Burned alive: a victim of the law of men

by Souad; Marie-Thérèse Cuny

  Mention of a donkey makes me think of another memory concerning my mother. I can see myself taking the flock to graze as usual, and coming very quickly back to the house to clean the stable. My mother is with me and she hurries me because we have to go and pick figs. The crates had to be loaded onto the donkey’s back and we had to walk a long way beyond the village. I’m not able to place this story in time, except that this morning seems to me very close to the incident of the green tomato. It is the end of the season, because the fig tree we’re standing in front of is bare. I tie the donkey to the trunk of this fig tree to keep him from eating the fruit and the leaves that are scattered on the ground.

  I begin to pick and my mother says to me: “Pay attention Souad, you stay here with the donkey, you pick up all the figs on the side of the road but you don’t go farther than this tree. You don’t move from here. If you see your father arrive with the white horse or your brother, or somebody else, you whistle and I’ll come quick.” She moves off a little on the road to join a man on a horse who is waiting for her. I know him by sight, his name is Fadel. He has a round head, and he’s small and strong. His horse is well cared for, very white with a black spot, the tail braided to the end. I don’t know if he’s married or not.

  My mother is cheating on my father with him. I knew it as soon as she said to me: If somebody else comes, you whistle. The man on the horse disappears from my view, and my mother, too. I conscientiously pick the figs on the edge of the road. There aren’t too many in this spot but I’m not allowed to go looking any farther because if I did I wouldn’t be able to see my father or anyone else who might come along.

  For some strange reason this story doesn’t surprise me. I don’t remember feeling afraid of anything. Perhaps because my mother had organized her plan so well. The donkey is tied to the trunk of a bare fig tree. He can’t reach anything to eat it, not leaves or fruit. So I don’t need to watch him as I would in the height of the season and I can work alone. I take ten steps in one direction, ten in the other, picking up the figs lying on the ground to put them in the crates. I have a good view of the road looking toward the village; I can see in the distance anyone who’d be approaching and whistle in time. I don’t see Fadel or my mother anymore but I guess they’re about fifty steps away, hidden somewhere in the field. So if someone were to arrive on the scene she could always make them believe that she went off for a moment for urgent personal business. A man, even my father or brother, would never ask an indecent question about such a thing. It would be shameful.

  I’m not alone for very long. The crate doesn’t have much in it when they arrive separately. My mother comes out of the field. I see Fadel get back on his horse; he misses the saddle the first time because the horse is tall. He has a pretty wooden riding whip, very finely made, and he smiles at Mama before riding off. I pretend to have seen nothing. The whole thing happened very quickly. They made love somewhere in the field, sheltered by the grass, or they were simply talking together, I don’t want to know. It’s not my business to ask what they did, or look surprised. My mother will not confide in me. And she knows, too, that I won’t say anything, quite simply because I’m an accomplice, and I’d be beaten to death, too. My father only knows how to beat women and make them work to get money. So if my mother goes to make love with another man on the pretext of gathering figs, I’m not bothered by it. She has good reason.

  Now we have to gather the figs very quickly so the crates will be full enough to justify the time we’ve spent here. Otherwise my father is going to ask: “You bring back empty crates. What were you doing all that time?” And I’ll get the belt. We are rather far from the village. My mother gets on the donkey, her legs straddling the animal’s neck, very close to his head so as not to crush the figs. I walk in front to guide the animal on the road and we set off with a heavy load.

  We soon encounter an elderly woman, all alone with a donkey, who is also gathering figs. Since she is elderly, she can be out alone. As we catch up with her, my mother greets her and we continue on our way together. This road is very narrow and difficult, full of holes, bumps, and stones. In places it rises steeply and the donkey has trouble advancing with his load. At one point he stops dead at the top of a slope before a big snake and refuses to go on. My mother strikes him and encourages him but he wants no part of it. Instead he tries to move back, his nose trembling with fear, like me. I detest snakes. And because the incline is really very steep, the crate starts to dislodge on his back and almost overturns. Fortunately, the woman who is with us seems not at all afraid of the snake, however enormous it is. I don’t know how she does it, but I see it roll up and twist. She must have struck it with her walking stick, and the big snake slithers into the ditch. The donkey is then willing to move on.

