Henna House (26 page)

W
e entered Sana'a late in the day through an arched gate in the city wall. What did I see there? Beggars in tattered black djellabas; decommissioned Turkish soldiers in fezzes and grimy uniforms sitting on overturned boxes playing
sheshbesh
; brown turbaned boys laughing and loitering in front of a mosque; old men spitting wads of khat onto the dirty street as our carriage rolled by. I watched with eyes “the size of little moons,” Aunt Rahel later told me, laughing. I saw toothless fortune-tellers squatting over pads of incense; wealthy-looking Muslim gentlemen in thobe skirts and dark suit jackets leaning into each other, and holding each other by the crook of the arm as they walked purposefully by the side of the road. I saw red- and orange- and vermilion-clad women swathed in
abaya
and
sharshaf
swaying through the throng, baskets filled with market goods flung over their shoulders, or balanced on their heads. And the buildings? Ocher-colored, with white arched windows. On all sides of us thousands and thousands of buildings rose up like the spires of a buried castle. They were so tall, I craned my neck but could not see the tops. Eight, nine, ten stories into the air, with red-brick and white-gypsum designs around domed windows and rooftop lattices. And so many mosques! Their domes and minarets gleamed in the sun. We passed by caravansaries with mules and donkeys braying in stalls. The city seemed a geometric puzzle assembling and reassembling itself before my eyes. The beseeching songs of the muezzin rising up from minarets; throaty men hawking rubber novelties; an angry soldier calling after a boy who had stolen a bag of nuts; the pitiful
caw caw
of a crow in a cage; the high-pitched complaining of three children stumbling after their mother as she disappeared through the muddy puddles of a dark narrow alley that smelled of shit and piss. I didn't care if the place stank. I wanted to
see everything, but as we made our way through town, I caught myself slouching down in the carriage, and suddenly I felt very small. Sana'a's loudness and largeness made me feel like a miniature version of myself, as if I were tiny, a doll-sized girl who hailed from an earth of more modest proportions.

We entered the Qu'al Yahud by the Al-Boonia gate. Inside the Jewish Quarter, the curled earlocks of the men and boys and the black gargushim of the women and girls alerted me that I was once again among my own people. Houses were marked with Stars of David and were only four or five stories high compared to the nine- or ten-story towers in the rest of the city. Uncle Barhun clucked his tongue and urged the donkeys forward past a ritual bath, a synagogue, and a neat courtyard off which radiated lane after lane of bustling stalls and shops. We were to spend the night with the family of a locksmith Uncle Barhun knew, who would provide our lodging in return for a modest payment.

*  *  *

In the morning, we rose early. After we had checked our bags and seen that all our materials were in order, Auntie Rahel braided my hair and painted my face with black gall—giving me three dots on each cheek and a triangle on my chin. She put turmeric powder on my eyelids and a smear of indigo higher, under my eyebrows. Then she dabbed hyacinth perfume on my pulse points. She had brought big silver hoops for my ears, a beautiful lazem necklace with Maria Theresa thalers and rupees dangling from the red coral beads, and six silver bracelets—three for each wrist. I felt very grown-up in such finery.

We made our way out of the Qu'al Yahud to the house of the parents of the bride. The celebrations for the Night of Henna were already well under way and had spilled outside. There were red-nosed musicians, rushing caterers, and neighbors who had already come to deliver their good wishes to the bride in the form of huge trays of candied sweets that filled the air with the allure of caramelized sugar and attracted so many bees that they seemed to be accompanying the music from the tabl drums with their syncopated hum and buzz. Even though we had eaten that morning, I felt almost faint with hunger, for it had been many weeks since I had eaten my fill. Now, everywhere I looked, I saw overflowing trays of fruits, sweets, and savories. I wondered if the drought hadn't affected Sana'a, or if this bride was so wealthy that her family could
afford to pay a premium on rare delicacies. Uncle Barhun helped us unload our baskets and then he left to attend to some business back in the Qu'al Yahud. Aunt Rahel and I were ushered into the ladies' salon on the second floor. We were introduced to the women assembled there by the bride's mother-in-law, and then led over to where the bride was sitting.

