“This is my sister Wajida,” he told me, and she blushed as she took my hand. For the rest of the evening, I only caught glimpses of her as she came and went from the kitchen, clearing dishes and offering fresh cups of tea. When the men’s conversation reached a fevered pitch and their laughter ricocheted off the empty walls, when the women fell back against pillows cupping their full round bellies in their hands, when the children flopped down onto floor pillows giggling, Wajida haunted the edge of the room as silent as a ghost.
Throughout my long first afternoon in Libya, a steady stream of relatives filed through the house to inspect Hajja’s American daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Hajja led each guest to where I was seated, and they stood over me smiling and speaking in Arabic. I smiled as warmly as I could—an effort that became increasingly difficult as the hours wore on—and they settled onto the floor around me, nested in flowing layers of cloth, and carried on animated conversations that went on for hours. Laughing loudly and slapping her thigh, Hajja elbowed me as if I were in on the joke. I cocked my head and listened to the melody and rhythm of their Arabic, trying to glean whatever I could from these foreign sounds. It was like hearing the hum of a television through a closed door, never getting the specifics, only the general mood of the discussion: joyful, serious, sympathetic. All through that long afternoon, Hajja watched me with a probing, open gaze like an outstretched hand.
Finally, Hajja lowered herself to the ground and sat cross-legged before me. She gestured toward my head and said something to Ismail. “She says you would look beautiful with your head covered,” he translated, flashing me an apologetic look. I nodded and smiled politely, and she nodded emphatically and brought her hands together beneath her chin, miming the act of tying a scarf. She raised her eyebrows invitingly like she was suggesting a game for us to play, then raised herself up off the floor and disappeared into a back room. She returned clutching a silken head scarf covered with Technicolor fruit: Day-Glo oranges, glossy red apples, an ornate vine of electric green leaves. She knelt before me and gently placed it over my head, sweeping stray hair from my forehead and tucking it beneath the cloth, then tied it snugly beneath my chin as if I were a porcelain doll. The other women in the room, each of whom I was related to in ways I did not comprehend, smiled and bobbed their covered heads approvingly. With my head swaddled in bright cloth and all eyes upon me, I felt ridiculous. Smiling apologetically and shaking my head, I pulled the scarf off and handed it back to her, feeling both indignant and for the first time self-conscious about the hair that fell across my face.
It seemed that I spent hours gazing down at the floor of Hajja’s crowded home. Sunlight poured across the concrete, then faded. Darkness pressed against the window, and the shadows of women in the kitchen boiling yet more water for fresh tea began to seem like a delirious dream. Five hours had passed since our arrival, and I was exhausted. I had not had a moment to myself except in the bathroom—and then, squatting on the low toilet, I’d listened to my sisters-in-law in whispered conference outside the door. I longed for privacy, and I’d hoped to stay in Tripoli’s big new hotel, where oil executives and tourists congregated. I wanted a steaming-hot bath, a countertop on which to spread my toiletries, an adjustable thermostat and a heater that hummed through the night, drowning out the honking of horns on the crowded streets below.
Finally I went to find Ismail. Standing in the doorway of a narrow windowless room where a circle of men sat appearing to have a heated debate, I gestured frantically for his attention.
“Can we go to a hotel?” I whispered when he met me in the doorway and bent his head to hear my request. Behind him, a room full of men watched us with curiosity; the circle of women behind me had grown silent and was studying us as well.
I did not realize how offensive this proposal would be to his family, but Ismail did. He sighed and looked at me long and hard, then turned to his family. I could tell by his apologetic tone that this situation called for the utmost diplomacy. His gentle suggestion that we retire to a hotel was met with a moment of shocked silence as relatives stared at one another and at us incredulously. Then the room erupted in protest. Men and women shook their heads and wagged their fingers, their expressions cycling rapidly from outrage to insult to pleading disbelief. They insisted we stay in the finest accommodations they could offer: the half-built home of my sister-in-law Fauziya and her husband, Adel. In the midst of the uproar, Ismail turned to me helplessly and raised his palms to the air. There was nothing he could do to stop this tidal wave of hospitality.
