Women of Sand and Myrrh (12 page)
On the fourth day I felt weak and tired. As I lay in bed, I heard my mother saying, ‘Are the Institute and books worth getting yourself in this state for?’ Batul persuaded Rashid to come in and see me just before the evening prayer and I was confident that my fast must soon be over. In a voice which sounded as if he was making an effort to be kind he said, ‘What are you doing to yourself, Tamr?’ ‘I want to go to the Institute and get educated,’ I answered tearfully. His reply was quite unexpected, and I didn’t believe it until he repeated it: ‘You’re not going to the Institute.’ ‘Then I won’t eat,’ I said firmly. He went out of the room and I thought I heard him saying, ‘As you wish.’ I no longer thought about anything. From time to time I opened my eyes. I could hear my mother crying, Batul screaming, and I seemed to see my mother striking her face with the palms of her hands. Batul’s children kept asking questions and one of her daughters said, ‘Auntie Tamr’s going to die!’
Batul appeared annoyed at the strength of my resistance. She came in and made me sit up and tried to force a piece of apple between my teeth without success. I needed all my strength to move my face away and I began turning my head rapidly from one side to the other. My mother eased me back on to the pillow and laid her hand on my forehead reciting prayers. Raised voices echoed off the walls and ceilings.
Batul’s voice called out, ‘Listen to me, Rashid. I swear to God you won’t come near me and you’re not my lawful husband unless you personally take Tamr to the Institute. Can you hear me, everybody?’ My mother walked around with the incense burner in her hand, wailing and crying. She came towards my bed: ‘Batul and your brother are fighting and who knows, they might divorce, all because you won’t give up the idea of the Institute. Those English have had an effect on you. They must have put a spell on you and poisoned your mind. Tamr, my daughter, get up and ask God’s pardon. Batul and your brother are going to get a divorce.’
My muscles went limp and I no longer seemed to have any interest in what the voices were saying. Batul and my mother came to sit me up, so that I’d be able to face in the right direction and say my prayers, but I couldn’t. They stayed with me all night long, pleading with me in the name of the Almighty, kissing me then screaming at me, trying to force my jaws open. They managed to get a spoon in but half the soup dribbled down my chin and on to my neck. I shouted at them but my voice came out strangely weak: ‘If anybody makes me eat I’ll never forgive them and God won’t either.’ Batul shouted back, ‘My God, you don’t love anyone except yourself. I thought you and I were like sisters.’
I opened my eyes and I was frightened. The room was in silence. They must have all wearied of trying to convince me. I don’t know how much time had gone by but suddenly Batul rushed in kissing me and crying ‘Congratulations,’ followed by my mother who was trilling for joy and singing, ‘O Tamr, O Tamr, you’re going to the Institute by car and you’ll come back reading and writing.’ I was tired, but even so I struggled into a sitting position, propping myself up with pillows. I opened my mouth to eat without the faintest desire, as if I’d lost my taste for food. Batul reported to me that Rashid had begun to sleep in the sitting-room, took no notice of her, and had stopped speaking to her. Her annoyance had prompted her to march into the sitting-room full of men that afternoon
and fling herself at his feet kissing them and weeping. ‘Forgive your sister, Rashid; God is forgiving. Knowledge is light. Fatima the Prophet’s daughter could express herself eloquently and read and write.’
Rashid had been deeply discomfited. His face became the colour of blood. There and then he found the courage to agree. Everyone in the room knew about his refusal and his sister’s fast. In front of them all Batul had knelt at his feet and invoked the Prophet’s daughter. He raised her face from his feet and said, ‘Be happy, Umm Ashraf. You can tell my sister to stop fasting.’
I said good morning to Said as I climbed confidently into the car, and thank you when I got out. I stood pressing Suha’s doorbell with a smile on my face, marvelling at her ideas, as I looked at the ancient door which she’d bought from the herdswoman living nearby; in its place she’d had an iron door installed for the woman. Whenever I went into Suha’s house, I felt as if I were boarding a plane and flying away, a similar feeling to the one I’d had the day I went to the Institute and met Suha for the first time.
Inside and out, the Institute building was the same as the other houses round about. High walls surrounded it and its garden was no more than a clearing of sand. The women teaching there made me feel as if I was abroad: they seemed to have no connection with the buildings, or the sign on its door – Gulf Institute for Women and Girls – or the brightly-patterned couches in the sitting-room, and the pictures on the walls torn from books and tourist brochures.
