by Nomi Eve
When I went marketing with my sisters-in-law or my mother, we would visit the stall to greet my father, or to bring him a flask of hot sweet tea or a pot of egg and meat stew for a midday meal when he was too busy to come home for lunch. Uncle Zecharia was not good with his hands, and really “helped” my father only by keeping him company. Uncle Zecharia would try to romance customers into making purchases, but was not a very good salesman when it came to leather, a deficiency he blamed on himself. “I am a merchant of spice and scent,” I heard him say more than once, “and have no talent for peddling dead flesh. Who can blame me after a lifetime spent inhaling the fruity delicacies this world has to offer?” When we visited the stall, Uncle Zecharia would always make a point to address me personally, saying things like, “Little Adela, what a lovely little collar, did you do the embroidery yourself?” He always complimented me on one thing or another, and I usually hid my face in my scarf and blushed. But Asaf wouldn’t act anything like his father. He would keep his head bowed at his task, or look right past me and pretend I wasn’t there. After all of these occasions on which Asaf ignored me, I began to feel as if his kindness in the garden on the day of his arrival had been a sham, and that the amulet that I kept under my pillow was a token from a different boy, one who had perhaps continued on his travels, not this cousin who had settled into our lives and was promised to me as my husband.
Chapter 4
I was engaged to Asaf in early autumn, but it wasn’t until late winter of that year that we began to defy tradition and became friends. I was lonely most of the time those days. I was no longer supposed to play with Binyamin. We were getting too old to be alone together, my mother said. His mother agreed, and they both did what they could to keep us apart. I spent more and more time in my cave. I was on my way there when I heard the thundering of hooves. I turned with a start, feeling my heart in my throat. A boy on a chestnut horse was almost upon me. I ducked behind a bush. He sped down around the side of the cemetery, and then came back again. This time he slowed down when he got close to a tamarind tree, slid off the horse, and tethered the animal. Then he walked over to where I was crouching. I sucked in my breath. My fiancé.
I remember that a chill was in the air. It was the sort of day when the sun shines so brightly as to make one forget that the heat of summer is still months away. Asaf cocked his head to one side. He squinted and then turned his eyes into laughing stars.
“Come out, cousin. What are you doing here? All alone out here—you should go home. You know I can see you? Come out so we can talk.”
I emerged from behind the bush. He seemed taller, lankier. I wondered when he had grown so much, or if I was just imagining that he had gotten so much taller since we had stood side by side, protected by the old magic of mercury, durra, and rue. I noticed a dimple in his chin, a smudge of dirt below his right eye.
I pointed to the horse. “Where did you get that mount?”
“What mount?”
“The horse tethered to the tree, stupid.”
“Don’t call me stupid.”
“I’m sorry. But I would expect you to call me stupid if I tied a horse to a tree and then pretended it wasn’t there.”
He shrugged, kicked at a stone.
“The horse isn’t mine.”
“Of course it isn’t. Where would you get a horse? And anyway, you aren’t allowed to ride it.”
“She belongs to Sheik Ibn Messer. A cousin of the Imam.”
I looked at my cousin, my husband-to-be. His missing front teeth had grown in, as had mine. His complexion was a toasted sesame brown. His long hair fell in a tousled fringe out of the sides of a brown turban that had replaced his red cap. His earlocks were tucked into his turban. I think that is the moment I realized that Asaf was pretty, as pretty as a girl, but with boyish grit and swagger. The crumpled brown suit he had arrived in had been replaced by a man’s dark blue guftan coat trimmed with cord. The cording had a gap on the front hem—not by accident, but because all of our men had their guftans made this way, with an imperfection, so that every time one looked at it, one was reminded of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Under the guftan he wore a white shirt with blue embroidery. The blue stitches on his shirt matched his eyes, which in turn matched the sky.
“Sheik Ibn Messer?” I was skeptical. “He lets you ride his horse?”
I knew who the sheik was. His summer compound was not far from my cave, though it was beyond the view of the escarpment.
Asaf stuck out his chest and squared his shoulders, holding himself in a stance worthy of such illustrious association. Asaf’s last word, Imam, hung in the air, traveling up like a puff of smoke. I must have scrunched up my face, or otherwise showed Asaf that his explanation was lacking.
“Ibn Messer is a great man and a mischief maker,” he explained. “He likes to let Jews ride his horses. He and Imam Yahye hate each other. They fight the way dragonflies fight, by buzzing each other’s wings.”
He bragged, “I am a better rider than most men. Ibn Messer holds races. Awards prizes. He said I could be a jockey if I weren’t a Jew. Said I keep my seat better than most. And that the way I handle his horses, he is sure I could win.”
Now I understood. The Jews of the Kingdom may have known next to nothing about the goings-on in the outside world, but we were experts in the political machinations of the Zaidi Muslims who ruled over us. Even I, a little girl, was old enough to know that there were several “little sheiks” in the mountain valleys surrounding Sana’a. And that every so often one rose up like a “cocky rooster,” as my father would say, “to peck at the ground around the Imam’s feet.” All throughout the Kingdom there were tangled allegiances and loyalties. Imam Yahye, while autocratic, did not wield absolute power. And the farther one got from Sana’a, the weaker the yoke of his authority. But politics didn’t interest me at all at the moment. I opened my mouth to say something benign and inconsequential like, “How far have you ridden?” but instead I heard myself say, “You aren’t a man, you are just a boy.”