Blinking back tears of frustration, I climbed into the backseat of another tiny, rusty car, and we sped off down a winding alley while I groped in the dark for seat belts that did not exist. At their home, Adel and Fauziya led us down a gray concrete hallway to a small, unpainted bedroom with black plastic taped over each gaping window frame to keep out the wind. We slept in their bed while they curled up in a room nearby on floor mats. After seventeen hours of travel and eight more of socializing, I fell exhausted into the bed beside Ismail and with Aliya curled on a cot jammed between the bed and the wall.
Before falling asleep, I turned to him in the dark and asked him to tell me the story of Wajida. In a low whisper, he explained that after his three sisters had been married, the man Wajida loved had approached her father, but her father had driven the suitor away. Instead of getting married, Wajida became the one to care for her parents in their old age. She was their social security, their retirement plan, their domestic help, and their in-home nurse. When her brothers completed law school in Tripoli or left for the United States and Malaysia for graduate degrees, when her sisters got married and moved into apartments in downtown Tripoli or farms in the country and celebrated the births of their children, Wajida remained trapped in the rooms in which she had been raised, where her father’s angry outbursts echoed through empty rooms and her mother’s bitter silence hung like acrid smoke in the air. Her parents no longer spoke to one another, instead relying on Wajida to deliver curt messages between them. Instead of changing diapers, she massaged swollen feet and arthritic hands. Instead of continuing her education she was apprenticed to her own mother, learning the intricacies of housekeeping, martyrdom, and unbreakable faith.
After Ismail told me about Wajida, he rolled over and fell into a deep sleep, but I lay wide awake, unable to settle down, my heart racing like a child’s after a ghost story. How could a family do this: sacrifice one innocent life for the benefit of the rest? Suddenly it seemed to me that everyone I had met earlier that day was complicit in Wajida’s servitude: Ismail’s gracious, sweet-smelling sisters; his gentle brothers who dropped their eyes in modesty instead of meeting my gaze; his mother who wept and kissed her son’s hands as if he were a saint and she his devoted follower; his father, who returned from the mosque and sat straight-backed and serene in his long woolen tunic, as regal as the Buddha; and Ismail himself, who had lived in an American college dorm and gone to rock concerts, jogged down the street shirtless and gone out on countless dates, all the while knowing about his sister’s confinement. And now I, too, was complicit in her oppression.
Eventually I drifted off to sleep, but in the middle of the night I awoke with a start to see a dark form reaching for Aliya in her cot while my husband snored softly by my side. My adrenaline surged before I realized it was my sister-in-law, who had heard my daughter cough and slipped into our bedroom to soothe her and give her God knows what medicine. On previous travels, exhausted by foreign languages and unfamiliar customs, I’d withdrawn to hotels and bars filled with other travelers, all of us ready to commiserate about home and toast our adventures. But there would be no respite from crowded, generous, broken, resilient Libya.
11 Hijabi Barbie
Awakened at dawn by the call to prayer crackling over the fuzzy loudspeaker of a nearby mosque, I slipped out of bed while Ismail slept. I greeted my sister-in-law in the hallway with my morning breath, my bed head, and my frown lines. She handed me a tiny cup and sa
ucer, the kind children use at tea parties, filled with a frothy concoction. None of my relatives drank coffee, but as a special treat for me, Fauziya had purchased a small, expensive canister of Nescafé powder. I tilted the cup to my mouth, nearly emptying it in one gulp. Among my hosts there was no coffee, no alcohol, no television or Internet, and as I quickly realized, no outdoor exercise, since I could not be on the streets without an escort and without my skin covered. In Libya I was cut off from all my addictions at once, cold turkey—and under the watchful eye of my female relatives who scrutinized my every expression and tried to anticipate every need.
After breakfast, seven of us piled into a car not much bigger than a golf cart and drove to the home of Ismail’s beloved aunt Fatama, swerving on dirt roads past potholes deep enough to swallow a tire. A Libyan flag flapped in the wind, as green and plain as the apron of a Starbucks employee. In my mind’s eye I saw a barista offering me three sizes that started tall and grew from there, saw myself cradling a paper cup filled with rich, dark brew. Folded onto Ismail’s lap in the backseat, my head brushing the torn vinyl ceiling, I whispered into his ear: “Is there a Starbucks on the way?” He chuckled, low and sympathetic, and squeezed me tighter.
