Behind the Veils of Yemen Page 13

  “Those aren’t ripe yet. They’re still green. But we might be able to find some in the village.”

  Kevin parked the van next to a long building walled on the lower half with bricks and the upper half with stained-glass sailboats. We got out of the van and stretched the stiffness from our legs after the six-hour ride.

  “I’ll check us in.” Kevin went into a door marked “Office.”

  I looked for a glimpse of the sea between the bars of a white iron gate. A small patch of blue-green water sparkled two hundred yards away. “I see it!” I cried. “I see the beach!”

  The children huddled around me. “Thank You, Lord,” I whispered. “Thank You for sea and sand and fresh, salt air.”

  We unlocked the door of our cottage and entered a short entryway that led to a center bathroom. The doors to the rooms on each side required separate keys. Kevin unlocked them both, and we tossed our duffel bags under twin cots made of wood with rope rungs. I flipped the switch on the air conditioner. Nothing happened.

  “What is this!” I exclaimed.

  “Khokha has no electricity, remember?” Kevin set our snack box in the entryway. ”They turn on the generator at sundown.”

  “They turn it off during the hottest part of the day? Yeah, that makes sense.”

  I wiped my face on my balto sleeve. “Why don’t we go into the village to buy our picnic stuff? Maybe the A.C. will be on when we get back.”

  Five miles away, the Khokha village was a small conglomeration of cement block buildings that looked as bleached and weathered as the palm frond fences between them. We bought cucumbers, oranges and freckled bananas from what appeared to be the town suq, a cluster of four wooden tables huddled under a single thatched awning. A small entourage of children gathered to help us. Older eyes scrutinized us from the shade of a nearby tamarind tree.

  We made our way to the baqala [grocery store] sandwiched between barefooted children. They crowded into the store behind us, squeezing us against the counter. The shopkeeper clapped his hands and shouted to shoo them away. Cheeks bulging with qat, he welcomed us. “Marhabah!”

  We bought loaves of rootee and triangles of cream cheese as dozens of small eyes peered in through the windows. The shopkeeper lifted Jack high in his arms and kissed both of his cheeks. Jack started to protest, but the shopkeeper handed him a lollipop.

  “Shukran [Thank you].” Jack smiled, handing me the sucker to unwrap. Jaden and Madison chorused “Shukran” for theirs as the shopkeeper chatted with Kevin.

  Twice as many children had gathered to guide us away from the baqala. Jack gripped my skirt, frowning as small hands reached for his white hair. Madison smiled shyly as girls pushed to be near her. Jaden walked with Kevin. He tucked his head down as if he were walking through a windstorm.

  “Mommy, what’s that?” Madison pointed to a round, thatched reed awning. “What’s that camel doing?” All eyes followed Madison’s pointing finger.

  “Zait [Oil],” a man called from under the tamarind tree. He spat qat-green saliva. “Ta’aloo, ta’aloo [Come, come]!”

  He sprang from his straw mat and waved us to the awning where a camel walked slowly in a circle. The camel was brown and dusty in his harness, bound to the spokes of a huge wooden wheel that was connected at the center to a giant stone pestle. As the camel walked in a circle, the pestle turned on a massive stone mortar. Oil poured from spigots below into plastic buckets on the ground.

  “They are grinding sesame seeds into oil.” I pointed to a partially covered cart filled with burlap bags of seeds.

  “Tamam [Good]?” the man asked, his teeth tinged with green.

  “Tamam!” Kevin answered.

  We clustered against the wooden rail. The camel ignored us. But the qat-spitting man suddenly grabbed Jack and hoisted him high, placing him on the wheel at the edge of the mortar. I gasped, reaching involuntarily to grab him back.

  Jack grinned, his little white head bobbing as he went around on his carousel. I tried not to look at the edges of the grinding stone or the huge pestle rolling next to him. I held my breath, trying to smile as Jack came back into view.

  After his third round Jack was finished. “I want down, Mommy!” he yelled. I exhaled my relief.

  “Khalas [Finished]?” the man asked. He deftly reached behind the camel for Jack, returning him to my outstretched arms.

