Many hours of the night still remained. Ebla dreaded the long hours ahead of her, awaiting her as if in an ambush: an enemy, an unidentified enemy, who fixed his eyes on you when he felt like it. But she walked out into the warm night to think over the situation.
She wished she were not a woman. But would being a man make her situation any better? She wondered.
‘But let me sort out my ideas; and see what I can do about them,’ she told herself.
2
Escape! To get free from all restraints, from being the wife of Giumaleh. To get away from unpleasantries. To break the ropes society had wrapped around her and to be free and be herself. Ebla thought of all this, and much else.
‘But why is a woman, a woman? To give companionship to man? To beget him children? To do a woman’s duty? But that is only in the house. What else?’ she asked herself. ‘Surely a woman is indispensable to man, but do men realize it?
‘A man needs a woman. A woman needs a man. Not to the same degree? A man needs a woman to cheat, to tell lies to, to sleep with. In this way a baby is born, weak and forlorn. He decides to belittle his mother as soon as he is old enough to walk. He slides away, becomes a heavy burden until he is independent, gets his basic education, like talking, walking, eating, under the care of his mother. When a child, he fidgets about like a lid on top of a boiler. He is infuriating at this stage—he should be put in a cage. After a while, he walks, he talks—only his mother’s language at first. He smiles at his mother. . . . But Giumaleh is the wrong match,’ she suddenly told herself. ‘I definitely can’t marry him.’
But who or what should she escape from? This was the real question which needed to be answered. Inside her, she knew why she wanted to escape. Actually it was more than a want: it was a desire, a desire stronger than anything, a thing to long for. Her escape meant her freedom. Her escape meant her new life. Her escape meant her parting with the country and its harsh life. Her escape meant the divine emancipation of the body and soul of a human being.
She desired, more than anything, to fly away; like a cock, which has unknotted itself from the string tying its leg to the wall. She wanted to fly away from the dependence on the seasons, the seasons which determine the life or death of the nomads. And she wanted to fly away from the squabbles over water, squabbles caused by the lack of water, which meant that the season was bad. She wanted to go away from the duty of women. Not that she was intending to feel idle and do nothing, nor did she feel irresponsible, but a woman’s duty meant loading and unloading camels and donkeys after the destination had been reached, and that life was routine: goats for girls and camels for boys got on her nerves more than she could stand. To her, this allotment of assignments denoted the status of a woman, that she was lower in status than a man, and that she was weak. ‘But it is only because camels are stupid beasts that boys can manage to handle them,’ she always consoled herself. She loathed this discrimination between the sexes: the idea that boys lift up the prestige of the family and keep the family’s name alive. Even a moron-male cost twice as much as two women in terms of blood-compensation. As many as twenty or thirty camels are allotted to each son. The women, however, have to wait until their fates give them a new status in life: the status of marriage. A she-camel is given to the son, as people say ‘tied to his navel’ as soon as he is born. ‘Maybe God prefers men to women,’ she told herself.
But Ebla had no answers to the questions how to escape, where should she escape to, whom should she go to, and when she should escape.
To escape. To be free. To be free. To be free. To escape. These were inter-related.
How to escape? Where to escape to?
Throughout the night, she had been thinking of the easiest method by which she could escape without her grandfather and her brother and the others knowing about it. Her future husband had gone away to the next dwelling, and would be back on the morrow, she had learnt the previous evening. But how? How to escape? She thought about the matter seriously, but there seemed to be no way out. The way to escape was not clear to her. Gradually the clues dripped into her mind as the spring rain drips on to the green grass with the morning dawn. Things came to light. Situations became more friendly. She knew what she should do: escape alone and join the caravan going to Belet Wene, which would leave after a while, she told herself. ‘After a while,’ she repeated to herself. ‘After a while.’
There was always plenty of time in the country. One spoke of morning, when one should say one’s prayers, or wake up to attend to the wants of the beasts. One spoke of ‘harr’ when the beasts would be put out to graze: the young men then went out and sat under the shade of a tree to play cards, and the old men talked poetry and told proverbs, while the women sat apart, talking together while they mended mats or while the older women plaited the hair of their young unmarried daughters. Everybody had a certain duty to keep him or her busy. Even the young boys had games to play, throwing sticks after each other, go-run-‘n’-catch the opponent, jumping races, and much else. This was life which took place within sight of the settlement of the central family. The central family consisted of women, children, the invalid, goats and a few camels to provide them with milk. Young men took care of the camels and moved around on their own, but occasionally called upon the central family, with the camels.
Ebla had learnt, even before she had seriously decided to fly away, that the only reasonable place she could go to would be a town. She was not sure which town would suit her best. Which place would give her all the things she wanted?
