The Bride Price (21 page)

Urgently Bryna looked around for Fatmah or Latifeh, but before she could find them, the men began to pray, reciting the Fatiha, the first sura of the Koran. Bryna had heard it so often in her months among the Moslems, she could say it herself.

When prayers were finished and the men gathered under a tree, Bryna left Pamela in the sparse shade of a juniper bush and went in search of Sharif’s wives. She found them sitting in the shadow of a huge boulder, surrounded by chattering women. Taking them aside, she explained Pamela’s weakened condition.

“If the Inglayzi is hungry, has she not enough sense to eat?” Fatmah asked rudely. “She does little but eat and grow fat anyway.” Irritated at having her kef interrupted, she marched toward Pamela’s couched camel, trailed by Bryna and Latifeh. Yanking down a small sack that hung on the saddle frame, she shoved it into Bryna’s hands.

When she opened it, the American girl found bread and a soft sheet of dried apricot paste, called “mare’s skin.” Mixed with water, the paste could be spread on the bread and eaten while on the move.

“See, even you are not so stupid that you cannot open a bag to get what is within,” the Arab woman snapped.

“No one told us...” Bryna tried to explain. Seeing Latifeh shake her head, she stopped, knowing her defense would do no good.

“Thou fool, can you kaffirs do nothing for yourselves? Must I also show you how to drink from a goatskin?” Fatmah raged.

“That won’t be necessary,” Bryna answered in measured tone, restraining her anger with difficulty.

Sharif’s elder wife glared at the American for a long moment. Let this witch defy her again and learn the consequences, she fumed to herself. Fatmah was in no mood for argument after swinging in a litter for hours, sweltering in the heat. But the girl said nothing, biting her tongue until the woman turned to leave.

“My lady,” she ventured then, “I have noticed some of the women leave their camels to walk for a while. May I?”

“Please do,” The old woman smiled nastily and stomped off to rejoin her friends in the shade.

Latifeh stayed behind, her annoyance tempered by practicality. “It would not be good idea to walk, Bryna bint Blaine,” she advised, speaking French as much as possible so there could be no misunderstanding, “There will be much work when we set up camp, and you are not accustomed to it. You should spare yourself at first.”

Suddenly remembering herself, she admonished, “If you are too tired to set up Nassar’s tent, no one else will do it for you. I know I will not. Then my nephew will beat you.”

The Creole girl was glad she had heeded Latifeh’s word when the caravan stopped for the night. Instructing the foreign women to watch, Fatmah, Latifeh, and `Abla pitched Sharif’s huge tent. It was the duty of the women of the family, even though the sheik had many servants. They spread the black-goat hair panels on the ground in the center of the camp and secured the edges with ropes before raising the poles underneath. They worked together smoothly, the entire process taking less than five minutes.

Then Fatmah directed Bryna and Pamela to a sandy spot in the gravelly terrain where Ali, Nassar’s lone herdsman, waited, ready to unload the household goods from the back of a pack camel. Bone-weary and sore, the foreign women were now expected to set up their master’s desert home.

When they set clumsily to work, Ali withdrew a short distance away to unload. Trying to ignore the stares she felt on every side, Bryna spread the tent material on the ground as Fatmah and Latifeh had. When the side wires were in place, she strained to raise the
am’dan,
or center pole, alone, refusing to allow her sick friend to undertake such heavy work. As Bryna struggled to tighten the flapping fabric over the pole, Pamela wielded a stone hammer awkwardly, pounding the pegs for the waist wires into the soft sand.

The women of the camp were noticeably silent as they loitered over their chores, watching the kaffirs’ efforts with sidelong glances. They sniggered among themselves and laughed aloud when the wind caught the goat-hair panel and pulled the cords from the ground, destroying the foreigners’ handiwork.

As Bryna and Pamela surveyed the wreckage, the Arab women returned to their work with sly smiles. Even Ali hid a smile behind his hand. Only `Abla came to stand beside her friend as Bryna fought back tears of frustration.

“It was not your fault it did not stand,” `Abla said sympathetically, her loyalties torn. Finally, unwilling to speak ill of her father’s wives, she pointed to a spot not ten feet away and recommended brightly, “Try pitching the tent there. Where you built before, the sand is soft and the pegs will never hold.”

