The next time he saw Kathmiya, Shafiq brought a note.
“How are you?” she read off the paper.
“Well?” he asked.
“Fine, if you don’t mind being misunderstood and all alone.”
“You’ll always have me as your teacher.” He smiled.
“You know what I mean.”
“No husband still?”
“He had money but no soul.”
“Oooh…that’s bad. What about another matchmaker?”
“Won’t work. All this time I’ve spent in the city apparently ruins me at home.”
Shafiq didn’t believe in much, but he had learned that you could lose someone at any time and once you did, all you had left were memories, sweet with satisfaction or filthy with regret. “Come on, Kathmiya,” he said. “You have to realize there are more matchmakers than just in the marshes. We’ve got about a million in Basra. It wouldn’t take you two seconds to find a husband here.”
It felt good to knock on the door where Jamila worked, even if Kathmiya’s heart pounded much harder than her knuckles.
She could feel the old woman who answered judging her—feel the time slip in that split second when she went, in someone’s eyes, from being a person to being a lowly Midaan.
“Please, ma’am,” she said. “My name is Kathmiya. Your maid, Jamila, she’s my mother.”
The door closed.
Kathmiya’s cheeks burned, but she had come prepared. No need to throw a rock at the wall this time. She knocked again.
“Please, ma’am,” she started again. “I thought you might want this.” The glossy magazine had been in Leah’s garbage; Kathmiya could only hope the old widow didn’t already have a copy. “There’s a wonderful article about the newest movies from Cairo. Please, if you like.”
The woman didn’t bother to notice that Kathmiya could read an article enough to recommend it. But neither did she bother to stop her maid’s daughter from coming in while she started flipping through the colorful pages.
Kathmiya knew enough to pick up a dirty teacup from the dining table before heading toward the kitchen, where the sound of running water, like the theme song on a radio drama, announced Jamila the Maid.
“Here’s another one,” Kathmiya said, placing the cup in the sink.
“What are you thinking, walking in like this?” Jamila’s face flushed.
“You’re my only relative in the city. Where else should I go?”
Jamila shot her daughter the is-this-an-emergency look and when Kathmiya just shrugged in response, she said, “Nafisa—that’s the widow—she sleeps late in the mornings…we could plan it if you tell me next time before showing up.”
They could hear someone approaching, so Kathmiya pulled one of the rags out of her pocket. She was polishing the tiled floor under the garbage barrel when Nafisa peeked in. Satisfied that she was being serviced, the widow left them alone.
“I’ve been thinking,” Kathmiya said.
“No more questions,” Jamila replied.
“I wasn’t going to ask you anything. Just suggest that we find another matchmaker. One outside of the marshes, maybe here in Basra. Less complicated, you know?”
Jamila silently wiped a tall cup, so that for a few seconds all they could hear was the squeak of fabric against glass. “Fine, my sweet,” she said. “If you want to we can. But it will take some money.”
“You must have enough, don’t you?”
“How much have you saved?”
Kathmiya stared. “You’re not asking me for the money I’ve put aside for my father’s funeral at Najaf?”
“It’s for your engagement…”
That little vase where Kathmiya dropped all but a few fils from her weekly pay contained more than her savings.
“…to help pay someone to find a good husband…”
Not that she could have written the word for it but in there was something like redemption.
“…to secure your future.”
A chance to make it right with Ali, even if he’d be dead by then. “No,” she answered flatly.
“Why do you have to make this so hard?” Jamila asked.
And Kathmiya thought, Why don’t you just try a little harder?
It took three weeks, but Jamila finally promised that they were headed to one of the most successful matchmakers in Basra.
Kathmiya had been through the ritual more times than most women would survive, but now she was determined not to let that dangerous little hook of hope catch her heart.
This was a battle, especially when they approached the impressive-looking home, so much more official and reassuring than the one that held the musty old marriage broker in the marshes. Its door was solid, the knocker brass, and Kathmiya could just smell the metallic scent of possibility glittering near.
“Maybe it’s your destiny to live in this sophisticated world,” Jamila suggested as they entered a clean, bright room and sat on an upholstered sofa.
Kathmiya knew that whatever curse was haunting her had not been lifted, but she felt her dreams pounding away at her doubts. This could be my escape, she thought. Instead of her usual fantasy involving a match in the marshes where the sheikh’s tent would be spread with food and filled with cheering relatives, she pictured herself on the grand balcony of one of Basra’s largest mansions surrounded by blooming flowers and adoring crowds.
The matchmaker was not a shriveled old lady but a robust man, with a smart, skinny moustache like a movie star. “Mabruk, it is time for your child to marry,” he said, offering congratulations.
Kathmiya felt strangely at ease. There had to be one good husband in the crowded city of Basra.
Even Jamila seemed relaxed as she answered the broker’s questions about her daughter. “Beautiful, educated and excellent around the house; knows how to cook and sew better than any chef or seamstress,” she boasted.
That’s close enough, thought Kathmiya. And if this works, I’ll learn all the home arts to perfection. I’ll devote myself, day and night, to my husband, my children, my new home, not because anyone pays me; they won’t have to, it will all be mine. Not only the home and the family but the freedom.
“Tell me about yourself,” the man asked Jamila with an open sincerity.
“I’m just a humble woman,” she replied.
“She’s very good and kind,” Kathmiya chirped. “Mother of two, grandmother of two, all girls, all healthy, thanks be to Allah.”
“The father?” the matchmaker wanted to know.
“Her father, well…”
Sailing confidence fell still.
“…her father has left this world.” Jamila looked down.
Why lie? Ali was contemptible but not completely gone…
“Allah yi-ruhmah.” Jamila added a prayer for God to have compassion on him.
All of a sudden, Kathmiya felt that familiar dead certainty about the imminent collapse of a marriage negotiation.
As if to confirm her dread, the man cocked his head slightly to the side. “Oh?”
“I’m afraid so,” Jamila said. “Allah yi-ruhmah.”
“Allah yi-ruhmah,” the matchmaker agreed, but he definitely looked skeptical. “Where is he from?”
“North of here…to the north…” What a painfully ridiculous answer, Kathmiya thought. She wondered if she should take over the conversation, but decided that might be too forward, too assertive, altogether too ruinous.
The marriage broker looked annoyed. “You are Midaan,” he noted, without any of the usual sneering prejudice, but with an emphasis that said, I see through the obfuscation.
“I have money!” Jamila blurted out frantically. Her panic just rang more alarms, but she didn’t stop. “Here!” she added, flinging her meager savings on the small wooden tea tray between them.
The crumpled dinars only served to make Jamila look more corrupt. Kathmiya wanted to crawl out of the room…her skin…this life.
“You have money,” said the matchmaker, quiet and firm, “but you lack honesty. Had you come here in truth, I would have been happy to find a wonderful match for your daughter, whether she is as cultured as you say or not. But since you are lying to me, I could not, in Allah’s name, ever connect another family to yours.”
The words had been spoken in a perfectly measured tone, but they boomed in Kathmiya’s ears: “…a wonderful match for your daughter…” Had it been so close, only to be snatched away? Kathmiya wanted to beg but the matchmaker’s hand was pointed straight at the door and she knew she had no choice but to leave.
Outside, on the sunny street that had offered so much promise just minutes before, Kathmiya hooked her arm through her mother’s. There was no point in attacking Jamila. Better to accept fate. It went against everything in her resolute, determined, raised-by-spoiling-missionaries character, but that hadn’t gotten her far in life anyway. So she just sighed and walked her mother back to work, sneaking in by the back door instead of defiantly storming through the front.