The Sand Fish (17 page)

N
oora sat in front of the three large trunks that lined the wall of Lateefa’s room. Brass studs, hammered into the thick wood, festooned the lids and sides. She ran her fingers over the arrangement—triangles put together to make stars—and, once more, in her most casual voice, asked, “Where are you going,
Ommi
Lateefa?”

And Lateefa’s impatient answer was the same. “We, my child, we!” Her usual restraint was ruffled as she sat to one side in front of a smaller tin chest. Some new restlessness kept her rocking back and forth. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she said. “Open that middle trunk, take out my things. Let’s pack.”

Noora lifted the handle and pulled open the trunk. There were Lateefa’s clothes, the same dresses,
thoubs, abayas
, and burkas they had packed and unpacked the day before, and for days before that, too.

“Take only one dress, the rest must be
thoubs
,” she instructed. Lateefa preferred to wear loose, cotton
thoubs
in the hot weather. With its wide sleeves, from shoulder to waist, the garment was much more efficient at trapping breezes. “No, no, not in the middle, more to the right side,” she said, as Noora placed a sky-blue
thoub
with yellow dots into the trunk. Lateefa blew an irritated puff into her burka. “Take it out, take it out. It is not folded neatly enough. Fold it again.”

Noora did as she was told.

“All right, that’s better,” Lateefa said. “Now, that
abaya
.”

The
abaya
was harder to fold. The fabric floated out like a flyaway tent. As she placed it on the ground, to wrap it as best she could, she felt Lateefa’s scrutinizing eyes ready to pick on any mistake she might make. Those eyes seemed to follow her all the time, everywhere she went. The divers would be leaving soon, and Noora hadn’t even been able to nod a direction to Hamad as to where she could leave the bodysuit for him to pick up. Whenever she faced him, she always worried that Lateefa was watching, and her neck would freeze and her eyes would fix ahead to some invisible point.

“Now, the burkas,” Lateefa said, handing Noora an old strip of fabric. “Stack them on top of each other and wrap them in this. I don’t want the indigo to seep out and color my clothes.” She paused briefly before losing her patience once again. “Pah! Just take everything out, take it out! We’ll pack later.”

The next morning, Noora found out why they were packing, but not before breakfast. As Jassem and his wives settled around the breakfast mat, Shamsa hinted that she was pregnant. Again.

“Ah, I can’t eat,” Shamsa complained, stroking her stomach with glee. “I don’t know what it is, but something is blocking my appetite. I feel nauseous.” It was the same act every morning. Shamsa was giving Lateefa and Jassem hope, trying to put in their minds that the child would come through her. Shamsa sighed and wedged her hand under her
shayla
to neaten her flawless fringe. Was Noora the only person who noticed her smugness? Clinging to her wrist was another bangle. This one was flat, with a turquoise dot set in its gold filigree.

“Are you feeling sick, dear?” Lateefa mumbled. She hadn’t quite finished munching her breakfast.

“A little,” Shamsa said, and Noora wanted to see some ugliness in her parted lips, but there was none. They were as vibrant as the petals of a desert flower after an unexpected rain.

Lateefa touched Shamsa’s head. “I think it’s the weather, dear,” she said.

“Have you packed my things?” Jassem asked Lateefa.

Lateefa closed her eyes solemnly. “That I am about to do.”

“Well, Lateefa knows, but I suppose I had better tell the rest of you,” he said. “I’m not going to India anymore.”

Noora’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to ask why when she felt the yolk of the egg she was eating dribble down the side of her chin—a warning to hold her tongue. She was not in a position to be so bold.

“Instead, I’m going to go to Leema. The rest of you will go to Om Al-Sanam, stay the summer there.” He nodded his head wisely. “You will get more drafts in the
barasti
huts out there than over here.”

Lateefa agreed with him. “Yes, much cooler, out there in the open desert.”

“I don’t need to tell you this, but this trip, the Big Dive…
well, it’s going to be the last. It’s costing too much, and let’s be honest, there are simply no more pearls in the sea.”

The last dive? No more pearls in the sea? There was not a hint of regret in his voice, not one thought for the divers and their families. Noora remembered Jassem’s conversation with
noukhada
Hilal: all that money advanced to the divers, and now they would not be able to pay it back. What would they do? How would they feed their children? Noora pictured the divers roaming Leema’s tight streets, begging for
ardees
, just like that madman.

Jassem’s voice trailed back. “So I’ve decided not to waste money on the Big Dive, open other roads. The way to go is trade.”

“The way to go is trade,” Lateefa repeated, with a sober nod of her head.

