Henna House (28 page)

Hani sat with me the entire week. Once, when I was doubled over with sobbing, she tried to comfort me. “Your mother did love you,” she said. “I heard her bragging at the little well about your
malawach
, and when I embroidered her a square for a pillow, she took one look and said. ‘Adela's handiwork is better than yours.' Why, I even once heard her praising your skill with leather, complimenting your helpfulness to your father.”

I let Hani prattle on, though her words brought me little comfort.

“S
o, was I right to wonder all those years ago? Do those strange eyes of yours see more of the world, or less of it?”

I looked down at my feet, modestly covering my face with the side of my gargush. I tried not to blush, but I knew my face blazed with fear. The Confiscator still carried the same jambia with the two jeweled serpents wrapped around the handle, a band of rubies at the thumb point, and an embossed hawk's head on the lip of the hilt. Whenever the man spoke, the snakes looked at me, opened their fanged mouths, and hissed.

“Don't be afraid, little girl, I mean you no harm.”

I was back in my father's stall, helping him almost every day. In the two months since my mother's death, my father's cough had grown much worse. He took more and more of Aunt Rahel's tonic, but it did no good. He was very weak and could barely make it through a day's work. So I helped him. Sometimes my brothers helped too—especially my brother Hassan—but they were generally busy with their own toil and had little time to spare for my father. On this day, my father was in the back, sorting supplies. I was embossing triangles on flaps of leather that would be used for little purses. The Confiscator had been standing at the entrance to the stall. Now he came around, and hovered over me. His shadow fell over my hands. “You do more than just help your father with sales and supplies,” he said. “I can tell. Your nimble hands do the work of boys. You are skilled with the knife and awl. Those eyes of yours help you to see more than others.”

I took a deep breath and slowly raised my head, the coins of my gargush tinkling. The Confiscator's long face had grown old. His skin was a dry riverbed, wrinkled and cracked by the swelling and receding of years.

“I suppose, sir . . . I suppose I see what everyone else sees.” I heard my voice, high and soft, as if from far away.

“And what is that?”

“I see ordinary life.”

“And what is ordinary about life?”

“Sir, why ask a Jewish girl?”

“Because what is ordinary about your life is extraordinary to me. As my answers would be to you. And we have much to learn from each other.”

I grew bold. “Are you a philosopher?”

“Are you?”

I looked down at my shoes again, and hid once more in the folds of my gargush.

My father came out from the back. When he saw the Confiscator he almost dropped the pile of soft skins in his hands. “Sir, I am so sorry. Please forgive me that you have had to suffer the prattling of a little girl.”

The Confiscator laughed. “She doesn't prattle, she philosophizes. This one is a deep thinker.”

“Beg pardon, sir, beg pardon. How can I serve you? More shoes for your lovely wife? Eh, I am at your service.”

The Confiscator ordered two pairs of shoes for his wife—a fancy pair and an everyday one. After the Confiscator left, my father began to work on the fancy pair immediately. He instructed me to cut the pattern for the everyday bashmag sandals, and I did as I was told.

That night, my father and Uncle Barhun went to a meeting at the synagogue. Before he left, he said, “Adela, we will leave Qaraah, and the Confiscator will not torment you anymore.”

I said, “I am not afraid of him.”

“Ach, Adela, there is no need to pretend.”

“Father . . .”

“What is it, Daughter?”

“His knife—”

“His jambia?”

“How is it that a man can carry silver snakes, and they never turn around and bite him?”

To this I got not an answer, but an embrace. My father smelled of cured leather, cracked nuts, and hookah smoke, a comforting amalgam of smells. He closed the door behind him and went to a meeting. I sat
back on the wheat-husk pillows and imagined myself a Muslim girl. What would my name be? Who would marry me? What would it be like to pray to Allah and not Elohim? And if I were confiscated, would I be married to an old man or a young man? A kind one or a monster? And would I ever see my family again?

