Sarmada Read online

  She took a bottle of the grief-milk and examined it. She carefully took off the lid and sniffed: it was pungent and perfumed. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh and the very roots of her hair trembled. A vague fear filled her and she nearly thought about throwing the whole lot away, but then she decided she'd give it time.

  As she walked back to the storeroom, her foot slipped and the bottle fell. The white, blue-tinged milk spilled all over the ground. She picked up the scattered shards of glass with the ill omen of the spilled milk rending her heart. The liquid flowed down into the middle of the garden. She hosed the area down, prayed for protection against the Devil, and engrossed herself once more in planting pots of basil, oleander, and damask rose.

  On the spring morning of March 9, 1969, you could say that she nearly fainted when she saw that the plants that had soaked up the spilt milk were green, unlike any she'd seen before. Their wafting scent was like longing mingled with delicate pity, and as the fruit-, bud-, and flower-laden branches swayed in the spring breeze, Farida was bewitched by the soft, whispering rustle they made; it was like the song of wailing mourners. It stirred hearts and rescued the names of deceased and absent friends while the unique and unfamiliar perfume filled the air.

  Farida shook her head from left to right, trying to clear out the mysterious images that had populated her morning, and invoked the name of God. Then she listened once more, though now she heard nothing but a whirring whisper. “You're losing it, Farida,” she muttered to herself. She waved to her neighbor: “Good morning, Abu Khalid!” It was none other than Salama.

  “It certainly is a good morning,” he replied, adding “Praise the Lord who made you, you vision” under his breath.

  She went on with her work, spurred by the puzzle of the plants and the rustling of desire for something unknown, whose mysterious pigments had begun to tint her whole existence. She built a low stone wall around the garden and planted cypress trees and cactuses along the perimeter. Out of that square plot, she created an arousing oasis of shrubs, trellises and flower beds filled with basil, oleander, jasmine, and damask rose. She tended the morning glory and storksbills that climbed the walls, until the garden became a dark grove perfectly suited to her own shrouded isolation.

  Nine months after moving into the shed, she decided she finally had to do something about the endless stream of suitors, courters, and give-it-a-triers. She needed to find a suitable husband who'd protect her from the vulnerability of solitude and agree to marry her without any fuss or big celebration. One day, Aboud al-Dari, or Aboud Scatterbrains—as the people of Sarmada affectionately called him—came to propose. Farida's only condition was that she would stay in the shed and that he would have to come and live with her. They read from the Quran to make the engagement official; the wedding would take place in a month's time.

  Once the well-wishers had all left, Aboud just sat there, his round, wheat-brown face etched with bashfulness. He had big eyes that gave off an innocence and benevolence that didn't quite fit his giant's figure. His thick fingers were scarred and bruised from his daily battle with bricks: he was the most talented builder in the village and for miles around. He'd turned down the chance to go abroad, not swayed by the invitation to join his two brothers in Venezuela. He'd built his own house, stone by stone out of the ruins of a Roman temple. He'd saved the best rocks for the walls, cutting and shaping them with his uncommon skill.

  Aboud Scatterbrains told Farida how he felt in two sentences: “The day I saw you step out of Salman's Land Rover—God rest his soul—I couldn't sleep all night. My life didn't begin until the day you agreed to marry me and the shaykhs read the Quran for us.” Farida smiled but said nothing. Aboud wished her a nice evening and left the discomfiting silence for home.

  He didn't come the next morning to take her shopping for the things they needed, as he'd promised. Instead she heard news of him: He's dead. It was heart failure, most likely.

  “Hold on. Hold it right there—Let's stop for a second,” I interrupted the man telling the story. “Hold on, there's no need to embellish here. Did you just make that up? You can't be serious.”

