by Nomi Eve
The next few days passed in a blur. I barely remember them. But I do remember that my grief was all-consuming. I had been betrayed by the two people I’d thought I loved most in the world. Asaf, who had never really returned, and Hani, who had skipped into my life, taught me to read, to dance and draw and laugh like her, and had now dared to teach me a different lesson—one I would never surpass her at, because we were fashioned of different stuff entirely.
* * *
The morning of the “appointment,” I took a knife and sterilized it with arak. Then, standing at the water basin, I cut the elements off my skin, by slashing straight through the line of “text.” I opened up a little channel of blood that gutted the message Hani was sending to Asaf, leaving it illegible. The wound I made in my hand wasn’t so deep, but deep enough to bleed until my head spun. I winced as I dabbed at my hand with peppermint liniment, and then I bound it up with straps of clean linen.
I kept the appointment too. I knew where Hani kept her extra key. I unlocked the door. Where is Mara? I wondered. Later I learned that she was at Edna’s. Edna was not complicit, but had been duped into playing a small part—minding Mara so that Hani and Asaf could meet in secret. Mr. Haza was in his warehouse on Steamer Point, so they had the house to themselves. I stood outside the bedroom door and listened to their lovemaking, their moans, their breathy giggles and groans. I opened the door slowly. My husband’s back was turned to me. My cousin’s long hair hung in loose, wild curls. Her face was distorted in the ugly throws of passion.
It took them a few moments to realize that they were being watched, but when they did, they seemed to lose dimensionality and become flat like the people in Masudah’s pictures. Then they grew real again, springing away from each other. Hani turned red, Asaf grew ashen. They covered their nakedness. Begged forgiveness. Flung themselves at my feet. Hani cried—big heaving sobs. Asaf couldn’t look me in the eye. He got dressed awkwardly, and then approached me, touched me on the shoulder, and when I flinched, he dropped his hand and his eyes grew dark. I wondered if I had married a real boy or a clay one, a creature of mud and filth and water.
Hamama was next door tending to her husband, who was home suffering from a bad toothache. When she heard the commotion she rushed over. I suppose it was her husband who fetched David Haza at his teacher’s workshop, just around the corner. When David rushed up the stairs, I ran down them. I don’t remember how I spent the next few hours. I suppose I wandered through Crater. What happened next at Hani’s house? In one version of the story, David stood in the middle of the room and cursed Asaf three times—twice with his voice, and then he raised his hand as if to strike him, but instead made a series of movements in the air, as if he were drawing something with his fingers, and then let his hand drop to his side. “He fought with names,” Hamama said, “like a Habbani warrior. Conjuring weapons out of the letters themselves.” Was Asaf stricken? Did he feel one of the many names of Elohim piercing his heart or spearing his belly? I don’t know; perhaps he felt it on the inside, but he put up no resistance. In another version of the story, David entered the house enraged and went to strike Asaf, but Asaf caught his hand, and what would have been a beating ended up a queer embrace, both locked together in stasis, neither freeing himself nor wounding the other. And in yet another version of the story, Hani turned herself into a filly and Asaf rode her out of Crater, deep into the hills, before David could confront them.
We later learned that their affair had begun almost immediately after Asaf came to Aden, before we were even wed. They caught each other’s eyes, flirted, and then, during a festive meal, dared to kiss in Hani’s kitchen. Not a little peck of a kiss, but a “kiss of Solomon and Sheba”—the kind of kiss that lasts so long it becomes legend. They made love on the dunes behind Commissioner Reilly’s stables. She brushed herself off, straightened her kerchief, and returned to David a sullied wife. And Asaf stole me from Binyamin, married me, made love to me with the stink of their coupling on his sex, though I naively mistook it for the salty tang of our own long-promised love. I was nothing but a pawn in their shameful game—an artful hide-and-seek they played not only behind my back but also on my hands and feet. At my wedding, I had let her draw on my entire body, turning me into an elaborate brocade, like one of Aunt Rahel’s beautiful tapestries. Once I knew the truth, I realized that even that first night, my husband had not belonged to me. As a bride I bore the scripture of betrayal on my own body. In all my time as a wife, I was pasul, a girl-parchment inscribed with so many false words, like a Torah written by a demon or by a scribe with bad intentions.
