The Locust and the Bird

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  When Muhammad’s brother Ali arrived, she expected me to retire to my room. And although she loved my children, she was forever arguing with my daughter Ahlam, trying to stop her from playing, skipping, or standing on the balcony. She wanted her to be like the girls from our village in the south, doing endless household duties and looking after her younger sisters and brothers.

  Mother’s aggravation, annoyance and intense sadness were at their worst when Father came to visit. She made it clear that he was the one she hated and despised – not his wife, her rival and replacement. She sat there darkly as he told us funny stories about the women in his village, who constantly sought his help and advice. They’d complain to him about how badly they’d been wronged and he would sympathise with their plight. He described how he patted one woman on the shoulder or pinched the cheek of another. From this, we’d know that he’d been flirting. These women had never met a man like him before; he appeared so open and friendly that they’d find themselves telling him all manner of intimate and personal details. Often their problems involved sex with their husbands. Father gave them this piece of advice: ‘If your husband wants you and has sex with you, you can put it right out of your mind that he plans to take another woman as a durrah.’

  I’d always assumed the word durrah, or second wife, was derived from the word darar, meaning to hurt or harm, since the second wife caused much distress to the first, subjecting her to great cruelty.

  Father always made a variety of suggestions, confident they’d be of little benefit, but would somehow serve for his personal profit. As payment, he’d ask for whatever the woman could hand over without her husband’s knowledge: dried tobacco leaves, eggs, yoghurt or flour. One woman offered him a chicken and a pail of yoghurt. In return, Father gave her one amulet after another, promising they would make the woman’s husband return to her bed and have sex with her again. The woman kept placing amulets under her husband’s pillow, but the result was only more frustration and annoyance.

  She complained to Father that his amulets weren’t working.

  Father lost his temper.

  ‘Look, woman!’ he told her. ‘We’ve eaten your yoghurt and grilled your chicken. If your husband doesn’t want to fuck you by now, he’s never going to do it!’

  Father was trying to get Mother to laugh.

  When she remained stony-faced, he yelled harshly at her.

  ‘God damn your ugly face!’ he shouted.

  In vain I tried to stop him, and so, to my surprise, did my stepmother.

  ‘One peep or complaint out of you,’ he said, pointing to my stepmother, ‘and you’ll go the same way as her!’ He pointed back to Mother.

  I tried to change the subject, but Mother silenced me with a single sentence.

  ‘Have you forgotten how he left us with nothing?’

  I bit my lip and shared her pain. I’d have preferred her to go and stay with one of my brothers when Father visited, but I didn’t dare suggest it. She only felt safe and relaxed at my house; she wanted to be close to my children.

  I’d watch her as she dozed off on the sofa. No one had ever helped her, not for a single day of her life, since the moment her first husband was killed. Her silence and sorrow had grown with the years. The buzzing inside her head grew worse, especially when she was lying in bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. ‘The buzzing has started again!’ she’d mutter. This buzzing meant her fears for all her grandchildren, old and young. She would listen to their complaints and problems and to each one she’d make the same offer: ‘Why don’t you take my gold ring and earrings and sell them?’ Then she’d lift the edge of her headscarf to show us where she kept all her worldly possessions, tied together with a knot.

  Sometimes I’d get her to watch television with me, in an attempt to inject a little joy into her heart, but she’d just start urging me to deal with whatever was happening on the small screen.

  ‘Tell that girl she shouldn’t believe him and get in the car. He’ll chuck her tomorrow!’

  If the heroine began to weep and Mother asked why, I’d say it was because her beloved had abandoned her.

  ‘Serves her right!’ was Mother’s reaction. ‘Didn’t we tell the girl not to trust him? It’s her fault. Why didn’t she listen to us?’

  At the sight of a male newsreader, she’d grab a headscarf and throw it to me, shouting, ‘You should cover your head!’ She’d duck out of sight and make sure her own headscarf was firmly arranged around her face.

