As the emptiness grew deeper, so would my own sense of inner void.
My head would spin as if enclosed within the eye of a needle. The
more events crushed me, the more submissive I'd become. Then my
submissiveness would lead on to contentment, and I'd pray to God to
send me more occa¬sions for it. The virtues of my husband
would become clearer to me, and I'd blame myself for not seeing
them earlier.
If he brought something new for the house, I'd thank God that he
wasn't mean with money; and if he no longer spent repeated evenings
out of the house, I'd thank God our life had become settled. If he
ordered me to perform some stupid service, I'd thank God he'd come
to depend on me in large or small matters. The days would pass and
I'd feel tranquil and secure; all memories of his faults would
fade, would become mere phan¬toms, to be driven firmly and
decisively from my mind. Then, when he returned to his old ways,
I'd be devastated, and blame myself for his way¬wardness. "If
you weren't barren, Afaf," I'd tell myself, "your house would be
full of sound and movement, and the children would draw him towards
you. If you weren't so listless, he wouldn't have tired of your
dull compa¬ny. If you weren't so plain-looking, he wouldn't
have desired other women." In a desperate attempt to repair what
life had destroyed, I'd begin to make the house and myself more
attractive. I'd turn the house upside down, wash the window panes
with soap until they gleamed like diamonds, and scrape the floor
till it was like a mirror; lay the coverlets and blankets and
pillows to air at the windows and on the balcony rails, and put his
suits in the sun till the vapor rose from them. I'd go to the
market too, and buy meat and vegetables, taking care to choose the
largest and freshest: cucumbers that had kept their freshness,
tomatoes that were still half green, potatoes lovely as a full
moon, and okras and green beans and cauliflowers and radishes. I'd
come back home proud of my vegetables and my fridge full of good
things, and thank God because I lived the best of lives.
Then I'd begin to make myself more attractive. I'd stand in front
of the mirror inspecting my clothes. Here was a dark-colored dress
which I should change for a lighter one, and there was a
light-colored one which I should change for a darker one; here was
a short dress whose hem I must let down, and there was a long dress
which I must change for a short one or shorten the dress itself.
I'd spend days lengthening and shortening, buy¬ing and
window-shopping. I'd make a full inventory of all the windows in
the shopping center and all the sales going on in town, spend all
the money I had. Then, when he'd stop drinking for a while, and the
bags had gone from under his eyes, I'd say with silly coquetry,
wearing my best dress, "Here, Mahmoud, give me some money, I'm
broke." I'd throw open the fridge and show him the good things
stacked up inside, then lay my new clothes down on the bed until
you couldn't see the bedspread under them anymore, and go joyfully
round them, hoping he'd be glad. He'd smile grudgingly and say, "Is
that the best you can do!" And I'd cry, "What's wrong with the way
we live? Thank your God, Mahmoud, and don't deny your blessings.
Your house is the cleanest and brightest in the neighbor¬hood,
your wife's cooking is the best, and you and I are the best of
people." He'd dip his hand in his pocket and hand over a stack of
dinars. "Take this," he'd mutter, "and be quiet." So I'd take it
and be quiet; and, day by day, I'd grow quieter still, till one day
I'd break down and cry, then grow calm, and go back to my old
listless ways. The fridge would become empty and the house would
gather dust everywhere. A windstorm would blow and the windowpanes
would become as dirty as sandpaper, and I'd sleep and sleep. I'd
beg God to grant me a new light to disperse my darkness even for a
few days, so I could gather the strength to continue my trip in the
wilderness. God would answer my prayer and things would improve. My
husband would smile and the sky would fill with a light that made
my spirit overflow, that I'd drink to the depths as avidly as
someone lost in the desert. This would provide me with the strength
to step further into the burning heat of the wilderness. Whenever I
fell back into listlessness, a spark would leap up again, giving me
new strength to take further steps, and so on, endlessly.
The more I walked on, the less possible it became to return to my
start¬ing point when I was still a young girl toying with
painting and reading pamphlets and defying the family. That was all
clouded now. Indeed it had vanished, lost in the labyrinth of a
shaken memory; it was no more than a remote dream, a mere illusion.
Whenever that dream drove me through its many coils, I'd rebuke
myself. "Be realistic, Afaf!" I'd say. "Be realistic!"
I often heard my father say that, may God rest his soul; and I'd
hear my mother say those words too, whenever I met her and
complained to her about my predicament. The same words would come
from the women as they gathered round their coffee and read
fortunes in the cups. The word "fate" was the refrain of a kind of
communal song repeated by the wom¬enfolk. One woman would
begin by unburdening her inner soul, revealing the ruin of her life
in an intimate gathering, unfolding the contents of her heart and
the scrapbook of her sorrows; and she'd cry, and draw on her
cigarette, and describe her husband in the ugliest terms, giving
him vicious nicknames and calling down curses and misfortunes on
him. Then, when she heard the horn of his car outside, she'd pull
herself together, wipe her face, smooth her hair and dress, look at
the lowered eyes with a kind of shared emotion, then whisper the
words of wisdom: "That's our fate!" The words would be repeated by
dry lips avidly smoking, and undulate like the echo of a common
"Amen."
