by Fadia Faqir
The prisoners knew that Aida had been sent to prison having been sentenced to life with hard labour for murdering her husband but the details and reasons for this were only known after Umm El-Khayr pieced together the whole story. Once this had occurred, and without the slightest embarrassment or fear, Aida started to tell her own story to any prisoner so that it should not remain locked inside her, eating away at her. The ceaseless torments which she had suffered had begun to imprint themselves on her features and not even her dark eyes and striking bushy eyebrows were enough to detract from her defeated look. Her long jet-black Ayrian hair dangled over her pallid face, which was tinged with blue and prematurely wrinkled for a woman not yet thirty. The pain within her drove her to the point of breakdown and to the brink of madness.
Aida was twenty-three years old when her family decided to marry her off to her cousin, who was at least twenty years older than her. This happened following a visit from her uncle and his wife, who often boasted that she was descended from the Prophet. After they had taken tea with her mother and father the two men read the opening verse of the Qur’an to celebrate the first stage of the engagement and her mother went round the house trilling triumphantly so that all the neighbours would be aware of the happy event. After that she called Aida and kissed her in front of everyone in the reception room, with the set of Assiuti chairs and the nine large framed photographs of her father, her brothers and some of the other relations who had died many years ago. After everyone had congratulated her, her father said: “Congratulations, Aida, your uncle has betrothed you to his son, Mansi”, and her mother and future mother-in-law made enormous efforts to see who could trill longest and loudest.
Aida neither hated nor loved Mansi because she simply didn’t know him. When she was small and still allowed to play with boys, he was a young man who came to visit them on rare occasions as a messenger from his father to his uncle on family business. If she went with her mother and brother to their house he rarely sat with them because her own brother was much younger than him. In the years immediately before her engagement she had not seen him as he was away for long periods working as a teacher in another town far from their village.
Before the wedding, she had obtained a diploma in commerce. Immediately after she obtained her diploma, her uncle hurried to put in hand the preparations for the wedding. Her mother behaved like a hen who had just layed an egg, bursting with pride because the bridegroom, as the only male amongst three children, would inherit the lion’s share of his father’s estate. In addition, by giving private lessons to students he was earning enough to enable him to contribute towards the cost of furnishing the future marital home, something which a bridegroom is not normally obliged to do. As well as the usual carpets, chandeliers and kitchen furniture, the bridegroom also undertook to install a fan on the ceiling in one of the rooms. Moreover, at considerable cost he had the walls hung with embossed wallpaper which, even though it clashed with what her mother had chosen for the entrance hall, was generally considered by the members of the family to be both extremely tasteful and a work of art. He then bought all the necessary electrical appliances for the house from the proceeds of his private lessons, received monthly from the families of his students. In turn, these students received doses of learning privately to supplement the normal school lessons, which were often unsatisfactory.
The bridegroom splashed out on everything which in his view was needed to have a comfortable life, from a gas igniter to an electric shaver, and he was the first person in the village to buy a video. On this famous day he celebrated his new purchase by showing the film “Ismail Yasin in the Army” to his mother, father and sisters as well as a number of relations and neighbours who filled his father’s big old house and during which they consumed a large packet of Lipton tea and a whole kilo of sugar.
Before the wedding, Aida realized that her husband had been extremely spoilt by his mother and father but she never imagined that he had a cruel harsh nature which emerged as soon as they were married and started an intimate relationship. It was then that she realized why her brother had been so unenthusiastic about the marriage and had even tried to dissuade her father from going through with it. He had suggested that the cousin’s proposal to his sister had been accepted in a hurry and that she could make a much better match. But the father took his son’s advice both as a slur on his honour and an insult to his brother and nephew, swearing three times to divorce his mother and to banish him from the house for ever should he ever broach the subject again.
Aida’s special relationship with her only brother was unusual amongst brothers and sisters in their native area of the distant Saïd. Her brother had a gentle nature and his manner towards her did not exhibit that sense of inequality which is such a feature in relations between a boy and a girl, despite the fact that they were brought up in a male-dominated environment in which the girl is traditionally denied any real rights, is little esteemed and considered fit only for bearing children. Maybe this was because they were so close in age – he was only ten months younger than her – and because there had never been the prospect of further children, his mother having had a hysterectomy after his birth. Their father had always threatened to marry again in order to sire more children and their mother’s constant references to this made them anxious from the time they were little. When Aida moved to her new home on the wedding night, her feelings of sadness and loss were not due to leaving her parents nor because she was moving away from the place in which she had grown up, but were, rather, due to her separation from her only brother, who was her soulmate and had been her constant companion since the time they were little children. Accordingly the feelings of love and longing which Aida felt for her only brother increased sharply and may well have played a part in the growing hatred and revulsion she felt towards her husband. From the start of their marriage she had felt at odds with him. When her family had left them alone and she sat next to him for dinner, she was astonished by his excessive greed. He consumed a whole duck, a pair of stuffed pigeons with green wheat, cooked in the local style that her mother had prepared for them, leaving her only the leftovers. As for his attempts at seduction and love-making, they made her feel as if she was one of those women dancers at the saints’ festivals. She had often heard about their behaviour and what men do with them, men who pay them for a quick moment of pleasure. She hated him at that time and she hated the way he fondled her. She felt that he defiled her the way a pure prayer mat is defiled by the feet of a filthy pig.
