Um Sharif

Yemeni mp

Ahmed Saif Hashed

Um Sharif was a woman who had reached retirement age, yet she still appeared robust and tireless, like a piece of German engineering in her strength and solidity. Her long face, with its striking and attractive features, inspired both acceptance and admiration. She was healthy, full of vitality, and possessed a daring spirit that sometimes reached the brink of recklessness. Through my mother’s side, there existed a distant tie of kinship between us.

I found my chance in Um Sharif. She was the coincidence that might help me reach what I longed for. I met her at a time when I was utterly disheartened. My despair, relentless in its return, seemed unwilling to leave me. If it slipped away for a while, it soon came running back, sometimes cleaving through my dreams like a bolt of lightning, at other times sawing through them like a blade. At times I imagined it as my inescapable destiny; at others it felt like part of me, like my own skin — impossible to shed or peel away.

I sensed that Um Sharif could help one half of me find its long-lost other half, hidden somewhere in the mists of fate, elusive, or when found dissolving into mirage and bitter disappointment. I turned to her hoping she might hasten my steps toward my goal: to find a suitable wife after my crushing failures and the bitter harvest of successive disappointments.

I said to her:

 “Um Sharif, I need you. I believe you can help me more than anyone else. You are my commando force, the parachute drop I count on to reach what I cannot reach on my own. Through you I can cross doors and closed rooms, enter homes I could never enter, overcome obstacles I cannot surmount alone. Through you I may finally reach the girl of my dreams — the one I have so often aimed for but failed to reach.

I yearn for a beautiful, poor, and kind-hearted girl to marry. I do not care much whether she works or not, whether she reads or not. What matters to me is that she be beautiful and willing to live my circumstances, whatever they may be, to walk with me through hell barefoot if need be. I want a loyal girl who will share my existence until the end of my life.”

Um Sharif struggled to understand much of what I said. Her comprehension stumbled here and there; perhaps she grasped only half or even a third of it. But certainly, she understood my intention — my aim, my search. She sympathized deeply with me, sensing how disheartened and wounded I was.

She showed immense readiness and an enthusiastic willingness to do what I asked of her. I began to take her along on my campaigns — my reconnaissance patrols, my advance units. Whenever I entrusted her with a task, no matter how difficult or demanding, she performed it with remarkable boldness. Her launch into certain missions resembled a missile speeding toward its target. That is how I praised and extolled her, through analogies and figures of speech, always with the difference understood.

And at one stage of my search for a life partner, I felt my resourcefulness exhausted. I resembled that Indian who, overwhelmed by poverty, rummages through his grandfather’s old records hoping to find an unclaimed debt owed to his ancestor, searching for debtors to collect from so he might survive. Another analogy with a difference, of course, for I was searching for my dream girl.

I scoured the far corners of my memory, wringing my mind a dozen times, until I recalled two sisters, overflowing with such dazzling beauty as to captivate minds and seize hearts. I had known them years ago when they were still young and underage, during the time I lived with my uncle Fareed in Dar Saad.

I said to Um Sharif:

 “Now, without doubt, the two blossoms have reached the age of marriage. Perhaps I might find my share in one of them. Perhaps destiny would compensate me for the chances I had lost, the long years of waiting, the wounds I had endured, and the many disappointments that had struck me. They were beauties painted to perfection, as though the artist who shaped them had poured life and soul into his work. They were so beautiful they could heal any wound, no matter how deep — beauty that competed with itself, charms that seized hearts and stole away reason.”

When Um Sharif asked me whether I knew their home, I hastened to reply yes. Then I took her with me until we reached the entrance of the building. I dispatched her on the mission after showing her the nearby courtyard where I would wait for her return, waiting with a heavy patience, as though sitting on live embers.

My heart trembled and pounded as I waited. Anxiety boiled in me. There was a tug-of-war inside me between my expectation of joyful tidings and a fear that bordered on terror at another blow of disappointment, one so strong it might shake me to my foundations and leave me undone. I found myself suspended between the high ceiling of my hopes and a hard, unyielding floor, ready to receive me if I fell from the tower I had built.

I could no longer control the quickening rhythm of my heartbeat. My heart had slipped from my reins and rebelled. I seemed to myself a failed commander who had lost control even of his own heart, and a failure too at the art of winning a girl. I felt a hollow inside me like a cavern, an emptiness curling in my chest, growing and widening. My anxiety and restlessness sharpened. Each passing minute felt like a carriage drawn by twenty-eight horses trampling over my body worn thin by searching and waiting that now seemed endless.

As time dragged on, I began to pace the place where I stood, back and forth. I waited with mounting impatience, guessing, assuming, speculating. My agitation grew sharper with every moment of delay.

I kept asking myself in foreboding:

 “What on earth are they talking about all this time? Did Um Sharif present my case properly? Have they begun to doubt her sanity? Why do they not call me in if they wish to know me? Did Um Sharif tell them where I am waiting? Are they peeking at me through some tiny hole or from behind a curtain, watching my anxious pacing and restless movements, delighting in the spectacle, and concluding I must be out of my mind? Why don’t they summon me to prove to them that my mind is sound, even if clouded by some tightness, confusion, and worry?”

