by Nomi Eve
In the morning I overheard my parents discussing logistics. My brothers lived next door to us, in a little two-story house that my father had built before I was born, when my mother bore their sixth son. One by one, when they began to grow hair on their chins, my brothers had moved into the little house with the charming red roof. When they married, they moved out of it. Now only two were left—Hassan and Aaron. “Ephrim or Pinny can make room for Hassan and Aaron,” my father said, referring to my two eldest brothers, both of whom had extra corners in their houses where one could lay a pallet.
“Mmpfh,” my mother responded, adding, “Bad enough I have to welcome her, now you throw our own boys out of their beds?” I almost never saw Ephrim or Pinny or any of their many children. They lived on the other side of Qaraah. Later I heard my mother grumbling to Mrs. Bashari that she was on the “worse side of a bad trade. My beloved boys for that Adeni witch? Bad enough that she is coming to Qaraah, now I have to breathe the same air as her, and probably share my dinner table.”
A few days later, I went to Auntie Aminah on the pretense of asking her to help me with my knitting. We bent over my wool; she tsked-tsked at my purposefully clumsy stitches and corrected my technique. I thanked her for her help, and made a few more mistakes simply so that she would have more opportunity to instruct me. But she knew that I had come for more than stitchery. She didn’t disappoint and began to speak about my other aunt as if we had been in the middle of a conversation about her.
“I’ve never known the circumstances that led to Rahel meeting your Uncle Barhun,” she said, “But what I do know is that it was a love match, not an arranged marriage. And your mother met Rahel only once—at Rahel and Barhun’s wedding. Your mother came home from that trip saying that her brother-in-law had married a cow. Of course, I thought she meant that Rahel was fat and ugly, but what she really meant was that Rahel has an animal nature . . . though I do admit this was a strange way to put it.”
“Are you saying that my mother called Aunt Rahel a woman of valor?”
This was a euphemism. It was taken from the Sabbath hymn of the same name that lists the attributes of a pious woman. But when muttered with a wink and a whisper, it referred to a woman who took pleasure in bed, not in the usual manner of wifely subservience, but with abandon, power, and passion, like men.
“Psha, girl, of course not. How would she know? I have no idea what she actually meant. An animal nature? For all I know she was referring to her stink, or her laugh. Maybe your Aunt Rahel smells like a goat or brays like a donkey. But I do think your mother is right to defy your father, right not to want them to come. Suli’s fears may be justified”—Aminah and my father were the only ones who ever used my mother’s nickname, Suli for Sulamit—“Your Aunt Rahel is the sort of woman who inspires gossips to flap their tongues.”
“About what?”
Auntie Aminah squinted at me. “It is not for me to fill your ears with trash, filth, and misery. No, I will not repeat the rumors. But there are other reasons your mother doesn’t want Rahel Damari to come. Reasons that have nothing to do with gossip. You see, with your brothers Hassan and Aaron still to be wed, she doesn’t want any trouble. She doesn’t know anything about Rahel Damari’s daughter. She is a year older than you. What if she is a seducer? What if she is a bad influence on you and causes you to lose your morals? And what if she comes in between your brothers and their intended girls? The fact of the matter is that the child isn’t engaged or married, even though she is of age. In Aden there is no fear of confiscation so there is no hurry with engagements, but of course once they are here, arrangements will have to be made.”
Auntie Aminah was quiet for a moment. The clicking of our needles seemed like the chattering of insects engaged in their very own conversation. When she began again she said, “There is also the matter of Rahel Damari’s profession.”
“Henna?”
“Yes, henna.”
“Why is this a problem?”
She snapped, “I didn’t say it was a problem. Henna is henna, that’s that.” Startled by her rebuke, I felt my cheeks color and I looked down at my hands. I knew that was the end of our conversation. We worked the rest of the time in silence. I was knitting a pair of sleeping socks for my father. The wool was gray and knobby, but it was soft enough. I planned on giving him the socks for his birthday, just two Sabbaths hence. I didn’t understand what my aunt meant. Even though I’d never had henna myself, I’d seen plenty of henna dyers, and none of them ever seemed dangerous.
