by Malu Halasa
Within months, marriage plans were finalized, and gradually the hazy shape of her first love was absorbed into Hussein’s. As a newlywed, she might have pined for her husband even when he was in the same room, but that was long ago. The both of them have been at odds with each other since the birth of Fuad. But the argument—like their passion—has been neglected. She thinks about those few minutes together on the farm. It was supposed to be a fresh start. The new house, which she feels is entirely her own, has in many ways blotted out the deprivation and shame of her upbringing. Now that it is threatened, the past floods back. Frustrated, she pulls off the earrings so violently that one of the gold posts scratches her earlobe. Out of disgust, mainly with herself, she buries them in the jewelry box and dresses.
Under the festive twinkling lights around a tall metal gate, the father of the bride greets an elderly patrician of the town: “You are welcome, a thousand times.”
The old man in an oversize suit does not release his hold of Matroub’s arm, while emphasizing, “No, the pleasure is mine.”
The host graciously answers him again. “Our house is blessed on your arrival.”
The old man bows and refuses to let him have the last word. “I am the one who is blessed.”
After a traumatic day, Laila finds herself unaccountably charmed by the exchange of traditional greetings. She surprises herself by joking to Mother Fadhma, “If these two don’t hurry up, Anna will be married and bearing children by the time we get in there.” Maybe it is the fairy lights, or the anticipation of seeing her friend, but Laila feels she is recovering.
With a wave of his hand, Matroub calls the Sabases forward. “Welcome, ladies and young gentlemen. Please, make yourselves comfortable in our home. Laila”—he presses her hand into his—“Warda has been asking after you all day. She’s waiting upstairs.” He returns to the old man.
A large tent, decorated with more lights and flags, has been set up in the garden. With the money from the Gulf, Matroub opened a successful electrical business in the capital and built a spectacular family home. Since they are from one of the town’s oldest Muslim families when the town was mainly Christian, everyone of standing has been invited to the wedding. The lavish celebration is not only for his eldest, Anna, the first of his three daughters to marry. It is an opportunity to impress on prospective suitors for the others the family’s status and generosity. From inside the tent, which opens on one side, chairs exclusively occupied by the male guests spill out onto the patio and garden. A bartender in a white waistcoat is serving whisky and short glasses of milky arak. For those who don’t partake, there are fresh juices. As a group of musicians tune their instruments, Salem and Mansoor run off to play hide-and-seek in the crush.
Fuad, desperate to join his brothers, cries as Samira carries him upstairs. In an upper hallway where the sharia coats and outer coverings have been hung, Laila retrieves her son and plants loud kisses on his flushed cheeks. “Now you’ll have fun with Mamma,” she promises.
The interior of the house is decorated in a way that, though tastefully restrained, leaves no doubt as to the wealth of its inhabitants. Enormous brass trays decorate the walls, and elaborate arghilehs and antique urns stand in corners. Because it is summer, the Oriental carpets and runners have been put away and the tile floors gleam. The Sabas women pass through a series of rooms, each more comfortable than the last, until they reach the party in an amply proportioned reception room. The bride’s female relations squeeze through the crowd, distributing trays of juice, mint tea, and bowls of assorted snacks.
All the chairs have been pushed back against the walls except for one on a wooden dais in the center of the room. In a bridal gown, Anna waits with a sheer red scarf obscuring her face. Almost immediately a tall, gracious woman grabs Laila.
“Where were you this afternoon? I missed you. Mrs. Salwa said you were on your way.” Warda Matroub screws up her face. “You should have been with us!” She folds Laila and Fuad in her arms.
Laila can instantly tell that the festivities have been a lot for a friend who could have used her help. Warda didn’t invite her to the women’s gathering because she assumed Laila would know to come. If the two of them were alone by themselves, Laila would have described her day. Instead she smiles.
Her friend is discretion personified. “If you saw the Syrian lingerie gift sets my cousins brought Anna! I nearly died—thongs with cell phones that light up and blink, a bra and pantie set, when you”—Warda claps once, loudly—“it falls right off! Can you believe it? Afterward Anna asked me, ‘Am I really expected to wear these things and dance for my husband?’ She looked as though she was about to cry.” The bride’s mother laughs. “Why pretend? I told Anna she would have to do that and much more. I think she was ready to tell her baba to call the whole thing off. And who could blame her?”
Laila gratefully appraises her friend. Being in her company is always a pleasure. There will be plenty of time for crying, but tonight she and Warda are going to laugh at life’s ridiculousness. Every woman there knows all too well what is good deteriorates and the bad at least has a slight chance of getting better. Women need to dance—not for their husbands but for themselves, to face down adversity.
Four female musicians equipped with an oud, a ney, and two hand drums—a counterpoint to the male troupe downstairs—warm up in a corner. Warda raises her voice to make herself heard: “Why weren’t you there? Anna needed pragmatic advice, not nonsense about cucumbers and carrots! It was enough to scare me and I’ve been married for a long time.”
