Henna House (7 page)

During the meal, I didn't look at Asaf and he didn't look at me. He
was seated in between my uncle and my father. Four of my brothers were there too. My mother and I served the men and then sat at the far end of the table to eat our portions of stew. When I got up to bring a new dish or to take one away, I pretended that I hadn't seen Asaf on the horse and he pretended that he hadn't seen me alone on the escarpment.

After the meal, I was sent up to the men's salon to bring them a tray of sweets. My brothers were reclining on pillows, chewing khat, and smoking hookahs. My father and uncle hadn't come up yet to join them. Asaf was sitting next to my brother Mordechai, who was speaking to my brother Dov. As I approached, Mordechai began telling a crude story. In our tradition, something was called “holy” when it belonged to the whole community—like a Torah or a synagogue building, a ritual bath or spice box used to mark the passage between Sabbath and weekday. This is why a loose woman was also called “holy,” because she was shared by many. I knelt to put the tray on the little table and I heard Mordechai say, “Avihu's sister sure is holy. She lay with her own brother-in-law, with the neighbor, and with the neighbor's neighbor before being caught by her own husband, who turned her out and sent her back to her parents, pregnant with a bastard with four fathers, who knows, maybe more.” Dov let out a great big self-satisfied guffaw. “Holy, holy, holy,” he said through a big wad of khat, “she must be so holy that the angels themselves mistake her for one of their own.” As I turned to go, he launched into a crude joke about a farmer who violated his goat, a baker who violated his fresh loaves, and a fisherman who sank his hook into the mermaid bounty of the deep blue sea.

My cheeks grew red. I was used to my brothers' boorish behavior, but it seemed to me as if they were telling these stories for my benefit, that is, to embarrass me in front of my groom. As I passed by Asaf he turned his head and caught my eye for the smallest little pebble of a second. In that second I thought his expression said, “Don't listen to them.” And, “If I were older, and already married to you, I would protect you from your miserable brothers.” Did Asaf's little glance really say all of these things? I don't know, but it was enough that I believed it so.

*  *  *

The next time Asaf met me on the escarpment he wasn't on Jamiya, but had come by foot. We stood without speaking for what seemed like a
very long time. Asaf looked up at the sky. I followed his gaze and spied a pair of sooty falcons circling over the ruins of Yehezkiel the Goat's forge.

“Well . . .” Asaf kicked a stone, bit his bottom lip, and then ran his fingers through his right forelock, twisting it into a tighter curl.

“Well what?”

“Hmmm.”

I looked back up into the sky. The falcons were flying away. Asaf shifted back and forth on his feet and narrowed his eyes, turning them into tiny slits of blue that swept over the landscape behind me and then settled on what seemed to be my chin. He began to curl the second forelock and then let it spring back up in a corkscrew. Finally he whispered, “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.”

I weighed my options. I could refuse, but if he already knew I had a cave, he could go there whether I took him or not. Really, he was just asking permission. And if I didn't take him, perhaps he would get angry. And if he got angry, would he give away my secret? Tell his father? Tell my father about it? Binyamin was the only other person who knew about my cave, and so far he had kept my secret.

“Come.” I turned on my heels.

“I'll follow.”

I snorted, “Of course you will. It's what you want, isn't it?”

“Don't be mad, Adela. I promise I won't tell anyone else. It will still be your secret.”

I didn't answer. I took him the other way around the culvert. The long way, past an old camel cart half-buried in the sand. Before entering, I hesitated. Asaf stood not a hand's breath from me. Together, we looked out at the landscape. Down below my cave, to the southwest, was the Jewish cemetery, where Grandfather Yoosef was buried, and past that was the wealthy village of Bir Zeit, where I never went, but where I heard that the imported fruit trees grew heavy with Indian mangoes and perfumed gardens sported yellow melons as big as the heads of giants. All around us the mountains rose up the color of wet wheat and old
canvas sacking. To the north was the walled city of Sana'a. We could see a camel caravan coming from Amran laden with grain and khat leaves and cotton entering Bir Zeit. And there in the middle distance we espied the gravekeeper stooped over stones, while a solitary horseman rode a stallion over distant dunes, where the mauve and golden mountaintops faded into each other, like feathers on a reclining bird.

