Celestial Bodies

by Johka Alharthi

  Even when he was very little, Marwan remembers, he had heard his mother tell the story of the dream she’d had when she was pregnant with him, and Judge Yusuf’s interpretation. You will have a son, he said, who will be righteous and good. Pure, and an important man. She wanted to name him Muhammad or Ahmad, but the baby already had brothers with these names. So she named him Marwan, seeking a good omen from the name of her deceased brother who had raised her. She brought the boy up on the soundness of her dream, which she believed in fiercely, and that’s why she gave him a second moniker, ‘the Pure’, which everyone else began to use, too. She worked hard to implant a love of knowledge and devotion to the Faith in him from his early days, and she pushed him toward the Shaykh at the mosque, wanting Marwan to shadow him. That’s the way he grew up, his heart attached to the mosque.

  Marwan the Pure committed to heart the whole of the Noble Hadith. Surely this alone was proof that he was amongst the elect, those whom God would shade and protect on the Day when there is no shade to be had but His. Marwan grew up obeying God to the letter. Because his heart was so attached to the mosque he scorned the games of other boys and their interest in trivial things. He found nothing to admire about the time people spent in wasteful pleasures. He had no use for chitchat or for anything else that stole moments from the quiet contemplation of God’s creation. He buried himself in this pure little world that encased him. When his parents moved to Wadi Aday, leaving al-Awafi, they chose a house near the mosque so that their children would be raised on the threshold of the mosque there, and particularly so that, in the new environment, Marwan the Pure would not find himself cut off from his life of devotions.

  He was number four, following Hamad, Muhammad and Qasim. After him came Hilal and Asim. But he himself recognised early that he was made of a different clay, and he was acutely aware of the pride his parents took in him. He knew how they talked about him. He stayed apart, refusing to play with his brothers or even exchange much conversation with them. These silly matters were not worthy of him, whose specialness had been foretold in the dream, who was vowed and destined to works of greatness.

  Marwan the Pure was thirteen when he snuck in the night to his parents’ room and stole all the money he found in his father’s wallet. The next day he beat himself sore with his father’s cane and vowed to fast for two weeks. Three months later he snuck into his big brothers’ room and stole the money in Qasim’s wallet.

  By the time Marwan had completed his sixteenth year, he had fasted a total of eight months and fourteen days as penance for his thefts. The neighbours swore that light poured from his face and that his eyes, fasting from the fleeting pleasures of this world, gave off the everlasting grace of the hereafter. The girls were crazy in love with his slow, leisured, gentle gait, the pace of a person who has nothing to fear. They adored his grave eyes that never met the gaze of any girl. No one saw the traces of the self-inflicted blows to his back, punishment for all he had stolen, which by now consisted not only of money but also included watches and articles of clothing, even his mother’s earrings and shoes. More often, now, he dressed only in white, and he rarely spoke. And when his face went pale from so much fasting, no one remained in doubt that he was some kind of saint, one of the pious, righteous Friends of God.

  Yes, by the time Marwan reached the end of his sixteenth year, he had fasted a total of eight months and fourteen days but he knew very well that he would not stop stealing, just as he was perfectly aware that he had no need of any of the things he stole. He hadn’t come to terms with the shock his own behaviour gave to his pure nature. What could he think? He didn’t believe this creature was really him, the boy who spent so much time in devotions at the mosque, who crept into rooms at night and stole worthless objects. It ripped him apart; he could almost hear the sounds of his body splitting and shredding. Everything got confused, his mother’s dream and his own grand sense of himself, trivial games and pleasures. And he stole, he whom God Himself was to screen with the formidable shade of His heavenly throne. He stole. The Pure One who was ever watchful to keep himself clean, who barely raised his eyes from the ground. He stole. The one who had been vowed to God, the one of whom glad tidings had come. He stole. His pure hands reached to steal that which he did not even need and would certainly never use.

  Marwan the Pure did not reveal his secret. He scorned himself to the measure that others esteemed his worth. He despised others to the measure that he valued himself. He deafened his ears to the sound of the tearing that echoed so loudly inside him but that no one else could hear. The closed circle of his life tightened around him. He dedicated himself to fasting and isolation and worship as his heart fractured in agonizing pain.

