I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  A missionary who danced with the women and had a taste for music, stories and gossip? She never talked to the women about the Bible, as she knew it would be risky for her and them. It was for the men to discuss things with her and then talk to their women.

  With those thoughts in mind she began to calm down again, although she was afraid that Mahyoub’s confession of love might mean that she had to leave the village, and she desperately needed to belong to this world now she had rejected her world forever. She had cut short her visit to Denmark. The image of the red cup floating in a sea of coffee grains on the Nescafe jar, the thought of which had filled her with nostalgia on her first trip to Yemen, no longer mattered to her. She had discovered back home that she didn’t even like the taste of Nescafe anymore, nor the cold, regular rhythm of life, the way people approached their daily lives in an organized fashion, with no place for chance or spontaneity, or a little of the anarchy that acts like a thermometer to show the variations in the soul of a place.

  She had missed the dusty road where she lived, the flies that, undeterred by her annoyance, clung to her as if they needed her, the handshake of the owner of the shop opposite, although the same hand had been scooping up olives, cutting cheese, then finding its way to his nose.

  When Ingrid saw families out walking on the mountain paths and the rocks with their leopardskin markings, she knew they were getting close. She had learned the colors of the rocks and the rare species of trees by heart. Almost at once children began popping up out of nowhere shouting, “Amina! Amina!” (This was the name they had given her in the village.) The women emerged from their houses like rabbits from their burrows that had smelled a juicy carrot, and when they pulled up Mahyoub presented her with a bouquet of wilting flowers, which included sprigs of qat. They decided to leave most of the luggage in the car until nightfall, fearing that the women would pounce on it, and she got out clutching the flowers, her handbag and a few small carrier bags.

  She attempted to kiss all the children who clustered around her calling, “Amina! Amina!” and asked them to run and tell Souad that she’d arrived. “Sweets for the one who gets there first.”

  Her words acted like a fire spreading through them and they scattered and ran like a herd of brightly colored goats leaping over the bare rocky ground. More children came running from the hillsides and out of the houses. The women were waiting for her beside Souad’s house, and a few men stood diffidently to one side. The women kissed her and the men called to her, and in no time the valleys and mountains echoed with the sound of her name, and Ingrid felt like a queen again. The children fingered her dress and handbag, and the plastic carrier bags.

  Souad rushed out and threw her arms around Ingrid. She tucked a sprig of basil behind her ear, pushing back her head scarf, and reproaching her nonstop for abandoning them. An old woman tried to make herself heard above the noise: “Fatima’s having a baby in hospital.”

  Finally Souad led Ingrid into the house and the rest of the women followed them into the sitting room, which had whitewashed mud-brick walls and was bare except for a few colored cushions on the floor and a heap of clothes on the broad window ledge. The room became a hive of activity. Souad brought in plates of bread and Iftikar followed with a stainless-steel jug, from which she poured coffee into little cups.

  “Did you travel alone?” Souad asked Ingrid. “I’d like to try flying one day.”

  She flapped her arms up and down like wings, then screamed at the smaller children, who were in the process of running off with the plastic bags. As she snatched the bags away out of sight she turned to Ingrid. “I’ll drink my coffee and call you,” Ingrid told the children reassuringly. “You count from one to five in English.”

  The women began talking argumentatively about Ingrid as if she weren’t there. One said she was fatter and no longer looked like a camel without a backside because of her height. Another declared that the devil had told her Ingrid was dead. Souad silenced them by remarking jokingly, “And I thought she’d got married I Last time she was here I said to her, ‘If you get married, Iftikar and I will deliver your baby.’ And she seemed to like the idea.”

  The old woman cut in: “You and Iftikar? Only the Almighty can deliver babies. And foreigners’ wombs have stones in them. She’ll be in labor for a year. Their kids have such huge heads.”

  “Fatima’s had four children and they’ve all died,” said Souad, trying to switch the course of the conversation again.

