by Jo Glanville
I used to work all day, leaving you in the care of Umm Mahmud, the only kind soul in the neighbourhood, and come home to you in the evenings, with bread and cheese and olives in my arms and a hankering and longing in my heart. I would hurry to you, nothing inside me but the spectre of the disgusting Awad when he would sometimes waylay me in the gloomy winding alleys and I would shower him with curses and run off spurred by feelings of rage, fear and dread.
I worked hard and my wages increased from five, to eight, to ten. This made the girls resentful and their tongues wagged behind my back and I thought I heard them say, ‘We expected this the moment she got here. She has a pretty, fair face and green eyes. Can’t you see how he devours her with his eyes?’ I felt stung by their attack; I did not know if ‘the boss’, as we called him, did indeed devour me with his eyes, like they said. He was kind to me and I put his kind treatment down to a certain care and sympathy. As for the extra, I earned it. Then one day he came inspecting the work and doing his rounds between the rows of workers, and when he reached me he patted my shoulder and said, ‘Would you stay a while after the other workers leave … I want to have a word with you.’
I spent the rest of the day wondering what he could want from me. A shiver that stripped the calmness from my heart overcame me. Once it was time to leave I tried to sneak out with the other girls, but I saw the boss at the door signalling to me to wait, so I held back. When the place was empty he pulled me by the hand into his office, opened a drawer from which he took a bottle of perfume and a bangle made of coloured beads, and said, ‘These are for you … I’m pleased with your work… Take them!’
I did not reach out my hand, so he pulled me towards him, but I slipped away like a small cat, then made it through the open door to the alley, in my heart an oppressive fear of some mysterious and invisible thing. As I turned the corner of the alley I saw Awad, studying me with his disgusting face and a yellow grin. Maybe he had been waiting there for me, and when he had waited too long he asked the other workers about me, because the instant he saw me he said, ‘Wonder why, out of all the girls, the boss made you stay? Did …? I thought so, you …!’ And he fired a dirty word that shook my small being. I ran to you terrified, crying. You looked at me with puzzled eyes, then burst into tears with me. We slept together, side by side; I pulled your little body into mine as if to protect myself with you from the boss. From Awad. From people. From the feelings raging through my heart.
I did not go to work the next day. I wanted to feel safe by staying beside you. But – at the insistence of Umm Mahmud, who kept asking why I wouldn’t go – I was forced to return. So I did, and the boss noticed me coming in and he smiled like a fox and nodded his head meaningfully.
That evening he ‘had another word with me’ and, in the evenings that followed, more ‘words’. I heard from him promises of gowns, perfumes, sweet things to eat, of all that was in his power to spin the head of a deprived girl. But I shrank back from staying with him, and my young heart beat uneasily. His promises did not reassure me one bit. I hated him even more when he leaned his greedy lips to my cheeks and began to kiss me, unaffected by the slaps on his rough face, so that when he let go of me I took to my heels, determined never to return. I stayed away for days, then bowed my head and went back. Because we had gone hungry. I had tried to find other work, so I took up service for a family, but then left it – after the cruel lady of the house struck me hard for breaking two cups – without me even demanding my week’s wages! So I had to return … to the looms!
The game of cat and mouse dragged out between the boss and me, my nerves weakened and the long chase ran them down. One day the prey stumbled. The vile man kicked her onto the street, stripped of dignity, cheated out of pride, scared, bewildered, tearful, crushed. Malice plagued her, contempt hounded her everywhere.
This time I could not go back to the house, or to the neighbourhood: Awad’s rumours and his baseness had arrived there first. He peddled the rumours here and there. And lips opened not to excuse or defend, or to ask for God’s protection, but to curse and shred.
I wandered about aimlessly for days … and day by day the belief in the justness of life died inside me. I ended up in a pitch-black hell that swallowed a victim every day yet always hungrily demanded more.
There I learned to reduce my humanity in the crucible of spite. There I learned to hate, to avenge, to do many more things … And I learned the trade!
