Brooklyn Heights by Miral al-Tahawy

Author:Miral al-Tahawy [Miral al-Tahawy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FA
ISBN: 9780571280025
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2012-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Hend’s other friend, Hanan, was round and heavy with skin the colour of wheat, a miniature version of her mother, The Lady Umm Hanan the seamstress. Once Noha had gone to live with the sculptor of girls, Hanan and Hend would sit next to each other on the sofa of her mother’s house and Hanan would show her the colourful snippets of leftover fabric that she hid in her pockets and used to make blackboard erasers or soft cotton rags for wiping the chalk off your fingers. Hanan was always wiping the board clean and the whole classroom would stare at her round, plump rear end as she did it. Hanan didn’t know how to play hopscotch, or beads either, but she was very good at making rag dolls and blackboard wipes. She was also good at cutting out patterns for doll dresses, especially ones with lots of frills – all from the leftover fabric that she gathered from under her mother’s sewing machine. She embroidered the dresses with sequins and coloured stones and sold them to the girls in the other classes for five milliemes apiece. She drew eyebrows and mouths on her rag dolls with coloured pens and sewed two green stones in for eyes. In arts and crafts class she crocheted tablecloths with the duck stitch like a practised housewife. She also sold crocheted hats that she made herself, as well as scarves and embroidered handkerchiefs. Her passion for embroidery and her quiet perseverance were extraordinary, and she became an expert at making exquisite tablecloths that she called ‘sunflowers’ because they were the colour of open sunflowers in all their glorious shades from dark brown to bright sunshine yellow.

The only game that Hanan was good at was Little House. She would come to Hend’s house and collect the empty matchboxes from the garbage, as well as old bottles and cartons. Together they traced out the borders of their imaginary house in the sand with pebbles and scraps and some tree branches and leaves. Everything was now ready to play-act mother and daughter. Hanan was the daughter and called Hend ‘Mama’, or sometimes she was the maid and called her ‘ma’am’. She was anything Hend wanted her to be, because Hanan had been trained to obey. She was sedate and well behaved, an immovable object, while Hend ran around like a lunatic in the courtyard that hosted an imaginary house of dust full of imaginary stoves and refrigerators and beds.

Sometimes Hend’s mother sent her to Umm Hanan’s house with clothes that needed altering. Hanan’s mother took them in or let them out or shortened them, from one child to the next. Hend skipped happily through the narrow streets covered in straw. Women sat at their doorsteps, washing the dishes and drinking tea or exchanging good-natured insults. Hend liked Umm Hanan’s house because it was always full of women, the door always stood wide open, and the hubbub of the sewing machine and the transistor radio gave it a festive atmosphere quite different from that of her own home.

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