I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  But the dry, unemotional behavior of Mustafa’s friend was spoiling the serenity of these moments, which were also dense with ambiguous feelings. He moved between a table in the corner, where he had spread out his blueprints, and another where he had put a thermos, a teapot and a bunch of mint. She tried to ignore his movements so that the place would remain outside space and time, and did not understand why his presence was becoming so intrusive. She wanted to be on good terms with him so that there was nothing to disrupt her sense of harmony. She asked him suddenly if she would be able to rent a house like the one they were in.

  “Why?”

  “So I could come here for a few months in the year.”

  “Why?”

  She felt embarrassed because she didn’t know the answer, but she could see herself reclining on a sofa in these spacious surroundings. She answered in a low voice, as if she didn’t want him to hear her properly: “So that I can live with this beauty around me!”

  “Is your man going to come with you?”

  I don’t know, she thought. But she said, “My husband? I don’t think so.”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem. What price do you want to pay? What kind of house do you have in mind? With or without a gharsa?”

  “Ghana?”

  “Jardin.”

  “A house with a garden.”

  “We can go and have a look. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Samr fidgeted uneasily, regretting that she had become so quickly embroiled, but this regret was soon buried under a surge of confidence. He began to show an interest in her for the first time, asking her if she liked the city, what job she did in Europe, what country she came from, whether Mustafa had taken her to this or that place, and he promised to bring her henna from his mother—genuine henna that his mother prepared herself—and said she must visit their house, because she’d like it, especially the garden. Then he began rolling a cigarette, assuring her that it was an ordinary one, but if she wanted to smoke hash … Samr laughed, and shook her head. He took a few drags on the cigarette, then let it dangle from his lips and started beating his chest as if he were playing a drum, varying the rhythm by switching between the flat of his hand and his fist, and humming and whistling in time to the beat. Samr was afraid of the way she had started to feel—like a tender plant, its stem bending as it searched for water and sunshine—and she forced herself to stand up.

  He looked at his watch and asked her if she wanted to go. Then he added hesitantly, “We can talk for a bit first if you like.”

  But she started to move with slow, heavy steps. As he bent down to pick up the shopping, she thought he brushed her skirt with his hand. Then he did it again, and she was sure. He straightened up and stood facing her and leaned forward to kiss her. She didn’t move away or resist. He put a hand on her breast. Again she didn’t resist, but returned his kiss with passion. She opened her eyes and saw the mosaic walls, then closed them again, soaring through the darkness until her lips and his, and the light and color around her, and even the image of her husband and the group of young men all became part of a single sensation.

  She was roused from her stupor each time he led her into a different movement. At first she would be nervous, then grow accustomed to it, and the rosy glow would return and she would close her eyes again and fly off into the dark.

  She didn’t look at him when he got up, saying he would make some tea. Instead she thought about her husband. She pictured him sitting with Mustafa and the rest of the group, chatting around the pool in the evenings, with his maps and the additional information about the city spread out all around him. She stirred restlessly and tried to calm herself by smoothing out the creases in her long skirt. Then she forgot about her husband as she watched Jalal pouring the tea, and he was like the finishing touch to the awe-inspiring surroundings.

  She wondered desperately whether she would have the chance to see him alone again before she left, or whether she should stay on a few days after her husband, or come back in a month’s time.

  He handed her the tea. She took the glass from him in complete silence, but smiled broadly at him and he returned the smile.

  She thought about Mustafa and was on the point of begging him not to tell Mustafa and the rest of the group. This was not only in case her husband should hear about it, but for their sakes too. She didn’t want them to have a confused image of her. It was as if she wanted to protect them. He looked at his watch. She looked at hers, and said without conviction, “I ought to be getting back to the hotel.”

  He jumped to his feet as if he had been waiting for her to say this, and took the glass of tea from her, although she hadn’t touched it.

  He must be on edge, she thought. Afraid of Mustafa. And of my husband.

  She hoped he would say something to her. She braced herself, but he was preoccupied with the keys.

  She went in front of him downstairs and he took hold of her hand. This reassured her in a way, although she noticed she was no longer as desperate for his touch as she had been when she was sitting staring at him smoking and playing the drums on his chest. The moment they stepped outside, the mosaic walls and rosy mist disappeared and were replaced by the roar of the street. She stood a few paces away from him while he locked the door. She was back in the noise and chaos. She saw people rushing, dawdling, calling to one another, walking along in silence. She had come back to life again. She read a flashing neon sign, and noticed a man looking at her.

  Jalal turned the key a couple of times in the lock, then bolted the door, and she caught herself staring at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. She tried with difficulty to connect this image of him with the man who had been inside the house with her. It was like trying to unite fire and water. The man standing in front of her had different eyes, a different physique, even a different voice, and she couldn’t believe that she had been lying with him a short time before. She found herself looking up at the windows in case a different man was looking down at her, his hand raised in a farewell salute. Perhaps he was waiting for her now, while the youth in front of her was opening the gate for her to leave. When she turned back to him she half expected to find that he had been a figment of her imagination.