  “A child of Amina’s wouldn’t want to come into the world in one of our houses,” said the old woman. “He’d like it better in hospital.”

  The children came back, having counted to twenty, desperate to know what was in the bags for them. They stood there, their hair matted with dust and the dry air, their feet small and black, their faces marked by the sun, chronic thirst and various skin diseases. The voice of Souad’s husband demanding to know why Ingrid hadn’t gone in to greet the men mingled with the children’s eager cries.

  The old woman turned to Ingrid: “You go in to the men! Show off your silky, clean hair to make our men happy! Poor things! Let Abu Muhammad, the blind man, smell it for a minute.”

  The other women snorted with laughter. Souad gestured warningly at them behind her back and asked Ingrid if she wanted to wash after the journey. She pulled her by the hand toward the bathroom, passing the kitchen, where there was a primus stove and a wicker tray piled with dishes. Ingrid went into the bathroom, which was dark and bare except for a jug and a bowl of stale water.

  The air was cooler there because it was tucked away among the other rooms and there was only a very small, high window, or because in a bathroom you face yourself alone and naked. Ingrid rested her head in her hands, trying to put a stop to her conflicting thoughts; she felt as if a football match were being played inside her head. She didn’t want to believe that her relationship with the village had come to an end because of Mahyoub’s behavior, but she couldn’t help thinking that its effects would linger on like a blot of ink spreading out across virgin snow. By the time she came out of the bathroom, she had decided that she was too sensitive, almost neurotic.

  She found herself giving in to Souad and entering the men’s sitting room, the most beautiful room in the house, because it floated between heaven and earth, thanks to its big windows opening onto the mountains, the cultivated terraces, the clouds and the arid land. The white silken threads of smoke had spun themselves into a cocoon, and the mouthpieces of the narghiles were like colored snakes coiling between the cushions and twisting up into men’s hands and between their puckered lips. They chewed qat from the supplies set out before them on the table, and their eyes protruded and swam in and out of focus.

  Ingrid went in, and it was unlike any other time. She was as dry as a stick of firewood, and her scarf was tied firmly over her hair. Mahyoub’s eyes were like an iron bolt locking her out of the village. She sat down awkwardly and forced a smile in response to their welcoming laughter, trying to control her feelings and behave normally, to be cheerful and tolerant, responding openly to their questions and even their teasing. She began telling them stories, from memory and from the Gospels. Usually they became like children at this point, paying rapt attention and easily affected by what they heard. She had once told them what Jesus said to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane a few hours before his crucifixion: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here and watch with me.” And how, instead of comforting him and staying awake with him, they all fell asleep and left him alone.

  Said had burst out in anger, “And they call themselves men. They’re as spineless as women.”

  Souad’s husband had compared it with the time the Prophet hid in the cave with Abu Bakr, and the dove laid its eggs at the entrance and the spider spun its web.

  “But Abu Bakr would have been scared when he heard the sound of the unbelievers’ horses,” another man had commented, “if the Prophet hadn’t reassured him and said, ‘Don’t be afraid
. God is with us.’ ”

  Ingrids discomfiture was obvious. The men couldn’t help noticing it, and whispered to one another that she was no longer with them, and that she must be going to get married in her own country and leave them.

  Ingrid steeled herself, and went to play with the children in the women’s room. She sat on the floor and made them crowd around her while she distributed pens, exercise books, pictures from European magazines, sweets, chewing gum and toys from the plastic carrier bags, ignoring the women, who had again begun talking about her as if she weren’t there and criticizing her for staying away for so many months—half a year, maybe. Ingrid did a quick mental calculation and it was hardly more than a month. Then they began demanding to know if she had got married, given that she had changed so much. “She’s drunk our water,” said Souad dismissively, “so she’ll only be able to marry a man from this village.”

  Should she get up at this point, and run away from their wagging tongues, or tell them the truth, very calmly, and ask them to stop behaving in this manner, tell them they must understand that there were women who weren’t made for marriage and childbirth, and that there was no reason to pity them? But she did nothing of the sort. She was shocked by her rebellious feelings, the simmering tension that made her snatch the sprig of basil from behind her ear and lay it beside her, muttering, “The basil’s very strong. It’s giving me a headache.”

