by Becky Aikman
Lesley had been discussing her situation again, this time with the rubbery resilience I had come to know in her. “I realize I underestimated. I had thought if it didn’t work, I could just walk away. But I can’t”—her voice wavered—“because I’m crazy about him.”
“Keep an open mind,” Dawn cautioned. “You may be better apart. But if it doesn’t work, bear in mind that you give much more credence to the first guy you meet—you know, after.”
AMID TOURISTS in Western dress in the lobby, one woman stood out. An elegant figure in a lime green djellaba, the floor-length hooded robe worn by Moroccan men and women alike, she had almond eyes and long, thick, coffee-colored hair.
“I am your guide, Saida,” she said. She extended her hand.
We repeated slowly: “Sigh-EE-dah.”
“Yes,” she said. “In Arabic, it means happy.”
We had managed to engage one of the rare Moroccan women who worked as a guide, and I felt an immediate kinship. Modestly covered, she looked much like other local women I had seen so far, but the color of her robe had more punch, her manner less self-effacement. Her quick eyes darted over us, seemingly as eager to learn from these strangers as we were from her. Saida appeared amused rather than annoyed that we were running late—the scourge of group travel—after our chatty breakfast. She hustled us onto a van that would take us to the countryside and introduced our driver, Laarbi.
Marcia held up her BlackBerry. “Can I get Wi-Fi on the hike?”
“No,” we cried.
Luckily, Marcia became engrossed when we peppered Saida with questions. She held a university degree in English, we learned. Married, a devout Muslim, a resident of Fès, she was the mother of two daughters. Her background was Berber, one of two main ethnic groups in Morocco, along with Arabs. Saida watched the road from the front seat of the van, but she kept an ear cocked when we fell into our usual gossip. “I didn’t know what to think when I heard you are all widows,” she observed at length. “You are a fun group of ladies, I think!”
We were soon bumping along a country road toward some verdant mountains, and we passed a woman carrying hay bales on her head. Eighty percent of the women in rural areas are illiterate, Saida told us with scholarly precision. Some of them marry as young as twelve. Men, she said, are allowed up to four wives.
“How many husbands do women get?” Dawn asked.
Saida laughed. “We are working on that!”
Released from the van into the fresh dry air of the Middle Atlas, we scrambled uphill toward white limestone peaks on a dry riverbed that was carpeted with loose rocks. Saida removed her djellaba, revealing army-green cargo pants, hiking boots, and a slim, athletic figure that could rock the casbah if she let it. A local Berber man who knew the trails joined us for the hike, and Tara, teetering but uncomplaining in her inadequate shoes, tried to communicate in French and Spanish. He taught her a few words of Berber, and they settled finally on a pastiche with a touch of sign language. He pointed out sage, thyme, quince, and pomegranate that grew under the shade of Aleppo pines and tall, majestic cedars. We sniffed and tasted. Marcia took photos with her fancy camera. We pushed on, upward, and no one talked about home. Saida took our picture from atop a rocky bluff with a valley behind.
“You are all so beautiful,” she said.
“I’m keeping this picture,” Dawn said, “to remind me what I looked like before I had four husbands.”
chapter
TWENTY-SEVEN
after the twilight call to prayer, Saida guided us through medieval gates into the heart of Fès, where our footsteps echoed in narrow, deserted stone passages barely illuminated by dusky lamps. We reached a tapered pool of light at the entrance to a riad, a traditional Moroccan home. The exterior wall of mud brick gave no hint of the welcome we found on the other side—a courtyard of multicolored tiles with a babbling fountain at the center. The air was tart with the scent of lemons that hung on trees within the walls. Rooms opened off the patio and several balconies above, circulating light and air from within the house rather than through windows opening onto the street. The design deflected heat, Saida explained, and guaranteed privacy, especially for women.
This riad housed a restaurant, booked exclusively for us that night. Saida motioned for us to follow her. We passed under an archway into an open-air dining room with ornately carved wood ceilings. Three women in djellabas sat gravely at a long table, on banquettes buttressed by mirrored pillows. In the impossible dim light, I strained to see their faces, but their heads were wrapped in scarves, their eyes cast downward. Saida had invited them to be our guests for dinner.
