openings.

Taj al-Arus had been certain that this wedding nightdress would ensnare the sheikh’s heart for ever, for the Sudanese girl whom the Sultan had taken for his wife and kept as his wife for a long time, asking for her and no other every night, had once told them her secret. In front of them she put on her white wedding nightdress and showed them the hearts on it, some embroidered and some open to show off henna patterns on her skin. She told them that night that the Sultan used to open a jewel box and play with her for hours, trying to fit pieces of jewellery into each heart-shaped hole and, where he succeeded, giving the ring or trinket to her for her own.

Taj al-Arus had heaved a sigh as she listened to this story, and thought that perhaps the man who’d been waiting in the room when Mauza pushed her through the door, and who’d lain on top of her and hurt her while she kept her eyes tightly shut, wasn’t the Sultan: he hadn’t played with her like that even though his room had been large, his bed gold, the carpet soft, and an air-conditioner had been humming in the room.
She wanted to hear more and she felt envious of the Sudanese girl, although the others talked about what she’d said and called her a liar.

Whenever she was in a gathering of women it always struck Taj that she might have been Sultana over them, and she found herself interrupting them and telling them her story however much she’d promised not to anger me in future, and not to open her mouth except to eat.

She used to sing traditional Turkish songs in a gentle voice, and the kohl round her green eyes was washed away by her tears; these eyes were sometimes cloudy, sometimes clear, and her cheeks turned the colour of roses. Her long neck grew longer as she looked constantly at the ceiling or out to the horizon, never meeting the eyes fixed upon her. It was as if she were pursuing her memories, or as if they had been there with her constantly since the day she went bewildered to the train, and saw her father bending to kiss the Sultan’s hand and heard him saying in Turkish, ‘Taj al-Arus is your lawful right, as she is your wife, and your sister should you divorce her. She’s my youngest daughter and the apple of my eye.’ The Sultan pressed his hand, and he walked away gathering in the skirts of his abaya which were flying up in the wind. Her curiosity was directed at the prospect of travelling in a train, and she felt a simple pleasure at the thought of seeing another country, mixed with fear because she couldn’t understand the language which these men were speaking. ‘You’re a Sultana,’ her mother had said to her, as she searched her long red hair for lice, massaged it with black mud and poured rosewater over it. Then she rubbed her body all over with a loofah and olive oil soap, poured water over it and dried it, saying, ‘The Crown of the Bride has become a Crown of Kings.’