January 1945
Still in Basra
Like the swirled designs on the rugs she beat, Kathmiya’s life moved in repetitious circles: the trip downriver to work, the brick floors she scrubbed, the weekend respite in the marshes and then back downriver. Give up, endure, hope, despair.
Shafiq would have been one shining spot on the pattern—purely decorative, but at least cheering—if he hadn’t disappeared right after their time on the rooftop. Just after saying he’d like to see her again.
Kathmiya had gone to Basra at thirteen furious at the injustice of having to work. Four years on, she was more developed, more exquisite and more despondent than before. No marsh girl ever married so late…well, maybe one or two widows to their dead husband’s brother, but not a first wedding, with the spangled promise it held.
Kathmiya felt like she was turning into that dry broom she used to push dust around Odette’s floor.
Back home, Fatimah had two daughters and the smug security of a normal life. Seeing the little ones only reinforced Kathmiya’s loneliness.
So when Odette ordered Kathmiya to polish the silver flat-ware for Salim’s engagement party, she felt like the world was taunting her with a front-row view of elusive success.
She wanted to run away, but her money was stored in the vase that awaited her father’s death, and if she broke it open she would violate a religious promise. Besides, how far could she go on a couple of fils? To Baghdad, or Ankara, or Paris? Even if she could travel, she’d never escape her class.
There was nothing to do but roast the lamb, bake the chicken in mountains of rice dyed orange with turmeric, burn the eggplant black and crush its smoky flesh with garlic.
“Clean the carpets,” said Odette.
And that.
“Now!”
With pleasure.
Slam! She hit her father for making her work. Bam! She struck her mother for leaving her single. Wham! She didn’t want to admit it, but the last blow was for that boy who never came back when he said he would.
Sometimes she wondered if she had just dreamed the bike ride and the pigeons. Other times, she thought maybe there had been a bad fight. Maybe Shafiq had suffered a grievous injury. Or maybe he had just forgotten all about the maid.
Salim’s fiancée wore a harsh yellow dress, lemon to the butter Kathmiya would have picked. She decided the round-faced girl looked mean, and resolved not to be friends with her. As if the sophisticated bride would ever talk to the Midaan maid anyway.
It was easy to disdain Salim’s fiancée, who looked closed tight. Her own engagement and she couldn’t even manage a smile. Kathmiya took pleasure in the girl’s impoverishment, thinking, She may be rich, but she can’t even enjoy a party in her honor. Not even polite, staring frozen at her new family. Or maybe she was just too dumb to come up with anything to say.
Kathmiya kept trying on these unkind interpretations but none fit. Obviously, the bride-to-be was just terrified. The girl stood like a stone statue in front of Salim’s father, as though she were facing her future. Watching her, Kathmiya realized the girl thought she was getting engaged to the father, not his son.
“For you,” said the balding man, who had tufts of gray around his temples, draping a polished necklace over the girl’s head. Salim was on the couch watching his father warm his fiancée to the family. Except that she was ice cold. But her parents tried to break the awkward silence with forced cheers of “Congratulations!”
“And these,” added the old man, his blue-veined hand clawing around her wrist to slip on four faceted gold bangles.
Kathmiya had been prepared to hate the bride for her fortune, but the girl was too sorry a sight, holding back tears on her engagement day.
For so long, Kathmiya had dreamed that someone—anyone—would take her as a bride so she could leave the alienating city. But now she amended her prayer: not an old man with liver spots.
Pitying the bride, she slid behind Salim and gently nudged an ugly but intricate lamp on the table next to him until it crashed to the floor.
All eyes were on her, Odette’s oozing fury. But Kathmiya ignored her you-stupid-maid glare, caught the bride’s eye, and tilted her chin toward Salim. A smile spread across the girl’s wide face. A smile of wonderment and realization.
“Thank you!” the girl said to her future father-in-law, genuinely grateful now that she realized she wouldn’t have to marry him.
Kathmiya stooped down, sweeping the shards of glass into a magazine.
“Now meet my son, Salim Dellal!”
When Kathmiya stood up, she noticed that the groom was looking more at the magazine’s cover photo of some official-looking men than his new bride. “Iraq joined the Arab League,” Salim mumbled approvingly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he turned to the bride. “Did you sew that yourself?” he asked blandly, pointing to the girl’s embroidered cuffs.
She blushed with pride. “Yes.”
“Nice,” he answered, but Kathmiya knew he would rather be shucking pistachios and talking politics than preparing to enter into holy matrimony.
He handed his finacée an apple. “Peel this for me,” he ordered laconically.
The girl took the apple in one hand and, with a knife in the other, quickly separated the skin from the flesh and handed it back. When Salim took a bite, all the women in the room started ululating.
Except Kathmiya. She was collecting the browning peel.
“We are having the Night of Henna,” Odette told her a few days later. “The girl must be tattooed with flower petals.”
“Why?” she asked, not being sassy but really wondering.
“To show her love for my son!” Odette seemed amused by Kathmiya’s ignorance. “You know what happens to henna leaves when they are ground up?” she asked, almost as if testing her maid.
“They become paste.”
“Well of course, but what I mean is the leaves turn from green to red. Think about it.”
Kathmiya reflected on this strange symbolism, and could only figure it must represent a transition to womanhood.
If only she could participate and learn. As a guest, married, with a child in her arms instead of dirty dishes.
When the evening came, she was busy with chores, but still managed to watch the artists using the brick-colored henna paste to dot symmetrical tattoos on the bride’s hands and arms.
“Kathmiya,” Odette summoned her over to the couple. “You’ll be moving in with Salim and his wife after they get married.”
Instinctively, Kathmiya looked down, but the round-faced bride reached out and handed her a small mesh bag of sugar-coated almonds. “Please, have some.”
So my life as a maid will get better, she thought. But she was still young enough to hope, and that made it worse. Because life as a maid was no life at all.
Kathmiya was up in her room after the guests left and the girl’s family came to retrieve their inked-up bride.
She had seen and done enough. There was no reason to go back out. Except a sudden, calm certainty that she would be happy if she did.
Happy. Not a sentiment she experienced often.
Feeling strangely compelled, she walked to the balcony, looking down at the garden below. There, looking back up at her, was Shafiq, not twelve and bony like in her memory, but fifteen and strong, with wavy brown hair that hung softly around his face.
The look in his eyes was as clear as if he’d shouted from the rooftops: You are stunning, more beautiful than before, and how is that even possible? With a woman’s sharp instinct, she understood that he was fighting the desire to stare at her.
It was a losing battle.
She saw in his eyes that long-forgotten warmth, but also a pained regret, and she knew, just knew, that it hadn’t been his decision to stay away from her. Or that if it was his decision, it hadn’t been because of her. And it hadn’t been easy.