“Beautiful,” she said when she met up again with the man and his urn at the top of the staircase. “So where can I find the people who make these things?”
“Oman,” he answered, nodding with pride.
“Oman? Ayna? Where?”
“Yes, Oman.” He lifted a cup. “Please, for you more coffee?”
“Well, that was a big help,” Rachel muttered as she tromped wearily back down the stairs into the blinding sunlight, suddenly finding herself caught up in a stream of people heading toward the far end of the souk. As the gate neared, she thought she heard the sound of babies crying echoing off the walls. Then she smelled the smell. “The goat market,” she remembered the concierge saying. “It is really something to see.” She instinctively grabbed the Leica as she passed through the entry, and began to capture the chaos around her. Hurrying men dragged reluctant animals behind, impatiently scooping up the wriggly little things under one arm to rush toward the center of the square. Some of the goats seemed oblivious to their fate while others appeared to be fighting for their lives, twisting and pulling back on their leads.
Rachel was eagerly devouring it all from behind the lens. But as she moved deeper into the fray, her pace slowed. The bleating had become louder and more frantic, and through a wall of men she watched as the tethered animals were paraded in a circle around a crowd of buyers noisily shouting out their bids. A stir erupted beside her as a goat no bigger than a cocker spaniel broke loose and scrambled to escape, its eyes meeting Rachel’s with a look that threatened to bring back all the feelings she’d been trying so hard to keep buried.
Behind her she could hear a mournful moan echoing from the edge of the square. In a dusty pen an emaciated cow was endlessly circling a metal pole, hopelessly determined to free itself from the short rope tied around its neck.
Rachel let the camera drop down against her stomach and pushed her way out of the crowd toward the exit, her head spinning. What the fuck?, she wondered as she tried to slow her breath. She’d seen so much worse than this before, so why this lame reaction now? But just as she was reaching the gate, something caught her eye that made her stop. It was a goat with a pink tail, and on the other end of the rope was the strange old woman she’d literally bumped into in Muscat, the one who knew her nickname. “Lil’ Cherry Bomb,” she’d sworn she’d heard her say that day.
True, there may be more than one goat in Oman sporting a pink tail, but still. She brought the camera back up to her eye with a shaky hand, pretending to focus on a group of men ten feet away. No matter how odd this woman might be, she was still a woman, and Rachel knew better than to take a picture of an Arab woman without first asking permission. Strictly speaking, taking a photo of anyone in the region without their knowledge was considered a criminal act under sharia, punishable both in this life and in the hereafter, or so they claimed.
But the gentleness of this country had made Rachel a little less prudent than usual, so when she pressed the shutter release and the aperture opened up to reveal the woman looking straight back through the lens with her one clear eye, Rachel was a little surprised. Yet instead of turning her head or shooing Rachel away, the woman was walking directly at her, her breasts swinging freely beneath her abaya, and was suddenly right in front of her face, pushing the Leica aside and poking her finger into Rachel’s own chest. Rachel took a deep breath and steeled herself for a well-deserved scolding.
The old woman’s words came out softly and silvery, like the vibrations from a harp. “My child, it is only by opening the eyes that one can open the heart. Know that there are times it will hurt, yet there can be no healing where there is no pain.”
Rachel stood stunned for a moment as the woman retreated with her four-legged sidekick, its pink tail wagging happily behind them. “Wait, do you know me?” she finally managed to cry out, her voice battling the sounds of the frenzied market. But the old woman continued ahead, her back turned to Rachel, who stood transfixed in the middle of the bedlam surrounding her.
16
“Can we slow down a bit, if you don’t mind?” Ariana’s nervous laugh blended with the rush of water flowing through the ancient irrigation ditch below. Hani shortened his steps atop the narrow stone path that abutted the stream, the only route that led through the lush grove thick with date trees. The abandoned flip-flops and sandals littering the ground were a sign of just how difficult the walk might be for Ariana. He should have said something when he saw her shoes earlier that day, when they had met in the lobby of the hotel after his morning meetings for their excursion. But those straps that crossed three times around her slender ankles looked so nice that he lost his train of thought, and then they were in the car and it was too late.
The hours they had spent together the night before seemed to have flown by as quickly as a jet across the wide desert sky. He tried to remember what they had even spoken about. They had cautiously tiptoed around anything too personal, both of them still a little wary from the bumpiness of their initial encounter, and though he still couldn’t quite figure Ariana out, he could see there was more beneath that makeup than a person would ever think. And Hani, he liked what he was seeing.
“It is not much further,” he called back to her. “And trust me, it will be worth it.” When he had come across Ariana this morning in the hotel lobby, she’d looked as though she had lost her best friend. Rachel, she’d told him, had gone off to the souk without her. “It’s my job!” she’d said. “I feel like such a failure.” Hani couldn’t stand seeing her that way, and offered the outing as a distraction. He couldn’t wait to share the wadi with Ariana. It was by far his favorite spot in Oman, one in which he’d spent countless days, first with his family and later with friends. Personally, he could have closed his eyes and still found his way safely along the little trail as thin as a beam, he was so familiar with the place. But now he shifted the bag he carried over his arm, and stopped at the bottom of a set of steep steps to wait for Ariana to catch up.