  The children’s laughter gradually restored her equanimity and she picked up the basil and put it in her lap.

  Her eyes looked beyond the door of the room, beyond the countryside that was visible from the window, and she heard a dog howling as if someone was tormenting it. The women’s voices seemed to be coming from a distance and the men’s voices rumbled up from deep inside a cave.

  She sat where she was, refusing to go back into the men’s sitting room as she had promised them, even though Souad’s husband cleared his throat insistently and spat on the floor outside the women’s door. Souad asked her if she was ill. She shook her head. “You must be homesick, then,” said Souad.

  But Ingrid was thinking of going back to Sanaa. She wanted to be alone to try and resolve her feelings; here she was unable to question them or put a brake on them. They had taken hold of her and were rocking her to and fro until her heart pounded like a church bell. They were like a big clove of garlic that flew out of the mortar when you tried to crush it. She couldn’t actually blame Mahyoub for spoiling their friendship and thinking of his own interests, because in a way she had done the same in her dealings with all of them. The thought filled her with anguish and she began reproaching herself: if only she hadn’t smiled and laughed and joked so much, this wouldn’t have happened. She should have been content to talk to Souad and the other women and build up relationships with them. She shouldn’t have let herself get sidetracked when she was telling the story of Mary Magdalene, or Aisha, Mother of the Believers, and the Prophet’s wives. If only she hadn’t answered …

  Eventually Ingrid lay down next to Souad, despite these tiresome thoughts, which had kept her up long after Souad had despaired of talking to her till dawn, as they had done in the past, and was fast asleep and snoring. They used to discuss a variety of topics, even though sometimes what each understood was restricted to a few sentences, or a couple of anecdotes. Nevertheless, they had talked on as if talking to themselves.

  Ingrid dressed in a leisurely fashion, although Souad had been up for some time. She pulled on her skirt, which she had dropped beside the mattress when she slept, and slipped out onto the balcony. She had been trying not to pay too much attention to the view, in case it was what had made her hurry back to Yemen, but now she couldn’t help being transfixed by it: the mist was rising from the mountaintops and floating down into the valleys; the smoke bore the smell of wild plants and wood toward her from the houses, which were like brightly colored cubes scattered over the terraces, and she imagined the fires being lit under the coffee jugs and cooking pots, and in the clay ovens.

  Ingrid’s eyes alighted on the yard of a house where smoke was rising from the oven and she tried to make out the woman baking bread and preparing breakfast there, marveling at how all the women found time to dress in their finery: loose trousers, dress, cummerbund, necklaces and bright scarves so that they looked like oddly shaped, multicolored flowers. She caught herself peering around for Mahyoub’s car. She wanted to send him a message asking him to give her a lift back to Sanaa. When she eventually noticed it, parked under a solitary tree, she thought of going to wake him, then thrust the idea from her mind as if it were infectious, furious with herself for having entertained it at all. She moved away from the window and paced around the room. But had she not gone to his house before, when Souad was ill, and almost dragged him out of bed?

