Women of Sand and Myrrh (4 page)

There was an odd smell. Sita put out the little stove, picked up the iron, and then dropped it because it was so hot; if she hadn’t said, ‘It’s the old man’s flesh burning,’ we wouldn’t have believed that she’d actually put the hot iron on his skin. She took hold of it again with the edge of her dress then picked up a rag from the ground and wiped it, repeating, ‘It’s the old man’s flesh burning. Like when someone’s burning the hair off sheep’s trotters.’ She added, elucidating, ‘The man’s chest is weak. It gurgles and rattles like the beads of a rosary. Creams and herbs don’t work. I said to him I’ve worked on both your shoulder joints and I’ve cauterized you. I felt for all the joints in his body. There are people whose hip joints are hard to get hold of, and the joints in their calves. No two fingers are alike.’ The strange smell persisted and Sita, still rubbing at the iron, remarked, ‘The flesh is still sticking to it. It doesn’t want to come off. The old fellow’s skin must be like cured meat.’

Then it seemed to strike her that we hadn’t yet mentioned why we’d come, although she didn’t look at us. She threw the iron on to a brass tray covered in verdigris, smoothed down her black head shawl and adjusted the veil that she wore on the lower half of her face. Then she pulled it down slightly and wiped her nose and upper lip on the edge of her sleeve. She was wearing a dress so remarkable that I thought if the most famous designer in the world could have seen it he would have gasped in admiration and wished that he’d thought of it first: it was patterned with purple flowers the colour of indigo plants, and with the sun and grass on a white
background; its shoulders and sleeves were embroidered in purple and fuschia-coloured thread, and the sleeves and the hem were trimmed with silver rings. Medicaments and dried herbs were all about the room and oils and creams in bottles and jars were arranged under sheets of old newspaper on the table, watched over by the stuffed peacock with gold-sequined feathers, who looked ready to weep.

Sita was manifestily irritated at our silence and she fidgeted and patted her dress, straightening it. When I said, ‘Your dress is nice,’ she gave a grudging smile and asked briskly, ‘Which one of you is ill?’

‘Neither of us, but my friend would like to write about you for a German magazine.’

Sita put her hand over her face: ‘God forbid. No television.’ I realized I ought not to have broached the subject directly, so quickly as if to cancel out the previous sentence, I said ‘My head hurts.’ And I wasn’t really lying. I got a headache every afternoon. Sita reached out her two hands and grabbed hold of my head forcefully, asking, ‘Where’s the pain, daughter?’ She scared me and I moved my head away abruptly: ‘Not my head, I mean it could be anyone’s head.’ Frowning she replied, ‘Have you come here to find out my secrets?’ and she sat down, fiddling with the things that lay round about her and pretending to ignore us. In the end we withdrew silently.

This time, once we were sitting on Sita’s cushions and she was sitting facing us, I relaxed because she hadn’t recognized me and had welcomed us effusively and asked us, ‘Tea or coffee?’ But Suzanne’s repeated urgings made me tell Sita straightaway the reason why we’d come. Sita seemed not to mind, for she rose up before I’d finished talking and lifted a curtain that hung down from one side of the table and took out a basket. Then she sat down again with the basket in her lap, turning over the little bottles in it and examining them, then giving me one uncertainly. I took it, trying to read the label. ‘Coconut with jasmine’. Taking it back from me and
peering at it she said, ‘No, daughter. The writing’s not important. They’re bottles I get from the women’s market and fill myself.’

Suzanne didn’t know what was going on between me and Sita but she put her hand in the basket and saw the Indian women’s faces, and asked me sarcastically if Sita was going to change her into one of them. I was busy reading the labels while Sita was still rummaging around among the bottles, occasionally picking one out to look at it more closely, then putting it back. In the end she selected a bottle, put the basket down and sat holding one of her toes.

‘Perfumed Castor Oil for the Hair.’ ‘Oil containing forty-two herbs; an ancient remedy invented by the doctor at the Emperor Shah Alam’s palace for falling hair.’ ‘Oil to make the hair grow longer, containing almond oil, lettuce and sandalwood.’

Sita was waiting for me to put the bottles back so that she could move the basket away. She smoothed down her dress and the shawl covering her hair, and looked at the bottle she’d picked out, then rested her hand on mine, saying, ‘Here, daughter. Three drops. Only in tea, and best in scented tea. If you can, let him take it on an empty stomach and see what happens.’ Then she laughed with gusto, leaning backwards from the force of it: ‘See what happens. He’ll come after you like a madman on his hands and knees, sniffing you out like a young pup.’

