I don’t know how it was possible for Khazna to be a mourner for the dead and a beautician for brides at the same time. I had heard a lot about her from my mother and her friends before I had the opportunity to see her for the first time—when one of our neighbors died. Not yet fifty, this man was already consumed by disease, and so it came as no surprise when one of our female neighbors said to my mother, without sadness, “He has passed away, Umm Hasan. May misfortune never befall us.”

I got the feeling that I was about to experience a colorful day full of excitements, and it pleased me. I could take advantage of being a neighbor of the deceased man’s family and sneak inside with the other boys and girls of the alley to stare at the dead man’s waxen face, to watch his wife and daughters weep for him, and see the female mourners rhythmically clapping their hands and chanting phrases they had learned by heart.

I took one of my little girlfriends by the hand and together we managed to sneak through the visitors’ legs and find a place not far from the door, where lots of other children had gathered, keen, like us, to get acquainted with death and experience a few adventures. There we stayed—until a big hand pushed us aside. It was the hand of Khazna, standing, tall and broad, in the doorway. She quickly assumed a distressed look, stretched out her fingers and undid her two braids, then took a black headcloth out of her pocket and tied it around her forehead. She gave a horrendous scream, which filled my little heart with dread, and forced her way through the women to a corner in which stood a vessel containing liquid indigo. She rubbed her face and hands with it, making herself look like the masks that vendors hang up in their shops during festivals. Then she came back and stood by the dead man’s head, gave another scream, and began to beat her breast violently and roll her tongue, uttering rhythmical words that the women repeated after her. Tears were already streaming down their faces. It was as if with her screams Khazna was mourning not only this dead man, but all the dead of the village, one by one. She stirred sorrow in one woman over the loss of her husband, and in another over a son or brother. You could no longer tell which of the women was the mother of the deceased, or the wife, or the sister. If the women flagged in their efforts, exhausted, Khazna delivered a particularly sad eulogy, followed by a horrendous scream. Then the tears gushed out, the weeping grew louder, and the grief intensified. Khazna was the pivot in all this, with an indefatigable tongue, a voice like an owl’s, and a strange ability to summon up grief. The reward was in proportion to the effort, and Khazna’s reward was such that it awakened in her an inexhaustible spring of grief.

I still remember how, when the men came to carry the deceased to his wooden bier, Khazna begged them to proceed gently with the dearly departed, to be careful, and not to hasten to cut his ties with this world. This went on until one man got fed up with her chatter, pushed her away, and, with the help of his friends, forcibly carried off the deceased. Then the black handkerchiefs were raised in farewell, and the women’s requests followed each other in quick succession, some sending greetings to their departed husbands, others to their mothers. Khazna then filled the whole place with a wailing that rang out clearly above the voices of the dozens of screaming women. Only when the funeral procession moved off and the bier, on which the dead man’s fez wiggled, was slowly carried away by the escorting men, did Khazna quiet down. Then it was time for the women to rest a little from the sadness that had overwhelmed them. They were invited to help themselves to some of the food set out on a table in one of the rooms. Khazna was the first to wash her face, roll up her sleeves, and fill her big mouth with anything she could lay her hands on. As I stood among the little children who had slipped in, I noticed her hiding something in the front of her dress. Sensing that she had been spotted, she gave a tired smile and said, “It’s a little bit of food for my daughter Masouda. I got the news before I could prepare anything for her to eat. And eating the food from a mourning ceremony is rewarded in the hereafter.”

That day I understood that Khazna was different from any other woman. She was a necessity for death even more than for the dead. I was unable to forget her big mouth, her fearful hands, and her loose, curly hair. Whenever I heard that a man was dying, I would run with my friends to his house, prompted merely by the wish to see something exciting. I would then relate the adventure to my mother—if, that is, she had not run there herself. But I would be distracted from the face of the dying man by the sight of Khazna, and my eyes would be glued to her, watching her hands as they moved from her breast to her face to her head in a violent beating which seemed, like the words she intoned, to have a special rhythm that penetrated the wounds of the bereaved family and made the visitors feel the grief.