The meeting lasted for many hours. It concerned our departure from the village. One by one, the families of Qaraah had come to a common decision—to leave our little town and to seek health and good fortune elsewhere. It was not easy to leave. A Jew had to get permission from the Imam's functionary. And that usually meant that a man had to either abandon his property or sell it to a Muslim for far less than it was worth. So the embarkation on a new life had to be undertaken with minimal funds. The most skilled among our community were prohibited from leaving unless they each taught their trade to a Muslim first. Our best jewelers and jambia makers had the hardest time of it and they despaired that their loved ones would die in this wretched place before permission would be granted. On top of all that, the road itself was dangerous. It made no sense to travel north, where the drought was even worse, and passage south meant going through the territory where the Imam's soldiers fought tribesmen in proxy battles with the British. One risked getting caught in the cross fire. It was impossible to know exactly where the fighting was taking place. But in spite of these hurdles, many families succeeded in prying themselves loose from the northern mountains to risk a venture south.

More often than not, a bribe secured the passes that were needed. My father, Mr. Haza, and Uncle Barhun had gathered together a decent enough sum to bribe the Imam's functionary in charge of the Jews of Qaraah. Their intention was to go to Aden, where Uncle Barhun and Mr. Haza had business connections. The night my father went to the meeting, we were waiting for our passage papers and prepared to leave in a month's time. At the meeting, the men traded strategies for procuring the papers and discussed the best routes south.

When my father returned, I gave him a bowl of chouia. Usually I put pepper in my chouia, but I made it bland for my father, as the pepper made his cough worse.

“Thank you, Adela,” he said as he began to eat. Every few bites, he had to put down his spoon to cough. Even the bland stew was hard for him to swallow. As he caught his breath, I began. “Father . . .”

“Eh?”

“Before the other Damaris came to Qaraah, Masudah told me that Aunt Rahel had had . . . er . . . troubles in Aden. That there were families who blamed her for their own misfortunes. If this is true, how can Aunt Rahel and Uncle Barhun return there?”

My father put down his spoon and wiped his face. He took a deep breath. I could hear the rattling of his chest.

“What you say is true. There were troubles in the past. But your uncle has had word that the families who accused your aunt have left Aden. She has also pledged not to do any henna in Aden, save that of her own kin.”

A fit of coughing racked him and he bent over as if a fist was wrapped around his middle, squeezing him too tight for breath. I ran for Aunt Rahel, and she came to give him a steam treatment, draping his shoulders with a blanket, helping him huddle over a pot of boiling water.

I watched my aunt minister to him. Her henna was old, and the lines and swirls on her skin looked like ugly scars in the dim lantern light.

*  *  *

Ten days later, in early March of 1933, my father died in his sleep. When Aunt Rahel came to see his dead body, she held me. My sobs were craggy and painful; my chest heaved and a stitch racked my side. I gasped and gulped and moaned and felt myself spinning. In one instant my grief was large and I was infinitesimal. In another, my grief was a shard of light, and I a vessel too porous to contain it. Aunt Rahel wrapped her arms around me and said, “I am so sorry, my darling. So sorry. When we lived in Aden, I apprenticed with a lady doctor. I learned what I could from her, but I didn't learn enough.”

We buried my father secretly, by moonlight in the ravine behind Yehezkiel the Goat's old abandoned forge. Aunt Rahel prepared his body. Masudah sewed his shroud. My brothers dug the grave.

When we returned from the burial, Aunt Rahel, Uncle Barhun, and Hani took me into their house. Aunt Rahel said, “You must not cry anymore, Adela. You must pretend that your father is still with us. Permission for our travels should come before the passage of two Sabbaths.” She held my hands as she spoke. I stared into her faded henna and saw there the form of a burning bush, which I took as a
sign that despite evidence to the contrary, Elohim had not completely forsaken me.

“Tonight you must begin to pack your things for the journey.” She reached out and wiped my tears with the corner of her apron. “You will need to be ready to leave at any time, but you will stay in your house until then. Hani will stay with you. The house must appear as though nothing has changed. You understand that we cannot sit shiva for your father. We cannot let the Confiscator know that you are an orphan. We must act as if your father is still alive in the house, as if you are ministering to him—feeding him soup, bringing him small comforts.”

