The Locust and the Bird

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Four Years or Four Seconds

  FOR FOUR WHOLE years, Muhammad and I allowed no one to get in the way of our affair. But Muhammad was increasingly under pressure from his family. My lover’s elder brother tried to persuade him to end the relationship and wrote him a letter:

  I don’t deny you’re in love with the woman, or that she’s equally worthy of your love, but you know better than anyone the right thing to do. From the bottom of my heart, I’ve wanted to be the one man who could bring your desires to fruition, even at the cost of life itself. You also know I am no hypocrite and will do anything to preserve my brother Muhammad’s honour. So, I beg you, pause to take stock and consult your heart. As God and His angels will witness, I don’t like having to talk to you like this, but at the same time I’d much prefer it if you distanced yourself from the unattainable, something that may well cost us all dear.

  Muhammad read the letter to me, then folded it and put it away without saying a word. Shortly after he received this letter, his mother – who had regularly visited him and his brothers and sisters for long periods – left Beirut and went home to their village.

  ‘She’s run away from me and you,’ Muhammad told me, broken-hearted. He took my hand and kissed it.

  I had an instant image of Ibrahim yelling at me: ‘I’ve known you all my life. I can read you like the back of my hand!’ To banish the thought, I shrugged and imagined Muhammad with his head on my breast as I sang to him.

  His family were desperate for him to marry. His sister Miskiah was my informer. Once she showed me photos of young girls of marriageable age; some of the women in his family hoped he might choose one. I snatched them and drew beards and moustaches on their faces. But this didn’t deter Miskiah from confiding in me that his family had chosen a bride for him. She told me when the young woman and her mother would be paying a visit to the house, and so I hid in his room. As I heard them approach the house, I moved a ring from my right to my left hand so it looked exactly like an engagement ring. I opened the window and, with my hand visible, began to sing.

  Later I heard from Miskiah that, when the mother and daughter heard my singing from Muhammad’s window and saw my hand with its engagement ring, they’d turned back the way they’d come. The mother later sent a strongly worded reproof to Muhammad’s family.

  During those four years, Muhammad became more and more desperate. He took to creeping up the stairs to my house at midnight or daybreak, not to leave me a flower or a tip of basil, but to spy into my bedroom to make sure I wasn’t sharing the bed with my husband.

  His suspicion rubbed off on me. I’d sneak to his room half an hour before we were due to meet so I could go through his pockets. I’d sniff his clothes for traces of a new scent. I’d search for a strand of hair different in colour and texture to mine. When he told me that he’d been assigned a new job at the port, issuing visas for tourists from the big ocean liners, I became convinced that he would fall in love with some blonde – a tourist or a girl who worked in a nightclub.

  I talked Fadila into coming with me to the port to keep an eye on him. As soon as we got there and heard the din and saw all the customs officers, we realised we’d never catch him flirting. But Fadila couldn’t resist stopping one of the porters and asking him which vessel had brought in all these foreign women.

  ‘Why, are you offering to be their pimp?’ the porter asked.

  She let fly with curses on him and all the generations of his family, and we scurried off. I was sorry to go; the port was a lovely place, with the snow-covered mountains behind it and the ships looking like houses anchored in the sea.

  After we left Fadila started crying, saying, ‘You see, that man guessed I wasn’t a married woman or a mother. Why am I still without a man? Everyone who shows an interest in me runs away as soon as he hears me speak. I don’t understand it.’

  Though I didn’t find any proof that Muhammad was planning to take a wife, I became more and more jealous with every breath I took. Once I even hid inside his wardrobe two hours before we were due to meet. I sat in the dark, determined to catch him with another woman. I must have dozed off, because the next thing I heard was the sound of his footsteps pacing the room.

  Then the bed squeaked and I heard him sigh, followed by the sound of the window opening.

  ‘My Kamila must have been held up somehow,’ he said.

  ‘I’m here in the wardrobe,’ I said, without thinking.

  I came out, laughing, and confessed to what I’d been doing. He laughed and hugged me to him until my bones were almost cracking.

