Free Henna House by Nomi Eve Page A

global politics and modernity.
    My concerns were for my father’s health, my mother’s temper, and the well-being of my many nieces and nephews. The Confiscator’s shadow continued to loom large. I knew that I was protected from confiscation by my engagement to my cousin Asaf. I also knew that this protection was tenuous and that I was still at risk, simply because life was unpredictable and I was a Jewish girl in Yemen. Occasionally I would see the Confiscator in the market. Each time my belly clenched up and I felt fire leap in my skull. Whenever the long shadow of hismaroon djellaba disappeared into a throng of marketers, I told myself, “I am safe, I am safe, I am safe” but deep down, I didn’t believe it. Every so often, he came to my father’s stall and ordered more fancy shoes for his wife. I had kept up my little apprenticeship with my father. Once I made the tops for the shoes. The Confiscator noticed my small stitching and complimented the delicate shape of the moon and stars I had embossed in the leather. I still hid behind my father when he came, and wondered about his wife, and whether she would be able to tell that I made those shoes, not for her, but in spite of her. If I could have, I would have learned a spell that turned dead things into living things, so I could make the leather turn into an animal that would chew on her feet and haunt her as the snakes on her husband’s jambia haunted me.
    In those days, I saw Binyamin Bashari rarely and never in private. He had left Torah school and was helping his father full-time in his stall, learning to make jambia. Sometimes I saw him when I went to the market to bring my father his lunch, or when I spent an afternoon with my father in his stall. We would nod at each other, and he would smile his half smile when he saw me coming, but usually I hid my face in the fold of my gargush and pretended—with a modesty I didn’t really feel—that I didn’t see him. When he played the khallool in his father’s stall, the sinuous tones of the flute would lick at my ears and remind me of the games we used to play when we were still small children.
    As for me and Asaf? We had become experts at playacting. I turned nine that summer. He was ten years old. When we saw each other in public, we pretended to be the perfect strangers everyone assumed us to be. But in my cave we were the best of friends. We spent a lot of time telling each other stories. Most of his stories were about his father’s business of buying and selling ingredients for perfume. Asaf told me how, before coming to Qaraah, he and his father spent half the year traveling west to India, and the other half traveling east to sell his father’s wares to perfumers in Cairo, Athens, and Istanbul. He had endless stories of their exploits on the road and sea. In return, I told Asaf my auntie’s stories about the founding of Qaraah and about the myths and origins of the Jews of Yemen. He loved hearing about the jewelers of Queen Bilquis, about the miners for the Great Temple, and about the son of Noah, who came to Sana’a when the Waters of Judgment receded, and founded the city on a cloud-covered peak of the new world. Wewould sit in the lip of my cave, the dazzling sun dappling down on us, but our backs cool from the shady breath of the mountain behind us.
    Once I was telling him about Shem, son of Noah, but toward the end of the story, my words caught in my throat.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œTell me.”
    â€œNo, it’s silly.”
    â€œTell me.”
    I didn’t say any more. I didn’t confess my new discovery, which was that Asaf was in my story. A companion to Shem, bending low to the still-wet earth, clearing a foundation for a home we would share. He was in all of my stories. Tall and lean, with eyes the color of good fortune. He was one of Sheba’s jewelers. He was in the retinue of miners collecting