by Nomi Eve
After the attack, Asaf and my uncle had made their way through the Naquum Mountains. They came to us seeking refuge. My uncle was weak and in need of a place to rest and heal. Their cart was laden with their entire store of worldly goods, which, thanks to the thieves, had been reduced considerably. But among my uncle’s meager possessions remained a true prize, a small deerskin Torah that he had somehow acquired from an Iraqi cedar-essence merchant. The Torah was in tatters, and should have been buried long ago. But Uncle Zecharia was the sort of man who saw wholeness where others saw deficiency, and was in the habit of reading the weekly portion from this sad little Torah, even though it would not have passed holy muster. The Torah had been buried under rags in the cart in order to protect it from the elements and criminal eyes. Now it was brought into my father’s house and stored in a place of honor: the big wooden chest on the top floor of the house, in the men’s salon. The chest had been part of my mother’s dowry, and was decorated with bone and iron inlay. It was the only chest in the house that had a lock on it. It is hard to say what flustered my mother more, having to host her wounded brother-in-law or the deerskin Torah, for she venerated holy books, and saw it as a grave and fraught responsibility to be given charge of such a treasure, albeit a pasul one, fouled by its own poor condition.
But the deerskin Torah was not the center of attention, and only my mother paid it much heed. Uncle Zecharia was garrulous that first night. He explained how even before the attack he had been growing tired of his itinerant life, and had been contemplating coming to Qaraah. Asaf, like me, was his father’s youngest child, the child of his mother’s old age. Three older children in the family were all married and settled in homes along his father’s route—a daughter in Bombay, a son in Jerusalem, another son in Egypt, in a suburb of Alexandria. Asaf’s mother had died giving birth to him, and he had spent his babyhood in the saddle in front of his father.
* * *
My sister-in-law Masudah had a pleasant heart-shaped face and big round cheeks that were always red like apples. Masudah had four living children and had buried another four. In Masudah’s house, I was put on a pallet with her daughter, two-year-old curly-headed Remelia. Masudah kissed me when tucking me into bed, and then laughed and said, “By morning you will be engaged, little one.”
I sat up, wide-eyed, “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you see? Your mother sunk her claws into that boy the moment he walked into the house. I wouldn’t be surprised if you are already betrothed; after all, your uncle doesn’t know about the bad luck you bring.” My face must have fallen. “Silly girl”—Masudah kissed my nose—“your mother is wise enough to act quickly. She knows she must put forth a proposal before your uncle recovers and hears what they say on the streets of Qaraah.”
Little Remelia shoved her pudgy hand into mine and fell asleep curled against me. I was awake for a long time. In my other hand, I held the amulet Asaf had given me. I wondered again which of Elohim’s many names or which angel’s name was written on the parchment. I wondered if he had made the amulet himself, or if it had been given to him. And if it had been given to him, by whom? When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed that he had been on the escarpment with me, and that together we found the amulet peeking out of the sand.
Masudah was right. My mother put forth a proposal that very night. First, she convinced my uncle that he was still dying, even though his arm was almost completely healed. She paid the tea seller to pretend he was a doctor and to come and pronounce my uncle’s wound so infected as to lead to sure putrefaction. The tea seller was a hunched-over little man who could tell the weight of tea leaves to the half gram without a scale. He examined Uncle Zecharia’s arm and then told him that he had only days to live. He told my uncle that though the flesh had healed over, the bone was dead inside the arm. He pressed so hard on the red angry scar that my uncle screamed and cursed and even whimpered. When the tea seller was gone, my mother came to Uncle Zecharia’s side and delicately broached the matter of an engagement. Uncle Zecharia was a cautious man, and was in his right mind enough to lift up his head and say, “Sister-in-law, don’t talk marriage to a dying man.”
“Well, if you are dying, all the more reason to protect the boy from the Imam.”
Uncle Zecharia, not having been back north in over a decade, did not know about the severity or heartlessness with which the Orphans Decree was enforced. My mother explained everything to Uncle Zecharia, though she neglected to tell him that I had an unfortunate habit of losing grooms. No, my mother judiciously kept this information to herself.
