by Tahir Shah
More than thirty years must have slipped by since Adele’s grandmother was initiated, but she remembers the routine in astonishing detail.
‘If you don’t do everything right,’ she says shrewdly, ‘then the ritual will be worthless. Make a mistake, and a blanket of shame will descend not only over my family, but over the entire community.’
The iria initiation usually begins about five months before the fattening period. A group of girls pass through the rituals at the same time, bonding them together for life. The first step in the process is the cutting of their hair. A knife is sharpened ceremoniously, before being wielded by one of the oldest, most respected women. After that, the girls strip off their clothes, their bodies anointed with a paste of ash, ground indigo seeds and red camwood powder. Intricate geometric designs are scored into the paste, highlighting the girls’ natural beauty, as well as repelling insects.
The second stage of the initiation is held on the morning of the entry into the fattening room. It involves the elderly matrons of the community inspecting the girls, scrutinizing their naked torsos, watchful for tell-tale signs of early pregnancy. Nothing is so important as for the iriabos to be seen to be chaste.
‘The great danger is at that moment,’ says Adele’s grandmother. ‘It is then that any mature woman can come forward and claim your daughter or granddaughter is not pure. Refuting such a charge is hard, and can only be done by a priest. I remember when I was an iriabo a bad woman with a grudge against one family said that their daughter had been immoral. A cloak of shame fell down on that family, and the girl had no choice but to drown herself.’
Then the girls are massaged with palm oil, and some of them have the spiralling copper bracelets, called ikpalla, wrapped round their legs. In some Efik villages, the leader of the community presents each girl with a wooden or paper tag, tangible proof of her purity. It’s a sombre moment, similar in its portent to graduation at a western high school. With the entire village looking on in pride, the iriabos are ushered into the cramped huts.
During the confinement period, the girls are either alone, or in pairs. The last intention is for them to spend their time chattering. The period is intended for quiet reflection – mouths are supposed to be eating, not talking. Sometimes the rooms are hung with raffia, onto which are tied the bones of fish that the initiate has consumed: partly as decoration, and partly to show her ravenous appetite.
In the days that follow, the girls are massaged frequently with palm oil, and smeared with clay and ash. All the while, plates of food are ushered in – fish, millet porridge, cooked yams and maize.
Traditionally, the confinement period could last as long as a year. It was a buffer between puberty and marriage, and an effective way for girls to postpone married life. But these days the girls are anxious to escape the fattening rooms as quickly as they can, just as they are eager to make a break with the village. For most, nothing is so powerfully alluring as the draw of the city.
A hundred miles to the south of where Adele and Gloria are sitting, Constance is impounded in another fattening room, on a backstreet of the bustling town of Calabar. Unlike the others, Constance, aged eighteen, is eager to put on weight.
‘I have been here for about a month,’ she explains, ‘and I will try and stay for another month or two. If I want to get married to a nice boy, I have to look my best, and boys here in Calabar like a girl with a full figure. I have seen the magazines from America… all those girls who look starved. That’s so nasty. Oh, no, we don’t want to look like that here in Calabar.’
Constance, who is of medium height, is doing well to achieve her ideal weight of ninety-five kilos. She is eating more food than she ever thought possible, all of it served up by her doting mother, Grace.
‘In the morning I eat three or four large bowls of millet porridge,’ she says, ‘and then a bunch of bananas, and some boiled yams. At lunch I have more porridge, and a plate of fatty meat, potatoes, more yams, maize and some fruit. Then in the evening, I eat whatever is left in the kitchen.’
Constance’s mother scurries around their three-room family house, attending to the cooking, giving orders to the younger daughter, who does the food shopping. ‘We are pleased that Constance is putting on weight so fast,’ she says. ‘Yes, all this food is expensive, but we have no choice but to bear the expense. It’s costing us about twelve thousand naira (£60) a month. We want our daughter to marry well, and for that we have to make sacrifices.’
