Nekropolis (12 page)

“Hariba!” I shout and chase her.

Her white sleeping robe is thin cotton and I can see her through it, almost as if she’s naked. Poor Hariba would be mortified if she knew what she was doing, that she’d be dressed this way where strangers can see her. Her skin is brown where the damp cotton clings to her and she turns toward me and half-crouches, her face in anguish. She has her hands in front of her, pleading, but like claws.

“Hariba,” I say. “Hariba.” I croon it. “Hariba.” She hears it and it speaks to something in her fever, but it’s a tenuous thing and I’m afraid she’ll run away from me. “Hariba,” I say and slowly crouch down, sit down in the dust of the street. “Hariba.”

She hesitates, partly I think because she has forgotten what she’s running to or from. She sways.

“Hariba,” I say again. Just her name. Long, and drawn-out, low, and almost a whisper.

I’m hypnotizing her with her name.

“Come back to me,” I whisper.

She looks bemused.

“I’ll help you,” I whisper.

She shakes her head-and the movement unbalances her and she sits down in a heap.

I scrabble over to her-these are my good pants and they’ll be dusty at work tonight, but what does it matter, since I don’t wear clothes at work. Then again, I’m not sure I can leave her like this. What if I come home and find she’s gone, wandering the streets in a fever dream?

“It’s shaking,” she says.

“Nothing’s shaking,” I say. “It’s your poor fevered head.”

“I’m cold,” she says.

It’s blisteringly hot, but there’s a breeze. She’s shivering and when I take her back inside, into the shade of our house, her teeth start chattering. I whisper her name and wrap her in blankets. There is no more wonderful sound to a human than their name.

“I’ll make you some tea, Hariba, my Hariba,” I say. “It will warm you up.”

“When I close my eyes, I’m dreaming and I’m not even asleep,” she says. At least my presence means something to her.

“I know, I know, sweet Hariba.”

“Where’s my mother?” she asks.

“Your mother? At her home.”

“Take me home,” she says.

“I can’t,” I say. The moment I say it I realize it’s the wrong answer.

“Akhmim, take me home.”

“Not this afternoon,” I say. “Soon, but not this afternoon.”

“I want to go home,” she says. She’s crying now.

“Your mother is probably selling wreaths,” I say. “You rest now, we’ll see your mother later.” That soothes her. I should remember that.

She curls up on her side, wrapped in the blanket. I make mint tea and bring it to her.

“I don’t want it,” she says.

“You need it. Come on. It will warm you up.”

She doesn’t want it, but I sit and cajole and bully and lie. Sweat is trickling down my ribs, it’s such hard work. But she sits up and sips tea. I keep at her, getting her to drink about half the cup.

“I’m hot,” she says.

She lies down, and after a bit she starts moaning. I get a cloth and a bowl of water. “Come on,” I say, and pull her cotton shift over her head. She raises her thin arms, listless as a child. I can see her sternum and the bones of her chest disappearing under her tiny breasts. She lies back down and I start to wipe her down with the cool water. Her nipples tighten up, but she doesn’t acknowledge the cold.

She looks past me, as if I’m not even here.

And then she seizes.

She clenches her teeth and tightens all her muscles, her fingers in fists, and at first I think she’s angry, but she starts going, “Unh, unh, unh,” and I can see a sliver of white just under her half-closed eyelids.

“Hariba!” I say. “Hariba!”

She can’t hear me for the storm in her. Is this the shaking she was afraid of? I keep calling her name, calling her, and then she relaxes. But she’s empty, her eyes lolling white in her sockets for a few seconds, until she closes up as if she’s in a deep sleep or a faint.

“Hariba,” I whisper.

Eventually she opens her eyes. “Umm?” she says, her look vacant.

“Look at me,” I say, and at first she doesn’t, but finally she seems to make an effort and her eyes find me.

I push her tangled hair away from her face. “Just rest,” I say, “I’m here.” It’s a relief, though, because for a few moments she doesn’t have any need in her.

An hour later she has another brief seizure.

I don’t go to work. I sit with her while the shadows lengthen, and I feed her sips of water. A little and a little more and a little more, until finally, around midnight, her fever breaks some and she falls into what seems to be a natural sleep.