  After a good night’s sleep under powerful air conditioners, we spent the morning playing in paradise. The Red Sea was deliciously cool, clear and salty, and the strip of beige sand was wonderfully deserted. The wind whipped small waves in the water that delighted Madison, Jaden and Jack. They splashed as Kevin swam nearby. I swam, too, wearing the long-sleeved dress and leggings I had made from swimsuit fabric. I grinned at Kevin’s whistle.

  “At least I can swim without drowning,” I said. “I’m not going to sit and swelter while y’all splash and play.”

  “Yeah, poor women.” Kevin looked thoughtful. “You never see them go in the water, do you? They sit in the sun in their black garb watching their husbands and children splash in the water.”

  After dinner we sat around a white plastic table under the trees. The sky was dark and full of stars. The breeze gently rustled the palm fronds as a string of lightbulbs dangled overhead, spilling enough light for us to play a family game of cards.

  Kevin looked at me across the table. We smiled at each other over the sleepy, nodding heads of our children.

  “Tamam?” Kevin asked.

  “Tamam,” I whispered back.

  On our fourth morning we walked onto the beach as a fishing boat returned from its long night at sea. Less than thirty feet long, the small dhow [traditional Arab sailing vessel] was handcrafted of seasoned wood stained dark from years at sea. An outboard motor was fitted on the stern, and a naked mast stuck up from the middle. Its six sailors were bare-chested and deeply browned. A few wore ragged, unbelted trousers. Most wore the local futas [wrap skirts], rolled tightly at the waist.

  The dhow pulled near to the shore, and two fishermen jumped out as a small white truck pulled up on the sand. Men spilled out of the truck bed, rushing to help the fishermen haul the large green net. They formed two lines opposite each other. They braced their legs in the sand and hauled the bulging net, hand over hand, in unison. They strained and pulled like a tug-of-war with the net. They heaved with grunts and shouting, sliding the net slowly forward to gut the sand with a wide, wet trench.

  “It’s full of fishies!” Jack cried.

  We moved closer. The net wriggled with fish of all sizes flapping and flaying inside. When the net reached the truck bed, the men scooped the fish with baskets and dumped them onto blocks of melting ice. The last few were wrestled directly from the net. Then the men who had come with the truck left with it, balanced between fish and ice on the truck bed.

  The fishermen dragged the net back to the sea and washed it. They picked out seaweed, soda cans and other embedded debris and stacked the net carefully on the stern. They started the outboard motor and chugged down the beach. About fifty yards away, they killed the engine and secured the anchor, then gathered their meager belongings and held them high over their heads as they swam to shore.

  I watched their wiry, brown backs glisten in the sun as they walked away from the water and disappeared into a grove of palm trees. “I wonder if that was a good catch or a bad catch,” I said to Kevin as I spread our towels on the sand. “The fishermen didn’t seem too excited.”

  Kevin rubbed globs of sunscreen on his arms. “It’s probably just another day’s work to them.”

  “I guess so.” I looked at the small dhow bobbing gently on the water. It seemed useless, floating with its outboard motor tilted powerless out of the water.

  “Will the fishermen come back?” Madison looked up from the trench she was digging.

  “Yes, honey. They’ll be back at sunset and fish all night again.”

  “How can they see in the dark?” Jaden wrinkled his face in a puzzled fro
wn.

  “They can’t really. They use a lantern like that one hanging on the mast. God gives them light, too: the moon and the stars. They are like a map for the fishermen.”

  “But what happens when clouds cover the sky and they can’t see the map?” Madison studied the boat.

  “Well, I guess they have to concentrate on what they can see.” I kicked off my flip-flops.

  Jaden folded his arms across his chest. “I would fish in the daytime,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s dumb to fish in the dark.”

  Kevin laughed. “But sometimes the dark is when the best fishing takes place.”

  At noon we went back to our cottage to prepare our patio lunch. I opened a can of Danish wieners, split open small rootee loaves and set out ketchup. We bowed our heads, thanking God for our meal and our vacation. We ate hungrily, gulping down hot dogs and several small bags of local chips.

  Madison stood from her white plastic chair and turned slowly toward the patio door. Her food was half-eaten on her paper towel.

  “Finished already?” I asked. “Do you want something else, honey?”

  Madison did not answer. I turned to look at her. I dropped my cream cheese sandwich, knocking over my water bottle. “Madison, are you all right?”