* * *
The day after I found them together, Asaf flung himself at my feet.
“I am unworthy,” he said, “but if you could forgive me, then perhaps we can all live together. I will take Hani as a second wife. She can get a divorce from David Haza. Surely he will grant it to her. We will all live together. I will be your husband still.” He repeated himself several times, each time with wilting emphasis. “You will always be my first, and she will be my second wife. We can take our trip, just as we planned, and when we return we can live in our house together, the three of us, with little Mara.”
I stood and stared at him. I didn’t speak for a long time. I knew that he feared Uncle Barhun’s wrath, and that he groveled in the hope that my forgiveness would soften the damage he had done to his prospects.
I didn’t know what to say. But then I heard voices in my head, voices I recognized though I had never heard them before. Oh, how was it I didn’t know they could speak? My little idols. They came to me from the past and told me the truth—and what they told me I repeated to my husband.
“Asaf Damari,” I seethed, “you were never my true husband. I have betrayed myself and another much more than you and Hani have betrayed me.”
I heard myself screaming. And I think I may have slapped him (with my good hand), raking my nails across his face. After he left, when I looked into the mirror, I saw that I had turned into a caracal, with claws as sharp as my newfound hatred and teeth in my mouth as deadly as my spite.
When we were just children and I had seen him riding Jamiya in the dunes below my cave, I had thought him a wild boy, a beautiful creature who had crossed from one side of nature to the other—a Jew on a horse, a boy who was speed and thunder and sun and light and sand. But now I was the wild one. I tore through our possessions, ruining all tokens of our life together, smashing wedding gifts, even setting fire to his clothes, which smoldered in the cooking stove and filled the kitchen with a rancid black smoke whose smell lingered long after. Remelia, Sultana, and Yerushalmit took turns sitting with me, but they were wise enough to let me unravel my marriage the way I needed to. With his pockets full of Uncle Barhun’s money, Asaf had given me showy gifts—a lazem necklace, a pair of dangling rupee earrings. I flung them across the room and trampled the string of beads he had presented to me on our wedding night. When I came across the old amulet he had given me so many years before, I was more methodical. I went to the kitchen, got a knife, and pried the wooden disk from the leather backing. What name had I been expecting? El Shamayim, God of the Heavens? El Rachoom, Merciful God? Eyeh Asher Eyeh, I Am That I Am? Ein Sof, the Infinite One? Or maybe there was an angel name inside: Raziel, Keeper of Secrets? Raphael, Healer of Hearts? Cassiel, Angel of Solitude and Tears? All those years I had wondered so many times. But I had never pried it open. I let the leather backing fall to the floor, where it clattered in a tiny breathless thump. The wooden disk was cold in my hand. But the amulet was empty. No old piece of paper fluttered out. Empty. All along I had been tricked into thinking its rough magic could protect me, bind me to my beloved, shield my heart from harm.
* * *
Hani came to her father’s door and begged to see me. She prostrated herself in front of me and begged my forgiveness. I would like to say that I forgave her, but about this one thing I am certain. I did not.
I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t for a single second waver. I said,
“Hani, I know what you did. No, I am not talking about what you did with my husband; I am neither crude enough nor stupid enough to lay that shame before you. You have shamed yourself plenty. What I am talking about is this.”
I held up my hand and showed her my bandages.
Her face blanched. “How . . . ?”
“Your code? I found it years ago in Qaraah in your little bag of precious things.”
“You never told me.”
“I never thought I would have to.”
“It is not what you think.”
“It is worse than what I think, Hani. It is what I believe, and believing springs from a well deeper than thought. Thought runs dry, but belief runs as deep as Noah’s floodwaters.”
“But Adela, I—”
“Stop. Don’t say another word. It is my turn to speak. I know that you used your art for treachery. And that you turned me—your bosom friend—into your enemy. What do I believe? I believe that you are dead to me, and so is Asaf. Go forth from Aden without my blessing.”
