Celestial Bodies

Abdallah thinks about his mother, who died suddenly when she “contracted a fever as she was giving birth” (168) to Abdallah. Ankabuta swears that she left the offerings of food to the jinni-woman exactly as commanded. Others insist that they were not at fault. While some suggest sorcery is to blame, Shaykh Said’s mother makes pointed comments, saying that “every person in this world will be served in the afterlife what she served others in this life” (168). While people try to deduce her meaning, Zarifa keeps quiet.

We learn the story of Marwan’s birth. His mother was told that she would have a son who would be “righteous and good” (169). She nicknames Marwan “the Pure,” and hopes that he will have a career in religion. Marwan memorizes the Noble Hadith, and he scorns “the games of other boys and their interest in trivial things” (169). He recognizes that he is different from his brothers; he is aware of the prideful way his parents regard him. One night, aged 13, he sneaks into his parents’ room and steals “all the money he found in his father’s wallet” (169). The next day, he beats himself with his father’s cane and fasts for two weeks. Three months later, he steals from his brother. By age 16, he has fasted for eight months and 14 days. People think that this is a spiritual commitment rather than a self-induced punishment. Marwan steals more and more, unable to stop. The secret tears Marwan apart inside. After his father dies, he sneaks into his mother’s room and steals “her new perfume, his father’s silver dagger, and a paltry sum of money” (171). He uses the dagger to cut the veins in his “thieving hand” (171) and bleeds to death.

In the 1890s, a slump in the Omani date trade leads a young merchant named Hilal to “seek a new source of profit” (172). He becomes involved in the arms trade and helps to smuggle weapons across the Middle East. After becoming a rich man, he seeks marriage into “a shaykhly family in al-Awafi” (172), eventually fathering a son and heir named Sulayman. Despite fathering other sons, only Sulayman survives into adulthood until Hilal visits a doctor to cure an errant vein in his head. He has three children: Sulayman, Ishaq, and a daughter who is a recluse and is divorced by two husbands. Sulayman inherits everything, including his father’s business savvy. Rather than weapons, he makes his money in the slave trade.

Masouda, still locked away, realizes that Shanna left al-Awafi with her husband, Sanjar. Her voice and body grow weaker; she depends on neighbors to feed and help her. She remembers peering curiously into the room of Merchant Sulayman, who has slept separately from his wife, Fatima, since the birth of Abdallah. She watched as Sulayman’s sister entered her brother’s room. The sister told Sulayman that she saw Fatima and Saleem (Shaykh Said’s slave) together “at the basil bush” (174). She offered to take care of the problem. Sulayman left on business and returned three months later to find his wife dead, and his son Abdallah in the care of his aunt. Saleem had vanished. Masouda had thought that she had “obliterated this murky dawn scene from her mind” (175). 

Abdallah sits on the plane, due to arrive in Frankfurt “any moment now” (176). He remembers sitting on Zarifa’s lap and listening to a story about goats and a wolf. The wolf tricks the young goats and eats them. When the young goats’ mother searches for her offspring, a dove tells her what happened. The mother goat first visits the blacksmith and asks him “to sharpen her horns until they were knife blades” (176). Then, she finds the wolf, slices open its stomach, and finds her offspring alive inside. Then, “Mama and the babies all went home” (176).

London excitedly telephones Hanan and says that Ahmad will dedicate his new poem to her at the Oman Poetry Festival. She calls Hanan again on the day she and Ahmad conclude their betrothal vows and sign a marriage contract. Hanan has long been cynical about Ahmad, “the guy who calls himself a poet” (177). Ahmad has pursued London for a long time, much to Mayya’s disgust. Abdallah allowed the marriage to proceed. London has heard Ahmad lament “backwardness and ugliness” (178) many times, as well as “abhorrent classism” (178).

When London sees Ahmad with another woman, her accusations are met with vitriol. He says that she is “hemming me in with your jealousy and egotism” (178) and stifling his poetic nature and creative instincts. When she discovers the woman’s photograph in Ahmad’s wallet, London is angry. He calls her backwards and ugly. The next day, Ahmad announces his grand plans for the future, which involve London but are markedly different to her own. However, she finds herself giving in to Ahmad. Hanan chastises London but must leave to Dhofar. Every day, London phones her “in tears” (181). Hanan reminds London that she is “still just in the contract period, meaning, it’s just an engagement, really” (181), but London does not want “to be a divorced woman” (181). When she finally breaks off the relationship, Ahmad pleads with her, apologizing for hitting her, but London refuses to take him back, still feeling “the sharpest, most violent bitterness and pain” (182).

Once Nasir settles in Oman with Khawla, she asks for a divorce. She can no longer “bear the past” (183) and, because she is at peace, “her heart stopped forgiving” (183). He begs her to reconsider, but she refuses to listen. There is no way Nasir can understand what she has been through.

In Abdallah’s dream, he sits in a car with Muhammad, and the latter complains about his imagined wife “being insanely jealous” (185). As Salim plays outside, London sits in the car with them. She is crying. Abdallah pictures Muhammad again, as the boy imagines that his wife is Mayya, “bent over that damned sewing machine” (185). Abdallah slaps Muhammad when his dribbling and “sharp nervous movements” (185) make a scene. Abdallah’s father snatches the whip from his son’s hand, throws it in the sea, and then walks away. Abdallah chases after him, begging him to “take Muhammad with you” (185). Abdallah hears a car start and sees London at the wheel. He scoops up Muhammad and walks into the sea, whereupon Muhammad slips away from him and Abdallah “came out of the water dry” (186).