I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Eventually Raifa lost patience and started running away from the goat or throwing lettuce seeds over it to break the spell, vowing even to put up with her husband. But all her efforts did nothing to curb the goat’s lust and in the end her husband, who knew nothing of all this, became convinced that the goat was ill and this was its way of complaining or saying good-bye to its owners. And so one morning he slaughtered it and skinned it and was amazed to see how enlarged its heart was.

  However, the women felt sorry for Qut al-Qulub because she was over thirty and not yet married. They knew why she had refused many offers; she and her cousin had been in love, but he had gone and married someone from another village and no longer dared visit Kawkabana.

  One day when the women were joking that Qut al-Qulub had missed the boat, she invited them to come and see the dozens of suitors from their village and villages around about who were asking for her hand. The hopeful suitors stood one after another in front of the closed door, which she refused to open. Afterward the women flocked around her, demanding to know why she had rejected them, and she told them that she didn’t want a man who was bewitched. “If he embraced me, it would be because I wanted him to. The same if he talked to me or slept beside me. Everything he did would be because I’d decided he should, except going to the bathroom.” Then she reconsidered and said, “Even that could be because I wanted him to. Perhaps if I was busy and wanted him out from under my feet for a bit.”

  Time went by and Qut al-Qulub did not appear to suffer from being unmarried, in fact the opposite. She made it plain that she was happy, saying, “I’m free, comfortably off. I’m Qut al-Qulub, not a beast of burden carrying some man’s kids. What’s more, marriage stops you feeling feminine and changes the love inside you into children. Your back’s killing you from working in the fields and your husband’s sitting there calling out, ‘Where’s my dinner? Where’s my qat?’ You find you’re always trying to snatch a bit of time to go and chat with your friends.”

  Not content with making comments like these, she would always show her annoyance when she heard of someone getting married or having children: her lip curling with distaste, she would gesture toward her stomach and her breasts and say, “Breast-feeding. All that milk. It’s disgusting.

  Her hair was parted in the middle, shiny black with not a trace of gray, not even disguised with henna. She wore coral beads around her neck, and what was astonishing about her was that she was always beautifully adorned. She put kohl around her eyes, one of which was black and one brown. Her headdress was made of material that gleamed like stars and her perfume was a costly essence that she had bought on her travels, mixed with rose water. To make it penetrate the fabric of her clothes thread by thread and never fade, she had constructed a circular stand for her dress out of tree branches and she kept a lighted incense burner under it all night. The other women came to her from daybreak onward and always found her without a hair out of place. When they commented on this, she remarked that she was never alone: if there weren’t human beings with her, there were always external forces that she couldn’t give a name to. “Jinns?” they asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, “but I have conversations with them, so they must be present and able to see me, even if it’s only in my mind, so why shouldn’t I look as nice as possible for them? Anyway, it makes me stronger and more self-confident.”

  The moon was full that night. Dogs howled and chased it as it raced from one mountaintop to another. It looked as if you could reach out and touch it, a flat loaf browning in the oven, or half a melon. The custom was that the moment you saw the full moon, you made a secret wish and then kissed the one you were with. So the women kissed one another on the cheeks, saying basmallas and making wishes, especially for the crops to ripen in their fields. Then they went on their way in and out of alleyways, under arches, across the open ground between the houses to see Batul, whose husband had been buried exactly a week before. The old women began to hand out advice, telling Batul not to look at the moon because it was male, in case the angels dropped her husband’s soul as they headed through the skies toward Paradise. Then as the time passed they all forgot their well-tried sayings and pieces of advice, the widow and her grief slipped their minds and they began unconsciously stealing glances at the moon and the stars, which were nearly coming in through the open window, bringing comfort to their hearts. They were enjoying the view without having to move their bodies, exhausted by the day’s work, slumped loosely under their black velvet embroidered dresses with gold and silver belts slung around their hips.

  All the women of the village were there except the young girls, who roamed the hills and rooftops as usual, and visited one another’s houses, trailed by dogs and younger sisters. Their voices could be heard recriminating, scolding, sometimes laughing, carried by the dry, clear air to the crowd of women in Batul’s house.

  The gap created by the absence of Qut al-Qulub was tangible: she was the last bead in the rosary and her presence pulled the other beads together and completed the string. Everything she said aroused the enthusiasm and interest of the others, even though they did not always agree with her. She had been the first to look into the unknown and see oil under the rocks and fields in many different places, and then see Saudi Arabia shaking a finger at foreign oil companies, warning them not to look for oil in Yemen; for it wanted to be the only country with oil so that the Yemenis would not stop working there. She had been right and now the villages were like bags emptied of their contents and thrown to one side, as if war had broken out and all the men had been called up. This was what had happened: the men had abandoned their dark shops, which were no more than wooden cupboards, to go and work in Saudi Arabia, leaving the villages to the women. They visited their families once a year when strings of taxis would arrive from the airport loaded with televisions, videos and blankets. This would go on until they came to the end of their active lives and prepared to face old age and the hereafter by returning home for the last time. They failed to notice that their women had changed completely, even in their way of speaking, and had a special language of their own.