* * *
All of my sisters-in-law had had Nights of Henna before their weddings. And every so often they went to one another’s houses to adorn one another, either for festivals, or for no particular occasion. I had been in the room during their Nights of Henna, but was sternly forbidden to get even a tiny dab of my own. Jewish girls were always welcome in the henna house, but almost never wore elaborate patterned henna until they bled. Little girls were indulged with a smear on the palm on special occasions like marriages and births, and if a girl was very lucky, she emerged with a few elegant scribbles on her hand. But not me. I watched greedily as the women of our community adorned one another. And I would sulk home afterward, feeling so jealous that I thought my heart would burst. But my mother was adamant, and I knew better than to defy her on this.
By the time Uncle Barhun’s letter arrived, even though I had never had my own henna, I knew enough about it to understand quite a lot about the process—simply from being a girl in Qaraah. I knew that for the most part, henna dyers were family members with fine, steady hands. They were knowledgeable in the usage of herbs and aromatic oils, and either volunteered their services for a bride, or agreed to the payment of a small sum for a more elaborate application. In our tradition, the hennaing of brides lasted from two to four days. The ceremony began with an application of a solid coat of henna paste up and down the bride’s feet, shins, hands, and forearms. Then the bride was wrapped in special cloths known as mehani. The next day the cloths were unwrapped, the paste was washed off, and the bride’s skin was revealed to be a deep reddish orange.
That’s when the henna dyer came to perform her role. She brought with her a waxy aromatic mixture of resin, myrrh, frankincense, and iron sulfate. She heated the mixture over a small fire and then applied it with a stylus in intricate patterns. Then came the darkening of the henna with a caustic mixture of ammoniac and potash called shaddar. The henna dyer spread the shaddar. When it was removed, after an hour or two, the henna had turned a deep greenish-black, while the areas protected by the aromatic mixture retained their orange-red shade. The end results were elegant red designs on a background of very dark, almost black, skin. This was different from what occurred in the nonbridal henna house. When women met to adorn themselves for the new moon, for holidays, or for other special occasions, they didn’t use the aromatic mixture or the shaddar. They simply applied henna with a stylus, left it to dry, and then sealed it with a coating of lemon sugar water—a much simpler process.
* * *
I shouldn’t have wasted time wondering about my aunt, but since my mother was so against Rahel Damari’s coming, she rose in my estimation and I imagined that she had special cosmetic gifts—like Viola, the wife of the lampmaker, who distilled the most potent perfumes, or Mary, the wife of Tomer the Scribe, who purchased only the finest imported malachite from the Timna valley, ground it into kohl, and then showed ladies how to outline their eyes to their best advantage.
The next morning, I went to visit my sister-in-law Masudah, who had recently given birth to her third son. When I came, she put an older baby, Shalom, on my lap and opened her dress to nurse his new brother. Her breasts came tumbling out, and the baby fussed for a moment before latching on to an enormous brown nipple. The baby on my lap reached for a clump of my hair. I let him curl his little fingers and tug so hard it hurt. I kissed his little upturned nose, and breathed in deep the yeasty, milky smell of him before I asked Masudah to tell me something about Aunt R
ahel.
She didn’t answer me immediately. She bit her lip, let out a big sigh. Then she looked at me intently. When she finally spoke she said, “Your Aunt Rahel was the most famous henna dyer in Aden. And not only in Aden. When she and Uncle Barhun were first married, they lived in Sana’a, so she is famous there too. She did the henna for so many brides that they used to call a bride she hennaed ‘one of Rahel’s blooms.’ Your Uncle Barhun not only permits but also encourages her to practice her craft. She is even known to henna Muslim brides—the daughters of sheiks and the daughters of Turkish functionaries.” Masudah knew this because she too was from a village near Aden and had grown up in the same community where Rahel attended brides. “Why, I had hoped she would do my henna when we were wed, but of course, I was married here in Qaraah, so it was not to be.”
As for my girl cousin and the threat she posed to my brothers’ morals, I had to laugh at the thought. I was sure my cousin was an elegant, sensitive creature and would want nothing to do with my brothers. My brothers were the real animals—goats crossed with gazelles, hairy beasts that rutted in the fields and grew skittish at their own shadows. At least this is how I thought of them when I was just a girl and they were already men.
