by Ghada Samman
The mother shoved the receiver into her daughter’s hand. As she took it, Fadila felt as though she were holding an adder that was about to bite her. The voice she detested (and which her family adored) came over the line saying, “My mom’s sick, so she can’t come visit you. But she’d like to talk to you and bless our marriage. I’ll pass by your workplace this afternoon and the driver will take us to the house. My mother has something important she wants to tell you about. It concerns me, of course, and I think it has to do with my habits, what foods I like and don’t like, that sort of thing. I’m sure you won’t mind spending some time with a mother who’s been sick, but who’s happy to be marrying her son off.”
Fadila chafed at the phrase, “marrying her son off.” After all, she was a person in her own right, with her own plans, who might not marry him after all. In fact, she’d told Mutaa more than once that she didn’t love him and wasn’t going to marry him. The first time she’d said it was the day when the families had recited the Fatihah.6 As far as she was concerned, they might as well have been reciting it over her grave! When, later on the same day, she’d told him she was in love with somebody else, it seemed to inflame his love for her like never before. When she told Zain about this, Zain warned her that what had been inflamed wasn’t love, but the desire to possess. Zain had gone on to add that women rarely know how to distinguish between these two, and that they pay dearly for it.
After hearing Fadila’s declaration, Mutaa had asked her with a mixture of sarcasm and apprehension, “So who is this gentleman you’ve set your heart on?”
“He’s a school teacher, and a poet.”
“Ah!” he replied mockingly, “So let him try paying the rent and the water and electricity bills with those marvelous poems of his!” Then, looking at the diamond ring he’d given her, he added, “And let him give you a ring made from the jewels of meter and rhyme!”
She hadn’t answered. She was too overwhelmed. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place—the rock of her family, and the hard place of this allegedly ideal groom.
No sooner had Fadila reached the shop than Mutaa started barraging her with telephone calls. He told her his mother was so sick she might not even live long enough to attend the marriage contract signing ceremony. Fadila didn’t remind him that she didn’t intend to go through with the ceremony anyway, and that the only reason she was coming was to honor an ailing woman who was hoping to see her son get married.
He showed up in his luxury car and the driver got out to open the door for her, but Mutaa, wanting to make a show of “honoring” her, beat him to it. Climbing into the car like somebody getting into her own coffin, Fadila felt alternately curious and reluctant. In the elderly driver’s eyes, she detected a look she didn’t know how to interpret. It seemed to convey a mixture of guarded warning, fear, and pity. It was the first time she had ever been inside Mutaa’s ornate villa on Qusur Street. With its opulent Western-style décor—from the elevator, to the posh European furniture, to the glistening crystal chandeliers with their dazzling moonlike glow—the place was in stark contrast to the large but modest dwelling in Ziqaq Al Yasmin. He took her coat, and she secured her headscarf around her face and neck. Then, in the monotone of a tourist guide, he launched into a bland description of their surroundings: “This chandelier is from Venice, the wall hanging is a French Aubusson tapestry, the lamps are made from Sèvres and Galéa porcelain, and all of them are from Parisian flea markets. The vase had been stolen from the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, but it was so beautiful, my dad couldn’t resist buying it. The chairs are Louis XV from Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, my dad bought the paintings at an auction, and …”
Weary of his braggadocio, Fadila broke in petulantly, “But your walls are made of cement, while ours were built from stone like the Umayyad Mosque and the Church of St. Paul. Besides, the pond in your courtyard doesn’t have any goldfish in it, and you don’t have any jasmine trellises. You also don’t have a wall fountain in your bay room …”
Interrupting her with a raucous laugh, he said, “Don’t worry! You’ll learn to love my things, and me, too!”
“Maybe,” she conceded, her tone still defiant, “but I’ll still go on loving the things I love.” Then she added curtly, “So, why don’t you take me to see your mother. Didn’t you say she wanted to speak with me?”
“Oh, of course. I’ll even carry you to her!”
