“We don’t know where she’s gone.”
The way of my mother.
Mustafa touched his arm. “I have to go.”
Pushing him lightly, Tein said, “Go.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tein forced himself to nod and say, “I’m sorry, too.”
He looked for Zaytuna and Saliha, but they were still lost in the crowd. Auntie Hakima broke out of the throng of women and came to him. He wanted to say to her, “Not now. I can’t. It hurts too much.”
She pushed past his resistance and put her hand on his arm, squeezing it, saying, “Come visit me tomorrow.”
He said it, but did not mean it, “I will, Auntie.”
She scolded him lightly, “You didn’t come last week.”
He took her hand off his arm and tried to kiss it. She pulled it away and patted him. “You come. Tomorrow.”
He nodded. He looked up and finally saw Saliha and Zaytuna coming. Auntie Hakima followed his glance and said, “Oh, I’ll be going, then.” She laughed. “I’m sharing my silence with your sister. She needs to see just a bit more of the back of my hand.”
“Anything I should know?”
She patted him on the arm again. “She’s coming along nicely, actually, but she can’t know that. Between us?”
He nodded again, knowing he was loved but it felt like being on fire.
She looked him in the eye. “Tein, you won’t find what you need in a woman, or drink for that matter.”
“Then I’m lost.”
She pushed at him and said, “Never,” then followed the rest of the women out.
He barely heard her. Saliha was walking just a bit ahead of Zaytuna. She was still holding up her injured arm but wasn’t being so tender with it anymore. It was healing. He saw Zaytuna watch Auntie Hakima walk off ahead of her, rather than wait to be greeted. Zaytuna’s face fell, tears coming.
They reached him and Saliha said, “Assalamu alaykum, Tein,” looking him straight in the eye.
He wanted to look away, not out of embarrassment, but because he wanted to hold her to him and live. He held himself still and answered, “Wa alaykum assalam.”
He turned to Zaytuna. “How are you?”
Zaytuna took hold of his robe and rubbed her face in it, then laughed through her tears, saying, “I’ve dirtied your clothes.”
“My clothes are your clothes.” He pushed her back so he could breathe and asked again, “How are you?”
She gave him a smile meant to prove she was fine. “You?”
“Right as rain.”
Zaytuna gestured to Auntie Hakima, now nearly out of the cemetery and heading back to Tutha, “Did she say anything about me?”
“No, only that she wants me to visit.” Then he asked Saliha, “How is your arm?”
“Healing, Yulduz puts a fresh poultice on it every day.” She turned to Zaytuna, “Can you walk on your own for a bit? I need to talk to Tein.”
Zaytuna looked at one then at the other. “I wanted to visit mother before I left anyway. You two go on.”
Tein and Saliha stood in silence as they watched her walk through the gravestones to a place where there was nothing but two date palms growing. There must have been dogs there. He saw her lean down to reach for stone.
“I heard what you said outside the surgery room.”
The tone was clear. He was ruined.
She asked, “Can we walk?”
Sorrow caught in his throat, “Yes.”
They walked side by side until they reached the edge of the cemetery.
Looking at the poor camped along the edges of the graveyard, she said, “You’re a long way from the nights you slept here.”
He frowned. “I feel like I’m at its edge.”
“I won’t marry you.” She offered nothing to soften the blow.
He expected the words, but he didn’t know what to do with them now he had them. He wanted to put them down someplace and walk away. Instead he made himself hold them. He forced himself to face her and say, “I understand.” But then he followed up in a hurry, feeling like a fool, wanting to reassure her he wouldn’t become a problem. “I won’t bother you when I come to see Zaytuna. You don’t have to worry.”
“No.” Her voice rose, insistent, “Stop. Tein. That’s not what I want.”
He stumbled, trying to fix it. “I don’t have to come there to see Zaytuna at all, if it will bother you.”
She reached out and took his hand. “No. Listen. Tein, I love you.”
