Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami Read Free Book Online Page A

because you don’t follow my directions.”
    â€œI want a divorce.”
    Fatiha slapped her hand on her thigh, spilling tea on the table. “Curse Satan,” she said. “How are you going to feed the children?” She wiped off the spilled tea with a wet rag.
    â€œI already do. Do you think they can be fed on what he gives me?”
    Maati made a living driving a cab for a businessman uptown, but there was little of it left by the time his bar tab was paid. Halima had taken janitorial jobs two days a week and made extra money by selling embroidery to neighbors and friends. She looked at her mother with mixed defiance and expectation.
    â€œChild, be patient with your man,” Fatiha said. “Look what happened to Hadda.” Hadda was Halima’s neighbor in the Zenata shanty. Her husband had taken up with another woman but refused to divorce her. She’d gone to court, but he hadn’t shown up at any of the hearings. “Now she lives alone. She’s neither married, really, nor free to remarry.”
    â€œBetter than living with the son of a whore.”
    â€œSee? This is why he beats you. You talk back.”
    Halima heaved a loud sigh, but her mother was unfazed. Fatiha got up and wiped off the new microwave that her sons had brought her on their latest visit. She readjusted the embroidered doily that she kept on top.
    â€œI’m not like Hadda,” Halima said.
    â€œThat’s right,” Fatiha said. “You’ve got children.”
    Halima undid her hair and nervously tied it up in a knot. She refilled her mother’s glass. “How much did that sorceress of yours want?”
    â€œFifteen hundred dirhams,” Fatiha said.
    Halima chuckled. “I might as well give Maati the money. I could buy my divorce from him.”
    â€œEven if you do,” Fatiha said, “he won’t let you have the children.”
    Halima gnawed at her thumb. “Then I’ll bribe the judge,”she said, her chin raised. She waited to see if her mother would say something, would discredit this idea as she had all the others.
    Fatiha snorted. “You couldn’t bribe a lowly clerk for that much.”
    Halima stared ahead of her, resisting the tears that she felt were coming.
    â€œLet me take you to this sorceress,” Fatiha said softly. “What do you have to lose?” Halima looked at her mother’s face, at the sudden and gentle turn that her lips had taken, and wondered whom she should trust, the courts or the magicians.
    I T TOOK SEVERAL WEEKS and another three beatings, the most recent only yesterday, before Halima managed to save the money to visit the sorceress her mother had recommended. She rode the bus back to Zenata and made it home in time to prepare the evening meal. She was going to make rghaif. The batter would be perfect for dissolving the pinch of powder that the sorceress had sold her. As Halima kneaded the dough, she heard the sound of the muezzins exhorting the faithful for the afternoon prayer. She winced at the thought of what she was about to do: a grave sin it was, the use of sorcerers. Nevertheless,the money was already spent, and if indeed actions were judged by one’s niyyah, then she had already sinned by intending to use sorcery, so she might as well go through with it. As soon as the first rghifa was ready, she tasted it, burning her tongue in the process. The powder made it look yellowish, but the taste didn’t appear to be altered. She grilled the rest of the rghaif and prepared a pot of tea, a strong one, with more tea and less mint, just the way Maati liked it.
    She unhooked the clothes from the line in the courtyard and took them into the only bedroom, a dark, humid space without windows. She put them away in the armoire that was tipped against the naked cement wall because of its wobbly legs, straightening the sheet that separated her bed from the children’s as she walked out. She went to the