Women of Sand and Myrrh (36 page)

Said was the one I was going to miss. Although I’d been on edge and unsmiling that morning, he’d been his normal self, assuring Umar that he’d see him again soon. Umar asked him innocently, ‘D’you want to come to Beirut? D’you know Granny’s house?’ Laughing and adjusting his head cloth, Said said, ‘Don’t worry, Umar. I’ll get off at Beirut airport and sniff you out like a dog. I’ll ask for the house where Umar and Madame Suha live and I’ll find you.’ Then he told us about the time he’d gone to Cairo and tried to find an Egyptian engineer who’d been a customer in the restaurant: ‘A very important engineer. A nice man. And he lived somewhere in Cairo.’ It was a long story: he’d asked a newspaper seller who’d directed him to the owner of a launderette whose son was working as a teacher in the desert. Said had gone off to the launderette and had eventually met up with the engineer who’d been delighted, unable to believe that he’d made his way through the millions of people in Cairo to find him. Proudly Said ended his tale: ‘He took me to the pyramids and the zoo and to see a lady and her sisters who were belly dancers and singers.’

I don’t know why I thought suddenly of Maaz’s wife, Fatima, and the way she used to smile as she stood holding the coffee jug, waiting to refill her husband’s cup and Suzanne’s.

I craned my neck, looking down. I could see the high walls around the town protecting it from the horrors of the sand. The desert came into view, looking as it had done the first
time I saw it: sand and palm trees, a way of life that revolved around human beings without possessions or skills, who had to rely on their imaginations to contrive a way of making their hearts beat faster or even to keep them at a normal pace; to search unaided for a hidden gleam of light, and to live with two seasons a year instead of four.

About the Author

Hanan al-Shaykh is one of the contemporary Arab world’s most acclaimed writers. She was born in Lebanon and brought up in Beirut before going to Cairo to receive her education. She was a successful journalist in Cairo and in Beirut, then later lived in the Arabian Gulf before moving to London. She is the author of
The Locust and the Bird
, the collection
I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops
, and her novels include
The Story of Zahra
,
Women of Sand and Myrrh
,
Beirut Blues
, and
Only in London
, which was shortlisted for the
Independent
Foreign Fiction Prize. She lives in London.

About the Translator

Catherine Cobham, who teaches modern Arabic literature at the University of St. Andrews, has translated a number of contemporary Arab writers, including Yusuf Idris, Nawal El-Saadawi, and Liana Badr.

“It is an extraordinarily brave act for a writer to undertake to inhabit, fully and sympathetically, the life her mother lived.”

—
J.M. Coetzee

HANAN AL-SHAYKH

The Locust and the Bird
is both a tribute to a strong-willed and independent woman and a heartfelt critique of a mother whose decisions were unorthodox and often controversial.

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