The embarrassment and sorrow he felt just a moment before exploded within him to complete joy. He had been dead and brought back to life. His fingers intertwined with hers and it felt like sparks would come from them and set the dry brush blowing through the cemetery on fire. Her beautiful mouth, her full lips, opened slowly into a wide beaming smile. She threw her head back and laughed joyfully.
He laughed with her and without thinking of where they were or who would see, he put his other hand on the small of her back and pulled her to him. Still smiling, she let go of his hand and placed it on his chest, pushing against him lightly, saying, “Not yet.”
Recovering himself, he stepped back from her, breathing heavily.
She became serious again and repeated, “I won’t marry you.”
“I don’t understand.” His joy sank into his gut and soured.
“I want to be with you. I love you, but I will not marry ever again.”
Then he realized what she was saying. He wanted it. The thought of having her so easily passed through him, but then made it to the other side. He didn’t want it. He wanted her love to fill every crack in his life. He wanted to feel her against him in bed at night, holding him to sleep instead of wine. He wanted her wild spirit to bring him to life in the morning. He wanted the aunties to fuss over her. He wanted the uncles to love her like their daughter. He wanted Zaytuna’s dearest friend to become her sister. But this? Zaytuna would scorn Saliha’s plan and she would be right. They’d be sneaking in and out of rooms rented by the hour, or worse, she’d come to him openly and become a pariah. Men would slap him on the back for it. She’d be destroyed.
“We can’t hide it, Saliha. You know what that would mean. Your reputation. Your work.”
He saw her nearly respond, then bite back her words at the mention of “work.” She knew as well as he did any hint of impropriety would end it. She wasn’t picking through bits of garbage to find something to sell outside the marketplaces, but she would be if they got found out. There wouldn’t be laundry for her to wash. There would be no going back unless her boss was willing to take her on like a daughter and answer to people for her sake. And why would she do that when anyone could work for her just as easily?
“It’s a heavy burden on a woman.” He shook his head, “I can’t do it to you.”
She took a step back and dug in. “That burden is mine, Tein.” She looked away from him. “This is why I won’t marry. You think you can make decisions about what is best for me because you love me. What happens after that? What other burdens will you want to carry for me? Will I have to obey you so you can turn me into a good woman?”
“You are a good woman,” he said in a rising panic that she couldn’t see the truth of what he was saying. “Saliha, it’s your wildness that made me love you! It’s not about me. It’s about this cursed world!”
She turned back to face him and was between anger and tears. “Why do I have to choose!”
“We can marry. I don’t want to own you. You heard me in the hospital. I wasn’t lying.” He looked at Nuri’s grave in the distance, “I want to take care of you without asking anything in return.”
“You can sacrifice for me, but I can’t for you. Tein, you can’t stop me from risking everything for you.”
“Why? Why do you have to risk everything for me?”
She moved so closely to him he could smell the salty sweetness of her skin. She said so softly he could feel it move through him, “You need to know you are l
oved,” and placed her hand on his heart.
Her touch filled him to overflowing and made everything worse. He knew in that moment, that he couldn’t marry her even if she agreed and he got what he wanted. The emptiness she filled would only want more and more from her until she could no longer make up for what was missing in him. Then what would they become? What did Auntie Hakima say? A woman wasn’t going to save him. He’d come home drunk in the end, if he came home at all. Drink wasn’t going to save him either, but at least it made the stench of living more bearable and he couldn’t ruin the life of a barrel of wine. He felt sick.
“No.”
She begged him, “Why can’t you just let this be good?”
“Because nothing ends up good in this world.”
He looked at her with the sorrow and longing of a last goodbye. He wanted to drink and he wanted to get into a fight and he wanted to sleep in the graveyard with the lost and the dead where he belonged. He wouldn’t fail her like he’d failed everyone else. It was done. “I can’t do this. Married or not, I’d ruin you.”
“Tein, Tein!” She reached out and tried to hold him there, grabbing a fist of his robe. She pulled at it desperately. “Tein, how do we love each other?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how to love me?”
