by Malu Halasa
Their distinguished guest, an expert in Islamic jurisprudence, explained that the Hadiths were considered secondary to the direct revelation of God in the Qur’an but also formed the basis for Islamic family law. During his lifetime the Prophet had been a man under constant scrutiny. After his death his words and deeds were collected, first orally and then in writing. Each Hadith was authenticated through isnad, a chain of transmission, that could be traced over the course of two hundred years to a reliable source, either his wives or companions. As the scholar discussed the different collections of Imam Malik Ibn Anas and Muhammad al-Bukhari, and al-Tabari’s The History of Prophets and Kings, Muna took notes.
At the end there were questions. After several innocuous exchanges, a Southeast Asian student stated, “When the Prophet Muhammad was asked whether a bowl of soup should be eaten after a fly landed in it, he said yes, because on the fly’s one wing is the germ and on the other the cure. That’s scientifically untrue.”
The scholar was unperturbed. “On the contrary, Muslim scientists have done their own research. The Prophet is correct.”
True believers murmured their assent to this vindication; the less committed were unconvinced at such a triumph of faith over logic.
Muna was irresistibly reminded of the old joke—“Waiter, waiter, there’s a fly in my soup”—and wondered whether scholar and student missed the point. The Hadith wasn’t about insects but hunger in seventh-century Arabia and food waste. As she was leaving, Muna came face-to-face with the bearded scholar, who scowled at her, the woman who had the audacity to sit among men.
Muna, flustered, apologized. “I didn’t want to move and disrupt the lecture.”
“What does someone like you know about our religion and culture?” His voice was filled with loathing. “Stay among your own people.”
“Khalik maa’na shaabunah—among my own people?” Muna’s minimal Arabic was direct enough. She walked off, disturbed by his suggestion that she didn’t fit in and never would.
Outside, the woman who had been trying to get Muna’s attention at the lecture was waiting. The two of them ended up laughing about the fly. On learning Muna’s background she was insistent: “You must visit Jordan.” Muna appreciated her companion’s generosity of spirit and mentally started preparing for a trip she had been waiting for since the occupation of Tahrir Square. The trip would prove if her mother was right, that the Middle East was insular and stuck in the past, or if the situation was far more complex. Either way, Muna knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
Her doubts increased after her flight landed in Amman and she stepped outside the airport and was met by large groups of watching, waiting men. Some were in uniform, others in T-shirts and jackets, with many more in traditional robes. A few women in abayas were scattered in the crowd. Intimidated, Muna hid behind a pair of wing-tipped sunglasses.
A kindly face detached itself from the crowd and floated toward her. A middle-aged man in a suit and starched white shirt politely shook her hand, introducing himself as Mr. Ibrahim. She was unsure whether she understood him correctly, even though he spoke in flawless, albeit heavily accented, English.
“Muna, I was with your father and mother in Cleveland last week, and I promised to pick you up from the airport and take you to your uncle’s house.”
In a daze she followed him to a waiting car. Mr. Ibrahim explained that he’d known her father since their school days. They lost touch after Abd emigrated. In time, Mr. Ibrahim began traveling to the United States on business, and a mutual friend put them back in touch. Muna’s father never mentioned this man, but his affable manner and familiarity with her family put Muna at ease.
As they drove across the capital, she examined the cramped lanes edged with stores and tea shops through the car window. On some street corners boys hawked lighters and cartons of cigarettes. It was midafternoon, and many people were hurrying home like rush hour in New York. Abruptly the car turned into an area devoid of pedestrians, deathly quiet except for dogs picking through the roadside garbage. The quarter had already closed for lunch and was filled with stalls and garages devoted to car parts and scrap metal. They drove down one lane filled only with headlights, joined the highway, and left the city behind.
As they passed an ancient Roman milestone inscribed with the names of towns and their distances, as accurate today as it had been two thousand years ago, Mr. Ibrahim asked the purpose of her visit.
