Chapter 8
Paul soon became a permanent feature of Nimco's household after this first music lesson. It happened that after the music lesson, where he interpreted, she approached him at his bakery, where he made a living, and asked him if he wanted a different occupation. 'A tutor,' as she put it, 'teaching her baby English.' He would be there daily for a number of indeterminate hours, and spent time with the child so that she could learn the language. He agreed, with much alacrity, and the deal was done. He was hired as a tutor, quit his bakery job, but he ended up being more than a simple tutor. Nimco had him running errands, cleaning, cooking, babysitting, to the point where he usurped the role of her mother who began coming less and less to her daughter's house, antagonised by a seeming degeneracy that hung around her daughter's house. A period of complete autonomy began for Nimco, whose position as matron had become crystallised, without her mother's restraint entangling her. Various young people began to frequent her house on a regular basis, the majority of them girls, Howa among them, ostensibly for these music classes with the 'small eyes' for their teacher. Nimco managed to find more violins, bought on credit, like much of her other purchases were, and a cacophony of string abuse resounded in her rooms when these lessons began. Nimco herself had started to practice on her own to try and find the melody that had bewitched Zhao. Time and again she sliced the strings attempting to find it, to memorise it, and give Zhao something he desired. She was frantic in her attempts to try and please him. That was her sole goal, to make him happy, proud, in order to...what? That thought hadn't crossed her mind yet. She was still at the stage of mindlessness, not thinking of its import or the consequence. One of the reasons Paul was hired as a tutor was to always be present when Zhao was there, so that they could communicate beyond the pitiable communication pigeon Somali allows. Her whole activity was directed at one man, but she didn't know it as of yet. She even forgot why she had established this music class to begin with, because she didn't want to be alone, with just her baby, establishing the class to entice people to come to her house.
One day, she was practicing with her violin while Paul and her daughter were in the narrow corridor of the house. She had told them to stay away from her and remain elsewhere so as not to be distracted, never realising that the trigger for the melody she was looking for had been told to stay away... The door opened and a greeting rang out in a voice of spring breaking into summer.
'Ah, friend,' Aaden said to the seated Paul, smiling his handsome smile. 'Here again?' Aaden watched the little girl use Paul's strong and steady arm to balance as she stood up. 'And useful as usual.'
Paul eyed Aaden, whose entire being seemed to be made up of insolence.
'The child you mean?'
'Yes, taking care of the baby. What is a man doing taking care of a child like this? Do you have children yourself?'
Paul shifted uncomfortably as he thought of his barren wife.
'No,' he answered.
'So this is the first child you're occupying yourself with?' Aaden smile was delightful aesthetically. 'And it's someone else's?'
'I'm not occupying myself with the child. I'm just sitting here -'
'Are you teaching it to walk?'
The mockery was unmistakable.
'And other things too, which you can't do,' Paul said in English.
The baby lost its balance and fell on the floor. Aaden laughed, his own striking laugh which he inherited from his mother.
'Yes, you are useful, indeed,' he added and walked to the living room where Nimco was playing the violin. He left Paul moody and contemplative wondering if he had really made the right choice in agreeing to become a tutor. 'Why am I teaching a child how to walk when I'm here to teach it how to talk?' he asked himself as he once again extended his powerful arm for the child in a natural instinctive movement. Meanwhile Aaden entered the living room.
'Sister! How beautiful you play!' Aaden nearly shouted to overpower the violin.
Nimco looked up to see Aaden walking towards and then sitting next to her. Her frustration was palpable.
'Is that a new one?' Aaden remarked, indicating the violin. 'It looks a different brown.'
'Yes,' she said angrily. 'One of the strings snapped while I was looking for the melody. I swear I was close that time!' Nimco hadn't realised yet that the strings could have been replaced, instead of the entire violin. And long may this ignorance continue, the violin sellers said, giggling to themselves.
'Wow! How much money do you have, sister? That pension must be phenomenal.'
'I didn't pay for it immediately. I just told them to put it on my credit line. I'll get to it in due time. All my focus and energy must be on this damn melody, or a better one.'
'And you're paying that man too?'
'Who?'
'That jereer.'
'Which…'
'The man who is teaching your child how to walk.'
How badly did she want to go back to finding the melody!
'Yes, him. I'm paying him to educate my child. She must know English. No language is more important.'
'Why?'
'Because I'll send her to Yasser, so she can be his wife. How can she go abroad without knowing English?'