  The man looked at me, leaving aside for a moment the important task of deciding what to say. “Why's it so hard to believe that Aboud Scatterbrains went to bed and never woke up? He asphyxiated. He up and had a heart attack in the prime of life. You know, a little emotion can melt away cold reason. If you just listen and pay attention, you'll discover how ridiculous death is, how cheap. Why would I lie? I'm supposed to be telling you the facts, not trying to win your approval, even if the only victim is a certain reality. I've got everything I need in order to change the story as I wish—to add or omit, create or destroy. What can you possibly have against an honest and serene death in the night?

  “Would it have been better if a rabid dog had run up and bit Aboud on the leg? Would that seem more plausible to you? Who cares if he died? Or went abroad? Or committed suicide after Farida spurned him? Or maybe he got killed while hunting or drowned while swimming down at the pond? Or what if he'd married Farida and lived happily ever after? Anything's possible, anything could have easily happened. But it didn't. And you know why? Because Aboud went to bed that night and never woke up. He developed a clot and his heart stopped.”

  Memories were awoken again a year after the wedding. Farida became the black widow once more, an ill-omened murderess, because Sarmada had an imagination, after all, just like any other village in the world. You were always bumping up against mysteries and miracles and genies and secret powers. It didn't take much to build a fortification against the meaninglessness of life out of the dry dust of legends.

  The man telling the story asked me to be quiet and uprooted anything in my mind that might have kept the truth out, anything that might have kept the truth of what had happened, and what had yet to happen, from getting in. He dropped me back into the world of Sarmada, where events take place according to its mood, paying no mind to the rules of novels.

  Farida met the outcry surrounding Aboud Scatterbrains' death with silence. She shut her windows and withdrew, surrendering herself to insuperable waves of sadness and deep feelings of disgrace and solitude. She was cursed, she felt, and there was no one there to cushion her fall, no one to lean on. She didn't attend the funeral, which was the source of much village anxiety, lest it mark the beginning of another spate of fatalities. Everyone thought it best to bury the deceased quickly and to return straight home to await the jackals' howling in the distant rocky wasteland.

  Yet Buthayna, her former husband's sister, couldn't stand it any longer and flew into a rage. She grabbed a can of petrol and attacked Farida's shed. She soaked the door and courtyard and then set it alight, shrieking curses on the wicked, evil witch inside. She kept shouting, “Get out of here! Leave us alone! Leave us alone, you crow!” until her cousins came and dragged her back to the house. Farida, trapped inside the house, crouched in a corner, wrapped herself in a thick woolen blanket, and sobbed without end. She woke with a start after a sudden blackout and ran to the kitchen. She grabbed a knife and made a deep gash across her forearm; blood came gushing out.

  “Forgive me, Lord! Forgive me, though I don't know what I've done to deserve your wrath!” She wailed as she fell to the ground.

  Salama saved her. He'd come over to pay his respects and cheer her up. He, for one, didn't like the idea of her bearing the blame for something that obviously wasn't her fault. And if she truly was cursed and prey to fate, well, then that wasn't her fault, either. It plagued him that she had no support, no family, nobody. He was distraught, but his wife, Umm Khalid, just kept repeating the same old curses, the same old poison against that “unholy chameleon!”

  He arrived at Farida's place and knocked. He waited. “Farida?” he called. “Open up.” No answer. He thought about going back home, but then he saw a thin stream of blood trickle out from under the gate. He knocked down the gate and found her, nearly dead.

  She finally woke up, and with a littl
e tender care from Salama and his newly compassionate wife, she recovered quickly. Her health improved, but she'd lost that arresting smile and she moved more ploddingly now. Her spirit sank deeper into the abyss of a grief that couldn't be remedied. She had to find a way to protect herself from want, and from the twisting corridors of emptiness and suffering. Nothing was better for it than tending her plants and her stash of grief-milk, extracting essential oils from flower petals and sesame seeds, and making her own dusky-tasting wine; discovering plant secrets. She took some bottles of the blue-gray grief milk she'd stored and began to run some experiments, many of which she'd learned as a child; she was the daughter of an herbalist who'd been fascinated by plants and their power to heal the sick.