Over the following days, I continued on my quest for information. My brother Aaron was thick, short, bucktoothed, and irritable. He cracked his knuckles and sneered at the mention of Uncle Barhun.
“Uncle Barhun is coming here to mooch off our father. You’ll see, he’ll sponge Father dry. And with all those daughters, there’ll be nothing left for your dowry.”
“But why are they coming?” I probed for answers. “I thought that Uncle Barhun’s business was profitable.” Of my father’s two brothers, I knew that Uncle Barhun was the wealthier—at least he had been before the current misfortune, whatever it was.
“Umph . . .” Hassan was a taller, uglier version of Aaron. He had a finger in his mouth and was working on dislodging a piece of candied ginger from his molars. He gave up and wiped his fingers on his dirty shamle. “He’s a coward and a simpleton, almost got himself killed in Aden, and is fleeing like a ratty dog.”
Hassan had a tear in his left nostril, from an accident when he was a boy. While playing with some boys in a quarry, he had tripped, fallen, and ripped his nose open on a sharp piece of volcanic rock. The wound festered and had to be excised. When it healed, he was left with only half a nostril, and people called him Half Nose.
I tried to get more information out of my brothers, but they either knew nothing, or refused to satisfy my curiosity. When I asked Auntie Aminah why the other Damaris were suddenly descending on Qaraah, she just shrugged, and answered with uncharacteristic defeat. She was usually chock-full of information, but now she confessed to being left in the dark.
“Who tells an old woman about business dealings? No one. If you find out, little girl, make sure to come tell me.”
It was my father who finally explained it to me. My mother had sent me to his market stall with a lunchtime bowl of stew. We sat together as he ate. The market was quiet, as it typically was in the middle of the day. My father’s stall always smelled of cured calf’s skin, shoemaker’s pitch, beeswax. He had been working on a pair of ghof sandals for one of the Muslim town councilmen. The sandals were stitched with turquoise and silver threads. Stitching the leather was not difficult work, but it made my father’s fingertips burn from pushing in the thick needle. I knew because when I helped him, my own fingertips stung and sometimes they even cracked and bled from the effort. When I arrived, my father was rubbing beeswax on his hands. I sat on one of the big leather pillow-stools, waiting for my father to finish his lunch. I must have felt very bold that day, for I opened my mouth and asked why exactly it was that the other Damaris were coming to live with us. My father looked at me the way I imagined a teacher must look at a boy in Torah school when he asks for knowledge reserved for others. He made a sound as if he would speak, then he stopped. When he opened his mouth again he spoke to me in a way I hadn’t heard before, as if I weren’t just a child, or a young girl, but someone who actually deserved answers to big questions.
“It’s like this, Daughter,” he began. “In Aden, the coffee-export trade is ruled by a few foreign establishments, most notably the Barde et Cie corporation from Lyon. But the foreign traders mostly concentrate on the larger business of exporting beans to Europe. It’s left to the small merchants, like your uncle, to perpetuate the petty trade among the Red Sea dhow captains who buy and sell coffee in between Aden, Djibouti, and Berbera. Your Uncle Barhun was one of these petty traders, with a stall in the market in Little Aden and a connection to a small but profitable interest in the Barde et Cie domestic coffee exchange. Just after the New Year, Barhun was cheated by a customer, and when he lodged a complaint with the British customs functionary at the port, the cheating customer hired men to beat Barhun, and to destroy his small warehouse, torching it in the middle of the night. He was lucky to escape with his life,” my father said, exhaling. The look on his face was terribly pained, as if he had witnessed the beating himself. “And of course he will be welcome here. He can depend upon us for refuge.”
I had no idea what happened in the next month to change my mother’s mind. But as the date of the other Damaris’ arrival approached, my mother not only agreed not to leave my father but also roundly declared to the women at the well that she knew it was her duty to greet the Damaris and treat them as kin. Another child might have thought this about-face strange, but my mother was temperamental, and it was not uncommon for her to swear one thing and do another.
