by Danny Bar
Yasmina sat crouched in the corner, weeping and placing her head on her knees. She still did not know just how much the bitter news would change her life forever.
5
Yasmina was twenty when her sister had introduced her to Issam, five years her senior. When he asked for her hand in marriage, she wasn’t in a hurry to accept his proposal.
“Your daughter has grown and is of age,” Yasmina’s mother told her husband with concern.
“Do not rush her, woman,” her husband scolded her, “her time will come.”
“She is a rebel,” his wife complained, “her eyes may be as black as a doe’s, yet she is like a wild goat hopping up and down dangerous paths.”
He laughed joyously.
“What are you laughing at? It comes from you,” she accused him.
He sighed, knowing she was right, “Had she been born a man, she would not have to suffer so much in the future,” he prophesied.
Yasmina was the youngest and closest to her father’s heart. Despite the frequent implorations of the guests brave enough to come to his house and ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage, he did not accede to their pressure. He had not acted the same with her sisters, knowing they were ignorant, would remain in the village their whole lives, and only wished to marry and bring children into the world.
“Let us call Yasmina and let her answer your proposal herself, as the holy sharia religious law has instructed us to do,” he used to tell her suitors, who were all turned down by the girl.
“I am a living example of a man whose family had forced its will on him and made him pay a heavy price for it,” he repeatedly told his daughters, “there are matters that are known only to Allah and are not for us, human beings, to decide. Each person has his ‘’naseeb, destiny, and that which Allah has decreed shall come to pass. A person’s ‘’naseeb must not be forced before its time.”
When Yasmina matured into a young woman, she asked to go outside the village and study at Halhul, and her father agreed.
“Asta’aghfirullah,” God forbid, the villagers used to whisper behind his back and shake their heads. They had never accepted his unusual ways.
He wasn’t bothered by it at all, “They have their ways while I have mine,” he told Yasmina, when she sat with him inside the vine shed of their garden, something her sisters had never dared to do. They saw their father as a distant man, always busy with his own affairs and still trapped the past and the memories of an old love. Only Yasmina, with her cleverness and questions she had asked him in his lap as a child, had found a way into his heart. Her questions indicated her sharp perception and intelligence.
“She is not fallāha, a peasant, even if she was born as one,” her father used to say, torn between his wish to set her free and his concern for her, but he was different, most of the fathers in the village barely took notice of their daughters, at best they saw in them the potential for the fat dowry they would get upon their marriage. More than once, Yasmina had heard them counting only their sons when asked about the number of their children.
“Women who break the fence come to a bitter end,” her father was warned by his few friends in the local cafe’. He did not heed the warnings, but his heart grew heavy. He knew of many young women who strayed from the beaten path and ended their lives in a deep water well. Furthermore, he knew exactly who it was who had done it. After all, it the father’s’ duty to uphold the Sharaf, the sacred value of the “family honor,” that he personally despised so due to its misuse in his conservative society.
“Yasmina is ahead of her time,” he sighed sadly. Deep in his heart he knew she would pay a heavy price for the modern ways she had chosen. Tears filled his eyes and he wiped them embarrassingly.
As for Yasmina, she was in a world of her own, busy with meticulously studying the shape of a fig tree, or sitting alone on the porch, swept away by her own imagination, drifting apart from the company of her sisters and resenting their constant giggling and narrow world view.
They, on their end, regarded her behavior as condescending.
“We all eat from the same bowl of ful, cooked beans,” they reminded her. But beyond that, they feared that she would tarnish the family name and urged her to get married. “A girl is like a fruit, let it stay on the branch for too long and it will rot. All your friends are already bearing a second child in their wombs, while you, your body is here, but your head is in Bab al Halil, floating in other worlds,” they grumbled.
Yasmina laughed, she knew they were right.
“What would people say?” they grumbled, “their thoughts are unclean. This one throws one remark and that one throws another. You will come to a bitter end, just like Amina. All the people in the village used to turn their heads and spit each time she passed them by.”
Your words ring true, my sisters, Yasmina thought, I am neither here nor there, living in my own house with my head in other realms. I belong and I don’t belong, my feet are planted here in our native land and its surrounding views, yet my head carries me to other, more distant places. This place is too narrow to contain the storm in my heart--
“What about Issam?” her sister interrupted her train of thought.
“What about him?” she was startled.
“He loves you.”
Yasmina burst out laughing, “The love of a man is like water in a sieve, it never lasts for too long.”
Many months had passed, and a lot of efforts have been made by her mother before she reluctantly agreed to meet Issam in the company of his parents.
Yet her own family feared she would change her mind at the last moment and pleaded with her not to shame them and hinder their own chances of finding a groom, “For who would marry his sons to the daughters of a disrespectful family lacking any manners?” they angrily asked her.
As for her father, once again, he sat aside, indifferently counting his misbaha prayer beads in his hand and smiling.
“Leave her alone, you ignorant peasants. Even if you join all your intelligences together, they would be no match for hers. You think you are clever enough to teach her what people are all about?”