Sometimes I would wake up from the throes of this great spite and remember you, and my heart would soften and I’d cry. I would send someone to bring me your news and so learned that you had ended up in an orphanage after Umm Mahmud had pleaded and pressured the neighbourhood’s elder to do something for this stray soul, who was you. Once, my longing tormented me, I made up my mind to see you and I picked up some presents, but when I reached the place I stood bewildered at the locked gate. I didn’t know how to go in, or what to say, or who to ask for. I tossed the parcel I was carrying through the window and turned back, caring about nothing at all.
Afterwards there were no reasons to connect our two worlds. I think you asked about me once or twice; you missed me a little or maybe a lot. But when the longing couldn’t nourish you any more, the memory of me slept inside you, then my face faded out of your heart as the days passed. I forgive you; you were young.
As for me, the young-old one, I did not forget you. I kept asking about you because my love for you was the only link between me and the world of emotions. Apart from that, storms of hatred consumed my heart.
Once again I say I pity you, now that you’re a man, for selling your life so cheaply. Once again I say, pray guard against the friendship of a low-life like Awad, whom I hated in the innocence of my childhood and whom I rose above on broken wings.
Enraged, I scorned him when he knocked on my door once, like the others. I slammed the door in his face and sent him away under a hail of insults.
As for this clumsy gun, take it and sell it, my little one … and buy yourself a shirt that covers your naked shoulders instead of this torn one that you haven’t taken off your back for the two weeks you devoted to watching our alley, ever since the thought of revenge drew you … to your sister!
Translated by Rima Hassouneh
NIBAL THAWABTEH
My Shoe Size and Other People’s Views on the Matter!
I’m free. I feel I’m saved at last. I throw my drained body into the safe little spot I’ve escaped to from the world of endless continents and lodge myself there securely. It is the realm of ‘my size’, though it barely contains me. I open my eyes as never before and shake my head from side to side with wild abandon. The stories and fingerprints of yesterday fall away with my curls.
As silent as love, granules of sweat roll down my face, like kind fairies bringing relief for a moment in childbirth.
I hold my head high, like a flag that has long hung half-mast but is hoisted up and flown with pride and victory by its children. With both my hands I smooth out the map of my life and call in a weary voice that barely reaches my ears:‘I’m free.’
I look down at my feet like an old invalid stunned by the sudden ability to walk. I rejoice like a child receiving a doll on a feast day and say to myself, ‘I’m reborn.’
I feel as fresh as peppermint, as though I was born today. My memory is as pure and clear as a pool of water untouched by the blowing breeze. I stand before the world in dumb bewilderment, as though I’ve stumbled upon a whole new existence.
The day before me is a blend of Eve’s life in the Stone Age and her life in this age of nothingness.
I run my hand along the contours of my body from the northern-most point to the southernmost tip and shout in that same voice you cannot hear, for I can barely hear it myself: ‘I can fly.’
The horse of my childhood dream, I see myself riding it now. True to the dream, we gallop on and on over level ground until we reach our destination. I hear nothing but the sound of hooves. I see nothing but the never-ending
horizon dyed the yellow of sunflowers and the red of my lips. I feel nothing but a quivering desire to embrace life.
I know for sure that I can fly and won’t be brought down.
I’m liberated and won’t be shackled.
I’m reborn and won’t die again.
I have awoken and won’t slumber any more.
The awakening may have come late but what matters is that it has come at all. I thank the circumstances that drew me to him and him to me, in the same unexplained way we come into the world and the world comes to us. This afternoon I walked vainly down Jerusalem’s Madbaseh Street and entered his store. The world was ablaze with people and sweat poured forth from every direction. ‘What size?’ asked the young man, his mind on one customer, his eyes on another, his hands serving a third.