My aunt was talking about “propping up” a corpse. Jewish families sometimes attempted it when there was no other way to protect an orphan from confiscation. But it almost never worked.

Uncle Barhun spoke next. “Darling Adela, if the Confiscator finds out that you are an orphan before our traveling papers arrive, we will present your old engagement contract to Asaf Damari. But if the Confiscator refuses to honor it, we will marry you off immediately.”

“To whom?” Aunt Rahel looked pointedly at her husband. “The matter is not so simple.”

Uncle Barhun put his hand to his beard and spoke without hesitation. “To David. Hani's husband can take her as a second wife.”

Hani and I looked at each other, and for a moment my heart stopped beating, for in her eyes was a sickle knife of hate, a cunning blade that would carve out my heart. And then her eyes changed back to loving orbs and she was all over me, as on the first day we met, touching my hair, kissing my eyes, caressing my shoulders.

“Yes, of course. It will be David, it will be David.”

David Haza was not with us then. He was elsewhere, perhaps with his father, who was also not privy to the conversation. Later, I learned that David Haza himself had put forth this solution. That he had gone to my uncle and suggested it even before my father died.

“I will marry little Adela if she is ever vulnerable to confiscation,” David had told my uncle. And my uncle had held the weight of this solution in his hands, and felt the true measure of his son-in-law's goodness. For this was both a sacrifice and a bounty on David's soul—a bounty that Hani would not suffer to pay back.

Hani threaded her fingers through mine and kissed me on the lips
and reassured me in little whispers that she would link her fate to my own and thus save me from confiscation.

“Mother, I will take Adela to pack.”

We walked across the courtyard into my parents' empty house. The first thing I did was to go up to the second floor. I found the key to my mother's chest. There on top was my contract to Mr. Musa, next to it was my old contract to Asaf, and there was the deerskin Torah, like a corpse sharing a too-small grave. I wrapped my hand around the parchment that bore my name and Asaf's. That's when I suffered a fleeting memory. A flash of his face.

“Can you take me there?”

“Where?”

“To your . . .”

“My what?”

“To your cave. I know where you go. I followed you, so I know that you have a cave. I would very much like to see it. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone else.”

“What is it, Adela?” Hani had come over, and put her hand on top of my own.

“Nothing,”

“But I saw you; you shuddered.”

“I am fine. Here are the documents. I suppose I should wrap the contract with my things. The Torah we will leave for the men to handle.”

Slowly, we gathered my mother's jewelry, her best antari, and other garments too precious to leave behind.

“There won't be enough room for everything, so you must choose carefully.” Hani's voice came from the bedroom, and my heart fluttered in my chest when I saw her at the drawer where I kept my undergarments.

I ran across the room and placed myself between Hani and the drawer—my drawer of secrets, which held Aunt Rahel's satchel of poison and my copy of Hani's code. I remembered how I had suspected that Hani used the code to write curses. It struck me as preposterous now and I blanched at the thought. But still, something pricked at the back of my neck. I wondered what my predicament would look like spelled out in Hani's secret language. It would probably look beautiful. A girl engaged, abandoned, almost widowed, and now orphaned. Loops and swirls, delicate petals, little florets. How could I be all of these things, and still only fourteen years old?

“I will pack my linens.”

“Of course, Adela, of course.” She quickly moved over to the cupboard where I kept my two dresses. “I will fold your good antari, yes?” She was at the bigger set of drawers. “And you must take all these shoes, especially the newest sandals, which were such a nice gift from your father.”

Hani sat up with me until the small hours of the morning. My mourning took the form of sick-bellied wakefulness. Unable to sleep, I was a girl again, hiding behind the supply shelves in my father's stall. I told Hani about the Confiscator and his snakes and that when he first came to my father's stall I was just a child. I told her about his wife, how I made part of her shoes, and hoped they would come to life, eating her feet before she could steal me.