‘You’re late,’ Sawsan whined as Fatima tumbled into her room.
‘I had to cut a thousand onions for lunch. Not all of us are brides-to-be and exempt from kitchen duties.’ ‘Well, let’s get on with it then!’
The room smelled spectacular. Sawsan was standing in the middle of piles of clothing, bags and footwear. On the floor lined against the wall were large glass decanters of scented oils, dilka and khumra; traditional Sudanese perfumes made with a mixture of sandaliya, musk, spices and French scents. Only married women used these perfumes. The groom’s family bought the ingredients as part of the dowry and the older, experienced women prepared the perfumes and frankincense in a small ceremony. Sawsan’s mother would give out small bundles of the frankincense to the other village women as gifts. A bride getting her own set of perfumes was an important rite of passage that all young girls dreamed about, except maybe Fatima.
A tall incense burner was perched on the windowsill and large clumps of burning coal glowed from within. As part of the wedding preparations, the bride’s new clothing sets would be perfumed with musk and sandalwood incense, folded neatly and wrapped up, each set of matching tob, sandals and bag together. These would be shown off to visiting women later, before they would be packed into the suitcases for Sawsan to take to her matrimonial home.
‘Hand me that small bag over there. Let’s put these three in. What do you think of this one?’
Sawsan held up a pale blue tob with purple and turquoise embroidery.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Fatima said.
‘Then in it goes.’
‘Honestly,’ Fatima laughed as she stuffed the tobs into the bag, ‘are you really going to hide all the beautiful pieces so that your cousins don’t give them the evil eye and burn holes into them?’
‘It’s not funny, Fatima,’ Sawsan huffed as she rummaged through the pile next to her looking for one tob in particular. ‘You know what they’re like. They jinx everything they look at and I’m not taking any risks.’
She pulled out a bright orange tob from the pile and handed it to Fatima.
‘I don’t know how you believe all this stuff. It’s all –’
‘Just put them in so we can hide the bag! I don’t need your nonsense-talk now!’
Fatima took the tob and crammed it into the bag, just as someone knocked on the front door. They heard Sawsan’s mother greeting the callers and a chorus of voices reply.
‘They’re here!’ Sawsan hissed in panic, grabbing things at random and throwing them to Fatima.
‘Where do I put the bag?’
‘Just stick it under the bed!’
Fatima kicked the lumpy bag and the last two tobs Sawsan had thrown at her under the bed as the bedroom door opened and four girls trooped in.
‘Sawsan! Just look at you, you’re positively glowing.’ Fatima – the other Fatima – stepped forward to embrace her cousin, smelling deeply, her eyes roaming hungrily all around the room, taking note of each item. Her smile stopped short of her sharp eyes which, when they alighted on Fatima, looked her dramatically up and down in an adolescent show of dislike. She let Sawsan go and reached her hand out to Fatima in cold greeting. There was no love lost between the two. The other Fatima and Sawsan’s fathers were cousins, while Sawsan and Fatima’s mothers were sisters. All of them were related to each other in some way but still separated into different camps.
Fatima returned the up-and-down look with a small sneer as Sawsan embraced the younger sisters and cousin who had tagged along. They picked up bits of clothing and accessories, ooh-ing and aah-ing, admiring Sawsan’s good luck and parading their envy. The groom’s family picked and bought all the items along with lengths of material that would be sewn into dresses to match the tobs, each set of clothing complete with a pair of matching sandals and handbag. It was a matter of luck – or the lack of it – for the bride depending on her in-laws’ good or hideous taste.
‘This colour is all the rage now. You’ll be just as dashing as the girls in Khartoum!’
Sawsan laughed nervously, pulling the garment out of the other Fatima’s hands and folding it tightly away. Fatima contained her mirth as well as she could. Perfuming the bride’s clothes was an important and happy occasion, and she didn’t want to ruin the day for Sawsan. Whenever the two Fatimas were together in the same room there was almost always a showdown for one reason or another; Fatima just couldn’t stand the other’s stupidity and insatiable appetite for gossip and backbiting. The other Fatima thrived on talking trash about anyone and everyone, half of which she made up, and a sizeable proportion of which was about Fatima herself.
They divided the work among them. Sawsan brought out the large glass jars of sandalwood incense from under the bed. She put a few sugary sticks over the coals and handed it to the other Fatima who positioned herself on a low stool on the ground, breathing in with relish the perfumed smoke as it bloomed. Outside, the house bustled with movement and the front door opened and shut more than once as other women came to help Sawsan’s mother with the wedding preparations such as grounding the spices, prepping vegetables and meat, cleaning out the storerooms and wrapping the gifts for the groom’s family. There were four days left until the wedding and these were the busiest days of all. However, what would have usually been a festive atmosphere with laughter, ululations, fits of singing and dancing was relatively subdued as the early events of the day overshadowed them.
