Nabil comes back. “Fhassin will be here in a few moments.” He glances up. “That’s one of the men who are sentenced to die.”
“What’s he doing?” I ask.
“Talking to her,” Nabil says.
A young woman stands in the yard. Her hand is flickering, too, in the same birdlike movements.
“Condemned men aren’t allowed to have visitors,” Nabil says. “That’s the only way they can talk.”
“Who is she?”
“His girlfriend. His wife. I don’t know.”
She’s a pretty thing. She looks like anyone-not cheap like some of the women here. I feel as if I should look away, but if she’s embarrassed, I can’t tell. She seems intent. A stubborn flame.
“Is it a code?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “She is shaping letters in the air.”
I don’t know how to read, but all my children do.
I watch her hands dance in this strange place.
Will I know Fhassin?
And I do know him, the moment I see him. I know from his smile he is being brave. I know that this matters to him and he would like to pretend that it doesn’t.
“Don’t cry, Mama,” he says.
I hide my face in my veil.
Nabil and Fhassin stand awkwardly when I have composed myself. Nabil starts and remembers the bags in his hands. “Here,” he says, and hands Fhassin the oranges and sweets. They’re embarrassed.
Fhassin is wearing a tight shirt, stained and yellowed with age. He’s older, harder-looking, but he’s still Fhassin. I had imagined him in a dark place, alone, but here he is, surrounded by all these men. One of them.
“Are you well?” I say.
“Sure, yes,” he says. “You look well, too.”
“I am.”
Fhassin looks at the bag of oranges and sweets. “This is great. Really good.”
He needs a shave. “At least you haven’t grown a beard here,” I say.
He looks around. “Those men are fundamentalists. They band together. It helps to have someone stand with you here.”
“You have friends here?” I ask.
He shrugs and glances away. “I’m not by myself.”
Secret Fhassin, who never ever told me things. When he was a boy, he would answer in just the same evasive way. “Where were you after school?” “Where I could hear Hariba call.”
He’s the one I always worried about. The one who was always thinking.
“Hariba is home,” I say.
“Hariba?” he says. “But she was jessed. Did she buy her way out?”
“She ran away,” I say. The bitter taste in my mouth makes my lips purse, like lemon on my tongue.
“Good for her,” Fhassin says. “Getting jessed was stupid.”
“Not good,” I say.
“Mama!” Fhassin says, “Going by the rules isn’t always the best thing, you know?”
“You should talk,” I say. “Look at you.”
“Look at me,” he says. “I made a mistake. But you always went by the rules and look at you.”
“I sleep in my own bed every night.”
He laughs, a short hard sound. “So your prison is the Nekropolis. So it’s bigger than this prison. How much bigger?”
“Hariba is sick,” I say. “She is dying. From the jessing. I need to find a doctor for her. I thought you might know one.”
His jaw clenches with anger, but he laughs again. “That’s why you came. Not because of me, because of Hariba.”
“Fhassin,” Nabil says.
“That’s right, isn’t it, Mama,” Fhassin says. “You came for Hariba.”
“I did,” I say, because what else is there to say? It’s true. And the Mashahana says that truth may be the longer way, but it is the way out of the labyrinth. So much truth I can’t say, though. Fhassin, you were my favorite. And you were the one I lost.
“You wouldn’t come for me,” Fhassin says.
“I was afraid to look at you,” I say.
He frowns.
“Don’t fight!” Nabil says. “Mama, just once would you be fair to Fhassin!”
Fair! To Fhassin! I who have never been fair to Fhassin, who has always secretly favored him! I gape at Nabil.
“Fhassin,” Nabil says, “listen to me. She can’t eat, she can’t sleep. She ran away with a harni .”
“A harni ?” Fhassin shakes his head. “No, not Hariba.”
“Yes, Hariba.”
“Nabil, a harni is something grown in a machine, it’s not just a servant. You mean Hariba ran away with a servant?”
