by Ghada Samman
She didn’t reply. It’s as if I’m at the bottom of the sea, and voices come and go like waves along some deserted shore.
“How can you sleep now?” he asked, his voice fading in and out. “I reserved your favorite table for dinner on Candles’ second-floor balcony. We’re going to celebrate your eighteenth birthday in style! And here’s your present: a diamond necklace.” “I’ve got the flu,” she said in a whisper. “I took some medicine for it, and it’s the kind that makes you sleepy.”
His tone suddenly sharp, he demanded, “So where were you all day, anyway? I didn’t find you at the university, or at the library either!”
“I was at the doctor,” she replied listlessly. “I’ve got the stomach flu, so it’s better not to get too close to me. You go have a good time with friends or family, and we’ll talk in the morning. I’m all doped up now. I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well.”
Hoping to avoid sharing a bed with her husband that night, she decided to tell him she’d sleep in the library because she didn’t want to give him the flu. The library gave her a cozy feeling. She would shut herself up alone there, let out her frustrations by dancing to the wild strains of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, and study the rest of the time. But she was too weak to carry through with her plan.
After giving up on getting her to cuddle, he drifted off to sleep. She could hear his snoring. Amazed to be alive, Zain struggled to keep the day’s grueling events from replaying themselves in her brain, but they kept running across her inner screen like a bad movie while she faded in and out of consciousness. Even so, she was grateful to be lying in a bed instead of being laid out in a death shroud.
The fog in her head was suddenly penetrated by the image of Ghazwan in Subki Park. I’ve always dreamed of going to Hyde Park in London, Central Park in New York City, the Flower Clock in Geneva, and on and on. It never occurred to me that out of all these places, the one that would be branded into my heart would be good old Subki Park. And why? Because that’s where I first met Ghazwan. I was in a sorry state, like an owl with a broken wing, but he was so good to me. If my mother, the closet litterateur I’ve never had the pleasure of knowing, had seen me, she would have understood, and she would have bent down to mend my wing. Grandma Hayat always says I’m “just a little bit of a girl – a half-pint.” But I carry around the sorrows of a middle-aged woman.
So what’s going on with me? The minute I come out of one relationship, I’m in danger of getting mixed up in another. Like somebody swinging over an alligator- and snake-infested swamp, I let go of one rope and grab onto another one. Does every day bring a first love? Is Ghazwan’s love dangerous? The danger is to my mental health. How could I let him slip into my life when it’s in such a mess?
I think of the doctor’s kind-hearted French wife, who had no idea what she was getting herself into when she came here. I’ll bet people blame her for every mistake anybody makes. After all, not only is she a woman—she’s a foreigner. So people accuse her of getting Dr. Manahili into the work he does. I’m thinking about her because I’m pretty sure I’ll meet the same fate she has. I’ll be stigmatized as an “insubordinate” woman, and my husband, who hasn’t been able to break into my mind and spirit, is sure to use that against me. But I’m a boulder on Mt. Qasioun.
* * *
When Zain woke up the next morning, she ran her hands over her body one part at a time, like a teacher taking attendance. To her amazement, she wasn’t in any pain at all. On the contrary, she felt energized, and her bleeding had stopped. She voiced a silent thank you to Dr. Manahili, who appeared to have taken top-notch care of her. When she got up to wash her face, she discovered that her diamond bracelet was back on her wrist. She was sure she’d given it to the doctor’s wife. So what had happened? And why hadn’t she noticed it on her arm until now? Was I that out of it from the anesthesia?
She was more determined than ever to get out of her marriage. She needed to end this chapter of her life, turn the page, and start at the beginning of a new line. It was terrifying to be faced with the unknown. She got out of her marriage bed for the last time while her husband was still asleep and slyly drank her coffee. In a small bag she placed the secret notebooks that held her stories and poems, and in another she packed her school books.
