The Sand Fish (20 page)

I
t seemed Lateefa had forgotten most of her important possessions at Wadeema. Noora grew accustomed to seeing her delve into her travel chest, every few days, in search of this or that. Then Lateefa would puff into her burka and shake her head with disbelief. “Now, why didn’t I bring that orange
thoub
with me? It’s so light, so cool for this weather,” or “I don’t know why my kohl is burning my eyes. I think it’s gone bad.” And then she would send Hamad and Noora to pick up whatever it was that she urgently needed. “You must go. You must go right away,” she would insist. This time Lateefa had accidentally spilled her henna in the sand.

“How much henna does she need?” Hamad asked as he watched Noora empty the greenish powder into a small bottle.

“I don’t know,” Noora said. “At least two handfuls to make sure she can cover all those white roots, to make sure she gets her hair nice and red.”

“Maybe you had better put four handfuls, just to make sure she doesn’t send us back.”

“I’m sure she will find something else she has misplaced,” Noora said, frowning. “Why do you think she keeps missing things and sending us to get them?”

Hamad shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess she is becoming forgetful.” He leaned back on a
takya
, stretched his arms over his head, and yawned. “When they get old, they begin to forget.”

“She’s not that old,” Noora said, shaking her head. “No, there’s something else. She has become so nice to me, bringing me milk before I sleep, sitting with me to chat, letting me use her perfumes. Saffron, amber, sandalwood, rose, all those essences, I mean, they are so expensive.” She paused. “It’s just not like her.”

Hamad yawned again. “Why do you always worry so much? We are together, aren’t we? That’s all that matters.”

She stopped pouring the henna and looked up at him. “Is it?” she asked. He seemed so unconcerned, stretched on the
takya
like that. So at ease. Seeing him that way brewed a rumble in her chest. “Is that all you can think of, that we are together? Don’t you think of my position? I know I can’t stop thinking of it. Soon, Jassem will be back. Then what will you do?” Her voice was shaking now. “What will we do?”

He was by her side within moments. “Easy, easy,” he cooed, stroking her head gently. “Let me take care of us.” He began nibbling on her neck. “Come on,” he mumbled, “finish pouring the henna so I can hold you.”

“No!” Noora elbowed him away.

“Why?”

“I’m not comfortable.”

Hamad pulled back and let out a defeated sigh.

“Look,” she explained. “I am very worried. Something doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s better if we finish this now.”

Hamad’s jaw dropped. “Finish what?”

“Us! Finish us. There’s no point.”

“What are you talking about? I want to be with you always.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Divorce Jassem and marry me.”

There was sincerity in his eyes, but Noora shook her head at the impossibility of his suggestion. How simple he was.

“It can happen, really happen,” he insisted.

“Divorce Jassem? And who said he would agree?”

“We’ll think of something. We’ll make him agree.”

“We, we, we, we,” Noora mocked the earnestness in his voice before letting out a hopeless groan. “As if we matter, as if we can pick what we want.” Her voice had turned shrill, and she paused to swallow some control back into it. Then, with a forced patience, she continued, “I am a woman—a married woman—and you are a man—a poor man. We are not in a position to make choices. Don’t you agree?”

“Don’t you agree?” Hamad mimicked the adult-speaking-to-children tone she had used. Then he stared deep into her eyes and said, “I have plans, you know. I do think and plan. I’m not stupid.” He paused. “I am planning to dive again.”

Noora’s eyes fluttered with disbelief. “Dive?”

“Dive, you know, dive. I think I can do it. I know there is a special pearl down there for me to find. I know it.”

“But you have tried it, and it didn’t work.” She crossed her arms. “And what about your ears?”

“Don’t worry about that. I can bear the pain.”

His head was bobbing up and down, so eager, so determined, that Noora felt sorry for the desperation that was overtaking him. Still, she had to shake the silliness out of him. He was speaking nonsense. “Wake up, Hamad, wake up,” she said.

“I can do it, I tell you.”

“Wake up,” Noora repeated. “There won’t be any more dives.” She flung her arms into the air, shouted, “No more! This is the last dive!”

