Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(199)

Their faces lit with the promise of ice cream. Again, Wardah intervened.

“Anas,” she said sternly, “you heard what I said. Take your brother inside the house. Now.”

The older boy grabbed his little brother by the hand. Together, they scooted out from under the tree and made a dash for the kitchen door.

Yumn whirled back to her mother-in-law. “Witch!” she cried. “You filthy cow! How dare you take my children and—”

The slap came hard. And so unexpectedly that Yumn was rendered speechless. For an instant she forgot who she was and where she was. She was thrust back to her girlhood, hearing her father's shouting, and feeling the solid force of his knuckles as he railed against the impossibility of finding her a husband without paying a dowry ten times what she was worth. And in that instant of forgetting, she surged forward. She grabbed Wardah's dupattā, and as it slipped from her head to her neck, she jerked its two ends savagely, crying out and pulling until she had the older woman forced to her knees.

“Never,” she cried. “You never, never … I who give your son his sons …” And once Wardah was on her knees, Yumn shoved her shoulders towards the earth.

She began to kick: at the neatly turned earth along the vegetable row, at the plants, at Wardah. The ruined tomatoes, she began to hurl. And as she did so, she shrieked, “I am ten times the woman …fertile …willing …desired by a man. … While you …you …with your talk of talent for doing nothing …you …”

She was so intent upon finally venting her fury that she didn't at first hear the shouting. She didn't know anyone had come into the garden until she felt her arms pinned behind her back and her body dragged away from the crumpled form of her husband's mother.

“Bitch! Bitch! Are you stark mad?”

The voice was so enraged that for an instant she didn't recognise it as Muhannad's. He shoved her roughly to one side and went to his mother, saying, “Ammī, are you all right? Has she hurt you?”

“I hurt her?” Yumn demanded. Her dupattā had fallen from her head and shoulders. Her hair had come unbraided. The arm of her qamis was ripped out. “She hit me. For nothing. That bloody cow—”

“Shut up!” Muhannad roared. “Get in the house. I'll deal with you directly.”

“Muni! She struck your wife in the face. And for what? Because she's jealous. She—”

He shot to his feet. There was a burning intensity in his eyes that Yumn had never seen there before. She retreated hastily.

She said in a quiet, more afflicted tone, “Would you have your wife struck? By anyone?”

He cast her a look of such aversion that she recoiled. He turned back to his mother. He was helping her to her feet, murmuring and gently brushing at her clothes, when Yumn turned from them and hurried into the house.

Anas and Bishr were cowering in the kitchen, both of them in the far corner on the floor behind the table. But she didn't stop to soothe their fear. She went straight to the bathroom upstairs.

Her hands were trembling like a palsy victim's, and her legs felt as if they wouldn't continue to bear her weight. Her garments were plastered to her body by sweat, soil crusted in their every fold, the juice of ripe tomatoes staining the material like blood. The mirror showed her that her face was filthy and her hair—caught up with spider webs, caterpillars, and leaves—looked worse than an unwashed gypsy's.

She didn't care. Right was on her side. No matter what she did, right was always on her side. And one look at the mark of Wardah's blow upon her face was going to confirm that.

Yumn washed the dirt from her cheeks and forehead. She bathed her hands and her arms. She patted her face upon a towel and examined herself once again in the mirror. She saw that the mark of Wardah's blow had faded. She renewed it by slapping herself repeatedly, stinging her flesh with the strength of her palm until her cheek was crimson.

Then she went to the bedroom that she shared with Muhannad. From the corridor, she could hear the two of them downstairs: Muhannad and his mother. Wardah's voice was back to that patently false tone of subservient womanhood which she reserved for speaking to either her son or her husband. Muhannad's voice was …Yumn listened carefully. She frowned. He sounded unlike he'd ever sounded, even in their most intimate moments when they first looked upon their infant sons together.

She caught a few words. Ammī-jahn …never to hurt …didn't intend …the heat …apologise and make reparation to you,

Apologise? Make reparation? Yumn crossed the corridor and went into the bedroom. She slammed the door so hard that the windows shook in their frames. Let them try to make her apologise. She slapped her face again. She scored her cheeks until her nails drew blood. He would see how ill his beloved mother had used his wife.

When Muhannad entered the room, she had combed her hair and returned it to its braid. She'd done nothing else. She was sitting at her dressing table, where the light was the best for him to see the damage his mother had done to her.

“What would you have me do when your mother attacks me?” she demanded before he could speak. “Am I to let her kill me?”

“Shut up,” he said. He walked to the chest of drawers and did what he never did in his father's house. He lit a cigarette. He stood facing the chest rather than her, and as he smoked, he leaned one arm against the wood and with the other he pressed his fingers to his temple. He'd returned home from the factory unexpectedly before noon. But rather than join the women and children for a midday meal, he'd spent the next few hours on the telephone, both making and receiving calls in a hushed and urgent voice. Obviously, he was still preoccupied with his business affairs. But he shouldn't be so preoccupied that he failed to note what his wife had suffered. While his back was turned, Yumn pinched her cheek so hard that tears came to her eyes. He would see how she had been abused.