Ever since my husband started sweet-talking me ten days ago about what we were going to do on my eighteenth birthday, I’ve felt like telling him – and specifically on my birthday – that I don’t want to live with him anymore, and that it’s all over between us. I don’t want to go on and on about it or have to justify it either to him or to myself. No stinging reproach, no bargaining, no calculating profits and losses. We’re through, and that’s that. There are so many painful details to deal with, we could go on fighting for hours.
But I haven’t said a thing to him. I haven’t told him I was pregnant either, even though I’d known it for more than two weeks when I had the abortion. I suddenly realized I couldn’t say anything to anybody, not even to my dear father, my nurturing grandmother, or my girlfriends. I was going to have to make my own decision and bear the consequences without any external support. The only thing I could rely on was what my dad used to call the second engine. I had to grow up, and I did.
Her books and papers were all she planned to rescue from the sinking ship. She’d leave her clothes and jewelry behind. Her university textbooks were especially dear to her heart. Every one of them represented some moment of indecision or transition, such as the moment when she’d fallen in love with an author’s creativity, or with an idea. Each one contained her hand-written impressions, and the Arabic meanings of words that had still been unclear to her even after she’d looked them up. She’d really communed with the things she’d read and studied.
Zain got dressed, but she didn’t spruce herself up or even get her makeup bag out the way she usually did.
She wasn’t sure what to do next, though. Should she wake her husband up to tell him she wouldn’t be coming back? Should she wait until he woke up on his own? Or should she leave without saying anything at all, and to hell with the Damascene good manners she’d been raised on? Remembering a notebook she’d hidden under her side of the mattress, she sneaked in to get it, and decided to leave right away without saying anything to her husband. She knew he might call her or follow her to work to spy on her. If he did, she would tell him from there that they were through: no blame, no regrets, no heated exchanges. When everything is over between two people, it’s best to stop talking altogether.
She was tempted to take her pen cemetery with her. She never had the heart to throw pens away when they went dry, and her defunct pen collection was the final resting place for her dearest friends. But she didn’t think she’d have room for it in her bag.
Like a wary owl, she slipped quietly into the bedroom to extricate the notebook. The mattress was heavier than usual. Or maybe I’m still just worn out from what I went through yesterday. I haven’t got time to be thinking about that, though. I must face today, which could get stormy when I tell him I want a separation— or rather, that we need to recognize the separation that started the moment we were married.
No sooner had Zain drawn her notebook out from under the mattress than her husband got up and turned on the light switch. He peered at her groggily. “What time is it?” he asked with a yawn. “And where are you going if you’re sick?”
With a cool, calm voice that she hardly recognized as her own, and which had merged with the voice of the rebellious author inside her, she announced, “I’m going to work, and I won’t be coming back here this evening. It’s all over between us, and I want a divorce.”
She fled from the room before he could start shouting and cursing. She picked up her suitcase, repeating to herself over and over, “I’m a boulder on Mt. Qasioun. I’m not afraid. No, I’m not afraid. I’ll speak my mind, and nobody is going to scare me from now on. I’m a boulder on Mt. Qasioun. A boulder doesn’t tremble, and it doesn’t cry.” Her husband be
at her to the front door and shouted, “All right. If you don’t want to come back, so be it. But you’ll have to wait until I get dressed so I can go turn you over to your father!” Then he locked the door with the key. She didn’t try unlocking it with her own key for fear that he might get violent. He was a lot bigger and stronger than she was.
She sat waiting in the entranceway, pretending she didn’t hear her husband pacing nervously back and forth and ranting and raving to himself as he put his clothes on. They got in the car and he drove like a maniac, as though he wanted to run over everybody he passed. She didn’t reply to a thing he said on the way.
They walked up the steps to her father’s law office. Her husband went in without her, and she heard him say, “I’ve come to turn your daughter over to you.” The words “turn… over to you” exploded in her head So he’s “turning me over” like some spoiled merchandise he wants to return to the seller!
