Mothballs (2 page)

Your isolated and dispossessed grandmother removed herself from all housework, as if she were created only for worship. She was proud of this distinction of hers, sprinkling water behind us after every meal, with prayers, to obliterate our footprints so that Satan could not envelop us.

She has known devils, your aunt and you. Your grandmother read verse to you from the Qu'ran, to soothe your aunt's hell, and so you will abandon your friendship with evil.

“May God show you the right path and bring you closer to Munir!” she cried to your aunt, and the strength of her faith inspired you.

When Munir thrust his fingers around your aunt's upper arm the mark remained for days, indelible, like that of a slap. He used to show up without notice and leave without excusing himself. When he was silent we knew there was trouble. He chattered about things which could not be understood. He was short and stocky, always wearing a suit and a new tie. His shoes gleamed, and so did his bald head.

He mocked and ridiculed. He laughed and winked. He jumped like a field locust and scurried like the cockroaches in the cesspool. He moved the way the movie heroes did, and pinched me on the cheek when he came in, and slapped my behind when he left. He filled the ashtrays with cigarette butts. He drank a great deal of water and tea.

Yet there was something of an evil spirit about him. You could never tell by his face whether he was serious or joking. He spat on the ground and coughed violently. Your mother vanished out of his way. He always asked about your brother; Adil was afraid of him. I always provoked him, and my grandmother watched everything.

To us he looked big and scary. You learned his age, approximately, when Aunt Najia told your grandmother, “No, dear, he's too old for her. He might be forty, and Farida only came of age a few years ago.”

Your grandmother lit two cigarettes and they smoked. This aunt's voice fluctuated between masculinity and femininity. She was full figured and fortyish, and wore gold-framed eyeglasses; her teeth were yellow, big, and jutted forward. She left her hair in two narrow black braids, streaked with white.

She always wore her new long silk robe with the low neckline, embroidered with a tree branch design, over her dress. Underneath it was a pink, beige, or orange slip with the bosom worked in lace and threaded with silver or gold. She would tie a wide headband of shiny black fabric over her wide, high forehead. Her fragrance spread immediately – a fragrance like that of a woman in labour. We gazed at her as if she were a fashionable lady, at the expanse of her wide, freckled chest, exposed to us as, and the crevice between her ample breasts that were pushed up by her brassiere. After we sank into the middle, we were enthralled by the glitter of the big brooch with its coloured stones; the big turquoise stone practically blinded us. When she'd taken the veil from her face in the hallway, she wiped away her sweat with a handkerchief of fresh cloth whose edges were embroidered in brilliant colours, then she buried it in the front of her blouse. She had a long coughing fit and spat out a dense clot of phlegm. Your aunt took her silken cloak with the gold threads hanging from the neck opening down to the waist.

In summer the courtyard was washed. The cushions with the tree branch-patterned covers were arrayed on the straw mats. The brazier gleamed, the coal turned to bright embers, and the teapot and kettle were new. The little cups with their gold-lined saucers and silver spoons were set out in the middle of the round platter, brought out of the old wooden chest. The courtyard was roofed with broad panes of glass seamed with black and grey iron, specked with bird droppings. When it rained, the raindrops reminded you of the devils that went around in your head, and when the sun shone, we did not perish.

Rooms lined the courtyard. Your parents' room was at the end of the corridor, and your aunt's and grandmother's room was at the entrance. It was your room, too – your's and Adil's.

This open courtyard was where you used to receive guests. In winter, the holes in the corners were stuffed with rags dipped in paraffin. We spread out old rugs and worn out carpets, and big pillows with worn linen covers in the four corners.

The grey heaters – the rust – were my mother's job. She took them into the kitchen and began there to clean and polish. She replaced the old wicks. She greased the hard knobs and returned everything clean and polished. She put one in each room, then brewed tea on the big brazier, grilled onions, and warmed yesterday's bread. On cold winter nights we smelled the orange peels as they burned – she used to spread them on the coals to banish the bad smell of the paraffin.