I tried to explain what she’d said to Suzanne and she asked me how she was supposed to give him three drops of the stuff when he’d stopped coming to visit her. I turned back to Sita: ‘We might not see him. Perhaps an amulet would be better?’ She placed her hand on my shoulder: ‘Daughter, didn’t you say he was your husband?’ and she didn’t wait for me to reply as she knew there was nothing I could say. I tried to translate what had happened to Suzanne but Sita didn’t like delay and argument. She was a practical person, and she seemed to be sure of what she was doing. She stood up, cut leather, got the
fire going, assembled various preparations. Reciting prayers, she passed a piece of paper back and forth over the fire and took hold of my hand. With an involuntary movement I grasped Suzanne’s hand and put it in Sita’s, which made me think that I must believe in what Sita was doing.

Sita opened her eyes and wrote something on the piece of paper and laid it on the leather she’d cut. She opened a jar and dipped her finger in it then smeared it around the edges of the piece of leather, stuck them together, and handed it to me. ‘The amulet has to be in the room that he’s in. That’s vital.’ And I didn’t say to her, ‘How can it be when she doesn’t see him?’ She stood up smacking one palm against the other and saying, ‘You’re very welcome. Let’s hope you don’t need me again. Tea or coffee?’ Then taking my hand and smiling she added, ‘You’re doing fine this time. You’ve made me feel that I can trust you, and you’ve asked for my advice. Last year you came to cheat me and steal my secrets.’ I was amused and said, ‘I thought you’d forgotten me.’ She struck her chest: ‘Forgotten you?’ I asked her how much we owed her and she said, ‘Whatever you want to pay me. I’m sure that when he comes crawling to you on his hands and knees you’ll come back to reward me.’ Then almost to herself, ‘Lord above! Why are men so spineless? Tired and stale and uninterested in the pleasures of the flesh!’ She pointed to the lower part of her stomach: ‘A long time ago women used to come to me complaining about the blood and the pain. They’d say to me, “In the name of whoever called you Sita, give us a cure. Something so that our men are repelled by us and don’t want to go to bed with us and leave us to sleep in peace.” I said, “Shall I make up a charm for them so they’ll marry a second time and a third time and spare you the degradation and the pain?” ’ Laughing, she finished, ‘Their voices reached the sky: “No, Sita. Any degradation rather than the pain of another wife.” ’

3

I went up to the roof of my house. The rabbits crouched under the motor of the air-conditioner and the pigeons’ cage was empty. Grains of corn were scattered on the ground and on the roof tiles. The black-and-white pair had flown away after the female had laid one egg. Umar had asked me, ‘Did the mother fly away because she didn’t want her babies?’ and I’d answered, ‘Pigeons’ minds don’t work like that.’

I looked again over the parapet of the roof-terrace to the roofs of the other houses. Smoke was rising from distant factories. There was an oil blaze in one spot, and a layer of grey hung over it like dirty muslin. A smell of sewers and chemical waste rose up in the air. I thought to myself, ‘Perhaps Umar was right.’

I wouldn’t go to the Institute the next day: the atmosphere there now was like my last few weeks in the store before I left. And besides, what had happened to me the previous day had upset me a lot.

I’d been walking along the narrow street thinking that I was wrong to feel weighed down like this; I wanted to wipe away the imprint of misconceptions from my mind so that I could go back to being as I’d been when I first went to teach at the Institute, untroubled by reports and rumours of the men who came to inspect what was going on inside. This street was like another country. Little girls’ dresses, mostly of cheap lace, hung on display together with more brightly-coloured dresses from mainland China. Veiled women spread themselves on the ground between the shops selling clothes made of nylon. I said to my student Tamr, ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have believed that there really were oases or springs in the desert like the ones in books.’ Tamr laughed proudly; that morning she’d taken me from her father’s house, which was in a different region from the one where I
lived, to visit springs where mauve garlic flowers bloomed on the banks, and little girls stood enviously watching the boys plunging in and out of the water among the turtles and young frogs. When we were at her father’s house she’d shown me the carvings on the walls and ceilings, and the roof still made of palm leaves. My attention had been attracted by the mud-brick dwellings among the new houses built of concrete and stainless steel. Tamr pointed to some glass-plated buildings and said, ‘The camel market used to be here and the gold market still exists. In a month’s time they’re going to demolish it. There are still women selling henna and silver in it.’