  ‘How on earth could I bring a woman to my room,’ he exclaimed, ‘when your photo’s hanging in a gold frame above the mosquito net?’

  He took my hand and kissed it.

  ‘You’re scared I’m going to get married, aren’t you?’ he asked – and he was right.

  Love had abandoned us in a desert. Whenever we savoured the sweet waters of its happiness, our thirst for each other only intensified. I scolded him, as he did me; I held him to account, as he did me; and all because we could not become one. Reality stood in our way.

  I was terrified of not being able to visit him. If I was ill and had to stay in bed, how would I see him? His fears were different: How can she love me when she’s living with another man? How can I possibly go on showering her with so much love and then returning to my room alone at night?

  But all of Muhammad’s jealousy and anger paled in the face of what one of Muhammad’s brothers did to me when he fell in love with Maryam and she rejected him. She didn’t care for the way he looked or the way he talked. ‘If only he were like Muhammad,’ she said. ‘You’d never dream they were brothers!’

  In fact none of Muhammad’s four brothers resembled him, in appearance, personality or intelligence. Though Muhammad wasn’t the first-born son, he behaved as though he was the eldest. Everyone turned to Muhammad for advice, but he carried the responsibility lightly. ‘We’re all of the same flesh and blood,’ he would say.

  This did nothing to stop Maryam’s rejected suitor going to Abu-Hussein’s shop and telling him about my relationship with Muhammad.

  He began by saying, ‘Did you know your wife Kamila is always at our house visiting my brother in his room? Sorry, but the husband’s always the very last person to find out.’

  The Haji’s world spun upside down. But that evening, he waited until his normal homecoming time to take me aside and ask for my explanation.

  ‘Lies, treachery!’ I yelled. ‘Bring me the Quran so I can swear on it.’

  He brought over the Quran, clutching his head and saying it was about to burst.

  I held the Quran and closed my eyes. Please, God, I whispered in my heart, I’m going to tell a lie. I beg you, listen to what I have to say. Please remember how they married me off against my will. Then I swore in a loud voice that I did not have a relationship with Muhammad, and insisted that Muhammad’s sister was one of my closest friends.

  I didn’t go to see Muhammad at his house the next day. Usually I ate lunch with him and then we’d nap. As we lay together like this I could almost believe we were married. An hour later I’d get up so that I’d be home when Fatima returned from school. But that day, I went straight to Muhammad’s office and waited in the street until he came out. As soon as he saw me, he realised what had happened. It took him quite a while to calm me down. Then he made me panic by asking if I wanted to divorce my husband and marry him. Everything could be settled, he explained.

  ‘What are you suggesting? I might as well throw myself under the next car!’ I shouted.

  By asking for a divorce, I would have confirmed to the Haji, to Ibrahim, and to everyone, that I was a fraud – that I had lied when I swore on the Quran that I was not having an affair with Muhammad. This would have had grave consequences.

  Again he calmed me down and promised he’d send his oldest brother over to see my husband and assure him that the rumours he’d heard weren’t true. Sure enough, the eldest brother h
urried round to my husband’s shop to assert my innocence. He accused his feckless younger brother of lying, blaming it on his unhappiness after Maryam’s rejection. He assured my husband I was like a daughter to them all; that in their house my status was equal to his own sister’s.

  This did nothing to make me feel safe. They couldn’t protect me from Ibrahim; I knew he would do everything to prove I was lying, and I was right. Until now I had been like a gazelle, camouflaging itself next to a stone or a tree every time it sensed the lion – Ibrahim – was watching. Now there was no escape. I came out of the bathroom, which was at the rear of the kitchen, and there was Ibrahim waiting for me. I prayed that someone would appear, even one of the children. But no one came to rescue me.

  Ibrahim snarled at me.

  ‘You have no shame and if you thought I was fooled you’re mistaken. I have always been aware of your relationship with that bastard; did he think he could get away with it because of his job? He has no honour … no respect, not for you, not for us, but above all not for himself.’

  In desperation, I begged him.

  ‘I swear by God that everything you’ve heard was fabrication and lies,’ I said.

