Celestial Bodies

by Johka Alharthi

  This was because Khalid, on his own, took on the likeness of a celestial sphere complete unto itself, orbiting only along its already defined path. Khalid knew exactly what he wanted and now he was getting everything he needed: a fond family, his diploma, and his art which – he made clear to Asma – was at once his inner world and his public work. What had attracted him to Asma – as she gazed wide-eyed at his canvases – was that she fit his needs perfectly. He had already decided on marriage to a woman who would somehow stand out from all the others, with some quality of note. He chose accordingly, looking for a woman who would fall instantly into the orbit he had marked out, who would always be there but would also always stay just outside, yet without wanting to create her own celestial sphere, her own orbit. So he encouraged Asma to continue her education, though at night school because the law now prohibited married women from attending the regular government day schools. He urged her to go on developing her sincere love of reading and when she achieved distinction in her teacher’s certificate he encouraged her to get a job. After all, her mature skills and accomplishments would advance his social status, not to mention that they confirmed his confidence in the choices he himself had made. She was a wife one could be proud of, and his acquisition of her put the final touch on his social acceptability. Yes, he had done it: a respectably able wife, circling within his gravitational pull, quietly, invisibly, inside its orbital path, never straying beyond.

  It didn’t take long for Asma to discover all of this. Nevertheless, she absorbed it calmly and methodically, her feelings already composing an attitude of sceptical affection. Her sentiments were balanced and steady, completely unlike his. At first he was very conscious and careful to adhere to the orbit he had traced out, and he was always checking to be certain that Asma was right there, orbiting in his wake, and watchful above all that she never veered off course. In his own fashion, he did fall in love with her.

  As the days passed, his incandescent feelings did not dim, either. He held her high in the firmament. She was a rare wonder, a radiant and translucent butterfly who reflected the light his love generated. She was the flash of perfection that confirmed his sharp sense of the world. But Asma was no butterfly. She wasn’t one to dive into the glare only to find herself scorched. She had only to calculate a prudent distance. She had already learned that there were times when the fire would go cold and Khalid would slip away, crawling or perhaps running to his warren, drawing that circle around himself and seemingly forgetting Asma entirely. He might stay inside that impervious little circle of his for days, weeks, sometime months. Then suddenly he would once again become Asma’s passionate lover, so much so that his passion tormented her, pulling her inside a hellish paradise, a hard-to-sustain world of absolute pleasures. How ecstatically she blossomed in the early days of his love, astonished that in a matter of days she lived what she had not lived in her whole lifetime before. She loved him with a startling, inexplicable thirst and a craving to feel everything.

  Unlike her husband, though, she was not a creature of impulse. She was not in any hurry to embrace all the joys of love in one gulp of intoxicating ether. As he was growing quiet, her love was pushing its roots deep into the earth, ready to grow, one shoot upon another. At first when he went into his shell Asma was bewildered and upset almost to the point of giving in to her despair. But as time passed and she accumulated experience along with wisdom and social sense, she learned how to accommodate to the situation. She did love him, too – this sceptical, careful, slightly distant love. But she began taking precautions. She formed her own celestial orbit. In the end, and with a great deal of patience, self-examination, and occasional sacrifice, they learned to create enough space that each could orbit freely. When they collided, and if they fused, Asma and Khaled knew it was only a temporary disruption, and that each path would return to its own course.

  With the years, children, an accumulation of friends, and her books, Asma made her peace with Khalid’s art and self-absorption. She left it alone, the circle he drew round himself, remaining inside contented with nothing more than the wood that would soon receive his paint. She learned patience with his horses: their hard eyes, thin bodies, straining muscles. She could deal with the invariable shades of brown, black and white. She made her peace with it, all of it. In return, the artist had to reconcile himself with the fact that she was her own constellation, independent and whole, a sphere unto itself.

