by Ghada Samman
So no, there was no way she would ever marry that rhino Mutaa. But she was prepared to take her chances with Najm.
* * *
The day the marriage contract was to be signed, Abdulfattah woke up counting the hours till his damaged honor could be repaired, however partially. He’d decided that unless Mutaa did what he had promised, he would kill his daughter.
“Get her up,” he instructed his wife. “It’s ten-thirty in the morning.”
Buran went to Fadila’s room, but didn’t find her. It occurred to her that Fadila might have gone to work early to get away from the house. Even so, she felt a pang of motherly concern. Where could she be? Virgin or not, she’s still my daughter! She called the shop. Fadila hadn’t come in. Then she put in calls to family, friends, and acquaintances, with Zain at the top of the list. Nobody had seen her, and she’d said nothing to anybody about where she’d gone. When Mutaa arrived that evening with the sheikh who’d be officiating at the ceremony, they told him Fadila had disappeared, and said they’d been too embarrassed to notify the police. Mutaa called a man he addressed as “Lieutenant Naji,” asking him to issue instructions not to allow so-and-so out of the country by land, sea or air.
“Oh, and regarding our appointment this evening,” he added, “can we postpone it till tomorrow?”
By this time Fadila and Najm had reached Beirut with the help of an official in the border town of Jdaidet Yabous. They’d decided to get married there and send a copy of the marriage certificate to her family. She telephoned Zain, who cried, “Where are you, girl?! The whole neighborhood’s been looking for you! And maybe the police, too.”
“I’m in Beirut with Najm,” Fadila assured her. “We’ll make our marriage official tomorrow morning, and I’ll send my family a copy of the papers with a driver who works for ‘Taxi Al Alamayn.’”
“I can’t call them, Fadila. You’ll have to do that yourself. They hate me enough around here already as it is. In any case, don’t call them till after you’re officially married. Let them worry about you for a while. Maybe that way they’ll remember that you’re a human being, and that they might have loved you once upon a time, at least when you were little.”
“Najm would like to speak with you.”
“Hi, Najm, and congratulations to the two of you. Don’t forget that Fadila might have gotten pregnant from what happened the other day. It wasn’t her fault, of course. But I didn’t want to remind her of it.”
“Any child she carries will be mine. All that matters to me is for us to be together.”
After they hung up, Zain sat motionless for a while, as if some sorcery had turned her to stone.
For some reason I feel guilty toward Fadila. But why should I? I’ve never asked anybody to follow my example. We should all do what we think is right and then take responsibility for it. Love is a trek over a tightrope stretched between two stars, and without a safety net. Some people are prepared to take the risk, and some aren’t. I personally thought it was worth it. So I tried, and I fell off the rope. I’m only human. But I’m not going to let anyone rob me of my freedom or my right to make mistakes. Love is a gamble, and you can’t buy an insurance policy against failure. I’m wounded and let down, but I’m working myself out of it.
On the other hand, Fadila and I have been friends ever since we were little, and I don’t want her to go through what I did. I have this feeling of foreboding hanging over me. I’d better do some writing. I see the lives of people I’ve known—Fadila, Juhaina,
Najwa, Hamida, Fayha—flowing out through the ink in my pen, and I create a world of my own.
As if he picked up on Zain’s sadness and confusion, little Haroun jumped into her lap and tried to console her.
I get discombobulated when Juhaina consults me about things and pours her tears onto my writing table. I get the same way when my cousin wants me to tell her which “love lottery” ticket to buy. In fact, I’m discombobulated by everybody who asks for my advice. They don’t realize I’m confused myself. On the other hand, their coming to me this way makes my pen happy, and I take refuge in blank sheets of paper. I have to, since I encounter so much hatred in people around me. I struggle with their rejection of me and my passion for freedom. But more than anything else, I struggle with my own mistakes.
Her grandmother’s voice jarred her out of her reverie.
“I heard the phone ring,” she said, “but I was stirring the yoghurt sauce for the stuffed squash, and I didn’t dare leave it for fear it would curdle. Who was it?”
“Oh,” Zain replied quickly, “It was a wrong number.” Then she whispered to herself, “Your secret is safe with me.”
* * *
Zain opened her eyes one morning with a dream still fresh in her mind, and it got her to wondering. Why do men cheat? Or, more to the point: Why would a man cheat on a woman he was once so madly in love with that he fought for the chance to marry her? Why is it that once the honeymoon’s over, a man goes looking for honey in some other tree? And further, why does he do it knowing full well that his wife will find him out no matter how hard he tries to hide it? There was a time when he couldn’t keep his eyes and hands off her, when a mere brush of her finger would catapult him to the heights of arousal. Yet despite this, a man might even betray the woman he loves with a stranger that Fate happens to throw in his path. So, is there some extraordinary pleasure like what I experienced in my dream last night, and which I never had in my marriage? I mean, the kind of pleasure you might have with somebody you don’t even know? If so, then why don’t I, or other women who’ve written before me, have the guts to give it a try, whether we do it just so that we can write about it, or whether for the sheer enjoyment of it—the way men do—without apology, and without hiding behind the excuse of art or literature?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the importunate cries of the telephone. It was her journalist friend Mazen, who wanted to do a full-page interview with her for his newspaper. She couldn’t really say no, since he had supported her in the past without flirting with her a single time! Out of politeness, she promised to come see him once she’d finished her work at the library. Some people claimed that she had only succeeded because her father was a well-known lawyer who could pull the right strings for her. I don’t give a damn about gossip anymore. I’m just going to be what I am, and that’s that. Looking at herself in the mirror, she whispered, “Good morning, little owl that doesn’t hurt anybody unless they hurt you!”