  When time passed and still Qut al-Qulub did not join the gathering to offer her condolences to Batul, one of the women went out to the edge of the porch and called her name at the top of her voice. This was the way people normally contacted each other, or had arguments, or announced news, good or bad. But Qut al-Qulub did not appear or call back to explain or apologize. Although the evening passed off satisfactorily without her, they became increasingly anxious. Some of them were more curious than worried and their curiosity was tinged with jealousy. Whatever was stopping her coming must certainly be important, otherwise how could she stay away from an occasion like this? It would become a stain on her past along with the habit she had of going off on trips by herself from time to time, which harmed her reputation, especially as she used to come back tired, absentminded and depressed, then shut herself away and listen to strange music, which she had brought back with her.

  The moment they had said good-bye to Batul they hurried off and, as if by an unspoken agreement, went over the rocks and hillocks and along the twisting lanes to the house where Qut al-Qulub lived. There was no light from inside but the outside was lit up by the moon. They shouted at her, reproaching her for not coming, banged on her door, threw little stones at the wooden shutters, but there was no response. They repeated the onslaught once, twice, three times and finally heard her voice asking them to go away because she was working and didn’t want to be disturbed, didn’t want anything to spoil her concentration. One of them replied derisively, “So you think you’re the governor!”

  The others laughed for in the next village the children had been obliged to stop playing in their normal rowdy groups at siesta time for a whole month while the provincial governor was visiting his family.

  At this Qut al-Qulub opened the window and whispered, “Have you forgotten that there’s a full moon above your heads! Leave me alone now and c
ome back tomorrow morning. I promise you, your hair will go white with shock!”

  They did not believe her. She must have remembered the gathering at Batul’s only after she had removed her headdress. Or perhaps she just had not looked as beautiful as she liked to look. Sometimes she found herself pretty and sometimes really ugly, especially before her period, when she used to say that everything swelled up, even the mole on her cheek, even the little hairs in her eyebrows.

  They, started shouting again. laughing, they reminded her of the story of Layla and the monkey shit. They still remembered how some of the magic she had attempted when the moon was full had failed. She had asked Layla to bring her some monkey’s feces. Layla’s husband had just married another wife, years younger than Layla, and the idea was that when his glance fell on the bewitched feces and then on his new wife, she would seem drab and ugly and give off a smell of shit.

  But when he came home and took his new wife in his arms, delighted because she was pregnant less than a month after their marriage, Layla was sure he hadn’t even noticed the stuff. She tried putting it somewhere more conspicuous and her husband simply remarked that it was the feces of an animal not found in the village. She conveyed this information to Qut al-Qulub, who would not believe that she had failed but would only concede that the shit must have been bogus. In any case, how could Layla have procured it, when a snowfall was just about as likely as a monkey in this village! She didn’t believe that Layla had hitched a ride with a medical mission that had passed through the village one day and gone to Taiz, where there was a cage full of monkeys by the museum gateway. She accused her of lying and when bystanders intervened to confirm that Layla was telling the truth she said they were hypocrites. A few days later Layla returned accompanied by a procession of children, old people and youths, all eager to tell Qut al-Qulub about the monkey Layla had bought with the proceeds from her gold jewelry, Qut al-Qulub came to examine the monkey and was delighted. She had never seen one before. Its small, searching eyes pleased her and she muttered that at last she understood the secret of the magic hidden in its eyes. Those who heard what she said were afraid that she might demand its eyes for her witchcraft, but she asked to be left alone with it, then came out and told Layla that the shit had to be black. But Layla’s husband took his second wife in his arms again, curious to know the identity of the strange beast that had emptied its bowels in front of his house, in case its flesh was good to eat. Qut al-Qulub claimed again that the shit was not black enough and the whole village went on trying to think of some food that would make it really black, without much success. Eventually the story leaked out through the women and children, Layla’s husband came to hear of it and went crazy because his wife had spent so much money and sold her jewelry for the sake of some monkey shit. He swore he would take a third wife and so he did.

  The women started shouting again, calling to Qut al-Qulub to show herself. In the end her scowling face appeared at the window. She warned them to keep away from her house and respect what she was trying to achieve on this momentous night, promising that she would show them the results in the morning.

  With one accord, they retreated a few steps in silence, then returned as if bewitched to their places in front of the house. The moon was shining directly above it. They were happy with the night, despite their grief over the dead man and his widow. Their visit to Batul had actually made them content and grateful and they praised the Lord that their husbands were still in the land of the living, not in the next world like Batul’s, especially since he’d died in Saudi Arabia and she’d had to pay for the transportation of the body and its burial here in the village. What’s more, his wages had stopped and from now on she’d have to rely solely on what she grew in the field. This death in the village reminded them how lucky they were, brought it home to them that they were married yet free.

  So wide were their eyes with sleeplessness that they seemed to fill the whole of their faces. The women appeared confused, circling around the house, sitting down, standing up. They were convinced that vibrations given off by Qut al-Qulub had drawn them here, with the intervention of the moon. It was said that people had walked on the moon. At the time the village sheikh had broadcast from the minaret that a cow must be slaughtered to atone for the moon’s defilement.