“No, a harni . The wife of the man she worked for had one. Then they sold Hariba’s contract to someone else and she went back and got the harni and ran away to the Nekropolis. She was living in a death house down where Ibrahim has his shoe place. We didn’t even know where she was.”
“A harni, “ Fhassin says. “Why did she do it?”
Nabil shrugs. “No one knows.”
“Because they are seductive,” I say. “That’s why they shouldn’t be allowed.”
“You’re sure it was a harni ?” Fhassin says.
“I’ve seen it,” Nabil says. “She wanted it to come with her to Mama’s.”
I cannot read Fhassin’s face, but I’m afraid that Nabil shouldn’t have told him. What if it brings back memories of Fhassin’s own crime? Since he could not have his adultery, will he be bitter about Hariba’s? Will he refuse to help us?
“I don’t know a doctor who can help you,” he says finally, slowly. “But I know someone who would.”
He tells Nabil about someone named Hassein. It is apparently someone whose brother Nabil knows, but I’m looking around the prison yard.
A bell rings, like a school bell, and the guards straighten up.
“Two minutes,” Fhassin says. “Goodbye, Mama.”
“What do you need?” I ask.
He’s casual. “I’m fine. But if you could send some medicine. For headaches.”
“You have headaches?”
“Sometimes,” he says.
“I’ll be back,” Nabil says.
“Tell me what Hassein says. I had better go back.” He needs to escape us. His body is tense, like the little boy I remember, ready to burst from me.
And he is gone back inside.
* * *
My sister Zehra looks up at me, then back at the pot of couscous she is stirring. Everything is neat in this house, even Hariba is washed. When we were growing up, there were five of us: Raschid, my older brother; Lida, my older sister; me; then Zehra, my younger sister; and Hamedi, my little brother, the baby. When I was twelve, my mother died and our life was nothing but shame. We were children who no one watched. No one paid for our school. I know my father was with us when he came home from work, but in my memory it is only Zehra and me, trying to be women, trying to keep a home. Lida didn’t care. Lida had beautiful fat little hands and feet, but she was solid, and if Zehra and I didn’t make her, she wouldn’t even bother to clean herself.
Zehra and I chased her out of the house with a broom and a dustpan full of coals one time because we were trying to make the house nice and she wouldn’t do anything. We were awful. “Do you remember when we used to go to Lida’s and clean?” I say.
Zehra shakes her head. “What are you bringing up old things for?” But then she shakes her head in another way, in memory. “Those babies in wet diapers.”
“We would push the trash out into the street,” I said.
“Lida would sit there with a baby on her lap and just watch us,” Zehra says.
“We were prideful,” I say.
Zehra laughs, “We were, but Lida was awful. Somebody had to be prideful!”
I wanted a house that would not make me ashamed. When Samil was alive, after the first two babies were born, he would come home and find the house neat and dinner cooking and me there with a baby in my lap and I would think of what he saw and the smell of mint and onion and it would all be there. The sun
would be going down outside and inside would be a house that did honor to Samil and to me. Sometimes I could barely hold the feeling in, I wanted to burst into tears from the strength of my happiness. I would kiss Rashida’s toes and bury my face in her belly and make silly noises until she laughed.
“Where did you go?” she asks.
“To see Fhassin,” I say, pretending I’m calm, that saying those words does not make my heart flutter like a trapped bird. I am sick, saying those words.
My sister Zehra, who is taller than I am and whose back is always straight while I’ve been bony and bent since I was in my thirties, looks at me and purses her lips. “Good,” she says. “How is Fhassin?”
“He’s in prison,” I say.
“That’s not an answer,” she says. “You are exasperating.”
“He’s all right,” I say.
To hide my agitation I go and kneel down next to Hariba. I think she’s sleeping, but her eyes are open and glittering in her wasted face. “You went to see Fhassin?” Hariba says.
