Women of Sand and Myrrh

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Knowing the answer in advance, I said, ‘You mean you wouldn’t think of leaving and going back with me?’

  He interrupted me, stuffing tobacco into his pipe: ‘Me? Now? You’re mad! Not for at least two years.’

  I sat in front of him mentally blocking my ears so that his words wouldn’t get through to me. It was as if I’d smeared my body in anaesthetizing fluid to deaden my senses, although I hardly needed anaesthetizing: for months now I’d been getting gradually more impervious to external stimuli. He said, ‘You haven’t got enough to do, that’s the trouble. Go and look for some kind of work again and do it at home.’

  ‘I swear, I’ve never been properly employed here,’ I burst out vehemently. ‘I was just killing time.’ Suddenly I felt angry and depressed and I shouted, ‘Do you think my job in the supermarket was a real job? Or my teaching at the Institute? A woman who’d only been to primary school could have taught there.’

  This outburst seemed to give me some comfort. Things appeared to be straightforward. I found myself staring at him as he fiddled with his pipe, and I sensed his uneasiness. All of a sudden I wasn’t interested in hearing what he had to say. I began to remember the day he and I had decided to get married.

  We were in the terrace café of a Beirut hotel. All the other tables were empty even though the sea was only a few metres away. We’d never thought of coming to this café before but that day we’d met early to apply for British visas so that we could go to Wimbledon, and they’d told us to come back for our passports in two hours.

  The ice creams were melting although the heat was pleasant. I looked at the rust on the metal canopy, the potted plants on the tables. ‘Maybe this is the first time anybody’s sat here,’ I said.

  Basem replied abstractedly, ‘Did you notice the questions in the embassy? What’s your relationship to each other? Are you engaged? It must have been to find out if we were fedayeen, or perhaps just because we were a young man and a young woman travelling together. Of course he would have been surprised. He wasn’t a European.’

  Embarrassed, I remarked, ‘Even Mata Hari and Philby wouldn’t have been interrogated in so much depth. But it’s good we convinced him and he’s going to give us visas.’

  Basem spoke first: ‘Let’s get married in London.’

  I was taken aback. Although we’d spoken of it before, the sudden mention of marriage now confused me. The beating of my heart seemed to take over my whole body, but I said lightly, ‘Why the sudden decision?’

  ‘Because I love you,’ he said, taking hold of my hand.

  I wanted a house of my own. I would go back to it, open the fridge, take out a bottle of beer, listen to music turned up as loud as I wanted, sit alone or talk with friends in an atmosphere which would be quite different from my parents’ house, although that was comfortable enough: people couldn’t help relaxing in the atmosphere created by my mother. They all loved visiting our house, eating there and spending the evening with us. The food was always delicious, the drink flowed liberally, and my mother was a talker; she wanted to be the focal point of any gathering and without meaning to, she was always waiting for approval: of the food, the furniture, the pistachio nuts, or of her hairstyle, her lipstick, her outfit, her high heels, the way she’d preserved her youth and had so few wrinkles in spite of her fifty years; then of her liveliness, her original conversation, and the way she kept up with politics and world affairs.

  I went on sitting in front of Basem, deliberately blocking off all the ways into my mind and heart. He sat with his head in his hands. I asked him if he was hungry. He raised his head and said, ‘Does that mean you care about me?’ I didn’t answer and decided that I wouldn’t enter into any more discussion with him and that it would be better if I left the room. As I stood up he said, ‘What about Umar’s school? Or doesn’t that make any difference to you either?’ I answered, ‘I’ll wait till his term’s finished, of course.’ When he sensed my stubborneness he played his last card: ‘I’m sure you’ll change your mind after one week there. Life with your mother isn’t easy; you’ll probably quarrel with each other the day after you arrive. And I’m not prepared to come back with you to sort out the house or buy a flat at the moment. And renting’s impossible …’ I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘Too bad. I’ll have to put up with it for now.’

  It seemed the canary sensed my determination to leave. He dropped the piece of biscuit which he was pecking at and flew on to my shoulder.

