The horse has taken his hoof from the fence and now he capers, flashing his tail. I cannot tell what it means. Is he angry? Laughing? Excited?
“Ice down the leg,” Hassein says to the boy, and the animal trots off, the boy clinging like a monkey, his smile bright white in his dark face.
“How much does the horse understand?” Nabil asks.
Hassein shrugs, watching after them. The horse’s tail switches back and forth like a girl’s hips. “Sometimes I think it’s all just tone, you know? I mean, of course, he understands when I say, “show me,” and ask him about his tendon. We’ve been worrying about his tendons and his sore feet and his back. He knows all those words. But the insults? Does he have any clue what I mean when I say I’m employed? I don’t think so. Or maybe he changes it all into some sort of horse society. Maybe he thinks we’re in the same herd and he’s a yearling or something.” Hassein looks at us, his face still rendered expressionless by his glasses. “So, Nabil, are you here to buy a horse?”
Nabil laughs weakly. “Of course, I have a million lying around I want to throw away.”
Hassein spits onto the track.
“I’m here, by the grace of Allah, to ask if you know someone who could help me,” Nabil says.
“Walk with me,” Hassein says.
They walk ahead and I follow behind in this strange place that smells like a barnyard but where horses live better than people. In Hassein’s office Nabil explains to him about Hariba; that she’s jessed and has run away. It’s a little office, not nearly as big as the stalls where the horses stay. I sit on a chair and drink mint tea.
Hassein takes off his dark glasses to reveal very young eyes, and stares at the papers piled on his desk like rugs in a bazaar. “I don’t know,” he says. “We jess the horses. You could talk to Tahar.”
“Tahar is a doctor?” Nabil asks.
Hassein smiles. “He thinks he is. Come.”
The barns are a maze of long, low buildings, white and new in the early morning sun. Hassein wanders among them, asking after this Tahar, and Berber boys look up and point or shake their heads or grin and shrug. A lot of Berbers, desert dark and dressed, many of them, as if they’ve just walked out of the mountains.
Hassein finds Tahar leaning on a stall door, watching a horse eat. Tahar is long-jawed and needs a shave, but at least he isn’t a Berber. His horse is as well groomed and shining as he is disheveled, but at least he doesn’t look as if his family lives in a mountain fortress with their sheep.
“How is the mare?” Hassein says. “Is she ready?”
“Ready,” Tahar growls. “She’s been ready for days. The boy has been on foal watch so long he had to go tell his wretched family he was still alive.” A boy sits in the corner of the stall, chewing on a long stem of hay. He is as dark and barefoot as any of the boys here.
“Is she waxing?” Hassein asks.
“Two days, now. Mares wax and within hours, they give birth, except the rajah-mistress here.”
The horse lips at her hay, not really eating, letting it dribble onto the floor of the stall. She stares off into the distance, shifting from one foot to the other. I wonder if she understands us.
“This is my old friend Nabil. From childhood. He is looking for some help, and I thought of you.”
Tahar looks Nabil up and down. “You need help with a horse?” he asks, looking sour.
“No,” Nabil says, “with my sister.”
Tahar looks at Hassein, a look full of meaning I can’t understand, then he sighs. “Tell me about your sister.”
“She is ill,” Nabil says. “It’s a delicate matter.”
“It’s always a delicate matter,” Tahar says. “Come on, you can talk here. The boy won’t tell anyone and the mare can’t.”
She doesn’t even as much flicker her ears, but gazes dreamily off.
“My sister is a servant, and there was some difficulty with her employment-” Nabil says.
“Is she pregnant or jessed? What’s the problem?”
“Jessed,” I say. I am furious with this man. “And she is dying.”
He raises an eyebrow at me. “You are who, her mother? Her grandmother?”
“Her mother. And luckier, I think, than your mother.”
Nabil says, “Please, excuse my mother, she’s worried about my sister.”
Tahar looks at me and we have an understanding: We hate each other.
Nabil says, “Mama.”
