The Sand Fish (6 page)

D
ur-Mamad clutched Sager’s wrist and led him in. Then he walked back out and indicated to Noora that she should follow. Once she was in Zobaida’s hut, a whiff of rotting grass, old skin, and toenails assaulted her nose just as Dur-Mamad sealed the entrance with a thin board, leaving only a sliver of light.

“Stinky in here,” said Noora. “Why did he shut us in?”

Sager shushed her. “Show manners—we’re guests here.”

She fidgeted and shifted on her feet when something scraped her forehead. Noora lashed at it. She had crossed from bright light to dimness and had to blink hard before she could make out the dried plants hanging upside down from the roof.

“Well, where is she?” Noora whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Sager, as he settled on the floor on folded legs. “Just sit and wait.”

She sat. “What does she want?”

“I don’t know.”

They waited, and as Noora’s eyes adjusted to the shadowy interior, she yawned and let her gaze drift to a row of jars and bottles lining the far wall. Were those squiggles dead sand-racer snakes? Her lips fell open in disgust. “Erkh. Did you see what’s in those jars?” In another jar, she was sure she could pick out the tips of the tails of mountain scorpions squished together. “Erkh,” she repeated. “This place gives me the shivers. Let’s get out as soon as we can.”

She heard Zobaida before Sager could respond. From the darkness the healer appeared, shuffling in on her bottom from a doorway that led into another room they had not seen. Her clothes rustled and there was a clicking sound from a mysterious necklace. She settled cross-legged in front of them like a dark queen about to attend to the woes of her subjects. With her head tilted to one side and her eyes half-closed, she waited.

Sager cleared his throat and said, “Your son brought us here.”

“Yes, but you were coming to see me anyway, weren’t you?” Her raspy voice flowed like a lethargic current.

“We were, but now there’s no point. We can’t pay you.”

“Yes, because that rascal stole your honey.”

What witch-blood ran in Zobaida’s veins that she should know so much? Noora’s head pulsed with the thought just as Zobaida shifted and stretched her legs. The beam of light from the doorway fell on her chest, on the source of the clicking sound. That was no mysterious necklace! It was her talismans, dangling from loops sewn to the edges of her
shayla
. Noora scrunched her nose at the teeth, claws, shells, and tiny bundles of cloth. She did not want to know what was in them.

Zobaida swiveled her head, and Noora dropped her gaze, only to be startled by Zobaida’s deformed feet. From the ankles down, they curved into crescents that had none of the beauty of the moon.

“You know, my mother tried to straighten them when I was small, but it didn’t work,” Zobaida said, and snapped open her eyes. Both her seeing, black eye and her blind, blue eye joined in an intense stare at Noora. “She would pin me down with her knees and place heavy rocks on my feet. How it hurt!”

Noora felt the heat rise to her face. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Never mind all that,” Zobaida said. “
Masha’ Allah
, you have done a good thing today. You are the first people ever to defend my son.” She sighed and clicked her tongue. “So helpless, life hasn’t been kind to him, giving him a tongue that moves without purpose and ears that can’t catch the sound of the wind.”

Sager muttered something about only doing what was right when she silenced him with a raised arm.

“No! What you did was something special. Dur-Mamad is my only son—as valuable to me as my liver. Even his father wouldn’t have stood up for him the way you did. He abandoned us, you know, when Dur-Mamad was just a toddler.” A growl crawled at the back of her throat, and she raised one of the clinging teeth to her mouth and blew a whisper over it. “To Moosa, you scoundrel, wherever you may be. May this tooth blunt your vanity and make you feel no better than a filthy dog.” Then she burped and slackened her eyelids. “Now, how can I help you?”

Noora and Sager were too stunned to speak. And for a while, the only sound that filled the hut was their muffled breathing.

“Well?”

Sager coughed and released their predicament in a rattle of words.

“Yes, I understand.” Zobaida nodded. “You have your home, but it’s no fortress of safety now that your father has become mad.” She had turned serene, almost motherly.

