Henna House (29 page)

“Hani, if he comes for me, I want you to know that I will not marry your husband.”

“Hush, Adela, we will be gone in under a week. And when we get to Aden, I am sure Asaf will be there, returned from his travels, waiting to make you his wife.” I let her lie to me because I was so tired. And I lied to her too. A lie of omission. I didn't tell her why she would never have to share her husband with me. I didn't tell her about her mother's little embroidered satchel, and about the bitter root inside of it. I planned that after she went to sleep I would steep it into tea and drink the whole thing down in one gulp. But Hani never left me, and I had no opportunity to steep my doom, stew my salvation. She stroked my forehead, whispering one of my auntie's old stories, of the sons of Noah on the mountaintop of Sana'a, and soon I was asleep. In the darkest part of the night, I roused to hear my cousin arguing with her mother and I knew that they were outside on the little path between our houses and that Hani was refusing the prospect of giving up a piece of her own husband to me. I fell back asleep with my head full of their noise, or maybe it was a gathering of bitch cats in the yard, sharpening their claws on the shreds of a sad little mouse who had been unlucky enough to wander into their domain.

The next night, when everyone had gone to bed, and Hani was asleep on my pallet, I took out the embroidered pouch. I lit a fire and steeped the tea. Then I drank the five-sip dose. When sleepiness came upon me, I muttered the words to the Shema, as I was going to the World to Come and would affirm my faith in Elohim, even though I was not worthy of salvation.

I shut my eyes and fell into a deep ravine. At the bottom was the Confiscator, older than he had been when he had last walked into my father's stall, older than any man I had ever seen, a patriarch older than time. Then he receded and I tumbled backward into the dye mistress's troughs, backward off the escarpment, backward off the ledge of an unfurled scroll of scripture and into an endless abyss. At the bottom of the abyss was a raging river. I became a tiny pebble in the water. I was tossed by waves, smashed against boulders. Finally, I came to rest in the sandy shallows, where I was swallowed by a fish who swam with me out to the depths of a dark ocean.

When I awoke, not dead, Aunt Rahel and Hani were bending over me. Aunt Rahel had a warm cloth on my forehead. Hani's face was blotchy; she had been crying.

I struggled to find words. My tongue was thick in my mouth. “What . . . ?”

Aunt Rahel was holding the little embroidered pouch.

“You brewed this to kill yourself?”

I nodded, and when I did my head hurt. “But I'm not dead.”

She half smiled, half frowned. “Oh no, you wouldn't have killed yourself with that little root. I could never let you. Everything I told you about it was a lie. The root is harmless. It did its job—nothing more than put you to sleep for a day and a night, and give you queer dreams.”

Did I hate her or love her even more for this confession? A little bit of both, I suppose.

On the fourth day of my father's not-shiva, I left the house and ran past the frankincense tree in Aunt Aminah's old yard. I made my way past the old grove of citrons, and past Yehezkiel the Goat's abandoned forge. I took the path down the escarpment and around the culvert. I hadn't been back to my cave in over a year—since it had been discovered and defiled by my brother. The henna bush at the lip had grown dense and woody. I squeezed myself behind it and ducked to enter. The stone altar was still there, but the cross-eyed lafeh scarf was not, so the stone was bare. Of course my idols were all gone, along with my rustic utensils, little rope-braid rugs, and pilfered furnishings—some scattered, broken knickknacks were strewn about on the floor. It gave me a sad, unraveled feeling to see my cave like this, and I wondered if the cave saw me in much the same way—a girl who had been filled with possibility, and was now empty of all comfort.

