by Ali al-Muqri
I did this for two months, going from one home to the next. As the sheikha had instructed, I focussed on intellectuals and other prominent members of the community. Eventually I got to know the family of a minister who was close to the president. The sheikha asked me to provide her with detailed information on the family, and how to contact its members.
I did as I was asked. The sheikha introduced me to a young girl and asked me to fill her in. Then she told me to introduce her to the family as my sister. I didn’t know why the sheikha felt it was time for me to take a step back and make room for this person presented as my sister to take over.
No one can tell you about life’s hardships
Like someone who has lost their loved ones.
Her decision surprised me, but it seemed to make more sense than me continuing to spy on the families. That day, Abu Abdullah was irate as he took me to have my photo taken for a new passport. ‘We’ll go to Afghanistan to fight with the mujahideen. We’ll stand with them against the infidel crusaders. Then we’ll come back and fight this infidel state that makes women and men have their photos taken for passports and identity cards, when it is forbidden by sharia!’
When I went to visit my parents I learnt that ‘Abd al-Raqeeb had beaten us to the front. He’d chosen Chechnya as his destination for jihad, fighting with the Muslims against the Russian communists.
Those who are dazzled by the riches of this world
Should know that I wore its finery until it fell to rags.
We got visas for Saudi Arabia. I didn’t really understand why they were for Saudi and not Afghanistan, but as a hurma it wasn’t my place to ask. This was men’s business, after all. Abu Abdullah said that Riyadh was to be our first stop on the road to Afghanistan.
We stayed four days in Riyadh. While we were there we got to know some Saudi families. The women would come to visit me at the villa we were staying in. On the first day, five of them arrived after the afternoon prayer. Umm Muhammad, as she called herself, made the introductions: ‘We are all from the harem of the mujahideen who have gone to Afghanistan. Only Umm al-Qaqa’s husband is still here,’ she said, pointing to a very elegant young woman whose strikingly beautiful face wore a look ofjoy tempered by anxiety. ‘God bless her, she’s insisted he takes her with him to jihad. They’re newly-weds,’ she added with a smile.
The women’s frequent visits to the villa over the following days bestowed many gifts on me. Once Umm Muhammad brought along her daughter, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old. She sat without saying a word, expressionless – except once, when I noticed a sarcastic smile play across her lips while her mother was talking. When we got up to say the sunset prayer, the young girl stood next to me. I saw that she wasn’t really paying much attention to the prayer. I didn’t say anything, even when she failed to end her prayer properly by turning her head to the right.
They spent most of the time discussing some recent fatwas that were being hotly debated in all the papers. These fatwas concerned the ban on women drivers, and whether it was permissible for a woman to make a male colleague become her kin – and therefore conform to sharia – by breastfeeding him.
The women often said things like: ‘We are the harem . . . It’s the harem’s duty . . . God created the harem to . . . Come on, harem . . . I’m the hurma of a mujahid . .
I realised that Abu Abdullah’s habit of using the word ‘harem’ to mean ‘women’ was probably a legacy of the nine years he’d spent in Saudi Arabia. He told me he had been just thirteen years old when he arrived. The family had begged a relative to put Abu Abdullah on his passport as his son, so he could work and earn money in Saudi. Despite his youth Abu Abdullah had begun work in a clothes shop as soon as he arrived, and continued until his return to Yemen at twenty-three, on assignment from a jihadi group. A few weeks after his return he began to distance himself from his family. They’d ignored his call to ‘abandon their sinful ways,’ as he put it. That was when he married me, after he’d got to know ‘Abd al-Raqeeb.
During our stay at the villa, a lovely Indian girl called Andeera looked after me, keeping me company for much of the time I was in Riyadh, except during the small hours when Abu Abdullah was at home. She told me she’d become a Muslim two years before. I took the opportunity to ask her what she knew about Hindus worshipping cows and other animals.
She spoke openly, as though my question had made her happy, or she was relishing the opportunity to think about this subject. She said the cow was a sacred religious symbol and that there were many stories around it. In broken Arabic with the odd English word thrown in, she explained how Hindus considered every living thing to be sacred.