“I want to see my father’s country and meet the family. Anything beyond that, I’m not sure.”
“People come here with preconceived notions.” He advised her, “Give it time and what you need will find you.”
Muna had no idea that one form it would take was of a pig.
“Stupid or not,” Samira tells her, “the town is upset with Hussein, but my friends don’t care. We have more important things to worry about. Imagine, for some sexual slavery and murder are more acceptable than pigs and the unveiled. Umm al-Muharramat, Mother of All Forbiddens!”
Muna mentions the driver who took her to the airport in New York. “It’s curious what causes offense. After I told him I was going to visit family in Jordan, he said he was Afghan, married to his cousin, with two girls in kindergarten. Then he admitted his greatest fear: the day his daughters come home from high school and say they have boyfriends.
“He said he would rather go back to Kabul and raise his daughters in seclusion. For him, his daughters’ lives are not as important as their virginity.” She makes a V sign with her fingers and taps her forehead. “At least they’re safe from a war. You’d think he would be grateful for that.”
“And how grateful should he be after the English, the Russians, and the Americans wrecked his country?” demands Samira.
“No, you’re right. But not everyone has been able to get out of Afghanistan, and this cabbie isn’t having difficulty adjusting to the American dream because of his daughters. Every time we passed a blond woman on the street, he looked like he was ready to jump out of the car and eat her alive. When I see this stuff played out in front of me, it makes me think about Baba as a teenager arriving in the US with only five dollars in his pocket and a college scholarship. I really wanted to ask Abu Salih about condoms. But if Mother Fadhma thought I was being rude she would have hit the roof.”
“Condoms?!” It is Samira’s turn to be surprised.
“After New York, Baba and Abu Salih took this Greyhound bus to Greenville, Illinois.” Muna goes on to explain that her eighteen-year-old father needed to urinate, and Salih, who spoke the better English, described his friend’s predicament to a traveling salesman sitting nearby. The man gave Abd a rubber, told him to go to the back where no one could see him, relieve himself in it, tie it up, and throw it out the window.
“Baba and Abu Salih had never seen a condom before and didn’t know what it was for. The salesman told them and made them repeat the word until they could pronounce it properly. Welcome to America!”
Muna drops another bombshell. “After telling me that story, Baba said if I was still a virgin at twenty-two, then something was wrong. And this came after years of getting at me about boys—like Laila’s mom. Culturally my parents are a million miles apart from each other. Mom never cared about having children, much less sons. She was Catholic-lite but that didn’t mean she believed in divorce or abortion. However, the one place she and my father did agree was my honor and respectability. So when Dad talked about my virginity, I was pretty speechless.”
Samira is beside herself. “You mean my upstanding brother advocates premarital sex?”
“This is from the guy I thought would bury me in the backyard if, God forbid, contraception failed and I came home pregnant.” Muna is as baffled as her Jordanian cousin. “What do you think he was telling me?”
“He has a secret life?”
As both women consider the implications, Muna abruptly changes the subject; maybe there are some things that shouldn’t be discussed with the relatives. Instead, she asks, “S
amira, why didn’t you come and live in the US? You must have been tempted.”
Her cousin makes a half-hearted joke: “I couldn’t leave the loves of my life—my mother and my country.” There is another reason, which she never discusses with anyone, but Muna isn’t like everyone else. “When Mamma was pregnant with me, Al Jid received a letter from one of the brothers saying it was shameful that Fadhma was still having children at the same time he and his wife were starting their family.”
“You mean they objected to an old married couple having sex?” Muna grimaces again. “By their standards, I must be sex crazy. It’s the double standards for women I can’t stand. We come from such a repressed family.”
Whenever Fadhma recounted the story to her daughter, the moral was that Samira should be grateful for her existence. The anecdote also had a more subtle effect. “You can see why I never went to America. My family wasn’t going to welcome me.” Samira smiles, but she’s not happy. It is a subject she doesn’t like to dwell on.