'But Yasser's in France. They speak French there.'
'I swear they speak English there too. They speak English everywhere, a universal language.'
Aaden looked at her nonplussed and then turned from her to the entrance way for he heard familiar steps.
Someone else had entered the house, a woman dressed in a niqab, walking with a heavy gait. She ignored Paul, who looked at her with the same moral revulsion as he did Aaden, and went straight for the living room. Aaden was already shaking with desire, making to get up. Nimco was pleased that she could get back to finding a melody soon. Mayloun, now visibly spherical because of her child, stood on the threshold to watch Aaden come towards her. She greeted Nimco and then turned to go into the master bedroom with Aaden in tow and Paul watching them in a state of mild envy and reproof.
No sooner had they gone into the bedroom then Paul grabbed the child and took her to the kitchen, the room furthest away from the bedroom. Soon only the babble of the child could be heard, responding to the English of Paul, and the strainings of Nimco, trying to find a melody, which ceaselessly kept escaping her and the muffled thuds of the bed Mayloun and Aaden used for their fornication.
'You've become softer, when I couldn't have believed it possible. Everywhere, except here,' Aaden drummed lightly on Mayloun's pregnant stomach as she laid on the bed. He laughed softly. 'But you're lazy,' he then said reproachfully. She had only flipped her veil backwards, and had kept the rest of her clothes on, only pulling up her black dress to have sex. Aaden however had taken everything off, a wonderful sylph, and now got off the bed to put his clothes back on.
'Try being pregnant and getting in and out of clothes. My arms feel heavy.'
She watched admiringly at Aaden's delicate physique, not bothering to pull her dress down.
'Maybe today is the day,' Aaden said hopefully.
'For what?'
'For the feeling.'
'Didnt you already get it? How many feelings can you get?'
'There are -'
Nimco's struck a particularly high, screeching note on her violin.
'Why is she so obsessed with that melody?'
'I don't know but Howa is also looking for a melody.'
Another awful, emotionless straining could be heard. Aaden looked at the curtain behind which the living room was; where Nimco was playing until he heard a break in her playing. He turned back to the swollen, glowing and glistening woman who had seemingly refused to pull her dress down and cover her equally swollen, glowing, and glistening sex. 'She is pure licentiousness,' he said to himself, frowning.
'Whose baby is that, Mayloun?'
A quick moving shadow moved across Mayloun's face. The cheekbones in her full face became more pronounced for a moment until the fat settled evenly across her face.
'It's your father's,' she answered sharply. 'Fragment of the devil.' She sat up as Aaden was now fully dressed and pulled her dress down. 'You ask such dumb childish questions,' she added angrily. 'Why am I even here. What am I doing with a child like you.' She mock spit in his direction. 'How dare you ask me such a question?' She put her index finger and her thumb into a pinch position. 'I dare you to insinuate again!'
Aaden looked at the little claw and said playfully:
'All I ask is that if the baby looks like me that she is named Waris.'
'Why would it be anyone else's but your father's, waraya? Tell me that.'
'I didn't say it was anyone else's,' Aaden said placatively. 'It was a joke if anything.'
'Your jokes are sick,' Mayloun spat out as she got up from the bed holding her swollen belly. 'If your father wasn't finished as a man, I'd be enjoying a regular marriage -'
'Oh? is that why we -'
'- but the disease that runs in your family deprived me of that. Diseases like these should be declared before marriage.'
'Ha!'
'If you weren't a child, it would have been permanent. I guess kids have a stronger immune system.'
'What makes you think it's a family disease anyway?' Aaden asked, becoming irritated at Mayloun's attempts at maligning his family when he knew better. 'Aren't you scared you will get the disease too, or even that you were the one who gave it to us?'
'What? Nothing drips from me. Why should I consider it anything other than a family disease if I don't drip and only you do?''
'You have nothing at all?'
'Nothing.'
'No drip?'
'Not a drop.'
'Maybe you never noticed?''
'Notice symptoms? There is no such thing as symptoms you don't notice.'
'Maybe,' said Aaden, defeated, as they entered the living room.
'I can't find it!' Nimco wailed as she spotted them separating the curtain. Both lovers were arrested by the dazzling light and Nimco's high voice. 'Why can't I find it? How long do I have to learn before I am able to play this damn thing.'
Their attention settled towards their wailing host like two parents indulging their only child.