  There were a lot of snakes around the village, small ones and big ones. The snakes would even nest in the house, in the storeroom between the sacks of rice, or in the piles of hay in the stable. We would see them every day and we were very afraid of them the way we fear grenades. Ever since the war with the Jews, grenades were all over the place. You didn’t know if you were going to die when you put your foot down. In any case, I heard them talk about it at home, when my father’s father would come for a visit, or my uncle. My mother warned us about these grenades, they were almost invisible in the middle of pebbles and stones, and I watched constantly ahead of me for fear of coming across one. I don’t personally remember having seen one but I know that the danger was always there. It was better not to pick up a stone and to pay attention to where you stepped.

  My father wasn’t there when we got home. It was a relief because we had lost time and it was already ten o’clock. At that hour the sun is high, the heat strong, and the figs at risk of shriveling and softening. They had to be in good condition and carefully prepared for my father to be able to sell them at the market. I liked preparing the crates of figs. I would choose beautiful fig leaves, big green ones to carpet the bottom of the crates. Then I would place the figs delicately, in neat rows like beautiful jewels, and put large leaves on top to protect them from the sun. It was the same preparation for the grapes: We cut them with a scissors and cleaned them carefully; there couldn’t remain a single damaged grape or a dirty leaf. I also lined these crates with vine leaves and covered them the same way as the figs so the grapes would stay fresh.

  There was also the season for cauliflower, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, and squash, and my father sold the cheese that I was assigned to make. I would pour the milk into a large metal bucket. I would skim off the yellow fat that formed on the edges, and the cream, which I set aside for making laban, which was sold in separate packets for Ramadan. The laban were put into large buckets for my father, who made up the packets with heavy plastic so that the product wouldn’t spoil. It was my job to label them in Arabic: LABAN.

  With the halib, the milk, I made yogurt and cheese by hand, using a white transparent cloth and an iron bowl. First I would fill the bowl to the top so all the cheeses were the same height; then I turned them into the cloth, tied a knot, and squeezed very hard so the liquid would run into a receptacle. When there was no more liquid, they were placed on a big gilded platter and covered with a cloth so the sun and the flies wouldn’t damage them. I would wrap them then in white packets that my father also marked. My father went to the market almost every day during the fruit-and-vegetable season, and twice a week with the cheeses and the milk.

  My father would not get behind the wheel of the van until it was completely loaded, and woe to us if we hadn’t finished in time. He would get in front with my mother and I would be wedged in between the crates in back. It was a good half hour’s ride, and when we arrived I would see big buildings. It was the city, a pretty, very clean city. There were stoplights to control the auto traffic. I remember a shop window with a mannequin in a bride’s dress. I twisted my head to be able to see the shops for as long as possible. I had never seen anything like that, because I wasn’t allowed to walk about and certai
nly could not look in the shops.

  I would have loved to visit this city, but when I saw girls walking on the sidewalk wearing short dresses and with bare legs, I was ashamed. If I had encountered them close up I would have spit on their path. They were charmuta and I thought it was disgusting. They were walking all alone, without parents next to them. I thought to myself that they would never be married. No man would ever ask for them because they had shown their legs and they were made up with lipstick. And I didn’t understand why they weren’t locked in. Were these girls beaten the way I was? Locked up like me? Slaves like me? Did they work the way I did? I wasn’t allowed to move an inch from my father’s van. He supervised the unloading of the crates, collected the money, and then gave a sign, as if to a donkey, for me to climb in and hide myself inside, with the only pleasures being a moment without any work to do, and catching sight of the inaccessible boutiques through the crates of fruits and vegetables. I understand now that life in my village hadn’t changed since my mother was born, and her mother before her, and still farther back.