  They would have remained under the sway of Qut al-Qulub and their own euphoria had they not heard the voice of the billy goat. “We’ve even woken the goat,” remarked Raifa. Then she sang a song that came into her head at that moment:

  Come my love and see

  I’ve bought you some qat

  Feed it to that little bird

  And he’ll become a billy goat with horns

  When they turned instinctively to look at Qut al-Qulub’s goat as if awaiting its reaction to Raifa’s song, they found that it was not in its usual spot.

  They went all around the outside of the house looking for it, convinced that Qut al-Qulub had forgotten to tie it up and that it was wandering alone in the mountains. They were a little worried about it but their concern led to much hilarity as Raifa imitated the goat leaping high in the air when the dogs nipped its hindquarters, which was what happened to Wajiha’s donkey. Raifa started calling to Qut al-Qulub, telling her that her goat had escaped and was lost, but instead of Qut al-Qulub answering, the goat bleated, and the sound came from inside the house. At this the women’s confusion mounted, clouding their vision. It was this confusion that led Raifa to call out once, twice, three times asking Qut al-Qulub about the goat, until at last they heard her voice shout back insolently, “Now do you believe me? The goat’s with me. That should prove to you that I’m absorbed in my work.”

  They went back to their homes and the sound of their snoring rose in the air as soon as they threw themselves onto cushions in their living rooms, too tired even to put down their mattresses. The next day they brought the bread to the oven to bake as they did every morning, milked the sheep, collected the eggs, then prepared coffee with ginger before hurrying off to the field in the valley, where they grew walnuts, qat, wheat, fenugreek and vegetables. When they met Qut al-Qulub at the pond with her goat drinking at her side, they asked her where she had found it, flatly refusing to acknowledge her claims of the previous night. As if she understood, she too acted as if nothing had happened and contented herself with patting the goat’s neck, stroking its horns, brushing some specks of mud off its coat and waving a fly away from its eyes. Ignoring this pantomime, they continued with their efforts to find her out, and asked her why she had not turned up to visit Batul. She answered them with a huge ringing laugh, throwing her head back so that all her teeth and her uvula were on show. Then she began to tell them about the silver light of the moon, but the women did not listen. They walked away from her in exasperation and went to work in the field. It was as if the subject of Qut al-Qulub no longer had any significance since the events of the night before. They put all their efforts into their toil under the burning sun, singing together or letting one woman sing alone to break up the day’s monotony, amusing themselves by talking to the animals that helped them with harvesting and carrying, studying the position of the sun and clouds, examining one another’s crops and muttering basmallas to ward off the evil eye.

  That night Qut al-Qulub’s goat disappeared again and she shut herself away as she had done before. This might have been forgotten within a few days if the goat had not appeared the next morning streaked with henna. Layla examined it and informed the other women that it had a different look in its eyes from before. The women did not inquire further or comment on the goat’s transformation. Instead they increased the number of basmallas they said when they found themselves face-to-face with Qut al-Qulub or caught her looking in their direction. They had instructed their children from an early age to say “God protect us” to themselves whenever she came in sight.

  When the goat disappeared and Qut al-Qulub shut herself away for the third night in a row. Layla and Raifa hurried to her house. They had been
delegated by the others to go alone, as it would have made too much noise if they had all gone. They searched for any traces of the goat, keeping their movements restrained so that not even a small exhalation of breath escaped their lips. They clung unblinking to the wall hour after hour until they heard the goat making a commotion inside the house as if it was kicking its hooves against something. Minutes went by. Nothing but silence and waiting. Raifa looked at Layla as if she hoped she too was having second thoughts about being there. When Layla did not respond, Raifa motioned with her head that they should leave. Layla moved her head slowly from side to side in a gesture of refusal, then looked in front of her, making her eyes soft as if begging her companion to be patient. Silence. Silence. Silence and then the sound of a throat being cleared in the still air, deafening them and making their hearts stop beating. It was not Qut al-Qulub or any other woman, nor the goat or any other animal. Was it a spirit? Then there was Qut al-Qulub saying, “Bless you.”

  The two women shook their heads in horror. Qut al-Qulub would never talk to a spirit in such a homely way, as if she was sitting beside it. Confusion, fantasy, conjecture and logic mingled wildly in their heads, and without saying anything they slipped away back to the others to receive confirmation and reassurance that they were still sane, for they were picturing the strangest scenes. The other women believed them without much hesitation. The two of them had become like bats using sound vibrations to construct a detailed image of their prey and its whereabouts.

  They pictured that Qut al-Qulub had changed the man she loved into a goat—for she had sworn when news of his marriage reached her that she would have her revenge on him even if it took years. They also pictured that she had managed to change the goat into a man who was a replica of her beloved. Then they reverted to the first version and decided that, having bewitched him, she had forgiven him and turned him back into a man, or that she had tried before and had succeeded only in the past three days, or that she was still in the process of bewitching him. Was the village not already familiar with the story of the magician who used to turn her lover into a donkey in the day and back into a man at night, all to avoid the talk and the violence of the men in her family, since her lover was from another tribe?