  Three years after I lost Muhammad, Mother died. We took her body back to Nabatiyeh to be buried next to my two sisters. When we arrived at the home of her brother the cobbler, he refused to let us in. His son had been married not long before and he didn’t want to attract the ill-omen of death to his home. I wept and screamed. My poor mother was denied sympathy and refuge even in death.

  Out of respect for the past, Mother’s childhood neighbours offered their own house, even though they hadn’t set eyes on her since she’d left for Beirut. My aunt, the one with the snake in her stomach, arrived to mourn. Her weeping seared my heart. We buried Mother in the ground, and for one last time I asked her forgiveness for the day, long before, when I bit her as hard as I could. I told her that I had forgiven her for marrying me off so young, because she didn’t know better.

  The Money in Your Pocket Is More Beautiful

  Than Your Heart’s Desire

  BY THE SEVENTH year after Muhammad’s death, many things had changed. I was dodging my creditors. I’d started watering the frangipani at night, rather than during the day, for fear one of my creditors might spot me on the balcony – the butcher, the baker, the greengrocer, the owner of the banana shop, the furniture shop, the textile shop, even the electricity-meter reader. Muhammad had planted the frangipani in a small pot, where it neither grew nor shrivelled but simply stayed as it was, producing a few flowers. Muhammad had always meant to transfer it to a larger pot, but had died before he got round to it.

  When creditors knocked on our door, my young son opened it. He protected me like a suit of armour. Though he was only seven years old, he was quick-witted and able to take control of the situation. If a creditor was particularly angry, tears would pour from his eyes as he explained, ‘Mama has gone to the doctor. He says it’s something serious.’ If the creditor went into a rage and insisted on waiting for me, he would change his story. He’d say that I’d had to go back to the south because a relative had died, and that he was waiting for his cousins to take him to their house. He even told one stubborn, merciless creditor that I had died, and wept on his shoulder.

  Of all the people to whom we owed money, I liked the electricity-meter reader best. He was a sweet young man. One day he told me very shyly that he’d been a schoolmate of Fatima’s, so I promised I’d tell her to come and see him. Then I had an idea.

  I asked if I could postpone payment until the end of the month.

  He looked very nervous but replied, ‘Certainly.’

  So I asked him if he would lend me 10 lira to buy books for my children. I said I would pay him back when the electricity bill was due next month. He thrust his hand into one pocket, then the other, scraped together the money, and gave it to me. My request had obviously shocked him; we lived in a large house. Fatima wore pretty dresses, went to dance parties, and was regarded as one of the nicest girls in the class.

  My efforts to keep track of the household expenses were an utter failure. Each cup of coffee came with its own costs: beans, sugar, gas, coffee pot and the cup itself; not to mention washing-up liquid and sponge. My kitchen was a coffee house for my female friends, who came to sip coffee each morning, noon and night. It became a café at lunchtime: ‘Time for lunch! Have some lunch!’ The saucepan and the Kibbeh plates were always emptied. When the children got home from school, the dirty plates and empty saucepan told them what they’d missed. They’d ask for sandwiches, making it clear how hungry and angry they were, and I’d give them money to take to the corner shop. I made a blacklis
t of words that swallowed money: ‘sandwiches’, ‘rubbers’ and ‘pencil sharpeners’, the latter two being steadfast foes that disappeared constantly from my children’s hands.

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t manage to arrange things so there was food waiting for them when they got home. And if ever I did succeed, they were soon hungry again anyway. They’d rush off to buy those same sandwiches, followed by their very favourite dessert. When the shopkeeper told me he couldn’t hear their requests over the roar of traffic, he and I agreed to mount a bell on our balcony. When we rang it, he’d come across from his shop, and we’d then place our order in a basket that we lowered down to him.

  The stories about the ways I managed to dodge my creditors made everyone laugh. Once, I didn’t have time to run to the bedroom, so I hid behind a curtain in the sitting room, and then realised I was holding a lit cigarette. I put my hand by the edge of the curtain for fear of causing a fire, and the rising wisp of smoke gave me away.

