SUMAC

I hope you will not remember me. 

I tried hard not to be remembered. My past is buried; I no longer think of it. I no longer  look down my arms into the eyes of a child against my breast. Nor do I look beyond him to the  end of my bedchamber, where a man rests. A most handsome man—or perhaps he is handsome  only in my memories. Men are often handsome in the mind, but they fail in reality. I did not care  to think of the man beyond the child. I wished to forget that room. I wished for so many things. 

The world now is no longer me in that bedchamber, nor am I someone’s plaything. You  might hear many things about me: that I am evil, and foreign, and strange; that I am a thief of  baubles and children. A thief because my mother-in-law decided I was one, and so I was shunned  out of that bedchamber in my memory, and the handsome man—my husband—let it happen. 

I had promised not to remember, but here I am, awakened. This woman writes my story,  and I am revived. I am young again. On this page, in these words, I live on. And yet I beg of you: Do not remember me. 

My story is that of any woman who lived in Bahrain during its time as a British colony. I  recall that there were a lot of white men. I recall the impartiality, how our country was allowed to  be plundered. I recall looking away. It was not my country. Mine was another one, past the  Arabian Gulf to the seven emirates. My father had brought me here to be married. He had called  it the land of immortality, where wealth would be ours. My father had sold me. I was little more  than a slave, if not for the marriage contract my father and my husband had drawn up.

My husband forgave my shortcomings, my youth, my ignorance. He called me beautiful,  in the beginning. I did not have time to look at myself, but I believed him; I would’ve believed  anything. My nights consisted of my husband atop me, taking me, using my body as a vessel for  his future children. It eventually happened. The child came. The pain came. Milk came in my  breasts. It was a constant taking: my womb, my blood, my milk. Man and child both took from  me. And I gave. I believed. 

I succumbed to that state of giving. I gave them everything. I thought very little of myself  during those years. It was about husband, home, and child. I worshiped in a religion of bathing,  caring for, soothing, and feeding; I was a slave for my little gods. Husbands and sons were  immortal; I was merely their servant. When my mother-in-law decided her lost necklace had  been stolen, it was me they blamed. And when a child fell ill, I was the reason why. 

It is easy to fault one who was so alone in the world, and that was what I was. I had  burrowed into this country as a desperate creature and married into a family I had wanted to love  but could not. 

Eventually, my god divorced me. And with that, I had the brief freedom to wander. One  time, after much walking, I knocked on a family’s front door and was let in as a guest. The  women there created a haven of laughter and kindness for me. They asked questions, yes, but the  minute my face reflected my inner turmoil, they stopped and poured me another cup of coffee. I  avoided the children, their sounds, their eyes, their smiles. I feared that something would happen  to them, that I would be shunned yet again, that my mother-in-law’s accusations had followed  me there. I had believed her curses; I had believed everything. It pained me to see mothers and  children while I was away from my child. I still had milk in my breasts then, and I would squeeze it out of me when everyone else was asleep and I was left alone with my memories— memories of a child in my arms, of a man, of a bedchamber. The act of giving never left me. Eventually, I married again. Most women did not remain unwed for long; there was  always a need for a male counterpart, a god, a husband. My second god was rather passive,  perhaps due to his confessed barrenness. He was much older than I was, and I welcomed our  differences there. In that desperate time, I wanted shelter and a name to call on. I had a fanciful  dream of belonging somewhere. My new husband was not unkind; he allowed me my world  while he kept to his. There were nights, though, when he came to me with determination and  vigor. He hoped that his state of disability would change, but my blood cycle would always  return, and he soon tired of the bedding act. He no longer hoped. I had often contemplated that  battle in my womb, my blood, and his seed. How strange it was to see blood and think I was  winning. 

I was a widow soon afterwards. And now I risk this moment to reveal some of my  cruelty. 

I did not contemplate the reasons for my late husband’s death; I did not think of him or  his poor health. Men are not gods. If I thought of my late husband, it was only as an example of  human weakness and little more. Women have always failed in that battle, and this was the  result: us as creatures of giving and giving again. That was why, in my second marriage, I was  exactly the opposite as in my first marriage: I took instead. 

But this is not a story of men and women. This is my story. My second husband was  dead, and, being alone again, I packed and ended up in the same condition as I had been found. I was alone on this plain—Hafeera, they called it. Rocks and sands and a little shack, my  sanctuary. I survived alone. No gods for miles. They did not come here. They no longer existed. 

Waking up at dawn, I would gaze up at the unforgiving sky, raise my sleeves to my elbows, and  begin my day. A day alone, away, and free. A day of giving and taking for myself. But this woman writes about me. She wants me to be filed somewhere. I have tried so  very hard not to be remembered, but that shack on that plot of land still stands, and they shall  tear it down soon. It is what men do when they find things. 

And yet, here on this page, I belong.