The ground was always the best place for sitting and relaxing. And for dreams and games.

Ahead of us were the steps that led to the high roof, where there were two rooms. The first was spacious and abandoned; there was old furniture in one corner. In the smaller room were heaps of newspapers and books: your and Adil's treasures!

When Aunt Najia came into the courtyard, we knew that the door of secrets had opened before us. When she laughed, our house shook. She shouted, “Huda, wipe off the platter, what's wrong with a little cleanliness?”

You, Adil, and your mother squatted in the corners. Your brother spread out the old newspapers, and pulled the thread off spools to make his kites. He worked like a patient adult; he did not shout or grumble. He was the youngest, the prettiest, the plumpest, the most delicate. You used to divide the world between you and him. He was order, melancholy, and introspection. You were anarchy, insolence, and violence. Your footsteps annoyed the people in the house and the way you walked in the street provoked danger. You were nine years old; Adil was eight. He was possessed by a surpassing ability to bear anguish and pain; you loved to apportion grief, hatred, and love, toward everyone, and among everyone. His head was strong and his eyes were wide, shining with sects and minorities. Their colour at night concealed the echo of sensitivity; in daylight, lights mingled in their honey-coloured waves. He was beautiful – venerable. He stood before you and you looked at him. You gave him titles – you barked at him. The day passed, and another, and another. You knew that his beauty was your greatest joy. The lines of his face, his nose, his lips, his silence, his backbone. The shadows of his casual sympathy, the depths of the resistance which people like you never know. All of this turned you against him. Siblings' fears are not written down or publicized. They proceed, step by step. You lit all the lights so that he did not walk alone. You were with him; no, he was with you. He was the one everyone loved, he was the one who loved you. It was you who pushed him towards the wheels of the wagons drawn by decrepit horses. It was you who were frightened by the creeping of the horses, though he was silent. You cried “God is great!” in the street, you shrieked. You took him behind the graveyard to frighten him. You dressed him in your father's uniform and saluted him. You got him embroiled in wild dreams. You were sure of nothing but his regal face. Adil's face was created as if he were meant to return to Heaven young. You used to take him up to the roof, place him at the top of the steps and push him down. He did not raise his voice, cry, or whisper. He did not give away this secret. You were burdened by the ways you tortured him. You were an expert at capturing him and hiding him. You stole the money that his father gave him, sweets, apricot paste, dried apricots, and the bunches of wrinkled figs that your grandmother put aside for him alone. He never protested, he gave you things in front of everyone and away from everyone – when they were asleep, when they were out, when they returned. He loved you as if you were the last sister in the world. He knelt before you, gave you his portions, made winged animals for you, frightening bears, gentle toys, and did not bother with talk. You imagined him standing up, his chest ready to receive bullets. He would close his eyes, his tears would flow, his pulse would stop, he would not raise his spindly but soft arms in the air and say “No!”

Since that time you have been alone, sinking into infernal stoicism. He stood in the doorway, defending you from their hands and feet, the whip, and shoes. He cried instead of you, and your rage mounted. You have brought all these curses upon yourself yet you always found someone to blame.

Your mother moved as if she were climbing a high mountain. She brought tea and biscuits on a wide, flat tray. She offered each person a fan. She sullied no one with her voice, responding to Aunt Farida's shrieks and shouts with a brief nod of her head. She gave them Adil and Huda – what more do they want from her?

She was extraordinarily slender, fair-skinned and tall. Her hair was the brown of an old walnut; her eyes were honey-coloured but showed no light. The skin of her face was dry, her cheeks hollow, her teeth crooked. When she laughed, she asked God's protection from Satan, and her facial features became tense as she remembered that laughter is asort of sin.

After pouring and serving the tea, she sat on the low wooden bench like a dejected sentry. She opened and closed, rinsed and dried, came and went. She finished everything slowly: cooking, eating, loving her husband.