The moment for stillness passed. A breeze rustled the henna bushes. I turned to the cave, ducked, and entered. Asaf followed me in. I lit one of my little contraband lamps, along with a stub of a candle that I kept in one of the indentations in the cave walls. He looked around. As the light illuminated the space around us, I saw him smile.

“Yes, this will do, it's very nice.”

“Do for what?”

“For our first home.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You are my wife.”

“Not yet,” I said through gritted teeth.

He shrugged. “In some places in Africa, the children marry at birth. In parts of Morocco, they marry when they lose their first teeth. I see no reason why we should wait any longer.” He came toward me. Quickly, I bent down and lifted one of the little pots that I used to heat water on a tiny wicking stove I had stolen from Auntie Aminah's storeroom. Before he could get any closer, I clonked him on the head.

I called him a brute and threatened to tell my mother that he had tried to violate me. He smiled, scratching his head. “Then I will tell her about this.”

“And I will tell your father about Jamiya.”

He pointed at my altar, my idols.

“And I will tell your mother about your little pagan gods.”

“Goddesses.”

“Forgive me, but I don't think she will care about the sex of your idols. Only that you have them. A Jewish girl like you—”

I put my hands on my hips and taunted Asaf back, “A Jewish boy like you, out here in the dunes, riding a horse?”

“A Jewish girl with her own cave? What will people say about you? That you meet goat boys here. That you tempt them with your wiles.” He rubbed his head where I had hit him.

“My wiles? You have been spending too much time with the animals
that are my brothers. Are you an animal too? Or are you a boy who mounts horses like women? That is a mare you are riding, after all?”

I don't know exactly how, but in the thicket of these crude threats, we suddenly came to a truce. And not just any truce, but a happy one. We both started laughing. We were saying things we didn't mean and didn't even understand. Our predicament suddenly seemed very funny, but funny in a way that mattered and felt safe. After all, our connection was based on protection; we needed each other to avoid confiscation. So that was the nature of our laughter. It was a balm and a joke and a trick perpetrated against the demons that overreached when they came for us. Asaf and I laughed and looked deep into each other's eyes. Did he think my eyes too big? No, I could tell that he thought they were just right. We were perfect for each other. We were each other's armor. And in that moment, we each became the other's lance, sword, and shield. We couldn't say all of this, because we were just children, so we laughed, because life was hard, and laughing was easy.

*  *  *

Two days later my family shared the Passover seder with Asaf and his father. At the seder, we pretended not to know each other at all. Asaf and the sons of our neighbors, who also joined us for the holiday, put on a little skit, reenacting the Exodus. Asaf played the part of Moses, defying Pharaoh, leading his people out of Egypt, raising his staff to part the Sea of Reeds.

“Oh, what a great Moses you are,” my father said, complimenting him on his acting.

I thought of Moses's staff. How God had turned it into a snake, which writhed at Pharaoh's feet. This made me think of the Confiscator's jambia, and soon the fire of fear was igniting behind my eyes. The faces around the table blurred, and suddenly I was back in the market, sprawled on the ground at the feet of the Confiscator and his wife.

“Adela, what is it? Are you not well?” My sister-in-law Masudah came behind me.

“I am fine, just fine,” I reassured her, forcing a big smile that soused the flames in my head. No, I was at home, all was well. I was safe. He wouldn't take me away. He couldn't, could he? When I came of age I would marry. If I did my duty and married Asaf, I would have nothing to fear, now would I?

I took the plate from my intended and examined it for clues. I needed to know: What did he like to eat? The lamb brains? The chickpea stew? Was he a boy with a big appetite? Would I be woman enough to make savory dishes to nourish and feed him?