  She sniffed the grief-milk and found it smelled ever so faintly rancid, with an underlying sweetness. She poured some into a copper saucepan and brought it to a boil, stirring in a handful of nigella seeds and some honey from the mountains. As soon as it started boiling, she sprinkled in a roux of flour and ghee. She rolled the resulting mixture into small knucklesized balls and wrapped them in cellophane like bonbons. She poured herself half a glass of homemade buttermilk and drank it down with one of her little bonbons. She licked up the clotted trail at the side of her mouth and instantly her stomach began to cramp. Her body went into spasms, she clenched her teeth, poured with sweat, and dissolved into a fit of violent sobbing unlike any she'd ever known. She wanted to call out for help, but no sound came. She curled up on the floor, writhing and twitching, until she finally lost consciousness.

  She came to that evening. She hurried over to the mirror and saw that her face was uncommonly white, smooth and refreshed. Stranger still, her spirits soared and her heart seemed full of laughter; she felt wonderfully happy. She realized at that moment that it was her duty to reawaken joy in the village that was surrounded by sorrow, stones, and dark blue basalt.

  To double check the substance's extraordinary effects, she decided to test it again on a woman from the al-Hamid family. The woman was suffering from the pain of a crushing loss. All her dreams had become recurring nightmares ever since her husband and son had heartlessly immigrated to some country in Latin America whose name she could never quite remember. She'd heard nothing from them ever since Saji had been killed in Caracas. Farida sat down beside the woman, Khoza al-Hamid, who'd started working as a hired mourner at funerals to heat the frigid ones up a bit. Her heart-breaking ballads caused previously held-back tears to pour out and made the families feel as though they'd given their loved one a fitting send-off. And she got some money for her trouble. Farida gave her one of the bonbons she'd made and told her to chew it. Farida's heart began to throb as she watched the woman's face contort in pain and go dark red. She was sweating and gasping for breath. The woman's daughter came in and screamed: “What have you done to my mother, goddamn you?!” Farida would have wavered had she not felt that what was needed now was a little patience.

  With feigned composure, she gestured to the girl to quiet down, and when calm gestures failed, she shouted back, “Be quiet!”

  After a helpless hour, the red mask cleared and the woman began to sob uncontrollably. She was crying for every year of her life, for all that she'd longed for and all that she'd lost. For two straight hours, she writhed and groaned and screamed and pleaded as all the toxins of her heart were gathered up and expelled through her eyes. Her body now only gently rose and fell. She was refreshed little by little and her breathing became more regular. Her face glowed tranquilly. Her voice was lilting, and though it was still drenched in grief, it had an arresting grace.

  “What did you give me, Farida?” the woman asked innocently.

  “Medicine, dear,” replied Farida, confident and soothing. “You ought to be able to rest easy now.”

  “It's like a weight's been lifted off my chest,” the woman said.

  Farida put the bedcovers over her and kissed her brow. “Go to sleep now. I'll come check on you tomorrow.”

  “God bless you. Thank you for everything.”

  “Don't mention it.” Before she left, Farida turned to the woman's daughter and said, “Send for me if anything happens.” Though she had no clue what, if anything, she could do if something actually were to happen. She said it only to inspire the still-suspicious daughter's confidence, and to remind herself that she was now sworn to a greater duty, which she couldn't ignore.

  Now that she'd managed, with her happy heart and winning smile, to regain nearly everyone's trust and made them forget all about that “cursed woman” talk, Farida started making preparations for a rice pudding party. She'd become famous throughout Sarmada and the surrounding area as a talented herbalist, though she'd still failed to win over Buthayna, her slain husband's sister. While Farida was making preparations for her feast, Buthayna was still consumed by her hatred and envy of this satanic outsider. After more than a few days' hesitation, she paid a secret visit to the famous soothsayer of Kanakir. “I want Farida's heart to burn,” she said, “like mine did when my brother died. I want her to suffer. I want her to get a taste of what she's put us through.”

  “Are you absolutely certain she's the cause of all the suffering in the village?” the soothsayer asked.

  “She's the cause of all that and more. I'm a million percent certain. Ever since she came to Sarmada we've had nothing but death and bad luck.”