I slammed the door behind her, and collapsed sobbing onto the floor. I swore at her retreating shadow that I would live the rest of my life without having to shoulder the burden of her cruel charms.
* * *
For a long time afterward there was much whispered discussion. Careless was the word bandied about. Everyone wondered why they had made love in the morning in Hani’s house. Surely they knew that they could be discovered. After all, either David or Mr. Haza could have come home unexpectedly. I overheard Yerushalmit and Sultana talking about this when they didn’t know I was listening. “How could they be so careless”—Sultana finished Yerushalmit’s thought—“in your own house? I would have thought they would have taken greater lengths to hide their treachery.”
But their carelessness was never voiced in front of me. By discussing it, by wondering over it, it seemed as if my sisters-in-law were asking, “Why weren’t they sneakier? Why didn’t they do a better job of hiding their lust?” Really the carelessness wasn’t in the choosing of the place, but in the simple fact they were misplacing their marriages, as if the vows they had spoken under the wedding canopy were little things to be lost, like socks or keys.
And they weren’t the only ones. After all, I had misplaced Binyamin, the boy who really loved me. Careless. Yes, we all were. Very, very careless.
I had waited for Asaf for years, but our marriage was dissolved in the blink of an eye. Mr. Haza testified to the triumvirate of rabbis that Asaf had lain with Hani. Asaf himself confessed his guilt to the Bet Din. My marriage was neatly torn asunder, as was Hani’s. Hani and Asaf were married soon after in a shameful ceremony with no festivity, attended only by Aunt Rahel and Uncle Barhun. And as for poor David Haza? He kept a brave face at first, but once he realized that his marriage was over, he was bereft. He moved in with his father, came down with typhus, and had to be hospitalized. When he recovered, his hands shook and he could no longer write the name of God. A scribe must write the name of Elohim in its entirety, and if he makes an error, the entire page of scripture must be buried in a sacred repository of holy books. Because of his shaky hands, David had to leave his studies, and would never again write a single word of Torah. His teacher mourned for him as if he had lost a son. When my uncle went to beg Mr. Haza’s forgiveness for Hani and Asaf’s treachery, Mr. Haza beat his own his chest with one of his fat hands and said, “We will be brothers forever, you and I. But my poor son has a broken heart. What is a father to do? What should I do, Barhun?” He dissolved in tears and let my uncle embrace him.
Chapter 33
Auntie Aminah once told me that I cried for the first year of my life. No one could calm me; I cried even in my sleep. I think that perhaps those tears were an early payment of water on a debt of sorrow that I owed myself, for I found I could not cry in the aftermath of my misfortune. Who was I now? Who would I be? Hereafter my arms would be forever empty. Like the dye mistress, I would have no babes to suckle and no husband to call my own. No, I didn’t shed a tear. But every morning I awoke spent, bitter, and empty, with the feeling that I had cried tears that shook me to the bone.
* * *
Several weeks after my marriage was dissolved, I forced myself to go back to the camp at Sheik Othman. I went alone. As far as I knew, Hani was in seclusion. The Jews of Aden were a conservative lot, and no one respected a woman who stole another’s husband. She was shunned on the streets of Crater and in our sacred spaces—the synagogue, the ritual bath, and in the market. I knew I wouldn’t see her at the camp, and I suppose I was hoping to see a bit of myself there, reflected in the eyes of my students. Immediately I was rewarded. A little girl with huge gray-blue eyes put her hand over mine so that I could show her the shape of shin——the letter that made the susurrus ssss sound, and also the shhh sound that hushes a baby. Hani had told me that shin originally signified an arrow’s bow, but now it looked to me like a harp with too few strings, an instrument capable of playing only broken music. I must have hesitated. My hand must have shaken or hovered. But my pupil squeezed my hand, and then squeezed it again. I felt a warmth flood through my bosom, and I began to draw again. I realized that even though her hand was on my hand, this little refugee was really covering my heart, my heart that was suffering from exposure.