  Another creditor didn’t believe my little boy when he said I’d gone to the doctor, and decided to inspect the sitting room. Again I hid behind the curtain.

  ‘By God, I can see you there! I swear I can see you,’ he shouted.

  I remained motionless, convinced he couldn’t see me but was trying to trick me.

  ‘I can see your feet,’ he said. ‘I swear to God! You’re wearing red slippers.’

  Very coyly I pushed the curtain aside and put my hand to my mouth.

  ‘Hush, hush,’ I said, ‘make not a sound. I’d never have hidden if I had even a piastre!’

  ‘God alone has the power and glory!’ he muttered, and began laughing out loud.

  My little son joined in the fun, dancing and jumping all over the sofas and throwing himself on the floor.

  It wasn’t enough that I had to avoid my creditors. I also had to deal with my youngest son, who had inherited my cunning personality. I had nursed this son of mine well beyond the age of five. As soon as he got home from school, he’d throw his books down on the floor and shout for me, even if I was surrounded by women friends, and point to my bosom. I’d take him into the bedroom and uncover my breasts. Still in his school uniform, he’d stretch out and nurse with his eyes closed, like a tiny baby. He’d nurse even as I was putting on my stockings or shelling peas.

  And now he began blackmailing me.

  ‘Give me a lira,’ he’d demand, ‘or I’ll tell Uncle Ali where we’ve been.’ Muhammad’s brother, who was still in love with me, continued to stalk us.

  ‘Give me a lira, or I’ll tell,’ my son would repeat in a low voice. Was my own son trying to wheedle money from me?

  Ali was often there, loitering as usual. He narrowed his eyes when he heard Muhammad Kamal’s threat.

  I yelled at my son, ‘Go on then, tell him!’

  He ran away, but in the distance he started singing, ‘If you don’t give me something, I’ll say that we went to Ba, to Ba.’

  He was too scared to say the actual word ‘Baalbek’,22 where a female neighbour and I had taken the children without a male member of the family as chaperone. I screamed at my son, I screamed at Muhammad’s brother, I screamed in rage at having allowed myself to be pushed around. I felt as if I was swallowing a knife.

  Without warning, Ali took out his revolver and pointed it straight at me. The children huddled around me, crying. My neighbour’s son called the police, who came and took him away. The terror reminded me of the old embattled Kamila, who’d survived through trickery and hypocrisy, defiance and shouting.

  Afterwards, I tried to get things back to normal, but Ahlam was terribly upset by the gun incident. She stopped going to school, saying she wanted to protect me. I brushed her concern away, telling myself she was just being lazy. My eldest son insisted on transferring to a school closer to home, because he too wanted to watch over me. I tried to get support from the other members of Muhammad’s family, but apart from Miskiah, all of them – men and women alike – believed that I was no good at managing the children or the household. They thought I was frivolous and selfish. And even Ali’s arrest after threatening us did nothing to diminish his ardour. His behaviour became even more domineering and obsessive.

  Standing in front of Muhammad’s photograph, I shouted, ‘For heaven’s sake, come down and get me out of this! Deal with your brother!’

  As my financial situation deteriorated, I was forced to seek out the women and men with whom I’d deposited money. First I visited the woman called Salsabil, who invested the savings of widows. Her name meant ‘a spring’ and she lived up to it, avoiding me and running away like water. When I did finally manage to confront her, she denied that I’d given her anything, since there was no written agreement. The truth emerged: she regularly squandered the money of widows. Next I went to see the shoe seller and asked for the entire amount I’d deposited, instead of the slippers and shoes he’d been giving me in lieu of interest. He swore I’d already got the better of him on the deal. When I approached the man who sold lovely nightshirts – with whom I’d deposited Muhammad’s annual bonus for fear I’d spend it all – he produced a detailed account showing I’d bought things costing the entire amount I’d handed over: silk nighties embroidered with lace and satin ribbons. I didn’t argue with him, even though, whenever I’d tried to withdraw some money, he’d muttered that the market was sluggish and offered me his goods instead. I’d taken nighties for me and my daughters, even though they were so young still. We would put them on and strut around. I’d been coming home month after month with ever prettier and more expensive nighties.