At the beginning I never said II Amen." But the deeper I went into
the wilderness, into the desert of thirst and darkness, the dimmer
the starting point became till it was a mere dream, and the more I
began to believe I should school myself to the realism I was said
to lack. Realism meant accepting things as they were, adjusting to
them, going along with them to the point of dying to preserve them.
I'd remember the stories, some long, some short, that had fixed the
whole intricate picture in my mind; the sto¬ries of women whom
I'd heard, in those distant gatherings, call down curs¬es and
misfortunes - death and chronic deformities even - on their
hus¬bands. But if one of them became widowed or divorced, or
if her husband took another wife alongside her, she'd fill the
world with her crying and wailing. Once I phoned to congratulate a
woman on her divorce, and she cursed me and slammed the receiver
down. I stood stunned near the tele¬phone, unable to believe
what I'd heard, persuading myself, finally, that I'd dialled the
wrong number or misunderstood what she said. So I rang her again
and began the conversation more carefully. She sighed. "Oh, yes,
Afaf!" she burst out. "Your heart does you credit, and so do your
brains! Good riddance to him you say? Why good riddance, you fool?
He divorces me, and I'm supposed to rejoice? Who'll bring up the
children? Him or me? And won't I have to pursue him through the
courts, asking him for child support and begging him to leave me
this child or that for another year, or even a few more months? And
if I should forget about him, would the chil¬dren forget? And
if he takes them away from me and bums my heart with anguish, who
will I live for, and where? With my brothers, under the feet of
their wives?"
When I heard this, things became clear in my mind. "And you, Afaf,"
I said to myself, "Where would you live? Under the feet of your own
broth¬ers' wives?"
I had marvelous brothers, who knew how to usurp a woman's rights.
They're actually very respectable men, even though, when our father
died, they snatched his inheritance before he was cold in his
grave, leaving noth¬ing to us girls except the family name and
its good stock. I tried to spur my sisters to action. "What about
our share?" I asked them. They repeated, with one voice, "That's
our fate!" So there was more than one meaning and tune to the same
word! And more than one heavenly reward! Since that time I've
learned to repeat the words "our fate" with even greater
convic¬tion, and begun to realize their force with utter
clarity. And since that time my husband hasn't missed a single
opportunity to bring the matter up, to try and stop me taking pride
in my family and its great repute, and in the fact that my father
was an inspector of schools, more learned than anyone else round
about. At a time when fingerprints were people's signatures, my
father was writing reports and using the dictionary, looking for
the roots of verbs and the meaning of difficult words, My husband
used to feel inferior when my father was mentioned, especially when
his own was mentioned too, His father was almost illiterate, and
was married to two women and had a dozen children, mostly girls,
all of them married to men with no money or status - in contrast to
my sisters, who were all married to men with good jobs and high
social standing; one of them was a deputy minister, and another was
a bank manager, and a third was an ambas¬sador. As for my
brothers, one was a doctor, the second an engineer, and the third a
lawyer. I came, then, from a family of high standing and lineage,
and my husband used to regard this as the best quality. But when he
heard the story of the inheritance, he was furious and began
taunting me with my family, and I had nothing left to boast
of.
In a desperate attempt to regain my status with him, I hurried
home, crossing the deserts, and the bridge, and the river, and said
to my sisters, "Come on, let's go." "Where?" they asked. "Come with
me," I insisted, "and you'll see." They followed me out of
curiosity - or desperation per¬haps - and we sought the
counsel of the family elders, who advised us to close our eyes.
"Shame on you!" they said. "Each of your husbands is worth a ton of
gold!" "And what if we should get divorced?" I said,
con¬tinuing the argument. A single cry issued from all their
throats, including my sisters': "God preserve us from your evil
words, God preserve us from your evil words!" Everyone gazed into
my sisters' eyes, then my sisters gazed into one another's eyes,
then they all gazed at me. I was accused, among other things, of
being rebellious; that's the way I'd always be, they said, however
good my life was. And they agreed that I'd been like that since
childhood. I asked what they meant by this, but they didn't deign
to answer, and turned to my sisters, ignoring me completely. My
sisters were cleverer than me. They absorbed the general mood
around them and repeated again, "God preserve us from her evil
words!"
We left after I'd been given such a lesson in "fate" that I'd
learned it by heart. I began repeating the word in my memory lest I
forget it; I'd begin the day, every morning, with the word "fate"
and end it with the same, in a whisper at first, then in a loud
voice, until with time I became convinced of its wisdom. One day,
by chance, I happened upon a political article that greatly
impressed me, and, adopting some of its political jargon, said to
myself, "It's true, I'm one of the oppressors, not one of the
oppressed." My cause was finally lost.
One day I felt a sudden sense of awakening and repeated my protest
to one of my sisters. She said, "It would be shameful, Afaf, for us
to fight our brothers." The sons of our father deserve his money
more than sons-in-law who are perfect strangers. "And what about
us?" I screamed. "We're the wives of those strangers," she
answered. "And what if those strangers should divorce us?" I
retorted. "Afaf!" she shouted. "You're nearly thirty. Grow up! Be
realistic!" "Do you think it's so unlikely?" I shouted back. "What
guarantee do we have?"
