Elamrani
With Dreams of Leather and Rings
There once lived a girl whose sole source of happiness came from her mother’s embrace. The pair lived quaintly, far beyond the outskirts of any town. The girl’s father would often refer to their home as “the gates of the desert ” since it was the only settled and fixed thing for miles. The desert was inhabited by nobody but nomadic trav elers whose homes often took the shape of densely woven fabric that could be transported in just a satchel. Her father made his living by trading with the Bedouins, the nomadic people who occupy the desert. Over a meal of milk and dates, men and women and children would come in and out of the family's home, trading camels and horses for argan oil and clothing from the far lands in which they travelled. The Bedouins were a gentle and charming group of people. Upon one of their visits, the mother’s mother found herself so wooed by their way of life that she packed her life into a satchel and made her way off with them. She had always
been an eccentric woman with a spirit no one could quite hold down, or at least so Silya has been told. Our young girl’s mother would often voice her surprise, wondering how she hadn’t left with them sooner. Silya knew of her grandmother through stories after the physical memories of her began to wither. One did remain, a physical memory, an image of sand dunes and heatwaves and a tiny blue dot.
Silya still remembered the way the sand billowed in the wind and then set tled back down.
The family lived satisfied like this for a decade. The mother and daughter would take turns stroking the traded argan oil through one another’s hair, while the mother would relay stories shared by the travelers. One night, the mother told her daughter a story of a young princess who, in the wake of her mother dying, found herself in the terrible misfortune of being betrothed to her own father. The princess decided to escape and disguised herself with a bunch of an imal hides in which allows her to pass as an old woman. She makes her way into a new kingdom in which she weaves in and out of the two new identities she created for herself, forcing the prince of the new kingdom to fall in love with her in the process. The daughter’s eyes began to grow heavy by the end of the story, and with the
hush sound of the desert around her, she went to bed with dreams of leather hides and shining gold anklets and rings in cakes and handsome princes. When she awoke, she was quickly torn from the spell of her fanciful dream by the sound of a cry from the kitchen. She knew it to be her mother’s voice, but her initial thoughts of it perhaps being a surprised cry, were quickly dashed when her eyes fell upon her mother’s concussed head. The bloodied corner of the counter made it apparent as to what had happened. For three days, the daughter sat faithfully at her side, bringing in water and soup and listening intently to the medicine men, the healers and at the direst point shawafa, a healer with the help of black magic.
During the early hours of the morning, unable to sleep, she would curse the wretched story. The story seemed to have cast an evil on her mother’s fate. The story that seduced her into a dream state that kept her from getting ou t of bed. In the beginning they were hopeful but after night passed, murmurs of burials began. The shawafa said she was on the brink of death and the only way to bring her back to the life of the living was to shear the finest sheep and to drink its hair in a soup of olive oil, vinegar and cumin. It took Silya hours and hours under the
sun to shear the sheep and by the time she brought the soup to her mother’s bedside, her mother’s face was pale and her skin cold to the touch. It was not until Silya felt no rhythm on the inside of her mother’s wrist that she fell to her knees, silent sobs escaping her lips. Her first cycle since her mother’s passing had yet to come when three new women took up residence in her father’s house. Silya knew it was stupid, but nonetheless she thanked God for not realizing the second part of that damned story. The foreign women began sifting through the Argan oil collection she and her mother had nurtured for years, putting several carafes in their satchels. When they made their way over to the kitchen, Silya ran to her father demanding answers.
“I need help taking care of you when I’m gone making trades and collecting food, besides I cannot be a mother to you. These girls will be good for you.”
Without a fuss, Silya ran outside to her mother’s grave and counted each grain of sand that covered her. A ritual she started the night she was buried.
By the third night, the strange women had already delegated Silya to the closet next to the kitchen, rearranging
her room to fit her two new sisters, Rhita and Racha. Their hair glowed red in the desert sun, dyed from henna. Their skin was tawny, even in the moonlight. They were twins and often said the same thing at the same time, which irked Silya to no end. They were tall and beautiful; on e may default to elegant if they never had a chance to speak with them. They were snarky girls but hardly ever malicious as that would require interest. Their mother, though soft spoken, was stern and tight-lipped. She spoke to Silya in sentences no longer than five words and regarded her as if she was a mosquito trying to suckle at her skin.
“Silya, go skin the sheep.”
“Silya, go get water from the reservoir.
“Silya, massage this argan oil to my hair?”
These questions were hardly demands but something in between. Sometimes she complied and sometimes she refused out of disdain. Yet, even if she did refuse, the women neither yelled at her nor k icked her. They would simply frown a little bit and go on their way. But no matter what, whether she complied or didn’t, the women never invited Silya to their rooms for tea and gossip when she could so clearly hear them
through the tile. They would never ask Silya to go to the reservoir with them to pick up water. When Silya applied argan oil to their hair, they never did it back.
The days passed with the four women in the house, her father dropping by sporad ically and necessarily. Excitement began to bubble within Silya, she loved when her father came because he came with travelers and with travelers came stories. Silya floated back to the last night she ever lay side by side with her mother. During those days, Silya was careful to dream, but that night she allowed herself to slip into a world where she was lying her head on her mother’s lap .
It was quite an arrival, the bustle of the trading in her house was the first familiar feeling Silya felt since her mother’s passing. This time however, it wasn’t argan oil that Silya was looking for, it was stories. Or rather, the woman from whom the stories came. It was at this time when she remembered that she would often see her mother in the corner talking to an older woman usually wearing a blue caftan and red and green beaded jewelry around the shape of her face. When Silya found the woman, perched in the usual corner, she stalked her way towards her. Silya stopped short a few feet, unsure of what to say nor what to do. But when the old woman looked up and
they locked eyes, introductions hardly even seemed necessary. When the woman embraced Silya like they’ve known each other for a lifetime.