With a grateful smile, Bryna followed her suggestion. `Abla helped Pamela with the pegs, ignoring the frowns of her father’s wives, and soon Nassar’s tent was pitched and anchored sturdily.

Open on one side to admit a breeze, the tent consisted of two chambers, a
majlis
and a women’s quarters. Only Sharif’s tent was larger. As sheik, he must have a
majlis
large enough to hold all the men of the tribe.

Once Nassar’s
majlis
had been organized, bags of grain and other supplies were dragged into the curtained women’s quarters to serve as pillows. Pamela lay down “for just a moment” with a grateful sigh. In the cooking area, `Abla hovered helpfully at Bryna’s elbow, explaining the duties of a Bedu housewife. The American girl listened as she picked through the copper cooking utensils that cluttered the space. Together she and `Abla explored the contents of the saddlebags Ali had unloaded.

“What’s this?” Bryna asked curiously, pulling out a wooden box.

The little girl took
it and opened the hinged lid. “Oh, it’s empty,” she said disappointedly. “You are supposed to keep things in it like
household medicines or anything Nassar gives you to put in it. But come now.” She summoned Bryna as she scampered from the tent. “I must show you how to keep the water skins cool.”

Outside the tent, `Abla showed her a bed of neatly piled brush upon which the skins were laid so air could circulate around them. They were shaded by a small canopy of goat-hair anchored on four short
sticks.

“Gathering brush is my job in my father’s household,” the little girl explained. “My father had one of our servants gather yours because Nassar has no servants or children. He ordered them to bring firewood as well. He does not say so, but I think he is grateful to you for helping me,” she added shyly.

“`Abla.” Latifeh beckoned. “Do you not have chores of your own to do?”

“I must go now,” the child called over her shoulder. “It is time to cook
dinner, but don’t forget to build Nassar’s fire.”

Taking an armload of brush to the
majlis,
Bryna found the young Arab sprawled on the saddlebags that served as his pillows. His mare, tethered to the center pole of the tent, whinnied softly when the girl entered.

“So there you are,” he greeted her arrogantly as he drank from a bowl, burying his nose in white foam. When he looked up, drops of camel’s milk dripped from his lips to speckle his black beard. “Where is Pamela bint Harold?”

“She is lying down.”

“It is not right for her to sleep just before sunset. It is unhealthy,” he said, but his protest seemed halfhearted. He eyed Bryna with new interest. His uncle had forbidden him to use her, but surely there was a way. “Why does she rest?” he asked carelessly.

“She is not feeling well,” Bryna replied, trying to ignore the man’s lecherous gaze on her. Stooping, she dropped the kindling beside the fire pit.

“Then she should rest,” the young Arab conceded magnanimously. “Perhaps you should both rest, for we reach the sands tomorrow. I will tell Ali to bring some
halîb,
some camel’s milk, to strengthen the golden-haired houri. I think the desert will be hard on my fragile flower, but not so hard on you. You are strong, eh, my tall beauty? You will bear me many sons.” Lazily he reached out and caught her hand.

“Not if I can help it,” Bryna said through gritted teeth as she tried to wrench free.

“You are my slave and do what I command,” Nassar ordered, scowling. “And I command you to sit beside me.”

“I thought it was time to cook dinner,” she argued desperately.

“I said, sit.” Nassar’s grip tightened on Bryna’s hand until she thought her fingers would break. With a mutinous glare at him, she knelt on a cushion as far from Nassar as his grasp would allow.

“Closer,” the young Arab demanded, yanking her toward him. Suddenly changing his tack, he said cajolingly, “You are to be one of my wives, Bryna bint Blaine. We should get to know each other better, I think.”

“The way you got to know Pamela?” she snapped.

“If you like.” He slid an arm around her and attempted to pull her near.

“I do not like,” Bryna announced, shrugging his arm from her rigid shoulders. “I will keep your house, Nassar bin Hamza, but I will not be your concubine.”

“You...you are my slave,” he sputtered in amazement. No woman had ever spoken to him in such away.

“Yes, but on our first day in Taif the sheik forbade you to touch either Pamela or me until we have made our
shahadas.
You took her contrary to his orders, and soon everyone will know what you have done. What will happen, I wonder, if you present such solid evidence of your disobedience again?”