“They are like you, widows,” she said, and the word hit me hard.
Widows—months of hijinks with our group had demystified the label by now. We saw ourselves as normal American women, and although we’d taken our lumps, we were moving along—relocating, traveling, dating, remarrying—all of it conveniently possible in our go-go American culture. I couldn’t imagine, wasn’t even sure I wanted to imagine, the life of a widow here in Morocco, where women in the best of circumstances were so constrained. They enjoyed a few more freedoms than those in some Middle Eastern countries—free to drive, work, vote, and dress as they chose, within limits approved by their families—but men dominated those families. I knew nothing about how a woman here would cope if suddenly left to fend for herself. I’d become so close to the Blossoms that I saw widowhood through our relatively privileged circumstances.
“How will we communicate?” I asked Saida. My voice sounded sharp and rattled.
“Don’t worry, I will translate. It will be fine.”
I was less concerned with language than the cultural divide. Our guests appeared modest, solemn, their hands folded on laps like novitiates at an abbey, and they sat very still, except for flitting glances at our Western clothes and hair. Tara took a seat next to me and leaned in close. “I hope you don’t think I’m a coward,” she whispered, “but I don’t want to say how my husband died … considering how Muslims disapprove of alcohol.”
For a few minutes I watched with unease, trying to figure how this would play out. The Moroccan women spoke to each other haltingly in Arabic. Apparently, they had never met before, either. Saida’s penetrating eyes followed the conversation, deciding what to translate. How selective was she going to be? “They are saying you all look much younger than your age,” she said. Very selective indeed. “I will ask them to tell about themselves.”
Seated next to Tara, Rashida, a plump woman with a broad flat face, declined to speak at all. She was afraid to tell her story, said Saida, who explained that Rashida was fifty-five, the mother of five children, all of whom lived in one room in the medina. She had cleaned in the courts before the work became too hard and now relied on support from friends. It is one of the pillars of Islam, Saida said, to help the poor, especially widows.
We have so little in common, I thought, despairing. Wait till they get an earful about Marcia’s suite of corporate offices and Tara’s house with bedrooms for every child. I glanced over at Rashida and saw that she was following Saida impassively, like a stone Buddha in a brown patterned robe and black headscarf.
Waiters distracted us with a clattering of plates. They dropped a bowl of harira in front of me, a thick porridge of chickpeas, lentils, and tomatoes with a heady bouquet of Moroccan spices. We passed the customary accompaniment of dates and cookies made with sesame and anise, displayed prettily on an inlaid plate.
“We have a similar cookie that comes from Italy,” Dawn asked Saida to translate, trying hard to connect.
A young woman next to Dawn watched her with a sweet, timid smile. Magda was forty with pale skin and heavy caterpillar brows that gave her an air of dark gravity. Her husband died of cancer seven years ago, she explained to Saida in a barely audible voice, and she was raising a fifteen-year-old son by working at a clothing store in the new part of town. “She is educated,” Saida said. But she had left it to her son to decide whether she c
ould come tonight, a strange-sounding power balance to our ears. “He decided it was okay, since she will only be with women.”
Were all Moroccan women so subservient? I couldn’t imagine anyone in our group summoning the meekness required to conform to this society. I felt Tara next to me, stirring in frustration. But I was also interested in the woman on the other side of Magda. Outwardly, to my eyes, she didn’t appear as docile as the rest. She was more brightly dressed in a vivid turquoise djellaba and red headscarf, which gave her a modern, almost fashionable look. Her arresting face was considerably darker, her stout body sturdier, and she spoke with the harsh accent of a country woman. Her name was Naima, we learned, and at forty-seven, she had been married three times, twice widowed and once divorced. Naima worked on a farm outside the city to support five daughters and a son. It was rare for widows to remarry, Saida said. “She is lucky woman.”