“We don’t know what to do,” Sager confessed.

“I can make you a potion,
insha’ Allah
, that will make him gentle. But the madness will always be there, this you must understand.” And with that, she pulled out two stones from behind her back and clapped them together.

The board slid open. Light poured in, and Dur-Mamad hopped into the hut.
Had he heard or felt her call?
Noora did not have time to mull it over, for she was struck dumb by the unfolding special language of mother and son, which left her open-mouthed and feeling useless.

There was Zobaida’s head lifting to the roof. There was her tongue slipping out in three sharp thrusts. There was Dur-Mamad reaching out for the shriveled plants she had indicated. A punch of a fist into her palm sent Dur-Mamad scurrying to fetch a mortar and pestle. When he returned, Zobaida twisted her wrists in the air, shaping an imaginary bottle he had to bring.

She was about to make the potion. The meeting was about to end. Noora felt cheerful at the thought.

But then a change washed over Zobaida. She had just begun to pluck the crumbled leaves from their stems when the black and blue of her eyes rolled to the back of her head. She dropped the plants and stared ahead through milky orbs. How eerie she looked! Her shoulders began to shake in a succession of tremors that wiggled all the way to her calloused feet. Were the jinn crossing into her world? Noora looked to Sager for an answer, but he was sucked into Zobaida’s trance.

“I’ve never seen you before,” Zobaida said. “Am I right when I say that you have come from the deep mountains?”

Sager nodded, even though his eyes remained glazed as he followed the healer’s swaying head.

“We are Ibrahim Al-Salmi’s children,” Noora said sharply. She had to break the daze her brother was in. “We live a day’s walk away.”

The tremors stopped and Zobaida’s head fell to her chest. She began mumbling into her burka. Each word blurred the next, and just as Noora tried to pick out what she was saying, Zobaida coughed back to earth.

A flutter of blinks and the black and blue of her eyes bobbed back into place. Her head wobbled slightly, and she pressed the ground with her palms, as if making sure it was still there, before addressing Sager. “You have more problems than just your father, don’t you?”

“Everyone has problems,” Sager mumbled.

“But there is one particular problem that jabs at your heart, isn’t there?” She fumbled for one of the shells and began stroking it. “You have now become the man of the family and your biggest concern is your sister.”

Sager dropped his gaze and said, “It’s true I worry about her. But then, what brother doesn’t worry about his sister?”

Noora crossed her arms high over her chest and grunted. They were talking about her as if she wasn’t there. Where was this leading to?

“She refuses to listen to you,” Zobaida said. “One thing you must know is that she’s different—headstrong, wild. But then, that’s all right.” She chuckled. “I’m different from other women, too.”

Noora scowled at the witch’s attempt to spin her humor on the seriousness that had gripped the air. “I’m not so different,
khalti,”
she said, and wondered whether she should be calling her aunty at all.

Zobaida stayed focused on Sager, releasing her eyes in an unremitting prowl over his face. “You see it was written that you would come for one problem but instead get the solution to another—the hidden problem that’s eating up your mind.” Zobaida touched her temple with a finger. “Your sister is growing too old—unmarried—and you don’t know what to do.”

Noora objected with a squeaky gasp.

Zobaida hushed her with a wave of the arm, as if she were no bigger than a mosquito, and continued to address Sager. “You want the best for her, but of course it’s unthinkable that you try to find a husband for your sister. It’s just not done, to throw her name around like that. Shameful, wouldn’t you say? I mean, it’s the man who picks the wife, not the other way round. But I can help. You see, I was told what’s best for her. I was given the solution.”

Did she say solution? Noora wanted to storm out of the hut, end this strange visit without giving it any more thought. But her breath thickened with curiosity and her limbs felt heavy. She remained where she was, stuck in a clammy air of anticipation.

“She must get married,” Zobaida declared.

It was time to stop all this! “You don’t know anything about us,” Noora said. “You don’t know what we want.”

“Let her talk,” Sager insisted.

How easy it was to fool Sager. What would the witch say next?

