Women of Sand and Myrrh Read Online Free PDF Page B

you?’ I asked her how much we owed her and she said, ‘Whatever you want to pay me. I’m sure that when he comes crawling to you on his hands and knees you’ll come back to reward me.’ Then almost to herself, ‘Lord above! Why are men so spineless? Tired and stale and uninterested in the pleasures of the flesh!’ She pointed to the lower part of her stomach: ‘A long time ago women used to come to me complaining about the blood and the pain. They’d say to me, “In the name of whoever called you Sita, give us a cure. Something so that our men are repelled by us and don’t want to go to bed with us and leave us to sleep in peace.” I said, “Shall I make up a charm for them so they’ll marry a second time and a third time and spare you the degradation and the pain?” ’ Laughing, she finished, ‘Their voices reached the sky: “No, Sita. Any degradation rather than the pain of another wife.” ’

3
    I went up to the roof of my house. The rabbits crouched under the motor of the air-conditioner and the pigeons’ cage was empty. Grains of corn were scattered on the ground and on the roof tiles. The black-and-white pair had flown away after the female had laid one egg. Umar had asked me, ‘Did the mother fly away because she didn’t want her babies?’ and I’d answered, ‘Pigeons’ minds don’t work like that.’
    I looked again over the parapet of the roof-terrace to the roofs of the other houses. Smoke was rising from distant factories. There was an oil blaze in one spot, and a layer of grey hung over it like dirty muslin. A smell of sewers and chemical waste rose up in the air. I thought to myself, ‘Perhaps Umar was right.’
    I wouldn’t go to the Institute the next day: the atmosphere there now was like my last few weeks in the store before I left. And besides, what had happened to me the previous day had upset me a lot.
    I’d been walking along the narrow street thinking that I was wrong to feel weighed down like this; I wanted to wipe away the imprint of misconceptions from my mind so that I could go back to being as I’d been when I first went to teach at the Institute, untroubled by reports and rumours of the men who came to inspect what was going on inside. This street was like another country. Little girls’ dresses, mostly of cheap lace, hung on display together with more brightly-coloured dresses from mainland China. Veiled women spread themselves on the ground between the shops selling clothes made of nylon. I said to my student Tamr, ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have believed that there really were oases or springs in the desert like the ones in books.’ Tamr laughed proudly; that morning she’d taken me from her father’s house, which was in a different region from the one where Ilived, to visit springs where mauve garlic flowers bloomed on the banks, and little girls stood enviously watching the boys plunging in and out of the water among the turtles and young frogs. When we were at her father’s house she’d shown me the carvings on the walls and ceilings, and the roof still made of palm leaves. My attention had been attracted by the mud-brick dwellings among the new houses built of concrete and stainless steel. Tamr pointed to some glass-plated buildings and said, ‘The camel market used to be here and the gold market still exists. In a month’s time they’re going to demolish it. There are still women selling henna and silver in it.’
    I stopped when I saw some local embroidered material, and picked it up and felt it and decided to buy it in spite of Tamr’s surprised reaction. Not long before, she’d bought some material imported from Europe. I counted out my money, thinking to myself that life was normal here in this district, perhaps because it hadn’t yet lost the old ways. I heard a boy’s voice saying, ‘She’s American,’ and turned to him to correct him, afraid that they’d put up the prices. He winked at me and whispered, ‘The old