  When the children began to arrive Asma ordered a bed made to her specifications, wide enough to hold all of them. They slept there, limbs entangled as if they had all sprouted at once from her body which lay there among them. She persuaded the artist that, once branded by childbearing, a mother’s embrace could no longer be a lover’s embrace. Now it was about giving milk and security to these open mouths, and waving protective scents in front of these tiny noses.

  Every birth confirmed to her that this was what her life meant: hearing the sharp scream of life from a tiny body, so finely sculpted in all of its details, which had come out of hers. Time after time, until whenever her body stopped making new life. When Asma reached her forty-fifth birthday, her body had sprouted fourteen young plants, living for light and colour, in the artist’s house, even if they took in that light away from the painter’s remote paintbrush, poised in endless thrall to the bridles of his silent horses.

  Abdallah

  On the 20th of March 1986, when my father had his first heart attack, London was five years old and Salim was two. On the 26th of February 1992 he died in the Nahda Hospital. My son Muhammad was one year old and, though we didn’t yet know it, he would turn out to be autistic.

  I lived six years in constant terror at the thought of my father’s death. But when he did die, it felt like he had already died several times. The last of his deaths gave no relief, no mercy. It did nothing to dispel my terror.

  In the first weeks after his passing I could not sleep. I was too angry. Rage crept like a slow lit fuse through my blood, burning me as it burrowed deeper. Over and over, obsessively, I sketched the scene in my mind: me, standing next to his bed, where he lay covered with a white sheet, the odour of antiseptic everywhere, people coming in little groups into the white room, people taking him away and leading me to one of their little carts, no one offering me any condolences. The dead man must be buried first and before anything else could be said.

  We arrive in the village and they take him inside the house. I hear Zarifa screaming. People are filling buckets of water, erecting the ritual palm-branch benches in the west courtyard and putting up screens. Someone ushers me in there with my father’s body because I’m the one who should wash it, all by myself. Mayya’s father, Azzan himself, hands me the water and instructs me how to rub my father’s body, part by part, limb by limb. Judge Yusuf’s son Abd al-Rahman helps me dry him off, perfume him, and wrap him in the shroud. People lift him into the bier and they set one corner of it on my shoulder. We march to the cemetery, west of al-Awafi. I can hear people saying there is no God but God in his honour and also the sceptical whisperings. Now Suwayd has dug the pit and Azzan lowers me into this grave so that I can receive my father’s body and lay it properly on its right side. I take in the moist freshness of the soil down there. I climb up out of the grave so that others can make a layer of stones over the shrouded body before they pile up the earth. Finally they fix a large stone into the ground where his head would be, and everyone returns to al-Awafi.

  At home to receive condolences, I’m greeted by one man and the next, and they all ask God to bless my period of mourning and make good come of it. I respond, over and over. God decides how long we live. There’s coffee, lots of coffee, and then large trays of rice and meat. When darkness falls I return to the house, to my father’s room, with nothing but this all-encompassing anger. Seven days of this, and then the mourning period – for visitors, anyway – is over.

  Some years later, other details enter this picture. I’ll see my father’s belly tremble slightly under the
bucket of cold water. The water will form a small pool, and this pond seeps out to trickle through all the alleys of al-Awafi. The odours of lotus and embalming fluid pervade the damp alleyways, and I will see my father’s index finger lifted slightly, just enough to cause a slight swelling on the white death shroud. I’ll see his hand sweep aside the stones and the soil. Only his hand remains there, outside the grave. I will see Zarifa amputate her own legs and pluck out the white hair on her head.

  The Man in the Desert

  The planet Saturn was directly ahead. The man standing alone in the desert was ready for it. He prepared the blend of ingredients that went into the smoke to be offered to Saturn. A little saffron, flax and some soiled wool, the brain of a cat. He had already checked carefully to make certain that the reigning sign was a changeable one, that the moon was where it should be, and that Saturn and Mars were both aligned facing the moon. As pleased as he was relieved by what he saw, the man breathed out a contented sigh as there flashed into his mind the woman’s face in the darkness as she left his home. The Bride of the Falaj.