Outside, the morning was lonely as if it were a widow whose second husband had just died and who intended never to remarry but to face hardship and loneliness. The wind was sad as if it were a poor student whose ink-bottle had just broken into pieces and whose ink had coloured the ungrateful ground. The trees were standing apart as if they were afraid of each other and as if they would contaminate each other had they shaken and touched. Silence was the only refuge they all knew. That was the only language they could comprehend. The morning did not expect to be followed by another morning and another morning and another morning. The wind was glad to be sad for a change, maybe just as the student would be glad at breaking the bottle of ink to give him a legitimate excuse to stay outside the school premises. The trees were delighted to stay apart lest they should multiply and quarrel over space.
Ebla had reached a decision in the meantime. She murmured to herself something she herself did not quite understand.
‘Destiny and fate can be worked out,’ she told herself. ‘One dies only once, and only when one’s Time comes. Nobody knows when Time will knock on his door. And when It does, It will be welcome. But until tomorrow, let me try to tackle my problem. Maybe Death will escort the morning.’
3
The work of the previous day had given her a hang-over. She realized this only when she was about to make the move. ‘A hard day’s work has always left an after-effect on me, so why should I worry,’ she told herself.
The clock would strike four in the morning. It was Tuesday—to her like any other day, for even Friday was not different. To men perhaps it was, as they all went to a praying-place, or to a mosque. To women Friday only meant more work, more washing and more cooking to be done.
She had nothing to carry along with her. She never owned much, only a spare sheet to wear when the one she had on got dirty—and it was old. The muezzin had not announced the nearing of the morning prayers: the first wailing had not been heard. The sound of watering camels had not yet started. She stopped as if to take something, but it was only to ease up the hang-over. She touched her toes and heard the sound her joints made. The hut was very dark. There were no matches to light, no maps to take. The only fire which provided a dim light had been blown out before Ebla and her friend had fallen asleep. Ebla’s colleague was still snoring her head off. Ebla stretched her long arms down to pick up her shoes and the sheet. She had placed them somewhere in the evening. She took both of them in her hands and walked o
ut of the hut. She put one foot outside and one inside and kept standing there motionless. For a while she hesitated, not wondering whether or not she should go—she had settled that and there was nothing to make her change her mind—but should she or shouldn’t she tell her colleague in the hut where she intended to go?
She lifted her foot back. Her body stood an inch away from the door. She could feel the mild wind. She turned her back on the door and headed inwards. She stopped a few inches from where her friend lay snoring. She wanted to call to her friend and say that she had decided to escape. She opened her mouth, but before she was able to say anything, she heard a bang on the outside wall. She stopped, wanting to find out what had made the noise, to see if anybody was outside, and to regain her lost self, for she did not know for a fraction of a second who she was. The noise had not been repeated and Ebla was prepared to go out and not wake up her colleague. ‘It is much better that way,’ she thought to herself.
She swayed as if she were drunk.
The whole area was silent. Not a sound was to be heard. The unmarried males slept outside the huts and in the clearing. White sheets covered their bodies. Ebla passed near them, not making any sound. She walked bare-footed, and wrapped her sheet around her shoes, and put the bundle between her arm and ribs. She tiptoed as if she were a thief who had preyed upon somebody whom he knows. She cast her eyes downward. She finally reached the entrance to the dwelling. It was a thorn-fence, which had just been built. There was a stick put across, which served as the gate. Should she go underneath or should she lift the stick? She stopped and bent down to see if she could pass underneath. Being unable to do that she lifted the stick. The gate creaked. The prickles stood out and the stick had touched some of them as she lifted it. Her heart began pounding frightfully fast. She thought she had made a loud noise. She looked around, but there was nothing coming, nobody, not a living soul. The cock crowed, then there was silence again. She replaced the stick in a hurry and stood on the outside of the dwelling-boundary.
‘My God, I am out,’ she said to herself.
She headed west and in the direction where the travellers to Belet Wene would pass by. She hid herself under a big tree, near the detour, which encircled the main road.
‘Alhamdulillah, Subhanallah, Istagfurullah.’ She kept on repeating these words, which did not convey much to a young woman of her background. She said them because she had heard others say them. She knew the words were Arabic and that they were God’s words, and sacred. She counted on her finger-joints just as she had seen others do it. Actually, she let her thumbs run over her fingers one by one. Thus rhythmically, and sometimes inaccurately, she counted, saying each word three times, until she had said every word ninety-nine times: that was the number which represented God’s names.
Fate in her faith. Ebla put her faith and her fate along with it into the hands of God. ‘And I am certain that God will understand my situation. And of course, He won’t let me down.
‘If I am asked by the caravan people where I am going, what shall I say? I suppose I must tell them the truth. But what is truth—that which corresponds to the notions we have in mind or that which corresponds to our doings? Why do we think differently from the way we behave? If I tell the truth, then it won’t get me anywhere, for certain. If I say I ran away because my grandfather had decided to give my hand in (sacred?) marriage to a man—an old man, I must say to drive home the point that I had to escape. But what is wrong in getting married to a man—old or young? Age doesn’t determine the genuineness of marriage, does it? Sometimes there are old men who are much more likeable husbands than young ones. People are argumentative, and surely they will bring up this question.
