Page 18 of A String of Silver Beads (The Moroccan Empire #1)
Tanemghurt finishes her inspection of me without either condoning or condemning my current state.
She calls out, startling me, and one of her slave girls appears, carrying hot water from the fire outside.
She pours it into a great basin on the floor, then brings more until the basin and three more large pots are full.
Tanemghurt tells her to keep the fire going and more water heating and then stands.
She makes her way to the basin and then slowly kneels, her knees letting out a loud cracking noise that alarms me.
I try to help her, but she gestures impatiently at me, and I step back, rebuffed.
She picks up a cloth, wets it in the hot water and begins to pat my body with it.
I nearly cry out, for the water is almost boiling.
Tanemghurt, however, seems able to immerse the cloth without flinching, her hands hardened after many years.
She ignores my whimpers and wets me thoroughly all over, by which time my body is flushed pink.
When I think she has finished she takes a small cloth, woven with rough wool.
Aunt Tizemt would scold me for producing such coarse work, but I quickly realise its purpose.
Tanemghurt dips it in the burning water and begins to rub me ferociously all over, using small circles, working her way up from my feet.
I stand first on one leg and then the other as she scrubs viciously at the soles of my feet, then works her way up without pause except to dip the cloth back into the water.
I look down, whimpering quietly, and see my skin being scraped off me in little rolls, layer upon layer.
I protest weakly but Tanemghurt has suddenly and conveniently become deaf.
Only when every part of me has been scrubbed and I am scarlet from head to toe does she gesture to me to kneel and dips the cloth yet again.
She kneels opposite me and pushes back my hair.
I close my eyes and steel myself for the assault on my face, the skin so much more tender than the rest of my body, but when the cloth touches my face, it is pleasantly warm rather than burning hot and the strokes are suddenly soft as a caress as she gently wipes each part of my face.
This unexpected gentleness lasts as long as it takes to finish my face and then Tanemghurt gets back to her work with a vengeance.
My head is all but submerged under water in her largest pot, filled with hot water.
I feel as if I might be cooked and briefly wonder what spice she might serve my head with, letting out a hysterical giggle at the thought which is instantly stopped as hot water enters both my nose and mouth.
Having dunked me, she begins to rub a thick paste into my hair while I try to get my breath back.
The paste smells of herbs and rose petals, and she seems determined that it should penetrate my very skull.
I grit my teeth and wait for this torture to be over, for there is no arguing with Tanemghurt.
Certainly, I muse to myself as my head is violently jerked about under her strong hands, I will never be so clean again, no, not even if I spent whole days in the hammams , the great steam baths of the cities.
“Has your aunt instructed you on what happens between a man and a woman?” asks Tanemghurt matter-of-factly.
“Oh yes,” I say quickly, seeking to sound mature enough to be a wife although in truth I have not received any instruction on this topic. Aunt Tizemt probably thought there was plenty of time for such things.
Tanemghurt only raises her eyebrows without challenging me.
At last, she seems to have finished with me, for I can think of no other part of me that can be cleaned.
She has even cleaned my ears with a small stick carved with a curve at the end and has removed not just a few but all of my bodily hairs.
I tried not to shriek when she did this, but I could hear small children outside, giggling between themselves and know that my howls of pain have most certainly been heard by others.
But I still have the thick paste in my hair and my body is covered with stray plucked hairs and little rolls of grimy skin which is an entirely different colour from my new skin, as though I am a serpent and my skin has been shed to bake in the sun, leaving me with a new glossy set of scales.
How am I to remove all this debris? I think perhaps I could immerse sections of myself into the large pot of water – my head, an arm, a leg, although how to manage my torso is beyond me.
But Tanemghurt has bolder ideas. “Go outside,” she commands as though I were not entirely naked and there was not a whole camp of people outside, including my father, brothers and future husband, all nearby. I do not move.
“Are you deaf?”
“ Lalla , I am not going outside naked!” I exclaim.
She laughs as though she had expected me to say this and thinks I am a simpleton. “No-one will see you. Outside. Now.” Her tone does not invite refusal. She yanks back the flaps that covered the entrance to the tent and draws back to let me see what she has done.
Outside stand many slave girls in a circle.
Between them they hold up bright, fluttering lengths of cloth, making a new tent with no roof, outside.
If I step out of the tent now, no-one will see me.
I step out cautiously, noticing too late that Tanemghurt has remained in the tent, then gasp as out of nowhere more slave girls appear on the other side of the bright cloths and each one pours, in rapid succession, a big pot of cold water over my head.
I stand, shaking and choking out some of the water I have accidentally breathed in when I gasped in surprise.
Before I can even raise my hands to my face to wipe the water away, Tanemghurt is by my side and has wrapped me tightly in a large cloth.
She is shaking with laughter, her few teeth exposed, and the wrinkles of her face so creased I can barely see her eyes.
She quickly pulls me back inside the tent as the slave girls, smiling at my shocked face, lower the cloths and go about their business as though what had just happened is a daily occurrence.
Back inside the tent, Tanemghurt has lost her fierceness. She seats me, still wrapped in my cloth, on the bed and then kneels before me and begins to rub warm perfumed oil over every part of my body.
“Did you like the waterfall?” she asks, smiling.
I wriggle my toes in her hands and relax as the warmth creeps back into my body, inhaling the smell of roses that fills the tent. “I have never seen such a thing before, Lalla ,” I say honestly.
She chuckles, pleased with her work. “It is hard to bathe out here – water must be carried so far, and we cannot build the great steam baths of the cities. But I have heard tell of them, how the skin is steamed so that the old skin will fall away and open to receive softening oils, how great buckets of water are thrown over the women who go there. It is a gift I make, for brides of our camp. Our brides are the cleanest and most perfumed of all the tribes. I have had women come and beg me to do this for them from tribes far, far away!” She is proud of her reputation as a wise woman, one who can manage not only the hard things, like a childbirth gone wrong, but also the joyful things of life, such as the honour of preparing a bride for her husband.
Tonight, I will sleep in her tent and tomorrow she will send me out as a bride to my husband, for the first day of celebrations.
***
All day long the guests have been arriving.
They are offered hot tea and all manner of good things to eat.
They set up their tents and settle down to the best part of a wedding – the gossiping, the catching up with family and friends and enjoying good food and drink.
In the afternoon the young men race their camels while the women ululate and praise them with shrill cheers and songs.
From Tanemghurt’s tent, as I sit still, waiting for the henna to dry, I smile when I think about my camel racing days.
“What are you smiling at?” asks Tanemghurt.
I shake my head. “I used to race camels,” I confess. “I pretended to be one of my brothers, but it was always me. I won so many races,” I add a little wistfully.
I think that Tanemghurt will frown or tell me that it is high time I set aside such nonsense, but to my surprise she chuckles and then pulls at my foot.
With her henna stick she quickly draws a tiny camel on my ankle, hidden from all but there for me and me alone. I look down and smile at its shape.
“Thank you,” I say.
She smiles. “We all have our memories,” she says.
***