Women of Sand and Myrrh (3 page)

Then Said took me to the seashore where there were huge water-purifying plants, some already completed and some still being built. A white bird poised on a wire and fluttered its wings. There was a man wearing a white headcloth, his white robe flying out in the breeze as he supervised work at one of the plants. In the distance on top of that enormous steel building he looked like Superman.

The markets were a hive of building activity: they were knocking down the old buildings whose walls were riddled with the effects of heat and damp, buildings with little ornamental stonework or wooden latticework considered lacking in artistic value. In their place rose buildings full of air-conditioners, neon lighting and garish, over-ornate tiles. Everything was unattractive except the calligraphic design of the expression ‘What God wills’ which was adorning one
wall in a contrasting colour.

A strange smell wafted into the car and small murky black clouds swirled around me at street level. A vehicle drove slowly along spraying the people and the empty air with germicide.

Asian workmen swarmed everywhere, on foot, in cars, and up the high ladders, the Yemenis in their skirts and loose jackets and platform shoes, stumbling at every step. Periodically the sand was sprayed with oil to immobilize it but it renewed its attack with fresh vigour over the cultivated parts of the desert and the asphalted roads, against windows, and against the few trees trying to bloom and the luxurious cars jostling for place with the lorries and trucks.

I was a little disconcerted: the feeling I’d started out with of losing my sensitivity to the life going on around me was growing stronger, as was my awareness of the complete absence of women, at least from the world outside. Most of the houses seemed to be devoted to men and their affairs with the signs announcing offices and companies for this and that, and the one house built of red brick with Spanish windows had a sign stuck in the middle of it saying, ‘Adli. Attorney at Law’. None of the houses had balconies, and everything was enclosed by high walls.

I found myself asking Said to take me to see Ingrid. Although I felt tired and nauseous from driving round and round in the car, I wanted to be with other people and get warmth and energy from hearing them talk and watching them move, so that I could breathe freely again and get back into the rhythm of life here.

I chose Ingrid because of her garden. The plants in it reminded me of Beirut: the blanket of lilac, the sunflowers, and a third flower, orange with a strong perfume. And apart from that, I had a weakness for her delicious cakes.

‘The American?’ asked Said, and he pointed to his head making a circle with his finger.

I answered, half-laughing, ‘No. Ingrid’s the German, the
one with the garden.’

‘Ah, the skinny one! Poor thing.’

Said remembered the women I visited even if he didn’t remember their names, and he assessed their characters through their ways of talking and behaving since he didn’t know any foreign languages. He could say ‘good morning’ to all the women I visited, smiling delightedly at his achievement so that his gold teeth, and the gaps in between them, were plainly visible. The first time he asked how to say ‘good morning’ in English and American and found they were the same, he exclaimed in surprise, ‘Praise the Lord! They’re the same as each other inside and out!’

Said had been sitting in the Adeni restaurant where he worked, when one of the customers read out in his hearing an advertisement for an accountant in the bank where Basem was manager. Said asked him what an accountant had to do and the man answered him sarcastically, ‘Count money.’ Said went off to the bank and asked to see the manager. Despite his persistence they wouldn’t let him go in. He waited at the door and when Basem came out he reached for the notes in his pocket and counted them in front of him in a flash as if he were a professional gambler, not just an ordinary Yemeni in his skirt and sandals. Then he returned the cash to his belt and adjusted his coloured headcloth. Basem asked him where he worked and he answered in an Adeni restaurant, spiking the meat on skewers and roasting it. Could he read? Could he write? Said contented himself with a smile. He was employed in the bank as a cleaner and teaboy. After a while he asked Basem to teach him how to drive, and Basem explained the principles to him three times. In a few weeks Said begged Basem to let him drive his car and surprised Basem with his proficiency. When Basem questioned him, Said told him that he’d begun to practise every day, making use of every car that stopped at the bank after convincing its driver that he’d take it off and park it in a shady spot. Those who weren’t willing had changed their minds when Said pretended to cry in front
of them, muttering something about not being fit to be trusted.

When I arrived at Ingrid’s I was sorry I’d come. The note of lethargy was still there in Ingrid’s conversation. By the end of every sentence she spoke you were ready to fall asleep. I sat drowsily in front of her, angry at myself for coming and wishing I could sleep with my eyes open.