“I don’t know how to be the man you want me to be.”
“You are the man I want.”
“You think you are going to love me out of this mess I’m in. Maybe you would, for a while, but it wouldn’t last. I’d end up coming home to you drunk. You know how I am. Is that what you want?”
She shook her head. “Zaytuna thinks the same. I don’t believe it.”
It made him angry that Zaytuna had said it, but she was right. “Saliha, she knows me.” It took everything he had to say it, “Let go of me. Let me go.”
Instead of letting him go, she wept openly and fell against him. He put his arms around her and held her to him, feeling every bit of her body trembling against him. He did not cry. He stood firm and let her quiet down before whispering, “Saliha. Let me go.”
Saliha pushed herself off of him. She pulled her wrap over her face, pulling it around herself as if it were a blanket she could hide underneath, took three steps back, turned and walked slowly through the break in the graveyard walls, never looking back.
He returned to Uncle Nuri’s graveside and stood beside the flattened mound looking for his uncle. “I’m lost.” There was no answer, no feeling, nothing. He yelled at the earth, “Uncle!” Nothing. Tein turned his back on his uncle’s grave and looked to the clearing where his mother’s body lay. Zaytuna was not there, and he was relieved. He didn’t want to go anywhere near it. He walked among the graves marked and unmarked, finally seeing her sitting beside a mound carelessly left unflattened. A young man was at Zaytuna’s feet and she was weeping with him. Tein drew close enough to hear her, but not so that she could see him.
Zaytuna’s hands were out in supplication. “God, widen her grave. Open a light onto her from Paradise. Make her longing for the Last Day joyful.”
The young man’s wrap was filthy from graveyard dirt and pulled around him in a way Tein knew too well. He’d been sleeping beside the grave. His heart went out to his sister for the kindness she was offering him. He wanted to join them and lay his head in her lap, have her pray for him, even though he didn’t believe in prayers.
“God, take Farzaneh into Your loving care.”
Tein let out a sharp breath. Farzaneh, the woman Saliha washed who had to withstand the Imam’s horrors. This must be her brother who visited her every week, despite the shame she brought her family. He would not abandon her even in death. Her friend Chandi and the herbalist who stood up to help were in cells to rot for killing an excuse of a man who deserved to die. Mu’mina was free but alone and without protection. His uncle was dead. Saliha was lost to him. Curse this world.
Then Zaytuna’s back began to arch and her arms raised as if of their own accord. The gesture gripped him. He knew what was coming because he grew up watching his mother do the same. Tein wanted to rush forward and grab her and pull her out of her coming ecstatic state, but he couldn’t move.
She called out to the heavens, “Hold his sister, bring her enraptured into your arms. Take our hearts, shatter them with Your love.” Her arms outstretched as if she were holding the world in them, as she recited,
I see love, an ocean without a shore.
If you are love’s worthy one, dive in!
Stay there until you drown in its depths,
for there is no existence without love.
There a brave one who disappears attains eternal life,
and wins the prize that he was once denied.
Tein turned his face from her slowly, scanning the cemetery, watching for anyone who might harm her.
Coming in 2021
The Unseen
A Sufi Mystery
The man was splayed on his back, an arrow shot through his eye and cuts to his arms with blood seeping through his sleeves. Blood had seeped into the pounded earth road and had turned black. Water had leaked from its leather sac, also shot through with an arrow, and mixed with the blood. The ground was still damp despite the heat. He whistled, realizing the shot in the eye mirrored the arrow that had wounded Abbas at Karbala. The cuts to the arms. The water bag shot through, that too, just like Abbas. If Tein were there, he’d laugh, saying that he read the horror of Karbala into everything. Let him laugh. He recognized the man from his parent’s neighbourhood but he couldn’t remember the name. The man was Shia, like him. Ammar stood up from beside the body and scanned to see where the archer would have taken his shot. There were only two possible vantage points. Up close, of course. But at a distance, the only possibility was the tomb complex of the Shia Imam Musa al-Kadhimi. The houses nearby only had thin reed roofs no one could stand on. But who would dare kill from that holy site? He knew in his gut that the man was murdered just as Abbas had been and he was going to find out why. Ammar kneeled again beside the body and hoped that the man had been able to make his prayers in the presence of Imam Musa before he died.
