Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves Page B

first helpings, Ismat, Hoda, and Abu Bakr’s mother, whom everyone called Ummi, sat down and joined us.
    After lunch Abu Bakr said he was taking us on the family expedition to his home village, where his father lived with his other wife, along with several of his brothers and their families. Mona and I put on our head scarves and overcoats. Ismat and Hoda put on their long black cloaks and niqab s. Ismat wore an additional layer that hung over her eyes, sheer enough for her to see out but too opaque for anyone else to see through. Protected against the dangers of visibility, we piled into the car.
    Abu Bakr’s brother’s diwan was more rustic than the clan’s Taiz home, with carpets on bare stone and a dirt yard outside. He served us Vimto, a purple soft drink that tasted vaguely of berries; Mona loathed the beverage and made me drink hers, lest she offend by leaving her cup full. We clustered with Ismat in a corner with our Vimto and cookies. She asked us if we were married; we said no. “It’s better not to be married,” she said. “Do you want Abu Bakr to marry again?” I asked, wondering if bigamy might not be such a bad thing,
if it might get her off the hook for wifely duties in some way. “No, of course not,” she said. I now felt a sense of complicity with Ismat, but I saw no point in mentioning the plans Abu Bakr had shared. As fascinated and appalled as I was, as much as I felt compelled to ask questions on the margins, it seemed irresponsible to stoke conflict in a family machinery I didn’t understand. We asked her if she liked wearing the veil. She said no, and pointed out that she hadn’t worn the niqab before marrying; Abu Bakr made her do that. She had been to high school and studied English and French. Now it was her wish to study at the University of Sanaa and become a teacher. If Abu Bakr went to Canada to study there, she said, she wanted to do that too. I suddenly hoped fervently that this would happen. Life depended on the husband, I now saw, and she was lucky to have one who might take her abroad. In Canada she could escape if she wanted to; it was set up to facilitate that kind of thing. I imagined myself in her shoes, biding my time until one day, Abu Bakr at work . . .
    He roused us from our corner. We walked from his brother’s place to another house and another diwan . Then we moved on, bound for a third. Mona asked why we were going from house to house. “So they can see you,” Ismat said, and I saw her smile for the first time. We were a sort of gift from Abu Bakr to Ismat, a learning experience and Friday diversion. A sense of responsibility came over me, and I resolved to power politely through my creeping exhaustion. Everyone else wore slip-on shoes, but Mona and I wore hiking boots, which had to come off at every door. We came to the threshold of the third home, in the courtyard of which at least twenty women and children had gathered; the women were unveiled. On the steps, flanked by Ismat, we met several women in receiving-line style, and imitated their gesture of pressing hand to heart. The oldest, small and gnarled, was the matriarch of them all. The women brought us a blanket to sit on in the
courtyard, and more tea. The grandmother kept bringing us out more pillows and blankets, until one of the younger women told her to stop. We sipped and talked. Abu Bakr had disappeared, and I wondered when he would come to collect us.
    When he reappeared, more tea was procured, and the grandmother and some of the younger women began chiding him, their chorus of voices rising in unison. The old woman went indoors, and he explained to us that she was mad at him for not warning her that foreigners were coming, so that she could have prepared gifts. Mona and I were nodding sympathetically when the old woman reappeared in her doorway and came waddling toward us, hands outstretched, proffering a dozen eggs tied in a red plastic bag.
    Mona hit