For an instant Nassar saw the infidel woman through a red haze. Then he released her arm and threw himself back against the cushions, demanding, “What have you cooked for my dinner, worthless one? I want to eat.”

“I have not had time to cook anything yet,” she explained with exaggerated patience as if speaking to a spoiled child.

“By the beard of the Prophet, do not speak to me thus. You anger me, woman.” Nassar scrambled to his feet. “I warn you, Bryna bint Blaine, from this day on, I will expect my dinner on time. I will not punish you today, for I am pleased with the
beit sha’r,
the house of hair, you and my Inglayzi have built for me. But next time...” He let his voice trail off menacingly.

As he stomped off in the direction of Sharif’s tent, he yelled over his shoulder, “Thou cursed of your two parents, tonight I will eat with my uncle.”

Kicking at the firewood in a fit of Irish temper, Bryna did not notice Pamela peeping out from the women’s quarters until she spoke.

“Is he gone?” the English girl asked wearily.

“He’s gone.” Bryna stroked the velvety nose of Nassar’s horse. “Do not be frightened,
chère,”
she comforted the high-strung animal. “I’m angry with your master, not with you.”

“Must you make friends with it?” Pamela asked peevishly. “I do not know why these people insist on bringing filthy animals right into the tent.”

“Next to his camels, she is Nassar’s most treasured possession, and I am becoming rather fond of her, too.” Bryna scratched the mare’s forehead affectionately. “Her very presence in this tent proves something to the Arabs.”

“What is that?”

“That I am not a bewitcher. They believe evil cannot enter where a purebred horse is kept. Yet here I am.”

“I suppose,” Pamela agreed apathetically. “Let’s do go to sleep, Bryna. Nassar said we could rest, and tonight I am so tired, I don’t even want to eat.”

“I’ll be there soon. `Abla told me the goats must be milked when they are brought into camp in the evening.”

‘Then I will help.” Pamela started to rise heavily.

“No, you rest. I will milk and then I will join you.”

So exhausted were the girls that they did not even awaken when the women of the tribe trilled a greeting to a visitor that night. The
rabia,
or guide, for this portion of the journey had arrived. Sharif’s party would be accompanied by a different
rabia
in each territory through which they passed. Each guide would carry the banner of the local sheik, which advised that Sharif’s
smala
was under his protection while they were in his region.

Sharif’s wives hurried to prepare a meal for the
rabia.
They complained about the absence of the foreign women, but Nassar told them flatly that his women were not available to help.

When Bryna rose just after dawn, she was already lagging behind on the day. Throughout the waking camp, coffee was being made on fires rekindled from the last night’s embers. Because there had been no fire at Nassar’s tent, Bryna had to build one before she could start to cook. Pamela’s inept assistance was more a hindrance than a help.

Nassar came to breakfast in a sour mood. While he waited, he sipped coffee impatiently and unleashed a tirade upon Bryna’s head. She watched with relief when he left at last, leading his mare, to join the other men beside the line of couched, waiting camels.

As she hurried to wash the breakfast pots, Bryna watched Sharif’s tent out of the corner of her eyes. `Abla had told her yesterday that when Fatmah and Latifeh began to take it down, all the other families would hurry to do likewise for it meant
ráhla,
time to move. If the sheik’s tent remained an hour past sunrise, the caravan would camp for another day.

When she was about to give up, Sharif’s wives appeared and began to fold his tents. The foreign women found the dismantling of the tent much easier than the construction. They had everything packed when Ali came with their riding camels in tow.

“So at last you rise from your beds,” Fatmah hissed from her litter when they joined the other women. “You left us to cook for the
rabia
last night while you and the pale-haired woman slumbered like babes in your tent. God blacken your faces.”

“We did not even know the
rabia
had arrived,” Bryna explained.

“Hah!” Fatmah snorted. “How could we leave this morning without a guide?”

“Yes, hah!” Latifeh echoed indignantly.

Then the Arab women closed the curtains of their litters, thwarting any reply.

Sharif’s
smala
traveled swiftly through the morning, turning southward until the plain gave way to desert. The blazing sun beat down on them, the heat rising from the reddish sand to create mirages of water spread out like lakes before them.