I sat at a table near some old women wearing face veils, and younger women, some of whom had left their headwraps on but bundled their abayas up in their laps.
I was astonished to find that there existed in my country women like the women in London and Lebanon and Egypt, the kind of women I’d seen on videos. Even Mary, my English
neighbour, wasn’t like that; in fact I’d never seen her in anything but a full length caftan.
I didn’t hear a single word of the lesson. I was looking at the teacher Suha so intently that I was staring into her face, at her hair, her clothes, her shoes and her hands. I thought about where she was living and couldn’t imagine that a woman like her would be able to go about the streets in her tight-waisted, low-cut dress, wearing that broad gold belt, long purple ear-rings and purple shoes with open toes which revealed her long toenails painted purple. And the hair. I couldn’t find words to describe its colour and style: it fell in tousled disarray over her forehead and ears and neck.
During the break I saw the other teachers. They weren’t beautiful like Suha. I thought about them too: where do they live? How do they live? Do they walk about the streets? Do they go down to the shops? What are their houses like? Are they like my neighbour Mary’s house, ordinary, except for the electric mixer and the tumble dryer? Do they have children? Where do their children play – out among the sand and stones? Even the young girls from the desert were different under their abayas: they’d taken trouble over their hairstyles, their dresses didn’t hang down to the floor, and they greeted one another with one kiss on each cheek, not with a third in the customary way.
I went back home and told my mother and Batul what I’d seen at the Institute. My mother clasped her hands together and insisted that I take her with me the next day to see the teacher Suha and the others, especially the American who went around smoking a cigarette in a holder. I laughed and held out my hands: ‘No. No, no. I’d be too embarrassed.’
I was scared of the remarks my mother would make and the stories she’d tell. I went into my room and stuck my tongue out in the mirror, examining it closely to see if one of the arteries in it had contracted and that was why it was so difficult for me to speak English; or was it just that English didn’t go with a woman who wore an abaya and whose hair
reeked of incense?
Every evening I waited for the television to become silent, the children’s crying to die down, waited till the door to the garden was shut and the black sheep had stopped bleating, till the women visitors had left and the relations set off back to their homes. Even when I’d excused myself someone would always follow me to my room, jokingly pulling the books away from me, or Batul or my mother would come in with almost the same phrase, the same sigh, on their lips: ‘It’s not right, Tamr. Really it’s not.’ When my aunt came to visit us she called to me all the time to come and squat at her side and entertain her.
After some weeks my relations with Suha went beyond those of a teacher and student. She invited me to her house and I made excuses several times before I was frank with her and said that Rashid would lay down the condition that she must visit us first. Suha was delighted and said that she’d rarely been invited into the local people’s houses and had always wanted to see them. The first time she came, I was glad to have the chance to ride in the back of the car next to her but I felt embarrassed to see my teacher chatting uninhibitedly with the Yemini driver.
I kissed Suha on both cheeks as usual and asked her if we could sit in the garden. I noticed boxes and cases against the wall but it didn’t occur to me to ask who was going away because her house was always changing its appearance and she was always receiving things from abroad. ‘In this heat?’ she expostulated. ‘We can sit on the green grass,’ I smiled. ‘D’you call that grass, and green?’ she asked in a disgruntled way. ‘Even though the wind and sand have left nothing, green or otherwise?’ But she stood up and handed me a glass of tea and went ahead of me into the garden carrying a glass for herself, and we sat down. Suha’s eyes roamed over her garden and she remarked that she could see nothing in it that she wouldn’t be able to see on the other side of the garden wall, but I sat benevolently studying the tomato plant with the
green fruit hanging from it, the water in the round plastic basin and the mauve and white bougainvillea on the wall. I didn’t like the scented tea she served but I sipped it all the same. I preferred it well stewed, and Suha had added a Lipton’s tea bag to my glass and left it until the tea became a deep brown colour. I sipped my tea feeling thoroughly happy. I loved foreigners’ houses. They were new and spacious. I began as usual to recount my problems with my brother and the bank, not noticing the listless expression on Suha’s face nor her distracted manner, until she interrupted me: ‘Did you get the paper from the sheikh?’ ‘Tomorrow,’ I replied excitedly. Our eyes met and we both began to laugh, remembering the day not long before when I’d asked to borrow Said and the car and she’d immediately begged to be allowed to come too. ‘I’d love you to,’ I’d replied, and she’d looked as blissfully happy as if I’d opened the door of Paradise to her. I was amazed because I hadn’t come across a person who asked permission like this before. Whenever we had the chance to leave the house we swarmed out like locusts, big and little, young and old. In the car she never stopped asking me if I was upset and if I felt any shame or anxiety. ‘Why should I?’ I asked. ‘Why?’ she shouted back in surprise, ‘When you’re on your way to ask your ex-husband for a divorce certificate after fifteen years?’
