Did the girl named Sara not discover that very fact when she spotted a statuette that looked exactly like her at the pottery store? When she visited the store, Najib was arranging some of his creations on the shelves. Those statuettes would always attract the eye and give rise to hidden emotions. However, this girl Sara pretended not to know about such things — indeed, not to like them at all. Once Najib realized that, he stole a glance at her features and figure. For her part, she stood in the sunlight and allowed him to take a long look at her as she examined others’ pieces. Soon a nonverbal conversation between them transpired, before Najib addressed her politely: “Next time you’ll see something you like.”
“I’ll wait then,” she said. “Goodbye!”
Sara did not have to wait long. Just a few days later, a statuette that looked just like her, one that she felt expressed a distinct feminine feeling, vanished from the shelves. She acquired it at the price demanded by the merchant, then put it beside her bed and admired it often.
The stories kept coming, and Badia expected to listen to them every morning. If she didn’t have to sleep with her husband, she would certainly have listened to them before the rooster crowed, like Shahriyar in a womanly form. But in this case, the young potter was Shahrazad in a masculine guise, and Masuda was the go-between. The nighttime stories came in various shapes and sizes. Were they supposed to postpone the death of Najib the potter — or hasten it? Was Masuda telling them so as to relieve her own stress or to increase Badia’s? Did Masuda tell them to prove to Badia that she was closer to the storyteller, or as a way of concealing her own despair about him? Did she sense that her role merely involved conveying the story to the person for whom it was intended? Was this intended person just the story’s subject and the story itself a rose on the statuette’s body? Yet the primary topic was operating in a different universe, distracted or seemingly so. Afraid? Hesitant? Nonchalant? Whatever the case, it was Badia who was on fire; she was further enflamed every time she heard a story about the other women.
As long as he doesn’t take the initiative with me, she told herself, I shall do it with him. And let whatever happens happen! She believed that her own story should be recorded, or else she should move to act. She had never been aware of her own femininity for a single day, or of the woman hidden inside her. Her very existence was like nothingness. As her own body opened up to its potential, she had been buried in a marriage to a frigid and inadequate husband.
Her father had been a potter working for Hasun. One of the employer’s ovens had collapsed on top of him, and her father had burned to death in its ashes. Hasun had arrived to convey his condolences and had spotted her as a teenager, having known her previously as just a child. Only a few months went by before he came back and asked her mother for her hand in marriage, in exchange for support for the widowed woman and her four children, of which Badia was the oldest. Her mother gave her to him, and so he hurriedly divorced his fifth wife, claiming that she was barren, whereas he knew full well that it was not his wife’s fault but his own — he was the sterile one. Changing wives for him was just like changing clothes. So Badia arrived at the riad of an infertile man who was older than her own father. He constantly craved money, his only obsession. She had been handed over to him at the age of seventeen, and now she was twenty-three, a prisoner in the guise of a wife, married to a man thirty-six years older. Her husband was addicted to kif, hashish, and other vices that made his sweat and breath stink. He had nightmares. What time had wrought could not be put right. He was cold in his daily contacts, and foul to be near. So, here I am, she told herself, unable to sleep, lying awake in these days of torment. She was served in her own relentless fashion by an old maid who had no purpose in her life either, but simply handed Badia over at night to a senile old merchant as though consigning her to a grave of ashes. But here you are, with heart tremors and calls to desire. Your stories hit me like so many arrows and tongues of fire. Where should I turn, and what should I do? Badia wondered.
Meanwhile, Masuda had started smoking some of the kif she prepared for her master, stealing a little for her own enjoyment. She also took some hashish. Hasun was aware of this, but chose to ignore it. He was relieved that someone else was sharing in his habit. One time when she got stoned, she raised her voice in song.
For Badia’s part, she was having her own daydream — where she was naked in front of Najib. Isn’t this spectacular display enough, using all the eloquence of my body to make even the dullest stone excited? Badia had asked the dream potter. She watched him while he stared at his delicate fingers stained with clay. He did not look at her. Masuda’s singing blended with her own daydream, and deliberately interrupted them like a planted spy. She looked on as Masuda stripped naked in front of him and kept on singing. He peered over at Masuda, but not at her. Bring me a knife! Badia yelled. So I can cut off his fingers. No, instead I’m going to kill him, and her as well. At that point, Badia woke up to hear Masuda’s shrills reverberating through the riad.
Masuda started spending more time with him and devoting more attention to his stories. The whole thing became more complicated. Did Masuda tell her his stories to uncover Badia’s secrets or her own? Every morning her ringing laughter greeted Badia as she perfumed the sleeping quarters to get rid of the stench of her decrepit husband’s body.
“Why are you laughing, Masuda?”
“Because I’ve failed,” she replied.
“Failed?”
“Yes, failed in love,” Masuda said.
“Who do you love, Masuda?”
“The summer clouds, my lady.”
“Is that a riddle?” Badia questioned.
“The whole of life is a riddle,” Masuda said.
“What do you mean?”
“I want to roll around naked in the dirt,” Masuda said. “In the end, that’s what we revert to, so our bodies need to embrace it. Fresh and warm before they’re buried beneath it... cold and stiff.”
Badia said nothing. She noticed how tall the trees inside the riad were as they opened up to the warmth of the sun and the blue sky above; dead, yellowing leaves dropping from their branches into oblivion, leaving behind fresh ones, alive. She also watched sweet basil leaves being tossed into the oven of her husband, the pottery seller with his brittle bones and feelings. Inside her, the fire burned to ashes.
That year, the summer hung around with its different moods. Sometimes the sky was clear, other times cloudy. The atmosphere was hot and steamy. Even so, the window in Najib’s room was only open a tiny crack; it looked out at the riad’s courtyard, where Hasun and Badia used to spend their summer evenings. Not a word was ever spoken, and eventually the merchant’s eyelids would sag, and his whole body would slouch with them. He would go upstairs to the bedroom followed by his solitary wife. Then, the only thing to interrupt his sleep would be a coughing fit. Badia’s heart would remain on fire, and she had trouble falling asleep. Time will always synchronize with whatever is weighing on the soul and force it to continue, like carrying a heavy rock up to the mountaintop.
Recently, Masuda’s behavior had changed. She had told her mistress, frankly, that she was unhappy about being single. She was certainly aroused by Najib’s stories, but at the same time they distressed her, like a false pregnancy. A few months before, there had been a blond cat inside the riad; the cat had an overwhelming desire to mate during the spring, and had started a feverish meow, raising her voice and turning it into a kind of chant. The cat had wandered all around the riad with her tail up, rubbing against everything. Her meowing attracted the attention of a huge gray male cat; the gray cat stared with lustful eyes at the female from all the way up on the roof. The felines started consorting with each other, but one night the female cat slunk out of the riad and disappeared, never to return. Surprisingly, the male cat kept looking down from the roof, searching all over for his mate. He called, cajoled, and waited. He went away, came back, and called again, but there was still no sign of the female cat. One night, he leaped down from the roof to the uppermost story in the riad and looked through the balcony window. Masuda smiled at him, and he stayed where he was. When she went over to him, he stood still and gave her a cautious look, seeking affection. She stroked his warm fur and he relaxed a little; he snuggled down comfortably. She took him downstairs, and looked over the balcony. Hasun and Badia were in bed.