Wanderlust (11 page)

Abu Bakr's brother's
diwan
was more rustic than the clan's Taiz home, with carpets on bare stone and a dirt yard outside. He served us Vimto, a purple soft drink that tasted vaguely of berries; Mona loathed the beverage and made me drink hers, lest she offend by leaving her cup full. We clustered with Ismat in a corner with our Vimto and cookies. She asked us if we were married; we said no. “It's better not to be married,” she said. “Do you want Abu Bakr to marry again?” I asked, wondering if bigamy might not be such a bad thing,
if it might get her off the hook for wifely duties in some way. “No, of course not,” she said. I now felt a sense of complicity with Ismat, but I saw no point in mentioning the plans Abu Bakr had shared. As fascinated and appalled as I was, as much as I felt compelled to ask questions on the margins, it seemed irresponsible to stoke conflict in a family machinery I didn't understand. We asked her if she liked wearing the veil. She said no, and pointed out that she hadn't worn the
niqab
before marrying; Abu Bakr made her do that. She had been to high school and studied English and French. Now it was her wish to study at the University of Sanaa and become a teacher. If Abu Bakr went to Canada to study there, she said, she wanted to do that too. I suddenly hoped fervently that this would happen. Life depended on the husband, I now saw, and she was lucky to have one who might take her abroad. In Canada she could escape if she wanted to; it was set up to facilitate that kind of thing. I imagined myself in her shoes, biding my time until one day, Abu Bakr at work . . .

He roused us from our corner. We walked from his brother's place to another house and another
diwan
. Then we moved on, bound for a third. Mona asked why we were going from house to house. “So they can see you,” Ismat said, and I saw her smile for the first time. We were a sort of gift from Abu Bakr to Ismat, a learning experience and Friday diversion. A sense of responsibility came over me, and I resolved to power politely through my creeping exhaustion. Everyone else wore slip-on shoes, but Mona and I wore hiking boots, which had to come off at every door. We came to the threshold of the third home, in the courtyard of which at least twenty women and children had gathered; the women were unveiled. On the steps, flanked by Ismat, we met several women in receiving-line style, and imitated their gesture of pressing hand to heart. The oldest, small and gnarled, was the matriarch of them all. The women brought us a blanket to sit on in the
courtyard, and more tea. The grandmother kept bringing us out more pillows and blankets, until one of the younger women told her to stop. We sipped and talked. Abu Bakr had disappeared, and I wondered when he would come to collect us.

When he reappeared, more tea was procured, and the grandmother and some of the younger women began chiding him, their chorus of voices rising in unison. The old woman went indoors, and he explained to us that she was mad at him for not warning her that foreigners were coming, so that she could have prepared gifts. Mona and I were nodding sympathetically when the old woman reappeared in her doorway and came waddling toward us, hands outstretched, proffering a dozen eggs tied in a red plastic bag.

Mona hit her limit and burst into hysterical laughter. I smacked her on the back and pretended she was having a coughing fit. We were so convincing that the old woman then brought Mona a glass of water, which caused her to laugh harder. I thanked the old woman for the eggs and we retreated. On our way back to Taiz I held them carefully in my lap.

I sensed initially that Hoda, Abu Bakr's sister-in-law, disapproved of us; she hadn't deigned to speak to us at all on the first day. Maybe she thought we aimed to marry one of the men, or maybe she thought we were a corrupting influence on Ismat, the newest inductee into the household, with all our talk of university and confusion over veils. Hoda seemed to be a much happier person, much better adapted to family life, than sullen Ismat. By Friday afternoon, though, she'd warmed up to us, and told me I looked pretty with my new Yemeni head scarf on, the one I'd picked up in the Taiz market. She promised that after dinner she would beautify us by hennaing our hands.

There are many ways to color the skin with henna; the method here was to dye the palm of each hand rust-red. Hoda sat down in front of us in the
diwan
with a pot of mud, and ordered me to extend my left arm. She caked my fingertips and palm, then placed a ball of the red mud in my hand and had me close it in a fist. “You have to stay like this,” she said, then speedily wrapped my hand up in a swatch of silk and tied it at the wrist. By the time dismay could register, I was already bound. Mona, who was watching, asked with trepidation, “How long?”

