Women of Sand and Myrrh

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Suzanne

  1

  I moved the packets and jars out of the way and took down the slender bottle. Although I could hear Maaz joking with Ringo, his loud laughter like the chattering of monkeys, I went to the door of the kitchen to make sure, then hurried back and poured Scotch and water into the glass, took the lid off the narrow bottle and brought it close to the glass. How was it going to be possible to add just two drops? I was at a loss, and afraid that Ringo and Maaz would come in while I was holding the bottle. But all the same I began to tilt it slowly towards the glass as if I was squeezing the breath out of it: one drop, two, or twenty? This time I hid the bottle in a cooking pot and picked up the glass, but I didn’t leave the kitchen. Had I put in three drops or twenty? Perhaps he’d be poisoned, die even. I went towards the sink to pour it away, but then drew back. This was my last chance and I had to risk it. I encouraged myself with the thought that if anything terrible happened nobody would realize the cause. They’d blame the Scotch and bundle the case out of sight, just as they’d bundle him away if he died. I found I was shaking my head, revolted by my own thoughts. Was I trying to calm myself down because I was scared, or had I really grown that hard?

  When Ringo saw me coming with the glass in my hand, he rose to his feet announcing that he would begin by cleaning the rooms on the top floor. I gave the glass to Maaz, hoping that he wouldn’t notice my hand shaking. I looked at Ringo and pointed to my mouth and my cheek. He nodded and went upstairs and came down a few moments later with my make-up bag. I sat down facing Maaz, trying to appear indifferent, although my heart had begun to beat violently and my mouth was twisted to one side with the force of my agitation.

  Each time his mouth went down to the glass and he drank, I felt a throbbing pulse in my neck; when he’d finished he handed me the empty glass and said, ‘More iced tea, Suzie. Why aren’t you drinking with me?’

  I stood up holding the glass, trying to control my twitching mouth. With a forced coquettishness, I pronounced, ‘You can’t live without Scotch, and I can’t live without you.’

  Maaz laughed his loud laugh and put his hand to his heart: ‘Our hearts are our witnesses, Suzie.’

  I went into the kitchen and put on lipstick and powder, using the glass door of the oven as a mirror. I told myself solemnly that I’d hear his body crashing to the floor any moment now. As I poured more Scotch and water into his glass a voice of guilt whispered inside me, blotting out everything else, ‘Sita said I had to mix the drops with tea or coffee, and here I am adding them to Scotch,’ But then I pushed away the idea that something would happen to him, offering myself the justification that Sita would never have heard of Scotch and wouldn’t know what it was.

  I was still shaking and I blamed Suha for ever taking me to Sita. Irritably I thought to myself that in spite of her clothes and her excellent English, she was like Sita and the rest of them whom I saw walking around the streets like sacks of coal. I found myself wishing I’d responded more positively to Ringo’s scheme and seen it right through instead of using this potion of Sita’s.

  I’d woken up that morning, or rather I’d left my bed, still more or less asleep. A whole month had gone by since we’d come back from our trip together and I hadn’t seen him. I’d heard his love talk and his voice trembling with emotion on the phone every week or so, and he’d brought me a gazelle that he’d caught out hunting, and then not waited to see me when I came out of the bath. My longing for him was unbearable, and yet I couldn’t manage to have him in my grasp although I telephoned him and went to his house and sent Ringo to his office.

  That morning I’d shouted at my husband, and then sat crying loudly. This craving was agony; it opened up a chasm in my body which the blood couldn’t reach. For the first time I’d thought about playing with myself; I’d controlled the hand hovering over my stomach the night before and put it back by my side, vowing that I would try to get Maaz back and marry him, whatever the cost.