  But I realised immediately that I’d poured petrol on the already thirsty flames of his fury. His moustache seemed bushier, and his hand struck me again and again, like a meat tenderiser, as he shouted curses with every blow. Finally my howls and cries attracted some members of the family, but only his wife had the courage to pull me away from his anger and hate.

  Humiliated and desperate, I withdrew, like a dove that had had its wings clipped. My sobs eventually subsided but my heart was broken at the realisation that I would no longer be able to see Muhammad.

  Abu-Hussein and Ibrahim now decreed that I could only leave the house with Khadija. But I continued to sneak out alone, fully aware that in doing so I was returning to the heart of danger. Muhammad would wait around the corner. He’d grown thinner. He would urge me to forget about what had happened, saying his brother was full of remorse, and insisting that we resume our relationship as before. Quivering from head to toe, I’d remind him about the Haji and Ibrahim’s new rule and tell him that it was impossible for us to see each other for the time being.

  Out of self-preservation I hung around the house like a ghost, making sure when I did go out that everyone knew I was with Khadija. But despite my protestations, I had the strong impression that no one was fooled. Walking past a shop, I overheard the owner tell his assistant, ‘No one can hide love, pregnancy, or riding on a camel.’ I nearly turned and cursed both men, recalling how I’d seen a woman paraded in Nabatiyeh because she had had an adulterous affair and become pregnant. They’d brought a saddleless donkey and put her on it, with her head facing backwards and her back towards the front. Humiliated, she’d cursed at the onlookers in anger. Instead I held my tongue and continued walking as if I had heard nothing, thanking God I was in Beirut and not in Nabatiyeh.

  While my circumstances were different from that woman in Nabatiyeh, I could not ignore the fact that my day of reckoning was at hand. I decided that the only way I could divert my husband’s attention was to let him sleep with me. I told him jokingly one morning that I had dreamed I gave birth to a baby boy and we called him Mustapha. That night I made it clear, with great effort and disgust, that the Haji could get into my bed. I tried to push him away from me at the right moment, so I wouldn’t get pregnant. My husband didn’t have a clue what I was doing. He was unaware of these methods and tricks. I was relieved when it was over, and went to the kitchen to boil some water on the kerosene primus. This was my way of announcing to Ibrahim that I had slept with my husband and everything between us was normal – boiling water at night was always an indication that intercourse had taken place.

  Climbing back into bed, I cried at the thought of Muhammad, murmuring, ‘Forgive me, what I did was only for our love.’

  Muhammad, despairing that things might never return to the way they’d been, wrote me a letter. I had insisted that all letters be delivered by hand. I could no longer trust any of his old strategies – leaving a letter under a stone or in the bottom of a bag of bananas – so he handed it to the boy at the grocer’s, who gave it to Maryam. Since I could not easily leave the house, the letter slept safe for a few days in my bra next to my heart, until it was read to me by Fatme:

  So, have we really forgotten the wonderful past, only to live in a miserable present? You’re mine, whether you like it or not. Your life is part of mine. Every day we spend apart is a loss without recompense. Come to me, Kamila, and I’ll ignore my family. Think only of the one who loves you, who worships you. I pledge myself to live for your sake. Come to me, Kamila. Life is short, our lifespan is not for ever. Your being so far away from me is a loss; your living at such a distance is like a void. Fulfil my wish, Kamila, and we will go to a world where no other human beings live, where we are alone, where flowers and shrubs beguile us, where there are swallows and nightingales …

  ‘You Lead Her This Way and That … Do You

  Expect Me to Resole Her Shoes Every Day?’

  AT THE END of the month I waited for my period, and waited. When there was no sign of it I became paralysed with fear: Muhammad would accuse me of disloyalty and leave me, and aside from that I did not want to have a third child with my husband. Had God heard me when I’d lied to the Haji about my dream of baby Mustapha?

  But although it was unwelcome, my pregnancy gave me the strength and courage to deal with Ibrahim. I came up with a variety of ruses to escape from the house without Khadija. I’d take Mother with me, leave her with a relative and then make my way to Muhammad. Sometimes I’d send a message to my brother Hasan’s wife, asking her to stop by and take me to the dentist; but as soon as I was in the street I would abandon her and run to Muhammad. I even managed to take Khadija along with me to the cinema, where Muhammad was to meet us.

