I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Also by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Women of Sand and Myrrh

  The Story of Zahra

  Beirut Blues

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1998

  Copyright © 1998 by Hanan al-Shaykh

  English translation © 1998 by Doubleday,

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  ANCHOR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks

  of Random House, Inc.

  All of the characters in this book are fictitous, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  “I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops,” “The Funfair,”

  “The Keeper of the Virgins,” and “The Scratching of Angels’ Pens” were previously published by Allen & Unwin in 1994.

  I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops was rendered into English by

  Catherine Cobham with the author’s cooperation.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  Shaykh, Hanān.

  [Aknusu al-shams ‘an al-shtūh. English]

  I sweep the sun off rooftops : stories / Hanan al-Shaykh ;

  translated by Catherine Cobham. — 1st Anchor Books ed.

  p. cm.

  I. Cobham, Catherine. II. Title.

  PJ7862.H356A7613 1998

  892.7′36—dc21 98-15876

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76662-5

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v3.1

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Season of Madness

  The Spirit To Engaged Now (Do You Want to Hold?)

  The Marriage Fair

  The Land of Dreams

  Place de la Catastrophe

  I Don’t Want to Grow Up

  I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops

  The Funfair

  The White Peacock of Holland Park

  An Unreal Life

  The Scratching of Angels’ Pens

  Cupid Complaining to Venus

  Qut al-Qulub

  The Holiday

  Do You Know Someone Who Can Teach Me the Piano?

  The Keeper of the Virgins

  The Land of the Sun

  About the Author

  I fell upon my mother-in-law, biting her nose. I had always hated her nose. The day before I had banged the door in her face and emptied the rubbish bin on her from the balcony as she went to get in the car and drive away. I scattered frangipani blossoms over her and sang to her and put a garland of jasmine around her neck, pulling her toward me and kissing her face and hands and her silk scarf. I took the scarf off her and spread it out on the floor and asked her why we did not hire one of the horse-drawn carriages printed on it. Some of the time she tried to escape from me and other times she composed herself and made some effort to bring me to my senses, then despaired and looked up at the ceiling, pleading with God to tell her what she had done to deserve a mad daughter-in-law. “I only chose her as a wife for my son because she came from one of the best families,” she protested.

  My response was to kick my legs high in the air, demanding to know why I felt so hot, and praying for ice cubes to cool me down, holding out my skirt to receive them. My husband rushed over and tried to pull my skirt over my bare legs and I struggled and bit his hand. All he said as he steered me toward my room was “Is this really how you want us to live, Fatin?”

  The two of them finally pushed me into my room and I sat staring at my reflection in the mirror and laughed at my appearance in disbelief. I heard them commiserating with each other over the state of the house, his bad luck in marrying me, and the children’s distress at seeing their mother losing her mind.

  His mother suggested taking me to a doctor locally, while he favored sending me back to Lebanon. They debated whether this would provoke too much of a scandal, then he pronounced that I would be a source of shame whichever they did, for I already was, even within those four walls: I wore no protection during my periods; I calculated how many eyelashes I had, using a pencil to separate them; I stuck flowers in the front of my shoes; I threw things away regardless of their value; I had tried to jump out of the window and fly, and run away in a truck transporting ivory, clinging on to the tusks until the driver found me and handed me over to the police.

  I stumbled along in my madness, never meeting my real self except when my eyes fell on the watercolors, which the strange light in this African country had inspired me to paint; it was a light that broke the hold of the sun’s burning rays for a short time at daybreak and dusk. I often wondered if I should tear these paintings down from the walls, in case they were what made my husband keep hoping that the old Fatin would return. (She was the girl who could not even say yes when she was asked to be his bride because, as well as being shy, she was dazzled by the fact that the offer was coming from a member of a wealthy emigrant family.) What really happened was that I did not think too much about whether to accept or refuse. If I finally said yes, it was probably because I was distracted by his mother’s gold bracelet, wondering what logic could possibly lie behind the choice of the charms dangling from it: an acorn, a house, a heart, a mountain, the Lebanese flag and a tortoise.

  All I could hear now was my mother-in-law—she who was used to finding an answer to everything—questioning, scolding, complaining because he could not decide what to do about me, while he merely repeated, “God help us,” in resigned tones.

  I felt more hopeful when the doctor came. He asked them to describe how my condition had worsened and if some incident had sparked it. “The sea,” answered my mother-in-law. “It began that time she went to the sea and it poured with rain.”

  Then he turned to me and asked me my age. “The age of madness,” I replied.

  This answer ensured that he never addressed me again. He asked them if there was any mental illness in my family. When they both shook their heads, I interrupted and said they were lying: they knew about my aunt; the cause of her madness remained a mystery and she had been moved from one psychiatric unit to another. I described how my mother had made me take her a dish of tabbouleh one day, and how she had pushed me against the wall and forced me to swap clothes with her, threatening to kill me if I opened my mouth. She had gone home in my place, slept in my bed, gone to school, played with my friends, married a man living in Africa and had hundreds of children with him. Although she visited Lebanon often, she had never come to visit me in the clinic. I fell silent briefly when I noticed the doctor leaving the room, then renewed my efforts, and screamed and howled and meowed and brayed and struck my face and banged on the window.