“Yes, trade. Not just with India or Africa. But right here, in our own town, in Leema.” Jassem rubbed his palms. “So many
Inglesis
roaming around, with so much money and so many goods. I must make friends with them so that we can buy and sell from one another.” He leaned back and moved his tongue along the inside of his mouth, clicking away what egg and bread remained stuck to his gums. “Maybe I’m telling you more than you ought to know, being women and all, but it’s good for you to understand a little about the world.”

“Yes, trade is the way to go,” Lateefa repeated one more time.

T
hey set out under the violet of the dawn sky. Walking in the sand was not the same as climbing mountains, and no matter how lightly Noora stepped, the sand seeped into her slippers and settled between her toes. Again and again, she paused to shake her feet and let the sand trickle out, until Lateefa scolded her. “Walk on, walk on. Don’t fall behind.”

It was better to walk barefoot. Noora pulled off her slippers and caught up with Hamad and Yaqoota, who strode along the side of Lateefa’s donkey. They were on their way to Om Al-Sanam, a desert where the dunes rose as the gentle camel humps it was named after. They would be staying there the full summer, far from the sticky heat of the coast.

Noora watched Lateefa’s hips sway on a donkey that looked too small to carry her. Every now and then, it objected, pausing to shake its head, only to be whipped with a soft reed and
clicked back into a trot with a twist of her tongue. Secured behind her was her tin travel chest, filled with everything she might need out in the dunes. Everyone else’s belongings were wrapped in small bundles of cloth. If Shamsa had been with them, there might have been two travel chests, but Shamsa had asked for permission to stay with her family, and Jassem had agreed.

Noora was pleased she wouldn’t have to deal with Shamsa’s moods and sneers. At the same time, she was bothered that both Shamsa and Jassem would be staying at Leema for the summer. So much time! Shamsa could poison Jassem’s thoughts against her, mold Jassem’s mind however she wanted, establish her position in the household.

Noora wondered whether they were all thinking of the same thing. It was hard to see Yaqoota’s face, swallowed in its darkness by the plum sky. And Hamad, she tried to catch some appreciation in his face (after all, she’d managed to deliver the bodysuit without being spotted just two days before), but he would not look at her; he only stared straight ahead. He was probably thinking of his father, left to sea on this same day with the other divers, to search for those pearls.

“It will be better for us all out in those cool, white dunes of Om Al-Sanam,” Lateefa said. She sounded unperturbed, her voice as soft as the plods of their feet on the sand. “There the air will be dry, instead of all that humidity by the sea that makes my blood curdle.”

Noora watched her lean back with ease, holding on to the chest, as the donkey struggled up a dune larger than the rest. Its hooves dipped deep into the sand so that the tips of Lateefa’s slippers skimmed the surface. Her mind seemed empty of worries. Didn’t she see Shamsa as a threat as well? She had closed
her eyes with clear-headed approval when Jassem had told her that Shamsa would be going to her family.

Such thoughts toppled on one another in Noora’s head, till she decided to put her slippers back on. At least there would be the distraction of trapped sand caking her toes.

The first arrow of light pierced the sky, and Noora squinted at the cluster of
barasti
huts that made up the settlement. There were other people there as well, families from Leema who had come for the same reason: to get away from the sticky, salty heat of the sea. There were goats, chickens, donkeys, and a couple of camels, too.

Noora welcomed the noise and movement after their walk under the silence of sky and sand. The scent of freshly baked bread in thick puddles of ghee wafted into the air, and children scampered out of one
barasti
and into another. The flat-roofed palm-frond huts were scattered randomly in a large dip between the dunes, about twenty, all in all. Jassem’s two huts stood at the end of the settlement, just under a gathering of three upright palm trees.

Hamad had brought everything they needed beforehand: pots and pans, cushions, flour, dates, rice, coffee, tea, goats, and chickens.

“There’s a well over there,” Lateefa said, pointing ahead, “with water as cool as a winter’s rain.”

Noora could not see it and wondered how anyone could find anything in such a vast expanse of shifting swells and hollows.

Lateefa quickly ordered the organization of the sleeping arrangements. She would take the first
barasti
(the one with the
wind tower made of sack cloth). Noora would share the second hut with Yaqoota. A wooden ladder led to Hamad’s sleeping quarters. It was a palm-frond platform on four wooden stilts situated a little distance away, as was proper.

As the rays rose higher into the sky, the heat blasted out of the sand. They had unpacked, cooked and eaten lunch, and now Noora staggered into her hut. In the dimness, she rested her eyes from the sun’s glare and slumped loose-limbed next to Yaqoota on the woven palm mats that covered the soft sand.

