Free Women of Sand and Myrrh by Hanan al-Shaykh Page A

two chambers, allowing me to steal a glance into them. I’m indifferent now to Suhail, Maurice, Adnan, Adil, and I understand that time takes a huge eraser and rubs out names and then writes others in and renews feelings and emotions. I’d got to know Basem and fallen in love with him, and my heart had leapt for joy when he asked me to marry him. Now I didn’t want to look into either chamber. I chased away all the images and questions and misgivings and convinced myself that I’d forgotten what had happened in Nur’s room. But the heart and mind were faithful and searched virtuously through their records, unearthing causes and explanations which mightsupply them with adequate justification for eradicating the event. They made me see myself a month before, when I’d escaped to my bed and listened to a child crying above the sound of the air-conditioner, and music – Western, Arab and Indian – floating out over the rooftops. I’d put my hand under the pillow to pull it nearer to me and smelt Nur’s smell and heard her laughter and seen her thick black hair.
    I imagined her with a man, warm and at the same time powerless, pliant and bending like a doll made of dough, wanting what was forbidden. The severity with which it was forbidden reminded people of it at every moment, and it wormed its way into their minds and bodies. Even when you were buying tampons and sanitary towels and perfumes and spray deodorants, the man behind the cash desk changed colour and you knew what he was thinking about as he smiled or assumed an air of indifference. There was a campaign being conducted in the press against the display of women’s underwear, and its leader was a girl in her twenties who had already raised the subject of bracelets and other jewellery; according to her they were symbols of slavery reminiscent of the age of harems and slave boys and girls, and make-up and jewellery on a woman was a provocation to adultery and fornication even if it was made from behind veils and black drapes.
    Although these thoughts of mine drew things together and had some substance, I couldn’t help feeling miserable. I began reminding myself how I’d thought of Nur as having a kind of illness as I stared at the pillows and the cover that day, and said to myself this is where Nur rolled around and breathed fast and slow with a man, separated from him only by their fine body hairs. However, I couldn’t see it like that now, much as I wanted to.
    A week passed and I drifted in and out of reality, staring out of the window at the dusty desert and the mechanical waste. The telephone rang and I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to hear Nur’s voice. But she came to see me early onemorning. She sat down on the sofa, then stood up and seemed to be examining my house for the first time. She grasped hold of the coral and shells, the puppets hanging from the ceiling, the old silver necklaces and bracelets and anklets, and smiled and sat down again in front of me, her limbs loose and relaxed. I was still only half there, trying to make normal conversation and not succeeding. Every question or statement I wanted to utter seemed to have a connection with us, either directly or indirectly, and I only breathed again when Nur left.
    When another day or two had gone by I began to feel a yearning. I missed the particular atmosphere that comes into being only if a person is alone, has spare time on her hands and is waiting for something to happen. For recently we had no longer sat chatting like visitors, each telling the other what she’d been doing. We’d begun to live our lives together, going to the department store, visiting Suzanne, entering the hotel in fear and trembling and ordering tea and cake only to rise up together after hastily swallowing the tea, because the looks of the other guests were almost beginning to be directed towards us, almost becoming a reproach. We went deep into the desert and saw a mirage of many colours. Instead of receding