Naphtalene. Alia Mamdouh
relaxing. And for dreams and games.
Ahead of us were the steps that led to the roof on top of the house, where there were two rooms. The first was spacious and abandoned; there was old furniture in one corner. In the smaller room were heaps of newspapers and books: the treasures of you and Adil!
When Aunt Najia came into the courtyard, we knew that the door of secrets had opened before us. When she laughed, the house shook. She shouted, “Huda, wipe off the platter, what’s wrong with a little cleanliness?”
You, Adil, and your mother squatted in the corners. Your brother spread out the old newspapers, and pulled the thread off spools to make his kites. He worked like a patient adult; he did not shout or grumble. He was the youngest, the prettiest, the plumpest, the most delicate. You used to divide the world between you and him. He was order, melancholy, and introspection. You were anarchy, insolence, and violence. Your footsteps annoyed the people in the house and the way you walked in the street provoked danger. You were nine years old; Adil was eight. He was possessed by a surpassing ability to bear anguish and pain; you loved to apportion grief, hatred, and love toward everyone and among everyone. His head was strong and his eyes were wide, shining with sects and minorities. Their color at night concealed the echo of sensitivity; in daylight, lights mingled in their honey-colored waves. He was beautiful, venerable. He stood before you and you looked at him. You gave him titles, you barked at him. The day passed, and another, and another. You knew that his beauty was your greatest joy. The lines of his face, his nose, his lips, his silence, his backbone. The shadows of his casual sympathy, the depths of the resistance that people like you never know. All of this turned you against him. Siblings’ fears are not written down or publicized. They proceed, step by step. You lit all the lights so that he did not walk alone. You were with him; no, he was with you. He was the one everyone loved, he was the one who loved you. It was you who pushed him toward the wheels of the wagons drawn by decrepit horses. It was you who were frightened by the creeping of the horses, though he was silent. You cried “God is great!” in the street, you shrieked. You took him behind the graveyard to frighten him. You dressed him in your father’s uniform and saluted him. You got him embroiled in wild dreams. You were sure of nothing but his regal face. Adil’s face was created as if he were meant to return to Heaven young. You used to take him up to the roof, place him at the top of the steps, and push him down. He did not raise his voice, cry, or whisper. He did not give away this secret. You were burdened by the ways you tortured him. You were an expert at capturing him and hiding him. You stole the money that his father gave him, sweets, apricot paste, dried apricots, and the bunches of wrinkled figs that your grandmother put aside for him alone. He never protested, he gave you things in front of everyone and away from everyone—when they were asleep, when they were out, when they returned. He loved you as if you were the last sister in the world. He knelt before you, gave you his portions, made winged animals for you, frightening bears, gentle toys, and did not bother with talk. You imagined him standing up, his chest ready to receive bullets. He would close his eyes, his tears would flow, his pulse would stop, he would not raise his spindly but soft arms in the air and say “No!”
Since that time you have been alone, sinking into infernal stoicism. He stood in the doorway, defending you from their hands and feet, the whip, and shoes. He cried instead of you, and your rage mounted. You have brought all these curses upon yourself, yet you always found someone to blame.
Your mother moved as if she were climbing a high mountain. She brought tea and biscuits on a wide, flat tray. She offered each person a fan. She sullied no one with her voice, responding to Aunt Farida’s shrieks and shouts with a brief nod of her head. She gave them Adil and Huda—what more did they want from her?
She was extraordinarily slender, fair-skinned, and tall. Her hair was the brown of an old walnut; her eyes were honey-colored but showed no light. The skin of her face was dry, her cheeks hollow, her teeth crooked. When she laughed, she asked God’s protection from Satan, and her facial features became tense as she remembered that laughter is a sort of sin.
After pouring and serving the tea, she sat on the low wooden bench like a dejected sentry. She opened and closed, rinsed and dried, came and went. She finished everything slowly: cooking, eating, loving her husband.
Her sharp coughing traveled through walls and windows. You heard your grandmother praying for her, and your aunt cursing her. You and Adil were surrounded by that cough, so they moved you to another room, out of fear, for protection, in expectation and doubt.
We did not know. We did not understand. We did not want to know. And they did not want us to know.
We called her “Mama” only when we were frightened or needed help, but after giving birth to us, she covered her narrow uterus with a veil of secrecy.
She learned one thing from your father: never dare to refuse his wishes. She walked toward the unknown with her ailing chest. She continued to have a delicate brow, dreaming of the fat of the land and hoping to put some flesh on her cheeks and thighs. Your grandmother loved her, and she did not dislike anyone.
Aunt Najia began to pace in front of your grandmother. She joked with her, she chatted her up, and teased her with grand titles. She behaved in the same way with other women. When your grandmother appeared, she wanted her to herself, and when your father’s sister came, she got her into new positions, saying things she never thought of saying before. When a changing rapture appeared on the horizon, she embraced it fully, never remembering what had gone before: the past, apprehensions, the first stammering. Your grandmother appealed to her now and she wanted to have a hold over her. She showered her with flames of passion that exuded from every part of her. She pounced on her with all her height and breadth as if in a frenzy. Her voice would become faint and I would hear her pulse throbbing. And when a new gripping thought presented itself to her she would wholeheartedly follow it and forget anything that had preceded it: the past, the anxieties, the first stammerings . . . Her legs were long and slender like those of an ewe. She took off her slippers and threw them far away. She rolled up the sleeve of the robe, higher, higher, up to her armpit. This was where the smell of steam and sweat came from open pores and the extending folds of her limp forearm. The hair between her armpit and forearm was long and black. When she was intoxicated, she undid the brooch and it dropped to the floor. Aunt Farida sat across from her with her legs open, and your grandmother asked God’s forgiveness: “There is no strength or power save in God!”
The words detour: “Even God’s words sound good coming from you.”
“Listen, Najia, God help you.”
“Oh, even my name sounds good coming from you.”
“Listen, you know I don’t like that kind of talk.”
“Fine, fine. Don’t get upset. By the way, is Bahija Khan going to drop in?”
Their voices rose and your head was lowered to that wide cavity and had its first encounter with the edges of the hidden split: that mysterious body.
You gave off strange vibrations, you don’t know how, or where they went, or who would feel them.
You will never see these strange women again in your life. You love listening to them. They are gold mines: if you go and extract it, the sun will shine; if you leave them in the belly of the earth, the belly will split asunder and produce a different posterity.
Were these the corrupt women you have heard about?
Women: souls painted with fire, bodies over which the open air passes, making them radiant, over which the salts of the sea pass, making them blaze, at whom fear fires its incomparable rays.
They screamed at you; they watched you.
You were there, in that courtyard, listening to horns that bleated at the threshold of your soul. The neighborhood in which your body lived was agitated. You did not retreat. They dragged you, gently at first; they beat you, and your mother went into the distant kitchen. Her shame was striking in its candor among those brilliant souls.
Aunt Najia started shouting again. Her voice had become riper than any other voice you’d heard in your life: “I want Bahija Khan.”
They gave the title Khan