Three Daughters: A Novel Read Free

cornfields of nearby plantations. The room was suffocatingly hot and only by stripping naked could he endure the heat. In compensation el-Mesmiyeh had an inexhaustible well and four stout mules raised cool, sweet water.
    When the family returned to Tamleh, they were so tanned the twins cried as if they were strangers. Nabiha was shocked at Miriam’s condition. “Look at her hair,” she said reproachfully.
    “The comb won’t go through,” said Jamilla, kissing and inspecting her babies, who were toddling around. “It would take hours to untangle it and my arms are too weary. It’s the tangles that hold the dirt.” Seeing how thin her daughter had become and the deep circles around her eyes stopped Nabiha from scolding her over Miriam’s condition.
    “Come.” She took Miriam’s hand. “That body needs scrubbing and that hair . . . that hair.”
    Miriam slipped her hand out of her grandmother’s grasp and began to scratch.
    “ Ya Allah ,” said Nabiha. “She has a rash, too.”
    She undressed her granddaughter and found her covered with oozing welts and ran to find Mustafa. He stared at the bony, infested body and his eyes filled with tears. He picked her up and carried her across town to Spiridum Rascallah, who was permitted to dispense pharmaceuticals. She gave him a soothing salve that Mustafa spread over the infected bites.
    Miriam’s muteness affected each family member differently. Her father taught her a few hand signs but mostly they communicated by pantomime and drawings. Jamilla, busy with the twins, distanced herself from the problem and never urged her daughter to talk. Nabiha prayed daily. Nabile asked Miriam privately each day to just say, “Good morning.” Daud, the younger uncle, who had been displaced by her birth, detested her muteness and was determined to end it.
    One day Miriam hid an abandoned pup at the edge of the yard. Dogs were too numerous to arouse sympathy but this one had rounded ears and large eyes. Each day she fed him with a rag soaked in milk, but one morning the tangle of vines hiding him was pushed aside and the crate was empty. Her face, still pale from sleep, crinkled into an anxious squint.
    She walked back to the house and Daud appeared with a covered basket. He was noticeably short and she had almost caught up to him during the winter. “Is this what you’re looking for?” He lifted the cover briefly and she reached out. “Oh, no. When you say, ‘Uncle Daud,’ I’ll give him back.” He poked a knife through the basket’s weave. “No talking, no dog.”
    She went to the far edge of the yard to look down the western road where her father appeared on Saturday. He came home filthy with ash residue from the soap making in Ramleh. He traveled with his own old dog to warn him of noise and danger, and the dog’s collar beat against itself, making a familiar sound. But today wasn’t Saturday.
    Daud moved to the vegetable patch. A slight breeze blew and he lifted his face. Then he sighed, held the dog up by his ears and put the knife against its throat. “Speak!” he ordered sharply. “You bloody little liar. You can speak as well as anyone.” He grazed the throat from ear to ear and a necklace of blood drops appeared. The dog yelped pitifully. The second motion was swift, deep, and sure and the small round head fell back.
    Miriam heard the gurgling before the dog collapsed. She tipped the head back to a normal position but the rest of him sagged pathetically. “Dead,” she said.
    “What?” Daud heard it.
    “Dead.”
    “You little fool. Why speak now?”
    Her mother found her holding the dog in her lap. “What happened? Are you hurt?” She called to Daud, who was a few yards away pitching stones at the herds.
    “I killed her mutt. He was digging in the garden.”
    Miriam was standing by her mother’s shoulder. “No,” she said firmly. Jamilla was startled as much by the quality of the voice as by the fact that she had spoken. “Lie,” said