Chapter 9 Widows, Whores, Beggars
Widows, Whores, Beggars
Seeking to ease her loneliness, the Princess of Sheba emerges into the world and, despite her damaged foot, begins to walk. She limps and moves forward, forward, forward without rest until she reaches the cities.
“You’re making a mistake, Goat Foot!” the alaleishos shout at her. “Be careful! Correct your course before it’s too late!”
She doesn’t heed them. She enters the city walls and approaches the crowded slums, where impoverished women survive and earn their keep as beggars, thieves, or sex workers.
Goat Foot wanders unmoored for days, and on the fifteenth day, weighed down by thirst and exhaustion, feet bleeding, she arrives in the immense district of Al-Basateen, near the port of Aden.
Al-Basateen, a cursed name. Home and not-home of the poorest of the poor, whether Somali or mixed-heritage Yemeni people with Somali blood.
The alleys buzz with insults, knife blades, and clouds scented with cardamom and cinnamon, with garbage, with incense and urine.
Dog poop lingers in doorways. Somebody follows Goat Foot, pulls at her sleeve.
She’s an mutasawil, or panhandler, and she carries a baby in her arms.
“Go home,” Goat Foot advises her. “Your child is suffering, he’s too young for this. When was he born?”
“I gave birth to him on the street four days ago. I sleep with him on this corner. Sometimes, the widows let me spend the night on their patio, but not always, because my son cries with hunger and it disrupts their sleep.”
“Take me to the house of the widows,” Goat Foot says.
“For god’s sake, not there!” protest the alaleishos. “The widows live a wretched existence!”
Twelve or thirteen widows share a small, partially roofed, earthen patio.
A few of them look withered and sickly, and one no longer moves: She’s curled up in a corner, mouth open, eyes stunned, waiting for death.
The healthiest one is called Syrad: She’s still got strength, quite a few teeth, and traces of ancient beauty.
Syrad connects immediately with Sheba, the twisted-legged girl; she lets her in, offers her tea.
“Here, in Al-Basateen,” she tells her, “we widows can’t work nor be with men, on pain of stoning.
We have to cover our heads and faces and wear dark clothes.
Begging is the only profession allowed to us.
If you ask a Yemeni man for spare change, he feels obligated to give it, as his religion commands it, but if he’s a real negotiator, he might say, Take these coins, woman, have them, you can have three times as much if you suck me off. ”
Goat Foot thanks her for the tea and leaves. Drawn to a long row of yellow doors, she approaches the zone of Hayi Esahira, where the dhillos, or sex workers, swarm. Their doors are set apart by their yellow color. One of those yellow doors opens.
“Don’t go in,” the alaleishos warn her. “A sad fate awaits you among the dhillos. They’ll be nice at first, but it’s known that they easily lose their cool and then attack.”
The she-wolves’ den is a patio almost identical to the widows’, only its walls are adorned with erotic paintings.
Mattresses stuffed with chicken feathers and tubular cushions of various sizes lie scattered about.
Here the women are younger, they wrap their bodies in colorful fouta fabrics and bear henna tattoos on their arms. They wear rings on their fingers and toes, chains on their ankles, and bracelets on their wrists.
In the back, on a beat-up green couch, two lethargic madams doze beneath their soft, white turbans, lost in dreams of khat. They’re the brothel owners.
For the decent women of Al-Basateen, sex takes place at night, in the dark, and with covered breasts; caresses must be given and received with the left hand only, without the right hand finding out.
The punishment for failing to comply is death by water or flame.
But these rules don’t apply to the dhillos, who can offer their services in broad daylight and with their anatomies bared, while sharing caresses with right hands, left hands, and tongues.
Unlike a decent woman, a dhillo can mount a man if he’s tired and prefers her to do the heavy lifting.
In the house of the dhillos, Goat Foot accepts tea from a shaved young man in makeup who wears chains tied to his neck and waist. His name—her name—is Zanabaq, she wears flowers in her hair, and she sways like a girl.
It’s clear she’s of inferior status because the dhillos treat her poorly, giving orders that she diligently fulfills.
Zanabaq sings gently as she swings a censer to refresh the space with aromatic smoke.
The dhillos are curious about Sheba, this foreigner with a goat’s foot; they surround her and spark a conversation.
“They don’t want anything good for you, they’re vulgar and they’re thieves, just waiting for the right moment to rob you,” the alaleishos warn from a distance, but their voices don’t reach Goat Foot.
“You’re young and beautiful, you could work with us,” the dhillos suggest. “That twisted foot you drag so pitifully does make you a little uglier, but you could hide it under an abaya long enough to graze the ground. Plus, there are plenty of men who find lame women or amputees more exciting. As for your thick-haired calves and armpits, no man will want to be with you if you don’t shave them, but we can take care of that without charging too much, and painlessly, with a nice sharpened mussel shell. ”
Goat Foot wants to know more about the norms of their profession.
“Around here, it’s customary to get paid in food,” they warn her. “If you’re hoping for gold or silver coins, you may as well go. Our clients take us to dinner, and we leave with full bellies and empty hands. Others pile on the khat.”
The dhillos of Al-Basateen get enough khat to be happy and enough food to stay alive, but they rarely manage to pull together money to send to their families. Sometimes, clients ask only to spend the night by their side.
