The Night Counter Read Free

children called daily. The others telephoned just once or twice a week. But how good they all were with weather reports.
Mashallah
, Fatima knew the weather in half the cities in the country through her children’s phone calls. Today Detroit was steamy, Washington, D.C., rainy, and New York foggy; New Castle was having an early summer.
    She was still reviewing the weather map of America when the rattleof an armful of delicate gold bracelets brought her back to the room.
Alhamdulilah
, God be praised. It was time for the night to begin. Fatima looked up, and there she was. Scheherazade. A few minutes early this evening, perched on the windowsill, seductively shaking her bangles for attention.
    Tonight she wore a chocolate-brown
thowb
of Damascene silk and Persian gossamer that touched the tops of her delicate feet and was trimmed in red embroidery. Fatima recognized the embroidery as a circular Baghdadi pattern. Her hair flowed like Fatima’s, but Scheherazade’s was still as crystal black as when King Shahrayar had fallen in love with her eleven centuries ago. Her thick lashes were almost as long as Amir’s, and she batted them at Fatima.
    “It was 101 degrees in Houston today,” Fatima told her.
    Scheherazade sighed, showing no more interest in Houston’s impressive heat than Fatima had in Amir’s fog update. In fact, Scheherazade’s mood seemed as bothered as her own this evening. “My dear lady,
inshallah yes
or
inshallah
no, it will either rain or turn fine tomorrow,” she said in a lilting voice that made her words come together like a little song regardless of her mood. “If it is fine tomorrow, I’ll finish plowing, and if it rains, I’ll finish weaving. … As long as your children know how to deal with the weather, all is well,
ya seiti
. Tonight we can skip your review of the temperatures of your children’s gardens so that we can get to my story for the evening more quickly.”
    Fatima picked up a strand of her hair and began twisting it. She had been a little troubled the first night Scheherazade, with her jiggling belts and breasts, had awakened her from sleep. That had been 992 nights ago, the night Fatima had moved in with Amir to keep him company. Scheherazade had returned every evening since, asking Fatima each night for some story from her past.
    “What if I don’t tell you a story?” Fatima had asked on the third night.
    “To know you have 1001 nights to tell your stories is a gift and a curse,” Scheherazade had replied. “But when our tales are over, so are our lives. Do you understand what I mean?”
    Fatima was no
hamara
, no stupid donkey. That was how she came to understand that she, Fatima Abdul Aziz Abdullah, would die in Los Angeles, California, USA, when Scheherazade visited her for the 1001st time. Maybe she’d never read the
The Arabian Nights
—again, not her fault—but she knew the stories by heart. This woman, Scheherazade, of whom
rawis
—bards in villages from Iran to India—had spun tales since the time of the Caliph Rashid Al-Harun, was herself the greatest storyteller of all time. For 1001 nights Scheherazade had saved herself from beheading by pausing at the most climactic point in one of her tall tales. She would promise King Shahrayar that she would finish the story just for him the next day. Thus, her life was spared each night, unlike the hundreds of women before her. By the time Scheherazade had nearly run out of stories, King Shahrayar loved her too much to do anything but marry her and have three children with her.
    Fatima twirled a strand of purple hair, angry that her nightly visitor had not let her ease into her stories with the usual weather report. Maybe she, too, has been counting the days, Fatima thought, and has realized time is almost over for me.
    “Come on,” Scheherazade coached. “Tell me a tale of your more recent husband.”
    Fatima continued to twirl the purple strand by way of answer.
    “We have memories so that we can share them.”