I don’t remember everything she said, except that she’d learned from her husband that true faith is to emulate God’s ways: ‘We must emulate God in our behaviour, but not in fear of punishment or in expectation of reward. If we obey His instructions because we expect to be rewarded, or because we fear His punishment, then we have not attained true faith.’
I saw in her eyes a longing for the past, or perhaps her family. Her words moved me, and they stayed with me, so that I woke up with them still in my head: ‘If we obey His instructions because we expect to be rewarded, or because we fear His punishment, then we have attained true faith.’
‘I seek refuge in God!’ I said, to protect myself from the effect of her blasphemous words, but instantly regretted it – although I’d only muttered the Islamic incantation I couldn’t help thinking Andeera might have heard. Trying to shake off her influence on me, I said outloud ‘They’re infidels, they’re ignorant, they’re heathens, they’re . . .’ I frowned at myself in the mirror, trying to look like someone else, someone intolerant towards anything that contradicted the creed of monotheism, but just then Andeera knocked on the door. She came in with her gentle smile, as though she were every mother, every child and every sweet Indian cow.
From its gardens I gathered roses and thorns
And from its cup I tasted honey and resin.
The day before we left Riyadh Andeera went off somewhere with one of the women visitors, who’d gestured for Andeera to follow her.
I was alone except for the television, which you could have called an Islamic television, since it showed only channels that specialised in Quran – recitation, exegesis, fatwas and the Muslim family.
I flicked through the channels for a while and then went to say the sunset prayer. After I came back, I found myself glued to a Muslim women’s show that was debating the notorious breastfeeding fatwa issued by an Egyptian sheikh. The sheikh, I forget his name, was a department head at Cairo’s famous al-Azhar university. The presenter said the sheikh had ruled that if a woman must, for some unavoidable reason, spend time in the presence of a man who is neither her husband nor a close relative – which is of course prohibited by sharia – then it’s possible for her to suckle this man, thereby creating a kinship bond between them and making it permissible for them to mix. Sheikha Umm al-Qawasim, who sat next to the presenter, was very enthusiastic about the fatwa. She said the ruling was based on something the Prophet, peace be upon him, had said when one of his companions, Suhla Bint Suhail, came to him and complained about how her husband, Abu Hadhiqa, didn’t like the servant greeting her, since he had now reached manhood. The Prophet instructed her to breastfeed the servant and make him family.
The programme was being broadcast live, and invited its female viewers to call in with their questions and comments. Was this one of those encoded channels, only for women, that I’d heard of? I’d been able to watch it without entering a password so perhaps whoever took care of the house had left it like that. When Abu Abdullah had left, the television was playing a Quran recitation, but Andeera showed me how to change the channels.
I was surprised by the bluntness of some of the viewers’ questions. If they hadn’t cited verses from the Quran and the words of the Prophet – peace be upon him – I might have doubted their Islam. One viewer said in astonishment: �
�God bless our venerable sheikh who has shown us that sharia can solve any problem, including the mixing of the two sexes.’ The second caller agreed with the first and said she would breastfeed her male colleagues the next day, so she could mix with them without feeling sinful, something that had been really bothering her.
One of the callers thought the fatwa was wonderful but wondered how she could suckle the family’s Ethiopian driver and make him family, given that he was Christian?
Sheikha Umma al-Qawasim’s voice betrayed her confusion and she continued to skirt around the question, even though she’d answered all the previous questions with the conviction of someone who believed she spoke with the authority of God’s law.
Still, anyone would have thought from the presenter’s emphatic nodding that the sheikha was giving the viewer a definitive answer. The presenter cut the sheikha short and moved on to the next caller, who introduced herself as Umm Maadh. The new caller didn’t allow the sheikha or the presenter to worm their way out of answering her question. Instead, she dragged them, along with the rest of the viewers, into a maze of questions that had no answers: Should a woman suckle a man directly from her breasts, or should she express the milk and offer it to him in a receptacle of some kind? Doesn’t the fatwa use the word ‘breastfeed,’ and not ‘give a drink to’ or ‘quench the thirst of’? How was this done in the Prophet’s day? If a woman is unmarried or not lactating then what does she do?