  The saga continued and I could no longer bear the passing of time. I was worn out by the waiting and the madness. I decided that in order to resolve the situation I would have to develop my madness and become dangerous.

  “She’s crazy. The doctor’s confirmed it,” shouted my mother-in-law. “I guessed as much. Even when she was sane, her eyes had signs of it. I’ll find you another wife once we’ve sent her back to her family. Let them pay for her to be treated. The children will be all right at their boarding schools.” Then she lowered her voice and said very quietly, “Marriage is like everything else in life—a matter of luck. Who says a worm-eaten apple can’t look red and juicy from the outside?”

  I listened intently as I floated above the wooden floor, and sank, and tried to rise again. His voice drowned out hers, accusing her of being hard and selfish. He swore he would never marry
again, because he was not going to leave me: he could not forget how I used to be when I was well. Marriage was for better or worse. He would have me cured. He loved me, he would never make me look ridiculous by sending me back to my family. He would stand by me. I shook my head, rejecting his compassion, floating farther away. His mother was temporarily infected by my madness and screamed maniacally at him: “I’m telling you she’ll kill you. She’ll poison you. Shell tear you apart with her teeth. Can’t you see she’s turned into a crazy bitch? Shell burn you alive, or stick a knife in you while you’re asleep.”

  Encouraged by her reaction, I became more absorbed in my madness, rising and falling, then floating again, borne along by the sweat that was pouring off me. I heard him shouting back at her, pushing her away, and vowing not to abandon me even if I did take a knife to him. She exploded with rage, trying to make him see that he must extricate himself from my power, for I had procured charms from the magicians at the seaside, where I used to go sketching, and had planned out his fate for him.

  “I’ll never leave her. Never,” he interrupted. “I’d give up the world for her.”

  When I heard this, I directed my energies to calming myself down, and took the last escape route left open to me: I washed my face, tied back my hair, fastened my robe modestly around me as I used to in the past, and went out to them in the filigree sandals that I had not worn since I went mad. I sat facing them, utterly composed, disregarding their eyes, which stood out from their faces with lives of their own, but full of panic. My calmness made them flex their arms and legs, ready to ward off any sudden attacks, or run for their lives.

  But I hesitated, not knowing where to start. Should I tell them that I had been content like any wife, firmly convinced that life was marriage, children, running a house, sex from time to time, and secretly retiring inside myself when I wanted to question my feelings, or a certain melody made me happy or sad? I had begun to snatch some time to draw and paint, and eventually another man had come into my life. He used to watch me regularly as I sat facing the sea, trying to transfer the color of it onto the paper in front of me, and would pick up everything I left behind me, even raking up the colored chalk dust with his fingernails, seeing this scavenging as hugely important. I could feel that my life had changed, and everything around me began to have some meaning: the temperature of the seawater lapping around my feet; his liking for the misshapen nail on my little toe; the glass of fruit juice in his hand; silence interspersed with talk, sleep with anxiety. The time came when he could pass his hand over my face without touching it, and I would feel a great warmth suffusing me and my heart beating faster, and when I stopped being able to force myself to leave these sensations behind as I reluctantly entered the other world which was in full swing at home. Although all aspects of this world—from the salt cellar and pepper pot to the place of my burial when my time was up—ran through everything I did, everything except breathing freely from the heart, I decided to loose the threads from the cocoon of marriage one by one, taking great care to ensure that none snapped or changed color. What I really wanted was for my husband to discover that he had no choice but to leave me.

  I began by handing him the soap, pretending to forget that this is said to be a sign of an imminent parting. I kissed his eyes while he slept, disregarding the song that says, “Don’t kiss me on my eyes, or tomorrow we’ll be separated”; I took care that the toes of his shoes were always pointing toward the front door. Nevertheless, my husband continued to live his life as normal both at home and at work, so I had no choice but to make him revolted by me. Without much effort I turned myself into a human dustbin: I drank milk as if it were water, although I was allergic to it. I encouraged my guts to swell up with it, and with the cabbage, cauliflower and pulses that I also ate in large quantities. I swallowed garlic cloves as if they were pieces of chocolate, crunched onions as if they were, sweet-smelling carrots, and then went to bed without brushing my teeth. While I was waiting for my husband to join me, I belched incessantly, releasing the pent-up gases whose odor spread through the surrounding air.

  However, I always found my husband at my side when I woke up in the morning. He stayed, despite my acts of rebellion and constant questioning of my life with him. Why did nature not do its job and make him disappear, or rescue me from the pit I was in and cast me out into the world? When nothing changed, and after periods of thought that were agitated, calm, logical and reckless by turns, I decided upon madness.

