In the Kingdom of Men (8 page)

“Don’t be a slugabed,” I told myself. “Get up and do something.” I pushed from the couch, tied my hair in a ponytail, and went to survey the sparse backyard, wondering what vegetables
might root in sand. Okra would love the humidity, potatoes and yams the porous soil. When I saw Faris watching me from the corner of the house, I lifted my hand, but he ducked away.

As I paced off the plot, I kept my eyes open for anything that might strike, remembering how, in Shawnee, I once had stepped off the porch without looking. The scorpion had hit my bare heel sharp and quick, not much more than a bee sting at first, but by midnight, I was burning with fever, my leg swollen to the knee. My grandfather began to pray and didn’t stop, right there beside me for two days and two nights, until the tremors lessened and I fell into sleep. When I woke, he stood from his hard chair, rested his hand against my cheek, and looked at me with his watery eyes. “What doesn’t kill you makes you strong,” he said, then turned for the door and the chores he had left undone.

When I went inside and announced to Yash that I would walk to the commissary, he protested that shopping had always been a part of his job.

“But I want to plant a garden,” I said, “and I need seeds.”

“You’ll not find garden supplies at the grocery store,” he said.

“Not okra?”

“What is okra?”

I described the small fibrous pods.

“Ah,” he said,
“bhindi!”
His smile dropped to a frown. “You will not find that either.”

When I insisted, he handed me a basket and the umbrella, its shade little help against the heat that rose from the blacktop, gumming the soles of my shoes. I stopped to peer out over the compound, its low-roofed houses, the young trees piecing the sidewalk into lacy shade, the homely fence, the stacks lifting their incendiary flares against the blazing sun. I checked out the recreation center with its swimming pool, the bowling alley where Bedouin boys set the pins, and the movie theater with its schedule of censored Hollywood films, traveling operas, symphonies, plays, and meetings held each Friday, one for Protestants, another
for Catholics, although, in deference to the laws of the land, the word
church
was never mentioned. The small auditorium seemed the heart of the compound, everything illegal all in one place.

There was a small library inside the center, but I knew about small libraries—I could exhaust the stacks in no time if I weren’t careful to ration. When I walked into the single room with its few shelves of books, I saw that it wasn’t small but tiny, its volumes dog-eared and stained with coffee. I opened an issue of
Good Housekeeping
to find the pages limp and scissored, whether by the censors or wives hunting recipes, I wasn’t sure. I sighed and turned to see a young teenage girl watching me, her nose brindled with freckles, hair the color of flax.

“Hi,” she said, her voice so high she sounded as though she had inhaled helium. “Is the new
Seventeen
in?”

I smiled and shrugged. She plopped down cross-legged and groaned at the dated covers. When she turned back to me, I peered at the magazine in my hands.

“Are you new?” she asked.

“I’ve only been here a few days,” I said.

She eyed me wisely. “You must be out of school.”

“I just moved here with my husband,” I said.

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m never getting married,” she said. “I’m going to be a stewardess for Pan Am.” She dusted off the seat of her pedal pushers, as though she’d been sitting in dirt, and left me in the library alone.

I moved outside and walked to the playground, where I watched the younger children tussle. I wondered how my life might be different here if I had a son or a daughter to join the romp and holler of the group, some experience to share with the other young women. I felt in-between, somehow, out of rhythm with the world, and tried to remember whether I had ever known another childless woman, but only the biblical stories of Sarah and Rachel and Rebekah came to me—women who prayed and obeyed and believed until they were old and still their wombs
opened and their sons were conceived. Sometimes I wondered why I had opened my own womb so soon, what had possessed me to give myself away. I remembered Mason, all that talk, all that sweetness, and couldn’t help but smile. Even knowing what it had cost me, it was a mistake I might be willing to make again.

