Henna House (30 page)

“Are you sure you didn't hear something?” Hassan wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand.

“Well, yes, now I hear a carriage.” Menachem squinted and cocked his head, trying to get an extra earful of sound.

Then we all heard it, and until the carriage or the horseman had passed, we were jumpy and cross with one another. This time it was just another family of Jews from a village east of Sana'a and we all breathed easily again. Eventually we descended into a basin girded by black-gray mountains. The sun bleached the gritty sand so that every stone looked like the white of an open eye and every felled branch like a piece of a cast-off skeleton. My thoughts were unbound. My mourning became a lesser kind of
burden, and I became dreamy, distracted. I found myself half-giddy with the newfound freedom from fear of confiscation. No, the Confiscator wouldn't find me here. We were far from Qaraah. I was safe for sure. I laughed for no reason and found beauty in every parched bit of landscape.

Uncle Barhun and my brothers Menachem and Elihoo went into the nearby city for its Fourth Day market, purchasing some much-needed meat and oil and hard-boiled eggs for the children. We were a big group. Five of my brothers and nine of their children had come with us. The youngest children were a pair of twins—two boys, my brother Pinny's new wife Salma's first living children. They were eight months old when we traveled and we women all happily traded those sweet, wiggly babies back and forth on the journey, strapping them to our backs when we walked, cradling them in our laps when we rode. Masudah and Dov had stayed behind because Masudah was expecting her ninth baby and was too far along to travel, but she had sent Remelia with us. When I realized that Masudah wasn't with us, I cried out as if I'd been kicked in the gut. Aunt Rahel promised that Masudah and her family would join us once she was safely delivered. But I didn't believe my aunt—not because I thought she was lying, but because when I realized Masudah wasn't on one of the carriages, I had tasted burnt almonds in my mouth, even though I hadn't eaten anything bitter. When I told Hani, she said that her sister Hamama, who understood the future better than she understood the present or the past, would say that the bitter taste in my mouth was a bite of future sadness. She would say that Masudah was lost to us all, even though she wasn't really lost yet.

That night Masudah came to me in my dreams. She held me by the shoulders and said, through clenched teeth, “Adela, promise me that on the way down, Remelia will sleep by your side and that you will look after her always. You promise? No, no tears, little girl, no tears.” I dreamed that I buried my face in her bosom and sobbed. When I awoke the moon was still high in the sky. Remelia was sleeping by herself near Sultana. I picked up my sleeping blanket and lay down next to her. And when she roused, crying for her mother, I comforted her, and after that we slept together for the rest of the journey.

*  *  *

We spent a quiet Sabbath with three other families banded together in a dry culvert near a grove of craggy olive trees. The men gathered to
pray to Elohim. The chill of midwinter had dissipated, and the air was warm. Rain fell, drenching us, but also bringing with it the sprouting of welcome greenery. We women pooled our food and foraged for wild grasses and tree nuts, but in the morning we left our camps at different hours and departed separately, for we knew that by traveling in too large a group, we risked attracting unwanted attention on the road.

Sometimes the men walked by the side of the carriages. Often we females and the children walked too. Sultana's Moshe was a sturdy nine by now, old enough to ride or walk with the men. When the men walked, they took turns carrying Uncle Zecharia's deerskin Torah, for it was our tradition that a Torah should be cradled like a babe in arms when transported. Usually Hani's David carried it. He said that when we got to Aden he would make it his mission to assess its true state of disrepair, and that perhaps as part of his apprenticeship as a scribe, he could undertake its restoration. David had a lovely voice and he sang as he bore the Torah down the mountains. Sometimes the other men joined him, and their voices enveloped us all, as our feet pressed their lilting tones into the earth. The deerskin Torah, with its ruddy parchment, played an important role on that strange journey. Every third and fifth day, and every Sabbath morning, Uncle Barhun and the rest of the men would gather around and read the weekly portion. And if other Jews were traveling with us on those days, they gathered around too, and treated that broken Torah with unabashed reverence—as if it were the original copy of the Words of the Law itself, written by Moses our Father in the desert. For it was a great relief for a tired road-weary soul to quench his thirst on the spiritual drink of the words of the holy portion.