“Some of them lie down next to you and don’t do anything but chew khat,” they tell Goat Foot. “In the end, khat leaves them impotent. They don’t care, they keep chewing, and so do we. Here, khat is the only affection and the only paradise.”
The ones who ply their trade at home are called dhillos. If they work the streets, they’re lupas. If they’re in inns or lodges, they’re mozas, and if they’re in the cemetery, basturias.
Licia, basturia by trade, a nocturnal moth, pale as death, offers to teach the young woman from Sheba the art of warbling weepy songs while prowling cemeteries.
“With sweet moans and laments,” she says, “you cast a tearful spell over some sad widower who’s just buried his beloved wife, and you console him right there, on the grave, on the freshly moved dirt.
Once you have more experience, you can play dead.
All you have to do is stay naked and still, with two copper coins over your closed eyes; some men pay well to fornicate with your warm corpse in a mausoleum. ”
“I could do that,” says Goat Foot. “I’m still the color of death and still have its bitter trace in my mouth, and since I live in mourning for my own life, it wouldn’t be hard to satisfy some fan of fake corpses.”
“Don’t do it, Goat Foot, beloved Sheba,” begs the chorus of alaleishos. “Don’t do it! It’s a dirty, dangerous game, you’ll get stung by scorpions and some men will try to kill you so they can rape the real thing.”
Goat Foot weighs the range of opinions. Among them, the least demanding and most convenient seems to be laboring for merchants and travelers in the inns downtown or the plentiful lodges along roads.
“Come with us,” say the mozas. “You’re pretty, and aside from that foot, you seem healthy too. You could work at the Three Crows, the busiest inn.”
“Is it far from here?” asks Goat Foot.
“A little far, yes, but the muleteers take us there on their animals’ rumps in exchange for a blow job, and we return the same way.”
“Do you barter at the inn too?”
“You have to take shifts as a maid. You refresh the straw in the mattresses, air out the blankets, wash the chamber pots, fill the basins with clean water, mop the halls, care for the horses, and attend to the guests’ wishes.
It goes better if you adorn your hair with flowers and perfume yourself with lavender water.
Are you a virgin?” they ask, and she replies yes.
“Then you’ve got a treasure between your legs. ”
Virgins are sought after by rich merchants who come from the high northern mountains with pouches full of gold.
If, in addition to being a virgin, a girl is not ugly, and knows how to please them, she can earn scraps of gold to send back home.
Once virginity is lost, she’s worth the same as the others.
Every once in a while, the innkeeper makes them wash their private parts with water and vinegar to prevent infections, and he inspects their hair and clothes for lice and fleas.
They prefer foreign clients, as they’re known to be generous and practice coitus from behind, which is better for preventing pregnancy.
Suddenly, Hayi Esahira erupts. There’s noise on the streets, the neighborhood explodes with fury, and women pour from all the yellow doors, shouting.
A client tried to split without paying, the victim sounded the alarm, and now they all chase him, catch him, and give him a good beating.
It looks like the man is just getting punched, but in fact the metal bracelets the dhillos wear on their wrists are making deep wounds.
The young woman from Sheba takes advantage of the commotion to escape.
This place is not for me, she says as she leaves.
A stench invades the road, accompanied by the tinkling of bells.
It’s from the red hats on the people approaching her, one very tall, the other extremely short.
Their hats are comical, over-the-top, reminiscent of a circus or carnival, the brims strung with little bells that jingle with each step.
Other people keep their distance, in fear.
Only Goat Foot stays where she is, because she doesn’t understand.
The two figures hide their sores with rags and wraps and emit a scent of rot.
“I’m Marcabrún and she’s Marcabruna,” says the tall one, in a rough voice, gesturing toward his companion. “Aren’t you scared of me?”
“Why should I be?”
“Because I am leprosy.”
Goat Foot walks with them for a while. People mutter, “The living dead!” and back away.
“Do you want to live with us?” Marcabruna asks. “We can offer you food and shelter if you promise to wash our sores, cook our soup, and console us during our long nights of suffering.”
The three travelers have paused to take respite from the sun in the shade of a tree by the name of dragon blood, in the shape of a high umbrella. The girl from Sheba considers the offer she’s just received.
“Yes, I could do that,” she replies. “I’d feel at home among the living dead.”
“But there are other requirements that might be harder,” Marcabruna warns. “As you walk the streets, you’d have to wear a red hat lined with bells, like the one I’m wearing, and people will back away from you with disgust. Children will throw stones at you.”
“I can’t wear a red hat with bells on it, nor keep children away or have them throwing stones.”
“That’s not all. For us lepers, dyed clothes are forbidden.
We can only wear coarse tunics made from raw wool.
You won’t be able to walk the roads alone, like you did today; from now on you’ll travel in a pair.
And you should know that sooner or later your blood will turn black and muddy, and sores will consume your skin.
Which will mean you’ve been infected. But perhaps that’s already happened.
Could it be leprosy that deformed your foot? ”
Goat Foot answers that it’s a birth defect. She wants nothing more to do with Marcabrún and Marcabruna, and she says her goodbyes, careful not to touch them, wishing them patience and resolve to endure their illness.
Al-Basateen becomes small in the distance, like an apparition that disappears.