I twirled the umbrella like a parasol and strolled to the compound’s entrance, where I stood at the fence, peering into the distance while Habib peered back. As far as I could see, there was nothing but the golf course, where a Bedouin caddy,
thobe
fluttering, waited patiently while an American dressed in bermudas teed off. A turnstile at the fence led me to the narrow lane of
suqs
, the smell a mix of sour lanolin and cinnamon. Spun fleece, daggers, silver bracelets, camel bags, honey, bolts of bright cloth—each small store had its specialty. I chose a handful of thimble-size strawberries, which the Arab clerk weighed on a balance scale and poured into a twisted paper funnel. I ate them as I walked to the commissary, which was little more than a line shack built of cement blocks. Cases of soft drinks stacked one wall. Shelves along the center held canned goods and cleaning supplies. I inspected the long open freezer as the two Arabs manning the checkout watched. One cleared his throat.

“Australian beef,” he said, his words heavily accented. “It is very good.”

I nodded and moved to the produce, where I found several bunches of wilted green onions that might yet revive if planted, softening potatoes and yams sprouting eyes that I could quarter and bury, and a miraculous handful of okra pods. A deep freeze held frozen vegetables and fruit, including a battered bag of sliced peaches, good enough for a cobbler. In the back of the building, I saw a doorway leading to a smaller room, where an enormous Nubian man, his head wrapped in a turban, cut pork into chops. He smiled down at me when I requested a pound of bacon and wrapped it carefully in butcher paper as though diapering an infant. On the way back to the checkout, I stopped at the small
rack of used books and magazines and picked up a worn copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
, censored but unabridged—a week of reading if I took it slow.

The Arab clerk who tallied and bagged my few groceries fingered the book’s pages, brought it to his face, and sniffed. The novel felt like contraband, enough to convict me, but the man seemed patient, even kind. He bound the book in brown paper, tied it with twine, then pointed me down the street to a small bakery, its interior roaring with the heat of a wood-fired oven, where the baker, gesturing to caution me that it was hot, pulled out a puffed loaf of bread that quickly flattened. It was then that I realized what had struck me as odd: only men worked the shops, sold the groceries, fired the ovens. I stepped back out, the sun like a heat lamp, and retraced my steps home, my stride falling in time to the muezzin’s second call to prayer. The entire outing had taken less than an hour. Already, the day seemed like it had stretched on forever.

Yash greeted me at the door, fretful as a brood hen. He approved of the bread and bacon, expressed surprise over the okra, and cut his eyes at the heavy paper package that I secreted to my room. I hid the book beneath the head of the bed, snugged against the wall—a childhood habit still familiar—before going back to the kitchen, where I found Yash considering the bag of thawing peaches.

“I’m going to make a cobbler,” I said. I opened the drawer that held tea towels and found six of them, each embroidered with a day of the week and a little Indian child, buckskin dress or leggings and breechcloth, engaged in the day’s corresponding chore—Monday, Wash Day, Tuesday, Ironing … only Sunday was missing, but since Saturday was Baking Day, I pulled it out, touched the precise, even stitches—the work of a superior seamstress—then raised the towel to my face, breathed in the smell of clean cotton, and tucked it at my waist.

Yash pursed his lips. “I will make you the perfect crust.”

We considered each other a moment before he reached for the lard and I made a move for the sugar. We worked tentatively at first, careful not to brush a shoulder, an arm. I mixed the peaches with sugar and a little flour before spreading the fruit in the baking dish, dotting it with butter, lemon juice, and a dash of cinnamon. Yash unrolled the dough from his rolling pin as easily as laying a baby’s blanket. We began at opposite corners, finger-thumb fluting the edges, his calm intent something I felt with the appreciation of a child, hot afternoons, my mother making pies as I napped, my bed an old quilt spread in the coolest corner of the kitchen.

“Tell me about your family,” I said.

Yash took a paring knife and slit pretty petals in the crust, added a border of tendrils and vines. “My family is Punjabi with a tradition of military service.” One eyebrow arched up. “We are, after all, a martial race, according to our lords and commanders.”

“What about a wife?” I asked.

He didn’t answer but gave a slight nod, then pinched a piece of dough. When he held it out to me, I drew back.

“That will give me worms,” I said.

“What?” Yash looked shocked.

“That’s what my grandmother always told me.”

He popped the bit into his mouth, looked at me slyly. “There are no worms in my dough,” he said, “but perhaps the same cannot be said of your peaches.” I caught the hint of a smile.