I leave the three men and go to the stall door and duck in. The mare is big, taller at the shoulder than I am, and once I’m in, I’m afraid. But she doesn’t care. She doesn’t even look at me. I inhale the smell of her, clean-healthy horse. Her beautiful pink and black feet are clean, her pink nose with its old man scattering of whiskers is clean.
“Mama,” I whisper. “I’m a mama, too.” I lay my hand against her huge belly. “Your poor back, your poor sprung ribs. You’re tired, aren’t you?”
She looks around at me now. She has a brown face with a white streak down the middle and wise eyes.
“Men don’t know,” I say. “But we know, don’t we.”
I can’t say in words what we know. But that’s all right.
* * *
Tahar says he’ll come when he can. His racehorse is more important to him than any person could be. When I think of the mare, waiting for the coming of her foal, I can almost understand. But at home, there’s my daughter.
Nabil sells paper funeral arrangements for me and I go to tend my daughter.
My sister’s house smells of sickness.
“She’s been vomiting all morning,” Zehra says. “There’s nothing in her stomach. She can only retch and bring up bile.”
Hariba is curled up on her side, whimpering. “Mama, can Akhmim come? He’ll make me feel better.”
“Shhh,” I whisper, stroking her forehead. She retches again and I grab the bowl. She brings up a little green bile and some strings of mucus. “Hush,” I say. “The doctor is coming.”
“Mama,” she whimpers. “Mama, I feel really bad.”
She retches again.
This is what it’s like, all through the rest of the morning and the afternoon. My sister watches her granddaughter and two grandsons while her daughter works. They complain that it smells. When my sister cooks for them, Hariba is even more nauseated.
Nabil comes by in the afternoon and I send him home to get some of the oil that I use to scent the flowers.
“It smells like a funeral in here,” my sister says.
“Isn’t that better than sickness?”
Rashida, my other daughter, comes and sits with us. She is the one most like me-short, with my face. She’s big with her baby. Two months left and she’s already so ungainly that I’m sure she’s miscounted the months. Or maybe it’s twins.
“How are you?” I say.
She frowns. “I wish I could sleep, but if I lie on my back it hurts and I can’t sleep any other way. But really, I’m fine.”
Hariba opens her eyes sleepily and smiles at Rashida. They always fought, but they are sisters.
Rashida is still there when the doctor comes.
He’s contemptuous of my sister’s home. Her home is as clean as he is slovenly and poverty is no shame, but I keep my tongue.
“What’s her name?” he asks, crouching.
“Hariba,” I say. I stroke her forehead. “Sweet, the doctor is here,” I say. Her forehead isn’t even damp anymore.
“How long has she been like this?”
“She’s been sick this way since before dawn,” my sister says. “She can’t even keep water in her.”
“I have to give her an injection to stop the nausea and let her keep some liquid down. It’ll keep her from dehydrating.” he says. He names a price.
I feel, beyond my fear for my daughter, nothing but contempt for this man. I find my money and I pour it into his hand. “This is what I have,” I say. “Can you cure her for it? Because if not, you’ll have to take my word t
hat I will pay you or you’ll have to let her die.”
“Take her to the hospital if I cost too much,” the man says.
We can’t. He knows that. If we take her to the hospital, they’ll arrest her.
He gives her the injection and in a moment I see her relax. Her eyes cloud. I think for a moment that he’s killed her and my heart all but stops, but Hariba is breathing slowly.
He gives my sister patches to use when the injection wears off. A flutter of packets. “Cut them in half and then in half again,” he says. “They’re too strong, otherwise. Give her too much and she’ll forget to breathe.”
“Why do they make them that strong?” I ask.
“Because a horse is bigger than a person,” Tahar says, irritated.
“These are for horses?” My sister picks one up.
“It’s the same thing they give to people, only less expensive because it’s for animals.”
“You’re giving my daughter horse medicine?”
