The Jewel Of Medina (4 page)

“Hearing and obeying,” I said, but when
ummi
disappeared into the darkness I slipped into the kitchen. Our neighbor Raha sat in a shady corner fanning herself with a date-palm leaf. She dimpled when she saw me and pulled from her sack a pomegranate as shiny and red as her cheeks.

“No, you have to give me a kiss first,” she teased when I tried to snatch the fruit from her hand. I settled in her lap for just a moment, long enough to press my face to hers and breathe in the lavender she wore tucked in her braided hair. She rubbed the tips of our noses together, making me giggle, making me forget my hurry until Asma walked in. I tore the pomegranate in half, heedless of seeds falling in wet plops on the floor as I raced out the door, dodging my sister’s grasping hands.

“
Yaa
A’isha, where are you going?” I heard Asma call, as if she didn’t
know. She and Qutailah, who was her mother, were always scolding me about my “obsession” with Safwan.
He will only cause you trouble. Playing with your future husband will invite the Evil Eye.

Away I ran, ignoring my sister’s shouts, waving my pretend sword and kicking up soft hot sand as I passed the jumble of tall terrace-roofed houses of dark stone with their arched doorways and sun-bleached palm-frond roofs, homes crowded together and watching me like gossiping, gaptoothed old men. Beyond them, Mecca’s caravan of rock-strewn mountains pulled in their shadows under the relentless eye of the sun.

I found Safwan huddled with Nadida inside her play tent, whispering.

“
Marhaba
, lovebirds,” I said. Nadida’s long, narrow face blushed a deep red. I started to laugh, but Safwan leaped up and pulled me into the tent.

“Hush!” he rasped. “Do you want them to hear us?” He nodded toward the bridegroom Hamal’s window and, beneath it, the rock that we’d rolled there last night.

“They’re in there now,” Nadida said. “You should see her. She’s the same age as me, and married to that old goat.” She touched the small red figure dangling from a string around her neck. “May Hubal protect me from that fate.” Her parents still worshipped idols in those days, not the real God as I and Safwan did.

Safwan placed a finger to his lips and tugged at one of his big ears, listening. A sharp, keening cry, like the wails of Medina’s mourning women, made me shiver. Then we heard a man’s growl, and his laugh as rough as scraped skin.

“By al-Lah, is he killing her?” I said.

Safwan and Nadida snickered. “She probably wishes she were dead,” Nadida said.

Safwan moved to the tent entrance and beckoned me to follow him. Crouching, we tiptoed over to the great rock. Safwan lifted his foot to climb it and a loud groan from inside shook me to my senses: That Hamal was a giant. If he caught us peeking in his window, he could crush us both with one hand. I tugged at Safwan’s sleeve, but he pulled himself up and peered over the edge of the window, then smirked at me.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Don’t be a baby.” He reached out a hand to boost me up, but I scampered to the top of that rock like a lizard, ignoring my pounding heart, which I was certain Hamal would hear. As
my eyes adjusted to the shadowy light inside, I could see only scattered clothing at first, strewn across the floor, then trays of half-eaten food and dirty dishes and a water-pipe tipped over on its side. The odors of barley and decaying meat and rotting apple mingled with the damp smell of sweat.

A low, steady grunting pulled my gaze to the bed. A trickle of sweat crawled down Hamal’s broad, naked back as he lifted his body off the bed then slammed it down again and again. I stared at his behind, as big as my goat’s-bladder ball and covered with hair, as it clenched and relaxed with each thrust. Beneath him, skinny arms and legs stuck out like the limbs of a scarab beetle under a sandal, flailing and clutching at him. A girl’s voice seemed to sob, and her heels pounded against his hips. I gasped and grabbed Safwan’s arm: He
was
killing her!

But when I looked at Safwan he was grinning, and as Hamal’s voice grew louder and his body-slams faster, Safwan pulled me down beneath the window. Hidden from their view we heard Hamal shout, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” like a hyena. I covered my mouth with my hand and stared at Safwan, but he was snickering. I pretended to laugh, also, not wanting him to see my horror, while the image of the girl’s squashed body under that hairy beast replayed itself in my mind.

