by Nomi Eve
* * *
Hani and David’s house was the closest. When we reached their door and pounded, Hani opened it, grabbed me, and pulled me in. When she saw I wasn’t alone, she urged Binyamin to follow us over the threshold. He refused. “I must make my way back to my barracks,” he insisted.
“But Binyamin,” I protested, “it’s not safe!”
He shook his head and motioned to the lapels of his British army uniform. “My uniform will keep me safe from the thugs.”
He turned on his heels and departed. Hani bolted the door behind him. She was pale, shaking.
“Where were you, Adela? Down by the docks? I feared for your life! Thank Elohim you are safe. But who was that? How do you know him?”
“He was my friend, Hani, my old friend Binyamin Bashari from Qaraah.”
“Ah,” she remembered, “the boy from the cave, all dressed up like a Brit. But enough prattling. It’s not safe down here.” I followed Hani upstairs to the roof, where the family had sought refuge. Little Mara was already there, sitting on Nogema’s lap. Nogema and her sons were there too, three little boys. But her husband—the British Petroleum man—was at work in the refinery.
The riots lasted for three terrible days. We later learned that in addition to Selah Bir Ami, three other Jews had been killed that morning. The mob slit the throat of a butcher with his own knife. A lampmaker was trampled and died in the Prince of Wales Hospital, and a young jeweler was shot defending his shop from looters. And of course there was that poor little British boy. By nightfall thirty additional Adeni Jews had been injured. Two more succumbed to their injuries the next day. Seven Jewish houses were burned, twenty market stalls ravaged. I joined Hani and Nogema and her boys in the center of the roof, but every so often I went to the edge and looked down at the mayhem below.
From her roof across the street, Hamama yelled to us. She was frantic for her husband. He had been at his stall when the riot started. Was he okay? Was he even alive? We had no way of knowing. Hani shushed her. “We must be quiet,” she said. “We must not let them know we are up here.” I looked about—all around us the roofs had filled with Jews like us, taking refuge. When I think back to that day, I see us as shipwreck survivors. The roofs were our rafts, the streets a shark-infested ocean, our prayers the gentle waves that buoyed us aloft until the storm had passed.
Thank Elohim, the rest of our family was safe. My sisters-in-law and their children all escaped unscathed. My brother Menachem’s nose was broken and Nogema’s husband was bashed in the head with a club, but he recovered. Uncle Barhun and Mr. Haza were safe in their warehouse. Aunt Rahel had taken refuge with a neighbor. Hani’s husband, David, and his fellow students took shelter on the roof of a nearby mosque—the cleric had opened his door to so many Jews that day that ever after he was known as “righteous Absalom.” He never paid for a pair of shoes, a tailored djellaba, or a basket of fruit again—that is, until the Jews left Aden forever. We didn’t come down from the roof until the next morning. The Aden Protectorate Levies were sent to restore order, but not before the riots had mostly died out.
Years later, when the Muslims of Aden rioted again and the Jewish community of Aden was viciously and irreparably attacked—leaving eighty souls dead, scores wounded—people would remember the earlier catastrophe. They would say, “It is just like when that boy was throwing rocks at birds.”
I would remember too. I would remember how Binyamin Bashari had pressed me into the alley wall, and how I struggled against him until I realized who he was. I would remember how in our fear, the alley became a kind of cave, a sister to my mountain aerie, holding us in the cupped hand of kindness until we garnered the courage to emerge.
* * *
Binyamin came to visit me a week after the riots. We sat in my aunt and uncle’s parlor. Remelia darned socks across the room. We were quiet together for a long time. As a boy Binyamin never had many words, but now I could see he was full to the brim with them. He needed to speak, but it was hard for him.
He opened his mouth, shut it again. More silence. And then finally he spoke.
“That day . . . that day I came to say good-bye to you in your cave . . . I didn’t want to leave home without saying good-bye.”
“I know. And I have always regretted that we never really took leave of each other. Hani . . . Hani got in the way, didn’t she?”
Binyamin shook his head.
“Your wife?” I said softly. “How does she fare?”
“My wife died giving birth to her first child. The child died too, two years ago in Sana’a.”