“I did,” I say, trying to soften my voice for her. I am angry at her, but she is sick and charity given is for the giver, not the receiver.
She closes her eyes. “Then I am going to die, aren’t I?”
“Not yet,” I say. Her face, empty of responsibility, empty of care, makes me angry.
“Mama,” she says. “Can I see Akhmim?”
“Who is Akhmim?” I say, but then I realize. “You mean the harni .” She would have it in my sister’s house. I rise up and walk outside.
Children are a blessing. They are a happiness so sharp that it feels like pain. It slices your fingers like the razor I use to cut paper.
Zehra comes out to stand next to me.
“Dinner is ready,” she says. “Will you stay and have something?”
“I should go home,” I say. She thinks I am being hard. Zehra thinks I am a hard mother. Always did. When they were little, she used to tell me to be softer with my children, but then she had a man. She didn’t know how it was. I told her that and it was true. Now that Driss, my brother-in-law, is dead, she has family all around her still. Not that she didn’t help me. Sometimes the only reason my babies had anything in their stomachs was because Zehra had us come and eat dinner. And Driss never resented us. Zehra and Driss had a good marriage, I think, but now that he’s gone, Zehra has come into herself. She is different without him, more the way I remember her from when she was a girl and she was bold. She has given back to herself that part that she gave up to be a wife.
“Why did you go to see Fhassin?” she asks.
“Motherly concern.”
She laughs through her nose, a funny snort. “Did you tell him Hariba is home?”
“I told him.”
She waits.
“I asked him if he knew of a doctor, someone who could help Hariba. He said he didn’t know of one, but he knew someone who might know. Did you know Nabil has been going to see him all this time?”
“He is his brother,” she says.
“So you knew?”
“No,” she says. “But I am not surprised. Is Nabil taking you to see this person or do you want me to go with you?”
“Nabil will take me,” I say. “Zehra? Should I go?”
“What do you mean?”
“Hariba broke the law. The Mashahana says that the law is the house in which we live-”
“I can’t believe you,” Zehra says. “I can’t believe you are talking about your own daughter!”
“If your own eye offends you-”
“Don’t spout holy words at me! That’s Hariba in there!”
“If I told the police about her, they’d cure her,” I said.
“And put her in prison,” Zehra said.
“She took something that belonged to someone else.”
“She was seduced by something that should never have existed in the first place!” Zehra said. “This is why there should not be harni ! The sinner is the man who she worked for, the man who bought the thing.”
“So you think Hariba has no responsibility? And I have no responsibility?”
“You are a mother,” Zehra says. “That’s your first responsibility.”
I don’t think Zehra’s right. Zehra is speaking with her heart, but what Hariba has done is willful. “If she had stolen money, would you say the same thing?” I ask.
“She would never steal money,” Zehra says.
“But she did steal. It’s the same as if she stole money.”
“But it isn’t. Don’t you see? Because she wouldn’t steal money, because she is a good girl, then there must be something else. That’s the harni . It shouldn’t exist. They should be against the law.”
“What if she’d stolen something else, something from the west, a piece of sculpture or a painting that was blasphemous, then you’d say she was guilty.”
Zehra sighs. “You’re being obtuse on purpose. I’m not going to argue with you, but I will tell you this: If you turn that girl over to the police, it will be on your head. Now come and eat.”
To her back I think, and if I do not turn her in, it will be on my soul.
* * *
Nabil isn’t home when I get there, but I hear him come in and lie down before very late. I get up early, before it is light, and make tea. Old women don’t sleep very well. To my surprise, Nabil sits up, rubbing his eyes.
“What are you up early for?” I ask.
“Hassein,” Nabil says. “Last night I found out where he is and I have to go early to catch him.”
“I’ll go with you,” I say and give him tea. The smell of mint makes the morning comfortable.
“You can’t,” Nabil says. “He works at the horse track.”
“I’m not a thirteen-year-old girl,” I say, irritated. I don’t trust Nabil to handle this. “I can go with you.”
