My sister Khadija continued to worry about her hair falling out up until the day she left home, saying with neither joy nor disappointment, “Look, look. My hair isn’t falling out anymore!” The man named Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein came late one afternoon and asked for her hand, all on his own, without any family or friends or conditions. How could he have conditions when he didn’t even possess enough for his own dinner, having nothing for her or for himself? All he possessed were his three useless names. A man currently out of work (and who had never worked a day in his life), living in a dark, cramped, empty room with a ceiling and walls that were crumbling because of the dampness. There was a patched blanket and a table wobbling on three legs. This is what Mother and I said to her: “Khadija, this man isn’t suitable for you. You’ll die from the cold before the end of winter.” She remained silent, and in the end said that she wasn’t thinking of herself. We didn’t understand what she was getting at. Who was she thinking about, then? In any case, she talked so little in the last few days before she left that we had to remain optimistic. She fattened up a little—her chest filled out and her buttocks plumped up—as if she were being nourished by her illusions, as if it were her special way of getting ready for marriage. She didn’t show any signs of joy or sadness. On either side of her eyes and above her upper lip an intricate web of fine wrinkles appeared that gave her face a sort of sternness. Khadija had grown old and gray after so much waiting. Like a fruit that had over-ripened before being picked, but she was neither delighted nor pained. Rather, she had simply ripened quickly, so quickly she had almost rotted. She could be forgiven for that. Perhaps she was right.
I didn’t find her in the room she rented after leaving us. I finally found her in the early afternoon on one of the roofs. Mother had been wondering what had happened to her daughter ever since she left in mid-November. She thought of her as she sat in front of the sewing machine. She thought of her as she sat at the dining table. She thought of her all the time. Anxiously, she wondered about the hand her daughter had been dealt. I didn’t find her in the second room either. The entrance to the house had no door, like the alley. The hallway was dark. I tripped as soon as I stepped in. Still, I stepped in and was immediately surrounded by a rotting smell, rancid enough to make your eyes water. I went up some narrow stairs that led to a long hallway where some nearly naked children less than a year old were playing, wrapped in rags that revealed more than they covered up. An obese woman was hunched over a tin washbasin squeezing her laundry, moving her lips without making a sound, as if speaking to her unhuman inflated chest. The woman was completely soaked; behind her there were clothes dripping on the line. The naked children jumped and pranced all around her. I asked her about the room where Khadija lived. She didn’t respond. She contented herself with a meaningless look, as if she were looking at the wall. She went back to her washing. I tried again, practically screaming, “Khadija! Khadija! I’m asking about my sister Khadija!” The obese woman didn’t lift her head this time either. Instead, a man with angry eyes appeared in the downstairs hallway, in the entryway I had just passed through without seeing him. He hit the wall with his cane and yelled that the woman was mute. I looked down at him from the top of the stairs. I could only see the white turban covering the top of his head and his cane raised up toward me. “The woman is mute. Mute!” His cane was the only thing that remained clear in my mind. What he told me about Khadija and her husband when I went down caused the blood to go to my head. Blood, anger, and tears. I told myself that I was the cause of what had happened to my sister. If her husband beat her, it was because no one had been asking about her. No one had asked about her since she went off with him. And where were they now? Who knows where they went. To another alley. To another hell. Her husband never paid the rent he promised to pay. How could he pay a single day’s rent when he didn’t work? Then he’d come home drunk every night and beat her, after which he’d throw her out to spend the rest of the night in the hall or on the stairs. The man was wearing two heavy wool djellabas. Standing in front of the house and boiling with the same anger I was, he hit the stone-hard ground of the alley with his cane as if he were smashing the head of the criminal, my sister’s husband. “If he’s going to end up killing her, let him do it someplace else . . .” I didn’t hear the last part of what he said because I was unconsciously repeating that I was going to kill him—knowing that I wouldn’t—or that we would kill him, Kika and I. We wouldn’t hesitate to slit his throat from ear to ear, Kika and I. Together we could slaughter an elephant. Especially Kika, because he happily slaughters the holiday sheep. But Kika isn’t my friend anymore. I don’t know what he’s been up to ever since Farah and I left him behind in the street.