  Ringo had patted me on the shoulder soothingly and told me he’d get Maaz to come that same morning. When I shook my head disbelievingly, he insisted that I’d see him sitting on that very chair, pointing to a chair untidy with newspapers and James’s clothes; probably he was thinking as I was that he’d begun to neglect the housework because I’d stopped giving him orders and distracted him from what he was supposed to be doing. He bent down to gather up everything that was on the chair, and repeated, ‘Maaz will sit on this chair today.’ Then he began to explain his plan to me, taking out the pin which he usually kept stuck in his shirt pocket. He lit a match and held it to the point of the pin until it turned red as a glowing coal, then black, and I thought Maaz would rise up out of it. At the same time Sita’s bottle gleamed in my head and I began to laugh. Ringo handed me the pin and told me to prick my finger a few times until I had some drops of blood on my hand. I did as he said, and when a few drops of blood were just appearing he mixed coffee with tincture of iodine and sprinkled it on a bandage which he bound around my right wrist. Then he made me sit down on the sofa, and brought a jar with the remains of some cream in it which he rubbed all over my face, and I burst out laughing again. When my pallor still wasn’t convincing enough for him he went to fetch the saffron used for colouring the rice and dissolved some in water and began massaging my face with it. All this time, I was holding a mirror and trying to see what was happening to my face. Then he asked me how to say, ‘She’s killed herself,’ in Arabic. I got up to phone Suha, although I didn’t think there would be an equivalent expression in Arabic. I couldn’t imagine anyone taking their own life in this country: there was no need for it. In her usual fashion, Suha had forgotten our recent rapprochement and our visit to Sita a few days before, and replied tersely that she was busy and hung up. I rang again, cursing her inwardly, and told her that I was about to give Maaz Sita’s drops. When I sensed her enthusiasm returning, I asked my question, and she asked me sarcastically if I was planning to kill myself. Then she asked me to let her know what happened to Maaz.

  I repeated the expression over and over again until Ringo had mastered it; this was the whole sentence: ‘Uncle Maaz, Madame Suzanne has killed herself.’ Then he ordered me not to open my eyes and not to answer Maaz except when he swore that he would never split up with me again.

  ‘No,’ I added involuntarily. ‘He has to marry me. He asked me to, or have you forgotten?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ said Ringo, going over to the door. ‘He chased you like a wasp shamed by its own buzzing.’

  Ringo’s words made me feel happier, even though I didn’t understand the comparison. I wasn’t stretched out on the couch for long, or it could be that I didn’t notice the time passing because I was going over and over the same subject: I wanted to get him back, and to marry him even if I had to be the second wife.

  If I’d stood and repeated this to myself in the mirror a few months before, I would most likely have thought there’s a woman who’s gone beyond the nervous breakdown stage and is well and truly mad – Maaz al-Siddiq’s second wife?

  When I heard the car roaring to a halt, I closed my eyes. I heard Maaz’s voice before I heard the door: ‘You heathen! You don’t believe in God. You’ll go to hell.’ When he added in English, ‘You crazy, you suicide,’ I was overcome by a desire to laugh. He shook me and I couldn’t stop my eyes opening. I began to cry but instead of being cut by my tears, he told me reproachfully that anyone who tried to take their own life without waiting for God’s will to be fulfilled went to hell. The minute he showed signs of pity for me because I’d be going to hell, Ringo came up and took hold of my hand, gesturing to Maaz and shaking his head sorrowfully.

  Maaz obediently took my hand from Ringo and I seized the opportunity and flung my arms round him, crying violently and pressing my breast against him with every convulsive sob; I hissed like a snake in his ear that I couldn’t live without him, why had he left me, and where had his love for me gone? The strength of my resolve convinced him, and created just the effe
ct I’d imagined, and did it quickly, because he turned to Ringo laughing and said, ‘God damn you! Bring me some iced tea!’ But as Ringo went towards the door of the kitchen, warning bells rang in my mind. I pictured what was going to happen between us, maybe standing up, maybe for no more than a few moments, then like someone who’d relieved himself of a burden, he’d be off. At this, the picture of the Indian woman on Sita’s bottle, holding up her long hair, flashed into my mind and I recalled her words: ‘Even if it doesn’t do any good, it won’t do any harm.’