I stopped when I saw some local embroidered material, and picked it up and felt it and decided to buy it in spite of Tamr’s surprised reaction. Not long before, she’d bought some material imported from Europe. I counted out my money, thinking to myself that life was normal here in this district, perhaps because it hadn’t yet lost the old ways. I heard a boy’s voice saying, ‘She’s American,’ and turned to him to correct him, afraid that they’d put up the prices. He winked at me and whispered, ‘The old man.’ Tamr explained, ‘That old religious man. If he knew you were an Arab he’d be furious.’ I glanced quickly behind me and saw an old man with a white beard and spectacles and a stick. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ I said to Tamr in a low voice, and in English. I imagined that by talking English I’d become miraculously invisible but the man stood in our path and addressed himself to Tamr: ‘Tell her to cover herself up. Our women don’t walk about unveiled.’ Tamr snapped, ‘She’s foreign, isn’t she? They have their religion, we have ours.’ I pretended to have no idea what was going on and said, ‘Let’s go to the car,’ in English, as if I was talking to myself. I seemed to have provided an outlet for the old man’s pent-up anger and he thrust out his stick, blocking my way, and screamed at me, ‘Get out of here. You can’t shop while you’re unveiled.’

I felt besieged from every direction, as men and boys pushed forward from all over the market and stood in a circle
round me and Tamr. Anger welled up in me, starting in my heart and rushing up into my head. When I confronted the man who was blocking my path, and was unable to push the stick out of the way or budge an inch, I knew that I didn’t have control over my own life and was a prisoner of this stick and this group of people. I seethed with frustration and was sure I was going to cry. Although I could hear Tamr’s voice raised in protest I felt completely isolated and she seemed just like all the other black-shrouded women.

Again a woman at a stall shouted at Tamr, ‘Buy the lady an abaya and go to your homes. May Heaven’s door be barred to her. And you’re to blame too.’

Tamr rebuffed her: ‘I didn’t know you had the key to Heaven.’ Then she turned to me quickly, pulling the bag out of my hand and unfolding the embroidered material. I took it and covered my head with it. And as I walked off, my shame and annoyance blocked out everything except a feeling of hatred towards Basem.

I didn’t tell Said what had happened when we got back to the car, although Tamr burst out laughing and clapped her hands together crying, ‘That old man! God help him!’

I rested my head in my hands and when I raised it the desert and the oasis of date palms were tinged orange by the evening sky. I was aware only of my helplessness. I had nothing, not even my eyes to stare and marvel. What had happened, I realized very well now, had been for the benefit of Tamr and others like her, to shackle the women’s freedom of movement so that it wouldn’t seem as easy and relaxed as we’d made it appear when we’d set out on our excursion. I took my head in my hands again.

I noticed that night had fallen while Umar and I had been up on the roof: the apartment blocks were silent; everywhere there were the concrete supports of buildings in the early stages of construction; stillness hung in the air above the hidden layer of noise, disturbed only by a hateful smell of food. The stars and the moon appeared meaningless. Did
anything really exist? I tried to stretch up to see over the roof parapet and stared out as I always did, even though all I saw, day or night, summer or winter, were the houses and the oil fields.

Tomorrow Said would go to the Institute and hand in my resignation. The reason I would give: painful backaches that hindered my movement and took away my energy. From that day on I wouldn’t see its door which every day had stood there like a portent, warning of tensions and unpleasant surprises to come, or the veiled women rushing through it, always waiting at the mercy of their husbands or brothers or drivers who might or might not remember the right time to come and take them back home.

On my first day at home I didn’t rush out as I used to before to visit other women. I decided to live my life here in a different fashion and moreover to think precisely as I’d thought when looking from the aircraft window and seeing the desert for the first time. The stillness of the sands had drawn me to them; I wanted them to divulge their mystery to me so that I could become close to them and the history and geography books would come alive. The camel hair tents, the wide moon, the stars so near to earth, the oases, the mirages, the thirst and the pervasive fragrance of cardamon would all be a part of my life. But the huge airport had all the latest equipment and would have been like any other international airport but for the preponderance of Middle and Far Eastern faces. We drove along a broad motorway on our way to the hotel and I could see the town lit up, plenty of cars and even a few trees; and as we came closer, restaurants, hotels and stridently modern feats of architectural design.