Some time passed before I had the opportunity to see Khazna at a wedding. I could not believe my eyes. She had the same black curly hair, but it was combed and adorned with flowers. She also had the same ugly face, but the powders made it look completely different from the face painted with indigo. Her eyes appeared bigger because of the kohl that she had used to circle them. Her arms were loaded with bracelets (who said trading in death was not profitable?). Her mouth was constantly open in laughter; now and then she shut it halfway to chew a big piece of gum between her yellow teeth.

Then I realized that Khazna had to do with brides as much as she had to do with the dead. Her task began on the morning of the wedding day. She depilated the bride with sugar syrup and penciled her eyebrows, at the same time initiating her into her sexual duties in a whisper—or what she thought was a whisper. If the bride blushed, she laughed at her and winked, reassuring her that in a few nights she would become skillful at lovemaking, and that she could guarantee it if the bride kept applying the fragrant soap to her body and the oil to her hair. These were items that the bride could fetch from the chemist or buy from Khazna herself. In the evening, the women arrived together, perfumed and beautifully adorned, and gathered around the bride, who sat up on a platform. Then Khazna’s trills of joy tore asunder the sky above the village. She played a prominent role in the dance circle, going around joking with the women, saying obscene things that made them laugh. When, amidst the winking of the women, the bridegroom came to take the bride away, Khazna undertook to conduct them solemnly to the door of their room, where she still had the right to keep guard. I didn’t quite understand why Khazna was so eager to stand at the newlyweds’ door, waiting nervously and inquisitively. Whenever the signal came—after a short wait or a long one—she uttered a piercing trill of joy, which the bride’s family had obviously been eagerly awaiting. When it came, the men twisted and twirled their mustaches, and all the women stood up simultaneously and uttered proud trills of joy. Then Khazna left, content in eye, soul, stomach, and pocket, the women wishing that she, in her turn, would rejoice at Masouda’s wedding.

Masouda’s wedding was something Khazna looked forward to. It was also the reason that she collected bracelets and provisions. After all, she had no one else in the world except this daughter, and it was to her that everything she earned from the funerals and weddings would pass.

But the heavens did not want Khazna to rejoice.

It was a summer that I was never to forget. Typhoid ensured it was a season like no other for Khazna. The sun did not rise without a new victim, and it was said that Khazna mourned for three customers on one day.

The disease did not spare Masouda, invading her bowels. Death took no pity on her, despite Khazna’s solemn pledges.

The people in my village woke up to the news of the little girl’s death. Their curiosity began where the life of this poor girl ended. How would Khazna mourn for her daughter? What kind of eulogy would her grief at the loss prompt her to deliver? What sort of funeral ceremony would throw the neighborhood into a state of agitation?

Curiosity and sadness got the better of me, and I went along to Khazna’s house, together with scores of other women rushing to redeem some of their debt to her.

The house had only one room and could not contain more than twenty people. We sat down and those who could not get in remained standing in a circle at the door. My gaze swept over the heads, searching for Khazna’s face, because I didn’t hear her voice. To my utter amazement, I didn’t find her weeping. She was silent, speechless, lying on the floor in the corner of the room. She had not wrapped a black browband around her head, or painted her face with indigo; she was not striking her cheeks or tearing at her clothes.

For the first time, I saw the face of a woman who was not feigning her emotions. It was the face of a woman in agony, almost dying from agony.

It was a mute grief—grief that only those who had suffered a great misfortune could recognize.

Some women tried to weep or scream. But she looked at them in dismay, as if she loathed this affectation, so they fell silent, utterly amazed. When the men came to carry the body of the only creature for whom Khazna might express her feelings without hypocrisy, she did not scream or tear at her clothes, but instead looked at them distractedly. Then she walked off behind them like someone in a daze, as they headed toward the mosque and the cemetery. All she did there was lay her head on the earth to which the little body had been entrusted, and let it rest there for hours—God alone knew for how many hours.

People came back from the funeral ceremony with different versions of what had happened to Khazna. Some said she had gone so mad that she seemed rational. Others said she had no tears left, because all those funerals had exhausted them. And there were even people who said that Khazna did not cry because she was not getting paid for it.

There were only very few people who preferred not to say anything, and leave it to Khazna—in her silence—to say it all.