  Now Saturn was at the pole of the sky, gazing toward the two lit bodies – the sun and moon – as the two fell away from each other.

  He blended the saffron, flax, brain matter and fleece and burnt it until it was a proper incense, of the right density between his fingers. He put on the ritual garments for his communication with Saturn. Saturn! Saturn demanded a length of black and green silk. On the wrist he held closest to the planet he wore cast-iron armlets, bones in his hand.

  The solitary man in the desert launched his fervent call. Great Sayyid, Victorious One, Crusher of All, Mighty Spirit, of Pure Mind and Broadest Understanding, Piercing of Gaze and Astuteness, Resilient King and Sultan who Vanquishes Time itself, Causer of Pain, Saturn! Cold Dry Star, Loyal Star, True in Affections, Master of Sorcery and Cunning, Angry and Powerful in Malice, Ever Able, Ever Realizing your Dark Promises, Bringer of Pain and Torment, Shaykh of Craft and Deception, Bringer of Woe on Whosoever Attempts to Thwart Him, of Misery to Whosoever Resists Him – I entreat you, Father of Fathers, Most Deserving of the fealty of your great ancestors and honourable associates, on the Truth of Your Creator and the One who gives you power, Bringer of all that is sublime and all that lies below the earth, Possessor of all: I entreat you to cut Najiya, daughter of Shaykha, from Azzan, son of Mayya, in the name of these spirits of the other world; to separate them as darkness is separated from light, and to lead them to despise each other, ever enemies, like the enmity between fire and water. I ask you, Great Father, to do nothing other than knotting Azzan’s carnal desire for Najiya to make that knot – by the power of these otherworldly spirits – as hard and fast as the knotting of these rock faces and boulders.

  Khawla

  Now that Asma was married, Khawla was alone in the house with her mother. On rare occasions her father joined them. He never smiled.

  Although her mother was not severe with her, Khawla felt dejected and irritated by the constricted life at home as the days went on, and she withdrew into herself more and more. Her single-minded fixation on her figure and her looks became an obsession. She almost went mad. She waited for Nasir with a conviction that simply would not admit any of the doubt others were trying to instil in her. She was Virginie in the tale of Paul and Virginie; Layla in the legend of her poet-lover’s devotion, so obsessive he was nicknamed Majnun, the Mad One; she was the tragic Juliet. She was all the women through all the ages whose love had been eternal and true, who had sacrificed themselves out of loyalty to that love. The only passage that had meant anything, amongst the many cultural nuggets with which Asma was always trying to refine her, was the story about the souls split apart who were forever searching restlessly for completion and would find rest only when they were reunited. Khawla discovered that this idea was not in The Dove’s Necklace after all, but in a much less famous book called al-Zahra. The important point, though, was that Nasir was her half-soul, and so he would inevitably come back.

  Nasir came back.

  True, she had to wait another five years and refuse at least ten offers of marriage before Nasir returned. But he came back to her.

  At least, that’s the way it looked to her. The truth was that Nasir came back having completely run out of funds in Canada. Years before, his scholarship had been suspended. He had lived on the very limited expense money that his mother had sent him secretly, plus minor jobs that he never stayed with for long. Then his mother died. He was thrown out of his latest job. He had no choice but to come back to al-Awafi, where he soon discovered that his mother had put conditions on her will. If he wanted his inheritance he was to marry Khawla. So he married Khawla, and he got the money, and two weeks after the wedding he flew back to Canada.

  Before his mother’s death, Nasir had settled down with a girlfriend in a little house in Montreal. Returning from his short funerary visit to Oman, he didn’t see any compelling reason to tell her about his marriage. For ten years, Nasir returned to Oman once every two years to see the new child in his house and to leave Khawla pregnant again.