“Three hours,” Hoda said, and reached for my right hand. Mona went to brush her teeth before her opposable thumbs were rendered useless. Once the ends of our arms had been reduced to stumps, we settled ourselves into the cushions and Hoda tuned the television to an Egyptian movie. The family turned its eyes to the screen. Chubby-faced Shafa was there, with one of her cousins, Fatima. Ummi and Hoda were there, and two of Abu Bakr's brothers were present, one with a child curled in his lap. Only Abu Bakr and Ismat were missing, and I found myself wondering how she was, and wondering, against my will, about the marital bed, whether it was happy or dreadful or somewhere in between. After a time I forgot that I had no use of my hands, and feeling sheltered and calm, let my eyes flutter shut.

The next day, like free people, we left. We took a bus to Aden, didn't much like it, and so, high on liberty, decided in an instant to head back north. I saw that I might never understand certain things. However far I went, I wouldn't forget that I was a visitor. I couldn't forget that I could walk away. However deeply I sank—into situations of my own devising, or even real trouble—I would be conscious
of an escape hatch, of the ability to call my embassy, my parents. Despite my great privilege, or maybe because of it, I couldn't resist wandering out to the edge. It was like when I'd tried to get myself lost in all those Spanish campgrounds, just to feel my pulse race. I was still pursuing the excitement of disorientation.

chapter nine

M
ona and I spread our
recent purchases across our beds and looked at them. We were back in Sanaa with a day left in our trip, staying in our hotel on Ali Abd al-Mughni Street.

We each had

“So,” Mona said.

“So,” I replied. We were daring each other again, psyching ourselves up. We were about to become deviants and fakes. We were going to go all the way.

Strange things were happening to us. We were watching ourselves shift and adjust, watching suppressed feelings rise to the surface. We reacted to things first, then thought about them later.

At a hotel one night, Mona had stepped out of our room to use the sink in the next-door washroom. In the washroom was another door, leading onto a toilet, and while Mona was washing her face she realized that there was a person in the water closet. She called to me and asked me to bring her head scarf. As I went to do so, a man emerged from the toilet. Mona jumped, I jumped, and we ran into our room; she still had soap in her hand and water dripping from her face. “Please! No scare!” called the man. We slammed our door shut. Adrenaline coursed through me for having been seen with a bare head. We looked at each other and fell on the bed, the residue of panic giving our laughter a hysterical pitch.

On another day, in a group taxi, we had taken the front while several boys of nineteen or twenty had taken the bench behind us. They tried to talk to us from the moment they got in, but we crouched down into our coats and ignored them. In parry after parry, they trotted out all the phrases they had learned in foreign languages—German, French, English. I concentrated as best I could on my book, until one of them said, “Can I fuck you.” This was, of course, nothing new, but my carefully cultivated immunity cracked. I twisted in my seat and lunged with my hands; I found purchase on his neck. All the anger of the last four months rose into my throat, and it felt good to finally let it take over. In a haze, seething with energy, I watched my hand until drops of blood appeared where my nails entered his flesh, and I felt Mona pulling me down in my seat.

They got out.

“Do you have the address?” Mona asked, as we looked at our new clothes. “Address” was a misnomer; they didn't really have them here. You either knew your way, relied on the kindness of strangers, or got lost. But I had directions to the Peace Corps compound on a piece of paper. We had met a volunteer, Aaron, and he had invited us to a group dinner.

“Let's do it,” I said. I put on my pantaloons, which were dark green with gold embroidery around the bottom. They zipped up at the hip, and I felt like I was locking myself in. I grabbed my long black knit scarf and centered it on top of my head. With the first fold, I wrapped it around my forehead, pirate-style. Then I tucked it and brought it under my chin, as Faiza had shown me, twisted it and brought it across my face, just below my eyes, and then brought both ends around the back of my head for a final knot. Mona and I looked at each other, our heads now encased in black, expressions invisible. Just like that we'd erased the thing we most identified with ourselves, our faces. We'd become vacant canvases. I thought about how we treat people as blank slates anyway, projecting onto them what we want to believe. The less visual information available, the more we can project, just as I'd imagined chubby little Shafa to be a great beauty.