“Ma’lesh, ya baba,” that’s OK, dad, she said fondly, “I’ll do it,” Yasmina told him and snuggled in his lap. His hand stroked her head softly and he appeared to be relieved.
Her mother was beaming with happiness and immediately began with the preparations. First, she bought a young lamb from the sheep merchant and labored over its cooking for many hours. Her neighbors all volunteered to help. It seemed that they had all joined forces to find a suitable solution for “the problem,” as Yasmina was unsubtly referred to.
The longed for day finally arrived. Yasmina went to wash her body in the water of the stream close to her house and wore a blue dress she had bought in Hebron especially for the occasion. Then she indifferently sat in the swing hanging from a branch of the mulberry tree in their garden, as if the whole affair did not concern her.
In the afternoon, Issam arrived with his parents. Yasmina looked at him openly and did not drop her eyes from him. He smiled at her shyly and she winked at him mischievously. It was only after she had told her father she liked him that the latter gave his consent to their marriage.
The marriage was held in the garden belonging to Issam’s father and all the dignitaries of Mount Hebron were invited. The women of the family rose before dawn and toiled over preparing plenty of food for the guests. Lamb meat was distributed in bowls of yellow rice dotted with pine nuts and raisins.
The garden was decorated with rugs hung beside a small stage on which sat the groom and bride, brimming with excitement and happiness. Colored bulbs illuminated the entire garden with a brilliant light. A band from Hebron entertained the guests with songs and the announcer excelled in his rhyming and had done his best to speak of the bride’s virtues. This being a difficult task, he preferred to linger over the descripti
on of the groom’s numerous positive attributes.
Yasmina’s friends accompanied her to the ceremony, holding lit candles.
“Mabruk alaik ya arouss, mabruk” congratulations, bride, congratulations, they sang to her and teased her for what awaited her in a few hours.
“And what exactly is awaiting me?” she asked naively.
“Laylat el-dakhla,” the night of the penetration, they told her in a chorus and hid their mouths with their hands.
Six months had passed since then. Issam spent most of his time at the Al Najah University in Nablus and came back home only for the weekends. The young couple mostly spent their weekends with his family, which resided close by. Salima, the youngest of his sisters, used to sleep with Yasmina in his absence, so the latter ‘wouldn’t sleep on her own and risk the family’s honor. The village youths were always on the prowl and were not above trying their luck with married women whose husbands were away.
But Salima married as well and stopped frequenting Yasmina’s house. Yasmina was actually relieved. She had never known what privacy felt like, but now that she tasted it, she was in no hurry to relinquish it. She calmed Issam and his parents by saying no harm would befall her so long as she was living close to them. After some time, Issam had brought a dog and tied it in the yard.
“Next year I will graduate from the university and return to the village,” he promised her, “I will secure a respectable job that would ensure yours and our children’s livelihood,” he added with a meaningful wink, but Yasmina was yet to get pregnant. Issam’s mother worriedly looked at her daughter-in-law’s belly, but did not dare say a word.
“Her eyes are killing me,” Yasmina complained to her husband.
“Halas, woman, enough, she only wants what’s best for you,” he hushed her.
Issam was Yasmina’s first man and they spent their time together in bed and behind closed shutters, insatiably exploring the joys of the flesh.
Yasmina was still on the verge of womanhood. Her body was youthful and had only recently rounded and matured. Upon discovering its qualities, she began to spend long hours in front of the mirror, carefully examining it, tracing its curves with her fingers, stroking the young, white breasts. She yearned for Issam’s arrival on the weekend so she could feel him touching her and quenching her thirst. The thought that he would see her naked body made her cheeks flush. Until now, they had made love in complete darkness or behind the heavy metal shutters that blocked the rays of the sun and concealed their bodies.
At first, she slept with Issam with her dress rolled up and in complete darkness, so he would be unable to see her body. She allowed him to penetrate her in silence, muffling her sighs and feeling ashamed of them. As time passed, she took off her dress and found joy with the sense of freedom being naked offered her and with the touch of his body on hers. She learned how to love aloud and no longer stifled her sighs. Not one of her friends had warned her of that storm of the senses, to which she had become addicted. But she never shared her desires with her husband and regarded them as an inner secret that no one but her could claim, not even him.
Yasmina was unable to explore all the secrets hidden in her body during Issam’s brief visits in their house. In his absence, she discovered more hidden springs that welled in her, springs she had never imagined existed and now only needed a finger to dip in.
A sharp pain spread through her body. With slow, pleasuring movements, she silently stroked the pain with her fingers. Her breath quickened, her body was seized with trembling. A pleasant warmth engulfed her.
Yasmina smiled with satisfaction. My friends wound never understand this feeling, after all, they live in a society that does not believe in the liberation of women, nor their right to their own bodies.
While she was discovering her sexuality, Issam was drifting away, his mind occupied only by his studies, or so at least he had told her. Lately, he had begun to change right in front of her eyes.
He spent many hours with Jamil, his cousin, at the mosque, listening to the Imam’s sermons as the latter hunted the stray souls of the village youths. He thirstily drank the threats of the terrors awaiting them in hell, unless they change their ways, and the promises of a sweet fate in heaven awaiting those who follow in Allah’s ways. The Imam spoke in great detail about the wondrous virgins waiting for them there.
