At this, her eyebrow cocked, her henna-dyed hands pausing between shushes<\/i> to wipe her brow.<\/p>\n
“Really?” she asked. “So how do you thresh wheat in America?”<\/p>\n
One day I waited for my tutor at her home. I sat on the low stone wall along her garden — one eye alert for the angry rooster — and watched her mother threshing wheat.<\/p>\n
Um Asad stood there, improbably sturdy for her frail frame, gnarled hands grasping a flat, shallow basket full of wheat.\u00a0 She threw the grain up into the air.<\/p>\n
Shush<\/i>, the wheat said, falling tidily back, as wispy flakes of chaff blew hither and yon on the olive-scented breeze.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Shush<\/i>, the wheat said again, and with each shush<\/i> I thought idly of my ancient foremothers who had, I knew, done exactly this thing. Shush<\/i>, my foremothers said.<\/p>\n
After some time glancing at me uncomfortably out of the side of her eye, Um Asad assured me that I was welcome to her finest visitor-room inside, were I bored.<\/p>\n
“Oh no,” I said, in my child’s vocabulary. “I love to watch… this thing you are doing.”<\/p>\n
She clicked her tongue disapprovingly.<\/p>\n
“Bismillah<\/em>!” I exclaimed. “I do love to watch! I’ve never seen anybody do this thing before.”<\/p>\n At this, her eyebrow cocked, her henna-dyed hands pausing between shushes<\/i> to wipe her brow.<\/p>\n “Really?” she asked. “So how do you thresh wheat in America?”<\/p>\n
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