Samah Shahadeh
542 Words
Samah Shahadeh
Ever since I was a small child and even as I have reached the age of fifty-seven, I have always enjoyed listening to astrologers and fortune-tellers.
I cannot resist the possibility of knowing the future, even if it comes through fortune-tellers.
But I’m afraid of the way they look into my eyes when they talk, as if creeping right inside my brain. And I’m also afraid of the timbre of their voices, which inspires a mysterious feeling of
awe.
My mother knew astrologers and fortune-tellers in Beirut, Cairo, Marrakesh, Athens, Budapest, and other cities. More than once during my childhood she brought me with her on trips to those cities, and every time she insisted on having her fortune read – and mine, too.
None of those fortune-tellers were right except for one we met in Budapest a quarter century ago who had only one eye. He told her that one of her spinster sisters was going to get married within a year, and it actually happened. My aunt got married about seven months after we got back, at the age of forty-three.
My father – may God give him a long life – never believed in astrologers or fortune-tellers or soothsayers. He used to call them “soul foxes” and would comment on my mother’s tendency to be swept away by them, telling her, “Fine. Go ahead and listen to them if it’s going to improve your mood.”
In my case, none of the fortune-tellers’ predictions ever came completely true, only partially true. But I would cling to those bits and pieces nevertheless because there were things I was able to know before they happened, no matter how insignificant they were.
I asked Uroub to interpret a worrisome dream I had the night before she came to our house. In the dream I saw a wall in our garden. It broke open and a cat jumped out from inside.
“And she shakes her head, right?” Uroub said, completing the dream for me.
“Yes,” I said, surprised.
“What color was it?” she asked.
“Gray,” I answered.
“You are going to find out about a secret that has been kept from you for many years and it will have a major effect on your life in the future.”
Totally bewildered, I asked, “How did you know what I saw in my dream?”
“How I knew is not important, madame. The important thing is the cat came back to life.”
“What is this secret that I will discover?” I asked her. “I have no secrets and my husband is completely open to me, like the palm of my hand.”
“Every creature has its hidden things. Even the moon has a side we don’t see.”
When she read my palm, she told me it was one in a long chain of palms on which riches poured down in torrents for decades, and the rain was still soaking me and soaking my husband along with me.
I remembered that Fawaz had nothing when he married me. Thanks to my father and his care and attention, Fawaz became a wealthy and influential man, and a Basha.
“And what about the gray cat?” I asked.
“Most likely it was not gray.”
“I remember it well. It was gray,” I said.
“All cats look gray at night, madame.”
I noticed afterwards that all cats do look gray at night, no matter what color they are.
- Writer