“May you be comforted amongst the mourners of Zion.”
He nodded his thanks at my recitation of the ritual words. Then he confessed to me that although he mourned for the child, he had not loved his wife. That from the very beginning she belittled him for being unsophisticated, for coming from a mountain village. She had eyes only for a neighbor, a jeweler—and Binyamin suspected that the baby she had carried wasn’t even his own. He was ashamed of these dark confidences and he spoke looking down, his cheeks under his beard flushed in the moonlight.
“I am so sorry for your sorrows, my friend,” I murmured, then added, “What a lucky coincidence that we are now both in Aden together. Now tell me, why are you in a British uniform?”
He didn’t answer and seemed suddenly very self-conscious, fingering the top button of his uniform and then adjusting his cap. That’s when I noticed that he had cut off his earlocks. Before this, I had assumed they were hidden under his cap, but now I saw that they weren’t there at all. All boys and men from the Kingdom had long earlocks, but some Adeni Jews didn’t. My brothers still wore theirs, as did Uncle Barhun. I took a good look at Binyamin. Without his earlocks he looked bolder, and freer, as if someone had filled in his features with more vivid strokes and colors.
When he finally spoke he said, “I am sorry for your losses. You lost both mother and father in such a short time.”
I nodded. “Elohim spared them the long journey south.”
“And your cousin, did he, did he ever . . .”
“Come back for me?”
“You aren’t wearing a ring . . . or a lafeh cloth. . . .”
I blushed that he had noticed these things about me. Now it was my turn to look down at my feet. I heard my own voice, as if from far away, and for the first time since coming to Aden I heard myself speak the truth about Asaf. “I wait for Asaf every day down by Crater Harbor, but he never comes for me. Who knows, maybe when the Messiah comes to Aden I will be very forward, and I will ask if He has seen my intended in some other corner of the world. But no, I don’t want to talk about Asaf Damari. Tell me why you are here. And why are you in that important uniform?”
He patted his lapels and broke into a wide smile. “I am in the service of a British major who has a fondness for the traditions of the East. He found me in Sana’a and brought me to Aden. I am part of a troop of Yemeni musicians in a little ceremonial unit that performs for visiting dignitaries. Would you believe I played my khallool for the Prince of Wales’s cousin?”
We sat for a little while in silence. Then Binyamin took out a handkerchief and wiped his sweaty brow. He explained that he had been down at the docks on an errand for his major when the violence broke out. He was running to get out of the way of the mob when he saw me. “I called your name first, but you didn’t hear me. I wasn’t even sure it was you. You forgive me, don’t you? For pushing you into the alley like that.”
“I forgive you, Binyamin Bashari. If you’ll forgive me for ruining your face.”
He reached up and patted the sore spot on his face. “Ruined? Is it that horrible?”
We were sitting quite close together, and I shifted slightly away, but then I broke custom and leaned back toward him. I reached up to pat the red streaks on his face where I had raked my nails. I touched him softly, and murmured, “No, not horrible at all.”
Chapter 27
Two weeks after the riots, Binyamin Bashari ca
me for Sabbath dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house. The riots had cast a pall over the Jews of Crater, but I was not gloomy at all. In fact, I found myself walking with a little bounce in my step. It was Aunt Rahel who urged Uncle Barhun to invite “the young gentleman from Qaraah.” At dinner, Uncle Barhun peppered Binyamin with questions.
“Does your major meet with Mr. Ah-Tabib of the Zionist committee? And is he encouraging regarding the refugee situation?” My uncle had recently become involved with the Committee for Jewish Settlement in Palestine. Uncle Barhun made up his mind to either like or dislike the British officers in Aden depending on their views on the subject. He had even refused to do business with an officer who was heard saying that the refugee problem could be settled quickly and efficiently by having the Jews sent to settle the Red Sea Islands—barren, waterless chunks of black stone. We knew that there were British officers who scorned us Jews and would just as soon see us tumbled into the sea. But there were also those who looked sympathetically on the plight of the Jews of Yemen, and saw themselves as having a rare historical and geographical opportunity to help us escape the grip of the Imam and the drought and poverty of the north by aiding in our efforts to go to Palestine, where at least our fate would be of our own making.