  The market was very large with a sort of roof that was covered with vines and that provided some shade for the fruit. It was very pretty. When everything had been sold, my father was very happy. He would go alone to see the vendor before the market closed, and he brought back the money, which I could see in his hand. He always counted it several times and then put it in a small cloth sack that was tied with a string and hung around his neck. It was with this money from the market that he was able to modernize the house.

  When my sister went to the market with my parents, I would go fetch water for cleaning the courtyard, which would be dried by the sun. And I made things to eat. Sitting on the ground I put the flour in a large flat plate with water and salt, and I worked it with my hand. The dough would rest under a white cloth, slowly rising. I would then go stoke the bread oven to get it really hot. The bake house had a wooden roof and was as big as a small house. Inside, the iron oven was always burning. The live coals stayed hot but the fire had to be stoked before we cooked on it, especially before making bread.

  I loved making the bread. So that the dough wouldn’t stick to my hands, I plunged them into flour and I caressed this white soft dough. Rising dough is a magnificent thing. I would make a hole in the dough to make it attractive before putting it in the oven. I made a big pancake, a beautiful round loaf, and a flat one that always had to have the same shape. If it didn’t, my father would throw it in my face. After the bread was baked, I would clean the oven and pick up the cinders. When that was finished, my hair, my face, my eyebrows and eyelashes were gray with dust, and I would shake myself off like a wet dog.

  One day, I was in the house and smoke was seen coming from the roof of the bake house. I ran with my sister to see what was happening and we heard them shouting “Fire!” My father came with water. There were flames and everything burned. Inside the bake house there were what looked like blackened goat droppings. I had forgotten a bread inside the oven and had not carefully cleaned the cinders. A coal was left, which started the fire. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have forgotten this piece of bread or forgotten to stir up the cinders with a piece of wood to take out the live embers. I was responsible for the fire in the bread oven, which was the worst of catastrophes.

  As expected, my father beat me harder than he ever had. He kicked me, beat my back with a cane, caught me by the hair, pushed me to my knees, and forced my face into the cinders, fortunately only warm by now. I was suffocating and spitting because the ash went into my nose and mouth. My eyes were reddened. He made me eat cinders to punish me. I was weeping when he released me, all black and gray with my eyes red as tomatoes. It was a very grave fault, and if my sister and mother hadn’t been there, I believe my father would have thrown me into the fire before it had been extinguished.

  The oven had to be rebuilt with bricks and the work took a long time. Every single day I got an insult, a mean word. I would slink to the stable bent low and I would sweep the courtyard with my head lowered. I think my father really detested me. But this one mistake aside, I always worked really well. I would do all the laundry of the house in the afternoon before night fell. I would beat the sheepskins, sweep, cook, feed the animals, clean out the stable. The moments of rest were so rare. When we weren’t working for ourselves, we would help the other villagers and they did the same for us.

  We were never out at night. But my father and mother would often go out to the neighbors, to the houses of friends. My brother would also go out, but not the rest of us. We didn’t have any friends, and my older sister never came to see us. The only person outside the family whom I saw sometimes was a neighbor, Enam. She had a spot in her eye and people made fun of her and everyone knew that she had never been married.

  From the terrace I could see the villa of the rich people. They would be out there with lights on, and I would hear them laugh. They ate outside, even late at night. But in our house we were locked up like rabbits in our rooms. In the village, I remember only this rich family, not very far from our house, and Enam, the old maid always alone, sitting outside in front of her house. The only distraction for us girls was the trip to the market in the van.

  There were several girls more or less of the same age in the village and they would put us all in a bus to be taken to pick cauliflowers in a big field. I remember so well this huge field of cauliflowers. It was so big you couldn’t see the end of it and you felt you would never get it all picked. The driver was so small that he sat on a cushion to be able to see over the steering wheel. He had a funny small round head with close-cropped hair.