"The only person who can guarantee it is you," she said. "Try and
understand. Men need patient handling. What can I tell you? Shall I
tell you about my husband's bad temper? About the constant burden
of living with him and his violent reactions to the smallest thing?
But it's all in the family and hushed up, thank God. Everyone knows
your husband spends long evenings out and goes in for certain
things, but mine? No one knows about my suffering. We don't let it
out!" I clutched her arm. "Tell me!" I begged. "Tell me!" She
stopped abruptly, suddenly realizing what she'd said. Then she shot
me a look full of suspicion, and I started laughing. I remembered
how my mother, sisters, brothers, and all the other members of the
family never trusted me with a secret; they used to warn one
anoth¬er, "Don't tell that chatterbox!" The warning was always
an encourage¬ment to my nose, ever eager for stories, to start
twitching, and I'd begin sniffing around and searching. I'd resort
to reading Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin learning enough to keep
looking till I found out. Then I'd stand on a chair or a bed or by
the window and shout, I've got it, I've got it, at last!" My mother
would shout, "God! Take her to You and release me!" "If you'd
trusted me," I'd retort, "I wouldn't have said anything. But I will
now, I'll let the whole world know!" But I never really revealed
things outside the family, because I was always ready to make a
deal. I'd agree to exchange one secret for another, and one story
for another. That's how I built up such a rich collection of tales
and anecdotes.
My sister gave me another suspicious look. I pointed to my nose.
"Shall I start sniffing?" I said. "Be quiet," she said in
desperation, "all that I need is you! Take it from me Afaf, some
husbands are sugar-coated, and some are open books, and others are
stealthy like a snake in the grass." "Amen!" I shouted, as if
totally amazed. "Oh, yes, Amen!" She sensed the sarcasm in my
answer and shouted back, "By God, if my husband was like yours, I'd
get every last thing I wanted! But you're an imbecile a million
times over!" I winked at her. "Do you mean blackmai1?" I said. As
she walked away, she shrugged and muttered, "Call it blackmail if
you like. What do you call the situation we're in?"
I rushed to her, laughing as I kissed her. I always laughed when I
saw how people's reactions revealed their inner secrets; I was
totally the¬ oppo¬site of how I'd been when I was still
very young and pure, and refused to compromise with any kind of
falsehood and insincerity. In those days, when I discovered a
situation like this, I'd go out of my mind and start screaming, and
my mother would shout, "God! Take her to You and release me!" But
now, as I saw my sister reveal those things we'd discov¬ered
on the path of life wherever we found a foothold for ourselves, I
couldn't stop myself laughing and laughing until my eyes and heart
were drowned in tears.
And so I came closer to being realistic. I no longer thought of
divorce as a solution to my problem; in fact divorce was a great
source of fear, equaled only by my fear of marriage. For what could
I do without the mar¬riage? Years of my life had passed
without my having any other profession except marriage, and even
this I hadn't mastered according to the rules: I wasn't a fruitful
wife who'd filled the house with children, and I wasn't the
obedient servant, and I wasn't particularly endowed with beauty, or
money, or coquetry. Besides, I wasn't in the least happy. I wasn't
happy in my wretchedness, or in my husband's humiliation of me, or
in his own self-¬reproach when he felt ashamed of himself and
wanted to change. I wasn't happy in my present state, or happy
contemplating the future. The present was a continuation of the
past and the future was a continuation of the pre¬sent. What
would I do, in any case if I got divorced? Where would I live and
how? Father was dead, and Mother was old now, living with my older
brother. My sister-in-law was hot-tempered and irritable as a
reaction to my own brother's temper and irritability. My other
brothers were no bet¬ter, and nor were their wives. Each one,
in fact, had his own responsibili¬ties and burdens, just as he
had his own "wise and correct" outlook on things I considered
pointless. They were so intent and fixed on these things that they
had no time to think about anything else. Whenever one of them saw
me reading a newspaper or a book, he'd smile and say, "There's our
philosopher again!" And I, for my part, would retort, "There's our
empty vessel again!" I'd say it silently, with the expression in my
eyes. But since the language of the eyes is well-known and easily
understood, they always knew exactly what I meant.
So I ended up being realistic and unrealistic at once. Realistic
because I knew divorce wouldn't bring any solution, and unrealistic
because the thought of it haunted me night and day, in my dreams
and in my prayers. Realistic because I kept my house spotless so as
not to give him the least excuse to take any final action against
me, and unrealistic because (for all his suspicions about me) I
remained faithful and solitary. But I wasn't real¬ly solitary.
I had my cat, Anbar, the sink, the dishes, the kitchen knife, and
the clothes lines.
Excerpts from Memoirs of an Unrealistic Woman (1986), translated
by Salwa Jabsheh and Christopher Tingley. From Modem Palestinian
Literature, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi.
Published by permission of the editor.