Her sharp coughing travelled through walls and windows. You heard your grandmother reading prayers to her, your aunt as she cursed her. You and Adil were encircled, by that cough. You were moved to your grandmother's room, because of fear …

We did not know. We did not understand. We did not want to know. And they did not want us to know.

We called her “Mama” only when we were frightened or needed help, but after giving birth to us she lowered a dark curtain of secrecy around her narrow domain.

She took all her guidance from your father: she did not dare refuse. She walked toward the supernatural with her ailing chest with the same noble forehead, dreaming of truffles and the nourishment of her cheeks and thighs in case the inevitable faltered. Your grandmother loved her. And she hated no one.

Aunt Najia began to pace in front of your grandmother. She joked with her, she chatted her up, and teased her with grand titles. This aunt made no distinction between any of the women. When your grandmother appeared, she wanted her to herself, and when your father's sister came, she got her into new positions, saying things she never thought of saying before. When a changing rapture appeared on the horizon, she embraced it fully, never remembering what had gone before: the past, apprehensions, the first stammering. Your grandmother now admired her; this was what she wanted in her possession. She sprinkled flame on her and emerged from all discords. She fell with her whole height and width as if struck by an all-consuming itch. Her voice vanished and the dripping of blood was heard. Her long robe was drawn back a little from her taut thighs, and legs as long and slender as a goat's. She kicked off her pointed sandals and they landed across the room. She rolled up the sleeve of the robe, higher, higher, up to her armpit. This was where the smell of steam and sweat came from open pores and the extending folds of her limp forearm. The hair between her armpit and forearm was long and black. When she was intoxicated, she undid the brooch and it dropped on the floor. Aunt Farida sat across from her with her legs open, and your grandmother asked God's forgiveness:

“There is no strength or power save in God!”

The words detour: “Even God's words sound good coming from you.”

“Listen, Najia, God help you.”

“Oh, even my name sounds good coming from you.”

“Listen, you know I don't like that kind of talk.”

“Fine, fine. Don't get upset. By the way, is Bahija Khan going to drop in?”

Their voices rose, your head bowed to that remote depth and you chose your first relation between the edges of the mysterious split: the enigmatic body.

You gave off strange vibrations, you don't know how, or where they went, or who would feel them.

You will never see these strange women again in your life. You love listening to them. They are gold mines: if you go and extract it, the sun will shine; if you leave them in the belly of the earth, the belly will split asunder and produce a different posterity.

Were these the corrupt women you have heard about?

Women: souls painted with fire, bodies over which the open air passes, making them radiant, over which the salts of the sea pass, making them blaze, at whom fear fires its incomparable rays.

They screamed at you; they watched you.

You were there, in that courtyard, listening to horns that bleated at the threshold of your soul. The neighbourhood in which your body lived was agitated. You did not retreat. They dragged you, gently at first; they beat you, and your mother went into the distant kitchen. Her shame was striking in its candour, among those brilliant souls.

Aunt Najia started shouting again. Her voice had become riper than any other voice you'd heard in your life:

“I want Bahija Khan.”

They gave the title
Khan 
to proper ladies between the Baghdadi period and the Ottoman occupation. The father, grandfather, or brother drove them into isolation and degradation, so the women took both the title and the abandonment.

Bahija was your grandmother's younger sister, the daughter of her stepmother.

Beautiful, plump, tall and broad, proud and haughty, she was about to turn thirty. All the women you knew plot against her. If she stepped into Aunt Najia's trap, it was because she resembled her. If she went to another, it was because that was her nature.

You did not realize all this. What was occurring in front of you left its mark, a step and who knows where it is going to lead you. That whole network of arms and legs met unwritten covenants and invisible charters. What went from this to that was bound as a kind of love from whose shadow there was no escape.

Your aunt's voice emerged sharply from her throat: “I want you to go like lightning to your grandfather's house and tell my Aunt Bahija to come quickly.”