Henna House by Nomi Eve Read Free Book Online Page A

haze over everything. Houses were redder; food was redder; thoughts, arguments, dreams, laughter, marriages, births, and deaths were redder, a fact that made people think of blood more than they would if they lived elsewhere. As for me? My memories of my childhood are tinted by the color of that crimson sun.
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    I was eight years old at my official engagement ceremony in the autumn of 1926. My groom was a tender nine. It was a joyous and long-awaited day for my family, for it signified my protection from Confiscation. That is, if my father should live long enough for Asaf and me to reach maturity and wrap ourselves in the armor of matrimony. That day was filled with hope, Auntie Aminah told me. Hope for all of our futures. My father’s health was precarious, but everyone knew that the Confiscator was mercurial and that sometimes an engagement document was enough to keep him at bay.
    Heavy rain fell throughout that season. Auntie Aminah said that during a break in the storms, a hot wind bearing silty flecks of mud came in through our windows and coated everything with a layer of ashen dirt. She also said that the rain was sweet because the mountains were so close to heaven. I am sure that it tasted bitter and left everyone gargling with cistern water, but my auntie always embroidered herstories with as much skill as she embroidered my leggings, dresses, and head coverings. For the occasion I wore nothing more than my ordinary everyday antari muwadda dress of dark blue cotton. The whole front of the dress was embroidered with red triangles, white chain stitches, and cowrie shells called David’s Tears, which were to protect us from sorrow and the evil eye. On my head, I wore a fancy triangle gargush my mother borrowed for the occasion. It was made of black velvet and framed my forehead with a straight row of silver beads that dangled over my eyebrows. The top was embroidered with red triangles and florets in rows that reached all the way up to a little tip, giving the hood its distinctive triangular shape. There were also twelve horizontal rows of triangles in the back of the hood, and silver-thread cords over the brow and down my neck. Two silver chains hung from either side of the hood, and the ends of the chains were silver bell tassels that touched my shoulders. Whenever I moved, the beads on my forehead tinkled, and the tiny bells on the tassels did too, making a pleasant noise that sounded like running water. The back of the gargush was decorated with a heavy triple-hanging row of Maria Theresa thalers—Habsburg Empire–era silver coins that had made their way east through the ports of Genoa, Trieste, and Marseille to Egyptian and Red Sea ports. When I was a child, the Arabian Peninsula was awash in them. I didn’t know anything about the global trading currents that brought those coins to Yemen, but I did know that their tinkling helped me avoid the evil eye, and that demons scattered at the sound. Like all Jewish girls in the environs of Sana’a, I always wore a simpler version of this tight, heavy headdress from morning till sunset, both in and out of the house. My ordinary gargush didn’t have the Maria Theresa thalers, but it did have the silver bells and tassels that tinkled whenever I moved.
    I am told that I cried at the ceremony for no good reason, and that my groom ripped his pants on a nail on a bench. My brother Hassan said that we both looked like babies and that to prove it, in the middle of the ceremony, Asaf pissed his pants, though I am sure this is mean-spirited embellishment, for Asaf was surely old enough to hold his water. The ceremony was held upstairs in the men’s parlor of our house. Parched treats were served, and the men—our fathers—cemented the deal over the signing of documents and the blessing and sharing of a ritual cup of wine. There was little celebration, though. According to Sultana, my mother had seen fit to put a holy-name