The bride was a beautiful creature with perfect teeth, high cheekbones, plump lips. She was ensconced in a wooden throne cushioned with red velvet and bedecked with chains of fragrant rue flowers. Her bridal “undergarments” revealed a generous bosom, a soft belly, big hips. She wore nothing but the undergarments—a sleeveless white dress and silver and red short trousers—so that Aunt Rahel could easily paint her hands, arms, feet, and legs. She wasn't wearing a conical gargush—as a Jewish bride would have—but a tight-fitting gold and red scarf with rupee bangles over her forehead. She had on big silver hooped earrings and three rows of coral and amber beads around her neck. So that Aunt Rahel could do her work, she wasn't yet wearing her bracelets or rings, but I knew that by the time she was dressed in her finery, her arms would be mostly covered with jewelry. Cousins and sisters surrounded her throne. One of the women was very pregnant and she had a black and red lafeh scarf tied around her big belly. I wondered if this lafeh came from the dye mistress who lived next door to us. The bride's henna “base coat” had been applied the day before. The fresh henna was protected by strips of cloth, called mehani, wound around her limbs. The mehani strips hadn't been removed yet, and I knew that our first task would be to unwrap the bride's hands and feet.

I hung back, behind Aunt Rahel. The bride was singing. “La, la la, la la,” her husky voice tripped up and down an octave. In between la la la's, she would giggle, and the girls all around her would laugh along with her, as if to the punch line of a private joke. No one noticed us at first. For those first few moments, I was acutely aware that I was a Jewish girl among Muslim women. Of course, I knew Muslim women in Qaraah, but I was never in their homes. We saw one another at the well or at the market. We were not intimate like this. My skin pricked and I felt my mother's fears climb my spine, leaving me queasy with an anxiety not really my own. Then the bride saw my aunt and said, “So you are to paint me?” The Sana'an bride squinted and appraised my aunt, cocking her head a bit to the right.

“I am.” Aunt Rahel's voice was low and soothing.

“Well, I am very ticklish, so you will have to put up with my writhing and wriggling.”

“No worries, daughter, I have a light touch.” Auntie Rahel smiled. “Some say they don't even feel my stylus on their skin.”

“Ticklish on a wedding night is not a bad thing,” one of the sisters piped in. The bride giggled. “Yes, but it is my groom who should do the honors.”

They all laughed, and then someone fed the bride a fat white lychee nut, and someone else wiped the juice running down her chin.

The women were nothing but kind to me. They complimented my black-gall makeup and my henna. They cooed and petted my arms and invited me to eat and drink, but I heard my mother's voice in my head and declined their date wine and honey balls of semolina dough, their mango and melon slices—piled like orange and green smiles on a tray—in spite of my growling hunger.

Aunt Rahel addressed the bride. “Please, hold up your hands, like this . . .” She held her own arms up, stiffly in front of her. The bride followed suit.

“Take the end,” Rahel instructed me. Slowly we unwound the mehani cloth from the bride's arms. She stayed as still as a statue as we tugged—my hands looping over and under her arms, close to her torso and then around her pretty feet, such elegant little toes, lifting them up gracefully so that we could unwrap her heels, her arches, her ankles, her shins. When all the mehani cloths lay in a heap on the floor, Aunt Rahel began handling the bride's limbs as if they were her own—turning a wrist, squinting to inspect a forearm, ducking down to espy the soles of her feet. The bride let herself be inspected and admired like a rag doll. Then Aunt Rahel stepped back and nodded her approval. There was clapping and laughing and ululations,
kulululu
, the women trilled their tongues to warn off any lingering demons. Everyone was happy. The henna was a henna of good fortune! The leaves had done their work, for her brown skin was rust red with a hint of vermilion, shades of blood orange, all scented with roses, jasmine, and high notes of honey. Aunt Rahel nodded her head again in approval and then wasted no time getting to work.

