Radwa Ashour - Granada

Naeem jumped up all of a sudden and asked that they clear the floor for him. “I want to dance alone,” he announced, winking to Saad as a reminder of what he had promised him ages ago. He stretched out his arms as far as they would go and straightened his back. He tapped his toes on the ground and lifted his left foot, and in rapid motions he spun around several times and lifted himself off the ground as the contours of his spinning body were blurred as he spun. Then suddenly he stopped, and the crowd cheered and applauded wildly at his astonishing prelude. With slow, delicate, and deliberate movements he started up again, and as in a solo recital he gyrated back and forth to the rhythmic beat of the applause. His arms lifted, his back straightened, and his body swayed very slightly, as though he weren’t moving at all. Then he tapped his foot on the ground, lowered his arms to the side without touching his body, and his chest protruded like the arch of a tightly strung bow, and suddenly he pumped his legs and thighs over and over again, as the eyes of the crowd followed his movements and their breaths panted to the beat. It was as though there was eloquence in his dancing, and magic in its eloquence.

Before Saad and Saleema awoke, Umm Jaafar and Umm Hasan had prepared everything. They heated the water for their baths, kneaded the dough and made fresh bread, and left two plump chickens simmering in a savory sauce over a fire for the newlyweds’ lunch. There was also an array of deserts that Umm Jaafar had prepared before the wedding, not to mention the many different sweets some of the neighbors sent over the night before.

As soon as Saleema came out of her room, Umm Jaafar shot her a quick and inspecting glance. Her face was flushed a rosy red and her features revealed no particular expression. Umm Jaafar’s heart beat easily, said “Good Morning” to her granddaughter, and gave her a kiss before going back to her chores. The next two days confirmed what Umm Jaafar had observed. She commented that the peaceful and glowing couple looked like a pair of lovebirds. Even Umm Hasan smiled and joked to Saleema, “Had I known that marriage would make you this content, I would have married you off as soon as you learned to talk.”

But things started to change soon thereafter. It was Umm Jaafar who first noticed Saleema’s pale complexion and puffy eyes as though she had been crying. It’s natural for newlyweds to disagree, she thought, but so soon after the wedding? She confided to Umm Hasan about what was bothering her, and they thought long and hard about what possibly could be wrong. Either they had a quarrel, or perhaps he put demands on her that were just too difficult, or maybe he was unable to fulfill her needs in some way. If she hadn’t known Saad, she would have guessed that he insulted her or mistreated her the way some husbands do early in the marriage in order to assert their authority and assure absolute obedience from their wives. But Saad seemed as perplexed as Saleema. His face grew gaunt, and he avoided looking them straight in the eye whenever he spoke. In her need to know, Umm Hasan asked Saleema what was the matter.

“There’s nothing wrong!”

“Did Saad mistreat you?”

“Saad?”

“Did he quarrel with you?”

“What are you talking about, Mother? Of course he didn’t quarrel with me.”

Umm Jaafar and Umm Hasan took turns fretting over what needed to be done. They toyed with the idea of bringing the matter to Hasan’s attention but decided against it. After giving it careful thought, they devised a plan both of them would carry out. When the couple closed the door to their bedroom, Umm Jaafar would stand guard behind it and listen in on what’s going on between them until her eyes and ears grew heavy with drowsiness. Then Umm Hasan would relieve her and take her place standing guard.

As agreed the two women executed their plan and spent the first night, each one taking her turn with ears glued to the newlyweds’ door, straining every muscle in her body to hear what was going on. When Umm Jaafar awoke the following morning, she got up quickly and went out to join her daughter-in-law who was still standing outside Saad and Saleema’s bedroom door, and the two women crept away slowly and quietly to exchange information on what they were able to gather during their watches. As the older of the two, Umm Jaafar spoke first and began to recount her sequence of events.

“I stood as long as my feet held out, but nothing at all happened.”

“What do you mean, nothing at all happened?”

“They didn’t quarrel. I didn’t hear Saad raise his voice or reprimand her in any way, nor did I hear her snap the way she always does whenever somebody scolds her.”

“They were totally silent?”

“Not exactly. They were whispering as though one of them was revealing a secret to the other. That’s what it seemed like to me although I wasn’t able to make out what they were saying. And I couldn’t tell if it was because the door was too thick or because my ears are too feeble.”

“You didn’t hear any other noise?”

“Not at all, as though he never approached her the way a husband approaches his wife.”

“I didn’t hear anything of that sort either,” responded Umm Hasan, as an expression of bewilderment came over her face. “I said to myself, what happened must have happened at the beginning of the night and Umm Jaafar must have heard it. But now they’ve made up, passing the night whispering gently in each other’s ear. This is something I cannot keep silent about!”

Umm Hasan decided to bring up the matter to her son in the hope that he would deal with this young man whom he married off to his sister. Despite Umm Jaafar s attempts to stop her, she made up her mind and headed straight to his bedroom. She sat down at the foot of his bed and waited for him to wake up to tell him what she had come to be certain of after a night’s vigil. But when she finished telling him everything, he scolded her and told her that what she was saying was no better than the idle gossip of crazy old women. “Why don’t you leave Saad and Saleema alone to start their life the way they see fit?” he added. But his words of rebuke only left her seething in anger.

Had someone told Saleema two days before Saad’s wedding gift arrived that she would have a gazelle that she would love as much as her mother, grandmother, and brother, she would have laughed in his face and thought him insane. But she was taken totally by surprise at how much this little creature crept into her heart and lodged herself securely in it as though it had always been her natural habitat. Every night she tied her on the eastern portico and no sooner would morning break than she would unleash her, and she and Saad would feed her, play with her, and take turns holding her. When Saad went to work, she would do those chores her mother insisted she do, quickly and carelessly, rushing through them to leave herself free time to spend with the gazelle or to read. She would take a book and go out to the courtyard, sit cross-legged on a carpet, read for awhile, and then lift up her eyes to watch the gazelle prancing about or standing still. Sometimes she would come on her own and stretch herself out at Saleema’s feet while she read, holding the book with one hand and gently stroking the submissive gazelle with the other.

The night Saleema said “I’ll never find a husband like Saad,” she lay wide awake, unable to understand why she had responded so readily. Now, as she was going over in her mind what happened that night, she smiled at the very thought of that sentence that had caused her so much confusion. For it was now clear that divine inspiration had come to her when she agreed to marry Saad, and in this short time together, she had fallen in love.