Tomorrow, Sawsan would begin the preparations for the wedding ceremony, including sugar waxing followed by the bridal henna that would cover her hands, forearms, feet and shins. Fatima and the other girls would also have some henna drawn, but only one hand as they were still unmarried. She wondered – and she suspected Sawsan did too – whether these preparations would go ahead as planned with the sad events of today and yesterday. Especially if Sulafa’s son was found, meaning there would be mourning. Usually, when there was a death in the village weddings were either postponed completely or went on without obvious celebration. Out of courtesy the wedding family would inform those in mourning that they would postpone or cancel their celebrations, and the latter would usually insist things go as planned. Would that happen now?
‘So, what do you think of Sulafa’s boy going missing? Do you think they’ll find him alive?’
The other Fatima spread a dress out over the coals in the incense burner, keeping it at a dangerously low height as Sawsan watched with terror from the other side of the room.
‘When have they ever found someone alive in the river?’ Fatima asked with irritation. She despised the sensational tone with which the other Fatima talked about it, as if she was sharing another juicy morsel of gossip. Her mind flashed back to the image of Sulafa that morning, crumpled and weeping.
‘Ummi said her friends’ neighbour went missing once and they found her alive after four days,’ one of the younger sisters piped up. She was tasked with the folding and was doing a terrible job. ‘She said they found her all the way in Abu Hamad holding onto a tree branch.’
‘She floated upstream for four days all the way to Abu Hamad?’ Fatima snorted.
‘Abu Hamad isn’t upstream, its north of here,’ the other Fatima retorted.
Fatima rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to reply but caught Sawsan’s eye. Drop it, the look said. Fatima couldn’t be bothered anyway, and knew that what she would have said would be too complicated for the girls to understand. The Nile river was unique not only in that it was the longest river in the African continent and flowed from south to north, but also in that it actually changed course at one point near Abu Hamad so that it flowed in the opposite southwest direction before turning back north at Al Dabbah. So even though Abu Hamad was north of their village, the river couldn’t have carried this fictional neighbour in that direction unless she had been swimming with all her might against the current.
Fatima sprinkled white musk over the emerald-green silk which she folded and laid out carefully. She picked up the heavy coal iron, blew on it and pressed gently over the cloth, pressing the perfume in and smoothing out the wrinkles.
‘I bet he was cursed by the witch in the mountains.’ Not this nonsense again. Fatima looked up at Sawsan who had stopped her folding and was watching the other Fatima with worry. The younger girls looked eagerly at her too and, enjoying the attention, the other Fatima continued.
‘The old lady who lives in the mountains and comes down to the village every few years to curse people. Anyone who sees her and looks her in the eye dies of drowning. They say that she looks at you and whispers “moya”, and then it’s just a matter of time until you find yourself at the bottom of the river!’
‘Ahmed Sharif saw her!’ the cousin ventured, referring to her older brother.
‘That’s strange, I saw him last week at the co-op store and he looked quite alive to me,’ Fatima said.
‘He saw her,’ she insisted, ‘but he said as soon as she came down the street towards him he turned and fled as if Iblees’s dogs were after him.’
‘Thank God he ran, Allah saw him!’
‘Yes, thank God otherwise there would be no one to marry you, Fatima!’
The other Fatima gasped dramatically and dropped the tob she was carrying. Sawsan dove just in time to keep it from falling on the burning coal.
‘What did you say?’
‘Oh stop it, both of you!’ Sawsan implored.
‘You better tell your cousin to watch her mouth!’ ‘Or else what? What are you going to do, sit on me?’ Fatima said. The other Fatima was voluptuous, her body shape surprisingly mature for her age. While this was generally considered an attractive feature, Fatima found it grotesque.
‘This is all superstitious rubbish,’ Fatima said, looking at Sawsan pointedly. ‘It’s just a stupid story people tell to scare little children.’
‘Ahmed Shareef saw her! He saw her!’
Sawsan looked upset as she looked from girl to girl, then turned to Fatima. Her eyes flew open and her the colour drained out of her face. The bright red dress she had been folding fell out of her limp hands.
‘Fatima!’
Fatima turned away from the girls and looked at Sawsan, intent on defending herself, but Sawsan was not looking at her. She was looking at Fatima’s hands. Fatima looked down and cried out in alarm just as the smell of burning fabric reached her nose.
She had burnt a hole with the iron all the way through the silk and down into the blanket underneath.
***
Reem Gaafar’s A Mouth Full of Salt was published April 2024 by Saqi Books
Now available in hardback RRP £14.99 and eBook £8.99.