Uncle Zecharia nursed his wounded arm, and listened to her impassioned oratory. And then there was the banging on the door.
“Oh, what is that? Is someone there?” My mother ran to the door and made a great show of speaking to someone outside. Her voice rose in angry tones and in the end she slammed the door and walked back inside with a huff.
Masudah later explained, “Your mother very convincingly pretended that it was the Confiscator himself, come to collect the boy before your uncle was even dead in his grave. But really, it was the lampmaker’s wife, speaking in a gruff voice and banging on the door with her clenched fists. With that, your Uncle Zecharia almost begged your mother to fetch the scribe that very night to write up the engagement contract. By the time you woke the next morning, you were already a bride, and Asaf was your groom. They made a solemn bargain over a cup of arak and signed the contract in a week’s time.”
* * *
It didn’t take long for Uncle Zecharia to realize that he’d been tricked. When he went out to the market, our neighbors greeted him with downcast eyes and words of comfort. He quickly realized that he had unwittingly engaged his precious son to a girl who had the strange power of killing her grooms. He bellowed into our house, demanding that the engagement be broken. But my mother stood her ground and swore that if he dared break the engagement, she would make an amulet that would shrivel his manhood and make worms come out of his ears. I don’t know whether my Uncle Zecharia was superstitious, or whether he believed my mother could harm him if he tore up our engagement contract, but he did back down—though not before calling me to his side and inspecting me, or at least, that is what Masudah called it, an inspection, though it didn’t feel like what a farmer does to an ewe, or like what a woman at market does as she sniffs the navels of melons for sweetness. He was sitting on the jasmine-scented pillows in front of the hearth. He patted the spot next to him. I remember feeling unsure of what to do. I never sat with the men, my uncle was a stranger to me, and I rarely even ascended to this floor of the house, where the men reigned supreme, chewing khat and smoking their hookahs. My mother was in the doorway, chaperoning this interview. I stood in front of him for a moment, rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet. I think I would have opened my mouth and bleated like a lamb had he asked me to. But all he did was look at me. His gaze touched my heart and filled me with warmth. Until that moment I hadn’t known that grown-ups could feel the same way that I did. There was wonder and hope and fear in his eyes, yet there was love in them too, and then finally, a gleam of recognition, as if we already knew each other, as if we were good friends.
* * *
Sana’a was within kissing distance of the southern lands of the Sauds. It sat on the narrowest point of a mountain plateau, almost eight thousand miles above sea level at the joining hands of two major ancient trade routes, one of them linking the fertile upland plains, the other Marib and the Red Sea. Our town, Qaraah, was ten miles south of Sana’a, high up on the peak of a lesser mountain. Behind our town was a gently sloping plateau formed by the joining of two mountain shoulders. The trip from Qaraah to Sana’a would have taken half a morning by donkey cart if there weren’t mountains in the way, but because of the precipitous elevation, the trip took an entire day of riding.
“The light in Sana’a casts a buttery sheen,” Auntie Aminah was fond of saying. She had spent several years there as a girl. “The houses are honey color
ed, the streets—when not defiled by refuse—glow sesame brown.” My only visit to Sana’a was years away, so when I was just a little girl, I had to content myself with my aunt’s comparisons. She pointed out the many ways in which Qaraah was not at all like Sana’a. We were a tiny new town while Sana’a was a sprawling metropolis, ancient seat of Ethiopian viceroys, Egyptian sultans, and Ottoman viceroys. Our salt market could boast only a handful of merchants, whereas in Sana’a there wasn’t just one market, but also a cloth market, grain market, silk market, raisins market, cattle market, thread market, coffee-husk market, caps market, carpet market, brassware market, silverware market, and firewood market—home to hundreds of merchants hawking everything from khat leaves and elephant-tusk ivory to coriander seeds, potash, turmeric, silk thread from China, and kaleidoscope bolts of the finest Indian linens. Our houses were a paltry three or four stories high, compared to the eight- or nine-story towers in which people lived in Sana’a. But it wasn’t just that Qaraah was small. I myself came to see the difference in the light. The sun hit the rocks around Qaraah at an angle that painted a ruby-red haze over everything. Houses were redder; food was redder; thoughts, arguments, dreams, laughter, marriages, births, and deaths were redder, a fact that made people think of blood more than they would if they lived elsewhere. As for me? My memories of my childhood are tinted by the color of that crimson sun.
