Henna House (18 page)

After a while, we had stripped all the bushes of the good leaves. I had an idea.

“Hani, I know where there are more bushes.”

“Take me.” She smiled.

“It's a secret.”

“I swear I won't tell anyone.”

I took her the back way, through the dye mistress's yard. We ran up
past the frankincense tree, past the citrons, down the escarpment, and over the culvert. I was proud and excited to show Hani my cave, but as we approached, I was suddenly filled with regret. Other than that quick visit before I was supposed to marry Musa, I had utterly neglected my cave in favor of my cousin. What kind of friend was I? Would my little goddesses remember me? I felt ashamed that I didn't even have any wheat or sage in my pockets to lay on their altar. But the second I stood in front of the cave opening, my feelings of shame receded. I knew then that my cave would always welcome me, and that I would always feel more at home there than I ever would in my parents' house.

When we ducked inside, Hani didn't bow low enough.

“Ow!” she exclaimed as she hit the top of her head.

“Sorry, you have to watch that.”

She frowned, rubbing her forehead. I lit my lamp; the wick flicked into life, illuminated her face, and then pressed both of our shadows into the wall. She moved around my little cave, touching all my treasures. When she got to my idols, she said, “Adela, your mother would skin you alive for these. But I am impressed. This proves what I have suspected about you. That you are fearless and reckless and bold. Your cave is the best place in the world. I want to live here. Do we ever have to leave? Let us stay and grow old here.”

We heard a sound outside. Hani squealed, sure we were about to be discovered. I peeked out and saw a horseman riding toward Bir Zeit. My heart leapt, and then just as quickly fell at the sight. In the time since Asaf had left, every horseman in the desert could be he. Every hoofbeat vibrated with the song of our reunion, and when it wasn't he, as it never was, Asaf receded just a little bit further into the mist of memory and possibility.

“Let's go.”

“So soon?”

“We'll come back, I promise. But Hani . . .”

“What?”

“Please don't tell anyone—”

“I understand. If too many people know, it won't be yours anymore,” Hani said, giving words to what I was feeling. She moved over to me, reassuring me, interlacing her fingers with mine. Then she nodded at the chalk girl and boy on the wall near the entrance and at Asaf's chalk horse. They had faded again but were still visible—little ghosts left to
haunt the cave in my absence. “What sweet little friends you drew,” she said. “How do you do, little girl? Little boy? My name is Hani, I am pleased to meet you.” She leaned forward and kissed each of them on their faces, where their lips would have been, had they had features.

Just as she straightened up again, I heard a rustling outside in the henna bushes. A shiver ran down my spine. Who could have found us? I turned and found Binyamin Bashari ducking into the cave. It had been many months since we had seen each other last, other than from a distance, in the market. He had grown so tall, and he no longer wore the tattered sharwal and tunic of his childhood but the gray shamle of a man, and a nicely wrapped black turban on his head. His face had grown in to his wolf-muzzle jaw. But still, he had an exotic look, as if he had come from elsewhere, even though he was a Qaraah boy born and bred.

Hani had backed up into the darkness of the cave when he entered. Now she stepped forward and cocked her head to one side, appraising him. She had taken to wearing a gargush like a northern girl, and when she did so, the coins tinkled and glinted in the little ray of sun that came through the cave entrance. She seemed unsure. I saw a flash of fear pass over her eyes, and then curiosity, and then she must have understood—though no words had been exchanged—that Binyamin also belonged to the cave or, at least, that he belonged to me. That's when her face changed and she began to look coyly at Binyamin. She reached a hand up to twirl a lock of hair that had come loose from her gargush. “I know you,” she said. “You are the jambia maker's son. What are you doing here?”

Binyamin didn't answer her. He hadn't said anything yet. She looked from Binyamin to me and then back again.

“Oh Adela, what kind of secret cave is this? No, don't worry, I will keep your ‘secret.' ” And she pointed to the chalk boy and girl on the cave wall. “So this is you,” she said to Binyamin, “a flesh-and-blood boy in my cousin's pretty little lair.” She laughed and wagged a finger at me. “All this time, Adela, how could you keep this,
keep him
from me?” She said this in a full, loud voice, and then nodded toward Binyamin as if he were a statue and couldn't hear her.