I quietly lowered myself onto a chair, then leapt up as its scorching leather seat stung me. There in the large mirror in front of me my action was reflected life-size. Struggling to overcome my confusion, I somehow managed to keep up my princess-like manners, ‘38, please.’ The young man, an expert in women’s fittings and shoe sizes, turned round and concentrated his full attention on me, ‘Really?’
His disdain brought the vile invisible walls that had encircled me for so long tumbling down. I could hear them collapsing. I watched him size me up and suddenly no longer knew myself. ‘What size am I really?’ I asked myself.
The man moved off, passing me, my distraction and my shock. He disappeared, then returned with the shoes in the style and size I had requested.
I took the shoes and undid the laces. Memories brought back the past. I recalled how each time I bought shoes in size 38 I would walk around in pain for a time, then eventually throw them in the cupboard stuffed with shoes of all styles and colours, all of which were 38s.
My feet are size 39 I told myself. Not 38. So why had I insisted on buying size 38 all this time? The answer lay folded carefully in a corner of Amal, Sana’, Samiyya and Ayda’s special girls’ meeting. We would all brag our feet were the smallest, the presumption of course being that there was a direct connection between shoe size and a girl’s grace and femininity.
I’d boast outrageously I was a 38, then fall quiet for a while, and occasionally admit warily that I was really a 39.
According to this theory, Samiyya was the most feminine and elegant of us all as she wore size 36, the size always on display in shop windows.
We would undress in front of shop windows to discover the truth. I stood for a long time in front of the windows of Benetton in Washington, lost in thought. How much ‘truth’ was really imparted there? If my colouring was black would the mirror receive me kindly? Or do we only stand in front of mirrors that flatter us?
Once, in a childish moment, exhausted by shoe sizes and walking barefoot in the desert of my life, I complained to my mother about the size of my feet. She gave me an adequate answer, but I was not satisfied. ‘It’s all proportionate. Samiyya is only 155 metres tall so she is petite and has small feet. You’re 170 so you have a bigger build and bigger feet.’
I dismissed my mother’s justifications, unconvinced and without giving her analysis much thought. I stuck with my own categorisation. ‘I’m a size 38,’ I thus convinced myself. It is incredible what we can make ourselves believe when we want to, in a sense selecting what we expose ourselves to, what we comprehend and remember. How we embrace some things and close our eyes to others and explain our visions from our own perspective! How we forget what we should really remember!
In some ways, my relationship with this theory resembles my relationship with my mother.
Today, with my simple discovery, having shed all former experience and sat as a spectator watching the film of my memories, I realise I have been doing this all my life because I wanted to get as close as I could to the standard people set for the feminine ideal. Whenever I went to buy shoes I would ask for 38s, then suffer from the new shoes for at least a month until they ‘softened or stretched’. Either this, or I threw them onto my pile of 38 size shoes because they were one size too small, but one step closer to the feminine ideal.
The disapproval of the man in the shoe shop shook me, my innermost being and all the hang-ups about my feet I’ve accumulated over the years, my convictions about shoe size, as it were.
The situation stunned me. A lifetime of immense suffering and trivial self-consciousness about my feet …
Why? How did this happen to me? Are there other measurements I should or should not wear?
Should I expect another shock to shake me into discovering that some other part of my unconscious is leading me unawares?
And you, do you wear the right size?
And this young man, who entered my life for a fleeting moment like a billboard that flips every minute as I pass in the car, why did he appear today?
Why hasn’t he ever asked, ‘38, really?’ before?
Why didn’t anyone else who saw me limping in tiny shoes intervene? Why didn’t anyone simply say, ‘Take off your shoes and you’ll feel a lot better! Take them off and walk barefoot.’
And me, how was I able to purchase hundreds of pairs of ill-fitting shoes simply because they were nearer to the feminine ideal? Perish my idiot shoes and perish the standards set for beauty and femininity!
All my life I have suffocated my toes in shoes that are not suitable because the size is wrong. Do you think I can make it up to my feet by walking barefoot for the rest of my life and never yielding to shoe sizes, styles and colours again?