Two months into the marriage and before she could become pregnant with any children, disagreements became part of their everyday life. Often, for a variety of reasons, mostly trivial, he would lash out and hit her. One such occasion was when Aida put the jam jar in the fridge, even though he had repeatedly told her that he didn’t like his jam when it was chilled, and another time she went to sleep with unsweetened gum in her mouth which infuriated him because her saliva tasted bitter when he kissed her. The truth was that Aida did not do these things deliberately to annoy him or consciously to challenge him but because she suffered from simple forgetfulness – a condition which was to become so acute in prison that she beame lost to the world.
Aida often complained about her husband to her mother because she was the woman closest to her. She showed her the bruises on her body to demonstrate the violence which her husband inflicted on her, but her mother always refused to intervene, urging her to remain silent lest her father get to hear about it. She blamed her daughter for not putting herself out for him and for not allowing for the fact that her husband was a spoilt, only son. If she were clever she would have turned him into the ring of Solomon on her hand, but because she was stubborn as a donkey she did not appreciate her God-given fortune and the fact that she was married to someone from a good family with excellent inheritance prospects and a good job. She went on to say that she was the envy of all the girls in the village and that it was arrogant and ungrateful of her to behave like this considering
she was dark and had very little in the way of breasts or bottom. If it weren’t for the fine black hair she had inherited and her widely-set eyes, no man would ever have given her a second look and if her husband had not been the well-bred man that he was and hadn’t been so keen to marry within the family, his power and influence could have enabled him to find a fair-skinned girl of his choice who was more beautiful and sweet-natured than her.
Aida was never convinced by her mother’s words, always delivered in the customary harsh manner which she had resented since childhood. Whenever her aunt came to visit them she had always been amazed at her mother’s failure to defend her when her aunt made fun of her dark skin and her slight body. She would comment, in a mocking tone, that she couldn’t believe such a daughter could come from her sister’s womb and that she must have stumbled across her amongst the rubble in a coal merchant’s shop. Poor Aida saw that her mother became even more determined to distance herself from her problems and to make sure that her brother, her only friend, took the same line in the matter. She warned her against allowing her brother to intercede on her behalf with her husband, pointing out the danger of this leading to a disagreement between them which might rupture relations between them. This made Aida determined to hide all her marital problems from her brother and to put on a show of enthusiasm for a married life which was, in reality, unbearable.
After a year of marriage when Aida was still not pregnant and showed no signs of producing the child her husband desired, her difficulties with her husband reached a climax. The problem, so far as her husband was concerned, was that he could not marry another woman quickly because of the huge outlay he had made in furnishing the matrimonial home and in investing in his cherished dream and wish of living a quiet and comfortable life. He began to insinuate that his wife must be sterile, an allegation which was completely unfounded: in fact two doctors who had each opened private clinics a few years after graduating, told her that she was perfectly capable of having children. She also went with her sister to a reputable woman doctor who told her that her ovulation might be a little weak, advising her to have some tests, while at the same time suggesting that her husband should also be examined. But when she returned home and repeated what the doctor had told her, he waited until her sister had left then slapped her very hard on the face, accusing her of insolence and disrespect which degraded his manliness. He stressed that if he had decided long ago to marry another woman, who was a real woman, capable of getting pregnant and giving birth, she would have have produced a dozen children for him by now. That night, as he tried to demonstrate his virility several times in spite of the extreme revulsion she felt for him, her wish that he would die first became a concrete desire as she willed a plague or some awful disease to strike him down and lift him from the spot where he sat.
Aida was overjoyed when her mother informed her two years later that her husband had disclosed his desire to marry another woman. She saw this new development as a happy solution to her problems which would put an end to the worries she never thought she would be rid of so easily. Her mother was surprised at her reaction and accused her of being stupid and cold-hearted; any other woman in her place would be crying and bemoaning her fate and shattered hopes. When she returned home that day after visiting her mother and learning of her husband’s intentions she felt lighthearted and joyous. This became obvious by the cheerful way she received her husband when he returned late that night from his teaching; she had laid out his dinner and offered to prepare a hot bath to soothe him after his exertion. This sense of euphoria lasted for several days while she was still hopeful that he would broach the subject of his intended marriage. At this point she would tell him: “Be happy with God’s blessing” and that she was in complete agreement on condition that he divorce her and allow her to return to her father’s home to live in peace and quiet. But one night he came home earlier than usual and asked her to make a cup of tea for him. He then began to speak gently to her which was quite out of character and admired her hairdo which was no different from usual. He told her that after thinking the matter over and praying for guidance he had come to the conclusion that he was about to take a step he might regret for the rest of his life. He had wanted to marry someone else but had recovered his senses and abandoned this evil thought, telling her: “Aida, you are my kith and kin and it is my duty to protect you.” He began to speak in glowing terms about the qualities of her character which were unrivalled and praised her ability to endure the ups and downs of life with him. Then he suggested she should go to a famous doctor in Cairo who specializes in sterility, offering to foot the bill for any treatment prescribed because he was no longer convinced by these local doctors of limited experience nor by all the traditional remedies which she followed on the advice of her mother and elder sister. As he noisily gulped down the last mouthful of tea he dropped the bombshell: if, God willing, she were to become pregnant he would slaughter a buffalo calf before the shrine in Cairo of Sayyida Umm El-Ghulam, the patron saint of children and those that loved them and he would distribute the meat to the poor and the vagrants of the quarter.