The sweat clung to her hairline, and she pinned her face to the elongated gaps in the palm-frond walls, waiting for that mysterious breeze to wriggle through one wall and out the other. And then it came. A tired breath that was certainly drier but just as hot as the air by the sea. “So hot,” she said.

Yaqoota spat out her response. “Hot is hot, whether you’re here or there. Hot…is…hot.” They were her first words since they had left Wadeema, and her tone was as dry as the desert they were sitting in the middle of.

“What are you so upset at me for?” Noora asked.

“Hmph. You should know.”

“Oh? And what if I don’t know?”

“You know everything—especially how to keep secrets.”

“There are no secrets to keep.”

“Just tell me the truth. That’s all I want. Then I’ll know whether you’re my friend or not.”

“What truth?”

“Humph.”

“If you’re talking about Hamad, he didn’t come to see me as you think he did.”

“If you say so.”

I
n the desert, the sun seems much bigger and somehow rounder and brighter. It washes the color out of the sky and blanches the dunes. Only in the late afternoons does the sun forgive, calling back its strongest rays to be stored for the next day. That’s when Noora wandered into the mass of humps that surrounded them.

Along with the vast emptiness of the desert came a strange informality. She could leave the huts and head in whichever direction she wished. Not that there was much difference, since every rising dune looked the same. Still, she liked that she could do that. Now, she sat on the edge of a lofty hill and burrowed her feet into the sand, watching a group of girls tumble down the slope.

“Come on,” shouted a little girl wearing a canary-yellow dress. “Swim down with us. Race us.” She was one of the older girls, perhaps seven or eight. She was climbing up the hill to
ward Noora, her shoulder-length hair crumpling into tangles as it began loosening out of her plaits.

Noora smiled at her. “I’ll get all messy. And look at your hair! Here, let me fix it.”

The girl pulled away. “It’s only sand,” she said. “You just shake it off, like this.” She waggled her head and, finally, her plaits fell open. “Come on, let’s go.”

Noora shook her head and wished Yaqoota was with her. They would have giggled and swam down the dune without a second thought. How stubborn that slave girl was! Ten days of sulking in Wadeema and another ten since they had arrived at Om Al-Sanam, and still Yaqoota refused to shake away her hurt. And now it was too late for Noora to confess that she had been right all along. That would just lead to more suspicion in the future. No, Noora decided, she must stick to her story. The girl was pulling her arm. “All right, all right,” Noora said. “What’s your name anyway?”

“Afra.”

Noora grinned and secured her
shayla
around her head. “You’re going to make me messy, too,” she said, lying on her stomach.

“Arms out, straight in front of you,” ordered Afra.

Noora did what she was told.

“Now swim!”

Noora clamped her eyes and mouth shut and, headfirst, slid down the dune. Sand everywhere! It trickled into her nostrils and seeped into her ears, snuck into her
shayla
and collected in her dress. Every time the sand tried to swallow her, she tossed it to the side with broad strokes. She was swimming, faster and faster. She could see the world slide past, even though her eyes were closed. Only at the bottom did she let the sand drown her.
And then she heard the mothers call their children back to the
barastis
. Noora did not open her eyes, just flipped onto her back and opened her arms and legs like a star, listening to the children’s hollers as they rushed back home.

What an exhilarating feeling! That plunge down the dune seemed to free her after all those months in Wadeema of watching how she talked and walked. She yawned and stretched her arms tight to the fingers, lengthened her feet to a point. She stayed that way for a long time before relaxing her limbs. And that’s when she felt a darkness creep over her face. She snapped open her eyes to find Hamad standing over her with crossed arms. She sat up instantly and squinted.

“What cheek you have,” she scolded. The sun was behind him, and she shifted to one side so that she could see his face better, find out whether he was smirking. “What nerve, coming out of nowhere like that…like a, like a…”

“Like a thief?”

She shook her head and frowned.

“Like a ghost?” He grinned.

“Worse than a ghost! The rudest…most disrespectful of…of…” Again, the word would not fall off the tip of her tongue. Her
shayla
had somehow twisted around her neck, and, as she loosened it, she felt the sand plop out of it. What a mess she was!

“Well, this ghost just came down to thank you for the lovely work you did with that bodysuit. My father kept asking me which tailor I took it to, and every time I had to disappear, pretend someone was calling me or needing me urgently.”

“Well, I’m sure that wasn’t so hard for you,” Noora said, “seeing as you are so talented at disappearing and appearing.” She stood up and shook free the rest of the sand from her dress,
brushed off the grains that caked her face, all the while half-listening to Hamad thank her once more.

“I feel I have to do something for you in return,” he said. “What can I do?”

“Nothing,” Noora said. “Just don’t make problems.”