She was telling me about the man she’d found creeping into her house while I thought about the pastries or the table whose delicious aroma wafted across to me, and about the sunflowers as big as moons. Then she recounted news of her parents: how her mother had to lean on her father to walk, how her father had slipped and brought the old lady down with him and how they’d both stayed on the floor till the next day.

I immediately regretted the strong urge I had to laugh as I pictured the scene. I tried to be serious and concentrate on what Ingrid was saying, but failed and rose to my feet, making excuses. When Ingrid said, ‘That was a short visit. You didn’t even taste my pastries,’ I hesitated, but the expression on Ingrid’s face and the vision of renewed boredom made me hurry to the door and not even pause to look at the garden. It was very hot, and when I was in the car I saw the sunflowers peeping over the wall.

I sat in the car looking about me, uncertain where to go. The fierce glare penetrated the windows and the car body in spite of the air-conditioner, and the humidity in the outside air came through to me. Depressed by the concrete gardens I saw, I looked back inside the car.

On an impulse I asked Said to take me to Suzanne’s house. To confirm what I’d said he raised his hand once more to his head making a circle with his forefinger: ‘The American, Auntie?’ I forced a laugh and nodded yes. Said appeared not to notice my curt response as he said, ‘It’s been a long time since you visited her, Auntie.’

As the car approached the Pepsi Cola works and I saw the
bottles moving along automatically and stopping to be filled behind the factory windows, I remembered how enthusiastic I’d been about my first visit to Suzanne’s, mainly because of the Pepsi factory.

When Suzanne’s servant, Ringo, opened the door I knew that I’d made the right choice this time. All at once I was in a world that had not the slightest connection with the desert, except for the brass tray hanging on the wall and the little brass coffee jugs arranged on the table. I loved the gloom created by the thickness of the curtains, and I loved the romantic music, the smell of coffee and the smiling photographs of Suzanne positioned carefully here and there.

Suzanne rushed from the kitchen shrieking excitedly, clasped me to her and kissed me, reproaching me for not coming to see her sooner and making me turn round in a circle so that she could look at what I was wearing: ‘It’s beautiful. Oh, how beautiful you look!’

She began to tell me her news, so full of enthusiasm that she didn’t finish one topic before launching into the next, and repeated old news that I already knew. Each time I asked her about something she said, ‘Okay …’ beginning to answer, then switched to another subject. She reminded me of the letter to her lover, and I found myself smiling as I recalled the day I’d met her in the store. She’d been talking in Arabic, murdering the letter
tha
, sticking out her tongue and swallowing the words like a fish swallowing her young in the face of danger. Now, just as I had been the very first time, I was astonished to go into her house and see the servant Ringo doing her platinum blond hair like a professional hairdresser. When Ringo went to the kitchen to make tea he moved like a girl who knows she’s got a beautiful body. He poured the tea into cups in front of me, raising his little finger delicately like a hostess at a tea party and stirring it till the sugar was melted.

On my first visit Suzanne had asked me to write a letter in her name to her lover, a local man named Maaz. The words
she told me to put were naïve, sentimental, cheap. Reading between the lines I could guess the sort of relationship they had. When she asked me if I liked her style, I nodded hypocritically. Then she asked Ringo to bring the box of tape cassettes, and from among the cassettes of
The Adventures of Dimbo
, Sri Lankan singers and even one of Muhammad Abdo, she pulled out one with her name on it and asked me to listen to it. For a moment I thought she was joking, but the expression on her face and Ringo’s told me I was wrong, and I felt more and more embarrassed as Suzanne’s voice sighed and whispered and called out that her Arab lover’s face was as beautiful as the moon.