* * *

Hariba’s friend Ayesha answers the door, for which I’m thankful. “Yes?” she says, drawing her veil up over her mouth, thinking she’s in the presence of a strange man, and then she recognizes me. “You!” she hisses. “What have you done with Hariba?”

I don’t know what to say. “I…I haven’t done anything with Hariba. She’s sick, I need your help.”

She glares at me. I think she’s going to shout for help. “Please!” I say, “Hariba is sick and she wants her mother!”

“Take me to her,” she says.

Ayesha doesn’t speak to me while we walk. Her anger makes me nervous. I keep smiling at her, trying to get her to see that I don’t mean any harm, that I’m just trying to help Hariba. I’m not bad, I want to say. “I’ve found some work,” I explain. “And we rented a house like yours, like hers. She feels more at home. But she’s sick, I think from the jessing.” We turn onto our little street. “It’s that one.” I point. “That’s where we’re living.”

Ayesha runs to the door and calls for Hariba.

“Here,” Hariba answers in a small voice. It’s early in the day and her fever is down this morning. She felt normal to my touch when I left to get Ayesha.

Ayesha runs inside and kneels beside her, stroking her face and calling her sweet names and crying.

“Akhmim?” Hariba says. “Why did you go get Ayesha?”

“Because you’re sick, and you need your family.”

“No,” she shakes her head. “Ayesha, no, you mustn’t tell anyone you saw me…” and then she dissolves into weak tears.

“You need a doctor,” Ayesha says.

“No,” Hariba says. “No, he’ll tell the police! Akhmim can take care of me!”

“You need more care than I can give you,” I say, kneeling down next to them. “I have to work, to take care of us.”

Ayesha hisses at me, “Get away from her.”

I sit back on my heels, unsure what I’ve done. Maybe I didn’t know what to do and I’ve made Hariba more sick? “I’ve been trying to take care of her-”

“Shut up,” Ayesha says.

Hariba cries wordlessly.

Ayesha says, “I’ll go get Nabil.”

“No!” Hariba says.

But it’s all in motion.

Ayesha comes back with a small stocky man-I can see Hariba’s face in his, although her hair is straight and his is in loose curls. They have a pedicab with them and they bundle her in.

“Akhmim!” she says. “Akhmim has to come with me!”

Ayesha stares at me in hate. Her brother doesn’t even admit I exist. They take her away-she’s too weak to do aything but cry for me.

I’ve failed. I’ve left her unhappy, and I can hear her calling me, even when she’s out of sight.

I wish I were at Karim’s. I wish I were with the
harni
.

3

Duty

All of my children are taller than me. Their father wasn’t a particularly tall man, but my father and brothers were tall. Allah made me small so I wouldn’t need much, I always said. I gave it all to my children. Fhassin was tall. Even Rashida, my second daughter and the smallest one, she is bigger than me. But look at what has happened. I’ve lost one. Fhassin is dead to us all, though I pray for him. I think it was because he was my favorite and no matter how much you hide it, children know. And now Hariba comes home, sick and in disgrace.

I go over it in my mind. What did I do wrong? Was it only because they grew up without a father? The youngest, Nabil, wasn’t born when his father died.

I am sitting in the door of my sister’s house-my grandniece climbs onto my lap and holds out her chubby fist and breathes, “Look.” She uncurls her fist to show me a raisin stuck with crumbs. She has a biscuit in her other hand. She smells of crumbs and sour food. She closes her fist again. Opens it again and breathes, “Look.”

“I see,” I say.

Sarai, for that is her name, puts the raisin down in the doorway, deliberate and thoughtful. She looks at it, her hand splayed open suspended in the air. She reaches back down to pick it up and her palm squishes it against the floor. She fumbles and picks it up and it is covered with dust. She raises it toward her mouth and I say, “Sarai, no.”

She looks at me, considering. Watching me, she brings it toward her mouth again.

“No,” I say again. I expect her to try to put it in her mouth anyway, and then I’ll take it from her and she’ll cry. Instead she holds it out to give it to me. I open my hand and she drops it in.

My sister has a cat and it has had a litter of kittens. Skinny, long-legged things with heads too small for their bodies. Sarai sees a kitten and toddles after it. The kittens are half-wild things. They can take care of themselves. I throw the dirty raisin into the street.