Laila allows Fuad to clamber onto his grandmother’s lap. Although she is smiling, her eyes are sad. “I would have been…” She is about to make some excuse, then changes tack. “Anna looks radiant,” she exclaims.
The bride, sitting erect, appears lifeless, like a painted doll.
Warda raises her hand to her brow. “How neglectful of me.” She moves a side table with bowls of olives and nuts nearer. “Please, help yourself,” she invites Mother Fadhma. “Laila and I have known each other for so long. Still, that’s no excuse for me to forget my manners.” She passes around a bowl, then returns to Laila. “We are fortunate. Everything is going well. Asaf will make a fine husband for Anna. As you know we chose him carefully. There were other candidates but his family is respectable. The two of them may not yet love each other madly, but they might.”
Warda bursts out laughing. “You know what Matroub told me? He said that his most difficult business deal was easy compared with the negotiations with Asaf’s family. Remember the saying ‘Daughters, easy to have, hard to give away’?”
Laila won’t hear of it. “Nonsense. An attractive, intelligent girl like Anna? Asaf is the one who should be pleased. Warda, you and your daughters are like pearls.”
“If only mothers believed that,” whispers Warda. “All of us are extremely pleased and relieved.” She beams at Mrs. Habash waving from across the room. Patting Laila’s knee as a signal for her to stay put, Warda goes to the mayor’s wife. Laila can feel Mrs. Habash’s eyes on her, but she is soon forgotten in the swell of guests: Laila’s colleagues from school, Hussein’s customers, and neighbors all shaking hands and saying hello. While some are the very ladies whom Laila and Warda would avoid socializing with, the exchanges are friendly and well intentioned. The wedding feast, like a funeral, is an opportunity to make amends. In such beautiful surroundings everyone pretends she can’t remember whether there were any disagreements at all.
On returning to Laila, Warda collapses into a seat and fans herself with her hands. “Let me tell you, no more next times. I’ve told the rest of my girls to forget these big parties, do us all a favor—elope!” When she realizes Samira has also been listening to her, she apologizes: “Don’t pay the least bit of attention to anything I say or do tonight, dear.” She stands again. “I must check on the food. By the way, Laila, I wanted to thank Hussein, the meat is excellent. Is he downstairs with the men?”
The words catch in Laila’s
throat as Mother Fadhma replies for her. “We expect him later.”
Laila takes the moment and tries to compose herself. A steely exterior, second nature to her in most company, is useless in Warda’s; with her dear friend Laila is only herself. Smiling weakly, she rises from her seat as Warda tells Fadhma, “I’m going to steal her for a while.”
The two women vanish into the crowd.
24
Samira has never attended such a grand wedding feast. Separate musicians for men and women are a great extravagance. As a stocky tabla player prepares the female troupe of musicians with an imperious wave of her hand, snatches of conversation drift toward Samira.
“They are remembering their own weddings,” Mother Fadhma whispers to her daughter, “or yearning for one like this for someone in their family.”
Samira detects a hint of regret in her mother’s voice. At one time she too would have been envious of Anna Matroub’s good fortune. Her marriage to a boy from a respected family is an aspiration shared by many of the town’s young women. Samira watches Anna’s friend offer the bride a glass of tea and help with the red veil. Anna is in many ways the perfect daughter. Well-liked, always well presented, she never once frequented Lovers’ Lane. The lavish feast will be the biggest event of her life. Except for giving her husband plenty of sons, nothing will provide her greater satisfaction. She is a credit to her parents and a role model to her peers. Anna is all these things and one more, Samira thinks: dull.
Young women like her follow a safe path. It never occurs to them that the ground beneath their privileged feet might give away. Samira doesn’t allow herself to believe in the certainties they take for granted. “Oh, Mamma, you know I will die a spinster,” she jokes, and touches Fadhma’s elbow playfully.
The old woman assesses her daughter. “I thought as much.” She kisses her tenderly on the cheek. “And what’s the harm in that? As long as you love and are loved.”
Samira wants to ask her mother her meaning, but the musicians have started playing and she helps Fadhma and Fuad move closer. Afterward Samira takes a place among her friends on the floor cushions.
“What happened to you in the music shop?” Yvette’s voice is drowned out by the older women clapping and singing all around them.
“Your anklet, O beautiful one, resounds and gives voice.”
The women of marriageable age, including Samira and the twins, respond loudly: “Your skirt, the color of peppers, has in it the hue of life and death.”
Shrieking ululation pierces the air. The time for advice has passed. The women have gathered to show solidarity with the new bride and give her courage. The wedding bed, only a few hours away, could contain a lifetime of woe if blood isn’t found on white sheets in the morning.
Samira has attended enough meetings and study sessions under Zeinab’s tutelage to feel nothing but disdain for weddings. They have thoroughly discussed the shackles of marriage. A woman’s chance for happiness is determined by how vigorously she suppresses her opinions. Samira understands the theory, has even experienced this in her relationship with Walid, yet despite the consciousness raising, something in her still responds to the dream of the bride. She wants to blame the excitement or the music, but she’s wrong. She cannot completely distance herself emotionally. On this occasion the women have segregated themselves by their own volition, to celebrate their experiences beyond men’s reach and empower one of their own.