The witch threw in some praise. “I think you are lucky to have a brother who cares about you so much.
Masha’ Allah
, he is a brave and gallant brother.”

Noora shifted her weight as a renewed urgency to flee washed over her. She gulped at the sluggish air and said, “But this meeting has nothing to do with me. We came for our father, not me.” She turned to Sager. “Tell her, Sager.”

“If you don’t want to hear what she has to say, you can wait outside,” he said.

Tiny tingles nipped at Noora’s face, and the damp stench in the hut seemed stronger than when they had first entered. “Maybe I will,” she said.

Noora got up and marched to the doorway. There, she paused to throw one final glance at them. Sager was waiting patiently, a blank stare fixed to the ground. The witch, on the other hand, was watching her intently, with a gleam of triumph in her eyes—both the seeing and unseeing.

S
weet girl,” Moza called. “Come here.”

Noora marched into the bedroom. Just like the living room, the floor was covered with palm-frond matting. Two mattresses were rolled in one corner, and above them, on a nail wedged into a gap in the wall, hung one of Moza’s dresses. In the other corner sat Moza’s padlocked tin chest.

“Time to ready the mattresses,” Moza said. She had a sleepy voice that always sounded as if it might lead to a yawn.

Noora blew her frustration into the air. A full week she had been staying at Moza’s hut, and still, Sager had not come to beg her to return home. The images flashed in her mind once more: Sager would find her missing; Sager would worry; Sager would search for her all over the mountains; Sager would not be able to find her; Sager would be sorry.

Moza extended her arms and, pushing her bottom into the air, bent over at half speed.

Yes, only when Sager saw that she was missing would he appreciate her. How would they manage, her father and brothers, without her? Who would mend their clothes? Who would cook and clean the huts? Who would haul the water? Hah! Yes, only then would they know her value.

Noora spotted Moza’s fingers twiddling the edges of the first mattress (preliminary attempts to the firm grip she needed) and sprung to her aid. “Here, I’ll do it,” she said, and grabbed the edges out of Moza’s fingers, which were still looking for that firm grip. Noora rolled one mattress out and then did the same with the other one. Once she shifted the mattresses next to each other into the middle of the room, she looked up. But Moza was not where she had left her.

With rare speed, the old woman had stepped to the other side of the room and was now sitting in front of the chest. She turned to Noora and crinkled her mouth into a smile. Her hand fumbled in her pocket and she pulled out a red strip of fabric, at the end of which hung a key.

“This key opens the lock,” Moza said.

It was a welcome diversion. “What is in it?”

“Oh, lots of nice things, all useless for an old woman like me,” she said, handing the key to Noora. “It’s full of things my husband brought back from his wanderings. Open it and take everything out, so you can see properly,” she insisted.

Noora clicked open the lock and pulled out a small knotted bundle from the top. She untied the knot, liberating a handful of colored silk threads. She cupped the bobbins, her eyes lighting up with the variety of colors.

Encouraged with her first find, Noora proceeded, removing the rest of the contents. Once she had piled them between her and Moza, the old woman looked proudly at her possessions:
six pieces of cotton and silk fabric in typical strong colors for dresses and
serwals
and a piece of rigid, indigo-stained cotton for making burkas. There was a basket of smaller pieces of fabric to patch rips; a pair of blunt scissors; two bronze hand mirrors; a bottle of jasmine oil and another of amber essence; four wooden combs; and a dagger and two knives, their handles embellished with silver filigree.

“
Masha’ Allah
, this is quite a treasure,” said Noora.

Moza ran her hand over one of the thicker cotton fabrics, sky-blue with broad, emerald stripes. “Look at this piece. Why does my Sultan waste his money so? Every time he’d bring something, I would tell him I am too old for all this.” Her droopy eyelids turned taut. “I wonder what he will bring back with him this time.”

Noora grabbed the fabric and fluffed it open. “Why are you storing all these things?”

Moza swept her head toward Noora and pushed her ear out.