With that, he came over to her, his nostrils flaring, his breathing loud and accelerated. Before she knew it, he had picked her up, only to slam her down on the floor. Dazed, she had no idea what was happening. He’d turned into a crazed rhinoceros. He butted her red dress, ripping off its buttons and tearing her underwear. Then he proceeded to bite her and thrust his horn between her breasts. He butted her here, there and everywhere. Then, his horn longer than ever, he rammed her in her feminine part. She cried out in pain. He dug his horn in deeper, as if her cry had sent him into the throes of ecstasy. She tried to resist, but the rhino crouched over her with his tremendous weight, leaving her paralyzed. He pumped his horn in and out, in and out like someone stabbing a body with a knife over and over in the same spot. She screamed in agony, but no sound came out, as he held her mouth shut with his foreleg until she could hardly breathe. As the rhino kept stabbing harder and harder in a frenzy of fiendish pleasure, she suddenly realized she had nothing on but her headscarf.
She heard the excited animal letting out a sound that made her pain all the worse: “Ah… ah… ah!” A few seconds, or minutes, later, she heard Mutaa snarl, “Instead of enjoying my body, you fainted, you bitch. Well, at least I know now that you were a virgin! Don’t worry. We’ll sign the marriage contract the day after tomorrow. But this is what you get for having the nerve to say you don’t want to marry me! I own you now, and I give the orders. After all, nobody else would want you anymore. You’ve spent the last few months being a spoiled smart-ass and insulting my manhood. So now it’s time for you to kiss my feet and beg me to take care of you. And if anybody finds out you’re not a virgin, I’ll say I don’t know anything about this. Maybe it was that worthless sweetheart of yours, the poet and school teacher Najm, who took advantage of you.”
“So where’s your mother?” Fadila asked, trembling from head to toe. “Didn’t you say she wanted to see me?”
“Oh, that!” he sneered. “My mother’s in Bloudan getting the house ready! Did you really believe she wanted to talk to you?!”
His words dug deep into her flesh, but even then she didn’t comprehend their implications. Her only concern now was to tell Najm what had happened, then go home and take a long, long bath.
Shattered, she went out to the car alone. Mutaa didn’t even do her the courtesy of escorting her to the car, much less open the door for her and accompany her back to her house. The driver’s face registered no surprise. He seemed to be accustomed to the sight of wretched, weeping women. As for her, she didn’t shed a tear. She decided she’d have to stand on her own two feet the way Zain had advised her to do after getting the divorce she was so proud of. She headed home prepared to face her fate alone.
“Could you stop in front of a shop somewhere?” she asked the driver in a tremulous voice. “I need to make a phone call.”
“As you wish, Miss,” he replied, his solicitous tone betraying a hint of disdain.
The shopkeeper asked her to pay for the phone call beforehand and insisted on dialing the number himself to make sure it wasn’t long-distance.
The telephone rang in Najm’s house. “Please answer!” she thought desperately. “Please!” Then the miracle happened. She heard his voice over the receiver.
“Hello?” That one word was the lifeline she needed.
“Could you meet me in front of Bakdash Ice Cream Parlor in ten minutes?” she asked hurriedly. “It’s urgent.”
“I’ll be there,” he replied.
Fadila asked Mutaa’s driver to take her to the entrance of Souq Al Hamidiya. Since the car wouldn’t be able t
o make its way down the crowded, winding roofed-in street, she got out and walked the rest of the way to their meeting place. She could hardly believe how much pain she was in. She felt a warm liquid, which she realized was probably blood, running down her thighs, and that scared her. As she approached the ice cream parlor she could hear the clip-clap, clip-clap of the giant wooden paddles in the vats of ice cream. It was a familiar, nostalgic sound that brought tears to her eyes. Or am I crying about something else? When she arrived, Najm stood waiting for her. Without wasting a moment, she proceeded to tell him her story, her face drenched in tears. “Mutaa raped me so that I’d have to go through with the wedding. He said now I’d kiss his feet and beg him to marry me!”
She nearly rested her head on Najm’s shoulder. But like him, she knew they were surrounded by prying eyes. Doing his best to calm her, he said simply, “I’ll marry you. I love you. I really do. In my eyes you’re still pure as pure can be, and he’s a filthy whore. The monster.” She was amazed to hear him call Mutaa a monster, since that’s exactly what he had acted like.
