by Emily Danby
When the cup of tea arrived, the two girls laughed and the scent of cinnamon filled the air. From her spot below, Hanan peered at the large woman who had brought the tea. She couldn’t make out her head; all she saw was a great lump of flesh dangling over her. When the woman turned around, her buttocks shook. The little girl stared at her greedily as the bride laughed out loud.
‘Mount Qasyoun’s moving,’ whispered the bride in the little girl’s ear. Hanan giggled shyly as the bride pulled her closer, covering her back with mud as she shouted for a second cup of tea.
‘Delicious with the steam. Tea is nothing without cinnamon,’ she whispered, her eyes fixed on Hanan, who had started to shiver.
The bride sipped her tea slowly, taking in the scent – the cinnamon fragrance blended with the steam and hot water, the laurel oil and the mud covering her body. Hanan wanted to go to sleep; she felt as though everything was calling her to take a little nap amongst the brouhaha. When the bride realised that the neighbour’s daughter had started to nod off she slipped down to the side of the stone tub and started to splash the girl’s body with the warm water, rubbing her thighs. The glimmer in Hanan’s eyes grew stronger and she clung to the bride, wrapping her arms around her, startled by the abrupt awakening. Hanan began to sense a white shadow creeping into view. The bride pulled Hanan’s trembling hand away from her waist and placed it over her right breast. A large pink nipple lay between the little fingers. Hanan’s fingers remained frozen in place. She wanted to scream, not understanding anything that was happening. She must be dreaming, she thought, until the bride’s moans told her she was awake. The head of the moving flesh mountain was peering down above her. The matron put the warm cup of tea next to the basin and left. The bride picked it up and brought it to Hanan’s trembling lips, pulling the girl swiftly towards her. As she did so, Hanan caught a glimpse of the bride’s deepest spot – the part that women are supposed to keep hidden, to guard more closely than their own life. As her mother would often say:
‘A girl holds her life in one hand, and this in the other...’
Could she recall what her mother used to say about how that triangular space where her legs met her body was both a blessing and a curse? It could be the rope used to hang her or the lasso she used to capture a man. The triangle nestling between the bride’s legs seemed perfectly shaped, toy-like. Hanan closed her eyes but the bride pulled her towards her, to sit in her lap. All of a sudden, the bride stopped and scooped Hanan up briskly. Hanan gave a faint yelp, feeling fire burning in her veins and a stinging pain where the bride was pressing. The bride grabbed her by her buttocks, pulling her thighs apart as she moved her about violently. A suppressed moan issued from the bride’s lips and in that instant Hanan felt a tremor take over her body. The potent scent rising from the warm cup stole her away from the world and Hanan fell onto the stone floor unconscious.
When she woke up, Hanan was unsure what had happened. The bride was occupied with plucking the remaining fine hairs from her stomach and the women had gone to rub their bodies with strange oils and mud. Everything had returned to how it had been before, except that Hanan was wrapped up in towels, trembling with fear as she lay stretched out on the stone bench beside her mother, who was peering at her worriedly as she continued to exhale smoke. The women spattered Hanan’s body with a vile, pungent perfume which made her cough. Hanan searched the air for that newly discovered scent. Later she would come to know it as her first scent and her last.
That evening, Hanan walked beside the bride in an embroidered white skirt. She felt as though what had happened in the bathhouse was pulling her irrationally towards the bride, but Hanan’s attempts to attract her attention were futile and her distress brought her to tears.
Hanan tried to recall the morning she had spent with that mysterious creation Aliyah. The scent of bitter orange, of roses and jasmine, which had once cloaked all the ugly things, no longer filled the air but wafted from her memory. Hanan grabbed Aliyah’s hand on the way to the women’s bathhouse and it was as though time had stood still. Other than the alterations to the shop fronts and the trading stalls dotted along the pavements, the alleyways were just as they had been then, but now the river had run dry and the city wall of Damascus with its seven doors seemed different.