Her husband’s change of mind about marrying again ruined his chance of fulfilling his ambition to father a child, while Aida lost any chance of retrieving peace of mind. The old violence which had existed between them was re-kindled after the temporary remission which had only been sustained by her hope of the new marriage taking place. Aida’s feelings of desperation returned and her husband reverted to abusing her and invented new sadistic ways of beating her. He sometimes hit her with his leather belt and sometimes with a reed cane which he drew quickly out of his briefcase to inflict on some part of her body; this was the cane which he used on the adolescent boys at the secondary school where he taught. One day he discovered that she had washed twenty pounds and his membership card for the Workers’ Union which he had left in one of his trouser pockets, having forgotten to check them before washing. When he upbraided her for this she replied in all honesty and without fear or remorse that she had simply forgotten to inspect the pockets at which point he swore at her and hit her until he drew blood. But this instance of violence differed from all the previous times since the doorbell suddenly rang in the middle of it all. Aida took advantage of the lull in violence to hide in the bathroom, the blood streaming from her nose and face, while her husband went to answer the door. It was none other than Aida’s brother bringing two bags of bananas and oranges. He was accompanied by her mother carrying a dish of baklava carefully wrapped in coloured paper displaying the name of the sweet shop they came from – a simple gift which she offered with profuse greetings to the young married couple.
As soon as her brother came through the door, he noticed drops of blood on the floor and asked after his sister who came out to seek protection from the visitors. When he saw her unkempt hair, her tearful eyes and bloody nose with her right eye bruised and her swollen lips, he could not contain his anger and rushed at her husband and began to hit him. Her husband, who was still beside himself with fury, rushed to the kitchen and returned carrying the large knife which Aida had so often used to slaughter the chickens. By this time her brother had become so enraged that he was like a bull about to charge and, although surprised when Aida’s husband descended on him with the knife and tried to plunge it into his chest, he managed to wrest it from him and stabbed him repeatedly until he fell lifeless like the buffalo calf which the husband had intended to sacrifice to Umm El-Ghulam.
Aida tried to scream but although she had opened her mouth wide she could only produce a strained moaning sound. She rushed to try and remove the knife which had been sunk into her husband’s side, who was on the point of death. But her mother, who had entered the apartment and locked the door behind her, intervened quickly between them to prevent her approaching him. It was as if she had planned the whole business in advance. However, the truth was that as a Saïdi woman from an isolated village she was well versed, from firsthand knowledge, in the rules of the vendetta. Sh
e calmly instructed her daughter to back off, confident of her wisdom in these matters, saying: “Move away …it’s better if he dies.”
Her son, with his slight body which resembled his sister’s, collapsed into the nearest available chair with sweat pouring from his deathly pale face. His cunning mother shook him violently, telling him to wipe the sweat away and pull himself together; this was not the time to collapse. She turned matters over in her mind, calculating everything as if her head contained some Japanese precision instrument. Then she turned to her daughter, whose mouth still hung open with the violent shock and terror she had suffered, saying in a voice of steel: “Listen to me. The disaster has happened. Thank God he is dead because if he had lived the affair would have become a drama without end. So listen, daughter, to every word that I say to you and carry out my instructions from beginnning to end so that the police don’t discover the truth and one disaster doesn’t lead to another.”
The mother’s plan was simple and did not require great skill to execute but she was very efficient all the same. After she had wiped the traces left by her son’s hand on the handle of the knife, she ordered Aida to slip her right hand through her hair which was greased with castor oil and to take hold of the knife as if it were she who had carried out the killing. This followed after she had convinced Aida that her brother was not to blame for what happened and that the fault was hers because she had ignored her advice and done nothing to smooth matters over by trying to reach some understanding with her husband. She had begged her to take the rough with the smooth especially as she was barren; he was a good, patient man who accepted his lot which had deprived him of having a son to carry on his name and restore his reputation for virility. Thus it was up to her to solve the problem and save her brother from tragedy; she should take responsibility and confess to the killing, whereupon her confession before the police and the prosecution would settle the matter. Because of the code of the vendetta, if it ever became known that her brother was the murderer this would release a torrent of blood which might flow without end in their family and that of her uncle. No one in their community paid any regard to government procedures and court sentences, and her husband’s father would undoutedly seek to avenge his son by killing her brother. The whole affair would reach a point where the sons of one family would sort it out with those of the other and all the men would be annihilated because of her. No one would take revenge on her and the court would only sentence her to a few years in prison because she would say that she never planned her husband’s murder but had killed him in self-defence.