  Her face was tilted down. Her eyes seemed blank, focused on an obscure spot on the floor. Her mouth was jerking, her lip twitching upward on one side of her face. She did not answer me.

  “Kevin, she’s choking!” I screamed.

  Kevin’s chair flipped backward to the concrete as he jumped up to grab Madison. “Madison, honey, are you all right?” He jerked her face to look at him.

  “Is she breathing?” I shrieked.

  “I can’t tell!” Kevin yelled back. He spun her around and knotted his arms around her abdomen, jerking sharply upward. Madison did not respond. She seemed limp in his arms.

  “It’s not helping!” I cried. “Maybe a hot dog’s caught in her throat!”

  I forced my fingers into her mouth to see if I could dislodge it. Madison was unresponsive.

  Jack began to cry. Jaden ran back and forth on the patio.

  “What can I do, Mommy? What can I do?” Jaden sobbed, wringing his hands. Jack cowered in the corner of the patio.

  “Pray!” I screamed at him. “Pray for your sister!”

  “Dear God!” I shouted as I tried to dislodge what I assumed was stuck in her throat. “Don’t let her die! Don’t let her die!”

  I was screaming. “Madison, darling! Can you hear me?” Then I yelled at Kevin, “Go get help! See if there’s a clinic near here.”

  Kevin ran out of the cottage and down the path to the office. He was back in seconds.

  “No one’s in the office, and it’s locked,” he panted. “They’ve all gone to the mosque for prayers. A clinic would be closed, too.”

  He struggled to keep his tone even as he tried to breathe. “There might be a clinic open in Hays. Do you want to try and go there?”

  Madison coughed. She cleared her throat and backed away, looking at us. No longer limp and unresponsive, she was bewildered and frightened. She did not seem to know what had happened.

  “My mouth feels funny, Mommy,” she said. Tears began to fill her eyes.

  “It’s okay, baby,” I said, pulling her into my arms. “It’s okay.” I knelt on the doorstep and took her on my lap, gently stroking her back and arms. “You’re going to be all right.” I tried to still the quivering in my voice. My arms and legs were shaking like jelly. Silent tears gushed down my cheeks, but I hid them from Madison as I held her tightly in my trembling arms.

  Jaden came close and leaned over us, wrapping his arms around both Madison and me. Jack joined us, stretching his little arms as far as he could around Jaden’s. Kevin watched from across the patio, his eyes glistening as he looked at mine.

  “Mommy, my mouth is tingling again.” Madison’s eyes widened as her voice rose in alarm. She sat forward in my lap, with both panic and pleading in her face.

  I rocked her back and forth. Jaden and Jack stepped away, their eyes widening with Madison’s. I struggled to hold back tears.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. Mommy’s right here.” I looked at Kevin. “What do we do?” I whispered.

  “We can pray,” Jaden whispered back, quietly watching.

  I stared at him. “Yes, honey. We can pray.”

  We gathered around Madison. Kevin led our prayer. “Lord, please help Madison’s mouth to stop tingling. Help us find the help she needs, Lord. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

  We all looked at Madison. Jack played with his shells, making car sounds as he drove them around the table.

  “We can pack up and take her to the hospital in Jibla, but it would be dark before we got there.” Kevin said. “They probably couldn’t do anything tonight anyway.”

  “We can’t even call them!” Frustration cracked my voice. “The only phone is in the office, and it’s locked.” I held Madison more firmly. “I wish our cell phone worked here. What if it happens again?”

  “I don’t know.” Kevin shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  He sat down on the other side of Madison and encircled us in his arms. “We’ll have to wait for the men to get back from the mosque. We can use their phone and call Jibla.”

  I nodded, gritting my teeth. I felt like I was groping in the dark. Lord, help us through this! I cried silently.

  “How are you doing, honey?” I brushed hair from Madison’s face and gently massaged her back.

  “Okay,” Madison whispered, leaning against my shoulder.

  We waited on the patio an interminable hour before the men’s motorcycle roared noisily back into the compound. Kevin was at the office door before the motorcycle was. He came back twenty minutes later.