Aliyah walked on without letting go of Hanan’s fingers. She unclenched her fist to reveal a pitch-black palm with so many creases it looked like the hand of a fifty-year-old. Hanan took out a handkerchief and placed it in the girl’s hand, then carried on walking until she reached the bathhouse – that same place where she had once sat beneath the domed roof. This time, Hanan noticed things that had escaped her attention as a nine-year-old: the walls were decorated with blue drawings, enamel roses and tree branches; in the centre of the room was a small pool, inlayed with marble and coloured mother-of-pearl, with a great water fountain springing up in the middle. On the sides of the pool were rows of potted plants – carnations, gillyflowers and snapdragons. Raised stone benches ran along the sides of the walls, covered with wide cushions and scattered with pillows, like a royal chamber. Narghile pipes made of blue Damascene glass were placed along the platforms, surrounded by stones on which the women could sit to smoke after bathing, their torsos wrapped in towels.
The woman who ran the bathhouse sat in the centre of the room behind a wide table, where she monitored what was happening, shouting orders and welcoming her customers as the women led their girls in for the others to examine, hoping to find them a husband once the women started their analysis of the girls during the bathing session.
The girls lined up with their mothers and sisters, choosing a stone basin which they shared between two, each massaging the other and taking turns to cover their partner’s body with a soft clay that strengthened the skin. In the corner of the room, the masseuses waited to rub the women’s backs with a coarse, black mitt which would remove the dirt and open the pores of their skin.
Everybody was naked. Hanan had discovered that women were all more beautiful without their clothes than they were in their black jilbabs. Often, the masseuses would speak foully as they exfoliated the women’s bodies. Some of the women enjoyed listening silently to the masseuses’ bawdy conversations among the cloud of steam and the clamour of voices. From the warm basin, Hanan observed what was happening around her. It was as if she were dreaming, her hand leading Aliyah’s fingers left and right, over her nipples, and down below her stomach.
That scent – the one she had locked away in her heart for decades – had returned with the little servant girl, who had overturned her authority and thrown her into torment.
Hanan observed her own image in the mirror, putting a hand to her mouth just as Aliyah used to do. She ran down to the bedroom on the ground floor and quietly pushed open the door. Her husband was there in his pyjamas, his death-like scent filling the air. Hanan crept towards him on the tips of her toes. As she stared into his face, she felt a fading hatred. Then she left the room, her heart pounding like a drum.
‘She betrayed me with a decrepit crocodile.’
Hanan spoke the words clearly, hearing the sound of her own voice as she watched her tears. Now, for the first time in her life, she had discovered the taste of betrayal.
Aliyah’s steps grew heavier as she continued along the wide road. Even though the sun had risen, she still hadn’t spotted a single person; nobody to make her feel safe. The place was empty but for the barking of dogs from behind the villa walls and the anguished howls of other frightened strays.
Tiredness had worn her down and the bag had started to feel even heavier now. Every few minutes she looked behind her, catching a glimpse of the few remaining shadows; nothing but emptiness. She combatted her fear with the taste of victory, contemplating how bitterness had assailed her mistress like a storm.
Aliyah felt the prick of needles slowly piercing her skin, from her knees to the tips of her fingers. She turned towards the nearest villa, which was surrounded by tall, dark-green cypress trees
. Choosing a spot clear of fresh grass, she threw down her bag, collapsed beneath the tree and took off her heels, flinging them away in disgust. She stretched out her legs and leant her head back, hitting it against a tree root. Aliyah winced and closed her eyes. Her body was like a sticky mass suspended in the air, she thought. Her eyes burned and her fingers were fading away. She felt her heart leave her chest and slip from her body through her fingers.