  The only solution was to start selling off my jewellery. It pained me to pawn a gold necklace for a mere 100 lira, particularly when I discovered that the jeweller had tricked me. The necklace was worth nearly 1,000 lira.

  I informed all the shopkeepers that they weren’t to sell anything to my children without getting my signature first. Naturally the children began faking my signature, still a flower and a bird. When I decided I couldn’t afford to buy them new clothes for the feast celebrations, Muhammad visited me in a dream.

  ‘What’s going on, Kamila?’ he asked. ‘Have you forgotten how important the feast is for young children? Have you forgotten how you felt when your family wouldn’t get you a new dress for Eid?’

  In spite of our desperate financial situation, I continued to give generously to beggars, even asking one of them to break the one lira note I had left, so he could keep half the amount. If my purse was completely empty, I’d tell the beggar to call on us at the start of the next month, and then I’d sing him a song and send him happily on his way.

  Once I tried to pay a taxi driver his fare when neither of us had any change. I took a picture of Father out of my handbag and handed it to him with a smile.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Take this picture of my father.’

  The driver stared at me in alarm, thinking I was mad.

  ‘Go on!’ I said again. ‘Take this picture of my father instead.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with a picture of your father?’ he asked in a low voice.

  ‘What do you mean? He comes from one of the best families in the south. He’s a sheikh. Just hang his picture up in your home, and you’ll –’

  But the driver wouldn’t let me finish.

  ‘How’s this picture supposed to feed my children?’ he asked. ‘How will it help me send them to school?’

  I asked him to drop by my house the next day to collect what I owed, and gave him directions by suggesting he ask for Kamila.

  ‘Everyone in the quarter knows me,’ I assured him.

  But he didn’t believe me.

  I insisted I wasn’t mad; it was just that, every time I had any money, it grew wings and flew away.

  When I told Father about my plight, the only advice he offered was, ‘You must stop thanking God, you know. If you keep doing so, he’ll assume you’re all right and stop providing for you!’

  Being constantly broke did not prevent me
from doing whatever I wanted. It certainly didn’t stop me from taking a trip to Syria to visit my half-sister Camelia in Damascus. We had become close since Muhammad died, and she had started visiting me in Beirut.

  When we were en route, my children and I were stopped at the Syrian border. Cars were speeding across into Syria, except for the one in which I was travelling. Our taxi driver couldn’t believe I had absolutely no money in my purse, nor could the Syrian customs officer. He stared at us, utterly astonished at my attempt to cross the border without paying customs fees and bewildered at my insistence on telling him about my situation. I explained that I’d been reduced from wife of the Bekaa region bureau chief to a widow in financial distress. When it became clear he wasn’t going to let us across, I started to get angry.

  To show my desperation, I climbed out of the car, stood on a rock and yelled some lines from the Quran, ‘“As for beggars, do not rebuff them; as for orphans, do not oppress them.” ’ Pleased with my skilled oration, I began to imitate the radio announcer at the beginning of a news broadcast: ‘“Brothers in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq, in Algeria …” ’

  The customs official stood there, flummoxed. My children reacted to my behaviour in different ways: some were laughing, others were telling me to shut up.

  ‘Mama,’ they said. ‘We’re so embarrassed! Stop it!’

  But I carried on until I saw the official disappear inside the office and emerge with his supervisor.

  Spotting the braid on the shoulder of the supervisor’s uniform, I started up again in classical Arabic: ‘“Brothers in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq, in Algeria …” ’

  The supervisor came over and listened to me. I could see that he understood what I meant, that Arab countries claimed to be united, one nation, yet all demanded an entrance fee. Taking my identity card from the junior official, he went back into the office and stamped it.