“I’m good!” she insisted with a confidence that rang false. Suddenly he felt her weight against his shoulder. “Oops.” She righted herself before he even had time to fully turn. “Sorry,” she said, the color rising quickly in her smooth cheeks. “Lost my balance.”
Hani simply smiled. They continued to walk silently beneath the cool shade of the green palms until the walkway widened into a rocky path. “Now close your eyes,” he instructed. “And hold on to my arm.” Ariana did as told, pinching the cloth of his dishdasha between two fingers. Hani led her gently forward, up to the point where the landscape burst open to reveal a sparkling blue mirror sandwiched between the cliffs. “Okay. You can open them now.”
“Oh, my.” Ariana stood at the edge of the outcropping of rock, her eyelashes fluttering like black butterflies in the breeze.
“It is beautiful, is it not?” Hani beamed with pride.
“I’ll say. Although spectacular is more like it, don’t you think?”
Hani laughed and led her farther in, to a smooth, flat boulder hanging right over the water’s edge, the view downward seeming to go as deep as that into the sky above. He took a light blanket from the bag and shook it, allowing it to sail back down gracefully over the rock’s surface, and gestured to Ariana. Together they sat facing the shimmering epicenter of the oasis surrounding them.
“So you come here a lot?” Ariana asked, her eyes now hidden behind a pair of dark lenses as big as pomegranates, with purple frames that were the exact same shade as the color on her toes.
“I did. But I have not been coming much lately. My father used to bring us here, when I was a boy. I learned to swim in this water.” Hani pointed to the young kids splashing around below.
“That must have been nice. Your family came all together?”
Hani nodded. “Yes, my father and mother, and all my sisters. My mother would bring a picnic, like I have today.” He reached his arm into the bag and placed three packets, all neatly wrapped in foil, onto the center of the blanket. “
She would sit on a rock, like that jeda over there,” he said, pointing to a covered grandma shaded by a tree, “and shout at us to stop playing around, to be careful.”
Ariana nodded as she watched a tall boy take a long dive from the cliff across from them, disappearing into the deep with barely a ripple.
“But my father,” Hani continued as he removed more food from the bag, “he was just the opposite. He would only encourage our wildness, even the girls, when they were small. He would always dare us to jump off that bridge.” Ariana’s eyes turned toward the thin metal bridge that spanned the far end of the pool, where the water narrowed into a river that snaked through the mountains. “Now he is the same way with my little nieces.” Hani pulled the lid from a Styrofoam container. “My father, you would like him. And he, I think, would also like you very much.”
Ariana shifted a little uncomfortably on the rock. “So do you spend lots of time with your family?”
“Yes. I mean, as much as is possible. Though it is never enough for my mother. She is always pushing. But I’m with them whenever I can. I love to be with my sisters and their families. And I still have much to learn from my father. Would you like some khubz?”
Ariana took the piece of flatbread from his hand and dipped it into the hummus. “So your father is also a businessman?”
“Yes. And a doctor as well. Kebabs? They are chicken.”
Ariana raised her eyebrows. “Wow. That’s certainly impressive.”
Hani lowered his eyes. “Not so impressive. It was all I could get from the hotel restaurant.”
Ariana laughed. “No, I meant your father.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, my father is quite an impressive man, known by many people. He has even been called on many times to travel to places like Jordan and often Dubai for his work.”
“Well then you must take after him, with your running around from meeting to meeting. It seems like you have quite a lot of irons in the fire.”
“And your mother, is she like you?” Hani helped himself to some chicken.
Ariana tilted her head up to the sky, as if it held the answer to his question. “Yes, and no, I suppose. I hope I am as kind as her, and as giving. But in ways she is far more traditional than I am. In that sense I am more like my father.”
“And you and your father, you are close?”
“We are.” Ariana chuckled. “My sister is constantly accusing me of being his favorite.”
“I can understand that,” Hani said with a smile that quickly erased itself. “I mean,” he sputtered, “please not to offend your sister.”
Again Ariana laughed. “No worries. You should hear it when the two of us go at it with each other. ‘Ariana the prima donna,’ she calls me.”
Ariana. He loved the way her name sounded when it came from her own lips. Like a trill of soft notes from a worn wooden flute. “Your family, they sound very nice. Are you able to see them often?”
“Not often enough. A few times a year, when I go home or they come visit me in Dubai.”
“So you must like Dubai very much, am I right?”
Ariana shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.” She paused for a bite of flatbread.
“It is a very exciting city,” Hani said.
“It is,” she agreed. “I do like the crazy mix of people, and the outrageous scale of it all, and the feeling it gives that anything and everything is possible.”
“And what is it that you don’t like?”
“Besides being so far away from my family?” Once again Ariana turned her gaze to the sky. “Well, let me see if I can explain. You see, it’s like sometimes I feel as though Dubai is one giant transient hotel. People are always coming and going, and don’t really take the time to get to know each other very well at all. So that leaves everyone seeming pretty fake and superficial. It just doesn’t feel like the real world. Does that make any sense?” Her eyes returned to Hani.