  “I talked with Lisa in the pediatric ward,” he said breathlessly. “She said it sounds like Madison had some kind of seizure. She said to bring her to the hospital as soon as we can, but to wait until morning. We would get there too late tonight. Driving would be dangerous, too. People don’t use their headlights, remember? The mountain roads can be deadly.”

  I nodded and exhaled, realizing I had been holding my breath. “At least we know what to do,” I whispered, seeing a faint beam through the storm.

  I moved Madison from my lap to Kevin’s. “We need to get packed so we can leave first thing in the morning.”

  After I finished packing I tried to force cheerfulness into my voice. “Y’all ready for some fun?” I grabbed a board game and a package of cookies.

  We walked hand-in-hand down the lane to the tables under the trees, as we had done each afternoon. The breeze was no longer light and teasing. It had strengthened into a rough wind. Every move we made on the game board was doubled by the wind. Game pieces blew to the ground, mingling with sand.

  “We’ll have to put rocks on the cards, won’t we?” I laughed. But I did not move to collect any rocks.

  “I think the wind won this round.” Kevin gathered the scattered pieces and returned them to their box.

  Jack left his chair to search for shells to add to his pockets, while Jaden studied a centipede crawling on the ground. Madison sat in her chair, watching a dog sleeping near the dining room door. I leaned back in my chair. The palm fronds overhead were dancing in the wind, rustling like stiff taffeta. Two black ravens, their eyes as sharp as their beaks, studied us from three feet away. They stealthily hopped closer to steal the children’s cookie crumbs. I waved my arms and shouted to chase them away.

  Madison went to the brown, short-haired dog, offering him a piece of her cookie. She looked like a china doll, delicate and fragile. Her light hair was like a golden cloud as she bent to pat the coarse, gritty head of the dog.

  “Not my baby girl, Lord.” I clenched my teeth. “Not my baby girl.”

  Over the next four days we visited two doctors and two hospitals. A kind German doctor at the Baptist hospital in Jibla told us that seizures in childhood were not uncommon.
He told us that Madison might never have one again. He patted my hand and sent us on our way back to Sana’a.

  On our drive back, Madison screamed out with terror in her eyes. “Mommy, my mouth is tingling again!”

  I reassured her that it would pass, reaching back to hold her hand from my front seat. I ignored the pain in my arm as I held it for several hours.

  The scene repeated itself the next day. Eyes wide and full of panic, Madison ran to me from her play. “Mommy! Mommy! It’s doing it again!”

  I held my trembling little girl in my lap and soothed her tears while gently massaging her neck and shoulders. “Mommy’s right here, honey.” I kissed her cheek. “It’ll be over in a minute.”

  I kept my voice calm to soothe the terror in hers. But my own emotions raged inside me like lava deep in a volcano. I wanted to stop my daughter’s suffering, but I could not. I could only hold her through it.

  Two nights later Madison’s screams cut through the quiet of our fitful sleep. “Mommy! Mommy! Make it stop!” I flew from my bed to hers, struggling to catch the breath I had left behind. Kevin stumbled in beside me, switching on the overhead light.

  I put my arms around Madison. “What it is it, honey?” I fought to keep the panic from my voice.

  Madison stamped her foot on the floor and rubbed her hand. “My foot’s asleep, and it won’t wake up!” she wailed. She slapped her foot again on the tile floor.

  “My hand’s asleep, too, Mommy. It tingles. So does my back. Up and down! Make it stop, Mommy!” Her tears streamed onto her nightgown. “Make them wake up!”

  I sat on her bed and pulled her gently into my lap, my eyes locked on Kevin’s as I held her.

  “There, there, honey,” I said, forcing a calm I did not feel. “Maybe you slept on them wrong and they went to sleep along with you! Silly foot! Silly hand!”

  I massaged her foot for several minutes and then gently propped it on her bed as I massaged her back along her spine. “Is this where it’s tingling?” I asked.

  Madison nodded, sniffing. Again my eyes locked on Kevin’s. I slowly rocked Madison back and forth in my arms as I rubbed her back. I sang a lullaby I had sung to her as a baby. I fought to keep my trembling voice even. I wiped away tears dripping down my cheeks so that Madison wouldn’t see them. I talked calmly, but I was wrestling a whirlwind in my heart.