Cinnamon

by Emily Danby

  Nazek shut the door. Hanan’s heart was pounding so hard that she felt her body were about to explode. There was that scent again; it filled the air as Nazek approached. She stood silently as Nazek removed her dress. Mistress Nazek then stripped herself and the two women stood face-to-face.

  Hanan looked out from the gap in the curtains once more, expecting to see Aliyah making her way back. She watched like a hunter awaiting his hawk’s return and tried not to think of the night she had become Nazek’s prey. But the powerful scent wafting in the air had brought with it the memory of Nazek’s touch as she had undressed her.

  Hanan pictured Aliyah naked. The girl was gone. She could no longer smell her scent in the air. The realisation made her panic. If only she’d been a little less harsh. She could have dragged her to her room, locked the door and given her a beating. She could have cried and pleaded with her to explain her betrayal. Or perhaps she should have hit Anwar instead, for meddling with her little girl?

  She could see Nazek’s expression as it had been in those moments when the lady undressed her, turning her into another woman. The face appeared in confrontation with Aliyah’s, attacking and chastising it until Hanan gave a loud snort and batted her arms in the air to make the vision disappear.

  ‘What have I done wrong?’ she croaked softly. Hanan slapped her face with both hands. She stood with her body frozen perfectly still, whilst in her mind she returned to that night at Nazek’s.

  What had happened for the scent to torture her like that? That scent of Nazek’s menthol cigarettes from all those years ago – the mint fragrance which had transformed into cinnamon. Back then, Hanan would escape with her little house-sparrow. She soaked up the fragrance as Nazek played with her body, covering her in kisses. The moment the lady’s fingers slipped between her thighs, a shudder ran through Hanan’s body. Her nostrils flared and she closed her eyes, her head resting in Nazek’s hands. Nazek was startled as she watched Hanan’s face crease in pain. How could a woman’s orgasm be so agonising? she wondered. And how could Hanan reach climax from her kisses and caresses alone?

  The scent of cinnamon took Hanan back to her maid’s slender body. Hanan – in her prime – was the ship’s captain, leading Aliyah’s fingers wherever she pleased, before she vanished under a drape of hot, foamy water.

  The streak of light faded into nothingness.

  The light which had led Hanan to discover that the girl had slipped into Anwar’s room, the light which had sent Aliyah scurrying like a lizard under her feet – that same light waned until it had vanished completely beneath the blinding rays of the rising sun.

  Aliyah put her bag down on the side of the road. She sat down on top of it, resting as she waited for the rubbish truck which always came at that time of morning and would take her into the city. She took off the gold chain from around her neck and slipped it into her pocket; it would be down to her to protect it from greedy hands. Aliyah took a deep breath in preparation for the stench of the rubbish. The scent of the mansion houses was different to the rotten odour that she had lived with for so many months, that had lingered in her nostrils until Hanan’s fingers and the scent of cinnamon tea had washed away all the scents that came before.

  The putrid odour of rubbish returned. Aliyah smiled sorrowfully as she recollected her first day of work in the skips. She had worn her best clothes: a pair of blue jeans and a pink shirt. She had combed her hair and pulled it tightly into a short plait, before setting off to her friends’ house, where a group of children was waiting to set out on the daily rounds.

  The boy in charge was waiting for them in a large warehouse, a building of endless depth which carried on up to where the tin shacks began. Although it was only a store for rubbish and glass, nevertheless, it was the best-constructed building in the neighbourhood. There were others like it; the factory owners had taken to setting up their storage spaces there, where they charged the local children with the task of running them.

  Before the groups set out to different parts of the city, they gathered around the warehouse supervisor, a boy of about fifteen nicknamed Suzuki by his friends; a name taken from a cartoon ninja hero. Suzuki’s hair was shaved into a strip along the centre of his head, in the European style, or so he liked to boast. Carrying pen and paper, he wrote down the names of the children to be split into groups and scattered across different areas of the city. When Aliyah arrived with her two constant companions the boy’s eyes shone. Three genies. There were happy days ahead, he thought, as he watched the girls hopping about like bunnies.