Noora spoke louder. “You shouldn’t store things. You should use them.”

“I can’t sew and I don’t like the way the village women…well, their stitching is so crude.”

“Why don’t you let me sew them into clothes for you? My stitching is clean.”

“Masha’ Allah.”
Moza’s eyes rounded with surprise. “Who taught you?”

“My mother.”

Moza’s decision was quicker than her movements. “No longer than here for my dresses.” She pointed to just above her ankle. “Otherwise, I might trip on them. And don’t forget to put gussets along the length on both sides—so pretty that way. And not too much embroidery around the neck—it scratches me, you see.”

As for the
serwals
, they were to follow the traditional cut: baggy around the waist and tapering into tight ankle bands that could be fastened with cloth buttons that Noora had to make.

“As much embroidery as you want on the ankle bands,” Moza instructed. “Use all those colored threads, and choose any pattern you want: lines, squares, triangles, zigzags—whatever you like.” She paused and spread the fabric with emerald stripes on Noora’s chest. “Ah,” she said. “Exactly the same color as your eyes. You must take it.”

It was a generous gift. Noora tried to refuse—just a bit.

“No, no, no,” insisted Moza. “In my house, you must have a new dress.”

Creating the dresses filled Noora with enthusiasm. This new undertaking would fill the monotony of her empty day hours, and she wasted no time in starting. She snipped the fabric to the right size. And then her fingers sped along the seams, piercing the material, tugging the thread in quick, coordinated yanks. Within two days, Moza’s first dress was ready.

With the exception of the early morning hours, when she went to get water from the well, Noora spent her days in and around Moza’s hut, cooking the food, washing the clothes, brushing the layers of dust out of the rooms, and taking care of Moza. The rest of the time she sewed.

Later, with early evening, came the soft dance of small feet outside the hut. The children of Maazoolah snuck out of their homes to peer at her, the visitor in their midst, through tiny gaps between the stones of Moza’s hut. There they remained until their mothers’ stern voices called them back. For the first time in her life, Noora was living in a community. And yet she
still felt like a stranger. The togetherness she had longed for weeks earlier was just not there.

As darkness wrapped the village, the wind carried the last noises of the night: a man clearing his throat, a baby sobbing its distress, the bleats of a goat or two from this side or that. Only when the soft crackle of the night crickets embraced the stillness of the village did the thoughts she had been ignoring all day trip over one another in her head.

Why hadn’t Sager come to get her? How much of that witch talk had he believed? And what about her father? Night after night, Noora lay next to Moza. And night after night, as Moza snored, Noora struggled to sleep.

A yawn swelled at the back of Noora’s throat. Was sleep coming? She closed her eyes and waited. Moza’s snore was taking shape once again: the light sniffle gained momentum, a sharp puff marking its peak. A croak gurgled deep in her chest and, bit by bit, grew into a husky roar.

It was no use. Noora curled toward the wall, bending her knees into a square. She stared at the moonbeams—cool, cobalt—falling in thin shafts through the gaps of the stone wall. Then something else: movement.

Three tiptoes and a flutter of fabric that broke a moonbeam.

Someone was outside.

She heard a sharp intake of air, as if pulled through clenched teeth. There was a hiss of pain in it, and she was sure that whoever was outside had stepped on a thorn. She waited for the muffled cry that would plausibly follow, but Moza’s steady snores filled the room once more. They were growing in confidence, with longer pauses in between: a thick drag, a gap, and a burst of air in the exhale. She imagined each pause getting
longer than the one before. What if the old woman suddenly stopped breathing?

She heard the footsteps again. They were careful and anxious, the kind that tried hard to stay silent, but the crunch of the gravel stole away their discretion.

She rolled off the mattress and pressed her eyes to a tiny gap in the wall, but all she could see were the tapering terraces of the village, wrapped in the indigo of the moon. She knew the person was still there though, standing very close to the wall. She counted three cautious intakes of air before she heard a hesitant shifting of weight as the person slinked away.