Yash was lowering the dish into the oven when the knock came so hard that I jumped, but he seemed hardly to notice. “One moment,” he called, but I beat him to the door and looked down to see a legless Bedouin garbed in pinned-up trousers and a faded tunic, riding atop a little wooden platform with wheels, balancing an enormous basket on his head.

“Is-salaam ‘alaykum!”
he cried.

Yash appeared behind me, wiping his hands. “No,” he said,
and turned to me. “I apologize,
memsahib
. I have no idea how the beggar found his way past the gate.”

I gave him a sharp look before addressing the peddler. “And upon you peace,” I said to the man, who smiled broadly, two black teeth stubbing his gums. He presented the basket, fanning the flies, and I saw that it was full of glistening pink shrimp. I knelt and ran my fingers through the briny casings, cupped two hands full, then watched as the man spread a newspaper and cleaned the shrimp on the spot before handing me the tidy package, smiling his painful smile. He looked parched to me, his mouth puckered and dusty.

“Would you like a drink?” I asked. “Water?”

Yash left and returned with a few riyals and a glass, which I handed to the peddler. He drank in one long swallow before thanking me repeatedly and rolling his way down the street.

“The Muslim won’t eat them himself, but he’s happy to sell them to us infidels.” Yash dumped the shrimp into a colander.

“That water was warm,” I said. I was remembering the two taps in the kitchen—remembering, too, the separate drinking fountains in Shawnee, one for blacks, one for whites.

“You do not give a Bedouin sweet water to drink. It is a taste he is not used to.” Yash stirred the shrimp with his fingers. “It is the way of every American home.”

“Not this one,” I said.

He looked at me quickly, then away. “Of course,
memsahib
.”

I scrunched my shoulders. “Could you just call me Gin?”

He considered for a moment. “Perhaps Mrs. Gin,” he said, and I smiled.

“We can make shrimp cocktail,” I said, but Yash pulled back as though I had uttered a shocking profanity.

“If you will allow me,” he said delicately, and I hesitated before abandoning my station and wandering through the house as though there were something I had lost.

When Yash finally called me to the table, my mouth was watering, my hunger whetted by the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen. He served me the shrimp sautéed in butter, spiced with ginger and garlic, and I ate them every one. The air conditioner kicked on, and I shivered in the cooler air. While Yash was making tea, I pulled back the curtain, louvered the blind’s slats. I could feel his immediate dismay as he positioned my saucer.

“It is not simply the heat,” he said. “If a Muslim sees what is forbidden, we will be the ones who are punished.”

“But we’re not doing anything,” I said.

“It takes very little,” he said. “I’ve known houseboys who were thrashed and deported for being observed playing a simple game of cards. The Americans believe that the fence is to protect them from the Arabs, but, truly, it is to protect the Arabs from the Americans and their myriad temptations.” He began clearing the table.

“Let me help,” I said, and stood to gather my plate.

“Mrs. Gin,” he said, stopping me in my tracks. “Without a job, I will be the one deported.” I let him take the dishes from my hands, then trailed him into the kitchen.

“What about the Bodeens?” I asked. “What were they like?”

He scraped our plates, ran hot water. “They were Americans,” he said, “like you.”

“Why did they leave the way they did?”

Yash lifted his shoulders but didn’t answer.

“All right then,” I said, too stubborn to stop. “How did you meet your wife?”

He lifted his chin but not his eyes. “We met at university. I spied her across the courtyard and was immediately smitten, but she was beautiful and a very serious student. I mistakenly believed that my soldier’s uniform might spark her interest, but she took no notice of me.”

“So what did you do?”

“What young men have always done in the face of love. I made a fool of myself.” He smiled, and I smiled with him. “I had been to the library, and my arms were full of Plato and Curie, Rumi, of course, and even Lord Byron. I fancied myself not only an officer, philosopher, and physicist but a poet as well. She was with her girlfriends at the fountain, and I thought to drop my books in front of her so she could see the brilliance of my study.”

I waited, imagining Yash, a mop of dark hair, dressed in a crisp white shirt, little different than he looked now, only younger.

“I tripped in realistic fashion,” he continued, “and succeeded in scattering my books at her feet. Misfortune that the trajectory of my fall propelled the weightiest of the tomes into the waters of the fountain.”