Muna is pushing the toy car toward Fuad when “Zourouni” by Fairouz erupts from Samira’s cell phone.
“It’s a miracle anything gets through!” When Samira doesn’t recognize the number she becomes instantly apologetic—“I need to take this”—and hurries into the house. “Hello?”
At the other end a woman asks for her by name. Samira can’t place the voice, but once she confirms that she is speaking, the woman gets straight to the point: “A letter is waiting for you to pick up.”
The minimum amount of information is conveyed: a designated time and place. It is the arrangements for the letter’s delivery afterward that are unusual. Normally Samira meets a member from the women’s committee or delivers to a trusted location. Instead the caller tells her that someone, unspecified for now, will contact her this evening. The details are frustratingly vague.
She keeps her reservations to herself. “Naam—yes,” she understands. “Of course… not a problem,” she reaffirms again. After hanging up, she checks her phone; she has time before she needs to leave the house. Because of Fuad she has to wait for her mother or Laila to return. Or she could ask Muna to babysit. Samira rejects the idea outright. Her cousin can be put to better uses. She is the decoy who ensures freedom of movement. When Samira started working for the committee, Zeinab advised her, “Turn left when you want to turn right, double back when you’re sure nobody is watching.” In Muna’s company, Samira can go where she pleases without having to worry or explain. She just needs to make sure that her intuition is not wrong and her cousin can be relied upon.
Samira returns to the terrace. “I have to run a political errand this evening. Want to come?”
“Sure.” Muna is game for anything; she doesn’t think her Jordanian cousin would be involved in anything too dangerous. “What group are you working for?” Muna asks.
“A women’s committee,” Samira begins slowly, “that is part of a larger organization operating in Jordan. It’s not the most active in terms of the humanitarian crisis, but it is effective politically and helps women. Remember when the Syrian revolution first began? It was a peaceful movement.”
Muna is intrigued. “So why did it change?”
“I asked my friend Zeinab that same question,” admits Samira. “She said soldiers entering towns and villages were raping women in front of their husbands and sons. In our committee some of the women have been raped or their daughters have been threatened with rape or forced marriage.”
She’s just getting warmed up. “I don’t understand people’s reactions to the hundreds of thousands of dead and the millions of Syrians leaving the country. The numbers alone are large enough for the violence to be condemned, but all you get are people like—”
Muna butts in. “Umm Omar.”
“Why can’t she and others like her understand that Sunni Syrians desperately need help and some of them have turned to the better-armed Islamic fronts. Not every Muslim fighting for their survival is committing Christian genocide. That’s what Assad did in the beginning. Those who opposed him, with or without a gun, were labeled terrorists.”
Muna raises a critical eyebrow. “It’s a mess that won’t go away like the others.”
“Millions of people,” argues Samira, “don’t abandon their homes and run from nothing. And if they can’t escape, they send their children on a four-thousand-mile hike to Europe. Shouldn’t that count for something?”
“It should,” agrees Muna. “But people in my part of the world disengage, particularly from the actions of governments in the Middle East. The Internet has turned all of us into isolated consumers. People watch and download what they like and ignore the rest. So there’s a refugee crisis—oh, I can buy a bikini.”
Her explanation doesn’t impress Samira, who scoffs, “At least there are some of us who do care.”
“I wonder where someone like me fits in?” Muna surveys the wooden lean-to on the roof next door, which provides shelter for the empty cushions and chairs from the sun. “For most of my life I’ve been too mixed for the Arabs, and before ethnic diversity became fashionable in the US, I was too odd for them too.”
Samira can’t believe that she has been talking about the incredibly desperate situation in Syria and Muna’s reaction is to think about herself. It is as Zeinab has maintained all along: the privileged are always the ones who feel the most unfairly treated. Samira tries not to show her irritation. “And what do you say to those who don’t accept of you?”