  The five girls and ten boys would be split into groups of three by Suzuki. The children were to meet at half past twelve in front of the large warehouse on the south side of the quarter. The warehouse was close to Aliyah’s school, which made her feel a little uneasy since she would always spot some of her friends. Aliyah was silent as she listened to the instructions. When one of the boys grabbed her by the arm the little remaining joy she felt seemed to disappear.

  ‘I’m group captain!’ the boy shouted.

  He blew his nose, shivering from the cold. Aliyah stared at the boy’s chapped face, trying to work out who he was. Her friend – the stout girl bodyguard – informed her that the boy was one of those she had bitten the day of the chocolate fiasco. Aliyah felt wary when she realised who he was and made a firm resolution not to get into any fights.

  Every day, Suzuki accompanied a different group. They would usually find him waiting for them in front of the workshop, smoking his narghile pipe. Aliyah would arrive with her stout little friend and another boy two or three years older than herself who would lead them through the neighbourhoods to the skips. Parading in front of the two girls like a cockerel, he would jubilantly issue orders to them to enter one area or another, to turn left or right. The money that the boy earnt, and the terrible smells – which never left him, even in his sleep – were of little significance in comparison to the joy he felt in the girls’ company. The boy was a friend to Aliyah and her companion and she would have liked them to stay together, if only Suzuki would refrain from reorganising the groups.

  On her first day with the cockerel boy, Aliyah rummaged through the black sacks of rubbish, scattering them across the pavement. She couldn’t find a single container, neither plastic nor glass. She rummaged through the debris, coughing and snorting until the boy came to show her how to sort the glass containers and how to extract useful items from amongst the rubbish – old shoes, hair brushes, dishes and spoons, clothes still good enough to wear. They boy jumped up into the rubbish skip and told the girls to follow. When Aliyah refused he grabbed her hand.

  ‘You’ve got to learn the art of rummaging; it’ll be your lifeline,’ he said. After jumping into the green skip, Aliyah felt as if she were in a grave. She struggled to breathe as she watched the boy’s black hands delve into the filth.

  Aliyah felt her stomach heave, remembering how she had vomited in the skip. She tried to throw up now, standing away from her bag; the taste of acid rose from her stomach into her throat, before sinking back down again. She was shivering, even though the rising sun had started to give out its warmth.

  She returned to sit on the bag. Every now and then a dust storm arose, churned up by a passing car. Each time, she jumped but the cars passed by without paying her the slightest attention. The stench of rubbish returned to her mind without the truck ever arriving. Aliyah recollected how the boy had jumped in alarm, swearing at her. He stood on the pavement listening to her coughing violently, hearing her vomit. Seeing what was happening, the other girl reached out a hand to Aliyah and attempted to pull her from the skip. It was hopeless. With her eyes bulging from their sockets, Aliyah was stuck where she was.

  Despite everything that had happened, Aliyah remembered the contentment she had known in those days. The burden of school had been lifted from her shoulders and she no longer had to deal with the children calling her the cleaner’s daughter. She recalled her mother’s faint smile at finally having somebody to hel
p her. Aliyah loved to see her mother laugh; she was so much more beautiful, so much more youthful when she laughed. Yet things were far from perfect. On more than one occasion, Aliyah returned from work crying, with her clothes in tatters as she wiped away the tears and the dirty streaks her fingers had drawn on her face. She never dared to tell her mother what had happened, but her mother understood without need for explanation once she caught sight of the blade in her daughter’s hand. Aliyah would remain stationed for hours in front of the door to the family’s room, her hands clasped tightly around the blade. She watched the alleyway, ready to leap up at any moment, to bite or to attack in whatever way her anger dictated. She was wary of going out with boys who were bigger than her, knowing what they liked to do to little girls.

  Suzuki was tall and dark as pitch, with a pug nose and hair that curled into tight rings. There was something unattractive about the boy picking his nose and leaping about pretending to be a cartoon hero. Suzuki behaved as if he were king and could do as he pleased with the girls, terrorising them with the knife he kept in the waistband of his trousers. He heard about Aliyah’s fights with the boys, who told him firmly that he would run into difficulty if he tried to treat Aliyah as he did the other girls. Suzuki put the idea to the back of his mind and the first time he accompanied her, he simply played his role as captain and ignored her completely. Aliyah was wary of Suzuki; she had noticed his piercing glances when the group lined up for him to count the containers they had each collected and receive their share of the money.