Her visitor came the next night and the nights after that. By the fifth visit, Noora had found a loose slab of stone in the wall. By the sixth visit, she pulled it out. Through the oblong gap, she spotted the telltale sign of his dishdasha as it glided past her: it was a man.

She snapped the stone back in place and, overcome with a peculiar shyness, tumbled back onto the mattress, her heart thumping with intrigue. Why did he linger outside Moza’s hut every night, standing so still so that all she could hear was the flow and pause of his breath? The sound of his breath was steady, but every now and then she detected a light tremor that further fueled her curiosity. Who was he?

The next night she decided she had to put a face to this man. As she stared out through the gap, she caught the moon’s gleam on the hump of a tiny beetle crawling close to a tree stump that was rooted next to the wall. Surely, she would be able to see more. From the sound of his breath, she could tell he was close and standing a little to the side of the gap. She felt the strain in
her eyes as they grew larger and rounder. She heard her neck crack as she twisted it as far as it would go, but it was no use. The man remained wrapped in the shadows of the night as still as a rock, with only that touch of apprehension in an otherwise steady breath.

He must be someone from the village, she reasoned. Why did he come only at night while the village slept? Did he come for her or for some other reason? What did he want? She shook her head to erase the questions. There was time for them to linger in her mind later, once he had left and she was lying alone with soft tingles racing through her limbs and only her active mind as a companion.

There was a soft clatter of shifting pebbles and she assumed he was leaving, for he never stayed very long. But the footsteps grew louder. A hot panic rushed through Noora as she realized he was walking toward her. She glanced quickly at Moza, who remained deep in her rhythm of sleep. When she turned back, the man stood in front of her, not more than three steps away.

A half-moon hung behind him, bathing his shoulders with its calmness, but his face remained in the darkness. On this, his seventh visit, Noora could not hold back her curiosity any longer.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“Someone,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“I can’t tell you, Noora.”

“That’s not right.” What else could she say? “You know who I am. I need to know who you are.”

He crouched next to the wall, and she began tracing with her eyes the sharpness of his cheeks, the sure bridge of his
nose. Something about him was familiar and she tried to see more, but the shadows lingered in the dips of his face.

“I feel bad for you,” he said.

“Why?” She could smell his breath, a warm mixture of earth and grass. It hung between them, heavy, holding the suspense of this very new experience.

“With what’s happened to your father and all.”

How did he know so much about her? “Well, don’t feel bad,” she said, her lips tight with disdain. “I’m all right.”

“No, no, I don’t mean to look down on you,” he said. “I am just saying you don’t deserve what you have gone through.”

He was probing her insecurities; she wanted the tangible, the facts: his name, age, family. Why was she accepting this stranger’s concerns? “I can’t talk to you unless you tell me your name,” Noora insisted.

“I just worry about you. I want to help you.”

Once again he had drifted onto another road, avoiding the important questions. She had to merge their paths. She was about to try again when a cough floated into the still air. It came from the village; someone was awake.

“I must go,” he said.

“But who are you?”

Alight breeze ruffled his dishdasha, scattering the moonbeams into puddles of luminous blue that caught his teeth glistening in a smile.
Why did he look so familiar?
He bent closer to her and whispered, “Rashid. That’s my name.” His palm inched its way into the opening, his fingers brushing her clutched knuckles. “Meet me at the far well tomorrow after lunch, when the village rests.”

She blurted the first concern that came to mind. “How?”

“Just say you want to go for a walk.”

“But…”

He smiled again. “You don’t need to be with the old woman all the time, you know. You can move about. It’s not a prison. No one will even notice.”

Noora felt the heavy weight of duty lift off her shoulders. In its place settled the anxiety about the taboo meeting he was suggesting, a meeting she already knew she would keep.

“Just go to the close well, the one we use. Then pass it, turning west. Keep going straight, and I’ll find you.”

It was all happening too fast. She needed to know more. What landmarks should she keep an eye open for? What should she say to anyone who saw her?

But Rashid had already risen, fading into the shadows of the slumbering village.