Henna House by Nomi Eve Read Free Book Online

tricked. When he went out to the market, our neighbors greeted him with downcast eyes and words of comfort. He quickly realized that he had unwittingly engaged his precious son to a girl who had the strange power of killing her grooms. He bellowed into our house, demandingthat the engagement be broken. But my mother stood her ground and swore that if he dared break the engagement, she would make an amulet that would shrivel his manhood and make worms come out of his ears. I don’t know whether my Uncle Zecharia was superstitious, or whether he believed my mother could harm him if he tore up our engagement contract, but he did back down—though not before calling me to his side and inspecting me, or at least, that is what Masudah called it, an inspection, though it didn’t feel like what a farmer does to an ewe, or like what a woman at market does as she sniffs the navels of melons for sweetness. He was sitting on the jasmine-scented pillows in front of the hearth. He patted the spot next to him. I remember feeling unsure of what to do. I never sat with the men, my uncle was a stranger to me, and I rarely even ascended to this floor of the house, where the men reigned supreme, chewing khat and smoking their hookahs. My mother was in the doorway, chaperoning this interview. I stood in front of him for a moment, rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet. I think I would have opened my mouth and bleated like a lamb had he asked me to. But all he did was look at me. His gaze touched my heart and filled me with warmth. Until that moment I hadn’t known that grown-ups could feel the same way that I did. There was wonder and hope and fear in his eyes, yet there was love in them too, and then finally, a gleam of recognition, as if we already knew each other, as if we were good friends.
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    Sana’a was within kissing distance of the southern lands of the Sauds. It sat on the narrowest point of a mountain plateau, almost eight thousand miles above sea level at the joining hands of two major ancient trade routes, one of them linking the fertile upland plains, the other Marib and the Red Sea. Our town, Qaraah, was ten miles south of Sana’a, high up on the peak of a lesser mountain. Behind our town was a gently sloping plateau formed by the joining of two mountain shoulders. The trip from Qaraah to Sana’a would have taken half a morning by donkey cart if there weren’t mountains in the way, but because of the precipitous elevation, the trip took an entire day of riding.
    â€œThe light in Sana’a casts a buttery sheen,” Auntie Aminah was fond of saying. She had spent several years there as a girl. “The houses are honey colored, the streets—when not defiled by refuse—glow sesamebrown.” My only visit to Sana’a was years away, so when I was just a little girl, I had to content myself with my aunt’s comparisons. She pointed out the many ways in which Qaraah was not at all like Sana’a. We were a tiny new town while Sana’a was a sprawling metropolis, ancient seat of Ethiopian viceroys, Egyptian sultans, and Ottoman viceroys. Our salt market could boast only a handful of merchants, whereas in Sana’a there wasn’t just one market, but also a cloth market, grain market, silk market, raisins market, cattle market, thread market, coffee-husk market, caps market, carpet market, brassware market, silverware market, and firewood market—home to hundreds of merchants hawking everything from khat leaves and elephant-tusk ivory to coriander seeds, potash, turmeric, silk thread from China, and kaleidoscope bolts of the finest Indian linens. Our houses were a paltry three or four stories high, compared to the eight- or nine-story towers in which people lived in Sana’a. But it wasn’t just that Qaraah was small. I myself came to see the difference in the light. The sun hit the rocks around Qaraah at an angle that painted a ruby-red