Asaf seemed taken aback, as if he didn’t know what conversation we were having—one about horses or one about us, about our future together when I would be less a girl than a woman, and he more a man than a boy. He was quiet for a moment, but then he shrugged and smiled. His eyes grew wide and his face opened up, like a present. He looked down the escarpment toward the horse. She had nosed around and found a mouthful of scrubby grass to chew on. “Do you want to meet her?”
“What is her name?”
“Jamiya. Come with me.” He led me to the tree. “Put your hand on her flank, that’s right, isn’t she soft?” I breathed in deep. The rich animal smell filled my nose—a combination of wet earth and burnt caramel. She made contented little whinnying sounds as Asaf scratched between her ears. Jamiya flicked her tail, widened her nostrils. We stood there like that for what seemed like a very long time. Eventually Asaf mounted the horse and rode away. I watched him make a wide turn and disappear over the dunes to the right of the cemetery. From the back, with his earlocks tucked away, he could have been a Muslim boy. Later that night, as I lay on my pallet, I kept thinking about Asaf and Jamiya. I fell asleep dreaming of a princess who married a horse and spent eternity riding her husband through the fields of heaven.
* * *
A few weeks later Asaf and his father came to our house for an evening meal. It wasn’t a Sabbath or festival day, but an ordinary midweek night. Uncle Zecharia usually paid a widow to cook for him and Asaf, but she was visiting her daughter who was in childbed, so my father had invited them to share our table.
During the meal, I didn’t look at Asaf and he didn’t look at me. He was seated in between my uncle and my father. Four of my brothers were there too. My mother and I served the men and then sat at the far end of the table to eat our portions of stew. When I got up to bring a new dish or to take one away, I pretended that I hadn’t seen Asaf on the horse and he pretended that he hadn’t seen me alone on the escarpment.
After the meal, I was sent up to the men’s salon to bring them a tray of sweets. My brothers were reclining on pillows, chewing khat, and smoking hookahs. My father and uncle hadn’t come up yet to join them. Asaf was sitting next to my brother Mordechai, who was speaking to my brother Dov. As I approached, Mordechai began telling a crude story. In our tradition, something was called “holy” when it belonged to the whole community—like a Torah or a synagogue building, a ritual bath or spice box used to mark the passage between Sabbath and weekday. This is why a loose woman was also called “holy,” because she was shared by many. I knelt to put the tray on the little table and I heard Mordechai say, “Avihu’s sister sure is holy. She lay with her own brother-in-law, with the neighbor, and with the neighbor’s neighbor before being caught by her own husband, who turned her out and sent her back to her parents, pregnant with a bastard with four fathers, who knows, maybe more.” Dov let out a great big self-satisfied guffaw. “Holy, holy, holy,” he said through a big wad of khat, “she must be so holy that the angels themselves mistake her for one of their own.” As I turned to go, he launched into a crude joke about a farmer who violated his goat, a baker who violated his fresh loaves, and a fisherman who sank his hook into the mermaid bounty of the deep blue sea.
My cheeks grew red. I was used to my brothers’ boorish behavior, but it seemed to me as if they were telling these stories for my benefit, that is, to embarrass me in front of my groom. As I passed by Asaf he turned his head and caught my eye for the smallest little pebble of a second. In that second I thought his expression said, “Don’t listen to them.” And, “If I were older, and already married to you, I would protect you from your miserable brothers.” Did Asaf’s little glance really say all of these things? I don’t know, but it was enough that I believed it so.
* * *
The next time Asaf met me on the escarpment he wasn’t on Jamiya, but had come by foot. We stood without speaking for what seemed like a very long time. Asaf looked up at the sky. I followed his gaze and spied a pair of sooty falcons circling over the ruins of Yehezkiel the Goat’s forge.
“Well . . .” Asaf kicked a stone, bit his bottom lip, and then ran his fingers through his right forelock, twisting it into a tighter curl.
“Well what?”
“Hmmm.”
I looked back up into the sky. The falcons were flying away. Asaf shifted back and forth on his feet and narrowed his eyes, turning them into tiny slits of blue that swept over the landscape behind me and then settled on what seemed to be my chin. He began to curl the second forelock and then let it spring back up in a corkscrew. Finally he whispered, “Can you take me there?”
“Where?”
“To your . . .”
“My what?”
“To your cave. I know where you go. I followed you, so I know that you have a cave. I would very much like to see it. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone else.”
I weighed my options. I could refuse, but if he already knew I had a cave, he could go there whether I took him or not. Really, he was just asking permission. And if I didn’t take him, perhaps he would get angry. And if he got angry, would he give away my secret? Tell his father? Tell my father about it? Binyamin was the only other person who knew about my cave, and so far he had kept my secret.
“Come.” I turned on my heels.
“I’ll follow.”