She began by measuring out the ingredients for her waxy mixture—resin, myrrh, frankincense, and iron sulfate—mixing them together,
and heating them in a high-sided pan over a fire until it was like molten wax. She also added sage and mint extract. Once she had brought the earthy mixture to the right consistency, she scooped out a small amount and put it into a wooden bowl; then she handed me the spoon and told me to keep stirring, lest it clump. After I had stirred for ten minutes she said, “Go to the bride and show her this.” She handed me a little oval clay pot, the size of my palm. I opened it, and inside saw that there was a miniature naked clay lady, with big breasts and a round belly. She was lying side by side with a naked man whose member was so long that it snaked out from between his legs, and in between hers. I did as my aunt instructed. Soon the bride and her sisters were tittering over the fertility amulet. Meanwhile, Aunt Rahel crouched on the floor by the bride's right foot, dipped her stylus into the little bowl, and began to draw on the balls of her feet. Later, when I asked her why she had begun with the most ticklish part of the bride's body, Aunt Rahel said, “If I can do her feet without tormenting her, then I can do everywhere else. I start there, to show her that she has nothing to fear from my touch.”

Aunt Rahel finished the ball of the bride's left foot before the girl even noticed that the work had started. When she realized that she'd been tricked she laughed. “You bring such wonderful ‘toys' and have the softest touch, Mrs. Damari, you are a mistress distracter and a magician with your hands.” Aunt Rahel thanked the bride for her compliment and kept working. She was executing a variation on a traditional grain of wheat design, alternating the stylized grains with waves and crescents in a tight spiral. Every so often she would hand me the bowl and I would fill it with more of the mixture. Every ten minutes or so, I stirred the mixture and checked the consistency. In this way, we passed three hours. And just as the bride's attendants fed her little bits of meat, bread, and sweets, so too I fed Aunt Rahel, urging her to take a sip of tea, a bite of date pastry, a piece of melon. But I didn't eat a thing. I heeded my mother's injunction, despite my growling belly.

By the time the bride's feet, shins, hands, and forearms were covered it was already late afternoon. Now it was time for the shaddar. Aunt Rahel mixed a paste of ammoniac and potash. She spread this paste on top of the waxy mixture. The bride grimaced when it was being applied, but by now she was feeling the effect of all the sips of spiced wine her sisters had given her, and she didn't complain that the shaddar was cold, or that it smelled like moldy ashes, or that it was giving her a headache.
I knew that brides often complained about the “ordeal” of henna, and Aunt Rahel would say, “It is a bride's prerogative to complain about the shackles of beauty.”

One hour later, Aunt Rahel rubbed off the shaddar. When the paste was all off, I saw that the henna had turned a dark greenish-black, but everywhere Aunt Rahel had applied the waxy mixture was still reddish-orange. The result was an intricate brocade of red against the darkened skin. The design had within it elements of
labbeh
necklace patterns—double-sided crescents, pears, flowers, and spheres that danced on her hands and forearms and were joined together by little links. The bride started singing her funny little song again.
La, la, la, la, la,
she sang, with her sisters and cousins joining in. I bowed low and shuffled backward, as all the women in the room gathered around to coo and trill their tongues at the success of the application.

All around me were delicious smells coming from overflowing trays on tables around the sides of the room. My belly grumbled, and my head hurt, but I ate nothing—that is, I almost ate nothing. Just before we left, I stole a few bites of a persimmon. I was so hungry, I couldn't resist. The fruit's mellow flesh dissolved on my tongue. I took another bite, and another. Many years later, when I heard the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades, I thought of my mother's warning, and how strange it was that at the henna house that day, I ate forbidden fruit just like Demeter's daughter. I wondered if perhaps I too later had suffered for giving in to my hunger. But at the time, I was so hungry, I barely noticed that I had disobeyed my mother at all.

We left Sana'a at dawn the next day. As we rode away, I crooked my neck back and saw the city not as a series of structures made by man but as a pattern for henna. The jutting towers and graceful minarets, the arches of the gates, and the encircling girth of the walls combined into a henna of history, a henna of conquerors and conquered, a henna of brides and grooms.

“What are you thinking of, dear girl?” Aunt Rahel brushed a few strands of hair out of my eyes. I thought for a moment before I spoke. I was very grateful to my aunt, and wanted to give her a snippet of conversation that would make her feel that I was worthy of this gift of a journey. And I was also feeling mischievous, unbound from ordinary life. I spoke in a whisper, so that Uncle Barhun couldn't hear me.