Unlike many in Calabar, Constance’s family was reluctant to send their daughter to one of the established fattening rooms operating in the town. Usually owned by women of vast proportions, they double up as beauty salons, where stern regimes dedicated to pampering are the norm. For Constance’s parents, the commercial parlours were unnecessary, as they had space enough at home to turn a bedroom into a private fattening room for Constance. Then there’s the issue of young male visitors. A recent scandal involving midnight parties has tarnished the reputation of one of the town’s most established fattening rooms.
At home, the high-calorie diet has helped Constance gain weight fast. She’s put on about eight kilos in a month. But another, darker factor has led to the rapid weight gain – steroids.
Like many Nigerian girls of her generation, Constance has discovered the little strips of pills, called Easi-Gain, which can be bought from chemists without a prescription. They make her feel hungry and sleepy, but they help her to put on the pounds extremely fast. And, like most other young women, Constance has no idea of the damaging effects of the pills.
‘As a modern woman I am using modern methods to make myself more beautiful,’ she says, reclining on the sofa. ‘The pills are quite safe, and they are cheaper than all the food I have to eat to gain the same amount of weight. In any case, everyone is taking them.’
In a small office across town, a group of women is in the middle of a meeting at the, ‘Women Guiding Women’. The walls of their headquarters are adorned with colourful posters, bearing slogans like ‘THIN IS NATURAL’ and ‘SLENDERNESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS’.
Leading the gathering is a woman called Ruth. ‘Our aim is a simple one,’ she says to the audience of new recruits, ‘we go through towns and villages and teach women that moderation is good, and that gluttony is bad. You don’t have to be the size of a whale to be happy with how you look.’
Ruth works part-time at WGW, an organization founded five years ago. It walks a fine line between traditional Nigerian rituals, like the fattening rooms, and the Western obsession of slenderness. As with many women of her tribe, Ruth spent more than a month being indulged with food before her marriage. After giving birth to four children, she realized that piling on the pounds for the sake of it wasn’t necessary.
‘Our society is changing fast,’ she says, ‘and as women we have to change with it. Our daughters need to be educated – taught how to use computers, not forced into fattening huts.’ Ruth pauses in mid-sentence. ‘There’s a new danger in our society, though,’ she says darkly. ‘We hardly even know how dangerous it is to become. But news of it and its “magic” is spreading like wildfire.’ As she speaks, she holds up a packet of pills. ‘This is it… it’s Easi-Gain.’
Back in their village, Adele and Gloria are sitting down to yet another high-calorie meal. A bulky pot of bubbling millet porridge has been carried in, and Adele’s grandmother is dishing it out with a ladle. Two plates of bananas and boiled yams are standing at the ready. The two girls frown at the sight of yet more food. They’re already full to bursting.
As she passes out the porridge, the old woman snaps: ‘Eat it up, eat up, you lazy girls! If you stay skinny like that we will never find a good husband for either of you!’
FORTY-EIGHT
The Favour Network
LAST WEEK ONE OF THE NEIGHBOURS near my home in Casablanca slipped a note under my door.
With almost toe-cringing politeness, he asked if I might introduce his niece to a friend of mine with connections in the art w
orld. The girl, he explained, was eager to get an internship at a British auction house, but she was thin on contacts.
At first I wondered how the neighbour, a man I hardly know, had such good information on whom I know. But then I remembered that in Morocco everyone knows everything about everyone. They know how much money you make, the names and phone numbers that fill your address book and, most importantly, they know how you may be of help to them.
The matrix to pass on the minute details comes through the hierarchy of maids and cooks, drivers and guardians, who are relied upon by many to share each word that touches their ears. They know so much sensitive information that no employer in their right mind would ever fire them.
I sent a message to my friend with contacts at the auction house, and later advised my neighbour that his niece could be certain of an interview. The next day there was a knock at the door. I went and opened it, to find a delivery man straining under the weight of an enormous bouquet of exotic flowers. Having placed them on the table in the sitting-room, I sat back and smiled to myself.