She wished she could give him a big hug, but they were right in the middle of the crowded marketplace, so she contented herself with a look that told him how she felt.
“Our love isn’t just a physical thing. What matters most to me is your spirit, your determination, your courage.”
Fadila felt a sudden pang of hesitation. She remembered that Najm belonged to a certain political party. So, might he turn her into a martyr for some ideological cause as a way of spiting others? Or did he really love her? For the first time she felt sure that the phrase “happy ending” didn’t necessarily apply to real life, and that she might be jumping out of one trap and straight into another.
As she stood miserably under the spray of water in their ancient bathroom, whose shower consisted of an unsightly pipe installed on the wall, she thought to herself. For all I know, Najm will turn out to be a “monster” too. I’ve got to be careful about everything. I’ve got to stand on my own two feet, and not go crying on somebody’s shoulder about what somebody else did to me when the person whose shoulder I’m crying on might be even worse that the person who hurt me in the first place. As a girl who’s only semi-pretty and semi-successful, I’ve got to learn to depend on myself. At the same time, I don’t want to judge Najm unfairly. I want to give him a chance.
* * *
Zain was getting ready for work when the telephone rang. Her grandmother answered. It was one of Zain’s maternal aunts in Latakia.
“Did he really divorce you?” she wanted to know.
“I’m the one who divorced him!” Zain corrected her.
“Why?” asked the aunt. “Weren’t you madly in love with him? What happened?”
Not knowing where to start, Zain stammered, “Well, because…”
Grandma Hayat snatched the receiver and, covering it with her hand, whispered with an unaccustomed imperiousness, “Just say, ‘It wasn’t meant to be!’”
Zain, who adored her grandmother, repeated parrot-like, “It wasn’t meant to be, Auntie.”
After hanging up, Zain asked, “Why do I have to keep saying that even now that the divorce is over? Why don’t I just tell people the truth and be done with it?”
Grandma Hayat, whom Zain viewed as a repository of the most ancient and revered wisdom, said, “Listen, sweetie. Nobody’s interested in hearing the truth, or what really happened to you. They’re not even interested in knowing whether you were right or wrong. All they want is some juicy gossip for next month’s reception. If you want everybody in town to know your secrets, just make your aunts or your girlfriends promise not to tell anybody what you’ve told them. You don’t know what people are like, Zain. So don’t get mad at me for saying this. Just remember how in love you were with your husband, and how you discovered later that he wasn’t what you thought he was.”
Zain couldn’t object to what her grandmother had said. All right then, nobody’s ever going to know why I divorced him—not even Grandma!
Once again the telephone started howling for attention. Her grandmother answered while Zain sidled up to her to listen in. This time it was a maternal uncle of Zain’s in Latakia. When he asked for Zain, Grandma Hayat fibbed, “She’s not home. She’s got an exam at the university.”
Zain was amazed to see what an accomplished liar her pious grandmother was! But she made no objection.
The uncle shouted over the phone, “Tell Zain her mother Hind was a rose that left a thorn behind!” Then he slammed down the receiver.
Zain was equally amazed to hear her uncle describe her mother as a “rose.” She knew how furious he’d been with her when she left her aristocratic father’s estate in Latakia, hopped on a bus and took off for Damascus to teach French in the National School, where she lived in a residence hall. According to Zain’s father, her mother Hind had left the estate on a white horse, though in her dreams it was always a reddish color. She also dreamed about an owl escorting her mother gently away.
“Oh,” Zain said suddenly to her grandmother, “I forgot to tell you: Juhaina’s coming for a visit this evening after I get home from work.” Juhaina Asiri! The little girl Hind brought with her from Latakia to help her with the housework when she got married. She and Zain grew up together, and I used to take care of both of them. I do love her, but…
Grandma Hayat hadn’t liked the Asiri family, whose venerable old house in Ziqaq Al Yasmin had been fancier than the Khayyal home. Some people even said it was nicer than Azm Palace. In Hayat’s opinion, though, none of the houses around the Umayyad Mosque was anything compared to the mosque itself. She felt guilty about it, but she disliked the Asiri family because one of its members had married the daughter of a Turkish pasha. He thought he was a big shot after that, and his wife acted as if none of the neighbor ladies was good enough for her. The women of the neighborhood were in general agreement that when Ido Asiri, the pasha’s daughter’s only son, fell in love with the Khayyal family’s servant girl Juhaina, this was God’s way of punishing the Asiri family for being such highfalutin snobs.
