Free I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops by Hanan al-Shaykh

brothers, and her children, her mothers and her sisters all evaporated around the room like soap bubbles. She decided to return to Sanaa as soon as she could. The sense of harmony, which used to descend on her the moment she took off her shoes and sat on the floor with the village women, had vanished completely. Now she wanted to sit alone, looking down on her garden in Sanaa until the buzzing and jostling of her thoughts had abated.
    She actually left the village with Mahyoub, as Souadinsisted that he should take her, rather than the truck driver who made strangers pay a fare. Souad literally pushed her into Mahyoub’s car and he didn’t open his mouth all the way, which made things awkward, for she had never wanted a war between them. She tried to start up a conversation, but the only sound that came from him was his heavy, uneasy breathing.
    Ingrid sat on her chair in her house in Sanaa looking out over the road and sand and nothingness. When she had been sitting there for some time, she began to grow restless, for her head refused to clear; if anything, the turmoil in her mind increased, especially when she recalled the oppressive atmosphere in the car on the way back and Mahyoub’s sullen expression implying that it was all her fault, that she was evil, and dangled the keys to others’ happiness under their noses but never opened the doors for them. Ingrid had never been so unsure of herself before, or felt so weak. She almost felt that she had reached the end of her resources. She realized now that she had never experienced the kind of desperation that was so deep rooted in the hearts of those whom she had instructed to be patient in the face of adversity.
    She remembered the camel she had gone to visit who was supposed to live in an ancient cave at the heart of the Sanaa market. She couldn’t find it and asked a man sitting among sacks of wheat by the flour mill if he knew wherethe camel was. Realizing that she was foreign, the man had gone through a pantomime for her, tilting his head to one side, then resting it in his palm, before repeating, “He’s asleep. Tired.” He pointed to the mill. “He works the wheel. Now he’s tired. Very tired.”
    She asked him why he didn’t change the camel for another. “He’d die if he didn’t work,” laughed the man. “He loves working. I blindfold him so he doesn’t get dizzy. So that he thinks he’s dreaming that he’s walking around. He works and sleeps. Sleeps and works.”
    The image of the camel working and sleeping, sleeping and working, at his own speed, and the mill turning in a cave that was over four hundred years old gave her a feeling of calm, and she paced around in a circle like the camel with her eyes closed, trying to free her head of the tangle of confusion that reminded her of a heap of wires and cables she had seen lying in the street outside. Eventually she recovered her composure, holding tight to what she knew would unravel the tangle: facing up to the truth fairly and squarely. That was always the most important thing, the starting point for being honest with oneself. Only in the presence of honesty did the false pretexts collapse and everything appear convincing and as if it were spread out on a table, accessible to the hand and eye. She was to blame, and Mahyoub and Souad were right: she had behaved like the sun when it winks its eye for a moment and then vanishesbehind the clouds, reappearing for a little while, then veiling itself again by degrees, leaving a feeble light that only serves to draw attention to its absence. That was how she had been with them: insincere and cajoling. She had been afraid to show them what she wanted from them, in case she alienated them and her work faltered; then her visits would have come to an end and her conversations with them have served only to furnish material for village gossip. Gradually her anger turned into affection and understanding. She wanted to ask their forgiveness. She missed them and