* * *
I was eight years old at my official engagement ceremony in the autumn of 1926. My groom was a tender nine. It was a joyous and long-awaited day for my family, for it signified my protection from Confiscation. That is, if my father should live long enough for Asaf and me to reach maturity and wrap ourselves in the armor of matrimony. That day was filled with hope, Auntie Aminah told me. Hope for all of our futures. My father’s health was precarious, but everyone knew that the Confiscator was mercurial and that sometimes an engagement document was enough to keep him at bay.
Heavy rain fell throughout that season. Auntie Aminah said that during a break in the storms, a hot wind bearing silty flecks of mud came in through our windows and coated everything with a layer of ashen dirt. She also said that the rain was sweet because the mountains were so close to heaven. I am sure that it tasted bitter and left everyone gargling with cistern water, but my auntie always embroidered her stories with as much skill as she embroidered my leggings, dresses, and head coverings. For the occasion I wore nothing more than my ordinary everyday antari muwadda dress of dark blue cotton. The whole front of the dress was embroidered with red triangles, white chain stitches, and cowrie shells called David’s Tears, which were to protect us from sorrow and the evil eye. On my head, I wore a fancy triangle gargush my mother borrowed for the occasion. It was made of black velvet and framed my forehead with a straight row of silver beads that dangled over my eyebrows. The top was embroidered with red triangles and florets in rows that reached all the way up to a little tip, giving the hood its distinctive triangular shape. There were also twelve horizontal rows of triangles in the back of the hood, and silver-thread cords over the brow and down my neck. Two silver chains hung from either side of the hood, and the ends of the chains were silver bell tassels that touched my shoulders. Whenever I moved, the beads on my forehead tinkled, and the tiny bells on the tassels did too, making a pleasant noise that sounded like running water. The back of the gargush was decorated with a heavy triple-hanging row of Maria Theresa thalers—Habsburg Empire–era silver coins that had made their way east through the ports of Genoa, Trieste, and Marseille to Egyptian and Red Sea ports. When I was a child, the Arabian Peninsula was awash in them. I didn’t know anything about the global trading currents that brought those coins to Yemen, but I did know that their tinkling helped me avoid the evil eye, and that demons scattered at the sound. Like all Jewish girls in the environs of Sana’a, I always wore a simpler version of this tight, heavy headdress from morning till sunset, both in and out of the house. My ordinary gargush didn’t have the Maria Theresa thalers, but it did have the silver bells and tassels that tinkled whenever I moved.
I am told that I cried at the ceremony for no good reason, and that my groom ripped his pants on a nail on a bench. My brother Hassan said that we both looked like babies and that to prove it, in the middle of the ceremony, Asaf pissed his pants, though I am sure this is mean-spirited embellishment, for Asaf was surely old enough to hold his water. The ceremony was held upstairs in the men’s parlor of our house. Parched treats were served, and the men—our fathers—cemented the deal over the signing of documents and the blessing and sharing of a ritual cup of wine. There was little celebration, though. According to Sultana, my mother had seen fit to put a holy-name amulet in the secret sleeve pocket of my dress, and to fasten a triangle amulet ring around Asaf’s neck. The neck ring was fashioned with nine nails from different households, as was the custom. Inside the hanging pouch were the traditional magical elements that boys wore to pass through the dangerous crossings of their lives. There were a vial of mercury, baby teeth, dried rue, durra, and sesame. My brothers had all worn this amulet at their circumcisions and engagement ceremonies, and my mother kept it in the locked chest along with her other precious possessions. There was no music at the ceremony. None of the tabl drum or shinshilla cymbals of wedding festivities, no mothers clapping their hands over their mouths to say kulululu. My mother even refused to have my hands dipped in henna for the event, and so I was presented to my groom without the customary bright red palms of fertility and good fortune.