  Tamr

  1

  I sat in the car alone, queen of all I surveyed, and breathed deeply, inhaling the air through my nose and into my lungs; although my face was swathed in black I looked at the other cars out of the corner of my eye. Riding in a car was no longer a wish or a dream: I was bowling along the streets at great speed and rejoicing; I hadn’t reckoned on the distances being so short and all the places so close. I thought, now I can do anything I want.

  When I’d first caught sight of the gleam of the car, which was waiting for me at the battered wooden door, my heart beat faster, and I felt the same as when I had a sudden vision of a luscious fruit or cold water on a hot day.

  Now I was passing tall buildings with glass fronts and others with façades of marble and gleaming tiles; handsome villas surrounded by trees; foreign restaurants – Filipino, Korean, Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani, Yemeni and Lebanese; numerous little plots of green grass and half-finished hotels and apartment buildings.

  I shook my head, muttering to myself in admiration, ‘It’s what God has willed,’ although I knew I’d never enter them. Once I’d been on the point of entering the white hotel: I’d bought tickets for a fashion show for me and Batul but it was prohibited. Anyhow all that kind of thing was for men, and for foreigners, who lived a different life. I saw a high wall with patterned tiles. Two marble columns framed the gateway, inlaid with fragments of copper and crowned with copper urns. Said must have heard me gasp. ‘That’s a new mansion,’ he said. The wall stretched away endlessly in front of my eyes. Perhaps this was the place which the Institute had thought of for the Heritage Revival Festival. The woman director had exhorted us to go back to eating local dishes in the open under palm trees, preparing them in big cooking pots over open coal and wood fires in the bedouin manner. The message was clear: we should return to the food of the people, rely on the produce of the area, stop imitating foreigners and be proud of our desert land. I reached out to touch the car’s blue upholstery and found myself thinking with faint sadness how it was this which had stood for a long time between me and so many things: shopping, flying visits, celebrating when a relation or friend had a baby, sharing in the sorrow when someone died. The car made me think about the constant apprehensive planning required to gain access to it. It wasn’t there for the taking, and was bound up with long waiting, standing firm in the face of despair until either my aunt visited us or my brother Rashid was in the mood to take us on a short excursion. Days here passed like months or years except when there were wedding celebrations and for these I was allowed to stay up till dawn, and they were the only times I felt free.

  The car was one of the reasons why at first I hadn’t been allowed to go to the Institute to learn how to read and write. The roar Rashid let out when my aunt tried to persuade him to let me go there is still ringing in my ears: ‘I didn’t like the idea of your going to London in the first place. I know you. You’re a rebel. All your life you’ve played with boys. You ran away from Ibrahim, and you told me that the sheikh got so drunk he divorced you. And now you’re asking me to hire a car for you and Batul so that you can go off to weddings unchaperoned with any driver you can find.’ My aunt interrupted him: ‘I don’t know what she’s done wrong. The sheikh divorced her after a month of marriage and married someone older, who wasn’t as beautiful as Tamr and didn’t come from such a good family.’ Quickly I replied, ‘Really, I’m quite happy. If the sheikh hadn’t divorced me, I’d have divorced him. I’m happy now.’

  Rashid was silent. Then he spoke ag
ain: ‘No, Aunt. I have boundless affection for you, and Tamr won’t interfere with it. But who gave her a roof over her head and supported her and her son? And who snatched Muhammad away from his father? It was me, no one else. No, Aunt. Tamr’s not going to the Institute. I swear that it doesn’t bother me having her to live with me. But she must think of her future.’

  I went off into my room crying. After a bit I got up off the bed, wiped my eyes and went back to my aunt and Rashid. Struggling to control my voice and slow down my breathing I said: ‘What’s wrong with me going to study? The Anaiz girls, the Mabruk girls, all of them go, even the old women. And Qumasha and Mawda. Rashid paused on his way out and replied, ‘You’re not going. I haven’t time to take you there anyway. And you’re not going in their cars. You’d do better to think about getting married.’

  ‘I’m not marrying for a third time!’ I looked first at my aunt, who was sitting with her head bent and her hand resting on her crippled leg, then at my mother who had her hand up to her mouth. I rose and went to bed, but I didn’t sleep at all that night. So transport was the problem? He could take me then; he’d occasionally given us lifts when Batul had asked him to. Perhaps Batul would have to enrol at the Institute, but what was to be done about her five children?