  But I did not disclose all this to them now; I found myself confessing to them in a low voice, articulating very clearly, that I was not mad, but afraid and ashamed because I had fallen in love with another man and wanted a divorce so that I could marry him. I asked them to forgive me for pretending to be mad because my husband’s good-heartedness and generous nature had stopped me from telling the truth, which was that I had never loved him all the time I lived with him and had feared that the knowledge of this might fester inside him, a wound refusing to heal. My conscience had eaten away at me on account of my unfaithfulness to him, and I had believed that my contrived madness would prompt him to remove me from his life without any qualms—indeed, he would welcome the prospect. I added that I was determined to ask for a divorce but wanted nothing from them, not even the Beirut apartment, which was in my name. As I said this, I realized that my mother-in-law was the one I feared most. Then I forced myself to look up and confront them. All the time I was giving an honest account of myself I had been staring at the floor. Now I fixed my eyes on their faces to prove to them how strong and brave I was, whatever their reactions might be. I waited for one of them to respond, expecting reproaches, physical blows, retribution of some kind, convincing myself that I would escape from them, regardless of the outcome.

  Then his mother was clasping my hand, twisting her mouth into a grimace of pity and murmuring, “She’s crazy, poor thing. Nothing can be done for her.”

  My husband collapsed, burying his face in his hands and repeating sadly, “Poor thing, she’s so young. I swear to God, I’ll take her anywhere in the world to find a cure for her.”

  Even though the occasion was so important to me, I tried to avoid it. I woke up in the night, boiling hot, certain that I had a temperature. I wanted desperately to be ill enough to have to stay in bed, to shiver and have aching joints and a headache so bad that I could think of nothing else but how to relieve the pain. But my daughter’s call from the States meant I didn’t have the opportunity to play the sick ostrich. My conversation with her forced me out of bed, and I dragged myself across the room and pulled a dress out from the bottom of the wardrobe, where winter and summer clothes lay jumbled together with shoes, handbags and jewelry.

  I chose a dress my husband used to like on me, and thought how my daughter’s absence had made it easier for me to live in this mess. I blessed it as I saw the empty hangers and thought of the creeping chaos in various parts of the house.

  I wanted to be able to wake up happy after good dreams or panic-stricken after nightmares with no one watching me and telling me to cheer up all the time. It was too easy for people to dismiss the angry or the vulnerable with phrases like “Take it easy” or “You’ll have forgotten about it before long,” I thought, as I pulled the dress on. It was many months since I had worn it and I felt throttled by it; I tore it off as if I were detaching a leech from my skin, dropped it on the floor and burst into tears. Then I picked it up and put it back on, forcing myself to be calm: I was trying to keep my thoughts under control but I couldn’t help imagining my husband looking out on the gathering from a house or a car. The idea made me desperate, but unexpectedly my thoughts took a more positive turn, and I felt the urge to take some trouble over my appearance so that I wouldn’t have to listen to my family saying, “What have you been doing to yourself?” or “If only she’d do something about herself. It’s hard to believe we raised her.”

  Today the street where my mother used to live was going to be named after her. She had been one of th
e leading figures on the stage, famous for her acting and her extraordinary personality, even though she had been married and divorced four times and her fifth husband was roughly my age. Her talent and the fact that she was serious about her work had saved her from attacks on her private life. I had been told that a representative of the government would be there and someone from the ministry of arts. I wondered how they were going to fix the nameplate on the wall. Life was unfair. They appreciated creative artists either when they had one foot in the grave or after they were dead. My mother had not taken it in when she had been given an award for her acting, even though she had still been alive as far as those around her were concerned. In her own mind, she had as good as died when she learned she had an incurable illness. I remember holding her hand and thinking it felt like a bunch of bones. She had begged me not to let anyone come into the room.

  Everything about her had changed, even her facial features, to the extent that she no longer recognized herself in the mirror. When I put the award down beside her, I thought she was snoring or giggling until she murmured, “I’d gladly exchange it for one hour without pain.” Then I realized she had been crying.

  I stood in the street, enjoying the company of theatrical Friends of my mother whom I had known since childhood, and was glad that I hadn’t managed to be ill, until various members of my family started to appear. Among them were my mother’s brothers, who had broken off relations with her for many years following her decision to go on the stage, and then made it up with her when she became famous. There they were, sipping their fruit juice proudly and reveling in their status. They tried to approach me and I avoided their eyes, afraid that they would invite me back to their homes after the ceremony.

  I had no desire to hear them telling me how uneasy they were at the kind of life I was living. I was among friends, people my mother had been on stage with and all her ex-husbands; the traffic in the surrounding streets and curious children, who wanted to drink the juice but had no idea what was going on, provided a protective blanket of sound. But I felt the sting of their sidelong glances, and my conversation faltered as I wondered whether to pretend to look overwhelmed by the event or cheerful and relaxed, and wavered uneasily between the two. Although the idea horrified me, I couldn’t help scanning the mostly familiar faces, then raising my eyes to the windows and balconies searching for my husband. He was out of my mind only briefly when the audience burst into enthusiastic applause.