Henna House (5 page)

My mother burst out the front door. I instinctively crouched down and curled up into a little ball, the better to ward off her blows. Masudah said that she watched out the kitchen window and saw the boy step in between me and my mother, and that because he was there, my mother turned away. But my meanest sister-in-law, Yerushalmit, who was always out to get me and always saw trouble where others saw goodness, said that this was a lie and that the boy ran into the house and abandoned me to my mother's wrath. She added that my mother beat me, but with little enthusiasm, before ordering my sister-in-law Masudah to take me home, clean me up, and not to dare bring me back until the next morning.

*  *  *

That night I learned that the strange boy was my cousin Asaf, whose name meant
gatherer.
He was the youngest son of my father's brother—Uncle Zecharia, the man whose arm was in a sling. I had never met either of them before, but I had heard many stories about Uncle Zecharia. I
knew that he was a spice merchant and a procurer of rare unguents and perfume ingredients. Once I overheard someone say that a precious vial of agarwood attar had been sent to a bride by my uncle Zecharia, whose relation to the bride was also unclear to me. Another time I overheard my mother call my uncle by a name that both shocked and amused me, for it was the same as a word that I knew—from eavesdropping on my brothers—that referred to a man's flaccid penis. Not long after, I heard my father brag to a friend that his brother was once the guest of an African prince in Djibouti. Another time, I heard him say that his brother had been involved in an ugly brawl with Chinese merchants in the Port of Mocha. My father had two living brothers: Uncle Barhun, who lived in Aden, and was married to my Aunt Rahel, the witch in my mother's stories, and Uncle Zecharia, the eldest, who had never before come to Qaraah. I never thought Uncle Zecharia's colorful travels would lead to our doorstep. But here he was.

After the attack, Asaf and my uncle had made their way through the Naquum Mountains. They came to us seeking refuge. My uncle was weak and in need of a place to rest and heal. Their cart was laden with their entire store of worldly goods, which, thanks to the thieves, had been reduced considerably. But among my uncle's meager possessions remained a true prize, a small deerskin Torah that he had somehow acquired from an Iraqi cedar-essence merchant. The Torah was in tatters, and should have been buried long ago. But Uncle Zecharia was the sort of man who saw wholeness where others saw deficiency, and was in the habit of reading the weekly portion from this sad little Torah, even though it would not have passed holy muster. The Torah had been buried under rags in the cart in order to protect it from the elements and criminal eyes. Now it was brought into my father's house and stored in a place of honor: the big wooden chest on the top floor of the house, in the men's salon. The chest had been part of my mother's dowry, and was decorated with bone and iron inlay. It was the only chest in the house that had a lock on it. It is hard to say what flustered my mother more, having to host her wounded brother-in-law or the deerskin Torah, for she venerated holy books, and saw it as a grave and fraught responsibility to be given charge of such a treasure, albeit a
pasul
one, fouled by its own poor condition.

But the deerskin Torah was not the center of attention, and only my mother paid it much heed. Uncle Zecharia was garrulous that first night.
He explained how even before the attack he had been growing tired of his itinerant life, and had been contemplating coming to Qaraah. Asaf, like me, was his father's youngest child, the child of his mother's old age. Three older children in the family were all married and settled in homes along his father's route—a daughter in Bombay, a son in Jerusalem, another son in Egypt, in a suburb of Alexandria. Asaf's mother had died giving birth to him, and he had spent his babyhood in the saddle in front of his father.

*  *  *

My sister-in-law Masudah had a pleasant heart-shaped face and big round cheeks that were always red like apples. Masudah had four living children and had buried another four. In Masudah's house, I was put on a pallet with her daughter, two-year-old curly-headed Remelia. Masudah kissed me when tucking me into bed, and then laughed and said, “By morning you will be engaged, little one.”

I sat up, wide-eyed, “What do you mean?”

“Didn't you see? Your mother sunk her claws into that boy the moment he walked into the house. I wouldn't be surprised if you are already betrothed; after all, your uncle doesn't know about the bad luck you bring.” My face must have fallen. “Silly girl”—Masudah kissed my nose—“your mother is wise enough to act quickly. She knows she must put forth a proposal before your uncle recovers and hears what they say on the streets of Qaraah.”