“Tell her she is our hero,” said Marcia.
Saida translated, and Naima laughed, a firm, barking laugh, the first break in our guests’ restraint.
Silence descended again as the next course appeared. According to Saida, it was called b’stilla, a dense creation of seafood, vermicelli, and black trumpet mushrooms infused with lemon, saffron, and cinnamon and wrapped like a present in sheets of flaky phyllo dough. While we picked through the crust to vent a fragrant steam, I noticed the Moroccans studying Tara’s embellished silver top and dangling earrings with sidelong fascination. The rest of us had introduced ourselves. Tara was the only one who hadn’t yet shared any particulars.
As if on cue, she cleared her throat in a manner meant to attract an audience. “My husband died almost two years ago,” she began. I thought she’d leave it at that, but her smile was fixed and so was her mind, as if accessing a memory bank. “Um … he died of, um … heart failure, but it was due to … to an illness.” She sighed audibly and shot me a what-the-hell look, barreling ahead. “He was addicted to alcohol,” she said decidedly.
Naima, our guest from the country, following a moment later in Arabic, reacted as if jolted by an electric shock. She interrupted in a staccato, guttural dialect.
“Her husband was also very sick,” said Saida with surprise, “and it was almost the same problem.”
Naima and Tara locked eyes, and a whole new dynamic took over. We all began to talk at once, a riot of conversation, in whatever language. Even Rashida, the silent one, broke her affectless composure. She still did not speak, but she was newly alert to the heightened exchange.
“But I am dating a lovely man now,” Tara assured everyone over the din.
“Becky is married again,” Lesley tossed in. “And I also want to say I’m dating somebody.”
Our Moroccan guests perked up at this hint of gossip and congratulated our seeming good fortune. “They ask you, Lesley, are you going to marry him?” Saida asked.
“I don’t know. He has children who are difficult.”
“Because for us, if you are dating somebody or know somebody, you have to marry,” Saida said. “It is not acceptable to be dating. In Morocco, you should not be with your husband before you marry. You should not even have coffee with him. His family will come to your family, and you can see him then and decide. My husband saw me at university, but this is what he did before we could speak.”
Of course we knew this was the custom in some countries, but it was so far outside our ken, to our Western ears, it sounded barbaric. Dawn wore her disbelief like a billboard. “But what if someone who wants to marry you is totally wrong?” she stammered.
“How can you know this person? How?” Saida answered. “It is, as we say, like a pomegranate.” She cupped her hands to illustrate. “You take the pomegranate, open it.” She turned her palms upward and lifted first one, then the other. “It could be red. It could be white. It could be sour. It could be sweet. It is up to fate how lucky you will be.”
“If you date someone, that’s it? You’re done?” Dawn was still incredulous.
Saida and the other Moroccans nodded in unison. “This is what we do as Muslims.”
The soft-spoken Magda directed a remark to Saida, then turned her grave, shy smile toward Dawn.
“She says she feels so sorry she cannot communicate with you.”
Dawn looked at the childlike Magda, conscious of her youth. “Ask her whether she wants to marry again.”
“Yes, she would love to, but her son forbids. Someone introduced her to a man who wanted to marry her, but her son cried.”
“See? More problems with children,” Tara said, exasperated. “Why does a fifteen-year-old have so much power?”
The Arab speakers held a vigorous discussion, and Saida cut through it. “She is sure that if she marries, the husband will not treat him like a son. All women who are divorced or widowed find it hard if they have children. And when they are grown, when a woman is more than forty, she becomes too old.”
I saw Magda’s options shrinking before my eyes. All the obstacles we faced in starting over paled beside what she had to contend with. Saida explained what was considered the correct attitude toward the loss of a spouse: “God gives you this person but takes this person. When we are born, we know we all will die at a certain time. So we should not be sad. We should accept our fate.”
“How does Naima keep finding husbands, if it’s so difficult?” I asked, indicating our guest in the brilliant blue robe.
“Some things are changing. She is very strong, like a rebellion woman. And now a friend has sent her another proposal. This man has a house he will give to her.”