‘ “You are allowed to tell lies if the situation makes it necessary,” said Prophet Mohammed. That is what our Prophet has said, and everything he said ought to be obeyed. But is this a necessity—I mean telling lies under the present circumstances? Every situation has its serious side—is this the most serious situation or are there many more to follow it?’
Ebla had not been able to reach a decision when she heard the caravans approaching her. Things appeared to crowd in upon her instantly.
The travellers could see her tall figure—and it gave more charm to the light caused by the dawn. Ebla was nature, nature had become personified in her. The trees, the earth, the noise, the talking of the caravan people were also part of nature. The dawn-wind caressed her cheeks. The birds chirped their songs. The stars withdrew into their tiny holes in the sky—maybe to rest and at the same time to get charged for the night which would await them. The moon faded into the blue colour of the sky—and lost its conspicuousness. Silence. Death of voices. Feet-shufflings. The still unused energy in the peasants of whom the caravan was made up was shown in their powerful strides—each of them a separate individual. The milk which they had drunk before they started their trip shook inside their bellies. The camels walked haughtily as if whatever they carried on their backs was their own and as if the peasants who walked behind them, with sticks in their hands, were there to guard the property. The master mistook himself for the slave. Heaps upon heaps of cow-hide, goat-hide, frankincense and other articles for sale unknowingly danced their way to their altar in the town.
As if he wasn’t sure of what he had seen, the young man who led the first camel by the reins, opened his eyes a little bit more. His hesitations confirmed, he said: ‘What are you doing here, cousin Ebla?’
Although she wasn’t his cousin, in that area people still address each other in those terms—that is their polite form of saying hello even to a stranger.
‘I am sick,’ Ebla said, thinking that would explain everything.
‘What are you doing here? And especially if you are sick? Home is a long way from here,’ said the young man, as tall as Ebla. By now, he had forgotten that he was leading the caravan. The first camel had mischievously led the rest of the camels astray. The young man, therefore, had to stride away from her to resume his responsibility. The other people in the caravan had by then come level with her. One by one, they asked her about her mission to town.
She told them why she was there: ‘I am sick, I need some injections. And I want to buy some clothes.’
‘For your wedding?’ some had asked.
‘Yes,’ she said and nodded her head.
And she smiled ironically.
PART TWO
‘There’s a man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.’
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
4
At the outskirts of the town, she could hear the hideous noise so common in Belet Wene, the smoke which could have smothered anybody, the peasants coming out of town after they had bought and sold what they wanted, and the young boys playing football, with a ball which was made out of pieces of worn-out clothes stitched together. Before she knew what was happening or where she was, she was somewhere near the bazaar.
Ebla stopped for a while to look closely at the townspeople. Inwardly she was annoyed, perhaps because nobody had noticed her aloofness or perhaps because she could not see anybody whom she knew. (But she had not known more than a hundred persons in her life; and perhaps, she never wanted to know more.) Her fellow travelers from the caravan had gone ahead. It was only when somebody called to her that she came back to her senses and woke up. Then she found nobody but herself, dressed in the long wide robe, which stretched out in all directions, down to the ground, to the sides, ruffling in the wind. She looked at her robe as she walked, lifting between her thumb and forefinger the corners which touched the ground. The wind blew on to her belly. Her right side was naked and one voluptuous breast could be seen, nodding, saying ‘hello’ to the robe which caressed it. Ebla thought that the clothes worn by the townspeople were indecent. ‘But maybe I am wrong—let me get closer,’ she told herself, ‘and see how they dress exactly. Tomorrow; I will be able to pass judgement tomorrow, perhaps.’
It was the first time she had ever been in a
town. Once they were about three hundred miles from Kallafo. The family wanted to go there to sell some camels, but it was not possible. Some inter-tribal warfare had broken out and had prevented them making their trip.
Ebla had never believed what people said about towns. She had listened to many of them describe towns: Kallafo, Galcaio, Baidoa, Warder, Hargeisa had all been described to her by different people and at different times, when she was in different moods. Some of them liked the towns they had talked about, others hated them. But it all came to one thing: that people’s tastes differ. She must find out something for herself, she told herself. She had her spare robe in her hands, even though it was stained in parts by the sweat from her palms: even so, it was tolerably clean and wearable.
She had queried people about her cousin and his wife, whether or not they were nice. She was very pleased to hear that they were and that they were in need of a maid-servant. The wife was pregnant and she needed a hand; Ebla felt that she could help.
‘But this is Belet Wene,’ she thought. ‘Oh, my Lord, what a large town!’
It was about one in the afternoon. The market-place was not very busy. Papers, turned yellow because of age, flew about and along the roads. It appeared to Ebla as if they had been intentionally scattered. To her, this was one of the phenomena of a town. The sun was very hot, maybe hotter than it was in the country; or perhaps the town’s sun came nearer to the earth than that in the country, she thought. The clouds moved in the sky, first heading in one direction then in the opposite. From a very narrow road, some children came out running. Two of them were stark naked: the kids played as if they cared for nothing in the universe.
From a Crooked Rib Page 2