“So,” Amjad Khayyal retorted, “you’re bringing her back to me a squeezed lemon!” The phrase “squeezed lemon” also went off like a bomb in her head. A squeezed lemon? Right. Well, I’ve lost a lot of weight and I had an abortion yesterday. But I’m a human being, not a lemon that somebody squeezes and throws away. One of them wants to turn me over like a piece of merchandise, and the other one’s decided the merchandise isn’t usable anymore.
She felt so degraded and furious, she couldn’t say a word. Whenever the voice of the rebel inside her got louder and louder, she went silent: wounded, insulted, humiliated. The voice deep down, which she knew was her own, said, Don’t start to cry now. This won’t last. You won’t let it. You’re going to stand up to him. Remember: You’re a boulder on Mt. Qasioun.
She sat down on a bench next to the exit. I hate arguments. And I hate violence disguised as polite clichés. That’s why the people I reject are so taken off guard. I do it without warning, and with a composure as cool as a cucumber. I kill them in my heart with a silent, bloodless elegance. My husband is dead to me now, and all that remains is to list his name in my heart’s obituary column. We never got into any arguments, since I discovered that trying to discuss things with him was a lost cause. I tried at first to draw him into conversations, but it never worked. I told myself it had been a good learning experience and all the usual things people say to make themselves feel better when they’re let down. But something inside me had broken. I still feel insulted and defeated, but I’m holding myself together. So if this is what love does to people, then it isn’t for me! This is the last time I’ll let myself be ground into the dirt.
Leaving her father and her husband to bicker over the squeezed lemon, Zain left and went to her father’s house in Sahat Al Midfaa, where she could see Grandma Hayat, the only person who’d ever really welcomed her with open arms.
Seeing Zain in the doorway with a suitcase in her hand, her grandmother knew something big was afoot.
“I’ve left him,” Zain announced. “We’re through. I want a divorce.”
“You’re always welcome here, honey. Besides, nobody ever liked Waseem. You weren’t right for each other. Your dad knew it from the start, but because he loved you so much, he went along with what you wanted.”
“Well, it’s over, Grandma. I’ll tell you what happened to me…”
“Don’t you tell me a thing,” her grandmother interrupted. “I might open my big mouth and blabber to somebody about it! You shouldn’t trust anybody with your secrets, not even me. The only person we should complain to is God. Like they say, ‘Better a heartbreak in the kitchen than a scandal around the block.’”
The old woman’s words came as a relief to Zain. She felt as though she’d been freed from a heavy burden. She’d learned from the time she was a little girl to keep her suffering to herself, mostly to spite the aunts who tried to keep her at their mercy. Did all that really happen? Or am I just imagining it? So many memories are hazy. Losing her mother as a little girl had been traumatic, and she wasn’t sure she really wanted to get over it. Even so, she preferred to focus on the future rather than dwelling on the past. She recalled the outbursts of rage she’d endured as a child whenever she tried to assert herself, and the more she thought about it, the more she rebelled against the familial repression that masked itself as altruistic concern.
Grandma Hayat added, “A lot of people are going to ask you why you left Waseem. Some of them will want to gloat, some will be looking for something to gossip about at the reception,2 and some will want to use your story to scare their daughters away from doing the same. If anybody asks you why you’re getting a divorce after you were so in love, just say, ‘It wasn’t meant to be!’ After all, everybody believes in fate.”
Zain figured her grandmother was probably right. Don’t wear yourself out trying to explain things to other people, or even to yourself. Love was born. Love died. That’s that. Beware of explaining the gory details to people who couldn’t care less about you and your feelings, and who just want a scandal to wag their tongues about. What happened, happened. And you survived it. So don’t let it destroy you now.
In a resolute tone Zain repeated back to her grandma, “It wasn’t meant to be!” Then she added, “Can I go to my old room, or is it being used for something else?”
“Nothing’s changed,” her grandmother assured her, “and we always keep it clean. I always expected you back. You know nobody in the house liked him.”
Zain knew that, like a true-blooded Damascene woman, her grandmother knew how to keep quiet about something when circumstances required it. Her unspoken rule of thumb was: Tell people enough to help you in your future, but not enough to let them hold your past against you.
