A sympathetic bond and a mutual fondness grew between my grandmother and Athurayyaa. The deeper Bint Aamir’s hands plunged into the household—into the soil, planting the family’s trees; into the bread dough, kneading it; into the oven, to bake the bread; onto little Mansour’s body, scrubbing it with a loofah and soap—the higher Athurayyaa rose above the soil, above the earth, circling in the air of our home until she was part of the air we breathed. She rose into the atmosphere with her prayer rug, like a ghost. Bint Aamir’s feet were submerged in the soil that was the ground of our lives. She built the walls that made this household exist and thrive, mud brick by mud brick. Athurayyaa ascended higher and higher, building a world of purely spiritual bricks. Athurayyaa inscribed amulets to keep fever away from children. She mixed saffron into a bit of water and painted Qur’an verses onto the interiors of shallow white cups. Once the lettering had dried, women in labor added water and drank the mixture to lessen their pain. People came to her seeking other cures and she responded, without charge and without a word. Her hopes were heavenward, and her desires did not include the recompenses of this world.
Bint Aamir had to walk through the soil of this world. To escape the sting of the late-morning sun, she would bind palm fronds to the bottom of her feet with thongs made of palm fiber. She balanced the clay jahla on her head and drew water from the falaj, Mansour following her every step. He was old enough now that he took pleasure in flaunting the myriad tiny round mirrors along the hems and front edges of his little broadcloth robes. These outer garments, shot through with gold threads, were ordered especially for him from India. He tried to provoke Bint Aamir by holding the mirrors up to the sun so the rays would bounce off them and straight into her one good eye. But she did not react; on her head, the jahla sat as steady as ever. When he tired of trying unsuccessfully to goad her, he gave up and ran ahead of her, toward the house, where his mother Athurayyaa had washed herself in preparation for midday prayers, pushing her soft feet into her wooden Zanzibari clogs. She walked across the courtyard to her prayer niche and began saying supererogatory prayers to the movement of her beads as she waited for the call to prayer. By now, his father, Salman, would have closed the door to his shop, ready for his midday nap, leaving Mansour to snitch sugar cubes from the tin that had on its lid a scene of a summer day in England, women in frocks and parasols walking among the trees. Mansour always imagined himself in that scene, racing ahead of his friends.
By now, Mansour was approaching the age of twelve, when his father would shave off his braids. The winds of fortune were finally blowing in Salman’s direction. He earned hundreds of silver thalers in a windfall deal that no one could have foreseen. Athurayyaa opened the doors of the household to the needy. Pots were hung over the fire. Women from much poorer families flocked to the household of Salman, to measure out wheat flour, which they kneaded into loaves and baked on the premises. They cleaned rice and boiled it, staying there through the midday hours. In the late afternoon, they carried the bread and the rice and their pots of yogurt to their own homes.
One evening, one of the neighbor women suggested to Athurayyaa and Bint Aamir that they ought to order silver bolts for their carved wood chests, and have gold latticework made for their rosewater vials. A wealthy woman of the village had been famous for having such things once. Silently, Athurayyaa went back to her prayer rug. Bint Aamir looked this neighbor and her advice in the eye and said, “Go home and give your advice to somebody else. No envy here of the rich lady, and we certainly aren’t going to do what she did. The envious imitate others only because they’ve got nothing better to do.”
The woman went home and never came back. Bint Aamir did fear the envy of others, and she always took precautions against its searing flame. But when envy did do its evil work, it came as a terrible blow, which no one could have predicted, and it flattened her without any warning, at least for a time. For it was only a couple of months after this encounter with the silver-bolt woman that the twins, Rayyaa and Raayah, landed in Salman’s home as his guests. Their arrival did not appear to change anything in Bint Aamir’s life in this household, nor did it temper the well-deserved recognition she got for being such a devoted mother to Mansour. But strange, foreign doors had been opened now, and obscure fears invaded her already anxious heart.
When Rayyaa and Raayah’s father had found himself caught in the snare of an ill-fated marriage, he worked several ruses to try to get out of it. A series of minor attempts at escape failed, but then he was given a chance to travel far away. He embarked for the Congo leaving two little girls in his wife’s care as well as the grove of date palms, which shriveled and died in the drought that fell two years after he left.
He thought he had rid himself, as much as he could, of those burdens of dependency that had so worn him down. He believed he could congratulate himself on having managed to elude all but the inevitable setbacks. Moreover, he had developed a passion for going deep into the Congo Basin rain forests on tiger-hunting expeditions—a venture that kept him free of the irritations that invariably arise in human interactions. But just when he had become most impervious to those annoying responsibilities of his past, or so he thought, a letter in the mail took him by surprise. His wife had died. She had died—just as she had lived—without knowing any happiness, any desires, any ambitions. His twin daughters were orphans now and completely alone. The date palms had long since died, too, and the land had been sold.
He had to wake from his fairy-tale escapades, landing in the dirt of the real world and sensing the noose of blood ties around his neck. His only recourse was to write to a relative in Oman, Hilal, a man renowned for his piety. He asked Hilal to fetch his daughters, and Hilal took on the burden of his relative’s plight. He booked passage and loaded the two girls—not even ten years old at the time, they were impossible to tell apart, one as emaciated as the other—on a ship from the port of Sur bound for Zanzibar. Onboard, a sudden blood clot ended Hilal’s life. As his body was lowered into the sea, the two little girls began to wail. They clasped each other’s hands and did not let go until the ship had anchored off the coast of Zanzibar and disgorged its passengers.
When the twins arrived onshore, they found that Hilal’s corpse had washed onto the land before they had. People wept for the pious man whose body had not been touched by the sea’s sharks nor by the vultures of the sky. They buried him among the graves of sainted men, and the girls went with their father, who had come to meet them in Zanzibar, to the Congo. They grew up there in near-total isolation from other people. Their father periodically forgot they existed, so they taught themselves how to grow cassava and bananas, keeping their stomachs full and selling the surplus. On the fringes of the rain forest, their bodies grew, and they wrapped them in kanga cloth. The sisters planted and harvested, and went hunting with their father. Sometimes he did remember to bring them food. Always, he remembered to force them to speak Arabic. But he forgot completely to see about getting them married. When he died, they knew very well that they were alone in the world.
After a long period of indecision, Rayyaa and Raayah decided to go back to Oman. They could not remember anything about their life there, or their family. The sisters tried hard to recall the details of the existence they had had with their long-departed mother, and they tried to remember some good moments. But the only times they could remember their mother’s eyes lighting up with enthusiasm, the only glint of interest she ever showed in anything in this world, were those moments when she heard news of someone’s death, or when she recalled—with the kind of detail that most minds repel—how she had learned of these death notices. But Rayyaa and Raayah came back anyway. They learned that Salman was their nearest living relative. Or, perhaps, that he was their most generous relative. And so they landed in the hospitality of his home.
When Rayyaa and Raayah alighted as guests in the household of Salman, they came with wooden clogs and small bundles of clothing—very few clothes, but all clean, and all perfumed with incense. They also had with them a small wooden chest that held a few silver pieces, and another bundle, tied up with care. This one they opened to reveal the marvel of marvels, which was to remain the talk of the village for weeks to come: a real, whole tiger skin.
They came prepared to stay in this home of Salman their generous relative. What they found when they arrived was a man preoccupied with his trade, a woman engrossed in her prayers, and a young teen who played in the alleyways. They found no one who might engage with them face-to-face, no one who would leave them feeling that they would not remain guests forever. No one at all, really, until Bint Aamir returned from her failed trip, her visit to Dr. Thoms, and found herself facing the twins.