So we do, and the sun is just up when we find this Hassein, standing at the fence at the edge of the track, watching horses run past.
Hassein is dressed like a Berber, with a white and blue scarf wound around his head and neck, and his sunglasses, and sticking out, the tiny mouthpiece of a headset. He leans against the fence, holding a tiny thing that flickers with writing, and he watches a particular horse, following it around the track. Everything about him says that he handles foreign things like this all the time.
Young men like this. This was what I feared for my children, that my boys would become like this, that my girls would get mixed up with this. And here is Nabil, saying, “Hello, Hassein.”
Hassein nods, without appearing to take his gaze off the horse, although who knows what he is looking at behind those glasses? His eyes are invisible.
I find I cannot speak, that I have grabbed my veil and pulled it tight under my chin. There are other men like Hassein, most of them dressed like Berbers, too, watching horses. There are no women here at all.
“This is my mother,” Nabil says.
Hassein turns his head and smiles at me. “Good morning, ma’am. How do you like the horses?”
“They are very nice,” I say, and against my will I lower my eyes. “The gray one,” I say, forcing myself. “Is that the one you are watching?”
“Yes, he is. Isn’t he a beauty?”
I look out over the fence and the green grass and fountain in the middle of the oval track, to the other side where the gray horse runs, the rider just a tiny figure in black clinging to its back. It’s too small for me to see, and I’ve never seen a horse close up before. We had chickens and goats when I was growing up, and an old two-stroke machine for pulling that ran on solar and ethanol. But we didn’t have money for anything but what we needed, and other than barn cats, no other animals. Some people we knew had a pet donkey that their children used to ride.
We stand and watch while time passes and Hariba wastes away. Hassein whispers into his headset.
They’re fast and healthy. Aristocrats with shining coats. The gray horse and rider come past us, the rider standin
g in the stirrups and the horse rocking underneath him, not running hard now. They slow to a stop, farther down the track.
Hassein says in his headset, “Salty.”
The rider doesn’t respond, except to turn his face toward us.
“Salty,” Hassein says again. “How’s the tendon?”
The rider is only a boy. He isn’t ignoring Hassein, but he isn’t answering, either. He just smiles. The horse lowers its head, its neck a taut bow, and snorts loudly.
“Salty,” Hassein says a third time. “Come here and let me look.”
The rider doesn’t seem to even twitch, but lazily, the gray horse ambles our way. The horse’s legs are long and fine, with the muscles bunching under the skin. It stops not too close to us.
“Come on, princeling,” Hassein says.
“He’s not cooperative today,” the boy says. “He’s no princeling, he’s dog meat.”
The horse’s ears flicker as if it is listening and it paws the track.
“Salty, you are a paranoid infidel,” Hassein says, “and if you bow a tendon, I’ll sell you in a heartbeat. You won’t be a princeling then, will you?”
The horse snuffs and shakes its head. I realize “Salty” is the horse. They’re talking to the horse. It sidles alongside the fence and when it gets to us, it places a black shining hoof delicately on the lowest board of the fence.
Hassein runs his hands over its joints and lower leg and the horse regards us with its black eyes, arrogant and curious. “Not too hot today,” Hassein says. “I guess you’re safe from the knackers.”
The horse nips at Hassein’s face, teeth clicking in the empty air.
“It understands you,” Nabil says.
“Salty and I have an understanding,” Hassein corrects.
The horse shakes its head as if shaking off water and the boy, tucked high in the saddle, laughs.
“Salty knows that the world is no good,” Hassein continues, “and that I’m going to make him do things he doesn’t want to do, and so he attempts to disobey at any opportunity, while I treat him like the prince that he is” -here the horse stretches his lips back from his teeth, as if he is jeering Hassein-“and he deigns to occasionally win a race, providing his owner with just enough cash to keep me employed.”
Nekropolis Page 11