So Naima was a Moroccan widow provocateur, in opposition to strictures that imposed a circumscribed destiny. Men, we learned without surprise, had few such concerns. They often selected a new bride from the crowd that came for mourning. Sounded familiar, I thought—sympathy marriage instead of sympathy sex. “He can marry as soon as the first night, the following day,” Saida said. “Usually he marries a young woman. My father is seventy. His wife is younger than me, thirty-seven years old.”
“But she will be a widow!” Dawn cried over our general objections.
“She’d rather be a widow with a house.”
I considered how far our romantic visions differed from the transactional nature of marriage in this poor country, and from the look on Lesley’s face, she must have been thinking the same. “Did they love their husbands?” she asked.
Magda nodded, and Naima looked impatient to answer, but she checked herself abruptly as waiters arrived to pour mint tea. As soon as they left, she spoke in a straightforward way. “With her last husband,” Saida said, “she wished it was she who passed away and not him, because he treated her well. She loved him a lot. The first one, too. She is lucky woman.” Then Naima’s words turned rapid and harsh, and she shot sideways looks toward Tara. “But the second one, the one she divorced,” Saida continued, “because of the drinking, he did not treat her well.”
We could barely hear Saida finish, because a wild clamor of Arabic erupted. The previously silent Rashida, initially afraid to speak, was galvanized to do it now, and whatever she said lobbed a grenade into the dialogue. If we had assumed she was a timid creature, her full, strident voice set us straight, and the others’ reactions matched her in vehemence. The Americans, uncomprehending, turned to Saida for guidance.
“You have to hear this,” she finally said. “Rashida did not love her husband. She felt so happy when he passed away.”
Now that Rashida had found her voice, it would not be stopped, and Saida translated in tandem with diplomatic efficiency. Rashida was turned not toward Saida, but to a disconcerted Tara, as if willing her to understand, and smacked her open palm against the table for emphasis, over and over, until the teacups clattered.
“Her husband used to drink a lot,” Saida said intently, “and he would come home, where she had kids. He would tell her, take your clothes off now. He would tell her, have sex now. In front of the kids, it doesn’t matter. He will make her do this like s
he is an animal, you know?”
Tara held Rashida’s furious gaze.
“When she says no, he beat her. The kids are seeing this. They are suffering. Eventually, she says she has no feeling toward him, because she hates him. Now finally, she is happy. She is safe.” Tara reached toward Rashida’s stout arm. Inwardly, I rejoiced that the creep would trouble her no more.
Dawn didn’t hold back. “Thank God he’s gone,” she said. “Wasn’t there someone who could help her?”
“That is what family is for in our culture,” said Saida with resignation.
Lesley began to say something, but the Moroccan women’s words grew more vehement as Rashida continued slapping the table and Naima, the strong one, the rebellious one, raised her voice to match.
She explained that she too had been abused, by her second husband, before she divorced him. “He drank, he beat her, and he broke her nose. He had a big knife, and he put it here”—Saida stretched her neck and bared her throat—“and she cannot move; he holds her like she is a puppet. When the kids come home from school, they saw her face was red and there was blood and everything. She divorced him, and now she is safe.”
Everyone around the table, Moroccan and American, was fired by anger beyond speech. I wanted to express everything I was feeling, but I didn’t have the words, even in English. Our troubles, however slight in comparison to those of the Moroccan widows, had made them believe that they could trust their stories to us and that we would understand. I wanted to tell them that I couldn’t know what they had suffered, but I appreciated the grit it took for them to survive. I wanted to tell them that they had made me appreciate that sometimes a woman is better off being a widow than subjecting herself to degradation and abuse. Even Magda—I recognized the boldness in her refusal to seek the support of another man who might be cruel to her son. These women were anything but meek. How could I have thought otherwise? I hoped that my face projected all that I was feeling. I looked to the other Americans and saw it on their faces, too. The voices of Rashida and Naima grew even bolder, fiercer, seeming to draw power from the unity all of us felt.