Amid the dark folds of their abayas, all that was visible of the sheikha and presenter were four glints of light, indicating the eye-slits of their veils. Even so, their voices boomed out loud and clear, while the camera darted from one angle to another.
The presenter decided to take some more calls before answering the last caller’s questions, asking the sheikha – she seemed very eager to reply – to answer them all together. This actually worked out better in the end, since there were some great questions: Is it permitted for a woman to shake the hand of a man she has breasfed? If a woman takes a taxi every day, not having a car of her own, should she suckle the driver every day? How many times does a man have to be breastfed? Is it possible to use a breast pump and feed him indirectly? If a man sucks his wife’s nipples and ends up swallowing some of her milk, does this mean he’s now like a son to her and their relationship becomes forbidden? If a woman is alone with a man she has suckled, then how does she deal with the religious police if they find them together?
The sheikha’s answers were arbitrary and unconvincing. It was obvious to me she wasn’t sufficiently well versed in the subject, despite the confident tone with which she delivered her religious judgements (even if it was difficult to consider them at all valid). The debate became particularly heated after two callers announced their absolute rejection of the fatwa, describing it as an insult to Islam. Only one other caller agreed with them. She said the fatwa was like one of those inauthentic sayings attributed to the Prophet which contradicted the Quran, and that al-Azhar University had sacked the sheikh who issued it.
The sheikha declined to respond to one caller’s obvious sarcasm: ‘I followed the fatwa – I asked the driver into the house so that I could breastfeed him. I gave him one of my breasts to suck on, and he kept sucking and sucking but no milk came out. So I gave him the other one, and he sucked on it for even longer than the first – but there still wasn’t any milk flowing. The good driver looked up and suggested he should try licking other parts of my body since this might stimulate it into activity and make it lactate. He got what he wanted, and milk began to pour from all my orifices, but not from my breasts. The driver lapped up the milk until he had his fill, and now he comes inside the house whenever he likes.’
The debate remained heated and I didn’t think it was about to end any time soon, even though it had already been going on for an hour and a half. Before the sheikha had finished what she was saying, a key turned in the front door and Abu Abdullah came in. I noticed straight away that he was dressed differently from when he’d left the house that morning, but before I could ask him why he’d changed his clothes he told me – with an odd smile on his face – to close my eyes. I’d never seen him smile before or, for that matter, show any other discernible sign of happiness.
I closed my eyes and recalled a similar scene in an American movie I’d watched at my aunt’s house when I was a girl: a man asks a woman to sit beside him and close her eyes. Then he pulls a present from his pocket and says ‘Open you eyes.’ He surprises her with a pearl necklace. It has a triangular pendant, perhaps white gold, engraved with ‘You are my heart’s desire.’ I sensed Abu Abdullah move back towards the front door, which he’d left ajar. ‘Open your eyes to see the surprise!’
He was right about it being a surprise. I didn’t just open my two eyes – a million eyes all over my body sprang wide open when I found a woman before me wearing an amazing wedding dress like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was speechless. For a moment I didn’t understand. At first, I thought she was some sort of bridal doll made from flesh and blood, an extraordinary doll, an example of the latest fashion in the world of dolls. I stumbled and swayed while my eyes, all the eyes in my body, remained wide open, fixed on my first ever present from Abu Abdullah.
‘It’s Andeera . . . Andeera!’ I said to myself, her identity dawning on me as I examined the familiar features of the woman who appeared clearly from behind the thin white veil that hung over her face.