I laughed: ‘What about it?’ I replied. I started to remember the way to the big house; it was the largest one in our area. A sentence escaped from my lips: ‘I hope the garden’ll be like it was before, Suha. It had an oleander and a prickly pear and yellow roses.’
Suha slapped my hand lightly: ‘You’re impossible, Tamr. Thinking of the garden at a time like this!’
I began giving directions to Said and we ended up in a dead end street. ‘Obviously you’ve forgotten the way,’ Suha remarked laughing.
I looked all around me. ‘I don’t know what they’ve done with the road, sister. It’s higher, lower, bigger, as far as I can
see.’ Said asked who was the owner of the house and when I mentioned the name, he said, ‘I know him. One of my group of friends is a driver for them.’ Not until we drove in through the open gate did I spy it. We got out of the car. Said went forward and hailed the doorman. There were numerous doors in the tall building which was built around an open courtyard. A woman appeared, crying, ‘Welcome, welcome,’ and kissed us. We followed her up a staircase with a scarlet fitted carpet. As she climbed she talked: ‘The sheikha has lots of nice stories to tell. She’s just arrived from down south. It was some wedding, there was enough food for a whole valley. Welcome to you. The people who couldn’t be there are forgiven.’
Suha asked me what she was talking about. ‘They had a wedding,’ I replied, then correcting myself I said it again using the Lebanese word for wedding and imitating a Lebanese accent. We followed the woman into the large salon. I went up to the sheikha who wore a dress of gold silk and on her wrist lots of gold bangles set with precious stones which outshone all the gold gleaming around the room. She kissed me on both cheeks and then did the same to Suha, ‘Welcome,’ she said. ‘How are you? Are you well?’ ‘Thanks be to God. How are you?’ I replied. The sheikha leant forward to move the lump of incense in the burner and Suha looked about her. I too took the opportunity to snatch a glance around while the sheikha wasn’t looking. The furniture was new and there was crystal ware and objects made of what looked like silver, a verse from the Qur’an worked in gold, a Ramadan calendar, a stuffed falcon and beside it on a glass table, an arrangement of roses made of semiprecious stones. All this was new to me. Before the room had been no more than a humble sitting-room. Vast sofas stood against the wall. Gesturing towards Suha, the sheikha said, ‘Would the lady prefer to sit on the sofa instead?’ I smiled. ‘It’s all right. My friend’s Lebanese. She was a teacher at the Institute.’ Then I introduced myself: ‘I’m Tamr, Tawi’s daughter.’ The sheikha
gasped, her eyes bright. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know who you were. When you got married I was in the south. I was very upset when I heard that you were divorced. I remember, I said to the sheikh, “You divorced Tawi’s daughter? The girl whose forefathers’ blood is one with the desert sand?” How are you? Are you married again? What’s your son’s name?’ ‘Muhammad.’ ‘Ah – Muhammad. And what is he doing? I see, studying. My son Abd al–Rahman married Nimr’s daughter the day before yesterday. You should have seen the bride: she was dressed like they were in the old days and she weighed as much as a camel, God bless her. Couldn’t you have been with us?’
‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘I hope they’ll be happy and give you grandsons and granddaughters. But what I came for, sheikha, was a certificate of my divorce from the sheikh. I want to open a workshop and they asked me for it.’
‘Fine,’ she answered simply, ‘Ask for anything you want. There’s no problem, Tamr. But tell me, your son Muhammad, was he the one whom Ibrahim’s family kidnapped and then your brother chased after them and snatched him back?’