  Marwan did not reveal his secret to anyone. He did not dare, in his aloneness and apartness, to extend his hands to his Lord, in hopes that He might show him the way. For Marwan was certain that he knew the right path: this was the only one. He was the Pure One and he must remain thus, as people had come to know him, as his mother had willed him to be, as he himself had been convinced of. This thieving hand of his – he would amputate it if it returned to its ways.

  After his father died and his mother came out of her mourning period, he snuck into her room one night and stole her new perfume, his father’s silver dagger, and a paltry sum of money he found on the table. Moments before dawn he cut the veins in his thieving hand with the sharp dagger blade. Ever pure, ever alone, Marwan bled to death.

  Sulayman

  In the 1890s a major slump in the Omani date trade drove a young merchant by the name of Hilal to seek a new source of profit that would let him benefit from all the mercantile experience he’d already accumulated. Resourceful Hilal realised quickly that the arms trade was the smart alternative. Sultan Faisal’s 1891 proclamation instructed Omanis to refrain from importing weapons into Jawadir Port, but Merchant Hilal and his commerce-savvy friends became increasingly dependent on weapons as a sure source of profit, especially since they could channel guns to the Afghans who seemed to need a constant supply for their raids and their feuds. Loads of smuggled weapons came in from Persian merchants on the coast, to be stored in clandestine warehouses until they could be sold to men coming from the tribes of Baluchistan and Afghanistan. Some merchants succeeded in smuggling weapons all the way to India and Zanzibar, but Merchant Hilal preferred dealing with the Afghans and Persians, since he believed that the port of Jawadir was a safer bet than any of the other possibilities. But Hilal found his commerce badly reversed after taxes were raised on weapons imports. Never mind, though – the trade revived with the new century, and Hilal joined forces with a group of Indian merchants who were importing guns directly from Europe. They were led by a man called Kemji Ram Das. On the 22nd of January 1908, when the S.S. Jayuladala arrived in the port of Muscat coming from Europe, Merchant Hilal’s share was fifty full chests of ammunition. He’d already managed to sell popcorn rifles in Jawadir port for seventy dollars each and that made him a rich man very quickly. Now he sought marriage into a shaykhly family in al-Awafi. His son and heir, Sulayman, was born after more than ten years of marriage.

  Nevertheless, his son’s arrival must be a good omen, thought Merchant Hilal. A good start to founding a dynasty. Siblings would surely arrive. But every boy born to Hilal after Sulayman was kidnapped by death while still a nursing baby. People whispered that Sulayman was afflicted with qashi’a, and the disease must be fatal to his little brothers. His father took him to a specialist who sat the little boy in front of him and peered into his skull to find the errant vein in his head that – if it flared and moved too far – would mean the death of every boy born after him. When the doctor pinpointed the location of the vein, he shouted the news at the top of his voice. He heated a metal skewer over a flame and seared Sulayman’s head where he believed the vein – or the qashi’a – to be, until it died completely, never making another appearance that would kill his male siblings. So Merchant Hilal had three children who lived: Sulayman and his very last
son Ishaq.

  There was also a girl, scrawny and pale, who spent her entire childhood as a recluse, mind and body shut away, until she was married off to a maternal cousin, and later on, to that cousin’s brother. Both cousins divorced her in turn. Zarifa hated her.

  Ishaq resembled his mother in her hesitant bearing and introversion. It was Sulayman who inherited everything: his father’s mercantile savvy, quick mind, tall and imposing figure, grave dignity, and the large house built of plaster – as well as his nervous disposition and the title of Merchant. But Sulayman did not trade in weapons. To all appearances, dates were what occupied his work days, although his real profits were built on the slave trade.

  Masouda, still here

  In her shut-away room that had once been a threshing floor, Masouda realised that her daughter Shanna had gone away with her husband, Sanjar. She knew she would not see her daughter again, and that now, her food and hygiene were hostage to the charity of the neighbour women.

