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

into the distance, it had come closer to us as we approached it in the car, and then it wasn’t a mirage after all.
    I couldn’t help exclaiming in wonder at the carpet of yellow and white daisies, other flowers whose names I didn’t know, and thick-stemmed ones standing straight as pegs: ‘Those are called snake poison,’ I said. It wasn’t the colours that made my heart beat faster, but the smell, fragrant and powerful and new and strange to my nose. I picked a daisy and brought it close to my mouth and chewed its petals, trying to bring together the taste and the smell. As we went further among the flowers the smell grew and changed, from jasmine, to white iris, to narcissus. We sat down on the grass and sand and Nur pulled the petals off the daisy one by one: ‘He loves me, he loves me not.’ I stretched out and smiled as asudden realization dawned on me. My relationship with Basem only existed inside the four walls of the house now; it didn’t even extend to the garden or the car or the street. I rarely sat next to him in the front seat of the car. I didn’t walk along with him in the street or go to the shops with him. We didn’t lie together beside the pool and I didn’t sit with him even on the back seat on the way to the airport; he sat in front next to Said. He’d never met Nur yet, or Tamr, and our conversations were brief, restricted to matters connected with everyday life, holidays, the news from Lebanon and family and friends.
    Through the rooms of my mind and heart passed images of how I’d gone to bed early, trying to read against the noise of the television and the laughter and talking of Basem’s friends. I’d stopped inviting men and women together because I’d become convinced that such gatherings were futile. The women furtively examined each other’s clothes, working out the financial situation of each other’s husbands so that they could feel either proud or jealous, while the men talked about money and business openly. I was glad that I wasn’t obliged to sit with them but it made me realize how lonely I was.
    Sometimes I used to refuse Basem when he came unusually early to the bedroom. It would depend on how fed up I’d felt during the day and how resentful that I was still in the desert. Sometimes I convinced myself that he had no alternative but to stay here, and that he was happy in his work. On these occasions I let him take me in his arms and cover me with kisses and I held him to me in memory of the past and the days of normality. However much I tried to relax I felt conscious of every noise outside and every movement in the bed, and the climax of our lovemaking was lost to me like a piece of paper blown near me by the wind, and blown away again every time I caught up with it. Then I felt angry because I’d shown a desire to participate and not come. Throughout the night I tossed and turned unable to sleep, as if I’d committed a sin, and as if I’d found out for the first time that I wasn’tin control of my body and that only my feelings could make it move, but they wouldn’t forget their dissatisfaction and were rebelling.
    Still breaking the petals off the daisy, Nur had said, ‘When they brought me back here and I saw the desert from the plane I screamed. In the car I threw up three or four times and when I got to the house I banged my head against the walls. I couldn’t sleep or eat and I wouldn’t greet my relatives without letting them see how angry I was. I sat for hours and days as dumb as that table. I locked the door of my room and got a mirror and stared at my face; I counted the hairs of my eyebrows and eyelashes, twisted my hair round my fingers, just like mad people do. All my life I never liked seeing the desert. My mother says that before I was old enough to understand, I used to cry and they didn’t know the reason. When I became conscious of my surroundings, I closed my eyes in the car. I was the opposite of my sisters and brothers. They loved