After my engagement, I was prohibited from seeing much of my groom. This was in accordance with tradition. A boy and girl promised to each other from the same family were not supposed to develop affinities for each other, lest they mistakenly grow up thinking of each other as brother and sister. “This would lead to the abomination of incest,” Auntie Aminah explained. “Even if you are cousins, you can still be brother and sister in your souls. So you must not see him, or get to know him. There will be enough time for that after the wedding.” Uncle Zecharia moved almost a mile away from us, into a house far from where most of the Jewish families lived in Qaraah. He and Asaf lived close to a little mosque and two doors from an old one-eyed caravanner from Najran, with whom Uncle Zecharia became friendly. On family occasions, Asaf was sequestered with my father, brothers, and Uncle Zecharia, while I was kept in the bosom of the ladies of the house.
My only real friend from those days was Binyamin Bashari, with whom I was still allowed to interact. We played the games of wild children—chasing lizards, squashing spiders, building forts out of sticks and stones, fashioning catapults out of straw, twine, and cast-off pieces of leather from my father’s workshop. Some of my earliest memories are of Binyamin shimmying up onto the subroof of our house to get a ball of gutta-percha that had gotten stuck up there during our exploits. I was very impressed that he could climb so high.
Binyamin had been learning to play a long wooden flute, called a khallool. Sometimes he brought his khallool to the frankincense tree behind my auntie’s house, and we would sit in the great big saddle of the tree and he would improvise reedy tunes as crickets chirped along to his tentative melodies. Occasionally Binyamin would bring me disappointing news of my husband-to-be. “He is no good at Torah school,” Binyamin once told me. “He knows nothing of scripture, and refuses to learn the weekly portion.”
“Why do you roll your eyes at my husband? Are you such a scholar that you can call him dumb?”
He shrugged and picked at a scab on his knuckles. “He isn’t your husband yet.”
“He will be.”
“He acts as if he is better than us Qaraah boys. He doesn’t talk to anyone, and keeps mightily to himself.”
“Well, maybe he is better than you Qaraah boys.”
“Is that what you think?” The half smile Binyamin usually wore turned into a scowl. And after that we never spoke of Asaf again, which made me glad because I knew that if the subject were to arise, I would once again speak words that would cut my frien
d, little ceremonial slashes to his soul, not to cause a mortal wound, just to draw blood and to relieve myself of a nameless burden.
But I was never sure that Binyamin really disliked Asaf. Once I saw Binyamin and Asaf leaving Torah school together. They were following the teacher, a tall, emaciated scholar from Taiz, who was everyone’s favorite, even though he espoused the teachings of a messianist whose philosophies were controversial in Qaraah. Asaf was on the teacher’s right, Binyamin on his left, and they were walking in the direction of the little well. Another time, I saw them walking together toward Binyamin’s father’s jambia stall. And a third time, I saw them sitting together on the low wall outside of the ritual bath, on a Sabbath afternoon. This time, they saw me too. But both pretended that they hadn’t. I passed, angry with both of them, but mostly angry with Binyamin. My anger quickly turned to shame, for I was embarrassed that I cared.
Once or twice I caught Asaf’s eye on the street beside the buckle and nail seller’s stall. Once, I passed right next to him as he was going into the Torah school. Usually I saw him in the market. Uncle Zecharia began to spend his days in my father’s leather stall. My father embossed his belts with a distinctive triangle and diamond design along the edges. Each belt maker had his own design, a signature on the animal skin. Asaf would attend school with the other boys of Qaraah in the morning, but in the afternoon, he would join his father at my father’s stall, stamping the triangles and diamonds into the belts. My father also made decorative bags that he sold to the wealthier and more discerning matrons of Qaraah, as well as leather phylactery cases for the prayer boxes that men in our community affixed to their foreheads and forearms. Sometimes Asaf cut the straps for the prayer boxes, or helped my father with other tasks, like cutting the soles for the shoes he made for children. I don’t think that Asaf ever knew that I had been my father’s helper long before him. When Asaf or his father was in my father’s stall, we both pretended that I didn’t know a thing about leathercraft, though when they weren’t there, I assisted him just as before.