  Khawla held on fiercely to her dream. Nasir had come back to her and she would not lose him a second time. The more patience she showed with his serial abandonment, the more estimable she seemed in her own eyes, if not in anyone else’s, and the more sense it all made to her. Her painful life was exemplary; it was the epitome of the greatest sort of love, a sublime and self-immolating love that could not be shattered by anything, not even the cruel harshness of the lover, who would no sooner arrive in Oman than he would wrap himself in long telephone conversations; who hung a photo of his Canadian girlfriend on his car key ring; who brought fancy clothes from Canada for his children but never in the right sizes because he didn’t even know how old they were.

  Whenever her sisters or her mother rebuked her, Khawla’s response was the same. He works there, but he’ll come back to his own country in the end. He’ll come to his senses, he’ll come back to his wife and children, and his home. He’s a good man at heart and that’s what will bring him back.

  When her dream came true – when the Canadian girlfriend left Nasir, throwing him out of the house in Montreal – he and Khawla had already been married for a decade. He came back. He found a good job in a company, and he began to get to know his wife and children.

  Abdallah

  At about the age of ten, London would accompany her mother regularly on jaunts to The Family Bookstore in Muscat. Her mother always bought children’s books in English for her. Although by then there were quite a few bookstores in the city, The Family Bookstore was the oldest and remained the most prominent. It was no longer dedicated to the purpose for which it had been established late in the nineteenth century: founded and built as a shop specialising in Bibles, it was an arm of the American missionary effort in Oman. But at some point, someone realised that a general bookstore offering a good range of titles would be more appealing to the ordinary reader than a shop selling the Gospels. And so, in the late 1960s, it acquired a new name and a larger footprint, and there were even attempts to launch branch outlets. The reputation it gradually made for itself as a secular bookstore led to criticism. The Middle East Council of Churches invested in major efforts to return it to its missionary commitments.

  Mayya wasn’t concerned with the bookstore’s religious history. She had a single, clear goal: that London learn to read in English. Later, her aim was that Muhammad learn to speak. When he turned five her efforts finally bore fruit and the boy began to talk. But he used words differently than other children did, and his communications with us remained fundamentally dependent on signs and gestures.

  Although the doctors made it clear to me that autism was not an inherited condition, nor did it have anything to do with the environment, the uncertainty about what had caused it persuaded Mayya and me not to have any more children.

  When I see Muhammad, I try to remember things about my own childhood. How did I feel about life when I was his age? But whate
ver floats to the surface of my consciousness is connected to the Big House, built of gypsum plaster which my father rebuilt in cement, adding on many more rooms. I can remember the exact colours of the balls I was not allowed to play with in the street with the other boys; the tiny flashing mirrors on my Indian-made coat; the statuesque figure of my uncle’s wife before they moved to Wadi Aday; the fat gold bracelets on my aunt’s wrist; the fragrance of the paper-thin bread as Zarifa pulled it from the hot oven; the horn of peppercorns in my mouth on the day Habib married her.

  I bought her for twenty coins, my father would say. At the worst of the economic crisis, when a big sack of rice imported from Calcutta or Madras cost one hundred coins, and Zarifa cost twenty.

  These were the silver Maria Theresa coins which could not be faked because the silver was so pure. My father hoarded them, keeping ten or twenty or fifty in the leather bag that he always knotted onto his belt. For a long time he had nothing but scorn for the paper riyals that had since appeared, until he was forced to bow to their superior power.

  Mayya, on the other hand, seemed completely enamoured of riyals. Her dream, she told me, was that we acquire as many riyals as we possibly could so that we could leave al-Awafi and build a nice house in Muscat. Meanwhile, her mother was demanding that I promise not to take her to the city. That irritated Mayya. She would not live forever, her whole and entire life, under the sway of her mother, in the way that I lived completely cowed by my father’s every word, she declared. When the rumours spread about the disappearance of the alluring Bedouin woman, her father’s lover, Mayya said, My mother has something to do with this. But her mother was a woman who never left the house. How could she have played a role in the woman’s disappearance?