I rode the lorry home to Aden with my head against the cool window. The entire way, I thought about the letter shin. It is a magical letter, as it stands for one of the most ancient names of Elohim. Shin is Shaddai, , God of the Breast and God of the Mountains. Shaddai was the name by which our Fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew to call on Elohim. Shaddai, God of the Breast, was kin to Asherah, the One of the Womb. As the lorry rounded the bend that would take us through the Main Pass into Crater, my hand fell on my flat belly and I cringed, thinking that it was both a blessing and a curse that I had stoppered up my womb like the drain of a tub. What if I had been pregnant? Would Asaf have betrayed me even then?
A few weeks later, Hani and Asaf departed Aden on a Dutch steamer bound for Alexandria. I didn’t see them go, and so their departure, like everything else that transpired since Asaf returned to Aden, seemed unreal to me, as if it had all happened to some other group of people, strangers I’d heard about but never met. They left Mara in Nogema’s care. Hani claimed my place on the journey Asaf and I were supposed to take together. But they had no intention of returning to Aden, where they knew they would always receive a frosty welcome from the community. Instead they let it be known that they would make their home in Mocha, on the western coast of the Kingdom. Once there, they would send for Mara to join them.
In the beginning, relations were strained between me and my cousins. But not long after Hani and Asaf sailed, Nogema, Hamama, and Edna gave me a special henna. It was, they said, a henna of penitence, for though they could not apologize for their sister’s sins, they could inscribe me with their own picture psalms of remorse, regret, shame, and sorrow for what I had suffered. When they were finished, my arms were covered from fingertip to shoulder, and my feet were covered with breathtaking designs, from soles to the tops of my shins. I looked at myself in the mirror and was reminded of what Hani looked like the first time I saw her, when she came to Qaraah embossed like a princess under her clothes. I forgave them, even though they had not sinned against me. I forgave them, and loved them like sisters once again.
* * *
In the years that followed my failed marriage, I lived a quiet life. Remelia married a teacher at the King George V School, and I moved in with them. Quickly, they filled the house with three delightful babies who distracted me with their cherub lips and chubby toes and constant need for attention. I refused any attempts by my sisters-in-law or cousins to play matchmaker. When I wasn’t helping Remelia run her busy home, I volunteered as a regular teacher in the camp at Sheik Othman. I taught many little girls to read, including Mara, Hani’s left-behind daughter, who sometimes came with me and eventually became my helper in the camp. Mara had her mother’s quick
wit and dark eyes, but she also had her father’s innate goodness. I grew to love her, and to love feeling her small hand in my own. She, of course, never truly understood where I really belonged in the orbit of grown-ups that made up her universe. She felt the gravitational tug of her missing mother and it made her walk closer to the earth, and laugh less and smile less than other girls. To her, I was always “Cousin Adela” and I took comfort in the fact that in her eyes I was not a woman who had been rejected or betrayed, as I was in the eyes of others. When Mara was most sad, I told her stories of her mother and me when we were children in Qaraah. Of how Hani taught me henna, and laughter and letters, and just about everything else.
The camp at Sheik Othman was a saving place for me. Hearing those little girls say the letters and sound out words never failed to return me to myself when I was most lost. On good days, I smiled and laughed with those girls. I took pleasure in the notion that I was helping to prepare them for modern lives in Palestine. That the words they learned from me would help them author their own lives far away, under the good glare of a different sun.
* * *
At first, the family heard from Asaf and Hani sporadically. Three months after their departure, Edna received a letter from Hani and Asaf from Port Said. Five months later, my aunt and uncle opened one from Alexandria. A year later, Nogema had a letter from Cyprus. After that we didn’t hear from them for over a year, and then we got word that they went to Istanbul, then back to Cyprus, and then to Corfu. Aunt Rahel opened a final letter dated November 1940, two months after Hitler invaded Poland. By then we were regularly getting reports of the darkness that was descending on Europe. There were those who never believed a word of news from the outside world and treated the stories spread by ship captains with detachment, as if they were speaking of events occurring on a planet as distant and unlikely as Mars. After that final letter from Corfu in 1940, no one heard from Hani again.