“I’m giving your daughter medicine,” he snaps. “A chemical is a chemical, it doesn’t care what label you put on the package. How long has she been jessed?”
I’m speechless. I thought the mare he was watching was his horse, that he was a rich doctor who raced horses. But of course not, why would a rich doctor come here? “You’re a horse doctor,” I say.
“Horses are jessed, too,” he says. “More often than people. In most countries it’s illegal to jess humans.”
I’m shamed. I can feel my sister looking at me, and my daughter. I can’t think of what to say or do-I can’t take Hariba to a hospital, but I’ve brought a man who doctors horses to cure my daughter. And given him all my money. My stupid pride.
Rashida says, “Can you release her from the jesses?” Her voice is calm, as if having her sister attended by an animal doctor is normal.
I cover my face so no one can see me cry. If I’d known he was a horse doctor, I’d still have had him come. What else could I do? It’s my daughter.
“How long has she been jessed?” Tahar asks again.
“Five years-” Rashida pauses. “No, six years.”
Tahar frowns. “That’s a long time to reverse.”
No one says anything. I keep my face covered and my eyes closed, choking on my own tears.
“I’ll give her an injection. It will reverse the instruction, but I don’t know if it will reverse all the jessing.”
I don’t understand what he is talking about. I’m too old, I never had any schooling. I don’t know enough to help my children. There’s some more talk and the horse doctor gives her the injection and leaves. Rashida puts her arm around my shoulders. “Mama,” she says, “you’re tired, let me take you home.”
* * *
I wake in the night, not sure where I am. I build my home around me-Nabil is asleep here, I am here, the door is here. I’ve lived here for thirty years. Where do I think I am?
* * *
In the morning Hariba is awake and sipping mint tea, propped up on her blankets. She is a stick puppet-her upper arms are as thin as my wrist and although she holds the cup in both spider-fingered hands, it looks too heavy for her.
“Daughter,” I say and sit down next to her. “You look better.”
She nods on her stick neck. “Aunt Zehra says I have to drink a lot.”
“You do,” I say. Illness has made her simple-Hariba, who was always thinking and planning.
“I have to get a message to Akhmim,” she says.
“The harni ?” I ask, startled.
She is guileless. “I have to, he is worried.”
I take the cup from her and put it down with a clink and hold her thin hand. “Don’t worry,” I say. I can feel the fragile bones of her hand, the skin dry and hot like paper. “Don’t worry about the harni or anything.”
“You’ll make sure he knows how I am?” she asks.
“I’ll tell Nabil,” I say. I will tell Nabil, but we’ll have nothing to do with the harni .
She drinks some more tea and sleeps, and drinks a little more and sleeps, until I tell my sister that I’m going home for lunch.
I walk home thinking of law and of justice. Of Hariba. The Mashahana says that justice is water in the desert, sweeter than love. Hariba has suffered; is it just to give her to the police? I’m supposed to protect and care for my children. I’m supposed to honor the law. Which is more important?
Nabil is sitting in the house with two men I don’t know. “Mother,” he says, starting to rise as I enter, but one of the men gestures for him to stay sitting.
“Ma’am,” the man says. They are the police, I can tell, even though they wear dusty djellabas and not uniforms. My knees shake and I pull my veil across my face. People who run afoul of the police disappear. “We have been talking with your son,” the older man says.
“Has he offered you tea?” I ask.
“No, thank you,” the man says.
He is almost my age, this man, and he’s lean and hungry-looking. The other is barely older than Nabil. “Have you heard from your daughter?” the old lean one asks.
“Rashida? I try to go and see her, she’s pregnant,” I say.
“Your other daughter,” he says.
I shake my head and I think Nabil relaxes a bit. They have been asking questions, and now they want to see if Nabil and I give the same answers. Prophets and angels walk with me. “Please let me make you some tea,” I say. “Nabil, how could you not make your friends tea?”
Nabil opens his mouth as if to speak, but the man cuts him off. “Your son has been most polite, ma’am.”