I didn't have much time, so I quickly got to work. I had brought black gall with me, along with chalk and candles. I lit two of the candles and put them into notches in the wall. On the wall behind my little improvised divan, I redrew the boy and girl. But this time I drew the girl dressed like a bride, her conical gargush reaching all the way up to the heavens. The boy was dressed like a groom, in a wide-sleeved
jallayah
, with a silk scarf over his head. I redrew the horse next to the boy. And I made it so that the girl pointed to herself with one hand, and to the boy with the other. I wrote Asaf's name under the boy, and my own under the girl. To signify where we were going, I wrote very clearly
Aden
. The only difference between the Adela I left on the cave wall, and the Adela Asaf had known was that I gave the cave-Adela henna, to show Asaf that I was a woman now. I drew little barley sheaths on her hands, to signify that this was a drawing of a marriage and that I, like other Jewish brides, would borrow the stranger magic of my Muslim sisters to protect me on my journey from maiden to wife. And I drew circles within circles within circles—the symbols of eternity—on my forearms and on my forehead. Those circles were a double message. I was telling Asaf that my love for him was eternal, but also that I was now shameless and bold, and that I wanted him to know that I had not forgotten the circles he had once dared to inscribe on my body when we were small children in this cave, rehearsing the roles our parents had cast us in.

When I finished drawing I sat down on the cave floor and sobbed. My tears ran out of my eyes, trailed down my cheeks, dripped from my chin, and dropped into the crevices of my cave, down through cracks and crannies where they joined the secret river that flows out of Eden and into the World to Come. Then I grew calm, and quiet. I wiped my face on my kerchief, blew out the candles, and looked one last time wistfully around at my old place of refuge and hope. Then I shook off my despair and left my cave forever—with the same regrets as one would have when leaving a bosom friend, and a hollow sense of emptiness now that I would not have her as a confidant and sister.

*  *  *

On the sixth day of my father's not-shiva, the Confiscator came to my father's stall to pick up his wife's shoes. My brother Hassan was with me. Together we had finished both the bashmag sandals and the fancy pair he had ordered. I had pressed the florets into the toe and softened
the back panel by rubbing it back and forth across the end of the anvil. They were in all ways perfect, and just as my father would have made them.

“Your father?”

“Doing business at the tannery.” Hassan was a bad liar. His torn nostril quivered when he spoke.

The Confiscator raised a quizzical eyebrow at me. “I have known this imp since she was a little girl. She would not lie to me. Tell me, A-del-aa,” he said. He still dragged out my name, as he had since before I could remember. “How is your father's health?”

“My father is quite well, sir. He will regret that he missed your appearance.”

The Confiscator nodded and paid my brother, but before he walked out of the stall he said, “I understand that you lost your mother recently. What a pity.” He turned to leave, but before crossing the threshold of the stall, he turned around and winked at me, then continued on his way. I knew his wink meant that he didn't believe Hassan's lie. He had seen into our souls and read the bald truth—that our father had gone to the World to Come.

Was I brave? No. My bowels betrayed me, and I shat myself in fear right there in the market. My brother stripped my linens, wrapped me in a blanket, carried me home cradled in his arms like a baby, even though I was a grown woman. Then he gave me into the loving arms of my sisters-in-law, cousin, and aunt to clean and comfort me.

That evening, unknown to me, Uncle Barhun bribed the Imam's functionary into giving us our traveling papers. At midnight I was shaken awake, and soon I found myself bundled onto the back of the donkey carriage. Most of the family was there, packed into four heavily laden carriages. As I tried to get my bearings, it dawned on me that we were escaping, but I don't know what surprised me more—that I was leaving the only home I'd ever known in the dead of night, or that my aunt and uncle would take such a risk for me. The penalty for their crime? My uncle could be beaten, jailed for many years, or worse. The Confiscator was not known for his mercy and had wide leeway to punish those who dared betray his authority. No one spoke as we wound our way through the penumbral little lanes of our neighborhood. Not a single word. We passed by the synagogue, and through the salt market. Qaraah was silent but for the barking of a far-off dog. Then, just as we
were about to reach the camel caravan depot, on the southern road out of town, we heard hoofbeats behind us. Hani pushed me down, covered me with her cloak. I curled up at her feet and she piled bundles on top of me. I felt my heart beating in every single corner of my body—my little fingers, my knees, my hips, my belly, my mouth. Through the bundles, I heard the hoofbeats coming closer, and then closer. I tried to imagine myself a speck of dust, a grain of sand. I squeezed my eyes shut but the darkness in my head tortured me with images of the Confiscator's jambia, his serpents, which in my terror I imagined writhing around my legs, and then upward to my torso, squeezing the life out of me. Uncle Barhun urged our donkeys on. Pishtish began to canter, but still the hoofbeats grew louder and louder. And then they were upon us. Did I die then? I think so. I think the Confiscator's serpents squeezed the life out of me.