'Ha. Is that melody the only melody that exists? I swear Zhao knows infinite ones,' Aaden said, as he and Mayloun sat on either side Nimco.
'That was the one he liked,' Nimco said miserably.
'Why did he like it so much?' Aaden asked.
'I...I don't know,' answered Nimco with a frown. 'I don't know.'
A faint odour of female sex was wafting around the room that the two lovers and Nimco were vaguely becoming aware of. Nimco started to think of her own sexual frustration and struck a chord mindlessly to dispel it. A short but thrilling sound was played. Usually the melodies tended to be wails but this sounded like a moan. The two lovers were pleasantly startled and looked up at Nimco and then each other. They excused themselves and went back to the bedroom.
Chapter 9
This was a curious time for the village, a sonically adventurous one. All through the little town, strains of violins could be heard from several houses with girls practising, or rather, searching for this melody that Nimco was searching for too. More than one passerby stopped when passing one of these houses that harboured a violinist to wonder what that noise was, letting out a bemused 'ah' after listening to the screech of amateurism for a while, and moving on. Several, however, walked away with a frown, mumbling invocations, the ones with orange beards as the sounds had something dark about them.
A slim, loose clothed man stood still in front of a door that had these violin strains resounding from it. He hovered his first in the air momentarily, and then banged sharply on the door, in order to overpower the music, and make his presence known. He stood there for ten minutes banging and banging on the door until the mangled screeching of amateurism defeated him. He left with a red face of fury to match his beard. He could have just simply opened the door, for he and everyone else knew that it would be open, but this was a business call, and when it comes to business, one could not enter any house uninvited. Inside the house Safia was holding a slipper in her hand, hovering over Howa to make her play that violin. She didn't want to face the debt collector to tell him that she didn't have the money yet.
'But he's gone, mother,' Howa whimpered, as she tried to put her arm down to rest.
'Uss, naya, and play!' Safia urged, standing next to Howa, pointing at the violin with her slipper. 'Play!'
Howa played again while moaning tearfully.
'What the fuck you have this thing for if you don't play.'
Howa played for another five minutes until she threw a strop.
'No more! I've been playing for an hour nonstop. What do I look like? Leave me alone. I said no more!'
Safia looked down at her daughter, listened out, and thought the man had gone.
'Do what you want. Who is forcing you?'
The yarad money, the bride price, that Moussa had given when he married Mayloun hadn't lasted long, and now Safia's household was tight. It was her turn to ask her close family for money but the last time she had spoken to her brother the connection had cut off and he hadn't returned his call. She also doubted whether her brother would send her money. This meant that she was in a pickle. She thought that she might have to break the agreement between herself and her husband and tell him to ask his close family instead of hers.
'Put that devil's instrument away and let's pray.'
Howa had already put it away and was inside her bedroom.
'Why? I'm tired now. Too tired to -'
'Uss naya! Get up and come here. Put your hijab on, Howa. It's time to pray.'
'But I'm tired,' she blubbered as she came out of the bedroom holding her long hijab. 'How can I pray when I'm so tired.'
Safia, who had moved towards the living room, stopped to look back, and was now a menacing figure, as imposing as a tall heavy set woman can be. Howa, noticing this, brought fire herself, aggression for aggression, to ward off menace with justification.
'I'm coming, am I not? What more do you want?' she snapped angrily.
'Naya,' Safia said, slowly, momentarily holding off what she wanted to say so that her eyes could confirm the matter for her. 'What did you do to your face?'
What wasn't apparent had become apparent to Safia, as household thoughts gave way to matters of motherhood.
'What?' Howa said, suddenly shy. 'What did I do?'
'You put that cream on your face?'
Now Howa's face broke out into outright delight, a face that was lightened by skin bleach. A memory came to Safia about the first time she had seen Mayloun with her skin bleached, with the same smile of triumph. It worked for Mayloun as it enhanced her beauty, but would it work for her other daughter? Safia had her doubts, sighed, muttered under her breath something about powerlessness, and turned towards the living room. Howa took this sigh to be a compliment and stifled laughter as she followed her mother into the living room. But her mother sighed because she wished she had this cream when she was younger so she could experience being beautiful at least for a little while...