Aliyah still couldn’t quite believe that the mistress had sent her away. For a long time, she had been convinced that the mistress’s love for her was so strong that she couldn’t possibly live without her. She was certain that the tears she had seen in her eyes were genuine, that her mistress was still sensitive to her kisses, to the touch of her fingers as they caressed her or bathed her body, as they washed her hair or lingered between her thighs, massaging her with oil and dousing her with perfume. She would brush her mistress’s hair, kissing her eyes as she held her in her arms. The nights when she left her mistress’s room limping from the pain in her hips, her face swollen where she’d been bitten, were over. Aliyah found it hard to swallow. She was pleased with what she had done to her mistress; a sense of delight would come over her whenever she sensed her mistress’s desire for her. She had imagined the feeling would last forever.
When she first began to work in her mistress’s service Aliyah was suspicious of the woman, who would come home late at night and scuttle about at the ends of the house as though she were lost, clattering and clanging until morning came. She would wake up before sunrise and sit sipping her coffee and chattering on the telephone, complaining about her family, cursing her crocodile husband and ruing the day she had first set eyes on him. Yet when she had guests, Hanan was a woman of calm and reserve.
Aliyah would stalk Hanan about the house curiously, snooping on her from behind the curtains or through the keyhole. She would leap like a monkey from one object to another, disappearing behind the furniture whenever Hanan spotted her. She dreaded having to stay with the cook in one place. Instead, Aliyah would take her food, wrap it in a special handkerchief and eat her dinner while sitting on the floor beside the bed. She was too shy to eat in the presence of others.
Day after day, Aliyah waited tirelessly for her father to arrive, or her mother. Head in hands, she sat on the stone steps, her sight fixed on the iron gate. She would stay there as still as a block of dry wood, until Hanan called for her. Aliyah stared at a spot in space, which became a great stage before her eyes. Her mother moved across it like a doll, calling her, chastising her, shouting. Aliyah’s face swelled with muted anger. In a distant, shadowy corner, she could make out a small bed. From it there came a sobbing sound and she could just distinguish the shape of somebody’s backside in motion above. She turned away but the sobbing continued. Even when she closed her eyes and put her fingers in her ears, she could still hear the sound ringing inside her head. With the days that passed, she took to watching the gate from the window. Repeatedly throughout the day, she would come to the window, draw back the curtains and peer out attentively.
‘What are you standing in front of the window for?’ Hanan would ask. With a shake of the head, Aliyah quickly retreated.
Aliyah paid little attention to what went on around her. She floated along as though sleep-walking, her toes barely touching the ground. If she ever made a sound, while washing the dishes or polishing the crystal and silverware, she would feel fear seize hold of her and sink into a depression for the rest of the day. Aliyah had taken her own existence and her own self-confidence from where she had found it: within Hanan’s body. Before that, she was nothing. After all, wasn’t she now capable of making such a rich, beautiful woman happy!
One evening the mistress requested a cup of cinnamon tea. When Aliyah took it to her she found her in the bathtub. The mistress ordered Aliyah to take off her clothes and come closer to help. Then she pulled her into the water, biting her neck until the salty taste touched her tongue. Aliyah was stunned – like a mouse suddenly confronted by a cat – as the mistress continued to kiss her. She was frozen to the spot. The mistress started to kiss the girl’s fingers, then she led them wandering to the secret places of her body. When she was completely gratified she whispered a stern order to Aliyah:
‘Now leave.’
Only at that moment were her animal instincts roused and Aliyah pounced at her fiercely. Covering her mouth with her hand to stop her screaming, she was victorious in dragging her mistress to the bed. Yet Aliyah’s victory ran much deeper than this; she had usurped Hanan, taken her throne – that seat of power founded in violent love or hatred; a vagabond loathing which heeded to nothing.
Aliyah took great delight in the power of her hatred, not suspecting for a moment that Hanan would turn her out onto the streets to be tortured by the hungry flies that bit away at her legs and face. She remembered the day her father had led her through the alleyways and cast her into that house, the House of Colours as she liked to call it. Aliyah resented her mother for sending her all alone to work for the mistress, for not asking after her once in over ten years and, as the days passed, the memories of her mother became tinged with anger and spite. She tried to picture her in the most repulsive way imaginable, but every time only the most beautiful image returned: her mother’s faint smile.