Noora drummed her fingers on her thigh and stared at the henna, poured into three small bottles and wrapped into a knotted bundle, ready to be delivered to Lateefa. Hamad was outside in the courtyard. She could hear him, marching back and forth from one end of the house to the other.

Why did she have to open her big mouth? Why couldn’t she have let him find out from someone else? She heard the slaps of his feet at the door—he was back—and his breath, too. Exhausted wheezes, as if he had just run to Leema and back.

She patted the mat she was sitting on. Like an obedient child, he entered and slumped next to her. She ran her hand up his spine, along the line of perspiration on his dishdasha, till her fingers cupped his neck and pulled his head to rest on the flat of her chest. It felt like a rock that was heavy with age, so old it was ready to crumble.

Noora clasped his hand, a limp piece of flesh that could be molded into any shape. Lifeless! So she pinched it with her fingers and rubbed it with her palms, squeezed it hard and stroked it with her thumb. She had to keep touching him, touch some soul back into him. Slowly, his passion returned and he
wrapped her in his arms, holding her so tight she felt an overpowering desire to throw away all her modesty.

She had never gone bare. It was an unnecessary embarrassment, a not-done thing she was always grateful for whenever she was with Jassem. Having before been too shy with Hamad, she now yearned for the feeling of skin on skin. He must have felt the same, for he loosened his embrace and they lifted their clothes up together. She watched his dishdasha fly to one side as she wriggled out of her
serwal
and peeled off her dress and rolled it into a bundle, which she dropped just behind her head.

Before she had time to dwell on her nakedness, he had eased her onto the mat and taken her whole. She belonged to him, every little bit of her. She clamped her lips and shut her eyes tight for fear of losing control. But the tears slipped out and snuck down her cheeks. And the whimpers of passion squeezed out of her throat anyway: tiny twitters of some morning bird, as she trembled with rapture.

It was only when Hamad rolled onto his side that she became aware of her rapid breathing. She did not try to pacify her pounding heart. Nor did she wipe away the film of perspiration that clung to her face; she just crossed her arms over her chest and grinned at the ceiling, seeing nothing till the flicker of a lizard’s tail slid into her view. It had been there all along, and she had not noticed it. Noora wondered whether it was the same lizard that used to cling to the ceiling when she was under Jassem, whether it had somehow scuttled across the courtyard into Lateefa’s room to watch another kind of lovemaking. Did it recognize her as the same person?

The chill of a sharp puff of air blew through the open doorway. Noora reached behind her head and lifted her dress,
fluffed it over her chest. Next to her, Hamad moaned. She rolled her head toward him and watched him as he lay on his back, fast asleep. Peace had softened the clamp of anxiety that had gripped his jaw earlier. There was a glimmer of his front teeth through his parted lips. He seemed as vulnerable as a child, and a gush of tenderness soaked her eyes, and tremors of guilt dried her throat, remorse at having upset him earlier, hurting him like that.

It was getting late. “Come on, wake up,” she said, prodding Hamad on his arm.

He started. “Hmm? What happened?”

“Come on, get up. We have to go.”

She wanted to get back to Om Al-Sanam so that she could unfurl all that had just taken place. Never had she felt such an outpouring of passion. She wanted to recall every discreet touch and caress, every mighty shudder and release. She wanted to take every small detail of their intimacy and think about it on her own. Until the next time.

H
amad’s shadow was breaking the light that spilled through Noora’s window. He was like a spirit lost in someone else’s world, unable to touch her, aggravated in its own existence. And so, this spirit, Hamad’s spirit in that shadow, hovered and tried to remain as close to her as it could.

Of course, there were always the fleeting glances that trapped her eyes whenever she came face-to-face with him. His eyes seemed to have stared at the sun for so long that they had swallowed its burn. She was sure he couldn’t sleep. How could he, when he knew she was sharing her bed with Jassem?

It had been a full sixteen days and nights since they had returned to Wadeema, and Jassem visited her on most evenings with renewed passion. And under his weight, she would mourn the joy she had lost. And her eyes would water. And Jassem’s vigor would rise at the emotion she was showing.

