I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops by Hanan al-Shaykh Read Free Book Online Page A

individual plate, drink milk and Pepsi from bottles.”
    Then he had criticized her for not giving the women advice about their medical and social problems. Ingrid had paused to collect her thoughts and laughed a series of short, irritable laughs. “Who am I to tell them to wash their hair?” she had said finally. “I’m here to speak to the mind, the heart. I’m here—”
    He had interrupted, his fist clenched: “You’re talking to the soul? The mind? While the mosquitoes and bilharzia worms run riot and qat dries up the mothers’ milk?”
    Something he had said on another occasion had sprung into her head, something quite different: “Qat, Ingrid I God sends it down like manna from heaven. He knows all about our poverty and gives it to us to chew so that we don’t want meat and chicken. We chew qat and its bitterness makes us forget the delights of food. Have some. It’s fresh. It’ll make your eyes shine!”
    She hadn’t reminded him of this piece of popular wisdom, but answered defensively, “I’m not part of a medical mission, and I don’t have the money to improve conditions. I don’t work for a government organization. But can’t you sense how happy the women are to have me here? Don’t you think I’m having some effect on this village? Do youremember when I wanted to revive beekeeping? I went to—”
    But he had interrupted her sarcastically: “You talk to the soul? You’re so vain I You must be under the illusion that everyone listens to you and believes what you say and acts on your suggestions. Don’t you realize that the moment you walk out of the men’s sitting room we discuss why you’re not married and whether you’re still a virgin?”
    Ingrid had suddenly felt afraid. Was her relationship with the village so one-sided? It couldn’t be. She had tried to convince herself he was sexually frustrated. She had a great relationship with the women, and the men too. When she was away, they all missed her.
    Mahyoub stopped sighing and broke the silence, interrupting her internal debate with a blow to the solar plexus. “I didn’t think I’d miss you. I felt as if my hand had been cut off. Every couple of days I went down to Sanaa and knocked on your door.”
    Ingrid attempted a laugh, and tapped him reprovingly on the arm like an older sister. She tried to explain to him that she had become part of his family, but soon lapsed into an uneasy silence. He reached out his hand, imprisoning her hand in his, then turned his face toward her, taking his eyes off the road. “I’ve fallen in love with you. I can’t changethat,” he said emotionally. “If you turn me down, you’ll break my heart.”
    Her hand fidgeted under his. It was a measure of her rebellion that showed plainly in her eyes, in the reddening of her nose, and the uncomfortable pounding of her heart.
    “I want to do it properly, Ingrid, the right way. I want to marry you and have children.”
    She shuddered. This was what she had feared. He was clinging to her as if she were a life preserver, trying love as a way to escape to Europe. She was like the others, then: like Yvonne, like Ferial, the Turkish girl, whom Ahmad had made a fool of, lavishing words of love on her. They had married and gone abroad and he had disappeared in the airport in Geneva.
    One foreign woman here obviously appeared indistinguishable from another. All she amounted to was a passport.
    She didn’t answer him. She let him talk on in his own language, which she understood fairly well, about the void she had left behind her, how angry he had been with her because she hadn’t left her address or phone number, how he had gone to the head of her school, who had claimed not to know them either. He had been scared she wasn’t coming back and had thought about finding a way of going to Denmark to look for her.
    Ingrid couldn’t help responding with scorn: “You knowDenmark well, do you? You’d have stood at the top of a hill and called my name and I’d