His aunt Fatama squatted in the dust among the chickens behind a high stone wall, waiting for us. A beaming round woman swaddled in a brightly colored cloth from head to toe, with a tattoo that matched my mother-in-law’s, she greeted us with kisses, tears, and prayers, then disappeared into her darkened home. She returned a moment later with a plate of french fries dusted with salt. At 9 A.M. we sat in her courtyard, dipping them in ketchup and warming our faces in the weak morning sun as her cats threaded through our legs and her chickens pecked the dust.
An hour later, it was time to drive to the home of Ismail’s childhood friend Mahmoud, where we had been invited for lunch. My limbs already heavy and my mind sluggish from jet lag, I leaned against Ismail in the backseat as we bounced down the road, our hatchback dodging chickens and a goat who looked up lazily, his breakfast of trash hanging from his mouth. Concealed behind a high stucco wall, Mahmoud’s courtyard was beautifully landscaped, with a clean-swept brick pathway to an ornate front door. He stood in his doorway in pleated slacks and spit-polished shoes that appeared to have never set foot on a dusty Libyan street. I stepped from the car and, without thinking, swung my arms wide to hug him. With an expression of alarm he leapt deftly to one side, as if dodging a snake attack, leaving me grasping at the air. He would not shake my hand or even hold my gaze during the entire time I was in Libya.
An official in Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, Mahmoud wore tailored suits and Italian leather shoes each time I saw him, even on weekends. A cloud of fear hung in the air around him like cheap cologne; friends and even his own family addressed him with downcast eyes and ingratiating smiles. I only saw him smile once, and he wiped the expression off his face so quickly that I thought I must have imagined it. Mostly he sat sullenly among the men, the lit cigarette between his fingers sending a thin question mark of smoke swirling above his head. One of the wealthiest men in Ismail’s hometown, he had a shiny Volkswagen Jetta in his driveway and a comfortable home enclosed by a wrought-iron gate. In the United States his would have been a solidly middle-class home, but in this labyrinth of dirt alleys and trash-strewn roads, parched lime trees and dusty, wandering chickens, his residence was startlingly opulent.
Mahmoud’s wife was heard and sensed but rarely seen: a swirl of black cloth, the sound of clanking pots, the smell of simmering curry drifting to us from the kitchen. I glimpsed her round face suspended in a tent of black, her kind eyes encircled in thick black kohl, her hands delivering a brass platter of glass teacups. The dining room table was elaborately set for two, though there were eight of us present; Mahmoud had assumed that my daughter and I would eat in the kitchen with his wife and children while the men convened in the formal dining room.
With a cajoling smile, Ismail said something to him in Arabic. Mahmoud responded in a clipped voice, and the two men began to negotiate. Mahmoud’s tone told me he was increasingly annoyed with Ismail, who was clearly refusing to back down. Finally Mahmoud tossed his hands into the air and retreated into the kitchen. A moment later his wife emerged to set two more places at the table. “Don’t worry: you will be eating with us,” Ismail whispered into my ear. I was grateful and uneasy. I could not decide what would be more uncomfortable for me: eating in the kitchen with a woman and children whose language I did not speak or eating among the men where I was obviously unwelcome.
I sat between Ismail and Aliya at the dining table. Mahmoud sat across from us, smoothing his napkin and avoiding my gaze, appearing to be as rattled as if I had insisted on dining with him bare-breasted. He was tense with the effort to deny my presence. Every now and then his eyes darted toward me, but he yanked them away like dogs on a short leash. Mostly I kept my eyes on my plate, raising them only to thank Mahmoud’s wife guiltily and effusively each time she emerged from the kitchen to serve me another dish.