  All day long we cut cauliflowers on all fours, all the girls in a row as usual, and supervised by an older woman with a stick. There was no question of loafing. We piled the cauliflowers up in a big truck. At the end of the day, the truck stayed there and we got back into the bus to return to the village. There were many orange trees on either side of the road, and because we were very thirsty the driver stopped and told us to go get an orange for each of us and to come right back. “One orange and halas!” which meant “one but not two!”

  All the girls ran back to the bus and the driver, who had parked on a little side road, backed up. Then he suddenly turned off the motor, got out, and started to yell so loudly that all the girls got out of the bus, frantic. He had run over one of the girls. A wheel of the bus had run over her head. As I was just in front, I bent down, I tried to raise her head by her hair thinking she was still alive. But her head remained stuck to the ground and I passed out from fright.

  The next thing I remember, I was in the bus, sitting on the knees of the woman who was supervising us. The driver was stopping before every house to let the girls off as we weren’t allowed to return alone even in the village. When I got off in front of our house the supervisor explained to my mother that I was sick. Mama put me to bed and gave me something to drink. She was good to me that night because the woman had explained it all to her. She had to explain the accident to each mother and the driver waited. I wondered if he wanted to be sure that everyone was told the same thing.

  It’s odd that it happened to this particular girl. When we were gathering the cauliflowers, she was always in the middle of the row, never on the edges. Among us, when a girl is always protected like this by the other girls it means that she might run away. And I had noticed that this girl was always surrounded, that she wasn’t able to switch places in the line, and no one spoke to her. It was forbidden to even look at her because she was charmuta, and if we did speak to her they would treat us, too, as charmuta. Did the driver deliberately run over her? The rumor lasted a long time in the village. The police came to question us and brought us together in the bus to the field where it had happened. There were three policemen, and that was really something for us to see men dressed in uniform. We could not look them in the eye and we had to be very respectful. We were very impressed. We showed them the exact spot. I bent down. There was a dummy head on the ground and I
raised it with my hand as I had done with the girl. They said to me: “Halas, halas, halas . . .” And that was it.

  We got back in the bus. The driver was weeping! He drove fast and wildly. The bus bounced on the road and I remember that the supervisor held her chest with both hands because her breasts were bouncing, too. The driver was put in prison. For us and for the whole village this was not an accident.

  For a very long time after this I was sick. I kept seeing myself raising the crushed head of this girl and I was afraid of my parents because of everything they were saying about her. They said she was charmuta. She must have done something bad but I don’t know what it was. I didn’t sleep at night, I kept seeing this crushed head and hearing the sound of the tires when the bus backed up. Never will I forget this girl. Despite all the sufferings I have endured myself, this image has stayed with me. She was the same age as I, with short hair, a very pretty haircut. It was also bizarre that she had short hair. The girls in the village never cut their hair. Why did she? She was different from us, more nicely dressed. What had turned her into a charmuta? I never knew. But in my own case, I knew.

  As I continued to mature, I waited hopefully to be asked for in marriage. But no one asked for Kainat, and she didn’t seem too concerned, as she was already resigned to remaining an old maid. I found this frightful, both for her as well as for me, who had to wait her turn.

  I was beginning to feel embarrassed to show myself at the weddings of others for fear of being ridiculed. Being married was the most I could hope for in terms of freedom. But even married, a woman risked her life at the least lapse in her conduct. I remember a woman who had four children. Her husband must have worked in the city, because he always had on a jacket. When I would see him in the distance he was always walking very fast, his shoes kicking up a storm of dust behind him. His wife’s name was Souheila, and one day I heard my mother say that the village was telling stories about her. People thought she was involved with the owner of the store because she went there frequently to buy bread, vegetables, and fruit. Maybe she didn’t have a big garden like ours or maybe she was seeing this man secretly, as my mother had done with Fadel. One day my mother said that her brothers had gone into her house and cut off her head. And that they had left the body on the ground and had walked around the village with her head. She also said that when her husband returned from his job he was happy to learn that his wife was dead since she’d been suspected of something with the store owner. But she wasn’t very pretty and she already had four children.