Celestial Bodies

Abdallah remembers Zarifa squatting down, “her enormous breasts” (131) spilling onto her lap as she handled the Omani jelly-sweets. Zarifa ate “a large chunk” (131) despite her diabetes. When he was scared, Abdallah wanted Zarifa to hold him. He still worries that his dead father will return to blame Abdallah for Zarifa’s death. Zarifa had returned to al-Awafi; rumors said that Shanna had tried to lock her up as mad or that Zarifa simply missed the village. Abdallah was too busy to see her. The stock market crash, building a house, Muhammad’s autism, and learning English were all a distraction. He worries that his father will hang him upside down in the well again. Zarifa’s diabetes got worse. Both her legs were amputated. Her relatives left her in a hospital to die.

Azzan and Najiya meet in the desert. He worries that “people are always apart” (133) and recalls a poem about the life of Ibn al-Rumi, “the pessimist” (133). Azzan explains that “the poets who sang about the pleasure of possession weren’t lovers […] they were hunters” (133), as a true beloved is someone who cannot be owned. Najiya is disconcerted by Azzan’s words. All she wants is to be his lover and “she didn’t want anything else” (134). To her, he seems “tortured by cryptic feelings” (133).

Standing in front of the mirror, Asma examines her heavily made-up face. Her hands are painted with henna and she recalls when she first had to begin wearing a head wrap. Looking at her stomach, she thinks about the children she wants to have. She shivers with anticipation and wonders what Khalid is feeling. At sunset, women arrive at the house with trays of food. People sing and dance. They call for the bride, and Asma is presented to the guests. Emigrant Issa drives her in a red Mercedes to his home in Muscat, the guests following in buses. Salima stays behind, as is tradition, and she remembers her own wedding day. After leaving the home of Shaykh Said aged 13, she spent “the loveliest years of her life” (137) in her maternal uncle’s home. Soon, Shaykh Said told her that she is set to marry Azzan, a “green and heedless boy” (137). Her mother and uncle did not approve of the marriage, so on the wedding day, Shaykh Said sent his men to forcibly collect Salima and threatened to drag her through the main falaj outside the building. A few hours later, she was Azzan’s bride. From then on, Salima had the nickname ‘the Bride of Falaj’.

London asks Abdallah why her “grandmother died bewitched” (138). It was a sickness no one could explain, he tells her. As a doctor, London wants to find out more. She fell ill two weeks after Abdallah was born; her “skin turned blue and her pupils contracted” (138). London worries that the symptoms resemble poisoning; Salima once told her that many poisonous plants grow around al-Awafi. That night, Abdallah cannot sleep. He wonders whether he will ever know the truth.

As Asma gets married, Azzan is with Najiya. He stares into her face and recites poetry. She recognizes the poet and they talk about the poem. Azzan recalls a story about his mentor, Judge Yusuf. Eventually, Najiya asks whether Azzan is “happy and comfortable” (141). They fall into silence and Azzan remembers the words of Judge Yusuf. He shivers and Najiya asks him what the matter is. Azzan announces that he “must go” (142), and he leaves. He implores to Judge Yusuf that his “heart’s been snatched away and it sits high in the eagle’s nest” (142), so much so that he “cannot see anything” (142).

Zarifa told Abdallah that, as a baby, he “cried endlessly” (143). She had been assigned to raise him and sometimes she “packed [his] nose with snuff” (143) to make him sleep. She practiced many folk remedies for Abdallah’s various ailments. She would recount all of it, how she raised Abdallah “until the coming of The Great Anger” (143), which was a big argument between Zarifa and Abdallah’s father. Abdallah never learned why they argued, but Abdallah punished Zarifa by forcing her to wed Habib, “the most eccentric and aggressive slave” (143).

The buses from Asma’s wedding return to the village just before dawn. While others are exhausted, Mayya is wide awake, thinking about Khawla’s constant prayers to reunite with Nasir. Everyone but Khawla knows he is not going to return. Mayya holds London close, wondering whether London will be happy. Almost 20 years later, London will be dissolving a marriage contract and processing difficult emotions, “certain that she would never again be that person she had been before” (144). Putting Ahmad behind her will be difficult for London. She imagines her heart as a triangle, shaking under the attack of her memories and emotions. Her life is not like a film or book, in which the heroine can simply forget someone.

Returning from Asma’s wedding, Zarifa is in “a state of collapse” (146). Merchant Sulayman is waiting for her. Though exhausted, she “gave him what he wanted” (146). While he falls asleep immediately, she is kept awake by a “sense of unease” (146). She no longer takes pleasure from weddings. She remembers her mother, a medium who had been the zar’s Big Mama and helped to organize the exorcisms of the jinni. No one could stop Zarifa from attending the ceremonies. When Habib leaves, she thinks she is relieved, but he leaves Sanjar behind, who seems so much like his father. Still awake at dawn, Zarifa thinks about the grandmother she had never known, who died during childbirth. Her ancestors had been captured by slavers, even though slavery was ostensibly outlawed by the British. They were taken from Kenya to Zanzibar and then Oman. During the first leg of the journey, 60 slaves died. Their bodies were thrown overboard. Eventually, Ankabuta’s father was traded around Oman until she ended up in the home of Shayhk Said, then barely 16-years-old.

Asma and Khalid discuss poetry on their wedding night. He tells her that he fell in love with her at first sight. Before long, Asma begin realizes that Khalid might not be her ideal match. Khalid, she discovers, “knew exactly what he wanted and now he was getting everything he needed” (150). Asma is part of this, as she “fit his needs perfectly” (150); she has the profile to slot easily into his ideal life. Part of this is his encouraging her to pursue her education and then a career, as “her mature skills and accomplishments would advance his social status” (151). Asma absorbs this revelation “calmly and methodically” (151) and Khalid comes to love her “in his own fashion” (151). His affection is fleeting; sometimes, he can be distant for hours, days, weeks, and even months. Still, she loves him with “a startling, inexplicable thirst” (151). She learns to make peace with “Khalid’s art and self-absorption” (152). Eventually, they have 14 children together.

Abdallah remembers 1986, when his father first suffered a heart attack. He died in 1992. For six years, Abdallah lived “in constant terror at the thought of [his] father’s death” (153). At first, he was too angry to sleep. They took the body back to al-Awafi, where Abdallah heard Zarifa screaming in lament. Azzan instructed Abdallah on how to wash and prepare his father’s body. The body was buried. Back at the house, people gave their condolences to Abdallah. Coffee was served. In his memories of the time, Abdallah imagines his father’s body beginning to come alive once again.