After a pause Muna replies, “Anna mish ghareebeh—I am not a stranger.” She points to herself. “This is the face of the modern Middle East—mixed on the outside and the inside.”
“Mixed on the outside and inside? I don’t get it.”
“I am the Arab who would rather be a daughter than a son,” declares Muna. “I refuse to be sacrificed on the altar of family. In short, I am the liberator of myself.”
Her words break the tension and Samira joins in. “I’m not mixed on the outside but inside—if the truth be known—I’m upside down.” What seems like the first time in ages, the two young women laugh together.
Her usual chores—feeding, grooming, and exercising the children and generally walking about, inspecting perimeters—went without mishap, despite a feeling of unease that grew stronger by the hour.
In the evening, she refused the last feed. Not even the feral cat, which appeared unexpectedly on the farm and stalked Umm al-Khanaazeer’s favorite mouse holes, was allowed near her. Usually the two of them communed when she was lying on her side at night. The feline fell onto the pig’s enormous bulk and rolled gently against her in an exchange of mutual satisfaction.
Although she had been able to mask her anxiety from her children, it was harder to hide it from Ahmad, who had been observing her moving hay around her pen as though uncertain as to which pile would be more comfortable. With a warm bottle of formula milk, he moved from baby to baby. He knew her well. He was responsible for cleaning and disinfecting her. He assisted her during birth and made sure she took her vitamins and laxatives. Afterward he tried calling Hussein again. “She’s not at her best,” He had been trying to get through to him since the afternoon. “Maybe tomorrow’s better. I might stay on just to make sure.”
Human visitors to the farm no longer slept in the barn; there was a pullout cot in the processing block, so Ahmad contented himself by building a small fire outside, drawing a woolen blanket woven by his wife around himself, and periodically checking the barn. Once he saw that Umm al-Khanaazeer had finally settled, he pulled the barn doors shut and went to bed.
She was having another of those dreams; there was no mistaking her own rot and disgust. Before dawn she peered out through the bars of the pen, half expecting to find her old adversary, the crate, waiting. What was making her feel this way? Her anxiety and fear caught a whiff of him before she saw him. As the doors slid open, she crouched down, trying to hide. But when he walked dangerously near a pen of gilts, her heart rate tripled, her bristles s
tood on end. Squealing, screaming, and charging, she shook the bars of her enclosure. The god-awful racket brought Ahmad running from his chores.
“Strangers aren’t allowed in here.” Then he took another look. “Why it’s Hani, no? Abu Za’atar’s friend?”
The two men shook hands.
“That’s my girl,” said the torturer, pointing at the sow.
The pacing pig kept her poor eyesight on him. When Ahmad opened the hatch to the outdoors, she waited until every one of her babies, even the smallest runt, went into the yard. None of them was going with this killer. Thankfully Hani had business of his own. After the arrival of Hussein and Abu Za’atar, the three of them were absorbed with the equipment on his truck. To celebrate his long-standing friendship with the old man, Hani had brought new technology for the farm. Periodically during the installation and testing of the sausage-making Wurstmeister machine, Hani showed up at the fence, and Umm al-Khanaazeer was forced to round up her piglets and get them behind her. Not one was she giving up. After payments were made and he drove off down the mountain, she celebrated by strutting with the family in the yard. It would be a short-lived victory parade.
A mother knows her children by smell no matter their numbers. She was growing them around her and she loved each and every one of them. Some were more needy than others, and others raged out of control. The larger the boars grew, the more aggressive they became, before castration. These ill-tempered progeny could no longer be in the company of their brothers, and if they were housed with her or the girls, they became a terrible nuisance, with one thing—copulation—on their minds. So she and her daughters lived by themselves, sometimes with the smaller piglets, in the other pens, which kept multiplying. The barn had grown into a small city. Before the arrival of Hani and his machine, a few went missing, but usually this happened in the run-up to giving birth, when hormones forced her attention inward. Now there was no mistaking the empty pens in the barn where many of the older boars, her boys, had once been kept.