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

mountain. It was a difficult climb, and her husband was away’?”
    Mahyoub had finally given in, climbed out of bed and gone to call the men to help him get Souad. They wrapped her in a blanket and took her off to the hospital. Ingrid understood from the episode that if the sick person was a woman it mattered less if she lived or died. She still remembered visiting a graveyard and noticing that women had one headstone and men two, but even though she recognized that life was harsh here, she had never managed to understand Mahyoub’s behavior toward his sister. The resemblance between the two had startled her, especially when Mahyoub covered his head, which made him look as if he had stepped straight out of a storybook. His head was flat from behind as a result of being swaddled so tightly as a newborn baby, and his features were delicate: he had small eyes like two black pearls, and a short, firm nose; he was slenderly built and had short fingers, which looked as if they had been melted down with use. He parted his curly hair to one side and smothered it in Brylcreem. He was proud of his hairstyle and when Ingrid asked him why he put Brylcreem on it he merely glanced in the car mirror and slicked it down. He was the only man who didn’t spit in front of her to moisten his mouth when the qat had made it dry.
    Ingrid tried not to let Souad, so eager for information, know what kind of state she was in. But how could she hide her annoyance, which always attacked her throat and chest in the form of red blotches, when she was up against Souad’s ultrasensitive radar system? Souad could pick up little wandering veins in the eyes, faint lines contracting the forehead, a slight, tense clenching of the fingers, and above all the inflection of the voice: did it fall gently on the ear, or lacerate the eardrum? Was the mouth slack when chewing food or properly closed? Were there signs of frequent swallowing of saliva?
    Ingrid thought up a number of reasons why she had to go back to Sanaa: she said the water seller might have forgotten to turn off the tap on his tanker as usual and her garden would be flooded. “That would be a blessing,” said Souad. “The whole quarter would soak up the water and pray for health and plenty for you and your family.”
    Next Ingrid gasped and said she had some homework to correct in Sanaa.
    “I’ve seen you go through a pile of exercise books like sheep through clover,” said Souad.
    She seized Ingrid’s hand suddenly and turned it over and kissed the palm and the tips of the fingers with her piercing eyes closed. Her skin was golden brown and smooth like apricots. She leapt to her feet, full of energyand sharp intelligence once more. “Let’s have coffee and I’ll read the cup for you.”
    She ignored Ingrid’s refusal and when she had poured the coffee she held the cup to Ingrid’s mouth. When Ingrid still refused to drink it, Souad tipped the coffee back into the jug and began moving the cup around and reading the grounds. “There’s a man standing here, saying something. It must be Mahyoub proposing to you.”
    Before Ingrid could digest this surprise Souad launched into an emotional speech that made Ingrid feel embarrassed as well as increasingly irritated. Souad accompanied her tirade with expressive head and hand movements, and her long silver earrings also played their part. Ingrid didn’t understand every sentence, but deduced that Souad was saying that Mahyoub loved her and that while she was away he had fallen ill and turned the color of turmeric and weighed as little as a baby.
    Ingrid shook her head and said nothing, but she felt somewhat mollified. Mahyoub must have been sincere and she wasn’t merely a way out to Europe for him. But Souad was demanding to know immediately if she would marry Mahyoub to relieve her of the burden her mother had placed on her. She had been left in charge of Mahyoub and she wanted her mother’s bones to rest in peace now instead of being