“What?”
“All those feminine baubles. It sounds like you enjoy them.”
“I do. And you seem to really like hearing about them.”
It’s true, I like it, I’ll admit it. I like listening to her and imagining her there, in tight French lingerie like the other women in the tafrita, reclined on pillows in a disquieting pose. Although who knows, in truth her tall five feet nine inches of stature might not fit on those flirty little cushions, it doesn’t matter, in any case that’s how I like to imagine her, and as she continues her story, I can almost see her in that mafraj, lost in khat-induced daydreams. But no, none of that rings true. I don’t think Zahra Bayda is going around in frilly, revealing bras and panties, that doesn’t seem like her style. Better put, I know that’s not her style, because I’ve seen her underwear in the patio of our house when she hangs them up to dry, and they’re white cotton pieces, no fuss about them. No. I can’t imagine a Zahra Bayda in garter and corset. On the other hand, I can, if I’m honest, imagine her naked.
Sometimes, as I watch her walk, work, or rest, I find myself guessing at what’s beneath her tunic. I suspect firmness and many shapes, appealing, compact, generous. May she forgive me, may she never find out. I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve been turning into an avid observer of her body and vibrations. I shouldn’t be doing it,it’s not appropriate. I’ve spent my life dreaming about imaginary women whom I make real, and now I’m getting carried away in the same vein but in the opposite direction: I have a real woman before me, and I’m making her imaginary. The delirium overpowers me, I can hear the Queen of Sheba murmuring, like in Flaubert’s story,I am not a woman: I am a world! My cloak has only to fall in order that thou mayest discover a succession of mysteries.1 It’s not that I want to fantasize about Zahra Bayda in such ways, it’s that I can’t help it, her nakedness invades me, it wants to possess me and I try to resist, like Bill Murray fighting off the ghost of Dana-Zuul.
Murmurs fill the mafraj. The women exchange information, catching up by word of mouth on recent events, from the tragic to the ordinary. Everything ends up mixed in the whispers: life and death twined together, luxury and poverty hand in hand, today a mirror of yesterday. Caramel honey to sweeten tragedies. These women talk about everything with a sensual indolence, who lost a son in the war, what a newborn will be named, who received a sapphire bracelet as a gift. Cholera outbreaks in the neighborhood, seasoning for lamb kabsa, villages flattened in the night, anti-wrinkle creams, locust plagues, the love scandals of Gaviota in theCoffeetelenovela, the ruin of harvests. One single tone applies to everything that gathers and stirs in the flow of their everyday lives.
“They’re people with money, they don’t suffer from public catastrophes like the poorer masses,” Zahra Bayda tries to explain. “Which doesn’t mean they don’t have their share of burdens or sorrows.”
“The wealthy cry too,” I offer.
The groom would not be present at any of these parties, nor even at the wedding. He’ll celebrate his part with men, while the bride celebrates elsewhere with women. All this has me thinking. I wonder how much Yemeni women really miss male presence, on these special occasions and in life in general. I’d say, not much. All the sensuality, friendship, mutual support, luxury, confidences,freedom, and laughter, all the good and pleasurable things in life unfold when they’re in a female space, without male company. Aside from economic, reproductive, and status-related matters, it strikes me that Yemeni women have little need of men. They’ve created a self-sufficient bubble all to themselves. They spend the most pleasant moments of their days in their crystal tower, or, one might say, their adobe tower, high up on the top floor, gathered in the tafritas of the mafraj, where they light cigarettes and smoke, sing, dance, talk.
Not one of them lacks her own cell phone in a crocheted case. They chat and text, snap photos of each other, take selfies and send them to friends. And those friends share the pictures with their brothers, who share them with male cousins or coworkers. A photo contraband smuggled via cell phone. An undercover trafficking of images. With one click, from the mafraj, an image of a young woman flies to the screen of a young man, who stares at it in some other part of the city. Cell phones undermine restrictions. They allow a woman to build intimacy with a fiancé or flirt with a stranger, and erase it all immediately so all traces of the crime disappear and there’s no punishment for the woman who bared her face to a male, a forbidden thing, extremely forbidden, as is smoking, as is laughing, dancing, singing, listening to music, and wearing high heels. Even so, it’s clear that customs are secretly changing, even here, in impenetrable Yemen.
As for Hanani, she has no digital contact with her future husband, who would see it as a disgrace: When it comes down to it, he’s an old-school landowner who probably disdains the use of cell phones even for himself. For now, the only image Hanani has seen of her suitor is a color photo taken in a studio, framed in silver. She’s never seen him in person, not even once, though it is common to do so, because in this case the traditional meeting of both families for the exchange of gold for the bride’s hand never took place. A man as powerful as this one doesn’t move, much less go to a woman’shouse. To seal the deal, it was Hanani’s father who had to travel to where the groom was.
What Hanani sees in the framed photograph is a sullen patriarch, at least sixty years old; hermetic lips, eyebrows as tangled as sparrows’ nests, the beard of a prophet. A lynx’s eyes, glaring through glasses. Red-and-white scarf fastened with a ring to his head, formal attire, a white tunic. He wears a camel hair coat trimmed in gold, half open to show his protuberant belly, and a large, bejeweled jambiya dagger with its curved tip, tucked into an embossed leather belt.
“An ogre . . .”
“A maniac grandpa.”
The image scares Hanani. Everything about that man stirs fear: his appearance, his excessive wealth, his power, his radical religiosity, his attachment to archaic customs, the rumors that link him to recent murders and the arms trade. Plus the fact that he’ll be taking her to live in his own dominions, far from Sanaa and her own family home.
Ironic comments and muffled laughter fill the mafraj when the silver-framed photo of the suitor makes the rounds among friends. He’s all nose and belly. Old, fat, furious, and ugly, yes, but he’s covered in gold: Deep down, they all envy Hanani a little. The worst part is that she’s been called on to become a fourth wife.