“There’s no need to cry,” he would gasp. “I am back now.”

That angered her, and she felt frustrated at having lost the brief happiness she had shared with Hamad.

Noora heard the rooster crow and propped herself up on her elbows. Still dark outside, still quiet, and yet her heart throbbed with anxiety as she wondered whether she would feel all right on this day. But then the dizziness drifted to her head like a thick haze and settled between her ears. She fell back onto the mattress and closed her eyes, breathed deep, and tried to ignore the familiar pinch of nausea that dried her mouth.

It was no use. She tumbled off the bed and staggered to the washroom. She coughed quietly and whispered under her breath, “It’ll go, it’ll go.” She hoped no one could hear her retch. After all, the nausea hit her only once a day, always just before dawn. As she crawled back to the bed, Noora tried to count the number of times she had been sick: seven times in as many days.

It was by late morning that Noora’s dizziness began to subside, only to be replaced by a weakness that settled in her joints. It was a particularly sticky day, and as the household hushed after lunch, Noora crossed over to the men’s
majlis
to chase away her fatigue. The breeze came from the sea just after the summer, and it was the wind tower in the men’s
majlis
that caught it best.

She lay on the mat under the wind tower and raised her legs into a tent. She could hear the pigeons roosted on the beams in the hollow of the wind tower. Their shuddering coos and flutters calmed her, and she rested her palms on her stomach, rubbed them in circles as her eyes grew heavy and she drifted into slumber.

She was not sure how long she had been asleep when she became aware that someone was standing over her. Heavy, heavy head—she refused to open her eyes, as that would just chase the sleep away. She covered her face with her
shayla
and rolled toward the wall. “Whatever you want can wait till later,” she mumbled, guessing it was Yaqoota. “Leave me to sleep for now.”

“It’s me,” said Hamad.

Noora pulled off her
shayla
and sat up. “What are you doing? The house isn’t empty, you know. Everyone’s here.”

“I must talk to you.” Although he spoke calmly, there was a warble of urgency in his voice. “We haven’t talked since we got back.”

“Talk?” Her eyes were still blurry with sleep. Yet her gaze drifted to the open inner doorway and immediately a panic seized her. He hadn’t even bothered to close the door. Anyone could have spotted him entering. “What are you doing?” she hissed. “Why is the door open?” All those times when they had roamed the house as if they were husband and wife, all those times and they hadn’t been caught. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be discovered now. She jumped up, startling the roosting pigeons into flaps of alarm, and swung the door closed, leaving just a tiny crack from which she could look through to the courtyard.

“It’s all right,” Hamad whispered. “They are all asleep.” He yanked her hand to his lips and kissed it.

Noora would not turn to face him, keeping her eyes glued to the gap. The kitchen door was ajar, and she squinted, trying to pick up any movement in its dimness. Only when she was sure they were safe did she turn to scold him. “What were you thinking, sneaking in like this?”

“I have a plan.”

“What plan?” she asked, looking back through the gap. She had to be absolutely sure.

“Look at me,” Hamad said, and twisted her shoulders so that she was finally facing him. He placed his lips on her forehead. “I miss you so much, and I haven’t seen you alone, and when I think of that ugly, fat Jass—”

“What plan?” she insisted. She was anxious to send him out again.

“Don’t you miss me?” he asked.

She watched those eyes, watery with hope, and sighed. “Of course I do, but we both knew it would not last.” She did not want to encourage him.

“But we were so happy. Why wouldn’t you want it to last?”

Hamad the dreamer
, she thought. Her lips curled into a half-smile and she shook her head. “You can’t be always happy. That’s not how the world works.” She felt they were someone else’s words, but she continued anyway. “We were lucky we got a chance at being happy, and even luckier that no one caught us.” She sighed. “Now, well…we have the memory. We will have to live with that.”

“I didn’t know you would give up so quickly.”

“It is not about giving up.”

“It is.”

“It’s not.”

“Yes, it is,” he insisted, his voice rising higher.