My youngest daughter is pregnant. I want to have grandchildren, but am I ready again for babies? Am I ready to still myself and to slow myself for her little ones? When Hariba was a year old and Rashida was on the way, I remember crouching on the floor, bulky with child, and saying to Hariba, “No, no, no. Sharp. Don’t touch.” I remember that moment, not because of what I said but because I realized how many hours of my life I had already spent slowing my mind down, and thinking of nothing but this child, and that I would have years of children ahead of me. I loved her. I loved her too much, the way when she was sitting she would roll onto one hip and put her hand on the floor, trying to decide if she should crawl or walk, if the speed of walking was worth the difficulty of getting up and the danger of falling down. But I wanted to talk to someone, and my husband and I, we were new to the neighborhood then and I didn’t know anyone. Women can only survive if they have other women who understand, who know what it’s like when you’ve been saying “no” all day to a toddler and you are tired of her anger and her unreasonableness, when you have become nothing but “no” and “no” and “no.” Don’t climb that, don’t go out there, don’t walk away from me, don’t eat that, don’t pick that up. Hours of “no” s. Years of “no” s. And you’re tired because you have the baby and your home and your life and the baby has nothing but itself.

I didn’t love Hariba when she was born. I thought she would come out of me and I would love her. When she was born, I looked at her and I was frightened. We were living in my husband’s family’s flat over the barbershop and his mother and his sister and my mother were all there and they put her on my swollen belly. Her face was flat and creased, you could barely see her eyes and I thought I would see her and become a mother at that moment. But I didn’t feel she was mine. She was dangerous, so frail, I was afraid I would do something wrong. Did she feel that denial in me? After she was born, I grew so sad and tired that I could barely get out of bed, and Samil, my poor husband, would come home to find nothing cooked, nothing done, and me sitting on the bed, holding the baby.

She had an empty mother those first months. I had nothing to fill her with. When Rashida was born, I had friends. They came to the birthing. We would trade children, give each other a break sometimes. Hamet would come over with her boy on her hip and say, “Talk to me! I need an intelligent voice or I’ll go mad!” She was plump and pretty and desperate, and we’d laugh. In the death houses it was a city of women and children and old people during the day. It was full of mess and crumbs and noise. Then it would start to get dark and the men would come home. Samil would say to the little ones, “Stop making that racket!” and I’d shush them. The doors of the death houses would be open and bars of light would come from them, and between the bars of light would be purple shadows. The sound of cutlery on plates. The smell of charcoal and flatbread and rice.

In my memory those nights are calm, quiet, and still, but in my memory I’m always looking at the glow of other houses. It wasn’t nearly that simple. Hamet came to me one day with a cloth bag and said, “Please, keep this for me. Don’t ask me anything, just keep it.” I took the cloth bag and looked inside and there was a gun, a shiny plastic-looking thing, oddly heavy. I looked at her, looked into her face. Ibrahim, her husband, he might have had a temper, what did I know? I had never seen her with bruises on her face, but I’d heard them argue. I had heard everyone argue, everyone had heard Samil and me argue. We lived at elbows. Her face was calm, closed. I could feel the fear in the way her face was so serene. I put the bag away where the babies wouldn’t find it and didn’t even tell Samil. A few months later she asked for it back. “I’ll take that bag back now,” she said. “Thank you for keeping it.” I gave it back to her. I don’t know why it was okay, or if Ibrahim had missed it and made her give it back. We talked, but we weren’t close beyond the concerns of motherhood.

When Samil died and I had three babies and the fourth on the way, Hamet sat with me. All she said was “You’ll get through this.” I didn’t want someone to tell me I’d get through it. But she was right. Still, for months I was hollow again, until my baby was born. Hariba and Fhassin, both infants with a mother hollowed by fear or grief. Is that where it happened?

I’m thinking about this when Nabil brings Hariba to my sister’s house in the pedicab. I’m thinking of her as a baby, all round-faced, so that I’m even more shocked by this thin girl. When she went to be jessed, I was saddened for her because who would marry a jessed girl? She would never have children. But I didn’t ever think my children might die before me.

The skin under Hariba’s eyes is purple and full of fluid, but the rest of her is nothing. Her hair is brittle and full of broken ends. She see me and she starts to cry, reaching out from the pedicab with her thin arms. I reach up to hug her. “Child of my heart,” I say. I don’t know where the words come from, formal and frightening to a sick young woman, I’m sure.