I leaned against the house, trying to keep my breath even, praying Safwan couldn’t hear the churn of my stomach. Someday I’d marry him—and we would do
that?
His smile was fierce; his eyes seemed to mock me as if he were having the same thoughts. But, unlike me, he seemed to relish the idea. Of course, he would be the one who crushed, while I’d be the poor girl underneath, sobbing and flailing my arms and legs. “That’s marriage, A’isha,” he whispered, making me want to run away. I thought of my mother: No wonder she frowned so much.

And then, as though I’d conjured her, my
ummi
came flying around the corner, her dark robe flapping like the wings of an agitated crow.

“What are you doing here?” she yelled. Shouts from inside the room made her glance up at the window, and she shrieked as if she’d been burned. I looked over at Safwan, but his place on the rock was empty. He’d vanished like a
djinni,
leaving me alone to face my mother’s wild shrieks and slaps. Not only had I disobeyed her by leaving home without cleaning up, but she’d caught me outside Hamal ibn
Affan’s bedroom window with bewilderment and fear groping like hands across my face.

I smiled at her—the very image of innocence, I hoped. Her face looked pulled apart and pinched back together, like scraps of bread dough.

Then Hamal filled the window. I felt his knuckle rap my crown and I shrieked, then scampered down from the rock and ran toward
ummi
. A part of me wanted to hide in her skirts from him—but I knew better than to place myself within my mother’s grasp. Once she got hold of me, she wouldn’t let go until she’d left the imprint of her hand on my cheeks and backside.

“One thousand apologies, Umm Ruman,” Hamal said, tucking his hair behind an ear. He’d pulled on a faded blue robe and tied it about his broad girth. His face was very mottled and beaded with wetness. “I thought I had closed this curtain.”

“I am certain you did.” My mother eyed me. “But someone else opened it.”

“No,” I said, “it was already open.”

Ai!
What had I just said? Now they knew I had been watching. I wished the noontime heat would make me faint, or that I could disappear like Safwan in a blink. Hamal’s great roar made me leap to my mother’s skirts, more afraid of him than of her.

“If you are going to spy, little girl, you had better learn how to lie,” he said with a scowl. My mother apologized, but he told her not to worry: He had children of his own. “I married off my girls as soon as their monthly bleeding started. It is the only way to avoid trouble.”

Had I come to see his new bride? he asked me. Her beauty was the talk of Mecca. “
Yaa
Jamila,” he said, without turning around. Her real name was Fazia, meaning “victorious,” but Hamal had changed it, he told us, so no one could say, “Hamal’s wife is victorious.” A pale, frail-looking girl appeared in the window next to Hamal. She clutched a bed sheet to her chest and kept her eyes lowered. With swollen lips she shyly smiled to reveal large front teeth that stuck out, and her nose was so big it covered half her face. A real beauty! A part of me wanted to laugh, but the other part noticed the shadows under her eyes and the trembling of her hand as it held the sheet.

She really was just a girl, not even as old as my sister, and married to a man my father’s age. She looked so timid and afraid that I wanted to reach
out and stroke her forehead, the way Asma sometimes did to me when I’d had a nightmare. But this was no nightmare: For Fazia-turned-Jamila, this was a woman’s life, to be endured with downcast eyes and nary a whimper of complaint.
Not for me,
I vowed. If any man ever tried to hurt me, I’d fight back. And when I had something to say, I wouldn’t say it with my head down, as if I were ashamed. If my husband didn’t like it, he could divorce me and I wouldn’t care. I’d rather be a lone lioness, roaring and free, than a caged bird without even a name to call my own.

“
Ahlan,
Fazia,” I said, giving her name back to her. She raised her head to look at me with a smile that had reached her eyes.

My mother said a hasty farewell then yanked me home, panting as if I were as large and heavy as Hamal. With those fierce strong fingers she clamped my hand in hers so tightly I thought my bones would break. I’d be whipped for sure, but I wasn’t thinking about that. Instead, I replayed the images I had just seen, of Hamal on top of the frail girl. That would be me someday—but not, thank al-Lah, with a man so much older than I. The girl must have been in pain, judging from the way she’d been crying out and clutching so helplessly at Hamal’s back. No man or woman would ever hold that kind of power over me. Except, for now, my mother.

Inside the house,
ummi
let go of my throbbing hand and I massaged it, but I refused to wince in front of her.

“What were you doing under that window?” she said.