The third room where I found my sister Khadija resembled a neglected wooden box on one of the rooftops. A seven- or eight-year-old girl led me to the building’s entrance, pointed to the roof, and disappeared. No smoke. No food smells. No running water. No clothesline indicating that there was any life on this roof. Just a narrow open door at the end of the stairs that I didn’t doubt for a moment led to the wooden cube Khadija called her room. As soon as I moved toward the door, the body of her husband Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein got in my way, rushing toward me as if a supernatural force had thrown him out of the room. Naked as the day his mother had given birth to him, enraged and yelling that Khadija had sucked him dry. Squeezed him. Sucked his blood. Sucked his last drop of water. I was bumped back to the top of the stairs. “This woman is never satisfied. Her hole always wants it. She loves it all the time—day and night, morning and evening, all the time. She loves it in every position—standing or sitting, kneeling or lying down, on her back or on her belly, in every position.” Then he headed toward me, forgetting that he was naked, as if I were someone with whom the secrets of the wooden room could be shared, the secrets of the room where her legs are always pointed up toward the sky. “And even afterward she stays there in bed rolling around like a cat.” I still wondered whether he had seen me. Had he seen me and recognized me? Right then, Khadija appeared in the doorway, also naked. Her breasts hung down like two dried eggplants. Wrung out. Black. Some birds flew off over our heads. Khadija went back into the room and threw on something so skimpy it didn’t cover a thing. Had she changed? She was the same Khadija, except for some faded bruises on her forehead. Perhaps she had gotten a bit fatter. And her skin had darkened a little. As for her husband Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein, the way he was standing was ridiculous. His penis looked funny too, hanging like a small intestine with green, dimple-like spots all over it. They might actually have been dimples. His testicles hung like two dried figs. How could my sister feel any passion for this sickly, pale body? And what could he possibly want with her breasts that hung like two droopy eggplants? What was it that attracted them to one another? They didn’t make me angry anymore. They looked funny. The scene was completely ridiculous. I went into the box she called her room to get Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein something to cover himself with. However, because of the awful, stomach-turning stench, I came back out before I had a chance to finish examining the few things that were in there. A room with no windows. Empty, with practically no furniture. It smelled of sleep, cheap liquor, sweat, semen, and whatever other foul odors come out of a body. I asked Khadija if she wanted to come back home with me. Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein seemed happy with this suggestion. He yelled gleefully, “Take her, take her!” as his body shook with delight. “Take her, take her! Free me from her!”
“I want my things.”
Mother had bought her a double bed and a refrigerator when she went to live with Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein. “But the room is empty. Empty, sister.” Except for the bed. No cabinets, no refrigerator, no dishes. Khadija said, “He sold everything.”
“The refrigerator?”
“He sold it.”
Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein said that the dishes weren’t good for anything since they didn’t cook at all.
“And the bed?”
“What about the bed?”
“I want my bed.”
I told him that Khadija wanted her bed. He replied that the bed wouldn’t fit through the door because it was too narrow. But hadn’t it gone in through the same door? Did it come in through the roof? The man who looked like he had an intestine between his legs stood there solemnly, looking at the door as if he were seriously thinking it over. Then he said, “Go ahead and try.” Surely he was being sarcastic. The sarcasm of someone who knew that the bed was bigger than the door. That was how I found myself measuring the bed’s dimensions against those of the door opening. First by eyeballing it, then with my arms. This time I didn’t ask him how the bed had fit into this room because it would only make The Intestine mock me more. I didn’t want to give him the chance to mock us. If only Kika were here. But Khadija wasn’t going to leave without her bed. “Her bed won’t fit through the door,” The Intestine said, laughing as he straightened the covering wrapped around his waist. Happy now that he was done with his nightmare. He headed toward the room, walking like a triumphant pimp. Khadija remained standing in the doorway, determined to take her bed before Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein sold it to some other man to sleep on with some other woman in some strange house she’d know nothing about. I stood there waiting. I no longer thought about how that bed had gotten through this door. I no longer wondered how the bed had grown larger than the door. All I was thinking about was why such a wide bed was so important. What use did she have for a double bed that only she would sleep on? Then I thought about the wisdom behind the invention of these sorts of beds; a bed wide enough for two people who don’t know one another. I thought about why a man and a woman needed to be in the same bed at all. What was the wisdom in remaining attached to one another for thirty or forty years? Who says that they have to live a full lifetime in the same bed? It’s not as if this custom can be found in any book. Khadija says that she won’t leave without the bed, because it’s her bed.