Little Remelia shoved her pudgy hand into mine and fell asleep curled against me. I was awake for a long time. In my other hand, I held the amulet Asaf had given me. I wondered again which of Elohim's many names or which angel's name was written on the parchment. I wondered if he had made the amulet himself, or if it had been given to him. And if it had been given to him, by whom? When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed that he had been on the escarpment with me, and that together we found the amulet peeking out of the sand.

Masudah was right. My mother put forth a proposal that very night. First, she convinced my uncle that he was still dying, even though his arm was almost completely healed. She paid the tea seller to pretend he was a doctor and to come and pronounce my uncle's wound so infected as to lead to sure putrefaction. The tea seller was a hunched-over little man who could tell the weight of tea leaves to the half gram without
a scale. He examined Uncle Zecharia's arm and then told him that he had only days to live. He told my uncle that though the flesh had healed over, the bone was dead inside the arm. He pressed so hard on the red angry scar that my uncle screamed and cursed and even whimpered. When the tea seller was gone, my mother came to Uncle Zecharia's side and delicately broached the matter of an engagement. Uncle Zecharia was a cautious man, and was in his right mind enough to lift up his head and say, “Sister-in-law, don't talk marriage to a dying man.”

“Well, if you are dying, all the more reason to protect the boy from the Imam.”

Uncle Zecharia, not having been back north in over a decade, did not know about the severity or heartlessness with which the Orphans Decree was enforced. My mother explained everything to Uncle Zecharia, though she neglected to tell him that I had an unfortunate habit of losing grooms. No, my mother judiciously kept this information to herself.

Uncle Zecharia nursed his wounded arm, and listened to her impassioned oratory. And then there was the banging on the door.

“Oh, what is that? Is someone there?” My mother ran to the door and made a great show of speaking to someone outside. Her voice rose in angry tones and in the end she slammed the door and walked back inside with a huff.

Masudah later explained, “Your mother very convincingly pretended that it was the Confiscator himself, come to collect the boy before your uncle was even dead in his grave. But really, it was the lampmaker's wife, speaking in a gruff voice and banging on the door with her clenched fists. With that, your Uncle Zecharia almost begged your mother to fetch the scribe that very night to write up the engagement contract. By the time you woke the next morning, you were already a bride, and Asaf was your groom. They made a solemn bargain over a cup of arak and signed the contract in a week's time.”

*  *  *

It didn't take long for Uncle Zecharia to realize that he'd been tricked. When he went out to the market, our neighbors greeted him with downcast eyes and words of comfort. He quickly realized that he had unwittingly engaged his precious son to a girl who had the strange power of killing her grooms. He bellowed into our house, demanding
that the engagement be broken. But my mother stood her ground and swore that if he dared break the engagement, she would make an amulet that would shrivel his manhood and make worms come out of his ears. I don't know whether my Uncle Zecharia was superstitious, or whether he believed my mother could harm him if he tore up our engagement contract, but he did back down—though not before calling me to his side and inspecting me, or at least, that is what Masudah called it, an inspection, though it didn't feel like what a farmer does to an ewe, or like what a woman at market does as she sniffs the navels of melons for sweetness. He was sitting on the jasmine-scented pillows in front of the hearth. He patted the spot next to him. I remember feeling unsure of what to do. I never sat with the men, my uncle was a stranger to me, and I rarely even ascended to this floor of the house, where the men reigned supreme, chewing khat and smoking their hookahs. My mother was in the doorway, chaperoning this interview. I stood in front of him for a moment, rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet. I think I would have opened my mouth and bleated like a lamb had he asked me to. But all he did was look at me. His gaze touched my heart and filled me with warmth. Until that moment I hadn't known that grown-ups could feel the same way that I did. There was wonder and hope and fear in his eyes, yet there was love in them too, and then finally, a gleam of recognition, as if we already knew each other, as if we were good friends.

*  *  *

Sana'a was within kissing distance of the southern lands of the Sauds. It sat on the narrowest point of a mountain plateau, almost eight thousand miles above sea level at the joining hands of two major ancient trade routes, one of them linking the fertile upland plains, the other Marib and the Red Sea. Our town, Qaraah, was ten miles south of Sana'a, high up on the peak of a lesser mountain. Behind our town was a gently sloping plateau formed by the joining of two mountain shoulders. The trip from Qaraah to Sana'a would have taken half a morning by donkey cart if there weren't mountains in the way, but because of the precipitous elevation, the trip took an entire day of riding.