“Seventy-two virgins,” he whispered to them, and their eyes sparkled.
In the evenings, when he would get home, Yasmina and Issam began to have arguments, which became more and more frequent.
“Your friendship with Jamil is not good for you,” she told him, “he will drag you into the depths, he is a bad man, full of a burning hatred.”
“Yasmina, Jamil is my cousin, flesh of my flesh, we are bound together by blood,” he said and did not heed her warnings.
After the Eid al Fitr religious holiday he began to grow a beard and piously observe the commandments of Islam. He often complained about the Israeli soldiers’ humiliating treatment and having to stand for long hours behind Israeli Army checkpoints. He began to develop a great hatred for the Jews.
“A dog, no matter how much fat it gains, even though fat is considered to be a delicacy, is still not edible. This is how lowly a Jew is,” he explained to her.
Recently, she had heard him speaking with Jamil about the need to act against the Jews, “Just like the holy Quran commands us to.”
A concern snuck into her heart.
“Dir balak,” watch out Issam, she repeatedly warned him, “you will bring a world of trouble over both our heads. You are a religious person and Allah commands us to follow goodness,” she pleaded with him, “stay away from him!”
The first red flag came a few days later, early in the morning, when Issam’s was at the university. Somebody knocked on the door. Yasmina had just woke up and wore nothing but a white gown that emphasized her curves. She opened the door. It was Jamil.
“Let me in,” he said.
“How dare you? I am a married woman!” she scolded him and tried to block the door with her body.
“Ganantini! you’re driving me crazy,” he said, his eyes caressing her body from head to toe.
Her body shuddered without control, “You are mad,” she cried.
“I love you, Yasmina.”
“I belong to your cousin.”
“Not for long.”
“What are you talking about?” she angrily wondered.
“Ma’lesh,” never mind, “One day, you will be mine,” he muttered angrily and took off.
At first Yasmina thought about telling what had happened to Issam when he next arrives for the weekend, but remembered he had told her he would not come back for two weeks, because he had to study for his exams.
I will tell him as soon as he comes back, she promised to herself.
~
The news Jamil had brought with him that morning was what she had long dreaded. Yasmina broke into bitter tears over Issam’s terrible fate, but also over her own: a twenty-year-old widow. From now on, her status will be among the lowest in society, she would be lucky to have an elderly widower or a feeble-minded man marry her. The youths of the village would not let go of her and circle her house like butterflies attracted to the light. From now on, she was allowed to all. She no longer possessed any a’rd, her dignity as a woman had gone. She would become hated by all the village women. They would bid their husband to stay away from her and constantly spy on those coming in and out of her house. Should she pass in the street, they would spit at her and call their young girls inside the house, lest their innocence be tainted by the “woman whose house has become a place of unholy pilgrimage.” No man from her family would protect her honor, should another man tempt her to sleep with him, even her brothers ‘wouldn’t seek to avenge the insult. She alone would pay the price of the disgrace she had brought over her family. Finally, there
would be someone who would not hesitate to throw her into a deep water well or push her off a high cliff.
Yasmina was unable to restrain her tears and wept aloud.
“Quiet, ya Yasmina, quiet!” Jamil shushed her by raising his voice and his fist, “Issam’s father doesn’t know about his son’s death yet, and he mustn’t find out. Understand?” He shook her body, “You mustn’t cry, and tomorrow you must go to work as usual. No one must notice any difference in your conduct. This village is full of collaborators.”
“You have taken my husband, you have turned me into a widow, now you won’t even let me mourn him?” she cried out.
“Enough! I need a doctor,” Jamil groaned and held his arm to stop the blood trickling from it. Yasmina slowly crawled to him and looked at his wound through her disheveled hair. Her eyes were red with tears.
“There is only one doctor in the village.”
“Get him!” Jamil groaned with pain.
The doctor opened his bag, took out some disinfectant and began to clean the entry wounds of the two bullets. Following a thorough examination, he determined that no serious damage had been inflicted to the internal organs and instructed Jamil to thoroughly disinfect the wounds several times a day to prevent infection. He handed him a prescription for antibiotics.
“Rest for several days and don’t strain your arm.”
“Dir balak!” Jamil threatened him while standing by the door, “’Do not betray the trust of the man who had put his trust in you.’ So the prophet has commanded us, ya doctor, if I see a single Israeli soldier here, you will come to a bitter end,” he told him with a threatening gaze in his eyes and shut the door.
In the morning, Yasmina left the house after closing all the shutters, locking the door with a large key closing the iron gate behind her. She hurried to the center of the village and took the bus to the Al Istiqlal sewing factory in the nearby town of Halhul. With great difficulty, she concealed the turbulence of the emotions inside her from her coworkers and did her best to maintain a relaxed expression on her face. My husband is dead… she thought while on the bus, and I keep smiling at everyone around me. All I really want to do is find a place in which I could rest my head and cry.