“No, Hani,” I protested, “you're mistaken. Binyamin is engaged to another. It's not like that between us at all.”

“Oh, really?”

Binyamin was blushing crimson from his neck to his turban, “Adela . . . I . . . I . . .” He stammered my name again and his eyes locked onto mine. We were children of the high northern sun, and in that moment he spoke to me as the sun would—with a fierce blaze that scorched in places I didn't know could burn. But not another sound passed his lips. Before I found my own voice, Binyamin turned around, ducked down, and left.

When he was gone, Hani rushed over to me, put her warm hand on my cool arm. “Tell me everything about him. He is not really handsome, but he is certainly interesting-looking—and so strong, a tree-trunk boy, so sturdy, he looks like he could lift up half of this mountain. And he is your friend? You say he is engaged? Pfe, what a shame. But perhaps the girl will die. Do you know anything about her health? Do you know her? Is she pretty? Or ugly? Maybe she is just a little twig of a thing that will break underneath him?”

I didn't answer. I was angry at Hani for teasing Binyamin, for making him so uncomfortable. Hani put her arm around my shoulders, kissed my ear. “Silly Adela, say something.” She poked a finger in my ribs and tried to tickle me, but I pulled away.

“Don't be so cruel and hateful!” For the very first time, I yelled at her. We'd never once fought, but now I was filled with rage. “How can you say such things? Elohim forgive you, and protect Binyamin's intended from the evil eye.” I flashed my own dark eyes at Hani, but then she again flung an arm over me, kissed me, and begged my forgiveness. My anger quickly melted away.

“He is just an old friend,” I heard myself saying. “We played together as small children.”

For the second time Hani pointed to the chalk girl and boy. “What a shame he is not engaged to you. What a sweet couple you make on the wall.”

The truth burst out of me. “No, that is Asaf. Our mutual cousin Asaf Damari is the boy on the wall. After we were engaged to each other, he visited me here when we were just children. We playacted at being husband and wife. But Binyamin was always just my friend. He and I were innocents together as small children.”

Hani took a quiet moment to digest this jumble of revelations, then the coyness returned to her voice. “Well, be careful not to
play
with the jambia maker's son now that you are a woman. If you bear his child,
everyone will know it is his. He doesn't look like anyone else, does he?” I blushed, my face as crimson as Binyamin's had been.

“Hani, really, we were just friends.” But as I said these words, I felt like a hypocrite, and the image of me and Asaf in this cave came unbidden to my mind and left me feeling as if I had deceived my girl cousin about several things, even though I hadn't lied to her about anything.

When we returned from my cave, Hani and I added our bounty of extra leaves to the cache Aunt Rahel had collected. Aunt Rahel nodded approvingly. “Good,” she said, “now we have more than enough.” She laid the leaves out in the sun, and then took out already dried leaves and began to macerate them with mortar and pestle, working rhythmically, with a swift turn of the wrist that quickly pulverized the leaves into tiny flakes, and then into pieces so small they looked like specks of green-gray dust.

Soon after that day, Binyamin left Qaraah forever. His intended had become a woman, and he went to marry her and to live with her people in Sana'a. When I heard news of his departure I realized that he must have followed me to my cave to say good-bye. Something told me—perhaps those womanish senses that were rising in me—that perhaps he had the same regrets as my mother that we could not be married. I murmured a little prayer beseeching Elohim to watch over Binyamin on his journey, then I daydreamed of when we were children, how Binyamin had slipped his hand into mine, how he would run with me, our pounding feet together blotting out the hiss of the Confiscator's serpents.