*  *  *

Once we reached the environs of Wadi Kha, we shrugged off our fear of capture. The wadi connects the midlands to the Red Sea. We had climbed out of the plains and were high above Wadi Kha, which flowed through a narrow slash in a vast gorge. We stopped and marveled at the water, and I know I wasn't the only one who wished I could dip a hand in, grasping for a moment a palmful of the water that would precede us in our trek south. Down on one of the higher banks of the wadi we glimpsed a wonderful site—tribesmen dressed only in loincloths,
wading in. They were expert swimmers and flipped and dove like sea creatures, their long hair released from their turbans.

We slept that night not far from a place where legend tells that Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed, left a footprint on a large round rock. There were pilgrims camped nearby, and when they lifted their voices in prayer, I found myself wondering in whose steps we were following. I also wondered how we could learn to read the marks left by ancient travelers on the stones of this earth. The journey was rough, but pleasurable too. For the first time in my life I slept under the constellations and bathed under a waterfall. From a distance I saw a British woman riding in an open car—her blond hair blowing out from under her kerchief. I ate the meat from a deer caught by my brother Hassan with a stone-launched trap and roasted on an open fire. On the road from Yarim to Ibb, we watched Nubians pass us on a camel caravan laden with goods from Egypt. My brother Menachem tamed a caracal that followed after our carriage for a whole week.

We all became very companionable: Uncle Barhun told stories from the childhood he had shared with my dear father, Aunt Rahel shared stories of India, and Mr. Haza took us traveling as he walked us through the streets and alleys of Istanbul. Hani's David was revealed to have the best songs. Yerushalmit surprised us by knowing the names of all the birds in the sky. Sultana's husband, my brother Elihoo, proved to be a talented whistler. Young Remelia had the best jokes. Yerushalmit even let her hand fall from in front of her mouth and spun wonderful stories of an underwater kingdom. Hani was the best at spotting animals—graceful ibex, foxes, shy gazelles, sturdy oryxes, rabbits and porcupines and badgers camouflaged against the dunes that we passed along the way. And as for me? I baked our bread in ovens I constructed—quite ingeniously, I was told—out of stones I found wherever we camped. And I added spices and herbs I found along the way: wild sage, thyme, rosemary, wild onion that had a peppery taste. I also helped with the nighttime stews and the morning cups of coffee-husk brew and fenugreek porridge.

I lay awake many nights of that strange journey. The stars were closer to earth in those days, or at least they seemed to be. In my drowsy discomfort I sometimes reached up and tried to pluck them like daisies. But instead of starlight, I got only an emptiness that revealed itself in the form of glowing Eyes of God in the center of my palms. We wore
no henna while we traveled, for we did not have the leisure to spend a morning devoted to adornment. But I saw henna everywhere—in the patterns in the rocks, in the trails of snakes left in the sand, in the tracks of foxes, ibex, and voles. In the sleeping forms of my sisters-in-law and their husbands. In the curled fists and rosebud lips of the children we met on the road. In the meandering shapes of dry riverbeds.

T
oward the end of our journey we met up with a curious group of travelers—a large extended family of Habbani Jews camped by the banks of the Khoreiba River. They were very far from their homeland in the Hadramut, where the Habbanim had lived since King Herod dispatched a brigade of Judeans to fight with the Roman legions in Arabia. The Hadramut was the name for the land bound by Aden to the west, Oman to the east, the Red Sea to the south, and the Rub' al Khali to the north. It was the scorched hem of the skirt on the southeasternmost tip of Arabia. It was puzzling to find the Habbanim here—north and west of Aden—in such a beautiful spot. The gray-gold rocky mountains rose up on all sides, but the land around the river was jungle-green, dense with big-leafed trees, draped in flowered creepers, a welcome respite from the desert landscape. Yellow and orange butterflies danced through the air, and birds of every color flitted and chirped overhead. The family was camped in little reed huts. Their patriarch was a tall man whose naked muscular chest was shiny with oil under a blue prayer shawl, draped over one shoulder. In the Muslim style, he wore a big curved jambia on a belt around his waist. To cover his sex, he had on only an indigo-colored loincloth. His thick curly hair was tied with a thong, and he wore no earlocks, which was strange. I had never seen a Jewish man without earlocks. His face was sharp, his features angular, eyebrows very bushy, mustache clipped.

