Going through an old space and found an old story that I exchanged with Sheena in an old skin. I didn’t hate it, so I am reposting it here. As a reminder to write maybe.
Baheerah
It was late on Thursday and Baheerah was on her 13th woman of the night. Another awkward tourist, probably from Japan judging by the way she kept her arm close to her chest and how her eyes flitted from one body to another. She liked them a bit shy, so she could tease them a little. She gave her bum a firm tap and asked her to turn. She turned around awkwardly and put her arms stiffly down her sides. Baheerah gave her a friendly grin,
“Where you from? Japan?”
The woman’s face relaxed a little into a returning smile, “No..… Singapore”.
“Singapore! Is far?”
“Yes. 14 hours by plane.”
Baheerah tried to imagine being in an airplane for an entire day, and shook her head. She stretched the cotton washcloth and dipped it deftly into the soapy container. It ballooned into a pouch of lemongrass scented bubbles that were gently squeezed out onto the woman’s body. Baheerah could see her suprisedsurprised delight and laughed, “You like this? Is nice?”
“Yes, very nice. Thank you!”
Baheerah liked her even more. She was sweet, and eager to show her appreciation. Some of the clients tried too hard to appear at ease, stretching their thin bodies like greek statues formed by amateur hands. Delight is wonderful. And the hammam is a place of delight.
“How long have you worked here?” the woman asked.
She counted in her head. How long hads it been?
She remembered being terrified when she first started. Of the old women who gathered around the tea shop and laughed out loud in their towelled bodies in between clients. Of the ladies who smelled like faraway places with an expectation of splendour. Of her own stiff hands and malnourished body with a disproportionately swelling stomach that folded over the black panties amidst the graceful sinewy ones of the other women.
Then she met Nasmeen, who met her eyes from across the sweaty room and recognised the terror. She walked up to her, and with a firm silence embroidered with kindness, showed her how the system worked. How to collect the ladies with the yellow tag from the waiting area to the changing room, where to bring them the white plastic mismatched sandals, the rhythm of waiting for a space on the warm marble slabs, laying down the clients, giving them time to soak in the magic and lose their own small terrors, working the soap and bodies and water, asking them little questions to put them at ease, and leading them to the next room.
She learnt a lot from Nasmeen in the early days, and was grateful for her sturdiness. Nasmeen seemed to own the space she inhabited, walking with ease and generosity. Over fragments of shared break times and cleaning up the hammam, she found out about Nasmeen’s daughters, about her husband who was eternally sucking on a nargile with men at the tea shop and only came home to shout and demand in violence until her fifth daughter finally exorcised him from her life for good, about her many jobs until this one, which she has claimed as her home. In return she unfolded bits of her own story. How she saved up money to escape from the quiet hysterical fear in Syria, where every night was stitched with urgent whispering of impending violence which must accompany the start of true liberation, but left no place for a young woman with no parents or husband but a heart full of butterflies.
She uncovered more stories, night after night. And Baheerah hads found the hammam to be the heart of women warriors who carved a space of belonging in skin and rituals. They each brought with them a private terror, a secret wound, that was soothed and scabbed over into a scar of confident laughter. She imagined each of the ladies who came there as bringing with them their own stones that contained a story which needed to be held, scrubbed and washed gently anew. Baheerah looked at her Singaporean lady, and smiled,
“3 years. A long time. A life.”
And led her to the basin for a shampoo.
– end –
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