In a corner of the kitchen the gayna sits.
It came with the bride, a gift from an Aunty. It is a small wooden gayna, its bark chipped and chiseled, and the woman sets to using it at once, the day after the night of the jaybaleh.
She uses the gayna everyday. It is her first gayna - she is its first woman. They discover each other gradually - she uses it for only a few minutes a day, while the oil hisses over the fire and the Sun is hot in the sky and the children chorus verses in the local daara. Her grip slippery at first, but growing firmer with time, as the gayna and her hand learn each other.
After a while the gayna begins to be able to tell what mood she is in, from the way she pounds it. When she is in a hurry, when she is irritated. When she is angry. When she is distracted, her mind on other things than the cooking.
And over many months the gayna finds too that it can penetrate deeper than this, to where her first feelings reside.