“Shh.” Noora wanted to scream her frustration, but instead she just rolled her eyes. Again, he was being careless, getting worked up and letting his voice rise like that. He wasn’t thinking of her, how vulnerable she was when he put her in such a position. Images floated into her head: images of Jassem, the
wives, and even Yaqoota, finding out their secret. They would certainly throw her out into the street. “Keep your voice low,” she whispered. “Now, what is your plan?”

He took a deep breath and began, “Well, the most important thing is that we be together. And every time I think of you with that big, round, ugly man—”

“Enough! I don’t want to hear about the ugly man. I want to hear the plan.” She could hear the chants of the fishermen on the shore as they hauled in their drift-net. The village was awake.

“Well, to be together—that’s the thing,” Hamad said, as if he had made some important discovery. Next, he paused and scrunched his nose, looked at the roof, searching for something, and Noora wondered whether he was making up his plan right there and then. She wanted to shake him. But then he spoke. “I don’t like what I have become,” Hamad said. “Spineless! Not able to make decisions. Remember that time, when you first arrived, when we brought you from your mountains? That beggar in Leema’s souk?”

Noora coaxed him to speak faster with rapid bobs of her head. The household was waking up. She could hear the ringing of the brass coffee mortar. Yaqoota was in the kitchen grinding the beans.

“I saw the way you looked at me when Jassem beat that beggar. And it was because I did nothing. But I wanted to do something, really I did.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, what could you have done?” She sighed. “You would have lost your job.”

“Exactly what I thought at the time. But what job is this, a
measly five rupiahs every month? That’s enough to buy me a basket of dates.” He blew a mocking puff into the air and shook his head, repeating, “A basket of dates, that’s it. This job isn’t taking me anywhere.”

Noora shrugged. She could see no solution. “Well, what are you going to do?”

“Leave. And take you with me.”

Noora lost patience. Once again, he was being foolish. “You can leave if you want, but I am not leaving,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m not happy here, but I have a place to live in. I have a bed to sleep in, my own room. I have food and water. I have security. Out there, I would have nothing.”

“No, no, no, you will have everything with me. We will start our life with money in our pockets.”

“Money? Is it going to fall from the sky or are you going to dig and find it?” She shooed him out with a flick of the fingers, but Hamad just crossed his arms and smiled.

“It’s right here,” he said, twisting his forefinger to the ground. “Right here.”

“Where? There’s a secret hole in the ground under me with all your saved rupiahs?”

“The trick is to get that money. It’s a bit risky and not completely honest…but then it becomes honest.”

Noora lost all patience. She began to jostle him toward the outer door. “It is time for you to go,” she said. “This is too dangerous, having you here like this. I don’t have time for all these little words that do not make sense.”

Her hands were prodding his ribs, and he giggled and twisted out of her grip. When she tried to push him again, he clutched her wrists and said, “The pearls! That’s what I am talking about. Just a teeny handful. Jassem won’t miss them.”

How many people knew about Jassem’s hidden pearls? “That’s stealing.”

“Borrowing.”

“Stealing! We would have to get his keys and steal them.”

“Just for a short while. Then we will use them to start off and give him their worth later.”

Noora shook her head and tried to free her wrists, but he held them firm.

“Think of it,” he begged. “Me and you, together, always.”

“Let go of my wrists,” she snapped through clenched teeth.

Hamad released his grip so quickly that her arms swung back with such force she heard a loud pop in her shoulders. She flinched and marched to the other side of the room. There, she faced the wall and composed herself, before turning back to him. Hamad remained standing by the outer door. He seemed unsure whether to approach her or to wait for her to say something. He was giving her a choice, a second chance at happiness.

The pigeons were settling back on the beams, and she listened to their flutters and coos, and then, from the kitchen, came Yaqoota’s syrupy voice breaking into a song that, under any other circumstances, Noora would have enjoyed listening to. Now it sounded more like a warning of the risk she was taking by being alone with Hamad.

“They are waking up,” she whispered, with a nod toward the inner door. “You’d better go.”