Questions crowded in. My head was about to burst while the wait stretched on, feeding me a stream of newer, sharper anxieties.

At last, Um Sharif emerged from the building accompanied by a girl I guessed to be ten or so years old. She should have come straight to me and told me the result, but instead she glanced at me in my courtyard without acknowledgment, ignored me strangely, and went off as though bewitched, following the little girl. I was plunged into bewilderment and confusion. I could no longer understand what was happening. I followed them with my eyes fixed on them, my steps lagging behind me as though I were dragging a tree. Where were they going? I no longer knew.

They entered a narrow, poor side street, closer to an alley, alive with noise, movement, and small children. I followed at a cautious distance, watching as the girl and Um Sharif went into one of the modest houses. I sank deeper into my bewilderment and astonishment, unable to grasp why things were unfolding in this strange way. I began to feel angry at Um Sharif for not telling me, as she left, what had happened — leaving me ignorant of my fate and of the girls I had come for.

I had no choice but to wait. I had to wait until Um Sharif came out of the last house she had entered, to ask her what had happened and was happening, as anger began to boil and surge in my chest. After about half an hour, a stretch of time that felt long and fraught with anxiety, she emerged alone. I tried to restrain my fury, to bottle up the storm inside me, to hear any scrap of news that might have escaped me. And as soon as she reached me, she said shortly, in haste:

“You have no share in the girls you wanted. The older one is married, and the younger one is engaged.”

I said to her:

 “Then why take so long when there’s no share for me? A word would have been enough. What were you doing all that time for nothing?”

She answered:

 “We sat talking about another girl that Um al-Banat told me about. Then she sent the little one with me, and I went in to see the girl. God bless her.”

I said to her:

 “So you’ve gone and proposed to a girl I’ve never seen, never known. You liked her yourself, but I don’t know her — not even by a photograph.”

She said:

“The girl is lovely, young, and an orphan. You’ll like her. I only pointed her out. Her mother wasn’t there. They said her brother died and she went to the mourning house. She won’t return until next week. When she comes back, they’ll give us an answer.”

And my misgivings rose up and attacked me from all sides:

 “How do I know she’s beautiful? How can I rely on your eyes? My father saw my mother first, then went to ask for her hand. That was thirty years ago. And today I’m being asked to propose to a girl I’ve never seen! I don’t know her and she doesn’t know me. Even in my grandfather’s time this never happened!”

I felt I had fallen into a trap. I burned and fumed at myself inwardly, trying to suppress the anger storming within me. Sparks flew from my eyes like a blacksmith’s furnace. I wanted to smash my head against any wall before me.

I said to her, my face contorted with rage and regret:

“The wise man’s mistake counts for ten. Who told me to bring along a madwoman? How much foolishness and lightheadedness is in me! What use is the law school I attended — what right have I even to an onion?”

Um Sharif, her own temper fraying, replied:

 “If you don’t want her, fine. We haven’t proposed and we haven’t married. We only consulted. They haven’t given us an answer. They said when the mother returns, we’ll have news.”

Um Sharif turned back, and I remained, trying to find some way to see the girl for myself, while her words still echoed in my ears — “a girl, God bless her… lovely, young, and an orphan.” Those words spurred my curiosity, made me even more eager to see her. That day I prowled the street back and forth but did not see her.

I tried passing in front of her door many times, but she did not come out or show her face. I went back exhausted, yet that night I could not sleep. I spent the night longing for a dawn that came too late. And as soon as the morning arrived, I left my lodging in Al-Qalou‘ah and went to her house in Dar Saad, determined to see her before taking any further step.

I waited in a spot that allowed me to see who entered and left her doorway. After hours, I saw a girl sweeping, pushing the dust out to the street. I hurried toward her. I managed to catch a glimpse of her, and she too caught sight of me. I passed by once more, and I felt — no, I knew — that she was the one I had been searching for. And she, too, seemed to sense that I was the ardent lover who passed her neighborhood morning and evening.

A joy as vast as the sky itself flooded me. I nearly cried out, “I’ve found her! I’ve found her!” I almost soared from happiness on clouds heavy with promise, heralding a great hope that spread its light into my darkened corners. Relief was knocking at my door after so many disappointments, and a great joy whispered to me: I am waiting for you.

My dream now stood before my eyes, drawing near, saying: I am here, close by. Stretch out your hands and I will descend upon you like a revelation if you will, or like rain falling upon the parched, or I will come to you as a triumphant victory crowning your brow, dispelling the sorrow that has haunted the kingdoms of your love, and compensating you greatly for all you have lost.

I felt as though the seventh heaven itself was bending down toward me, inviting me to fly through its vast reaches. I felt the entire universe had become mine, obedient to my hands — a dense, overwhelming feeling, a moment like the Big Bang itself, from which my joyful existence burst forth, bringing with it an unending life and a delight that flooded everything yet to come.

The despair that had hounded me and nearly overtaken me forever just yesterday now stood defeated, routed, vanishing into nothingness. My losses were compensated, my crushing disappointments were healed, filled with overflowing happiness.

I left the place full of gratitude, whispering thanks to Um Sharif:

“Thank you… thank you, Um Sharif.”

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