Fitna, a neighbor lady, came in. Seeing Zain back at her father’s house at an unexpected hour, suitcase in hand, she’d picked up on the scent of some juicy gossip. With typical Damascene urbanity, she asked, “Well, what brings you here, dear? It’s lovely to see you!”
“I’ve left my husband,” Zain replied straightforwardly, “and I’m going to ask for a divorce.”
“Oh, why would you do a thing like that, sweetheart?” Fitna probed, her appetite whetted.
“It just wasn’t meant to be,” Zain answered simply, her eyes meeting her grandmother’s. She was pleased with herself for not saying any more than this to her neighbor, or even to her cousin. When her cousin telephoned asking if she could come by Zain’s workplace, Zain was taken completely by surprise. It was the first telephone call she’d gotten from her in her life. What’s going on? Has word gotten around so fast that the whole family knows about it already? Or is this just a coincidence?
“How did you know I was here?” Zain asked her.
“Oh,” she said, “I called my uncle to ask for your number at the library, and he said you were at home today.”
Zain went to her room, and her grandmother followed her. Despite her earlier advice to Zain not to tell her secrets to anyone, she couldn’t contain her own curiosity. “What happened?” she asked anxiously. “Aren’t you going to miss him? Are you sure about this?”
“Don’t worry, Grandma,” Zain replied. “He’s given me no reason to miss him!”
* * *
Waseem sighed with satisfaction as he drove to his family’s house for lunch. Man, have I got it made! I’m getting rid of that shitty wife of mine, Zain Khayyal. And since she’s asking for the divorce herself, it’ll cost me a lot less. I was an idiot to marry her in the first place. On the other hand, though, it makes me mad that she was uppity with me, and that she’s the one saying she wants out. In any case, I’ll come out without any material losses to speak of. That damned lawyer-dad of hers set her divorce dowry3 ridiculously high—it comes to nearly the price of a three-story building. It never occurred to him that if we split up, I’d make her waive all her financial claims against me before I agreed to a divorce!
I doubt if there’s a man on earth who’d put up with a wife like her. Zain’s unbearable. Sure, she’s got a delicate, feminine look about her, but she�
��s as tough as a man, and she’s always trying to act like one. Instead of staying home and cooking for me and whoever I’m in the mood to invite over, she gets up at the crack of dawn to go to her job at the library, and then to the university. She doesn’t even go to hair salons or doll herself up so that she’ll be looking her best when I get home from work, from hanging out with friends, or from hooking up with other women. She’s got no business knowing where I’ve been or who I’ve been with. Her job is to do what I say and be content with what she’s got.
My poor mom likes Zain even though I’ve told her how awful she is. She even fixes food for us every day and either sends it over or has me pass by and get it. It doesn’t even occur to Zain that her priority should be to set up shop in the kitchen and learn how to cook from my mom so that she can make feasts for my friends whenever I want her to. Instead, she thinks she’s my equal, as if we had two men in the house. She goes to her job and comes home tired. Then she buries herself in her books and doesn’t give a damn whether I stay home or go out for the evening.
So I’m ecstatic to be getting divorced! But the fact that she seems even more excited and happy about it than I am makes me mad. She might even come to the court for the divorce proceedings all by herself. I suppose she won’t feel intimidated by the judge, or bat an eyelid when I stand next to her. Those damned books of her are the real reason we’re splitting up. They’ve ruined her mind.
The crazy girl used to chatter away to me about things I didn’t understand, and were boring as hell. She would say, “The only person who doesn’t make fun of me for getting engrossed in reading and writing is my dad. When I study Western literature and read the books my dad shows me from the Arabic tradition, I feel as though I find myself. I’m starting to understand the meaning of freedom, equality, and civilization – what it means to be a human being, and who I really am. You know, it’s really important to write about what you think and not to hold back. So if anybody tries to keep me from swimming in my inkwell, I just write that person off.”