  The crowds in the street made her apprehensive: she was afraid she might see Mustafa and the others, and her husband, and then wished she could see them. She wanted to disappear as she and Jalal made for the hotel, and was relieved that he wasn’t holding her hand. She felt as if she had weights attached to her feet, and summoned up the courage to tell him that she would write to him in a few months to let him know when she wanted to rent a house. He nodded agreeably and her anxiety grew: she had only said this to prompt him to leave. It wasn’t going to be easy to get rid of him. How could she explain to him that he had provided the finishing touch to the place, but she was never going to see him again? He was behaving awkwardly himself. Was he waiting for a chance to continue the relationship begun in the paradise house?

  As they approached the bright lights of the hotel, she grew more fearful and he grew more embarrassed. When the hotel was clearly visible he stopped. She stopped beside him, the answers and excuses almost bursting out from between her lips. But she was aware of him speaking to her in French for the first time: “Help me. I don’t have the money to go to university. There’s no money in this job.”

  Samr was so completely taken aback that she couldn’t move, and was forced to remain looking into his eyes. It was as if a heavy bird had suddenly landed on her head and was constricting her neck movements, but she managed to hear him repeating in French: “Will you help me?”

  Don’t use the jug with a long spout to do your ablutions I Don’t wash your face with scented soap I Don’t admire the moon I Don’t bleach your sheets! You mustn’t raise your voice above a whisper, especially when there’s a man present, even if he’s in the next room! If you want to clear your throat or sigh, shut yourself in the bathroom! Don’t forget, three months and ten days, or preferab
ly four months, you stay in the house, day and night. Even if you’re unwell, don’t go out. But if you get worse, call me and I’ll go with you. Keep away from your flashy friends. Don’t eat nice food! Don’t smell flowers!

  Shadia sat in her black clothes between two rows of women, some wailing, some silent, wishing she could be left alone for one moment. Her pale, haggard face picked up all the glances and unspoken words around her. The wailing women were relations of her husband, who had died following a car accident, and the silent ones were her relations and acquaintances of her family.

  She wished she was still with him in the hospital. Although he had finally slipped through her fingers, those days had been beautiful compared with what she was going through now. She had him to herself in that room. For hours in the daytime and during the night she sat with him, watching him, unable to believe that their dialogue had become limited to the brief moment when he would move slightly and she would rise from where she had been sitting at his feet, massaging them, and touch his face. Then he would signal to her with his eyes, his forehead, his nose—it was hard to know which—and she would rest her cheek against his and feel the dampness of the saliva that trickled from the corners of his mouth. Perhaps he wanted to kiss her. He muttered words she didn’t understand, then focused his eyes on her as if he were giving her all he possessed. Sometimes he showed her the tip of his tongue and she dropped a kiss on his mouth and brought her hair close to him. putting a lock of it in his palm and closing his fingers around it. rejoicing when she felt him pressing on it. She spent hours like this, motionless at his side, looking at the veins on his hand, at his fingers clutching her black hair. To her disappointment, he would always drift back into a deep sleep. But after a while she was thankful he slept—perhaps it would rest him and make him better. She would sit without moving until one of the nurses came in, and Shadia would be glad of her company. All the nurses admired her boldness and devotion.

  Her little daughter was clinging to her now, but this was no consolation to her. She was being smothered under a thick blanket of whispered remarks, and it was impossible to escape, for the talk was now about more than the jug and the moon and unperfumed soap: “Come on! Given a bit of time, she’ll go back to her first husband and start bringing up this daughter of hers again. See, the Almighty’s taken His revenge.”

  When Shadia heard this she hid her face in her hands. To stop them intruding on her privacy, she bowed her head and retreated within herself so that she was alone, as she had wanted to be all along. She abandoned herself to her passionate thoughts, conjuring up his smell, especially the smell of his neck and under his arms, his smell before he went to sleep and when he woke up, and before and after shaving. Eventually she worked around to the smell of the first kiss. She found herself delaying, hesitating, uncertain where she wanted to freeze her thoughts so as to enjoy them for the maximum possible time. But then she let them run on, again reliving the moment he first entered her, which in its intensity surpassed all that followed, even the ecstasy, because it was the focal point, dissolving the agony that had been eating away at her: her sorrow at leaving her daughter, her horror at the idea that her lover would marry somebody else before she could get away from her husband, her fear of facing her family and the neighbors.

  As soon as she felt him right inside her, she was sure she had been created for this moment. She closed her eyes, savoring the peace of mind that she thought had been taken away from her for good.

  But they didn’t leave her alone with him now, any more than they had done before, when she ran away with him and they had pursued her with violent talk and messages and threats. Their voices reached her, and she felt they were working her in their hands like a piece of dough, especially the women on her family’s side. The others were mulling over their loss with enormous anguish, which made them accuse her of being the reason for God’s vengeance on him.