When Juhaina told Grandma Hayat that her father-in-law was going to give her and her son ownership of the Asiri family dwelling, Hayat had already heard the news. Wanting to make sure it was true, she cautioned Juhaina, saying, “He can’t put more than a third of the property in your name, since he’s a Sunni Muslim. Besides, your husband Ido is also an heir to the house, and he’s taken another wife.”
“That’s true,” Juhaina admitted. “But since he’s making me and my son owners of the house while he’s still alive, the Islamic inheritance laws won’t apply.”
After a brief pause, she added, “Please don’t tell the other neighbor ladies. I want to keep it a secret.”
“Well,” Zain said, laughing, “good luck with that! The news is already out. There’s no such thing as a well-kept secret in Ziqaq Al Yasmin.”
Zain silently gloated to hear people say with obvious envy, “The Khayyal family’s servant girl Juhaina (the ‘cow girl,’ as her mother-in-law referred to her disparagingly) owns the Asiri mansion now!”
All sorts of explanations were put forward for this bizarre turn of events. Some people said the girl’s father-in-law was in love with her. Others concluded that Juhaina must have slipped some sort of amulet inside her father-in-law’s pillow, since otherwise, how could he have gone from hating her to being putty in her hands?
After being sold by her father to Zain’s mother Hind when she was just nine years old, Juhaina had developed into a woman of strength and stunning beauty. The neighborhood boys who hovered around her said she looked just like Sophia Loren, except that Juhaina was prettier.
One of the lessons Grandma Hayat had drilled into Juhaina after Hind died was, “A secret heard is a secret kept.” Unfortunately, there was no such thing as keeping a secret in Ziqaq Al Yasmin.
And of course, she wasn’t trying to keep any secrets when she scandalized her husband by doing a lurid dance at his weddi
ng to his second wife! That same night, Juhaina found her father-in-law lying half-buried in a rare crop of snow that had blanketed the entire courtyard. She was stunned at the sight. Here, sprawled helpless before her—alone and at her mercy—was the man who, with his wife “the pasha’s daughter,” had never once treated her with the respect she deserved as his daughter-in-law and the mother of his grandchild.
This was the night when Ido would take his second wife, the daughter of an influential merchant. Her mother-in-law, the pasha’s daughter, had gone to the wedding out of sheer spite. As a matter of fact, Juhaina herself had been about to leave for the wedding, where she planned to perform her special dance of revenge. She could dance better than Tahiya Kariouka and Samia Jamal, as all the women in the neighborhood could attest.
But just as she was on her way to crash the wedding party with her little boy in tow, what should she find but the man who had made her life hell lying on the courtyard floor and struggling like a cockroach on its back. She could easily have pretended not to have seen him and left him for dead. And the thought did occur to her. It also occurred to her father-in-law as he gazed up at her in terror. But she didn’t have the heart. So she picked him up and carried him to his bed. She saved his life even though she expected nothing from him but more insults and abuse the next morning.
The suffering Zain and Juhaina had been through together as little girls after Hind’s death had forged an unbreakable bond between them. I’m proud of having taught her to read and write, although I did it without really trying. I would just come home from school and share with her whatever I’d learned that day!
After Juhaina’s visit, Grandma Hayat remarked, “Even the sweetest cowife is a bitter pill to swallow.”
Zain mused, “I remember the night when Juhaina crashed her husband’s wedding party and danced that wild, half-naked dance of hers—which she could get away with since all the guests were women, and the groom was her own husband! And after that women in the neighborhood started rebelling against any husband who had the nerve to take a second wife. Have you noticed that?”