Soon both were side by side synchronizing their prayers, but doing so awkwardly. Howa was light and supple in her movements while Safia was labourered, this being one of five instances of exertion she did a day. She had to push herself up with her hands, and lift one leg up at a time when she came up. Howa more than once rolled her eyes to see her mother struggle. Then a noise of entry was heard, of cane hitting concrete, dreamily metronomic, and it announced that Sharif had come home. He passed the living room, noted them both in prayer, and continued on to the bedroom. Both women felt a surge of satisfaction at being observed in prayer, expressing devotion in shared religion. Despite her attempts at concentration, Safia congratulated herself at her perfect timing.
Chapter 10
'Did you speak with Awad?' Sharif asked Safia who was sitting next to him on the bed. He spoke with his eyes closed, and his head bobbing up and down in rhythm with the beads that he rolled in his hand. At times there was a strong bobble of the head accompanied with a yawn.
'Yes,' she said in a drawn out way. This was the tone in which she spoke to him most of the time. It was a tone that indicated either respect or the other person's deafness. In this case it was both.
Sharif let out a 'humph' to encourage her to speak on.
'Yes, we spoke, brother. But the connection was bad and we got cut off.'
'That guy from the fabric place accosted me on the way here. He said that he came here, knocked, but that no one answered. But when people are praying how can they answer?'
'Is that right?' she asked, colouring imperceptibly from pleasure at her perfect timing.
'I told him that he would get paid soon.' There was a pause. 'I would call Ahmed,' one of his sons who lived abroad, 'but the last time was so recent.'
'Awad should call again soon, considering the connection got interrupted.'
'When did he call?'
'Two days ago.'
Another pause.
'I'll call Mohamed,' Sharif said, Mohamed being one of his other sons, 'and see what he says.'
He yawned and rolled a bead at the same time.
'If it wasn't for the toilet and the amount of times we had to fill up the well, this wouldn't have been necessary,' he said through the yawn.
'I think Awad has some problems over there. London is expensive, he says, and he is getting married, he says.'
'Oh? Good. To have a family with no woman is indecent.'
'Yes, and now he needs more money than ever. I don't know what he will be able to spare.'
'Even without this new family he seemed to have trouble sparing,' Sharif grumbled. 'He is having difficulties achieving success over there. He's been there a long time, longer than my own sons, and they have more money to spare than him.' Safia bristled but kept quiet. 'What does a man need to make money in a place flush with money? With opportunity? He's been in so many different countries and never did anything but bide his time in order to move again. What is he doing there?'
'It's that woman,' Safia cried pleadingly. 'That woman destroyed him when they split. He was doing well until then, making his way in Kuwait. His son said it was her that divorced her husband. A curse befell on that family once that happened. It's evil for a woman to abandon her family.'
'I remember when I was there,' Sharif said, 'there' being somewhere foreign. 'All I saw was frivolous men and women for sale.'
'And what can a man do in those settings, without a wife and woman in the household?'
Sharif shrugged his shoulders to indicate his agreement.
'And what of Xemi? It's good that in the final years of his childhood he is living with a mother figure. It can act as a restraining influence. Only a woman can hold together a family, and raise children.'
Safia shuffled uncomfortably.
'Awad says that Xemi has left his house and is living on his own. He's got a job now and supports himself.'
Sharif opened his right eye, and turned to look at Safia sitting to his right and closed his eye again, returning to his bobble. She was looking at Sharif's beads with her own hands empty, still not having replaced hers.
'Do they allow children to live on their own?'
'I don't know. That's what Awad said. The boy has left his house and found his own.'
'He's married now?'
'No.'
'And the girl, his daughter?'
'Left too. That one is married - to a jereer. Awad's washed his hands clean of her.'
There was silence for a moment with only the slight sound of the beads moving on old flesh audible to both.
'No household should be without a woman; only a mother can raise children,' Sharif said gruffly, with his eyes half open. 'You see what happens when a family has no mother.'
He and his wife looked on as the beads rolled from thumb towards little finger, each one reciting prayers of their own, for a man in their minds cursed by a broken marriage. On and on the beads went, with Safia staring at the beads, luminescent silver, moving along the string, each prayer allowing a bead passage along its course, making way for a new bead, taking the place of another. How deft were the old man's fingers and how liquescent the flow, inexorable seemed both - until the string snapped, and the beads tumbled to the floor, splintering as it hit it. Safia let out a gasp, which dispelled the phantasm, and now snapped out of trickery, saw the beads continuing along the string's path, remaining together, moved by prayer along its course. She began to say her prayers with more fervour.