The tabla player carries her drum into the center of the room. From the back, a voice suddenly calls out: “Mother Fadhma!”
Surprised, Samira’s mother freezes in her seat until many other women take up the call. Samira helps her mother stand up. Only the truly honored are asked to lead the dance. A belt of metal coins is loosely tied around her ample hips as she faces the roomful of women, some at the beginning of their adult lives, others like herself closer to the end, and, at the heart, innocent Anna, on the threshold of womanhood.
Samira can see that her mother is losing her nerve, but the tabla player’s beat is infectious and Fadhma begins moving in spite of herself. After an awkward beginning she is instantly transformed. It is scarcely credible that someone her age dances so gracefully. She glides in short steps, spinning in small slow circles. Her hands perform the ritual gestures, evoking the moon and its little sister, Sirius, the Dog Star, the celestial guardians of women since the dawn of time. She stamps the floor, drawing fertility from the fields. As the tempo of the music increases, some of the women can no longer resist and they propel themselves into the center of the room, elegantly waving hands held high. The drums grow louder and they move with wild abandon around the throne of the bride.
The constraints of good manners and stiff bridal taffeta keep the veiled figure on the dais from responding to the music. Every once in a while she trembles. The dance awakes in her forces that have lain dormant. All that she wants whirls like a promise around her; in an instant, the past, the present, and the future collide.
The song, reaching its peak, unfurls like a banner drifting back to earth. Some women fall, as though entranced, back into the arms of chairs or onto floor cushions; the rest stand, sweating and disorientated. Water is passed around and for several minutes nobody speaks. The only sound that can be heard is the slow, monotonous beating of a single drum.
During the dance Samira lost track of her family and the twins. Looking to cool off, she lets herself out through a closed door and walks along an empty corridor and, on impulse, up a flight of stairs. At the top in a window alcove overlooking the garden sits Dania, from Lovers’ Lane. Instead of being with the women she has been watching the men. She makes room for Samira. “Look” is all she says.
Below, the men too are dancing. A fellow at the front entices the groom with a fluttering white handkerchief. His other hand, outstretched, keeps time to the music. The men sway in a line behind him, their arms interlocked. As the beat rises, they leap forward and backward, stamping hard and loud, over and over again, their strong, agile bodies in a display of male prowess.
“He’s so handsome,” Dania whispers.
Samira picks him out. A few feet away watching and enjoying the dance is another man Samira vaguely knows. She nearly overlooked him in the crowd, but for some reason she keeps coming back until the reason becomes clear. Mr. Ammar, the front’s political officer who knew about Hussein, is with another activist she might have met at their office. Apparently the two slipped into the house once Matroub finished his formal greetings of guests by the gate. Instinctively Samira reaches for the letter and relives the upset she experienced with the courier in the garden. She’s not a fan of Mr. Ammar’s either; she tried telling Zeinab, but none of this matters now. Samira makes her excuses to Dania and goes downstairs. On the way, she runs into Laila, who tells her to come and help with the food.
The kitchen is a swarm of activity. At the center, Matroub gingerly places the tastiest pieces of lamb, which have simmered all day in a sauce of dried mansaf yogurt, onto trays piled high with rice and roasted pine nuts. One is handed to Samira, and she carries it to the long tables in the garden beside the tent. Here the men stand and eat communally. The musicians, by now a little tipsy, are playing a jolly folk tune.
After setting down the tray Samira looks for Mr. Ammar but doesn’t find him or the other man. On her way to the house she runs into Yvette, also conscripted into kitchen duty. The twin, attempting to balance one too many dishes on top of one another, is in danger of dropping the lot. Her face is flushed around the edges.
“At the arak again?” Samira helps her friend and takes a few dishes to a table. She is rewarded for her efforts. Standing near the tent is Mr. Ammar, who nods imperceptibly. He knows that she knows. There are too many people around to make the delivery. Samira follows Yvette inside. She will meet Mr. Ammar secretly soon enough.
The friends carry their plates of rice and lamb upstairs and join the others who have started eating. Mother Fadhma attempts to coax Fuad with a tasty tidbit; the exc
ited toddler pushes her hand away.
Samira picks at her food. It’s one thing for her to decide, but quite another to involve her family. She knows Hussein, Laila, and her nephews will be all right in the end; it is her mother who will suffer. As Fadhma’s youngest unmarried daughter, Samira is expected to care for her aging mother. She never considered herself ambitious; any plans she has remain unformed. However, since joining the women’s committee, she wants her life to have meaning. In her mind Zeinab, Syria, and Palestine have become intertwined, and she feels she must steel her resolve for what comes next—be it tonight, tomorrow, or in a year from now—even if it means one day leaving home. She is so lost in her thoughts that she doesn’t hear Warda above the hubbub calling the women downstairs.
In no time long-sleeved coats and robes cover glittering party dresses. Some of the women Samira saw dancing put on their niqabs. She follows them. Near the dining room, her uncle lies in wait.