*  *  *

Asaf came to my cave again two weeks after Passover. When he had tethered the horse, we sat in the cool shade of an overhanging red rock. He told me a story about a race he had watched, in which a man fell off his horse and broke his leg. The Muslim boy who won was a member of one of the far northern hilltop tribes. “You know,” Asaf said, his voice tinged with what seemed a combination of apprehension and admiration, “the tribe of the great assassins.”

“No,” I said, “I don't know. I know nothing about any assassins.” He reached into Jamiya's saddlebag and pulled out a bag of salted almonds. We sat on our haunches and shared them as he explained the intrigues of days before we were born. Asaf told me how the boy's tribe plotted against the Imam's father, who was the leader of the land when our parents were children. The assassins tried many times before they eventually succeeded in killing the Imam's father. They tried to poison his soup, to suffocate him in bed, and to break the legs of his horse as he rode at a full gallop. They even tried to kill him with henna. How? A henna dyer was paid to add a bit of coded text to the bridal application of one of his nieces. The groom was the killer. He was to receive the information that told when and where he was to kill the Imam's father by reading the soles of his bride's feet on their wedding night. But that plot was foiled too. And both the bride and groom were executed, even though the bride had known nothing about it. The assassins finally succeeded with a gunshot to the head.

Asaf finished his tale by making his hand into an imaginary gun and pulling on an invisible trigger while making a clicking sound with his tongue. After that, we were both quiet for a while. We were giving this dramatic and sad story the respect it was due. But our silence didn't last long. Next, Asaf told me about a client his father had, a Moroccan taxidermist who used spices to preserve his animals, and another, a Muslim burial master, who used spices to ward off the smell of death. I listened without asking any questions. We both reached for the last almond. Our fingers brushed together in the bag. I quickly pulled my
hand out, for I knew I wasn't supposed to touch a boy who was not my brother. Especially since he was my intended. He pulled his hand out quickly too. But then he laughed, and said, “When we are married, we will share more than almonds.”

I blushed, and looked down at my feet. But then I dared to peek up at him again. “Look”—I pointed at Jamiya—“she is being tormented by flies. You should take her home.”

Asaf nodded, and then he did something very silly. He lay back in the sand and made an angel shape with his arms and legs. When he rose, his hair was full of sand, and his clothes dripped sand like water. He brushed himself off, ran toward Jamiya, mounted, and rode away without looking back. He took a zigzag path, riding at a slow trot. I lay back in the sand on top of his ghost angel. I let my hands fall into the wings and shut my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them again, I could no longer see him.

*  *  *

A few weeks later, the next time Asaf came to my cave, we drew together on the cave wall. I had some chalk stones. I drew a chalk boy and girl. He picked up a piece of chalk and drew a stick horse next to him, and one for me too.

“But I don't ride,” I said.

“You will one day; it's like flying. We will ride together, race each other.”

“But girls can't ride.”

He shrugged. “Neither can Jews.”

By the late spring, I was calling him
husband
, and he was calling me
wife
. It was a game at first, a joke even, but eventually the words seemed to change substance and become mighty on our tongues. We began to steal away whenever we could to spend time together in my cave. I always made my way to Auntie Aminah's through the backyards now, in order to hide my intentions of going to the cave. Sometimes the spinster dye mistress would be at her troughs. Once she reached for me as I ran by and made me stand in front of her. “Where are you always going, little girl?” she asked. She had been stirring a big pot of purple; I could tell because she still held her mixing staff, which dripped purple onto the sand, and her fingers were the color of caper flowers.

“To my auntie's.” I looked down, blushing.

She knew I was lying. “Are you a liar or a dreamer? Neither? Or both? Well, you are not the first little girl who ran through my pots to escape one thing and find another. Just be careful you don't fall in”—she gave a little laugh—“or you will arrive at your lie or in your dream wearing a coat of many colors, and then you will be found out, and I too will be implicated in your deception.” I backed away, and ran out of her yard as fast as I could. After that, I was careful to step sure-footedly through the pots of ocher and amber and red and blue and purple—all much darker in the troughs than they were on the cloth she dyed.