“Four wives? Even Mirza Hussain had only three.”
Mirza Hussain and his lament for lost loves. He had three wives when he was rich and young, the same three he lost when he grew poor and old. Fatima, the one who sang; Zeliz, the one who smiled; and Zaida, the one who danced... how we laugh, Zahra Bayda and me, full of gentle nostalgia on the Oasis patio, repeating by heart the words of Mirza Hussain, the old man who sells carpets and invokes the three beloveds destiny stole from him,Zaida, Zeliz, Fatima, my thoughts go to all of them on this sweet Safar night, perfumed by all dreams, by all desires....2 Three loves that left forever, Zaida who smiled, Fatima who sang, Zeliz who danced...
“The one who danced was Zeliz, not Zaida. Zaida is the smiling one.”
“Zaida smiles, Fatima sings, Zeliz dances... and Hanani becomes the fourth wife of a northern sheik.”
“Not first, nor second, nor even third, but fourth.”
She’ll be the last in the hierarchy and will have to contend with the other three. That worsens the offer considerably. Something must snap in beautiful Hanani, who’s so intelligent and accomplished... but with a clear disadvantage: She’s the single mother of a sixteen-year-old son. And she herself is already thirty-four, almost twice the age considered appropriate for a bride.
Because of the unwanted pregnancy and motherhood, her parents couldn’t marry her off at the right time: disgrace and ruin for any woman who is relegated to eternal spinsterhood and deemed a useless burden, a waste of space. Hanani’s misstep has marked her for life, and not only her but her family, who kept her secret for years. An open secret, of course; it couldn’t be any other way in a closed society, so folded into itself. But there had at least been the appearance of a secret, which helps to some extent; in the end, it’s not about things being unknown, but about trying to not know them. To justify the existence of Layal, the boy who was born, Hanani’s pregnancy was hidden under lock and key until birth, when it was attributed to Hannah. From then on, the grandmother acted as mother, and Hanani as an older sister.
The one person who can’t be led astray is Layal himself. He loves his grandmother and calls her’um, but he’s deeply attached to Hanani, his friend and accomplice. I know you’re my mother, he tells her when no one else can hear.
Hannah, a great fan of telenovelas, was deprived of the pleasure and pride of choosing for her only daughter a handsome young man who could grant her happiness and many offspring. Great preparations and festivities for the wedding: There would be none of that. Hannah had dreamed of the four days leading up to the ceremony,during which her Hanani would have adorned her body with henna and worn four different outfits, one for each day and each a particular color, green on the first day, turquoise on the second, pink on the third, and yellow on the fourth, each more lavish than the last, until finally arriving at the crimson outfit of the wedding day itself, majestic enough to be worthy of the Queen of Sheba.
Abdel, her husband, has been a good man and a devoted father, but he’s twenty-five years older than her, and for Hannah there’s never been what she calls a dream of love. Nor will there be one for her daughter: That’s the price they’ll have to pay for fixing her past stumbles. Hannah’s moment of glory would have been to see Hanani don the Nur Ul Ain tiara, which she herself wore when she married. It won’t happen: Nuptial ceremonies for fourth wives are discreet, without great displays or expense.
The Nur Ul Ain tiara—a large ruby set among gold arabesques, eighteen topaz pieces, and a profusion of diamonds—has belonged to Hannah’s family for generations. Though poor, they’re part of Yemen’s noble clans; the Nur Ul Ain tiara gives them special status. Decades ago, Hannah’s marriage was arranged by her parents with Abdel’s clan, who held a long lineage as jewelers. Abdel was not an aristocrat like Hannah and her people, but he was rich. One thing for another. Despite their difference in fortune, Hannah’s ancestry allowed her parents to require that their daughter be the first and only wife, a privileged position that let Hannah enjoy protection and fortune without having to share it with others. Hanani, more beautiful than Hannah ever was, would have deserved a similar circumstance. But it couldn’t be. However, life, which brings such pain, also brings compensations, and you have to know how to make the most of them. Something is something, better than nothing. Now the family could recover their dignity and good name thanks to this marriage offer that seems to have fallen from the sky. In the end, the demotion to fourth wife doesn’t matter; what’s essential is that Hanani will finally be a legitimately married woman. Given her ageand her sin, it’s understood that the proposal won’t be optimal; even so, her parents have accepted it with joy and relief. Plus, they’ve agreed to a considerable sum for the dowry they’ll receive in exchange for their daughter’s hand. The past will stay buried, shame erased.
Things are as they are, yet different at the same time. The story the way Hannah tells it is one thing; the way Hanani has lived it is another. What was tragedy for the mother was salvation for the daughter, who could grow into an educated, free woman. Because it was impossible to marry her off, her parents let her finish high school, attend Sanaa University to study psychology, and later travel to Jordan, where she completed graduate studies; all that’s left is her thesis, and she’ll have a master’s degree. Though she still lives in her parents’ house and respects customs like veiling her face in public, today Hanani is a professional psychologist with her own private practice who earns her own income and goes wherever she wants in her own car.
Now all of that will change.
Once she’s married to that man, she’ll have to move north and live under his control, in a place dominated by feudal customs. She’ll have to give up her profession. She won’t be able to work, earn money, keep books or her Western clothes, or even use the internet. Her English and French will be worth nothing, because she won’t have books in those languages to read, or anyone to talk to. She’ll be trapped in the routines of domestic life. She won’t drive her own car; she’ll only be able to go, under strict supervision, wherever her husband’s drivers and bodyguards take her. She’ll be isolated from her own family, shut away in a huge, unfamiliar mansion, with the other three wives and their twenty-one sons and daughters. It’ll be like being buried alive.