Zain’s lovely companion sat perched in the window, her image reflected in Zain’s mirror. Every day the bird would appear in a new incarnation. One day her feathers would be pure white, other days adorned with brown stripes or forest-green spots. Zain knew her owl didn’t wear masks. She was just moody, and every mood came with its own color scheme. Sometimes she would alight on the window sill bleeding and moaning, and Zain would let her carry on with her rituals of mourning. Zain understood that like her, there was nothing anybody could do for her little owl, and she needed the freedom to carry on alone. Zain talked to her owl looking straight into the mirror, knowing that if she turned to look back, she would disappear.
After the interview Mazen escorted Zain outside. When they got to the sidewalk, they ran into a towering, extremely good-looking young man. He and Mazen exchanged a hug, and Mazen said to him, “Let me introduce you to Zain, a well-known writer.” Turning to Zain, he added, “Zain, meet Amer the poet. He looks like a wrestler, but he’s actually quite a gentle soul!”
As she shook Amer’s hand, she shuddered as if she’d just wrapped him in a passionate embrace.
“Where’s your car?” Mazen asked her.
“I haven’t bought one yet!” she said.
Hearing this, Amer offered her a ride. Mazen was about to object when, to his amazement, Zain replied lightly, “Thanks! I’d appreciate that!”
She and Amer got into his car and drove off. Mazen’s jaw dropped in amazement. As he stood on the sidewalk watching them disappear into the distanc
e, he thought: Damn it all! I’d been dying to offer her a ride. So why didn’t I have the guts to do it?
His voice dripping with desire as he took her in from head to toe, his eyes lingering on certain curves along the way, Amer said, “You’re invited for a cup of green tea in my humble basement apartment in Al Rawda. I got a bag of it this morning from a Chinese friend of mine.”
From a Chinese friend? Or from the corner grocery store? What difference does it make? She declined at first, even though she was dying for an adventure. That dream is still tugging at me. Are there situations of raw attraction—the way things were in the wild before language was invented—where the body is entitled to pleasures all its own? Can the prey really be the hunter sometimes? If so, then the trick is to give the hunter the illusion that he’s the one doing the catching. Then, while he’s enjoying his catch, the prey gets a double enjoyment: the pleasure of the encounter, and the pleasure of the game. Am I writing in my head now, or is this really happening? And will I be able to tell the two apart from now on?
Zain felt herself setting foot on an unknown continent, led on by her craving for experimentation and discovery. But she figured she must just be writing in her head.
“Come on,” he urged. “You’ve got to try some green tea at my house!”
So, instead of insisting that he take her straight home, Zain relented and accepted his invitation. After he’d pulled up outside his apartment building, he reached for her hand. She didn’t resist, or even hesitate. On the contrary, no sooner had he closed the door behind them than she surprised him by planting a feverish kiss on his lips. He picked her up the way one picks up a tiny doll. She wrapped her legs around his massive body and squeezed with all her might as though she wanted to merge with him. Then, without a word of introduction, chatter, or promise, they fell together onto the entranceway floor. Lightning struck with its magic wand, and before she knew it, they were both naked. She nudged him away from her slightly so that she could contemplate his body, which was reminiscent of a statue of a beautiful Greek god that had suddenly come to life. As she did so, he fell upon her with kisses, embraces, and sniffs, and she returned the favor in utter, earnest, mad surrender. Slowly but insistently, his boat entered the coral grotto, the waters alternately frothing up about it and gushing out of the mouth of the cave. She heard what sounded like sighs, moans and gasps coming out of her. Only then did she realize that she’d never really known ecstasy before. As the boat reached the grotto’s inner sanctum amid flashes of lightning and peals of thunder coming in rapid succession, she saw Ghazwan’s face, and her soundless whispering of his name sent the cave walls crashing down.
With his name still on her lips, she went soaring through space astride a star. She wished she could hear Ghazwan’s voice whispering her name in turn. But what she heard instead was the voice of her father calling, “Lunch time! The food’s going to get cold while you sit in there scribbling!”
She heard the flip of a light switch, and the green-hued library was bathed in the bright glow of the chandelier.
“You always write under the patch of light from the little desk lamp,” her father remarked with concern. “That can’t be good for your eyes!”
Zain couldn’t tell her dad, “Don’t talk to me when you see me busy writing! Don’t even come near me!” When I write, I turn into a crazy owl flying through a dark enchanted forest. My talons tear at the blank page, reopening the wounds of what was and was not.