*  *  *

The day after I showed Hani my cave, after I had finished my chores, I sat with Aunt Rahel and Hani. I watched as mother and daughter adorned each other with fresh designs and then let the henna set by painting over the designs with a paste of lemon and sugar. I felt shy and out of place, though Hani didn't make me feel that way.
Come closer, Adela, come sit by me, look, this is how we do it, you dip the stylus, the ink has to be loose, but not so loose it will drip down her hand
. . . . Hani was already adept at applying henna. Her mother would let Hani do her hands and feet, tutoring her all the while. Sometimes mother and daughter consulted Aunt Rahel's henna book, a little red leather notebook in which she had written hundreds of henna elements down
the left-hand sides of the pages. The book was a real marvel. I had never seen a book that wasn't a holy text before. I didn't even know that books existed that weren't dedicated to psalms, prayer, or scripture. Really, I had never considered such an unlikely thing. Every single page and blank spot of paper was written on. Some of the elements were as tiny as a dot or a single slash, a half triangle, a swirl within a swirl. Next to the elements Rahel wrote the corresponding meanings. Hani read to me—explaining how two little wavy lines signified water and abundance. A whole page of different paisleys all stood for mango fruit. Next to the paisleys, Aunt Rahel had written, “Paisleys—mango, the Buddha's fruit, contemplation, paradise, repose.” I was surprised that a Jewish woman would reference a pagan god, but the more I flipped the pages, and the more my cousin read and explained what was written on them, the more I saw that the henna elements did not spring only from the seeds of our own Jewish traditions: there were Chinese lotus leaves for fertility, Turkish carnations for luck. Even New Zealand Maori designs, fierce and angular. Next to them Rahel had written, “Hero warriors. Not for brides.”

Aunt Rahel let Hani practice, never minding if she made a mistake or tried her own variations. She took joy in Hani's experimentation but also scolded a lazy line, an uninspired cufflet, a blankness that should have been filled in. My aunt and cousin told stories as they decorated each other. Scary stories . . .
Once there was a dead god who lived in a place where the wind blew the flesh off the bones of men.
Love stories . . .
Once there was a flute maker in the Suk el-Thuluth who fell in love with a maiden from Abyssinia
. When they had finished inscribing each other, Aunt Rahel sang a song of the sister and brother Canaanite goddess and god, Anath and Baal, and their enemy the Mot, god of darkness. Aunt Rahel sang of mythic intrigue, romance, war, gore, retribution. In her song, henna was everything. It was worn for battle, applied for seduction, smeared on breasts, hands, and feet. Anath waded knee deep in the blood of her brother's slayers. Chopped off their heads and put them in a bag she wore on her belt. My head grew dizzy. My heart beat in time with the supple melody. In Rahel's song, henna was blood and blood was henna. My aunt and cousin lay back on pillows, waiting for their henna to set. I lay back with them, languid and hot, holding my hands delicately, pretending that I too was decorated, that I too had swirls and lines on my skin.

After the singing was over, we ate a small feast of nuts and dried fruit. I inched closer, and I listened to everything, hoping to be gathered into the soft circle of their arms. But still,
I
knew I was an intruder. On the ground next to me was the pot of henna paste. It smelled wheaty and earthen, like the very clay of the pot.

Toward the end of the night, I looked up at my aunt and was startled. She looked different. She was radiant. She was a queen riding on an elephant in a distant jungle. Hani was her princess. I looked around. The tapestries on the wall began to shift forms, and the animals peeked out from behind trees whose names I didn't know. Though she was ordinary in the outside world, here in the henna house, Rahel Damari was exquisite. My aunt. An artist of flesh, an acolyte of flowers. I left drunk with their laughter, their breathy whispers, their triumphs of art and intimacy. When I crawled onto my lonely pallet, I wished with all my heart that the walls between our houses would dissolve, and that I could cross the distance between us, curl up next to Hani, her hennaed arms wrapped around my own, our hennaed feet entwined like vines. In my dreams, I was as decorated as they were. But in the morning I woke up blank and lonely. I hurried through my chores and then ran out of our house to join her as quickly as I could.

*  *  *

Throughout the summer of 1930, when I turned twelve years old, my new girl-cousin kept me busy. Hani taught me six different step dances. She tutored me in herbs—for she was following in the footsteps of her mother as a healer. And best of all, she taught me my Hebrew letters. She explained that she and her sisters were all fluent in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and Arabic. Uncle Barhun bragged affectionately that his girls were born reading, and that they read words before they walked, whole sentences before they ran. My cousin told me that in Aden it wasn't unusual for fathers to teach their daughters to read. Why, there were even schools for girls, and Uncle Barhun not only sent his daughters to the Selim School for Girls but also tutored them himself in French, a smattering of dockside Hindustani, and some pidgin Italian too—all of which he had learned in order to conduct his business dealings with customers at Aden port and the gentlemen from Barde et Cie.