  When her turn came Aliyah opened her bag, ignoring Suzuki’s intentional stroke of the hand as he counted the containers. One time he drew close to her, pressing himself against her back as he pretended to help her lift down the rubbish sack, but Aliyah had jolted away and thrown the bag to the ground. Suzuki pretended not to notice what had happened as the other children sniggered. He waited a while after that before going out with Aliyah’s group a second time. He had decided he would break her, or so he told his friends.

  The boy in their group that day was skinny and red-faced, his hair was thinning in the middle and singed at the ends from evenings spent in the graveyard smoking with the other local boys. This was Suzuki’s right-hand man, his collaborator in touring about the city skips. The moment Suzuki chose him to accompany Aliyah and the other girl, the boys knew what was to happen.

  Once the group had moved far out of al-Raml, Suzuki signalled with a wink to his companion, who turned down an alleyway after the other girl, while he continued straight on, puffing out his chest as he moved towards a narrow corner between the wall and the skip. Terrified, Aliyah walked behind the boy, grasping at her knife. She hoped Suzuki could not sense her fear as she heard the screech of her own grinding teeth. Aliyah trembled. For a second, as Suzuki asked her to open the bags thrown behind the skip, she thought perhaps she had made a mistake. Relaxing, she bent down to open the bags and in that very moment, Suzuki accosted her from behind, gagging her.

  Suzuki threw her to the ground and tied her arms behind her back like a rope. Even though Aliyah felt as though her bones were about to break, she couldn’t scream. The boy yanked down her pants and threw his whole weight onto her. She felt as though she were being crushed beneath him. Aliyah almost choked as she felt his hot, hard member rubbing against her. Had he carried on another minute, she would have died by his hands just like her sister before her, but not a whole moment had passed before she felt the liquid trickling down her inner thigh. Suzuki stopped and pulled up his trousers, holding his knife between his teeth as he drew close to her.

  ‘One word and I’ll break you in two!’ he threatened before spitting on her. For a few moments Aliyah died. When she closed her eyes the sound of her pounding heart had disappeared. She had seized up. Her bottom half was cold and the smell of the rubbish bags on which she was lying had found its way to her nose.

  That day, Aliyah returned home and washed without letting the knife out of her hand. When her mother asked what had happened she said she’d fallen into a pile of rubbish. The following morning, Aliyah went back to work as normal and waited for the right moment. When it came, she assailed Suzuki from behind with the knife, carving deep gashes into his face which left scars that time would never erase. That day she fled the warehouse and never returned to work in the rubbish skips. She stayed at home after that, not taking a step outside again until the day her father took her to Mistress Hanan’s house in Muhajireen.

  This had all happened when she was still only ten years old.

  Aliyah recalled the old scratches on her face from Suzuki’s fingernails. When she touched where they had been, the marks had vanished, but there was no need for her to see them to remember. Aliyah felt as though she were back in the alleyways, and for a moment she forgot everything that had happened that night. She could hear Aboud screaming out to the neighbours and, in some deep, secret part of her memory, she fought to tear his image to pieces. A stifled sob blocked her throat. The blood was careering around her body and her fingers trembled as she peered behind her. She knew exactly where the sound was coming from. It was the moan of her beautiful sister, who was alive within her, who had taken possession of her body and soul.

  Aliyah stopped and looked out towards the horizon. From somewhere above, she heard the sound of a car. The silence was oppressive. She picked up her bag once more and tottered onwards on her high heels.

  Hanan thought about waking Anwar up to go looking for Aliyah.

  Daylight streamed in from behind the curtains. Picking herself up off the bathroom floor, she immediately wanted to sit back down again. After hesitating she made her way back to bed, biting her nails and muttering to herself. She might kill him, she mumbled, rather than send him looking for Aliyah.

