Adam mumbled in his sleep then farted. Still on her side, Noon’s moist eyes followed a tailless grey lizard scramble across the wall. The scamper of lizards’ feet across the roof kept Noon awake at night. She watched the warty reptile disappear behind a plastic-framed wedding picture on the wall. In the photo she wore a purple tobe and three kilograms of fake gold borrowed from an already married cousin. The gold draped her hair and chest. Intricate swirls of henna adorned her hands and feet. Adam stood behind her, in groom’s regalia and a wide smile. He looked old and flabby. But what a lovely bride she had been! Noon’s cheeks flushed in pleasure at the memory.
She turned on her back and stared at the revolving fan. Like a giant moth it stirred a pungent odor of earth. She had sprinkled water on the dusty floor this morning, then swept it with the straw broom. She preferred simple straw to the fancy ones with bristles that Adam bought for her.
“To make your life easier,†he said.
***
Noon woke at dawn, just as night withdrew gently from the blaze of a rising fireball on the horizon. Listening to the hauntingly beautiful voice of the muezzin she performed her morning prayers. Wrapped in a plain beige tobe she listened to the tic-tock sound of a grandfather clock hanging in the living room. By some miracle Adam had acquired this contraption and it looked vulgar, un-Sudanese among the gaudy furniture, the lacquered yellow wall paint and jaundiced light bulbs hanging from dangerous looking black wires. Adam had promised her a chandelier. She had her eye on one from that shop where she used to work before marrying him. Plastic, shiny and cheap. Made in China. Every day, the naked light bulbs reminded her of yet another betrayal by her husband.
The morning was brisk. Summer was slowly coming to an end. Noon preferred the rainy season anyway. She pulled the tobe tighter around her swollen belly as she walked across the yard towards the kitchen. The baby was growing. The sight of her changing body in the mirror made Noon recoil in horror. The looming finale left her psyche locked in a permanent, clandestine scream.
While the pancakes cooked Noon thought of how much she hated housework. And Khartoum. And this doomed, sullied house full of broken individuals.
She thought of how much she detested washing Adam’s white robes by hand. The crude bars of soap turned her skin into indigo colored blotches and washed off her carefully applied henna. She disliked ironing his white robes with that heavy coal iron. Adam liked his robes flawless.
Eleven months and eleven days since her wedding day Noon watched her husband devour the breakfast she had spent an hour preparing. She placed a round tray heaped with spongy warm pancakes and a large glass of milky tea in front of him on a small metal table.
Adam inhaled, his flat nostrils flaring in approval. “Ahh,” he said, “vanilla and cinnamon.â€
“Yes, vanilla and cinnamon,†Noon repeated.
Her husband ate as he lived. He ripped portions of pancake with his stubby fingers, dunked them into a plate of sticky honey before shoving them into his plump cheeks.
Honey dribbled down Adam’s fingers and hand, landing on his white robe, the one she had washed and ironed with meticulous care.
Noon sipped her tea and looked away. She stared at the neem tree shedding more of its leaves.
Vomit rose in her throat and into her mouth. She stood up, unsure whether it was the baby or her husband that made her ill.
“Bless your hands,” Adam licked his thick lips. “Your mother did assure me you were an excellent cook.â€
Oblivious to the pieces of dough stuck to his teeth, Adam slurped tea and sighed. He stretched on the bed and closed his eyes. “I feel dizzy.†He threw a hand over his forehead and turned on his side.
She had been dismissed.
“Would you like something else before you leave for work?” she asked.
Adam grunted in reply. Noon picked up the tray with the glutinous leftovers. Her gold bangles jingled. Her husband’s child kicked inside her. Bile made her mouth sour. Adam didn’t ask if she wanted some breakfast. He never did. It was just how he was.
Greedy.
She is in Kadoogli and the river flows beneath her feet. The water is cold and she splashes it at her squealing cousins. Oh, how she misses bathing in the Nile. On the bank, her mother and aunts prepare a picnic. They spread out lunch on a large straw mat. Salted fish, hard boiled eggs, sesame paste and jam sandwiches, mangoes that turn blood red and leak through Noon’s fingers as she devours their piquant sweetness…
“Noon!”
Noon almost dropped the tray.
“I am telling you to get me a glass of water.†His voice sounded strange. Noon pursed her lips and lifted her head high.
“What’s wrong with you, girl?â€
She didn’t look at him.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.â€
  ***
The empty tea glasses slide on the tray and shatter. The tray is a mess of glass fragments, spilled tea and disintegrated pancake. Noon’s feet feel heavy as she stumbles towards the kitchen for what seems to her an inexplicably long time.
The sounds come then. The gurgling, the first startled intake of breath… She doesn’t turn around to look at her husband. Not even when he calls her name. It’s barely a whisper, but her senses are sharpened, incredibly aroused and she clearly hears the pleas in his voice. Adrenalin pulses through her veins like that boiling water in the teapot. She wonders if this elated feeling is what smoking bango feels like. The baby kicks again. Placing her hand and the disappearing henna doodles on her belly she touches the miniature earthquakes baby’s limbs create inside her.
Shush baby… Shush.
Adam doesn’t call again and Noon continues tidying up. She dumps the tray, together with its useless contents into the plastic garbage bucket. A breeze has lifted off the highlands somewhere in Sudan and made its way to her. Clear and crisp. No dust. She inhales the scented air into her lungs and closes her eyes. A river, a forest, frangipani and jasmine, guava and tamarind. Sandalwood too. It smells of home.
Something brushes against her calf. It’s a stray. Emaciated, black and evil.
“Black cats are the jinn themselves,†mother always warned.
Noon sees the cat scurry towards the garbage. It sticks its ugly pink tongue into the trail of spilled milk-tea.
Everything is so quiet now, so beautiful. Noon forgets the cat. She feels light and free. At the same time she wants to bang her head against the stupid crumbling wall until her head splits open like a ripe watermelon. Red and fleshy.
Adam has not called her again. She is curious but doesn’t feel like going back to check. To walk across the endless yard, stand by the bed where his splayed body, contorted and dead now lays. No she will not go.
The cat is onto the pancake scraps. Licking… licking. Has it not had enough already? Obviously, it’s stupid and greedy. Just like Adam.
The cupful of lizard poison Noon had stirred into the pancake batter should have killed the jinn cat already. Vanilla and cinnamon. Cinnamon and vanilla. She wanted to pat herself on the back. Her cousins are never going to believe she had it in her. Her close-set eyes crinkle at the corners. She smiles.
The baby is suddenly heavy and Noon slides to the dusty ground like a rag doll. Her legs stretch out in front of her at an awkward angle. She breathes mouthfuls of that home scented breeze and watches the jinn cat. Its pupils are as big as coins, bottomless. Noon is sure now. They emanate hell fire.
The fire bores straight through Noon’s bulging eyes all the way to the decaying regions of her mind. And still, the cat keeps licking the damn pancakes.
Zvezdana Rashkovich is an American author and columnist born in the former Yugoslavia and raised in Sudan. Her swork has appeared in When Women Waken Anthologies, Inkapture Literary Magazine, New World Writing, Huffington Post, and InCulture Parent among others. She is also the author of ‘Dubai Wives’, a novel.
