Free Henna House by Nomi Eve

was calling me wife . It was a game at first, a joke even, but eventually the words seemed to change substance and become mighty on our tongues. We began to steal away whenever we could to spend time together in my cave. I always made my way to Auntie Aminah’s through the backyards now, in order to hide my intentions of going to the cave. Sometimes the spinster dye mistress would be at her troughs. Once she reached for me as I ran by and made me stand in front of her. “Where are you always going, little girl?” she asked. She had been stirring a big pot of purple; I could tell because she still held her mixing staff, which dripped purple onto the sand, and her fingers were the color of caper flowers.
    â€œTo my auntie’s.” I looked down, blushing.
    She knew I was lying. “Are you a liar or a dreamer? Neither? Or both? Well, you are not the first little girl who ran through my pots to escape one thing and find another. Just be careful you don’t fall in”—she gave a little laugh—“or you will arrive at your lie or in your dream wearing a coat of many colors, and then you will be found out, and I too will be implicated in your deception.” I backed away, and ran out of her yard as fast as I could. After that, I was careful to step sure-footedly through the pots of ocher and amber and red and blue and purple—all much darker in the troughs than they were on the cloth she dyed.
    Asaf and I kept meeting at my cave.
    â€œHusband, are you hungry?”
    â€œWife, are you well?”
    â€œHusband, so good to see you.”
    â€œWife, I have brought you some fava beans.”
    We did our best to playact the parts of devoted spouses, taking cues from our dreams and stories we had heard.
    He would come in the early evening and I would serve him a little vagabond supper of scraps I had stolen from my mother’s kitchen, or nuts and berries I had foraged myself. Then we would tell each other about our days, or share jokes, tell small stories before going our separate ways. I took the path around the old forge that led to the grove of citrons and into Auntie Aminah’s yard; Asaf went farther west on the escarpment, emerging through a hole in the wall behind the silk merchants’ stalls in the center of town.
    Sometimes he would come on Jamiya, who seemed to consider me a threat for Asaf’s affections. But when I dug a turnip for her out of my pocket, she took it gingerly with her big yellow teeth. In no time we were each won over by the other—I by her warm brown-eyed gentleness, she by my turnip-ness—and after that we were good friends.

Chapter 5
    I t was early summer of 1927. In the outside world many things were changing, though we knew nothing of them inside of Yemen. Only many years later was I able to look back and put the small events of my life in a larger context. The year of my engagement, the first transatlantic phone call was made between New York and London. Closer to home, Abdul Aziz had just been declared King of Hejaz and Sultan of Nedj, later to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Reza Kahn was crowned the new Shah of Persia. In another corner of the world, Stalin consolidated his power. But what did we know of these happenings? In Qaraah there were three weddings and nine births in Jewish households. There were the usual deaths among the old and very young, as well as a strange and incomprehensible tragedy: a scribe who killed himself after slitting the throats of his wife and three daughters.
    I mourned the tragedies and celebrated the happiness of my neighbors modestly and properly, from a distance. I watched longingly as my sisters-in-law left their homes to attend henna gatherings for brides. I was always left behind, peeking out from behind my mother’s disapproving shadow. I didn’t spare any thought for the political or social machinations of the rest of the world. How could I? In Qaraah we were entirely cut off from