  I couldn’t hear a sound; he must have guessed from the taste of it: perhaps Fatima had resorted to Sita and her potions and that was why he didn’t want to leave her even though she put oil on her hair and had yellow teeth. But he was strolling around the sitting-room and he stopped by a model aeroplane which David had made. As soon as he saw me he reached out to take the glass from me. ‘God, I need this, Suzie,’ he said. ‘Tell me, where did you buy this plane? It must be the biggest you can get. Has David been into the desert to fly it yet?’ ‘I’ve told you a hundred times,’ I answered irritably as usual, ‘David didn’t buy it. He just bought the motor, and you know he goes into the desert to fly it every Friday.’

  I forced a laugh, annoyed at myself for answering him in this way, and aware that the days of the proud pleased assurance which his love had brought to me were gone.

  He stretched out his hand to my breast and said, ‘It’s been ages since we ate pomegranates.’ When I asked him what they were he began to explain, and I nodded my head without really understanding: a pomegranate was a fruit like a pearl, he said, and if one of its seeds dropped on the ground, God wouldn’t let us enter Paradise. He went to put both hands on my breasts and I stopped him, making the excuse that David would be home soon. At this he looked so put out that I asked him why he hadn’t been in touch with me if he felt so passionate.

  The image of Sita’s bottle gleamed brightly, and I remembered her promise that a few hours or a night after a man took these drops ‘his body would be ablaze as if he had peppercorns up his backside’.

  ‘Don’t lie, Suzanne,’ he yelled at me. ‘Lying’s a sin. David doesn’t come back at noon.’ I found myself swearing in God’s name, just like him, that when Ringo had saved me from cutting my wrists he’d sent for David too and when he hadn’t been able to find him, he’d left a message.

  Only then did I suddenly remember that my attempted suicide was supposed to have been the main topic of the morning, to the exclusion of all else, and I realized that because I knew it wasn’t real I’d forgotten all about it.

  ‘I want more iced tea, Suzanne,’ he said. ‘Since there are no pomegranates, I’ll drink tea.’

  Why didn’t he try again? Or didn’t he love me any longer? I went up to him and embraced him and clung to him and told him how I’d missed him. When he pulled me closer, I knew that he still wanted me, whether Sita’s drops got to his brain or not, and that what had happened between us during our trip abroad didn’t matter. And because he could squeeze me and pull me to him for a few minutes and feel happy, I pulled away like a fish slipping out of the net and said provocatively, ‘I’ll go and get the Scotch.’ I’d dreamt for so long of being in his arms and of the pleasure he gave me, and yet I didn’t feel any longing or desire at this moment; could my passion have been no more than the result of his abandoning me?

  He sat drinking. Then he asked, ‘Why this long separation, Suzie?’ Before I could answer, he stretched out his arm to show me his new wrist-watch.

  I wouldn’t have believed that he could be so sly as to turn the question round like that. But he jumped to his feet suddenly, and seized hold of me, pulling me up off the couch. ‘Suzie, I can’t wait. Come on, let’s go upstairs. We can go into the bathroom, or do it standing up behind the door.’ Pushing him off, I said, ‘How did you wait for a whole month?’

  He struck one palm against the other, then one palm against his forehead and said, ‘Maaz, you bastard! It’s been a month since you were blessed by Suzanne’s fragrant aroma! Suzie – I went to the bedouin to see my mother. She wasn’t well at all, nor was my father. And I went on a trip hunting gazelles with some of my relations.’ Perhaps he was telling the truth; perhaps he did go to his mother’s for ten days. When I didn’t make any comment, he must have imagined that I’d agree after a while and we’d go to the top floor, into the bathroom, or stand up behind the door, because he added, as if exonerating himself further, ‘When I got back, we had people from the oasis coming to stay with us.’

  My eyes bored into his, trying to find out the truth.

  ‘Where are they? In your house?’

  ‘What do you think? Would they be sleeping in the street?’

  I raised a hand to silence him.

  He sipped a third glass of Scotch, then turned to me: ‘What was your answer, Suzie? Are we going upstairs?’ I heard the shrieking of children in the garden and answered, ‘No. Why don’t we go in the garden?’

