Free Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves Page B

and divorced. Ahmad granted, without further explanation, that this was unusual—not the marriage but the divorce. After we ate, Faiza returned to the diwan . “You came from Sanaa?” she asked us. Yes, I said, adding that we studied in Egypt. Everyone had some concept of Egypt—it was the source of Arab soap operas and movies. Faiza had never left the area around Manakha, Ahmad explained. As soon as he left she asked about our hair—Mona’s was bumpy like hers but she found mine oddly straight, and wanted to touch it. She unwrapped her head gear to show us hers. We heard men coming up the stairs. In a blur of panicked movement, she retied her head scarf, an impressive task at high speed, involving an elaborate series of folds and knots. Later she showed us how to tie the black, slightly elastic rectangle that women used as the underscarf. When tied properly, the part of the underscarf that covered the face could be lowered without disentangling the rest, which simplified eating and speech. When women went out they added another layer on top of it, the face-covering niqab .
    The next morning Faiza came to watch us again, this time dispensing with the charade of sweeping. I tried to think of something to say to her, but having already covered our marital status and hair, we were left with little common ground. I thought about the conversations I had with Mona, our classmates, and Graham, and realized that nearly every single one could be distilled down to a central theme: aspirations. What we wanted, what we planned, who we wanted to become, and how we were going to get there. Even in the
gossip and the cheap thrills—the who-slept-with-whom, the pursuit of alcohol and drugs and weekend adventures—we were always talking about our own wishes. The fundamental assumption of my own agency underlay everything I thought and did. It was difficult to get into a different frame of mind and to imagine what I would talk about once there. I couldn’t even ask Faiza if she hoped to marry, for at fifteen she had already failed at that one permitted ambition.
    â€œDo you like Manakha?” I finally asked, groping for a connection as she fluttered her fingers over a pink cotton sweater lying on a windowsill. My words immediately struck me as lame. It was like asking her if she liked life.
    â€œI have to work a lot,” she said.

    One day in Sanaa, Mona and I were in the front seat of a shared taxi, waiting to depart. Suddenly a man rapped on our window. He was compact, brown-skinned, and mustachioed, like most Yemeni men, but wore a Western suit, and spoke careful and correct English. He had the offbeat enunciation of someone who had studied the language, but hadn’t heard it spoken very often by natives.
    â€œPlease, would you ride with my family member?” he asked. Behind him was a small figure draped all in black, complete with face-covering niqab . This didn’t strike us as a strange request. We’d angled to share the crammed benches of intercity taxis with other women, or had paid extra to have a whole bench to ourselves, apart from the men. So we moved to the back bench, where I took up my seat next to the black-clad woman, while the man who had knocked on our window, whose name was Abu Bakr, sat in front. Our taxi left Sanaa for Taiz.
    All I could see of her were dark almond-shaped eyes with long
lashes, set in unlined skin. Based on this I formed a picture of a great beauty. Abu Bakr’s young wife, perhaps. My attempt at conversation went nowhere: I said hello, she said hello, then she looked out the window. I wondered if it was shyness or if she disdained me.
    A half hour into our drive we could feel the sun beating on the windows. I felt sorry for our seatmate in the black layers. She took off her gloves and I looked at her hands. They were soft and pudgy, and I realized that she was a child. Mona and I pulled down the window screens, blocking out the sun and any