The Fruits of Our Labor

Caden Denton

Period 1

World Literature Honors

Ms. Tompkins

25 April 2014

The Fruits Of Our Labor

“Tread lightly now, the tides arrive once the sun sets”, hollered Musawwir to Aahil as he cautiously set his foot about the floor of the mahogany colored  dhow they were embarking onto. The slender, ebony haired man with a red velvet turban that seemed an inch too big for his head, slipping off his brow as the waves crashed against the underside of boat, nestled himself in between the cargo boxes he had stacked on top of each other.

He peered over at the curmudgeon steering the boat, with a wiry slate colored beard and a tobacco pipe that seemed conspicuously glued to his bottom lip, hands burnt and blackened from one too many accidents burning wads of hashish in his pipe, the ground thundering underfoot when he stepped back, losing balance against the rapacious waves. “So are you gonna stare at me, or are you gonna tell me where you’re going, Mawlawi?” said the old man in a galled manner.

“Yemen, Shaikh” answered the boy with the brow not big enough for his turban. “I am traveling there to feed my family with the money I make from the cargo I have put onto your dhow”. said Aahil. “Hah!” scoffed the elder. “Don’t you know selling spices without a license in the souks is illegal? They’d much rather pull you apart from head to toe than let an absolute stranger control their resources!”.

A sudden feeling of dignity washed over Aahil, his eyes growing moist and reflecting off the warm rays of the sun, proclaiming; “And what is law as long as I have work?”. The captain averted his eyes from the rubicund sea to examine the boy clenched between wooden crates and growled; “And what is work without your own dignity? You juveniles are all the same, out to cause trouble for the good working people that inhabit these lands!”.

Aahil’s sullen demeanor quickly transformed to pitted rage and fury, “What is dignity as long as I can provide for those that love me?”. Musawwir paused while showing no intention of replying to the young man’s remarks, he continued to light the pipe fixed to his lips, as the ghastly smoke trails into the misty mountains, humming a tune Aahil had heard before by the bystanders at the fruit markets, and even within his own home near the Wadi Harad, the smell of anise and acacia flowed through his nostrils like the hashish smoke from Musawwir’s pipe, the vapor dragged off the chamber like the mouth of a bearded dragon his family had warned him about when he was a child to scare the life out of him. Such memories slowly transformed into a listless daydream.

“Dreaming, are you Mawlawi? Or just simply staring as you were before?”. “Simply dreaming, Shaikh, simply dreaming”. “Ah, that family of yours eh? You do this without shame of your thievery?”. At first the comment did not resonate with Aahil, he was stuck within reveries of the homeland he adored, and the family he knew he had to stay providing for. “Yes” Aahil mumbled impetuously. Once that last remark escaped his breath, Aahil began twiddling his thumbs, remembering the soft tassels of the embroidered carpets that riddled the Yemen markets. The enchanting sight of men and women not only spending the coinage they had procured from a long day’s work in who knows where, but also the giving up of their own free will in order to step out of their way to buy produce for their family. Aahil loved this feeling, it was seeing a man spend his own spirit in order to provide for his family, it was total control of a customer. As these fanciful ideas danced around in his head like dabke performances he had seen once in Al-Bireh, the waves bubbled on the surface of the stagnant sea reminded him of the of naan, fresh from his stone oven and the yelling that accompanied it if you ate before the man of the house sat down, in essence, this was a home away from home.

Finally Aahil’s eyes caught sight of Musawwir’s. “Why Yemen then Mawlawi? Why the happy land? The Coffee Country? The place of the Houthi Rebellion?”. Musawwir rambled on about a million other words but they simply got stuck to the end of his pipe like flies upon amber. “It is where I grew up in.” Aahil replied. “If I were to desert my family, then what type of man would I be?” “A good man at that, too many men try to lead their lives with example and integrity, and you know where that got em? A back alley figuring out that their iš-šarmuuTa of a wife had sold them into the opposition party of the state on some faulty charge of who knows what because everyone in the capital is paranoid anyway. I mean who wastes love on marriage anymore?”.

Aahil chuckled at the sentiment, “Some men seem to love their family, especially the wives that bring them the fruits of their labor. We bring the bread to the table and they bring us their nurturing demeanor, isn’t that how it works in Yemen, or have I been gone for too long?”.

Musawwir laughed whole heartedly at this statement.

Glossary
dhow: A traditional sailing vessel used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. 

Mawlawi: An honorific meaning master or highly qualified scholar, this is connected to Muslim religious texts given mainly to Sunni Muslims.

Shaikh: An honorific in Islamic culture literally meaning elder.

souks: Open-air marketplaces in Middle Eastern and North African cities.

dabke: A modern Arab folk dance of possible Phoenician origin

naan: Leavened, oven baked flatbread popular in Central Asia and the Middle East

   
iš-šarmuuTa: An Arabian curse word most likely meaning whore or dishonorable woman.