It was a good example of the favour network in action.
You can’t live in Morocco long without brushing into it. The favour network is all around, a blurred backdrop to life. In a culture based on connections and trust, the only way forward – or upward – is to rely on favours.
All Moroccans live with the same niggling fear: withdraw from the system before you’ve paid in, and the creditors will come calling. That was the reason for the pricey bunch of flowers – a fear that if the favour wasn’t repaid at once, I would demand a favour in return. But as with the lure of instant credit in the West, there’s always the danger of taking a favour that you can’t pay back, and plunging into debt.
For anyone new to Arab society, the situation can be baffling. It’s a kind of silent language. Everyone knows who has helped whom, and what strings have been pulled – now, yesterday, or a century ago. The slate is never wiped clean, because it’s part of a system built on pride, written on an invisible chalkboard in the sky.
Our maid, Zohra, once told me of how her family’s fortunes had been swept away in repaying a favour left owing by her great, great grandfather. I had asked why she simply didn’t dispute the request.
She smiled.
‘Do you not know about honour?’ she said.
My father, who had been brought up in the East, drilled into my sisters and me his motto – ‘Never owe anyone anything!’ After moving to Morocco, I now understand his reasoning. He knew that, like Zohra, a family’s security can be lost in the blink of an eye while striving to uphold its honour.
As a policy, I rarely ask favours. If I do, I repay at once and with abundant dividends. Equally, I have come to learn that only a fool boasts about whom he knows, or what contacts – or favours – he has in his arsenal.
The only difficulty is when someone pays into the system covertly, before turning up to be repaid in kind. In such situations, even the most astute expert must tread with care. The conditions are usually the same. First comes an absolutely over-the-top box of chocolates, a bottle of expensive aftershave, or perfume, just like that – out of the blue. In Arab society refusing a gift is tantamount to a declaration of war. So you have no choice but to accept. Once the gift has been received, you must respond with an equally lavish gift. If you don’t, you can be certain that a request will be on its way.
If I’m unsure of how to act, I ask Zohra. She’s an expert on the right etiquette. When I told her about the neighbour, the favour, and the flowers, she wagged a finger towards the door.
‘Some people have no shame,’ she said.
FORTY-NINE
The Forgotten Women of Bhopal
TAKE A WALK THROUGH the narrow alleyways off the main road and you immediately know that something’s wrong.
It’s as if the spectre of death is hovering there, ready to speed away those who eluded it one December night, twenty-five years ago. Everyone bears the scars of that horrifying encounter.
Halfway down the lane, Ambereen Khan sits on a battered old chair outside her concrete home. Squinting through goggle-like glasses, she strains to make out the approaching visitor. Her body is emaciated, rigid with arthritis, her legs swollen, and her breathing forced. Ambereen could easily pass for a woman in her sixties, but she’s just thirty-two.
If a cloud of poison gas swept silently across London or New York, killing thousands and crippling many more, we would expect drastic action and answers. The injured would be given relief, the bereaved would be compensated, the guilty parties prosecuted. And, once the dust had settled, Parliament would pass laws ensuring such a catastrophe never happened again.
But in Bhopal things are different.
To the outside world the city’s name is still synonymous with a multi-national’s incompetence. To the people who live there still, Bhopal stands for a far greater misfortune. In the back streets, a stone’s throw south of the Union Carbide factory, they say that the lucky ones perished that night back in 1984. Those who survived have been dealt decades of pain, and the worst affected have been Bhopal’s women.
On breathing the toxic gas, hundreds of them had spontaneous abortions. Many more pregnant women later had still-births, or babies which died after a few days of life. Yet thousands more were made sterile by the disaster. In Bhopal, congenital deformities are common to children born in the years since the toxic leak.