“Yes, it does,” he said, nodding.
“And lately? I can’t seem to stop thinking about how unfair it all is.”
“Unfair?”
“You know, the great divide between the haves and the have-nots. Everywhere I look, I see all those poor laborers literally slaving away for the comfort and well-being of others. It seems like more and more of them are coming every day, but to most people they are invisible.”
“I see,” he said softly.
“I can’t help but think that it could have been me, Hani. If my parents hadn’t had the means to leave Pakistan, to bring me up and educate me in England, who knows what I’d be doing today? It’s an awful situation. I just wish I could do something to help.”
“So why do you stay there? Is it this job, this fixing job, that ties you?”
Ariana sighed. “Oh, Hani, I’m not really a fixer. I just took this job because a friend of mine couldn’t, and because, frankly, I needed the money. But please,” she quickly added, “don’t tell Rachel.”
Now it was Hani’s turn to laugh. “I think that maybe, how is it said, the kitten has escaped its box?”
“Really? You think she knows? Wow, I’m gutted.” Ariana dropped her face into her hands. “This is just so embarrassing.” She raised her eyes to Hani. “Honestly? It was all so last minute, and I truly thought it would be easier, but I had no idea that everything was such a big secret in this country.”
“Secret? What do you mean, secret?”
“Oh, you know. Like how when you Google all you get is the tourist stuff and the things the government wants you to see. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all very beautiful, but what Rachel needs is to go behind the scenes, and I feel like nobody wants us to get off the beaten path, or off any path at all for that matter.”
“I see.”
“Seriously, Hani. This is tough for me. I’m usually much better at what I do.”
“And what is it that you usually do?”
“Well, I came to Dubai for a job in finance.”
“I see,” Hani said, surprised once again by this woman.
“But to be truthful with you, I don’t really have a full-time job at the moment. I’m sort of at a crossroads, trying to figure out what’s next.”
“I see.”
Ariana helped herself to a kebab and pulled a juicy morsel of chicken off the stick with her teeth. “I do often think about moving back to England,” she continued after swallowing, “but that would almost feel as though I were giving up.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her lips. “Why am I telling you all this?”
“No, please. I like to hear it.” Hani unscrewed the thermos and poured some juice into two little paper cups. “And what are the dreams, the ones that you are giving up?”
Ariana smoothed the front of her blouse. “Well, if you were to ask my mother, she’d tell you they were foolish dreams, dreams that either won’t happen or, if they do, won’t make me happy in the end.”
“And why is that?”
“Basically because I want it all—husband, job, kids, travel—the complete package.”
“And so what is wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I guess, in theory. But it’s not that easy to find someone who wants to put up with all my crap, or at least one who doesn’t feel threatened by it.” Though her head was turned toward her lap, Hani could feel Ariana watching him from the corner of her eyes. “And believe me,” she continued, “I’ve looked. I even did the whole online dating thing. My sister made me. Horrible. I’m done with that, full stop.”
“Oh? With the way your phone dings and rings all the time, I would think you would be very popular.”
“Popularity is not the issue. There’s simply nobody good out there. And even if there were, I’m simply terrified of making the wrong choice again.”
“Again?”
“I did tell you I’d been married, didn’t I? Disaster. He was one of those guys who acts like a perfect Muslim man when they’re with their family, but turns into a skirt-chasing perv the minute he gets away. I
seem to keep coming across that type. Or worse, the ones who like to play around but then look for the nice little brown girl to take home to appease their parents. I can’t go through that again. I just need a guy who is comfortable with who he is. Is that too much to ask?”
“I understand.” Hani nodded gravely, masking his surprise at the news that she was divorced instead of widowed, as he had assumed. “And yes, making the right choice, it is very important.”
The shadows from the cliffs had lengthened into long, dark fingers reaching out across the wadi. Hani wrapped up the leftover food, placed it back into the bag and stood. “Come,” he said, pointing to the rocks below. “Let us go and relax next to the water.”
Ariana unstrapped her sandals and placed them side by side on top of the blanket before attempting to follow Hani on the short climb down the cliff. He patted the ground beside him and she sat, pulling the wide hem of her skirt up to just below her knees.
“You know,” he said as he dangled his two feet over the pool’s glassy surface, “I am sure you would like to get a special Omani pedicure, am I right?” He pointed to her purple toenails. Ariana nodded, puzzled. “Well,” he continued, “put in your feet.” She hesitated as he plunged his own bare feet into the crystal clear water. “It is quite warm,” he assured her. “You must trust me.”
Ariana gingerly dipped in one foot and squealed, pulling it back in a jerk. “Holy crap! What the hell is that?”
Hani was laughing so hard he could barely speak. “They won’t hurt you. Look.” He pointed into the water, where an entire school of tiny black fish had attached themselves to every part of his feet. “They are the Garra rufa, but some call them the doctor fish. They just eat the skin that is dead. Come, try it again.”