  Her aunt was trying to make her change her name back to Rashida, “the wise,” for Shadia—which means “the singer”—symbolized his era, as he was the one who had given her the name, and now she had to go back to being wise … and don’t do your ablutions with the tin jug because the long spout will remind you of men, and you shouldn’t look at the moon because it’s male, and …

  Shadia kept her eyes determinedly shut, lost in her memories of how he had smelled, the way he had touched every part of her, even her toes, sensing him all around her. Then her feelings took off in another direction as she heard the women discussing, more audibly now, how she would be forced to go back to her previous husband this time, straight after the seclusion period, and how she would be moved to her brother’s house in the meantime. She found herself blessing death, deciding that she too would die. She closed her eyes and held her breath. She wanted to suffocate. She squeezed her chest, as if she could wrench her heart out of place. However, she remained fully conscious, and happened to glance down at her healthy hands. Her longing for him must be interfering with her grief and giving her strength and vitality. She willed herself to die again, picturing him cold and lifeless, as if he had never known her. She was startled when her aunt forced her head upward, pried her clenched hands away from her body and pushed her daughter toward her, hoping to oblige Shadia to take the child in her arms.

  “Bear up!” her aunt ordered her briskly. “It’s God’s law. Dust to dust.” Then she went on, “You must repent. Return to the fold. Defeat the keeper of hell’s furnaces by showing him you’ve slipped through his fiery fingers. What more could the believer desire? Naturally, the angels’ pens will cross your bad deed off the slate if you return to your first husband. They’ll be even surer of you if you look up into the sky at night when you’re dozing off to sleep—after your period of seclusion, of course—wait until you see a shooting star, then close your eyes, say, ‘There is no god but God,’ and repent. This star will hear and hurry to curse Satan, who tempted you to commit adultery. Repent so that you can go to heaven and see ‘the ground gleaming white like silver and pearls, the earth made of musk, the saffron plants, the trees with alternating leaves of silver and gold.’”1

  Shadia’s eyelids did not even flicker while her aunt was speaking: she was still trying to die. But one sentence penetrated the gloom, and gave her a glimmer of hope. “Heaven is the place where all couples are reunited,” said her aunt.

  But as quickly as Shadia had rushed to greet the words, she backed away from them. “Will I meet my first husband or my second?” she demanded.

  Her question, asked in a heartfelt rush of despair and terror, rolled over ears that had never heard an amorous whisper, a kind word or a beautiful melody, and was buried in hearts that knew only frustration and anxiety.

  Her aunt lashed out at her with loathing, disregarding the rest of the company, as if her chance for revenge had come at last. “You’ve lived exactly as you pleased and dragged us through the mud, and we’re still paying for it. If you repent, at least we’ll get some benefit. But you want to guarantee your afterlife as well. You scheming whore!” She paused and then burst out again with venomous delight, “Your first husband, of course.”

  As Shadia’s world fell apart, she heard one of the women asserting that God forgives all a woman’s sins except adultery. Shadia closed her eyes, recollecting what she had read in her teens about the terrors of the afterlife, about “women hanging by their hair in the infernal zaqoum tree and having boiling water poured over them till their flesh came off in strips, because they’d taken medicine to get rid of their unwanted children,” and “women whose faces had been burnt and whose tongues lolled out onto their chests, because they had asked their husbands to divorce them for no reason.”2

  Too bad. Shadia nodded her head calmly, accepting her fate. “I don’t care,” she said, and rid herself of two images: herself in bed with her first husband, and lying with him on the pearly white ground of Paradise.

  1 Sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad by Imam Ibn al-‘Abbas. From Kitab al-Idra’ wal’-Mi�
��raj (“The Book of Muhammad’s night journey to the seventh heaven”), Sudan, n.d.

  2 See note 1.

  1

  I woke up this morning thinking I was a tin can stuck away on a shelf, wanting to be picked up by a pair of hands and opened so that some of the air trapped inside could escape. It wasn’t the spring urging me to open up even though it has always stirred animals and birds to cover thousands of miles for the sake of sex. No. It was my nightdress.

  Why do I keep wearing it when I know I’ll be disappointed as usual in the morning after sex? Now I only have to picture it to get that feeling.

  I pull it off and fling it away and put on a dress suitable for cleaning the house and scrubbing bathrooms. Perhaps this will bring me back to reality. But I still feel like a fruit stone discarded on the sidewalk: a mango, my luscious flesh sucked from its fibers by a voracious tongue. I pick the nightdress up off the floor and stand holding it. I should be grateful it’s this ivory color, not rose pink. Rose pink would be too much.

  I know that color of pink which promises uninterrupted passion, but it’s a color you don’t see anymore: maybe the people who mix fabric dyes have never seen pomegranate seeds, and you can be sure that nobody examines the color of a woman’s nipple anymore except the doctor.

  But there must be women like me looking for it, and if they find it unfortunately it’s in nightdresses that have seen better days in secondhand-clothes shops, and bras and corsets that depend on more than plastic bones to give them shape: they were made for women like my mother’s friend whose breasts used to be the object of regular attacks by me and my brother. I mean we would sit on her knees as close as possible to the two big mountains and she would fend us off, laughing until her whole body shook, including the two mountains, and we were happy when they touched us. She told my mother of the salesgirl who stuck her head in the cup of a bra she’d been looking at and said, “This one’s the right size for you.”