Chapter 8
Two weeks after the arrival of Uncle Barhun’s letter, Mr. Musa came to Sabbath lunch. I served him his jachnun and hilbeh and precious hard-boiled eggs. For the entire meal, he spoke in proverbs. By the time the coffee was served and the men began to chew their khat, he had already proclaimed, “Work like an ant and you’ll eat sugar”; “Who dies today is safe from tomorrow’s sin”; and “A monkey in its mother’s eye is like a gazelle.” He picked his teeth as I cleared his dishes. After I was done helping with lunch, I went out back and sat underneath our frankincense tree. In no time at all, Mr. Musa found me. I tried to walk away. He followed. I slipped through the opening in the wall leading to the dye mistress’s yard. He followed me again, and I looked over my shoulder, surprised that such a fat, decrepit man could fit through the narrow passage. I’m sure he would have continued to chase me, but instead of going farther, I turned to face him.
“Mr. Musa,” I said, “please leave me alone. I am unchaperoned, it is unseemly for you to—” but before I finished my sentence, he grabbed me by the crook of my arm and began to paw at the front of my dress.
“Let me go,” I hissed, but he pulled me toward him. I smelled his foul onion breath. My heart raced in my chest. I noticed a wart on his right cheek, white hairs sprouting out of his nose. He bent toward me, puckered his gray, flaky lips, and almost pressed them into my own. But before he could force himself upon me, he screamed and fell cursing into a big trough full of purple dye.
“That’s right, little girl” the dye mistress said. She was standing behind Mr. Musa with one hand on a hip. “You tell that horrible man to leave you alone.”
She had come out of her house, snuck up behind Mr. Musa, and hit him over the head with a clay pot.
Mr. Musa dragged himself out of the trough. The dip had dyed his earlocks—dripping bruised wormy streaks on his pouchy cheeks. His shamle was dyed purple, and his huge belly looked like a swollen eggplant over his pants. As he slogged out of the yard cursing the two of us, I couldn’t help but laugh, covering my mouth with my hands.
“Remember, it is no shame for a girl not to be wed.” The dye mistress put down the pot next to the trough. She came and stood next to me, and patted my forearm. “There can even be happiness in a spinster’s lot. Look at me.” She spread out her hands, gesturing to the kaleidoscope of troughs and to the many-hued pieces of cloth hanging from lines around
the edge of the yard. “If Jacob our Father asked, I could make Joseph another coat of many colors. I am blessed with my work. If you ever need a profession to earn your keep, you come to me and I will teach you my craft.”
People gossiped about what had happened. They said that Mr. Musa had imbibed too much Sabbath arak at lunch and mistook the dye mistress’s yard for ours, tripping on a crack in the path. Only I knew that he had followed me there, and that the dye mistress had saved me from his thuggish advances. The day before the other Damaris arrived, I left her a small basket of aromatic soap in between her troughs. Then I sat for a little while, losing myself in the colors of all the drying cloth. Saffrons and blues and reds and yellows and, of course, purples. I looked at the vat that had proved Mr. Musa’s undoing. The deep purple was almost black, so dark that my face, reflected only barely, seemed to float on the surface of a starless, moonless sky. I felt so melancholy and filled with longing for Asaf. I wondered where Asaf was at that very moment. If he was on land or at sea. In Africa, Arabia, or Asia? If he was eating or praying, or striking a bargain with a purveyor of rare perfumes. I wondered if he knew that I still slept with his little amulet under my pillow. I thought about what the dye mistress had done—how she had protected me. I saw myself. I was wearing Jacob’s coat of many colors. I lifted my arms and every tint of the rainbow shimmered down from my arms. I was cloaked in glory like a bird with incandescent wings.
My father called for me.“Adele, where are you? Adela, Adeellla . . .” I dropped a little stone into the trough, breaking the taut canvas for my visions. I left the sanctuary of the dye mistress’s yard just as her father was coming outside. A cheerful little green bird perched on his arm twittered and sang as the old blind man whistled—the two seemingly engaged in a very pleasant conversation.
When I got back home my father was standing by the rear window. My mother was sitting on the low stool in front of the hearth.