Binyamin reassured my uncle that his major was sympathetic to the plight of the Jews, then steered the conversation to other subjects—the decommissioning of the lighthouse on Perim Island, a triple murder among the camel drivers who brought firewood into Aden, and finally, the impending visit to Aden by a cousin of the King of Sweden. After grace, Binyamin took his leave of us, promising my aunt that he would come back to share our table. He was true to his word, and was the perfect suitor. When he came to court me he blushed and mangled his words, he cracked his knuckles, and acted in all ways uncomfortable and desperately in love. But in private, in those tiny moments when we had a cushioned alcove to ourselves, with only a cousin or a sister-in-law minding her own business on the other side of the room, he wasn’t any of these things. He was confident, kind, and full of all the words he didn’t have as a boy. He looked me in the eye and said that he wanted to move to Palestine. That he longed for a home he had never known. That the Torah he had learned as a boy seemed like a road map to him, and his heart was the compass, pointing to Jerusalem. He told me that he had a recurring dream in which he was walking through a city of golden stones, holding a big ring of keys.
“And where do the keys let you enter?”
He shrugged. “It’s a mystery. But in the dream I’m not bothered by it. I walk with curiosity and confidence down a street named for the Angels of Redemption, under an arch, around twisty corners, past bakeries and shoe shops and spice stalls. I turn right and left and right again. As if I know where to go.”
“Do you?”
“What?”
“Know where to go?”
He smiled his wolfish grin. “I have always been told that I have a good sense of direction.”
“When I was a little girl, I always wandered.”
“And you never got lost, did you?”
“You know I didn’t because you followed me.”
He shrugged. “My brothers beat me, my father was a drunkard . . . Following you was a game I played. I told myself that somewhere in the dunes was a secret city and only you possessed the key to it.”
“Keys again?”
“I suppose I’ve been dreaming about keys for a long time.”
Soon after this conversation, I dreamed that Binyamin came to my house with a big ring of keys. “These,” he said, “unlock the secret doors of Aden.” He took me on a patchwork tour, unmoored from geography. We explored the Memorial Building, where the British war dead were honored; we entered the bedrooms and ballrooms of the Grand Royal Hotel, the private officers’ cinema in Steamer Point, the inner recesses of the concert hall in Crescent, and the back rooms of the belching refinery in Little Aden. And when I thought we were finished, Binyamin took out one more key. It unlocked the great lighthouse in Crater Harbor. I followed Binyamin up the narrow twisty stairs. He showed me how the great mechanism on the lens lit up the night. We stayed there a long time, spotting ships coming into harbor, as well as the dancing tails of mermaids who surfaced ever so briefly before swimming east to India.
* * *
Binyamin courted me throughout that summer, and through the autumn. My memories of those days are of a series of sweet little gifts. One day I was making dough for lafeh bread when Remelia answered the door. She called for me to come. Binyamin stood in the doorway looking awkward and yet very proud of himself. A half smile turned one side of his mouth up. He shifted back and forth on his feet and thrust a basket of dates at me. “These are for you.” I accepted the gift, imagining that the dates were music notes, and he was handing me a basket of melodies.
“What is it?” He looked concerned. My strange vision must have flashed across my face.
“Nothing. Thank you. Thank you so much.” I gave him a big, unambiguous smile. “I was wondering, will you bring your khallool and play for us sometime? My uncle would so love to hear your music.”
Later that night when I ate the dates, I had the same feeling. That I was eating music, delicious music.
He came again the next Friday afternoon with a jar of spicy pickles for our dinner table. And a few days after that with a jar of honey. Once when he came, Hani was over and we were making jachnun together. When he had left she said, “When you marry him, I will give you a special henna. He will lose himself in the tendrils running up your thighs.” She poked and pinched me until I doubled over in a knot of laughter.