“Sitting in the shade.”

“Sitting in the shade.” She folded her arms. “On a rock that just happened to be under Hamal ibn Affan’s bedroom window? And how did that rock get there? Hamal said it was not there yesterday.”

I opened my eyes as wide as they would go. “Maybe he never noticed it before.”

“You were spying!” she cried. “And you brought Safwan along to spy with you.” Her glare was pointed, as though it were she, and not Qutailah, who had warned me away from Safwan. As though she hadn’t scoffed at her sister-wife’s Evil-Eye superstitions.
The known is better than the unknown,
my mother would say, and send me off to play with him.

“We were sitting, that’s all. We didn’t know they were in there.”

“Enough!” She raised her hand high above me. “I should beat those lies out of you right now.” Her fire-red hair seemed to flame about her head.

Unflinching, I waited for the blow. How proud Safwan would be to see me face my doom without any sign of fear! When he left Mecca to join the Bedouins, I’d be ready to go with him.

Instead of striking me, though,
ummi’s
hand lowered slowly down to smooth the hair back from my forehead. I searched her eyes: What would she do to me? Her lips twitched at the corners, holding something back.

“I almost forgot the reason I came to find you today,” she said. “You are to remain indoors, A’isha. It is forbidden for boys or men to see you unless they are relatives.”

“Stay inside?” I frowned. “But I and Safwan are going to the market to see the caravan from Abyssinia.”

“You won’t be going to the market anymore, or going anywhere else without me or your father,” she said in the clipped voice she used for rule making. “Starting today, you are in
purdah.”

“
Purdah?”
I felt all my senses sharpen. “That’s for Asma, not me.”

“It is for you, too, from now on.”

“What?” I gaped at her like a fish pulled from the water, trying to breathe. “For how long?”

“Until your husband says otherwise.”

“My husband?” For the first time in my life, I raised my voice to my mother. I knew she’d beat me for my shrill, whining tone, but I also knew I had to convince her to change her mind now, before she pressed her lips together and refused to speak—a sign that her mind was set and that no argument would change it.

“Safwan wouldn’t want you to hide me away,” I begged. “Go ask him,
ummi
. He’ll tell you.”

“Safwan has nothing to do with this,” my mother said. From the courtyard came Qutailah’s call: “
Yaa durra!
Parrot! Where is my meal?”

Ummi’s
sigh scraped like a blade on a stone as she turned away from me. “When you marry, daughter, make certain you are the first-wife in your household. Make certain you control your destiny, or it will control you.”

The pounding of my heart, like the hooves of panicked horses, sent me running to her, dizzy with the need to stop this imprisonment before it started. In
purdah
I wouldn’t be allowed to step outside my parents’ house
until my wedding day. I’d be stuck in this cold, dreary tomb until the day my blood flow started, six years away or maybe even longer, with no Safwan to play with, no boys at all, just the silly girls who came with their mothers to visit.

“It’s not fair to lock me up!” I threw my arms around my mother’s waist and held on as she tried to move away. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you? I embarrassed you at Hamal’s house, and now you want to take revenge.”

“Let me go!”

“Not until you change your mind. I want to go outside,
ummi.
” I tightened my grip, holding on to the notion that this was just a cruel joke—and fearing that if I let her go, I might crumple to the floor.

Years of hauling water and making bread had made my tiny mother an amazingly strong woman. She reached behind her and gripped my forearms so tightly I thought she would snap them in two. Yet I clung to her until she pried me loose, then pushed me backward onto the floor.

“You will do as I say, unless you want to be whipped,” she snapped. “This confinement is not a punishment.”

Sprawled at her feet, I looked up into her flushed face and realized she wasn’t going to change her mind. I felt as though hands were closing around my throat, squeezing tears from my eyes, making me gasp for breath.

“I don’t want to stay inside!” I wailed. “I’ll die in this stuffy old cave.”

“Al-Lah has blessed this family today.” My mother’s voice was as hard and cold as the stones under my bottom. “But a girl’s honor can easily be stolen. If you lose it, you might as well be dead.”

Qutailah called for her again, this time in a sharper tone. “By al-Lah, you will be shoveling out the toilet if I have to ask for my meal again!” My
ummi
turned and walked with brisk steps—and slumped shoulders—to the courtyard entrance.