When they separated, the woman asserted “You are the daughter of my daughter.” Silya nodded her head. Tight-lipped and with a solemn face, the woman bent her head and went down on her knees to hold Silya’s hand. It was at this point that it finally dawned on Silya that this was her grandmother. The one that had left them so many years ago that she had forgotten her face, that she had overlooked her when she saw her talking to her mother so many times over the years.
“Your mother was a good woman. It is a shame the world lost her light so early, but we can at least be thankful she shared some with you.” Silya didn’t say a word, just watched her grandmother intensely. Watching and waiting for her to say something.
“I would sincerely enjoy sitting and staying but even though we haven’t been around each other much, you still must know I am not very good at sitting and waiting. So, I will impart this news I have to you quickly. There is a king coming from Mali, a rich king. It is said that wherever he goes he gives
so much gold to the people he passes, that the gold becomes worthless because there is so much of it. He plans to hold a feast once he crosses the desert, it will be near this house. Five nights from now, he will arrive. When he does you will wear this caftan.” She held up an intricately embroidered emerald, green caftan with a gold lining. “This was the dress I wore when I met your mother’s father, and the dress your mother wore to meet your father. It should not fail you now. Take it and hide it from those women your father has taken in. Do not tell anyone I told you anything about anything, your greatest power now is this information.” With that her grandmother left through the alley between the stables and the outhouse, her blue caftan waving in the wind as she made her way back toward the canyon.
Silya had stayed up that night thinking about what she was to do. She had a knack for leaving big decisions up to luck or fate or whatever you have. When it came to picking tilework for the walls, Silya usually closed her eyes and switched around the tiles. These were as big as the decision got. At this time, Silya had no idea what to do. So, she decided to work on what she did have. She took out the caftan her grandmother had given her. She went outside and under the palm tree that sat
near her mother’s grave, she started to dig. When the women came and started taking things, Silya took her mother’s jewelry and embroidery work and hid it next to her mother so it would not be bothered. First, she took the little satchel that held ornate gold jewelry, she would use these to embroider it on the center front of the caftan.
In and out, zig and zag. That night she used the light of the moon to guide her needle. Once morning came, her caftan shimmered in the dawn sun. She quickly moved to hide her things, packing her newly woven dress with her mother’s jewelry. Once she patted the sand flat against the root of the palm, she snuck back into the home. Sneaking past Racha, who was awake early that morning applying lip rouge and cheek stain. Engrossed in her v anity, she hardly noticed when Silya tiptoed up the stairs, to her tiny abode.
It was two days until the King was expected to arrive when the father came home unexpectedly. Out of breath he tells the women huddled around him “There is a king, a rich king. He is coming to this side of the desert. When he arrives, he will hold a five-day feast. This will bring gr eat business. I have come back to get everything sorted.” Before he had even
finished talking, the three women rushed to fix themselves, as if the king were to burst through the door right then.
What was there to do now? Her most prized asset had dissolved within a matter of moments. Now that the King’s arrival was public information Silya felt her hopes dash. Silya found some solace in knowing that she had very little idea of what to do before her father so rudely altered all her plans. The thought of her even trying to seduce the king, seemed like a fantastical daydream. Now with her stepsisters assured attendance, it would be even less likely that she would be able to catch the attention of such an endowed king. The entire notion of seducing a king seemed a bit grotesque to Silya anyways. She had no idea how old he was or what he looked like, just that he was rich.
Silya went out towards her mother, thinking about what her grandmother had told her. “Your greatest power now is this information.”
At the time Silya had assumed the information she was referring to was about the King’s arrival. I mean what else could she have been talking about? She dropped her head where her fingers had been running up and down the
embroidered buttons in the center of the caftan. In all her thinking she hadn’t realized she had been playing with an uprooted part of her caftan, the rest still buried under the root of the palm.
Silya began pulling the caftan out from its place. She waved it in the wind like a flag to get all the sand out of it.
The sand billowed in the wind and then settled back down. Silya stared expectantly at the caftan. What’s so special about you, she wondered. She began inspecting, pulling at buttons, twirling beads, unhooking jewelry. Arbitrary acts in the hopes of igniting some sort of magic. Silya thought for a moment, amid all of it, and almost whispered to herself that there had probably never been a time where she felt more directionless. With her mother around, her days were guided by her mother’s whim. Without her, Silya finally acknowledged that her life had been structureless to the point that she believed for a second that the only way out was to seduce a rich and foreign king.
“I’d believe that this dress was sewn with magical silk and cotton before I could see myself marrying some rich king,
alone in a big palace all the time, away from the desert? Away from my mother? ” Silya said to the wind. Silya was directionless.
She began digging out the things she buried for her mother, she knew nothing but that there was nothing for her at the gates anymore. With the frenzy of the new King, her absence would hardly be realized. At least not unt il after she’d be long gone. Right then, Silya knew she had to make it as far into the desert as possible, perhaps towards the coast where the cities were. Maybe someday she may run into her grandmother, and she could finally finish telling the story of her mother and father, of the caftan, of what was before.
She set her mother’s prized silk at the bottom of her satchel, acting as a cushion for the glasses of argan oil and perfume. Then she put more silk and the rest of her mother’s jewelry. Silya sat up, unraveling the caftan beneath her and felt an indent, a sort of weight, within it. She began ruffling the material in her hands, checking each of the linings until she saw an opening. Shaking the caftan, a silver ring fell out of the hem along with a piece of leather and a knife. Silya knew now she most certainly had to leave.
She threw her caftan over herself, put the knife and leather in her satchel and the r ing on her finger. She imagined herself now from the perspective of the house, how she was just a green dot amongst the dunes and how the sand billowed around her.