But my death was short-lived. And when I awoke, I found that I wasn't dead at all. Rather, I had fainted dead away and missed learning that it was my brother Dov. Under cover of darkness, he had borrowed a Muslim neighbor's fastest horse and chased us down. In a satchel on his back, he carried the little deerskin Torah, which had been left behind in the scurry to depart. I didn't know it yet, but Dov and Masudah and their children were staying behind. Dov handed the Torah to my uncle for safekeeping and then bid our party farewell. I found this all out in the morning. My faint had ushered me into merciful dreamless sleep. When I finally came to, the sun was rising in the sky, and the landscape of my youth had been replaced by the scrubby sands of a desert I didn't recognize. Hani pulled me up next to her, and together we dared to smile and almost laugh. We kissed each other and embraced, and she laid her hand on top of my own. I took my free hand and lifted her hand up and put it on my lap. As the carriage wheels squeaked, and the donkeys' tails swished, I traced a meandering path on her palm, a path beginning with the coming of the other Damaris to Qaraah, and ending in this astonishing journey of redemption.

W
e were not the only Jews trekking down through the mountains. Drought had hit hard throughout the Kingdom, and what had begun as a trickle of refugees had become a flood. We saw many families we knew along the way. Hope lay in the south and the largesse of the British. Some, like us, had contacts and relatives in Aden. We were lucky, for we never once fell into the path of either the Imam's or the tribesmen's armies, nor were we ever close to any of their skirmishes.

Those first nights on the road I barely slept. I kept waking up and seeing a ghost—a girl with my face, squatting in the dust next to my pallet. She rocked back and forth on her heels and accused me with narrowed eyes. I didn't know it then, but I was looking at a cast-off version of myself—the Adela I was leaving behind. Sometimes in my dreams, I still see her, this left-behind Adela. She cries out to me. She begs me not to leave. She tugs on my ears and tells me that the tragedy that later befell my family would not have happened if only I had stayed. But when I awake, I tell myself that this is foolish. Even if I had stayed in Qaraah, the design would be the same, as it was already fixed in fate, set by lemon juice, writ in indelible scribbles.

*  *  *

“Did you hear that?” My brother Hassan usually trotted in the back of our caravan.

“What?” My brother Elihoo rode in the middle, but he often doubled back to consult with Hassan.

“Hoofbeats behind us.”

I usually traveled in the third and last carriage, or I walked beside it.

“No, I hear nothing.”

“Listen.”

We all stopped and tried not to breathe. One of the donkeys made a belching sound. Another whinnied. A carriage wheel creaked.

“At least one rider, maybe two.”

“No, Brother, this time there is no one.”

It was my brother Hassan who kept hearing the hoofbeats, and my brothers Elihoo, Mordechai, and Pinny who kept hearing nothing. Menachem was the smallest and meekest of my brothers, and he was always taking Hassan's side in an argument. “Hassan is right; there are riders on our tail.” Menachem spat when he said this, and then rode to the middle of the caravan. A coward, he would hide behind the women.

Though we tried to pretend we hadn't heard anything, the truth is that we all heard whatever most frightened us. I heard the hoofbeats of the Confiscator's horse, still convinced he was coming after me. Uncle Barhun also heard the hoofbeats of the Confiscator's horse – because he had stolen me away. But he also heard the hooves of the Imam's functionary's horse. None of us knew that Barhun had paid the bribe for our departure papers in counterfeit thalers, and that, until we reached Aden, he feared being followed and arrested for the crime. My sisters-in-law Sultana and Yerushalmit heard a monster who was rumored to live under the wide-open sky and prey upon travelers, eating their faces off with their three rows of teeth. Aunt Rahel heard the hoofbeats of an angry husband. Had one of her brides died in childbirth? Was a baby born with a cleft palate? It had been a long time since she had had any troubles, but she was never fully at ease. And here on the road, all of us were out of our element. As for Hani? What did she hear? Did she have special reasons of her own to fear that someone was giving chase? If she did, she kept her own confidence.