  Khadija agreed despite her best instincts. She sat there in a panic, weighed down by the thought of the domestic duties she’d abandoned, especially since Ibrahim was so demanding and unpredictable that she lived in fear of his temper.

  Once inside the cinema, I left a seat vacant beside me and Muhammad came and sat nervously in it. All I wanted was to go back to the ease of our past meetings. I couldn’t rejoice that I was sitting in the cinema next to Muhammad; I felt only weary and dejected. It was as though what had happened was merely the first breath of wind in what would soon become a cyclone. I panicked, lifting my hand to draw Muhammad’s head to mine, but found myself touching my headscarf instead.

  Afterwards Khadija didn’t want to talk about the film. We had to speed home because she was terrified Ibrahim would arrive before us. And she was right to be afraid.

  When he came home he grabbed her shoes and inspected them. He blamed me for their dishevelled state.

  ‘You lead her this way and that,’ he shouted at me, ‘just like the shuttle on a sewing machine. Do you expect me to resole her shoes every day?’

  His Indifference Sucks up My Desires;

  His Desires Suck up My Very Blood

  I CONTINUED TO MEET Muhammad, although never in his room, but then he sent me a message that I could not ignore:

  I am very miserable and feel a great longing for everything. It’s as though I can feel my own end approaching. So at least come and say goodbye.

  This time, gaining reassurance and strength from Hanan’s tiny hand, I took my daughter along with me to Muhammad’s room, telling her that we were visiting the doctor.

  We couldn’t live out our love in the way Muhammad had hoped, as he expressed in that letter: ‘You’re mine, whether you like it or not …’ He had no idea of the realities of my life – that I had been pregnant, that I had aborted the baby, Mustapha.

  I hadn’t, like other desperate pregnant women who wanted to get rid of their babies, asked someone else to hit me on my back, nor had I been injected with quinine, two guaranteed methods of aborting. Instead, I jumped secretly
from my bed to the floor until I nearly fainted, and yet still I didn’t stop. Then I drank some boiled parsley, all the while asking the baby inside me for forgiveness.

  Finally one morning I was wrenched from sleep by agonising cramps and, drenched in blood, I saw Mustapha, no bigger than my finger. I screamed and soon everybody came running to help me. I don’t know who put the foetus in a soup bowl full of water, but he was displayed for one day, pink and tiny with a slender thread trailing from him. All the children in our house and the neighbours had a peek before we buried him in the garden.

  I prayed and asked for God’s forgiveness, believing that Mustapha had wanted to be aborted and I had simply helped him. What else could it be, when so many women tried to get rid of their pregnancy and failed? I was upset by this loss. But to my relief, in a few days I began to feel strong again, just like the malu-malu – the touch-me-not plant, which folds and droops its sensitive leaves when touched, but quickly revives itself. But I pretended that I was still raw and vulnerable so Ibrahim would leave me alone.

  Muhammad was living in another reality: he was stressed and unhappy, and his family was putting even greater pressure on him to leave me. His older brother even wrote to me, sending the letter via his wife. I repeated it to Fatme, our neighbour, reciting, ‘“If you really love Muhammad, you should leave him. He’s ruining his chances in life for your sake. By concentrating on the here and now he’s neglecting his own future.” ’

  I couldn’t understand what he meant. Muhammad worked for the government and, though he often complained about his miserable salary, he’d managed to buy himself a suit of the very finest material, costing 140 lira. His shirts were extremely elegant, as were his socks, shoes, handkerchiefs and ties. Everything about him was fashionable. He bought himself some sunglasses too. No one in my family had ever worn sunglasses; dark glasses were only for the blind. For the first time ever, I tried on a pair and saw the mountains and trees in a romantic orange glow. Muhammad also owned a pair of binoculars to watch birds and eagles; he patronised restaurants and cafés and went to the movies. The only people I’d heard about who lived this way were film stars and the rich.