Aliyah muttered hoarsely to herself until her voice dissipated in the air. Taking a deep breath, she sensed that her throat was dry. Her gaze turned to the patch of green beneath the tree, settled among the tiny pine needles. She nibbled at her lips, then bit them hard, until she could taste salt.
The silence persisted. Aliyah opened her eyes as wide as they would go. Dazed and obscured, they saw nothing but a roof of green, permeated by beams of violet light. In peaceful surrender, she closed them and leant her head on the bag, her body slipping towards the ground. Sitting beneath the tree, Aliyah surrendered to a sudden sleep. In her dream she vanished behind high walls of green metal. Black bags fell on her head like drops of rain and she shielded her face with her hands. The bags hailed down so hard that she couldn’t run away, as the metal walls grew narrower, crushing her between them. Then, rising up from the ground came what seemed at first to be another wall. No, it wasn’t a wall; it was a skip. Aliyah screamed at the sight but heard no sound from her voice. She saw two eyes peering out from the shadows, she ran towards them. When she got there the mistress was standing above the two eyes. She fled but Hanan pursued, flying above her head, screeching and howling like the cats of al-Raml. She hid beneath the black sacks, shielding her face from the rotten smells with her hands. Then the bags turned to a sea of rubbish and she began to drown.
Aliyah opened her eyes and woke up from the nightmare. Breathing the air, she exhaled with a deep sigh. Hearing a sobbing sound coming down from the sky above she looked up to see her sister’s eyes staring out from the empty space, just as they had that evening.
It wasn’t Aboud’s face that had caught her attention that evening when she had returned from school to discover him on top of her crippled sister; it was her sister’s eyes. That vacant look was just like her mother’s as she lay groaning beneath her father’s weight. Why do a woman’s eyes turn to empty hollows when she lies beneath a man?
Despite the darkness, Aliyah could see that her mother was attempting to escape with her eyes, to get far away from her husband’s face, as if she were calling for help. Once he had clambered off her mother and she heard the water begin to splutter in the bathroom where her mother was washing, Aliyah always knew that it was time to sleep.
‘That’s how you make babies,’ her little brother said. Aliyah slapped his mouth to keep him quiet, afraid that their father might catch them out and punish them; he would flay their hides with his leather belt, followed by confinement to the bathroom, beside the black pit. That was his most lenient way to admonish them. One night, he had caught her brother spying on him. He dragged him from under the woollen covers where he lay shivering, his teeth chattering with cold and fear. Paying
no attention even to the wind that howled between the gaps in the tin sheets that protected the roof, he stripped the boy bare, threw him out into the darkness and locked the door.
At the sound of her brother weeping, Aliyah put her fingers in her ears and closed her eyes beneath the covers. As the crying grew louder, her mother stayed silent, her siblings too, even though they hadn’t closed their eyes for a moment. Aliyah couldn’t bear the sound any longer. She jumped out of bed, picked up her brother’s clothes, which were scattered over the floor, and went out to find him. In the dim light she could barely make out his dark body, which had turned blue. As she attempted to breathe some warmth into his hands her head gave a sudden, violent shake. Barely conscious of what had happened, Aliyah saw stars in her eyes as her father’s giant body swooped down to grab hold of her and her brother. He stripped them both bare, before he swung them in his grasp like a pair of mice, slinging them into the bathroom. There, fluorescent red eyes emanated from the deep, black pit. For a few minutes Aliyah fell unconscious, her head hitting the side of the hollow. That pit was where the devils and hyenas came from to steal children, her mother had told her. The creatures kept children trapped in human waste, turning them into tiny insects. As she searched the darkness for her brother, Aliyah heard her mother sobbing, muttering incomprehensibly and smelt the smoke of her father’s cigarettes.
