Джоха Альхарти - Celestial Bodies

Khawla did not forget Nasir’s words. Certainly Nasir could not have forgotten them either. Two years, or three, or five, who cared! So what if his circumstances had kept him from returning? He must be very busy with his studies, and he couldn’t send letters to Khawla out of fear of her mother’s anger. Of course not. He hadn’t forgotten her. She was engaged to him, and she would wait for him.

When Nasir passed his secondary school examinations and cans of soda pop were handed round to the neighbours to celebrate the occasion, Khawla was still in middle school. Deliriously happy, she drained three entire cans of soda all by herself. She gave him an eye-catching silver pen that Nura had bought for her in Muscat. As she looked on, he kissed the pen, and she was so embarrassed she almost hoped the earth would open and swallow her up. He told her he had gotten a scholarship to Canada, and she should start now to prepare for the wedding, which they would have the next summer, then he could take her back there with him. She cried, and she drew red hearts pierced by arrows on the long letter she wrote, and when she found she had no picture of herself to give him (that’s what the heroines in romance novels always did), she imitated what he had done years before. She tore the photo off her sixth grade school certificate and gave it to him. It was an old picture; what he saw was a dazed-looking little girl in long braids with a blue amulet hanging protectively round her neck.

Lying on the red carpet, Khawla tossed restlessly and moaned. The rumours whirling around refused to disappear. People said Nasir had failed his first year; they said he had gotten involved in things that had nothing to do with study and couldn’t get out; they said he wasn’t in touch with anyone here now, not even his mother; they said the Ministry in Muscat had cut off his scholarship money because time after time he had failed his exams. They said he would not be coming back. Well, let them say whatever they wanted! Nasir would come back. He would come back to her, to pretty Khawla who had waited for him, who still waited for him, always taking good care of herself, preserving her looks for his sake and the sake of their upcoming marriage.

The brown plastic bank moulded into the form of a house sat on the shelf in her wardrobe. No one knew it was a gift from him, on the day she passed her first year of middle school. Every time she dropped a hundred bisa into the slot that bisected its roof, Khawla swore that the money would reappear only to pay the costs of their wedding. So then, who was this son of Emigrant Issa who dared to try to win her hand? Didn’t he know that she was already engaged? How could he be so insultingly bold? And how could they engage her to someone when she already had a first cousin and was vowed to him?

WAllahi wAllahi wAllahi! May my throat be slit, my neck carved like a lamb, sliver by sliver, if my family insists on marrying me to the son of Emigrant Issa. I will kill myself, I swear to God I will.

Through the airplane window I see streams of light far below, spilling from cities along the coastline to arc into the sea. The flows of light follow a quiet, meandering course, not at all like the fierce spills of water in al-Awafi that drowned Zayd.

The floods came about a year before I first saw Mayya at her sewing machine. The image of Zayd’s body swollen by floodwaters haunted me, chasing me through every dream I had. Returning home on those evenings when I had stolen away to hear the wails of Suwayd’s oud, I would find Zayd’s ghost looming in front of me all of a sudden, blocking my way. It was only when I saw Mayya, so sad and pretty and pale, bending over the sewing machine as if she were putting her arms around a tiny child, that I stopped seeing Zayd, whether in my dreams or on the dark path leading back to my father’s house.

I came out of my heavy moods. In the melodies and rhythms of Suwayd’s oud I could almost feel myself dwindling to nothing, a little like the way I sensed myself dissolving in the cloudy pallor of Mayya’s face. Perhaps I came close to becoming a fast-moving little stream myself, a rush of water ready to sweep away the sewing machine and plant me in its place. I could nearly feel my own earliest, inchoate self, my flesh recreated in Mayya’s thin fingers on the fabric, in Suwayd’s thin fingers stretched over the strings of his instrument.

If only my father had not caught sight of me.

For some reason he hadn’t stayed in his room as he usually did after the evening prayers. Having assumed that he’d sought the refuge of his bed as he did every night, I went out and Zarifa locked the door behind me. We both knew she would unlock it before going to sleep.

But when I returned I found the door bolted. I stood there confused and afraid. Did it make sense that Zarifa would forget about me? Or had some other person come along after her and locked the door?

My bewilderment didn’t last long. The door whipped open and I saw my father’s face through the darkness.

Fattum’s boy... yes, Fattum’s son. So you think you’re grand enough to go against me, d’you? Me? You’d disobey me? Fattum’s son! He bellowed a lot of words at me, most of which I didn’t understand or even hear — except my mother’s name. I lost consciousness after a blow somewhere to my head. He left me bleeding, lying in front of the gate. When I came to, I could hear Zarifa weeping but I couldn’t see her.

When he had kicked me, I yelled. I am not a boy any longer! I screamed my rage in his direction. And I will go out at night to have some fun. Like any other guy my age.

But in fact, my voice was too weak to be heard. I knew it then, and I know it now. So why, twenty-five years later, was I shouting at Salim, You’re not in bed yet? Where have you been? Are you such a grown man, then, that you can go against me and stay out all night?

He had gotten home at 2 am. As far as I could see, he was drunk. I had more to say, more to shout into his face, but I didn’t recognise the voice that was coming from me.

It wasn’t my voice. My father’s voice, in the black fortress of the entryway to his home, bruised my face and head. The next morning I was adjusting my turban as I got ready to leave when Salim came into my room. He still looked drunk and he said to me, Dad, I’m really sorry, really I am. And then he went out.

When I said to Mayya, furiously, and not for the first time, I told you, this son of yours is good for nothing, she made excuses for him. His exams were just over, she said, and all of his classmates were out on the town. He was not a boy any more.

Zarifa rapped hard on the door. Sanjar! Get out here, boy.

He was there immediately. Mama! Everything all right?

She would not come into his room. They walked through the broad front courtyard of the Big House and out to the little alleyways that were palely lit by the wan flows of light coming from the houses on either side.

Is it true what I heard, Sanjar? Is it true, you’d leave your own home town, your family too, you’d go away?

Yes, it’s true, he said. Come with me if you want to.

She pounced on him, her arms so hard around his neck that she practically throttled him. You give your little girl this strange name, Rasha , which no one around here would ever name her daughter, and you want to leave town too?

He shook off her grip roughly. His voice was loud now. Listen, Mama! I don’t care what my daughter’s name is — yes, if she’d been a boy I’d have named her Muhammad or Hilal or Abdallah—

What? Zarifa shouted. Merchant Sulayman would kill you! You’d give your child a name he gave one of his children? Are you crazy, boy? Who do you think you are? And who raised you in his own home and gave you an education and got you married?