“Really, Adela,” she said, “when he first came upon us in your cave, all those years ago, I thought Binyamin Bashari was an animal turned into a boy, a desert creature come to eat you up. But now I see that he has grown quite civilized, and I love him for you, because he has taken you from your vigil at the lonely harbor and turned you into a girl who primps and blushes.” At this, I blushed even redder, then grew angry, for although I knew I had left my post—and replaced my hope of Asaf’s return with hope for a proposal from Binyamin—I felt guilty. In some ways it felt as if I were carelessly relinquishing a holy obligation that had been bestowed on me, not by the Imam nor my parents, but by some other meddling force that spelled out my fate in smoky letters in the sky.
“Achh, don’t go all gloomy on me. If Asaf were going to come back for you, he would have been here by now.” Hani rolled out another piece of dough, pounding it with the heel of her hand. “And anyway, we are no longer backward villagers of the Kingdom; we are modern girls”—she winked—“and modern girls can choose their own paths.”
The next week, Binyamin was once again invited to share our Sabbath table. Toward the end of the meal, there was some unpleasantness with my brother Menachem. Menachem had always been pious, but in Aden he had become even more so, and he was suspicious of Binyamin for shearing his earlocks. The men had been discussing the refugee problem—how the Brits claimed to be protecting the Jews of Aden, yet they wouldn’t let us immigrate freely into Palestine.
“The Brits lie,” Menachem said bitterly. “If we have rights here, then why won’t they let us enter into Palestine without quotas?” Menachem pointed to the broken cord in his guftan coat.
“I’ll tell you why. It’s because too many of us forget that the Temple wasn’t destroyed only in the past but is being destroyed even now, continuously. Our mistreatment by the British is punishment for our own spiritual laxness. Whose? Jews who don’t keep the Commandments, Jews like you who are ashamed of looking Jewish. Why don’t you wear earlocks, Binyamin? Why do you cut your hair? Such impiety is a grave dishonor.”
“I mean no offense, Menachem. And I pray whether I wear earlocks or not.”
“But I don’t see you in synagogue. Don’t tell me that you pray with the British soldiers.” His face twisted into a mocking glare. “There aren’t enough Jews in your little regiment to make a minyan.”
It was true. Binyamin rarely went to synagogue with my uncle and brothers. When he came for a Sabbath meal he didn’t walk with them around the corner to join in community devotions. He told me that sometimes he prayed privately in the mornings, and that he was more comfortable saying his prayers alone than in public. I didn’t mind. I knew that Binyamin and I were of the same opinion. We felt that Elohim was everywhere—in the black rocky shoals of Crater Harbor, on the banks of the Khoreiba River, in the symbolic break of corded hems, and in a far-off cave found by a girl who prayed in the way she was born to pray. In other words, we both believed that the forms of our prayers were ours and ours alone to fashion.
* * *
The next time Binyamin came, he didn’t have a little present but an invitation:
“Can you meet me at the fair at Sheik Othman the day after tomorrow?”
“Alone? I don’t think—”
“Bring one of your sisters-in-law, or Remelia, or one of your cousins.”
I looked into his eyes. Dark brown with flashes of amber. I was possessed by the urge to touch his face, to feel his bones under his flesh, his soft lips, those warm tuneful eyes deep set in their sockets.
“You’ll come?”
I took a deep breath.
Chapter 28
The fair at Sheik Othman was a lorry ride west from Crater. I had never been there before. When I asked Hani, her face lit up. She said, “Mara will love the festival. And we can use her as our excuse to go.”
The next day, Remelia dragged me to Hani’s house after we had finished our marketing. When we walked inside, I realized that I was being treated to a new henna application. I could smell the wheaty henna paste in the pot and the fruity rosewater in fluted glass flasks that Hani would use to wash my hands before beginning her work. My last application—over three weeks old—was a faded gray scrim. I sat down on Hani’s low cushions and thoroughly enjoyed myself as she teased me by pretending to have no idea what to draw. She flipped her hair, which was loose, as she was inside her own home and not wearing her kerchief. I noticed that it seemed even curlier than it had been before she had had Mara. She flashed her eyes and looked into my palms for a long time. When she began to draw, I saw that she was giving me the same rose and lily pattern she had given me on my very first henna. But there were other elements in it too: little waves that signified the Red Sea, and twisty mountain paths that signified our journey south, and a little corrugated swirl that was the sign of the secret angel who watched over courting couples.