  Ingrid had been on her second visit to the village, invited by Souad, whom she had just met. Souad’s warm smile and overwhelming generosity had been hard to resist, but she was also encouraged by the fact that Souad’s husband was away in Saudi Arabia at the time. As soon as she got out of the car, which had brought her all the way from Sanaa, the children crowded around her, repeating Souad’s name. She nodded her head, smiling with pleasure at the welcome. She didn’t pick up on the anxiety and tension in the words and faces, nor understand what it meant when a woman came running and pointing to Souad’s house and repeating Souad’s name within earshot of the driver of the foreign mission’s car. But neither Ingrid nor the driver understood and Ingrid took it to be a further expression of welcome, until she finally went into Souad’s house and found her in bed under piles of her own and the neighbors’ clothes, although at that time of year the heat rose up and hit you, even from the cracks in the walls. Souad wasn’t moving except to throw up helplessly, having given up hope of controlling her diarrhea. Ingrid understood from the women who were sitting dejectedly around her, taking turns putting hot vinegar poultices on her forehead, that she had been like this for several days. Ingrid hurried out onto the porch and saw the mission car disappearing down the winding mountain road, reduced to the size of a small insect. She looked around her, unable to believe that there was nothing she could do but sit there like the grim-faced women around Souad. She went inside and asked if there was a telephone anywhere nearby, then went back outside and looked in despair and disbelief at the emptiness, overcome by a feeling of loathing for this silent countryside. Suddenly she noticed a car parked down the valley beside a house. She stared hard and rubbed her eyes, as they say in stories. She rushed back in, gesturing toward the car, praying that they wouldn’t tell her it had broken down. The women gathered around her and began shaking their heads disapprovingly, and one of them spat on the floor. Finally Ingrid understood that the car belonged to Mahyoub, Souad’s brother. She tried to find out why nobody had thought of turning to him for help, but was irritated by them talking all at once in loud voices and beating their breasts, and hurried out to find some children to go and fetch him.

  Ingrid imagined that Mahyoub would come rushing over, but the children returned, saying he was asleep and didn’t want to wake up. Ingrid flushed bright red and, seething with rage, she was off, almost hurling herself down the mountainside, slipping and sliding over the rocks and stones, surrounded by children whose shouting made the women they passed look up from their baking or washing.

  She found herself in the middle of a room made bright with cheap rugs on the walls and floor, curtains at the windows and cushions and backrests around the sides. One huddled mass of color moved and sat up. She told him in English that Souad was nearly dying of dehydration and that they must get her to the hospital.

  She couldn’t believe the cool indifference in his voice. He told her that Souad wasn’t strong enough to walk and that it would be difficult to carry her down in her condition as her house had been built at the top of the mountain and it was a fair climb to reach it. Ingrid wondered if he was still half asleep, or didn’t understand the gravity of his sister’s condition. She explained the po
sition to him slowly and deliberately, and Mahyoub repeated what he had already said to her, also slowly and deliberately, and was clearly wide awake.

  “What will you tell her husband if your sister dies?” shouted Ingrid. “How will you be able to show your face around here? What will you say to people? ‘My sister’s house was on top of the mountain. It was a difficult climb, and her husband was away’?”

  Mahyoub had finally given in, climbed out of bed and gone to call the men to help him get Souad. They wrapped her in a blanket and took her off to the hospital. Ingrid understood from the episode that if the sick person was a woman it mattered less if she lived or died. She still remembered visiting a graveyard and noticing that women had one headstone and men two, but even though she recognized that life was harsh here, she had never managed to understand Mahyoub’s behavior toward his sister. The resemblance between the two had startled her, especially when Mahyoub covered his head, which made him look as if he had stepped straight out of a storybook. His head was flat from behind as a result of being swaddled so tightly as a newborn baby, and his features were delicate: he had small eyes like two black pearls, and a short, firm nose; he was slenderly built and had short fingers, which looked as if they had been melted down with use. He parted his curly hair to one side and smothered it in Brylcreem. He was proud of his hairstyle and when Ingrid asked him why he put Brylcreem on it he merely glanced in the car mirror and slicked it down. He was the only man who didn’t spit in front of her to moisten his mouth when the qat had made it dry.

  Ingrid tried not to let Souad, so eager for information, know what kind of state she was in. But how could she hide her annoyance, which always attacked her throat and chest in the form of red blotches, when she was up against Souad’s ultrasensitive radar system? Souad could pick up little wandering veins in the eyes, faint lines contracting the forehead, a slight, tense clenching of the fingers, and above all the inflection of the voice: did it fall gently on the ear, or lacerate the eardrum? Was the mouth slack when chewing food or properly closed? Were there signs of frequent swallowing of saliva?