Just then Grandma Hayat followed her father into the library saying, “The gas canister ran out before I’d finished frying the bread for the fattat al-makdus. Could you hook a new one up for me?”
Bless you, Grandma!
“Sure,” he said to his mother. “So, then,” he said to Zain apologetically, “we’ll be eating in another ten minutes. Sorry about that!”
“No problem, dad,” she replied affectionately, “I’ll be right there!”
However, she couldn’t tear herself away from the desk, as there were several voices coming simultaneously out of her heart and her pen.
A voice said accusingly, “Ghazwan proposed to you without even knowing your name, and even though you were weak, sick, wounded and helpless, but you ran away and left him stranded in front of the Kaddura Pharmacy, whereas all Amer offered you was a cup of green tea, and you ravished him like a sex-starved maniac! What’s wrong with you, anyway?”
Then came a terrified voice from somewhere inside her: “I did no such thing! I woke up this morning, went to the library, did an interview with my friend Mazen, and came home again. A friend of his gave me a ride home, and then I sat down to write. So what’s this trial all about?”
“Liar,” countered the accusing voice. “Before you sat down here to write, you were setting fire to Amer’s cold tile floor.”
“I did no such thing. I’m just writing something out of my head! But now I can forgive men for their infidelities, provided that they acknowledge women’s right to cheat on them too.”
“Yeah, right!” came the accuser’s mocking riposte. “Everything you just wrote about, you’d already done. First you went to Amer’s cave, and then you came running back to purge yourself at this desk. You think you can exonerate yourself on the pretext that you’re a writer, and that you make no distinction between your actions and those of your characters.”
“Hurry up, girl. The food’s gotten cold!”
And Zain sprinted to the kitchen.
* * *
A few days later Zain passed by Mazen’s office to look over his transcript of their interview before it went to press. As she was about to leave, she noticed that he was wearing a black necktie. When she asked him about it, he said, “You remember Amer, the poet that gave you a ride home after our interview the other day?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’m going to his funeral. He died in a terrible accident on the Aleppo highway. He was a reckless poet. Anyway, do you need a ride home?”
“No, but thank you,” Zain replied, wincing at the painful news.
Do you suppose Amer told him what happened between us that day?
Instead of walking straight home, she took a long detour. So, it’s Lord Death again. He’s been my arch enemy ever since I lost my mother. I lay down next to her in her coffin and tried to wake her up, but it didn’t work. Now here I am immersed in life, drinking it in with a vengeance without thinking about the fact that I’m really just heading for my own death. When people we know die, we grieve not just because we’ve lost them, but because we’re afraid of losing our own lives.
When Zain arrived at the house, dark clouds were gathering in her heart.
To her delight, however, she found Juhaina visiting her grandmother. She concluded from the way the two women went quiet when she walked in that they’d been discussing matters of an intimate nature. Might Juhaina have admitted to her relationship with Najwa now that the whole neighborhood was abuzz with the story? It was obvious that she hadn’t, since her grandmother appeared relaxed, with Haroun in her lap. Zain greeted Juhaina with a kiss and sat down to join them.
I really don’t care what Juhaina’s done. Who am I to judge her? The earliest image I have of her goes back to our summer vacation at my dad’s farm in Rayhaniya. I was a little girl at the time, and I poked at a beehive with a stick. All I’d really wanted to do was find out what was inside it. In any case, I was attacked by a swarm of bees and went running for cover to Juhaina, who hid me under her long skirt and took the bees’ stings for me. That’s the kind of person I’ve always thought of Juhaina as being. I suspect there really is some sort of romantic connection between her and her cowife, but that’s her business. Besides, I’ll never forget how she saved the life of a man who had never shown her a whit of appreciation or respect. He’d never called her anything but “that country bumpkin servant girl that used to tend the cows.” But in spite of it all, she picked him up and carried him to his bed instead of leaving him to die of the cold. Whatever she’s doin
g and whatever people say about her, that’s the Juhaina I’ve always held in my heart.
Picking up on Zain’s positive, endearing vibes, Haroun jumped into her lap.
Chapter Five
Zain stood on the porch of her father’s house in Sahat Al Midfaa, gazing out at Abu Rummana Street and the trees in the yard. The voice inside leads me to write about freedom, but what kind of sense does that make if I don’t even support myself? I preach freedom, I demand equality, and I claim in newspaper columns to be the spokesperson for liberated girls, yet the whole time I’m being supported financially either by my father or my husband. Oh, and I think of myself as “famous,” too. Well, as long as I’m dependent on a man for my support, I’m a pitiful mess!
The voice of the woman who’d taken up residence in Zain’s mind, and who wielded a pen as though it were a rifle, had started to become part of her now. The voice had grown louder and louder since Zain had gone alone to get an abortion, alone to her divorce hearing, and alone to sit for the university exams that she’d barely had time to study for. She adored the books she was reading for her English and World Literature classes, and she adored her professors too—Dr. Varma from India, Dr. Mayan, also from India but less literarily radical than his Indian colleague, Dr. Gilders from the US, and Dr. Musa from Palestine. But her personal life had been wearing her down.