  Hanan’s hatred for her husband gradually faded. From beneath her ribs her mother crawled out and took her position in the mirror. Multiple faces peered out at her, each carrying the same expression of anger.

  Hanan hid under the sheets. At once the memory came back to her of the first shiver she had felt take hold of her body. She was at the bathhouse. It was the first time she had tasted cinnamon tea, the first time she ever inhaled its scent.

  On that early morning, Hanan had held her mother’s hand as they walked slowly along a street paved with gleaming black stone. The road ran alongside the Old City wall and Hanan could hear the roar of the water running through the ducts nearby. Little alleys branched off into narrower quarters. There were arches of all sizes, stone walls and decaying moucharaby windows. Once they had skirted the length of the stone wall, the wide square appeared before them, filled with orange trees, rose bushes and jasmine, the scents transforming the city evenings into a perfumed dream which cloaked the ugliness. As her nose recollected the fragrance, Hanan’s memory of her first visit to the women’s bathhouse came back to her. It was the wedding day of the neighbour’s daughter.

  The bride was of medium build and full-bodied. Eight years older than Hanan, she visited their house frequently with her mother, Hajja Husniya al-Miwalidi, and always wearing a black aba. Yet that morning, the bride was sitting beside the large stone basin while two of the female attendants rubbed her back and her mother roamed the room with a censer. The incense fused with the scents of the women’s bodies, the bay soap and olive hair treatment, as the figures moved like ghosts through the thick steam. Naked, the women were like divine creations, their hair flowing down as they called out to each other coquettishly with little screams and shouts, taking furtive glances at the bride’s body to quench their curiosity. Their observations would be the basis of much discussion on future Damascus mornings: how round were her buttocks? Were her hips wide enough to bear healthy infants? Were her breasts full or flaccid? What about the feel of her skin, was it soft? Were her thighs strong and in proportion? Did she smell sweet?

  Each body has its own odour, and it was down to the groom’s mother to take the bride in her arms and capture her scent time and again. The fact that most women w
ith Damascene origins had similar looks – pale skin and curvaceous figures – meant nothing to the family members of a prospective bride, who would bring their sixteen-year-old daughter to the bathhouse, her soft white body not yet fully developed. There the girl would provide a spectacle for the onlookers and the women would pinch every part of her body, winking at her and paying compliments. Eyes would follow the girl as she moved about slowly and seductively, while the women would imagine what she would be like in the groom’s bed. That day, Hanan was amongst the girls whose role it was to accompany the bride as she bathed for the last time before her wedding night, the night of consummation.

  At the bathhouse, Hanan was alarmed by her own nakedness. She tried to copy her mother, who was busy smoking narghile with some of the other women in the busy inner courtyard. In that moment, Hanan too became captivated by the bride, following her every move as she considered the meaning of the women’s words and the glimmer in their eyes. When she stepped out of the inner chamber, the women teased Hanan, beckoning her to sit next to the bride. Anxious, Hanan looked over from the edge of the room towards her mother, who motioned to her from afar to return inside, laughing from her spot in the centre of the women, where she sat as if she were their queen. Hanan returned to sit beside the bride, who ordered a cup of cinnamon tea.

  She remembered how the women had laughed at the bride’s request, and how the bride had blushed with embarrassment, asking the women to back away a little and to pay attention, since their nails had left marks on her body. Later in life, Hanan would learn that sticks of cinnamon, like those which her mother put in the kettle when she made tea for the family, worked magic on a bride, giving her greater strength to bear the man’s desires in their marriage bed. At this pre-nuptial bathing ceremony, the bride became aware that her request was a cause for embarrassment, as she recalled the reputation of cinnamon. The fuss was not about to die down peacefully and the bride sought refuge in a corner of the bathhouse, far from the women’s stealthy glances. Barely opening her eyes, the bride asked Hanan to stay by her side. She took her by the hand and gently stroked her back, before lifting her onto her lap. The girl laughed, telling Hanan that she was a mischievous little thing. She spoke to her sweetly about the trips their families had taken together to Ghouta and about the devilish tricks of the boys hiding behind the apricot trees. Then she released her, letting her slip into the stone tub, where she began massaging her body with a strange, perfumed mud.