“He’s my youngest and I’ve spoiled him,” I say. My voice rattles around like a single pistachio in a jar. “Sometimes he forgets.” I can pretend they are friends of Nabil. I can be a dotty old lady. Then if I say something that contradicts what Nabil has said, it’ll be because I’m confused and old. I pour water into the teapot and light the stove.
The lean one frowns. “Please, ma’am, about your daughter.”
“Are you and Nabil looking for my daughter?” I ask. “Nabil, what have you been doing? I told you, she is dead to me.”
The young one looks a little surprised.
“We’re looking for your daughter,” the lean one says, “but not with Nabil. There’s been a report that she stole something. That she ran away. You knew this?”
“Did her employer send you?” I ask. I allow myself to sit down tiredly. “She didn’t answer my letters. So we called.” It’s true. Rashida writes my letters for me, and Hariba has always answered, then for three months we didn’t hear anything, so Nabil called and the man she worked for told us her contract had been transferred and that she’d run away with the harni . I didn’t believe it until Nabil brought her to my sister’s. “I’m sorry. If my daughter came to my door, I’d turn her away.”
The lean one says, “Has she been here?”
“No.” I shake my head. “She knows better. She is a thief and what she’s done, the thing-” I hide my face in my hands. It’s easy to be disgusted if I let myself think about it. “She’s not my daughter anymore. I have one son and one daughter now.”
My pleasure is a thing I can hold in my hands, but I don’t think it shows in my face. It’s almost true, and that makes it easy to say. I look up at the two men. They don’t care about what I’ve said. In the young one’s face I see Fhassin. It’s an odd thought. Whatever else Fhassin has done he’s never given me any reason to think he might want to be police-and certainly not police such as this, men who wear normal clothes and who spy on people. But it’s there. That same glitter, that same cynicism. Policemen probably think that there are no innocent people. What does it matter if they spy?
Fhassin never had much faith in innocence, either.
I feel as if fingers walk up my back and I shudder.
“Come with us,” the man says. “Both of you.”
“Come where?” Nabil asks.
The young one takes Nabil by the upper arm and p
ulls him to his feet.
“But the tea!” I say, a foolish, ineffectual thing. I know it’s stupid, but my mind stutters on it. “The stove,” I say. “The tea!”
“It’s all right,” the man says and puts it out.
He’s lying.
They take us to the police station, in full daylight, where anyone might see us go in and assume we are criminals. But I’m lying about Hariba, so I am a criminal.
They take us to a room with a table and some chairs and that’s all and they lock the door from the inside.
“Where is your daughter?” the older man asks.
“I don’t know. I told you,” I say, “she’s no daughter of mine.”
He gestures to Nabil to sit down. “Where’s your sister?” he asks.
Nabil sits down and stares at the table. “I don’t know,” he mumbles.
The man leans across the table and pushes him so the chair tips over backward. Nabil cries out as he falls to the floor. It’s so quick I can’t even think of it. The younger man pulls a length of fiber hose out from under his robes and strikes Nabil.
“No!” I say, reaching my hand out, although I’m nowhere near enough to touch my son.
Nabil covers his face with his arms, and the young man strikes again and again. Nabil is tangled up in the fallen chair. “Stop! Stop! O Prophet, stop!” I’m thinking that a good mother would throw herself across her son’s body to stop the blows. I’m thinking that a good mother would at least try to grab the arms of the boy with the hose.
I’m not a good mother. I make funny noises and then I bite my fingers. I do, I stick them in my mouth and bite on them. Not so I won’t cry out, but for no reason at all. Then I cover my mouth with my hands and cry.
Nabil! Nabil! My baby boy! He isn’t good at the world, he doesn’t have Fhassin’s wit. Don’t beat him. He’s too good-natured. I’ve brought him to this, for Hariba, who’s brought this on all of us. The black hose whistles through the air but, the sound it makes when it hits Nabil’s forearms and side and shoulders is dull, a thwack, like someone beating laundry.
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