I snorted, “Of course you will. It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be mad, Adela. I promise I won’t tell anyone else. It will still be your secret.”
I didn’t answer. I took him the other way around the culvert. The long way, past an old camel cart half-buried in the sand. Before entering, I hesitated. Asaf stood not a hand’s breath from me. Together, we looked out at the landscape. Down below my cave, to the southwest, was the Jewish cemetery, where Grandfather Yoosef was buried, and past that was the wealthy village of Bir Zeit, where I never went, but where I heard that the imported fruit trees grew heavy with Indian mangoes and perfumed gardens sported yellow melons as big as the heads of giants. All around us the mountains rose up the color of wet wheat and old canvas sacking. To the north was the walled city of Sana’a. We could see a camel caravan coming from Amran laden with grain and khat leaves and cotton entering Bir Zeit. And there in the middle distance we espied the gravekeeper stooped over stones, while a solitary horseman rode a stallion over distant dunes, where the mauve and golden mountaintops faded into each other, like feathers on a reclining bird.
The moment for stillness passed. A breeze rustled the henna bushes. I turned to the cave, ducked, and entered. Asaf followed me in. I lit one of my little contraband lamps, along with a stub of a candle that I kept in one of the indentations in the cave walls. He looked around. As the light illuminated the space around us, I saw him smile.
“Yes, this will do, it’s very nice.”
“Do for what?”
“For our first home.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are my wife.”
“Not yet,” I said through gritted teeth.
He shrugged. “In some places in Africa, the children marry at birth. In parts of Morocco, they marry when they lose their first teeth. I see no reason why we should wait any longer.” He came toward me. Quickly, I bent down and lifted one of the little pots that I used to heat water on a tiny wicking stove I had stolen from Auntie Aminah’s storeroom. Before he could get any closer, I clonked him on the head.
I called him a brute and threatened to tell my mother that he had tried to violate me. He smiled, scratching his head. “Then I will tell her about this.”
“And I will tell your father about Jamiya.”
He pointed at my altar, my idols.
“And I will tell your mother about your little pagan gods.”
“Goddesses.”
“Forgive me, but I don’t think she will care about the sex of your idols. Only that you have them. A Jewish girl like you—”
I put my hands on my hips and taunted Asaf back, “A Jewish boy like you, out here in the dunes, riding a horse?”
“A Jewish girl with her own cave? What will people say about you? That you meet goat boys here. That you tempt them with your wiles.” He rubbed his head where I had hit him.
“My wiles? You have been spending too much time with the animals that are my brothers. Are you an animal too? Or are you a boy who mounts horses like women? That is a mare you are riding, after all?”
I don’t know exactly how, but in the thicket of these crude threats, we suddenly came to a truce. And not just any truce, but a happy one. We both started laughing. We were saying things we didn’t mean and didn’t even understand. Our predicament suddenly seemed very funny, but funny in a way that mattered and felt safe. After all, our connection was based on protection; we needed each other to avoid confiscation. So that was the nature of our laughter. It was a balm and a joke and a trick perpetrated against the demons that overreached when they came for us. Asaf and I laughed and looked deep into each other’s eyes. Did he think my eyes too big? No, I could tell that he thought they were just right. We were perfect for each other. We were each other’s armor. And in that moment, we each became the other’s lance, sword, and shield. We couldn’t say all of this, because we were just children, so we laughed, because life was hard, and laughing was easy.
* * *
Two days later my family shared the Passover seder with Asaf and his father. At the seder, we pretended not to know each other at all. Asaf and the sons of our neighbors, who also joined us for the holiday, put on a little skit, reenacting the Exodus. Asaf played the part of Moses, defying Pharaoh, leading his people out of Egypt, raising his staff to part the Sea of Reeds.
“Oh, what a great Moses you are,” my father said, complimenting him on his acting.
I thought of Moses’s staff. How God had turned it into a snake, which writhed at Pharaoh’s feet. This made me think of the Confiscator’s jambia, and soon the fire o
f fear was igniting behind my eyes. The faces around the table blurred, and suddenly I was back in the market, sprawled on the ground at the feet of the Confiscator and his wife.
“Adela, what is it? Are you not well?” My sister-in-law Masudah came behind me.
“I am fine, just fine,” I reassured her, forcing a big smile that soused the flames in my head. No, I was at home, all was well. I was safe. He wouldn’t take me away. He couldn’t, could he? When I came of age I would marry. If I did my duty and married Asaf, I would have nothing to fear, now would I?
I took the plate from my intended and examined it for clues. I needed to know: What did he like to eat? The lamb brains? The chickpea stew? Was he a boy with a big appetite? Would I be woman enough to make savory dishes to nourish and feed him?
* * *
Asaf came to my cave again two weeks after Passover. When he had tethered the horse, we sat in the cool shade of an overhanging red rock. He told me a story about a race he had watched, in which a man fell off his horse and broke his leg. The Muslim boy who won was a member of one of the far northern hilltop tribes. “You know,” Asaf said, his voice tinged with what seemed a combination of apprehension and admiration, “the tribe of the great assassins.”