I’d stopped caring about the Pepsi bottles in the factory window and found myself looking forward to my visits to her just to hear her passionate stories about Maaz. Whenever I’d felt my interest in her flagging, her outlandish reports of violent scenes and fake suicide attempts had drawn me back. I only broke off my visits when Amer banned her temporarily from the store because she’d been joking with a salesman. The noise she was making had attracted attention, she was wearing bright red lipstick, and although her dress was long it showed the curve of her belly and buttocks as she moved. However, I continued to defend her and told them that her only fault was that she was too good-hearted. I watched her now as she talked for maybe an hour, and felt sorry for her when she started to cry. She’d got fatter, and the roots of her hair showed darker than the rest. As usual she showed me the traces on her forehead left by the bottle that Maaz had thrown at her, and she didn’t stop begging me to go and see Maaz and talk to him and ask him to come back. I was noncommittal, and when pushed refused even to consider it. For a moment I regretted coming back, because I was getting involved once again in her tortuous entanglements. I reminded myself that I was an Arab and should be careful, but I found myself promising to get Maaz back for her another way. Although she begged me to tell her how, I
wasn’t going to: I was scared of her runaway tongue and her excitability, and I just said I’d see her the next day.

2

Suzanne and I went into Sita’s house; Sita cured sickness and healed wounds with herbs and cauterization, and made amulets and ground lead to ward off the evil eye. It didn’t seem like two years since my first visit. Sita was just as she had been then in her beautiful dress, whose rich colours had long faded. Her skin was coarse and wrinkled from the desert sun, and from her constant grimacing as she held the irons in the fire’s glow. Her small yellow teeth looked like a child’s milk teeth. Her room was just the same too, the stuffed peacock on the table and on the wall the inscription which I’d never been able to remember: ‘Sita the famous, whose fame has spread near and far, makes jinn lie down, kindles the fires of love, and trust in God comes first of all.’ Even the rooster sketched above these words hadn’t stuck in my mind.

I’d wanted to go back to Sita’s house once more and amuse myself by reading what was written on the wall. Said was always talking about her and would praise her highly whenever I took Umar to the doctor. If he heard that someone Basem knew was ill he’d try to persuade me to take him to Sita, and he swore to me that she’d cured a madman by making him bury his head in the sand for an hour every day, used a vulture’s stomach to heal a festering wound, and strange plants for diabetes. When he noticed the surprise on my face he added, ‘Even if she’s no use she doesn’t do any harm. Some people swear by the Almighty that she’s cured
them and brought back their loved onces from the gates of death, and others say only God can cure disease.’

Her house was half an hour’s drive out of town. I remembered the first time, when Ingrid was with me, I’d become convinced that the herb doctor was a figment of Said’s imagination. For the desert couldn’t suddenly stop short, gather itself in and produce houses and palm trees. But his manner of driving and his continuous talk about her seemed to confirm that he knew the road already. ‘We’ll be at Sita’s house in the twinkling of an eye,’ he said. I thought that if it hadn’t been for Ingrid’s curiosity I wouldn’t have come, and then in the distance houses and telegraph poles appeared, though as the car drew near it became clear that the houses were just huts with tin roofs and mud-brick walls, leaning against each other and sprouting television aerials. A couple of boys in vests and underpants were standing in a plastic washing-up bowl, scooping up water from it in an empty dried milk tin and a juice carton, and spraying it over themselves.

Said asked them where the doctor’s house was and one of them said ‘Sita?’ pointing to a hut that was bigger than the ones around it. Said stayed outside, while Ingrid and I had to bend our heads to get through the open door into an unroofed yard. It was empty. I called, ‘Sitt Sita,’ and a voice answered. ‘I’m in here.’ We took a couple of steps forward and looked about us. There was another room, or enclosed area of some kind, because you couldn’t really call it a room. We were astounded to see a man clad only in underpants stretched out there, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, while Sita bent over him massaging his body. We automatically turned our faces away and retreated a few steps. Before we’d had time to think what to do next we heard Sita’s voice: ‘Hallo. Just a minute until I’ve finished with this poor creature.’ We laughed to start with, then Ingrid asked me in amazement how this could be happening here, and I answered her seriously, ‘Why not? Sita’s a doctor.’

We heard a series of shrieks that even seemed to startle the goat who’d been lying there chewing and twisting her head around from time to time to keep the flies off. A few minutes passed. Then the man came out with his clothes on, not looking in our direction. We went in to Sita. She was rubbing her hands in the ashes and explained, looking up at us, ‘It sterilises the hands.’ When I asked what was wrong with the man, she said, ‘A cough and asthma.’