I had never seen Habbanim before, and had to stop myself from staring at the almost-naked men, though it was the women who most intrigued me. They were adorned head to toe in the most beautiful jewelry I had ever seen. All of it had been made by the patriarch, their husband, and father. At least this is what they led us to understand.
They had so many necklaces; it looked as if their heads were being held up by the tiny metal links of their chains, not by their own flesh and bones. They wore filigreed disks on thick chains, as well as six or seven beaded necklaces, layered one on top of the other, all hung with amulet boxes. Their wrists were adorned with thick silver bracelets, five or six on each arm, set with carnelians and coral. And they had rings on every finger. Their hair was plaited in graceful manes of tiny braids that hung free around their shoulders, topped only by little embroidered diadems on their foreheads instead of gargushim or kerchiefs. Even the youngest girls were dressed like this, like wild little desert brides. On their foreheads some of the women and girls wore black-gall dots. Others wore kohl under dark eyes, or triangle markings on their cheeks and mouths, just the way Aunt Rahel had marked me when we went to Sana'a. We came to understand that three of the women were wives of the patriarch, who was a skilled silversmith, and that most of the thirteen or fourteen children belonged to him as well.

*  *  *

When my uncle asked them what they were doing so far from their homeland, the patriarch unburdened himself of a story. He had welcomed us with coffee and porridge and sat on a big rock not far from the river's edge chewing khat. Uncle Barhun and the rest of the men sat down on other rocks. We women hung back, listening. He spoke Hadrami Judeo-Arabic, which meant that his pronunciation was different from ours, but for the most part, we could understand him.

He said, “An Englishman came to our homes near Abr, three summers ago. He was a representative of the Crown government, and came to build dams in the Hadramut, to help stave off the dreaded droughts that plague our land. This man, an engineer, had a wife back in Aden, and he was much impressed by the jewelry I produced in my little workshop. He was so enamored of my skill that he promised me that if I came to Aden, he would see that I was situated and compensated for my work. I could not refuse such an offer. We went to Aden, and spent two years as the favorites of the high officials of the British petroleum refinery. But it turned out that the engineer was a liar, and I was never fully compensated. The British engineers who purchased my work to give to their wives and lovers back home never paid me. Now we are tired
of the city, and of the Englishmen's lies. We have come north in order to live under the stars. We plan on returning home sometime before Hanukkah.”

Later that night I overheard my brothers speaking. They assumed that the man was lying and that he was returning to his home in the Hadramut a wealthy man. Elihoo said, “He doesn't want to tell us that he prospered. He fears we will rob him. He is right to be wary of strangers he meets on the road.”

We camped not far from them, and enjoyed their hospitality, and the river's green, rushing welcome for a few nights. I had heard stories of the Habbanim from Auntie Aminah—how they were fierce warriors, and how they were sometimes hired by the great sultans of the north as mercenaries. According to Auntie Aminah, the men “fought with names”: if a Habbani Jew was threatened, he would simply lift a finger and draw a Hebrew letter in the air. The letter became a weapon that speared the heart of his enemy. She also said that Habbanis were the only Jews in Yemen allowed to wear jambia, because no imam or sultan would dare disarm them.

We spent the next morning gathering herbs and berries and replenishing our bladders of water, for the water from the river was sweet. Then we were invited by the Habbanim to share their lunch of peppery soup and bread. After eating, our men joined theirs to pray the afternoon liturgy. Some of the Habbani women and girls sat in a circle, embroidering a big green cloth that they told me would be used for a wedding canopy. One of the older girls in the family was to be married in a few weeks. I brought handwork and sat on a flat rock, close to one of the Habbani huts. A few of the little girls were playing near where I was sitting. After a few minutes of work, I absentmindedly put down my embroidery and picked up a stick. I crouched down and doodled some letters in the sandy earth,
vav
and
zayin
. One of the little girls inched over to see what I was drawing. She had heavy-lidded eyes, long lashes, a snub nose, and plump lips. The black-gall markings on her cheeks were little upside-down triangles. She had thick silver hoops in her ears and many necklaces and bracelets. After watching me for a minute, she reached out her arm, let it hover for a second or two in the air, and then gently put her hand over my own. Her bracelets slid down her arm, making a tinkling sound, which added to the gentle music of the flowing river water. She had a ring on each finger, except for her
thumbs. Her palm was warm on my hand, but the rings were cold on my knuckles.