At first, I couldn’t understand what was going on. I felt so confused that I distracted myself by rearranging some of the cushions in the sitting room. I can remember the moment vividly; it was as though I were just going about the household chores, plumping up the cushions and smacking the dust off them. It was exactly as Mother used to do, except that the cushions in Riyadh weren’t dusty. When I suddenly grasped what was happening, my whole body went rigid with rage. I automatically reached for him but quickly checked myself. I didn’t want to just slap him, I wanted to totally destroy him, like that bomb that exploded in an American movie I once saw. My body, my whole body was like a bomb he’d lit the fuse of – it was about to blow him to smithereens along with his gift. I never thought that a bomb could be stopped once the fuse was lit. But that is exactly what happened, when Andeera placed her hand on my shoulder and her smile widened in that way I was now so familiar with. My muscles relaxed and I suddenly felt drained of every ounce of strength. I didn’t have to relinquish the marital bed to my husband’s new bride – as is expected from a woman who obeys God’s law, which gives a man the right to marry four women – as another bedroom had already been made up.
*
When the call to prayer sounded from the nearby mosques, Abu Abdullah went to the mosque next door to the villa to pray with the congregation. I made my ablutions and waited for Andeera to come out of the other bathroom so that we could pray together.
I didn’t sleep that whole night: I was kept awake by pangs ofjealousy. I tried to listen in on them but I couldn’t hear a thing, not even a whisper. I kept asking myself, ‘What am I so jealous of?’ But I only had to imagine the two of them lying next to each other in bed for the anger to bubble up once more.
‘May God make your happiness continue,’ I said to the bride as she walked towards me.
Andeera always looked happy or had a smile on her face, even if this wasn’t obvious from her lips. There are no words to describe the sheer delight she exuded – she was simply a ball of joy.
I wanted to ask her how her night had been, but I didn’t dare.
Andeera and I sat next to each other on the plane, while Abu Abdullah sat to the right of us on the other side of the aisle. I discovered that all our travel documents had been produced in Riyadh with new Saudi names and identities instead of our real ones, including Andeera’s name, which was now Aisha al-Ghamidi. We weren’t exactly scrutinised on our way through passport control.
As we left the villa in Riyadh, I felt like I was literally covered from head to foot in the gold Abu Abdullah had bro
ught: bracelets, anklets, pendants, chains, necklaces, heavy rings on every finger, a watch, a tiara, belts – all very weighty and expensive. I was weighed down by gold, as though it were a heavy dress.
It looked like Andeera was wearing just as much gold as I was, since it covered most of her body. The two suitcases that had been checked in under her name were filled with make-up compacts and an assortment of perfume bottles. I couldn’t see any difference between them and the two suitcases that Abu Abdullah had checked in under my name, except for their orange and brown colour scheme. They weighed roughly the same. Each of us had her personal luggage, although Abu Abdullah showed no interest in these like he did the four suitcases.
I was happy when I first put on the gold and saw the perfume and make-up, but I soon felt differently when I realised that gold and make-up don’t go with jihad. These things belong to a beautiful woman, the hurma at home. ‘What’s the problem? True, I’m a jihadi, but I’m also a hurma and I should make myself pretty,’ I told myself, after giving it some thought.
Abu Abdullah insisted I wear all the gold, but he warned me not to open any of the perfume bottles or the makeup. There was a kohl pot, which looked old and worn. Pointing to it, he said, ‘Be warned.’
‘Marriage is wonderful, don’t you think?’ I said to Andeera as the plane prepared for take-off.
‘Wonderful, wonderful. Marriage is wonderful,’ she said.
I tried to make my meaning clearer: ‘Marriage . . . Marriage is wonderful. You are the wife. You are the wife, the hurma. He is the husband, the man. You understand. Marriage is two people together. Hurma and man in one marriage. Understand?’
‘Means that . . . that man and hurma, he husband together, together,’ she said with a giggle and then added, her laughter growing louder, ‘It’s all zig-zig. Man and hurma together. All zig-zig.’
‘What’s zig-zig? I don’t understand.’
She giggled again at my question.
‘You don’t understand? No, not possible. You zig-zig. Doesn’t make sense,’ she said, thrusting her index finger in and out of a loose fist.
