Dancing Arabs

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I was always looking for the keys to the cupboard. I looked for them every time Grandma went to visit the home of another old woman in the village who had died. The old brown cupboard was like a locked trunk with a treasure inside — diamonds and royal jewels. One morning, after another night when I’d sneaked into her bed because I was too scared to fall asleep, I saw her take the key out of a hidden pocket she’d sewn in one of her pillows. Grandma handed me the key and asked me to take her prayer rug out of the cupboard for her. I leaped out of bed at once. What had come over her? Was she really letting me open the cupboard? I took the key, and as soon as I put it in the lock, Grandma said, “Turn it gently. Everything is rusty by now.”

White dresses were hanging in one section, and in the other were shelves with towels, folded sharwals, and stockings. No underpants. Grandma didn’t wear underwear, just sharwals. The sheepskin prayer rug was on the bottom shelf. She’d made it herself: bought the sheep on ‘id el-fitr, skinned it, salted it, and dried it in the sun. On the top shelf she’d put an enormous blue suitcase, the one she’d taken on her hajj a few years earlier. What’s she got in there? I wondered. Maybe a few more of those policemen’s outfits, like the ones she brought back to us from Mecca.

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