The day before the poison cloud destroyed her life, Ambereen Khan was preparing for her wedding to a man from a neighbouring town.
‘As soon as his family heard about the gas leak,’ she whispers softly, ‘they forbid him to marry me. You see, people don’t want to marry girls from Bhopal. They’re scared that we will give birth to children with two heads.’
Ambereen was eventually married to a local man who had himself become handicapped by the calamity. The possibility of deformed children was never an issue though, for the gas had made Ambereen infertile.
‘Now I am waiting to die,’ she says resolutely. ‘Look around… there’s no joy here, only misery and death.’
As Ambereen pauses to rub her swollen eyes, I scan the street. She’s right. There are no children playing in the long shadows of the afternoon, and none of the usual bustle of Indian back-street life. In the distance, a funeral procession carries a cheap coffin to a nearby Muslim burial ground. Walking solemnly behind, their eyes fixed at the ground, are the relatives of the tragedy’s latest victim.
The area where Ambereen lives is called Jai Prakash Nagar. A predominantly Muslim area, it is home to hundreds of low-income families, most of which used to be casual labourers. They relied on their physical health to work.
A staunchly pious community, some considered the catastrophe to be a scourge sent by God. Accordingly, thousands refused to seek compensation but instead blamed themselves. Those that did seek justice – Ambereen and her husband among them – faced a steep uphill task. Most could not understand the paperwork needed to make a claim. Those who did receive a little money found themselves relieved of it by unscrupulous agents of the underworld.
But, for Ambereen and the women like her, some assistance is at hand. Twice a week, Aziza drops by to have a chat and make sure she’s coping with the pain. Aziza, who’s a health visitor from the Sambhavna Clinic, has to deal daily with the victims’ anger and their sense of betrayal.
‘They can’t understand why their teeth are falling out,’ she explains, ‘why their eyes are bloodshot, why they’re struggling for a single breath, or why arthritis is crippling them well before old age.’
After spending a little time with Ambereen, Aziza heads back to the clinic. Thirty women there are waiting to be treated. Dr. Rachana Pandey, sees each of them in turn.
‘I had just graduated from medical school in 1984,’ she says, ‘and was at Bhopal’s Hamidya Hospital the night of the gas leak. Words can’t explain the scene. There were bodies everywhere. Every inch of space was covered with the dying and the de
ad.’
The doctor motions for the next patient to enter the surgery.
‘My medical career has been devoted to helping those who were exposed to the poison gas,’ she continues. ‘We never thought that the suffering and death would go on like this. Women are getting their menopause decades before their time, children are suffering from stunted growth, while scores of others are mentally handicapped.’
Dr. Pandey smiles at the young woman who has come to her for treatment, suffering from chronic depression.
‘Look at her,’ she says. ‘Her husband’s been beating her because she can’t conceive, telling her she’s worthless, that she’s a witch. No wonder she’s depressed.’
The Sambhavna Clinic treats only victims of the Union Carbide seepage. More than a hundred a day flock through its doors and make use of its already stretched resources. Patients (eighty per cent of whom are women) are charged a small one-time registration fee, after which all treatment is free. The Clinic is kept afloat by donations, and was set up in the ’nineties with help from the British-based charity Pesticides Trust. There’s an emphasis on Ayurvedic healing, on yoga, and on Western-style counselling – sharing experiences of that life-changing night.
The scale of the situation is enormous.
The hundred thousand female children who were exposed and survived are now at a child-bearing age.
‘An additional problem,’ explains Sarangi, ‘is that women in this community aren’t used to discussing such personal problems within their own families, let alone with others.’
While their bodies ache and burn with the effects of the gas, the victims’ minds are haunted by the memory. Pick anyone at random and they’ll recount their tale.
December 3rd, 1984 was a warm night. Most people had left their windows open. Shortly after one a.m., more than half a million people woke in terror, fighting for breath, their lungs. Their eyes streaming and, gasping, they leapt from their beds and ran into the streets.