Glossary
Adhan: The call to ritual prayer. See Time.
Alhamdulillah: “Praise God.”
Ali: The cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, husband of Fatima, and father to Hasan and Husayn. He is known as the inheritor of the Prophet’s knowledge of God for both Sunni Sufis and Shia. He is also famed for his extraordinary bravery and restraint. He refused to kill a man who spit on him in battle lest he harm the man out of petty anger. He is called “The Lion.”
Allahu akbar: “God is great.” This can be used in times of shock or distress to say, “God is greater than whatever is happening,” in times of joy, “God is amazing,” and affirming what another person is saying, “You said it,” to “Wow.”
Arbitration and mediation: Exactly as you might imagine. Parties were encouraged to meet with a suitable mediator to resolve issues rather than clog up the court system.
Assalamu alaykum, wa alaykum assalam, and wa alaykum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu: It means literally “peace to you” its reply is “and on you peace” but can basically mean “hi.” Arab Muslims and non-Muslims alike use it. The long version ends with “and God’s mercy and blessings,” used sincerely, but also, sometimes, performatively to be extra-pious or even joking.
Bismillah: “In the name of God.” Used to start any action.
Duha: About twenty minutes after sunrise is completed. Casually, it can refer to the time following as well, broadly early to mid-morning.
Fals: The smallest denomination of money. These and other coins could be chinked, meaning, hand-cut into pieces to make smaller denominations.
Fatima: The prophet’s daughter, the wife of Ali, and the mother of Hasan and Husayn. Her representation in Shia literature is beautiful and diverse, spanning the naturalistic to the metaphysical. Here I call on
her representation as a loving and protective mother.
Ghazi: One who fought on the frontier of the empire’s expansion. They are held in high respect, unlike the troops who fight internal, civil battles.
Habibi: Masculine form of “my love,” or “my dear one.” Feminine is “habibti.”
Hanafi: Ibn Salah and Ibn al-Zayzafuni follow the Hanafi school of law. When scholars look at the Qur’an and hadith to determine what God and the Prophet intended Muslims to do and not do, Hanafis are open to using any number of methods of interpretation, such as analogy or an individual scholar’s informed reasoning on a matter.
Hanbali: Mustafa is a follower of the Hanbali school of law. He is not a legal scholar, but a scholar of hadith (see Hadith). He collects, memorizes, and transmits the reports about Muhammad. But hadith scholars were asked to give legal opinions in the early days, just as Mustafa is by the guard. The Hanbali legal school prefers to stick to the basics when it comes to interpreting law, believing that methods such as analogy or using one’s own personal judgment, no matter how informed, could lead to a person straying too far from what Muhammad intended. They prefer to rely on the judgments of the earliest members of the Muslim community.
Hadith: These are individual reports of what Muhammad said, did, accepted, and rejected. There are major compilations of hadith. These compilations may have several similar accounts of the same event or the same saying, or even contradictory accounts. The goal of very early Muslim Sunni scholars was to collect everything, not necessarily to resolve differences. Zaytuna and Mustafa’s argument over the slaves and wives of the Prophet is an example of one set of contradictions and the kinds of committed arguments Muslims have over what story to tell about the Prophet’s life and his intentions.
Hurr: Hurr was a commander in the Umayyad army who changed sides and fought alongside Husayn at Karbala after being called by angels to stand for him and embrace martyrdom. He came to Husayn with his hands out, ready to be bound for his wrongdoing, begging for Husayn’s forgiveness. Husayn forgave him and he was martyred at Karbala.
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