I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops by Hanan al-Shaykh

they had given her in the village.) The women emerged from their houses like rabbits from their burrows that had smelled a juicy carrot, and when they pulled up Mahyoub presented her with abouquet of wilting flowers, which included sprigs of qat. They decided to leave most of the luggage in the car until nightfall, fearing that the women would pounce on it, and she got out clutching the flowers, her handbag and a few small carrier bags.
    She attempted to kiss all the children who clustered around her calling, “Amina! Amina!” and asked them to run and tell Souad that she’d arrived. “Sweets for the one who gets there first.”
    Her words acted like a fire spreading through them and they scattered and ran like a herd of brightly colored goats leaping over the bare rocky ground. More children came running from the hillsides and out of the houses. The women were waiting for her beside Souad’s house, and a few men stood diffidently to one side. The women kissed her and the men called to her, and in no time the valleys and mountains echoed with the sound of her name, and Ingrid felt like a queen again. The children fingered her dress and handbag, and the plastic carrier bags.
    Souad rushed out and threw her arms around Ingrid. She tucked a sprig of basil behind her ear, pushing back her head scarf, and reproaching her nonstop for abandoning them. An old woman tried to make herself heard above the noise: “Fatima’s having a baby in hospital.”
    Finally Souad led Ingrid into the house and the rest of the women followed them into the sitting room, which hadwhitewashed mud-brick walls and was bare except for a few colored cushions on the floor and a heap of clothes on the broad window ledge. The room became a hive of activity. Souad brought in plates of bread and Iftikar followed with a stainless-steel jug, from which she poured coffee into little cups.
    “Did you travel alone?” Souad asked Ingrid. “I’d like to try flying one day.”
    She flapped her arms up and down like wings, then screamed at the smaller children, who were in the process of running off with the plastic bags. As she snatched the bags away out of sight she turned to Ingrid. “I’ll drink my coffee and call you,” Ingrid told the children reassuringly. “You count from one to five in English.”
    The women began talking argumentatively about Ingrid as if she weren’t there. One said she was fatter and no longer looked like a camel without a backside because of her height. Another declared that the devil had told her Ingrid was dead. Souad silenced them by remarking jokingly, “And I thought she’d got married I Last time she was here I said to her, ‘If you get married, Iftikar and I will deliver your baby.’ And she seemed to like the idea.”
    The old woman cut in: “You and Iftikar? Only the Almighty can deliver babies. And foreigners’ wombs have stones in them. She’ll be in labor for a year. Their kids have such huge heads.”
    “Fatima’s had four children and they’ve all died,” said Souad, trying to switch the course of the conversation again.
    “A child of Amina’s wouldn’t want to come into the world in one of our houses,” said the old woman. “He’d like it better in hospital.”
    The children came back, having counted to twenty, desperate to know what was in the bags for them. They stood there, their hair matted with dust and the dry air, their feet small and black, their faces marked by the sun, chronic thirst and various skin diseases. The voice of Souad’s husband demanding to know why Ingrid hadn’t gone in to greet the men mingled with the children’s eager cries.
    The old woman turned to Ingrid: “You go in to the men! Show off your silky, clean hair to make our men happy! Poor things! Let Abu Muhammad, the blind man, smell it for a minute.”
    The other women snorted with laughter. Souad gestured warningly at them behind her back and asked Ingrid if she wanted to wash after the journey. She pulled her