Water from Heaven

WOMEN PREPARED for bath day the way they would for a recreational outing. It was a special day that brought together friends, relatives close and distant, and women who never saw each other anywhere else. The bathhouse was a place women liked to go not just to bathe, but to relax and socialize. Servants also looked forward to going there, since, after tending their mistresses, they got their turn to bathe as well. The hours would fly by, and everyone would come home spic and span until the next time around.

A few days beforehand, the servant women would prepare the clothes, perfumes, and soap for the occasion, and the slave that served as the coachman would get ready to take them to the bathhouse and bring them back by coordinating his comings and goings between the market and the men’s businesses with the women’s requirements for the day.

As preparations were being made for bath day, Lalla Uwayshina spoke with her daughter Fatima about the changes evident in Tawida. She was visibly pregnant by now, although she was trying to hide it, since the father of the child belonged to the slave-owning family. She’d been seen vomiting next to the bread oven. Hoping to dissuade her mother from what she intended to do, Fatima said, “Even if what you say about Muhammad being the child’s father is true, please leave her be!”

“No!” her mother retorted angrily. “I won’t stand for such a thing. The child’s mother is a slave woman who was born into slavery, and Muhammad has a wife who’s pretty as a picture. Just as she’s borne him daughters, she can bear him sons.”

“I beg you, Mother, by Grandpa and Grandma’s graves, don’t give her the potion! We’re dying to have a male to carry on the family name. Who knows? She might be pregnant with a boy. So leave her alone.”

“No black slave woman’s son will ever carry this family’s name! That’s something we’ll never allow. Let him make love to her all he wants. That kind of thing is bound to happen. But have children by her? Over my dead body!”

That night, Lalla Uwayshina prepared the mixture of herbs that her friend Manani had brought. Once it was finished, the two of them would divide the potion between themselves, since Manani also had a couple of slave women she wanted to abort. One of them was a concubine of her husband’s; the other, her son’s. As a group of women sat in the courtyard talking, Fatima sat in silence. Lalla Uwayshina called Tawida, gave her a cup of the mixture, and told her to drink it. She’d been laundering clothes, and was tired from leaning over the washtub. After drinking a little of it, she stopped, revolted by the taste.

“It’s bitter, Auntie,” she said. “And it burns my tongue.”

“Keep drinking, keep drinking,” Lalla Uwayshina insisted. “It won’t hurt you. In fact, it will make you strong and lively, even in bed, and it’ll make your sweat smell nice.”

To keep Tawida from suspecting her mistress’s intention, the other women sitting there emptied their own glasses. However, theirs contained nothing but plain water. Lalla Uwayshina winked at Manani and Saada, their cackles filling the courtyard. Tawida closed her eyes and downed as much of the vile liquid as she could. Leaving the dregs, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve, a look of disgust on her face.

“That’s enough, Auntie,” she said. “I can’t drink any more.”

“Fine, go finish the laundry now. Then come have supper with the girls. Hajja Manani’s cooked something for you all as a charitable gift on behalf of her deceased relatives, and all of it has to be eaten or the dead won’t receive the merit it brings.”

Unsuspecting, Tawida bent down and kissed the old woman’s hand, saying, “May God accept your gift, have mercy on your loved ones, and cause you to meet them in Paradise.”

At Manani’s house, her two servants were given the pure “water from Heaven”—a potent, cathartic mixture of expensive herbs—to drink in the same way as Lalla Uwayshina’s had. Then they were given the rest of the potion in the form of food.

She told them, “Lalla Uwayshina has cooked something for you as a charitable gift on behalf of her deceased relatives, and all of it has to be eaten or the dead won’t receive the merit it brings. When you see her tomorrow, don’t embarrass me by forgetting to thank her. I wouldn’t want it to be said that the girls that live in Manani’s house don’t know their manners!”

The two servant women replied dutifully, “May God accept her gift, have mercy on her loved ones, and cause her to meet them in Paradise.”

That evening Tawida got up from the washtub, sweating profusely. Instead of subsiding, however, the sweating got even worse, and she had a hard time going to sleep. Was it the hot weather or was it just her? She tossed and turned, at the same time feeling strangely limp all over.

“Go to sleep,” her friend said to her, “and stop thrashing around like that.”

“I can’t,” Tawida replied. “I feel as though my whole body’s gone limp.”

“Oh, really? Is that so, or do you just miss him? Be honest!”

“I don’t know,” Tawida replied after a pause. “Maybe it’s both.”

“Go to sleep, go to sleep. Tomorrow’s bath day and it will be really nice. We’ll see the girls and chat and laugh and get out of our misery for a while.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It will be a special day.”