  The next morning I measured out rice from the sack, picked it over, and cooked it along with the broth, the meat and the vegetables, then had a bath and put on my dress, and my abaya and veil. My throat muscles tightened as they did whenever I rebelled and did what I wanted to do. As I shut the door behind me I called out, ‘The food’s ready and I’m off to the Institute.’ I walked along determinedly in my thick abaya, my throat growing tighter and my palms sweating. Only once I looked back towards the house and saw that its iron door was closed. I didn’t notice the heat, or my sweat, or the distance. Instead I concentrated on the obstacles in my path which forced me to cross from one side of the street to the other – heaps of stone and steel beams and mounds of sand left lying about the streets. I couldn’t see the Institute building, but it didn’t matter. I heard a car horn and stopped myself turning round, drawing my abaya more closely round me and wrapping the black head cover twice round my face. A car horn, and Rashid’s voice calling to me. I turned then; he’d opened the back door for me. I stood where I was for a moment but my thoughts were a jumble. I climbed into the back seat and Rashid didn’t speak the entire way home. Gradually my throat muscles relaxed, and as I sat in silence I decided to go on hunger strike. When my mother and Batul pleaded with me for the sake of my son Muhammad, I agreed to drink a little tea without sugar, but I ate nothing for three days.

  On the fourth day I felt weak and tired. As I lay in bed, I heard my mother saying, ‘Are the Institute and books worth getting yourself in this state for?’ Batul persuaded Rashid to come in and see me just before the evening prayer and I was confident that my fast must soon be over. In a voice which sounded as if he was making an effort to be kind he said, ‘What are you doing to yourself, Tamr?’ ‘I want to go to the Institute and get educated,’ I answered tearfully. His reply was quite unexpected, and I didn’t believe it until he repeated it: ‘You’re not going to the Institute.’ ‘Then I won’t eat,’ I said firmly. He went out of the room and I thought I heard him saying, ‘As you wish.’ I no longer thought about anything. From time to time I opened my eyes. I could hear my mother crying, Batul screaming, and I seemed to see my mother striking her face with the palms of her hands. Batul’s children kept asking questions and one of her daughters said, ‘Auntie Tamr’s going to die!’

  Batul appeared annoyed at the strength of my resistance. She came in and made me sit up and tried to force a piece of apple between my teeth without success. I needed all my strength to move my face away and I began turning my head rapidly from one side to the other. My mother eased me back on to the pillow and laid her hand on my forehead reciting prayers. Raised voices echoed off the walls and ceilings. Batul’s voice called out, ‘Listen to me, Rashid. I swear to God you won’t come near me and you’re not my lawful husband unless you personally take Tamr to the Institute. Can you hear me, everybody?’ My mother walked around with the incense burner in her hand, wailing and crying. She came towards my bed: ‘Batul and your brother are fighting and who knows, they might divorce, all because you won’t give up the idea of the Institute. Those English have had an effect on you. They must have put a spell on you and poisoned your mind. Tamr, my daughter, get up and ask God’s pardon. Batul and your brother are going to get a divorce.’

  My muscles went limp and I no longer seemed to have any interest in what the voices were saying. Batul and my mother came to sit me up, so that I’d be able to face in the right direction and say my prayers, but I couldn’t. They stayed with me all night long, pleading with me in the name of the Almighty, kissing me then screaming at me, trying to force my jaws open. They managed to get a spoon in but half the soup dribbled down my chin and on to my neck. I shouted at them but my voice came out strangely weak: ‘If anybody makes me eat I’ll never forgive them and God won’t either.’ Batul shouted back, ‘My God, you don’t love anyone except yourself. I thought you and I were like sisters.’