I pause with deference and humility and offer my deepest apologies to my toes and the balls of my feet, which have often swollen from the pressure. I leave the shop wearing a new pair of size 39 shoes, with my old tiny ones under my arm. I decide to hang them in a prominent place in my house. Perhaps I will think up a creative way of displaying them that will not enhance their beauty or bring them any admiration.
I’ll put them somewhere I can see them so that I will never forget that lifetime of discomfort, swollen soles and squashed toes borne out of my insistence on a size that was too small but that would provide the opportunity for people to regard me as ‘feminine’.
Translated by Christina Phillips
Biographical Notes
DONIA ELAMAL ISMAEEL was born in Gaza in 1971. She is an author, journalist and poet. She was editor-in-chief of the newspaper al-Hakeeka and has contributed to many publications. Her poetry has appeared in three collections and her book, Raato fi Ghaza, was published in 1995. Dates and Bitter Coffee first appeared in Arabic in the journal Masharef.
LAILA AL-ATRASH lives in Jordan. Her novels include Sunrise from the West (1988), A Woman of Five Seasons (1990; Interlink Books, New York 2002) and Illusive Anchors (2005). She has also published a short story collection, A Day Like Any Other (1991), and has had a distinguished career as a journalist and television broadcaster.
S. V. ATALLA (translator) studied comparative literature at UCLA, and currently writes, translates and teaches in southern California. Her poetry and translations have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including A Crack in the Wall: New Arab Poetry, and The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology.
SAMIRA AZZAM (1928–67) was born in Jaffa. After 1948 she lived with her family in the West Bank and then later made Beirut her home, where she was editor-in-chief at the publisher Franklin House. She published a number of short story collections including Time and Humanity and The Feast from the Western Window. ‘Her Tale’ first appeared in Little Things (Dar al-Awda, 1982, 2nd edn).
LIANA BADR was born in Jerusalem and now lives in Ramallah. She is a writer and award-winning filmmaker. Her work includes the novels A Compass for the Sunflower (1979) and The Eye of the Mirror (1991) and short story collections I Want the Day (1985) and A Golden Hell (1991). She has also published a number of children’s books and a collection of poetry. Her work has been translated into English, French and Dutch. She was General Director of Arts at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture 1
995–2003 and editor-in-chief of Dafater Thakafiyah, a cultural monthly review.
CATHERINE COBHAM (translator) teaches Arabic language and modern and contemporary Arabic fiction at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and has translated the works of a number of Arab writers including Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Fu’ad al-Takarli and Hanan al-Shaykh.
SELMA DABBAGH is a British Palestinian writer currently based in Bahrain. She has been selected twice as a Finalist for the Fish International Short Story Prize (2004 and 2005) and was chosen as English PEN’s nominee for the David TK Wong Short Story Prize 2005 with her story Down the Market. Fish, the Irish publishing house, have also nominated her story, Beirut-Paris-Beirut, for the most prestigious of American short story awards, the Pushcart. Her work is scheduled for publication in several anthologies in 2006. She is working on her first novel.
HUZAMA HABAYEB was born in Kuwait. She moved to Jordan as a result of the first Gulf War and is now working as a journalist in Abu Dhabi at Emirates Media. She has a BA in English literature and has published four collections of short stories. She won the short story prize at Al Quds Festival for Creativity in 1993 and The Mahmoud Seif El Din Al Irani prize in 1994.
NATHALIE HANDAL is a poet, writer and playwright. Her plays have been produced worldwide, and her short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies, magazines and literary reviews. Handal’s recent books include Spell (poetry CD, with music by Egyptian musician Will Soliman), and The Lives of Rain, which was shortlisted for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize/The Pitt Poetry Series. She is Books Review Editor for Sable (UK), a member of Nibras Theatre Collective and Associate Artist and Development Executive for the production company, the Kazbah Project (currently working on the feature film Gibran). She is the recipient of the Menada Award, an international literary prize awarded to her in Macedonia.