  Day by day her voice grew fainter as she repeated, I am here . . . over here. I am Masouda. Her frame was more bent than ever. In odd moments neighbours asked themselves if Masouda would be buried in her misshapen posture or whether, after death, her spine would regain its straightness.

  Memories of the distant past, as cloudy as they were, began to fill Masouda’s head as the days she was living through and those just before grew ever more absent. She began to see moments in time that, years ago, she had not believed her head would ever be capable of facing.

  She saw a thick dark dawn and herself going to gather wood. She heard a rustling in the room of Merchant Sulayman. She could not control her natural curiosity. She pressed herself to the wall and peered into the back window.

  He and his wife had been sleeping in separate rooms since the birth of his son Abdallah three weeks before, so he was alone when his sister rapped on the door and immediately, without hearing a response, opened it and came in. He turned in his bed. Everything all right? he asked, startled.

  She stared at him. Your wife, she said.

  He got out of bed, took his dishdasha from the iron hook and struggled into it. He faced his sister. What about my wife? What’s wrong? You’re the one who said to me, Get married, stop doing your business with the slave women. So I married this woman. Then you carped at me, Why haven’t you had a baby yet? And she’s had this boy. What do you want now?

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed. She stood over him. Her voice, always low, was quiet now, but he heard her. I saw her, she said. Her and Saleem, Shaykh Said’s slave. At the basil bush.

  Merchant Sulayman began to shiver. She finished what she had to say without any change in the tone of her voice: Never mind, leave it all to me. And she went out.

  That morning, Merchant Sulayman had to travel to Salalah for some business. When he returned three months later, his wife had died, leaving tiny Abdallah in the care of his paternal aunt. Saleem, Shaykh Said’s slave, had vanished.

  Masouda thought she had obliterated this murky dawn scene from her mind.

  Abdallah

  I am not sitting in this seat suspended between heaven and earth waiting to arrive in Frankfurt any moment now. I am in Zarifa’s lap in the east courtyard of the Big House, my eyes open to the full moon high in the sky, Zarifa is stroking my hair and telling me a story.

  Every day when Mama Goat left the house, she warned her oldest children, Zayd and Rabab, saying, If anyone knocks, do not open the door. It could be Mr Wolf and he would eat you up. If it’s me at the door, I will say, Yoo Rabab, yoo Zayd, open the door! On your mama’s back there’s grass to eat, and good good milk in each teat! When you hear me say that, you can open the door. So the children obeyed her. But one day Mr Wolf heard Mama Goat reminding her children what to do. After she’d gone, he began rapping on the door, and saying, Yoo Rabab, yoo Zayd, open the door! On your mama’s back there’s grass to eat, and good good milk in each teat! He’d changed his voice and he fooled the children. They opened the door and Mr Wolf ate them up.

  When Mama Goat came home she began knocking at the door. She knocked and knocked, but in vain, as she repeated her words. Yoo Rabab, yoo Zayd . . . When she’d gotten no answer she butted the door open with her horns and went inside. But she didn’t find Zayd or Rabab.

  Mama Goat went outside at a run to search for her little ones. She passed a spider, she passed a lamb. She asked everyone she passed, Did you see my children? But they all said, No, they hadn’t seen them. Until she passed a dove. The wolf came by here, said the dove. And his stomach was very big. He must have eaten your children. Quick, go after him, you will find him asleep under the rocks. First, Mama Goat hurried to the blacksmith. She asked him to sharpen her horns until they were knife blades. She found the wolf asleep. She drove her horns into him and sliced his tummy wide open. Her children came out, and she said, Come, come! And Mama and babies all went home.

  London

  The minute she puts down the phone, London will jump out of bed, scattering her teddy bears – a rose-coloured streak here and a red one there. Picking up her phone again, she will call her friend Hanan. She has to tell her everything Ahmad has said, as she paces round and round her room.

  Bismillahi al-rahman al-rahim, girl! Do you know what time it is?

  Listen, Hanan, the new poem he’s going to recite in the Oman Poetry Festival, which is coming up – it is dedicated to me!

  So what? Hanan replies in English.

