Henna House by Nomi Eve Read Free Book Online Page B

amulet in the secret sleeve pocketof my dress, and to fasten a triangle amulet ring around Asaf’s neck. The neck ring was fashioned with nine nails from different households, as was the custom. Inside the hanging pouch were the traditional magical elements that boys wore to pass through the dangerous crossings of their lives. There were a vial of mercury, baby teeth, dried rue, durra, and sesame. My brothers had all worn this amulet at their circumcisions and engagement ceremonies, and my mother kept it in the locked chest along with her other precious possessions. There was no music at the ceremony. None of the tabl drum or shinshilla cymbals of wedding festivities, no mothers clapping their hands over their mouths to say kulululu . My mother even refused to have my hands dipped in henna for the event, and so I was presented to my groom without the customary bright red palms of fertility and good fortune.
    After my engagement, I was prohibited from seeing much of my groom. This was in accordance with tradition. A boy and girl promised to each other from the same family were not supposed to develop affinities for each other, lest they mistakenly grow up thinking of each other as brother and sister. “This would lead to the abomination of incest,” Auntie Aminah explained. “Even if you are cousins, you can still be brother and sister in your souls. So you must not see him, or get to know him. There will be enough time for that after the wedding.” Uncle Zecharia moved almost a mile away from us, into a house far from where most of the Jewish families lived in Qaraah. He and Asaf lived close to a little mosque and two doors from an old one-eyed caravanner from Najran, with whom Uncle Zecharia became friendly. On family occasions, Asaf was sequestered with my father, brothers, and Uncle Zecharia, while I was kept in the bosom of the ladies of the house.
    My only real friend from those days was Binyamin Bashari, with whom I was still allowed to interact. We played the games of wild children—chasing lizards, squashing spiders, building forts out of sticks and stones, fashioning catapults out of straw, twine, and cast-off pieces of leather from my father’s workshop. Some of my earliest memories are of Binyamin shimmying up onto the subroof of our house to get a ball of gutta-percha that had gotten stuck up there during our exploits. I was very impressed that he could climb so high.
    Binyamin had been learning to play a long wooden flute, called a khallool . Sometimes he brought his khallool to the frankincense tree behind my auntie’s house, and we would sit in the great big saddle ofthe tree and he would improvise reedy tunes as crickets chirped along to his tentative melodies. Occasionally Binyamin would bring me disappointing news of my husband-to-be. “He is no good at Torah school,” Binyamin once told me. “He knows nothing of scripture, and refuses to learn the weekly portion.”
    â€œWhy do you roll your eyes at my husband? Are you such a scholar that you can call him dumb?”
    He shrugged and picked at a scab on his knuckles. “He isn’t your husband yet.”
    â€œHe will be.”
    â€œHe acts as if he is better than us Qaraah boys. He doesn’t talk to anyone, and keeps mightily to himself.”
    â€œWell, maybe he is better than you Qaraah boys.”
    â€œIs that what you think?” The half smile Binyamin usually wore turned into a scowl. And after that we never spoke of Asaf again, which made me glad because I knew that if the subject were to arise, I would once again speak words that would cut my friend, little ceremonial slashes to his soul, not to cause a mortal wound, just to draw blood and to relieve myself of a nameless burden.
    But I was never sure that Binyamin really disliked Asaf. Once I saw Binyamin and Asaf leaving Torah school together. They were following the teacher, a tall, emaciated scholar from Taiz, who was