  He began to laugh: ‘God, like the Imam of Yemen’s apes. His house has been turned into a museum and when we went to visit it, I saw apes in the garden one on top of the other, just like human beings, not paying the slightest attention to anybody round them.’

  I said nastily, ‘I saw the guests. One day I went to visit Fatima and I saw them.’

  With complete lack of affectation he said, ‘I swear Fatima didn’t tell me, Suzanne. She must have forgotten. She’s got the children and their problems, and the little one worries her to death. He’s still eating earth, and it’ll kill him.’

  I lost faith in Sita’s drops. If they’d changed anything in him, they’d made him more balanced. Laughing, he asked me, ‘You’ve seen Aisha, you know how beautiful she is? Three men want to marry her and she refused them all because she wants to marry a man from the town, not a bedouin.’

  My heart missed a beat but I nodded my head, while he went on, ‘She drives a tractor and a landrover. When the desert guard told her that it was forbidden for women to drive, she said, “Try and stop me. I’d like to see you bringing drums of water in by camel, and winter supplies.” She comes in to town every three months.’

  I sensed that the way he talked about Aisha was out of the ordinary; I began to understand Maaz. ‘Does Aisha want to marry you?’ I asked.

  He started to laugh, slapping one palm against the other, until his eyes disappeared into his head, and his teeth showed white like pearls. ‘Fatima must have told you?’ he said, questioningly. ‘I swear she’s joking, Sheikha Suzanne. Aisha’s father is a nomad and a real bedouin. He lashes people with the cord of his headcloth and they say one of his strokes is enough to take your fingers off. He decided to marry Suad, relying mainly on God to help him, but also on me. He told me that Suad, who’s a nurse, had fallen passionately in love with him when he was a patient in the government hospital here. Aisha asked him how he knew that Suad loved him and he regaled us with stories of how she’d washed his face for him, changed his sheets, brought him hot food and even helped him to eat, and not been disgusted by him; when she took his temperature she’d always rubbed the thermometer on an apron tied around her waist so that a trace of him stayed with her. It was while he was still in hospital that he’d told Aisha he wanted to marry the nurse and Aisha, the wicked girl, had said, “There’s nothing to stop you.” Then she went off and told Suad, who was Lebanese, and the two became close friends and laughed together over the old man. When he was better and they took him back to the oasis, he couldn’t get Suad out of his mind, and began saying to his sons and daughters, “It’s not right. The girl Suad’s waiting for me. I must keep my promise. Take me to the town, or bring her here to the desert.” Aisha assured him that Suad was preparing herself for the wedding, and so the father began dictating poems to a bedouin who’d learnt to read and write, then he folded some money inside the poems and gave them to Aisha: “The money’s for winter clothes for Suad,” he said, “because I can see one cloud chasing another, and the cold winds will start to
blow at any moment.” ’

  I realized what was awaiting me, and cried out, ‘And you love Aisha, and she loves you?’

  Maaz was unconcerned by my accusation and went on, ‘Listen! I told Aisha not to play tricks on her father, because one day he might crack up over Suad and it would kill him. Or he might try and go to the town and wander off into the desert and lose his way … Every day he says to her, “Take me. Suad’s waiting for me.” ’

  Again I asked him, ‘Are you and Aisha in love?’

  He laughed and said, ‘Let’s go upstairs, and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ I replied. He didn’t look disappointed. He’d begun to know me very well and he came over to me and pulled me up. Although I usually submitted at the first touch, sometimes at a glance, I found myself feeling remote from him, thinking that desire too was just an idea in the head. I felt how strong I was now, and how he needed me.

  He whispered, ‘Never mind. Let’s go up. You know what I want.’

  I went in front of him to the door, rejoicing that I still held the key to our relationship, and said, ‘Go now. Tomorrow I’ll be waiting for you.’ He made for the Scotch bottle and began sipping from it. I pulled it away from his mouth and asked him maliciously how his cousin Muhammad was. (The doctor had implanted a small instrument in his body to help him give up drinking.) Maaz replied laughing that Muhammad’s body had adapted to the instrument and even to the sensation of nausea which it produced, and continued to swallow a tumbler of Scotch as if it were water.