“The light in Sana'a casts a buttery sheen,” Auntie Aminah was fond of saying. She had spent several years there as a girl. “The houses are honey colored, the streets—when not defiled by refuse—glow sesame
brown.” My only visit to Sana'a was years away, so when I was just a little girl, I had to content myself with my aunt's comparisons. She pointed out the many ways in which Qaraah was not at all like Sana'a. We were a tiny new town while Sana'a was a sprawling metropolis, ancient seat of Ethiopian viceroys, Egyptian sultans, and Ottoman viceroys. Our salt market could boast only a handful of merchants, whereas in Sana'a there wasn't just one market, but also a cloth market, grain market, silk market, raisins market, cattle market, thread market, coffee-husk market, caps market, carpet market, brassware market, silverware market, and firewood market—home to hundreds of merchants hawking everything from khat leaves and elephant-tusk ivory to coriander seeds, potash, turmeric, silk thread from China, and kaleidoscope bolts of the finest Indian linens. Our houses were a paltry three or four stories high, compared to the eight- or nine-story towers in which people lived in Sana'a. But it wasn't just that Qaraah was small. I myself came to see the difference in the light. The sun hit the rocks around Qaraah at an angle that painted a ruby-red haze over everything. Houses were redder; food was redder; thoughts, arguments, dreams, laughter, marriages, births, and deaths were redder, a fact that made people think of blood more than they would if they lived elsewhere. As for me? My memories of my childhood are tinted by the color of that crimson sun.

*  *  *

I was eight years old at my official engagement ceremony in the autumn of 1926. My groom was a tender nine. It was a joyous and long-awaited day for my family, for it signified my protection from Confiscation. That is, if my father should live long enough for Asaf and me to reach maturity and wrap ourselves in the armor of matrimony. That day was filled with hope, Auntie Aminah told me. Hope for all of our futures. My father's health was precarious, but everyone knew that the Confiscator was mercurial and that sometimes an engagement document was enough to keep him at bay.

Heavy rain fell throughout that season. Auntie Aminah said that during a break in the storms, a hot wind bearing silty flecks of mud came in through our windows and coated everything with a layer of ashen dirt. She also said that the rain was sweet because the mountains were so close to heaven. I am sure that it tasted bitter and left everyone gargling with cistern water, but my auntie always embroidered her
stories with as much skill as she embroidered my leggings, dresses, and head coverings. For the occasion I wore nothing more than my ordinary everyday
antari muwadda
dress of dark blue cotton. The whole front of the dress was embroidered with red triangles, white chain stitches, and cowrie shells called David's Tears, which were to protect us from sorrow and the evil eye. On my head, I wore a fancy triangle gargush my mother borrowed for the occasion. It was made of black velvet and framed my forehead with a straight row of silver beads that dangled over my eyebrows. The top was embroidered with red triangles and florets in rows that reached all the way up to a little tip, giving the hood its distinctive triangular shape. There were also twelve horizontal rows of triangles in the back of the hood, and silver-thread cords over the brow and down my neck. Two silver chains hung from either side of the hood, and the ends of the chains were silver bell tassels that touched my shoulders. Whenever I moved, the beads on my forehead tinkled, and the tiny bells on the tassels did too, making a pleasant noise that sounded like running water. The back of the gargush was decorated with a heavy triple-hanging row of Maria Theresa thalers—Habsburg Empire–era silver coins that had made their way east through the ports of Genoa, Trieste, and Marseille to Egyptian and Red Sea ports. When I was a child, the Arabian Peninsula was awash in them. I didn't know anything about the global trading currents that brought those coins to Yemen, but I did know that their tinkling helped me avoid the evil eye, and that demons scattered at the sound. Like all Jewish girls in the environs of Sana'a, I always wore a simpler version of this tight, heavy headdress from morning till sunset, both in and out of the house. My ordinary gargush didn't have the Maria Theresa thalers, but it did have the silver bells and tassels that tinkled whenever I moved.