  The soothsayer warned her that the spell wouldn't work if Farida was innocent.

  “At least I'd know then that she was,” Buthayna quipped.

  “Okay, as you wish.” The soothsayer consented indifferently.

  She agreed to prepare the amulets for driving out evil in exchange for a 21-karat gold ring, a ram with a broken horn, and an eighth-kilo of the choicest raisins. Buthayna handed over the ring and the raisins and promised to bring the ram after the job was done. The soothsayer told her she also needed one of Farida's nightgowns, which Buthayna had no trouble getting among the things Farida had left at their house, and she also got her mother's name and date of birth from the marriage certificate, along with several other silly things the soothsayer asked for. Buthayna followed the soothsayer's instructions very carefully: she brought everything the soothsayer had requested. The soothsayer then set about creating the most powerful spell she could, with help from the secrets contained in the pages of Abdullah al-Hazred's Al-Azif.

  As the full September moon shone in the sky above, the soothsayer withdrew to her private chamber and unlocked the ancient chest. She carefully removed and unwrapped the book of death's secrets, known as Al-Azif. She admired the binding, made from the tanned flesh of people who'd died in horrific accidents, and illustrations made with needles. She remembered the advice her father repeated every time he read a chapter from the book to her, revealing the secrets of death: “Never use this book unless it's absolutely necessary.”

  She analyzed Farida's name with geomancy and discovered that she was, in fact, a descendant of one of the twenty lost angels, who were sent to Earth when it was created to help set things up and to help humans arrange their work so that they would have a specific mission in life. Twenty of these angels forgot their original allegiance and refused to return to Heaven when called by God. The Earth had seduced them and in its deficiency they'd discovered that eternity is frightening and painful. So they disobeyed the divine warning and married members of this misguided, inconsequential mortal species. Their descendants were a plague upon the earth, for they had inherited a corrupted, rancorous, jealous nature. And when their waywardness reached the point of no return, God twice ordered that they be destroyed: once when he wiped out Iram of the Pillars and once with Noah's flood. Now it was true that the descendants of the Twenty had lost much of their power, but they continued to transmigrate and become reborn, and they carried on from one generation to the next, infiltrating human society, undetected by all but those who possessed the knowledge of the Names of the Dead, which the author called Al-Azif.

  The soothsayer searched fo
r the right spell, invoking the help of a giant demon servant, a direct descendant of the genie who'd gobbled up the author of the book in a Damascus alley some thirteen hundred years before. She took the book in her trembling grasp, unaware that it was the last existing Arabic copy of one of the most controversial texts in history. Al-Azif, or the Necronomicon, is over 900 pages long and divided into seven chapters. It was written by a Yemeni poet called Abdullah al-Hazred—which, perhaps, is a corruption of Hadramaut—who wrote it after many years of solitude spent in the desert hunting the few powerful, if ostracized, genies and demons left on earth. They, the genies and demons, had been around a long time before God decided to cast them out and replace them with humankind, for whom he had a special affection. Al-Hazred, also known as the Mad Poet, had written a history of the deep past, filled with rich details, which hardly troubled those who believe in reason and those who judge their own five senses to be sufficient. He dedicated his peculiar life to searching for the legendary ruins of Iram and symbols of antediluvian worlds hidden here on Earth. He named his book Al-Azif, after the noises insects make in the night: the voices of genies and demons.

  Abdullah al-Hazred's tragic demise put an end to his search for the descendants of the Twenty before he could complete it. In a Damascus market, a giant genie suddenly appeared right in front of him and bit off his head. The people in the market just watched in horror as the genie devoured his body piece by piece and from that day on, they couldn't stop trembling; they called this new illness epilepsy or “the point of seizure.” And it was at this “point” that the veil obscuring human vision was finally pulled away, or rather that the formerly invisible expanses of the mind were revealed, and the victims saw that the void is actually filled with the dead and the mutilated, with genies, demons, and other creatures, and that the mind would never be the same.