  So what? Don’t you see? I am his inspiration, his angel, his muse! I’m the beautiful demon of his poetry, as the Arab poets all used to say.

  Well, congratulations to you, my dear. Can I go back to sleep now, seeing as I don’t really understand poetry at all, and I only believe in well-tested scientific analyses that give guaranteed results?

  On the day they concluded their betrothal vows and the marriage contract was signed, the minute they said goodbye and he left her father’s home, it was almost time for the dawn prayers. She called her friend.

  Hanan! I am the most blissful girl in the whole wide world!

  A thousand congratulations, love, you certainly deserve it. So is your little dove-love time together done?

  He’s just left.

  Did he kiss you?

  No, Hanan! He told me our marriage is a victory over the disgusting hidebound class structure of society, and a crowning of true love.

  She heard a laugh. You mean, he gave you a lecture instead of making the most of his opportunity? I mean, this was the contract, right? Couldn’t he at least kiss you?

  Hanaaan, stop it.

  Hanan’s frankness no longer smarted; London was too used to it. Anyway, Hanan’s position on all of this had been clear from the start. Ahmad? You mean, the guy who calls himself a poet? Who is with someone new every day? Even his poetry is too heavy for anyone to bear. Why would you want him? Even his appearance . . . like, he doesn’t even know what to do, sometimes he lets his beard go and other times he shaves and either way he looks wrong. One day you see him in a dishdasha, the next in jeans. Monday his hair is long and Tuesday his skull is shaved. He’ll be acting like the most religious of the religious, and then the next time you see him, he’s cocking around like he’s the latest thing.

  Ahmad had put a lot of effort into securing London. You are the girl of my dreams, he would say. He pursued her with emails and phone calls and real letters on paper, with poems and songs and photos. She was hooked.

  When her mother discovered the business, she locked London up in her room and smashed her phone. The more London resisted, the more stubborn her mother became, as if she wanted to see how far her daughter would go. How hard would she hold onto this dream of hers? Or it was like Mayya was punishing herself, and not her daughter at all, not the woman in love.

  London’s father was bewildered and torn. When he finally cracked the whip, decreeing she could have this marriage, her mother simply withdrew.

  On the day the contract was signed, after all of the guests h
ad gone, Ahmad kissed her hands. Do you know what it is about you that attracted me, London? That you’re a girl who isn’t easy. And when you did decide to love me back, you loved sincerely, and you defended your love in the face of all this backwardness and ugliness that surrounds us on every side.

  Ever since she had met him she had heard him repeat these two words. Backwardness. Ugliness. Sometimes he added ‘abhorrent classism’. When she saw him laughing with the woman who headed the students’ literary collective, as he clasped both of her hands, he did show a bit of embarrassment. They went out to her car. He defended himself but it was more like an attack, even though she hadn’t started it. Listen to me, London. Yes, you are my fiancée. My beloved. But don’t start hemming me in with your jealousy and egotism and possessiveness and reaction, okay? This selfishness is ugly, and jealousy is backward, and possessiveness is one of the primitive practices from the times of hateful classism. I am a poet. A man of letters. My soul is free, completely free, like a dove in the sky. Ah, yes, my words remind me of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem – the dove flies, the dove lands . . . Anything that ties me down throttles me. Stifles my creativity. Kills my rush of poetic language. I want a woman who understands me. A woman who knows perfectly well that I am the wind and she is the tree. She sends her roots into the ground, I circle overhead in the sky.

  London didn’t say anything, not then. She tugged her lab coat tightly around her, ate the falafel sandwich he had bought her from Café Nasir, and realised that he’d given her a clear view of his chin, which she didn’t usually see like this because he didn’t usually carry his face tipped so high. This time, trying to stare him in the eye all she could see was his chin, bobbing up and down with his words and the sandwich he was eating.

  Some weeks later she discovered a photograph of the president of the literary collective in his wallet. She was so angry that she tore it to shreds immediately. Ahmad shouted at her. You silly woman, this photo is just some of the material for the booklet we’re doing for the poetry event. What a stupid thing to do. Backward, and ugly!