  I opened my eyes and I was frightened. The room was in silence. They must have all wearied of trying to convince me. I don’t know how much time had gone by but suddenly Batul rushed in kissing me and crying ‘Congratulations,’ followed by my mother who was trilling for joy and singing, ‘O Tamr, O Tamr, you’re going to the Institute by car and you’ll come back reading and writing.’ I was tired, but even so I struggled into a sitting position, propping myself up with pillows. I opened my mouth to eat without the faintest desire, as if I’d lost my taste for food. Batul reported to me that Rashid had begun to sleep in the sitting-room, took no notice of her, and had stopped speaking to her. Her annoyance had prompted her to march into the sitting-room full of men that afternoon and fling herself at his feet kissing them and weeping. ‘Forgive your sister, Rashid; God is forgiving. Knowledge is light. Fatima the Prophet’s daughter could express herself eloquently and read and write.’

  Rashid had been deeply discomfited. His face became the colour of blood. There and then he found the courage to agree. Everyone in the room knew about his refusal and his sister’s fast. In front of them all Batul had knelt at his feet and invoked the Prophet’s daughter. He raised her face from his feet and said, ‘Be happy, Umm Ashraf. You can tell my sister to stop fasting.’

  I said good morning to Said as I climbed confidently into the car, and thank you when I got out. I stood pressing Suha’s doorbell with a smile on my face, marvelling at her ideas, as I looked at the ancient door which she’d bought from the herdswoman living nearby; in its place she’d had an iron door installed for the woman. Whenever I went into Suha’s house, I felt as if I were boarding a plane and flying away, a similar feeling to the one I’d had the day I went to the Institute and met Suha for the first time.

  Inside and out, the Institute building was the same as the other houses round about. High walls surrounded it and its garden was no more than a clearing of sand. The women teaching there made me feel as if I was abroad: they seemed to have no connection with the buildings, or the sign on its door – Gulf Institute for Women and Girls – or the brightly-patterned couches in the sitting-room, and the pictures on the walls torn from books and tourist brochures.

  I sat at a table near some old women wearing face veils, and younger women, some of whom had left their headwraps on but bundled their abayas up in their laps.

  I was astonished to find that there existed in my country women like the women in London and Lebanon and Egypt, the kind of women I’d seen on videos. Even Mary, my English neighbour, wasn’t like that; in fact I’d never seen her in anything but a full length caftan.

  I didn’t hear a single word of the lesson. I was looking at the teacher Suha so intently that I was staring into her face, at her hair, her clothes, her shoes and her hands. I thought about where she was living and couldn’t ima
gine that a woman like her would be able to go about the streets in her tight-waisted, low-cut dress, wearing that broad gold belt, long purple ear-rings and purple shoes with open toes which revealed her long toenails painted purple. And the hair. I couldn’t find words to describe its colour and style: it fell in tousled disarray over her forehead and ears and neck.

  During the break I saw the other teachers. They weren’t beautiful like Suha. I thought about them too: where do they live? How do they live? Do they walk about the streets? Do they go down to the shops? What are their houses like? Are they like my neighbour Mary’s house, ordinary, except for the electric mixer and the tumble dryer? Do they have children? Where do their children play – out among the sand and stones? Even the young girls from the desert were different under their abayas: they’d taken trouble over their hairstyles, their dresses didn’t hang down to the floor, and they greeted one another with one kiss on each cheek, not with a third in the customary way.

  I went back home and told my mother and Batul what I’d seen at the Institute. My mother clasped her hands together and insisted that I take her with me the next day to see the teacher Suha and the others, especially the American who went around smoking a cigarette in a holder. I laughed and held out my hands: ‘No. No, no. I’d be too embarrassed.’

  I was scared of the remarks my mother would make and the stories she’d tell. I went into my room and stuck my tongue out in the mirror, examining it closely to see if one of the arteries in it had contracted and that was why it was so difficult for me to speak English; or was it just that English didn’t go with a woman who wore an abaya and whose hair reeked of incense?

  Every evening I waited for the television to become silent, the children’s crying to die down, waited till the door to the garden was shut and the black sheep had stopped bleating, till the women visitors had left and the relations set off back to their homes. Even when I’d excused myself someone would always follow me to my room, jokingly pulling the books away from me, or Batul or my mother would come in with almost the same phrase, the same sigh, on their lips: ‘It’s not right, Tamr. Really it’s not.’ When my aunt came to visit us she called to me all the time to come and squat at her side and entertain her.