After dinner we moved to another room to lounge on floor pillows, and Mahmoud’s wife and children joined us there. The floor pillows at Ismail’s mother’s house were only inches thick, but the ones at Mahmoud’s were plush and ornately embroidered with gold thread. We relaxed into them and Mahmoud placed a gift in Aliya’s lap: a Muslim Barbie doll covered from her neck to her toes in a black abaya. Just a few wisps of her brassy blonde hair slipped out from beneath her head scarf, but the face that stared up at Aliya was as familiar as an old friend from home: wide, sky blue eyes; slightly parted bubble gum lips; a brilliant white smear of teeth.
Something besides her clothing was fundamentally different about her; something essential was missing. It took me a few moments to realize what it was: her torpedo breasts, those unyielding nipple-free mounds. Her chest was as flat as if she had gotten a double mastectomy.
The Barbie stared up at Aliya with her impenetrable smile. The room fell silent as we waited for Aliya’s reaction. I silently willed her to show gratitude and delight, but instead she stared down at the doll with a furrowed brow, her lips pursed in concentration. This Barbie was a riddle she couldn’t solve.
After a few moments of befuddled contemplation, her face lit up with an idea. She yanked the head scarf from the doll’s head, freeing the brassy blonde hair, which she combed with her chubby fingers until it lay down her back. The narrow strip of cloth she smoothed out onto the carpet beside her, considering it carefully. Next she yanked the abaya wide open, its Velcro strips resisting before giving way to her insistent fingers, revealing Barbi’s peach-colored near nudity in plain white granny underwear and what looked like a Jogbra. Now I could see that her figure was childlike: gone, too, were her pencil-thin waist and voluptuous hips. Aliya tugged at the undergarments, but they were sewn to the doll’s flesh, not to be removed under any circumstances.
All eyes in the room rested on the disrobed doll splayed out on the floor. The dolls at our house were shameless, always in a state of partial undress. When I found them lounging topless on our furniture or lying spread-eagle in an empty bathtub, I stepped over them without giving them a second thought. But in this foreign world, her exposed peachy flesh made me squirm. I had to resist the urge to cover her up. Aliya cocked her head like Versace considering a half-dressed model. Then, in a burst of inspiration, she grabbed the strip of cloth that had once been a head scarf and was now a bandera. She cinched it tightly around the doll’s bottom, turning it into the smallest miniskirt imaginable and tying it rakishly at the hip. Her eyes lit up with pleasure and pride; now the doll was ready to play.
12 Freedom
Hussein had been the first to embrace us when we arrived in Libya. He was over six feet tall and thirty years old, the first slivers of gray hair already streaking his temples, but he had raced down the sidewalk outside the Tripoli airport and clung to his big brother like a little boy, wiping tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. Next he’d turned to Aliya, lifti
ng her gently from my arms and kissing her on each chubby cheek. His display of vulnerability and raw emotion evoked a tenderness I usually only feel toward small children. From the first moment I saw him, he was our quiet and gentle companion in Libya, often hovering in the background, his hand appearing before me just in time to open a door, refill a cup of tea, or sweep Aliya from the sidewalk before she stepped in a puddle.
The other men in Ismail’s family refused to meet my gaze for more than a few seconds, staring instead down at my knees when we were introduced, but Hussein let his curious eyes linger on mine before dropping them again toward the floor. When our eyes met, he could not suppress a shy, boyish smile. Like the sun momentarily appearing between the clouds, his smile lit up his whole face before it was concealed once again behind an impassive masculine front. Like Ismail, he seemed more at home with his laughing, affectionate sisters than with the men, who spoke over him and addressed him in clipped tones. He responded by springing from the floor to do whatever had been asked of him.
Having graduated from college seven years prior, Hussein was still living at home with his parents and biding his time until the government, Libya’s main employer, placed him in a job. Seven years was not an unusually long time to wait. He seemed frozen in time, trapped in a prolonged adolescence even as his hair began to recede and his belly began to spill over his pants. He inhabited the same small rooms where he had been raised, slept on the same floor cushions on which he had lain as a child, his long legs and large feet now spilling onto the floor. He had spent all of his twenties under the brooding, critical eye of his father and within arm’s reach of his doting mother. When he first approached us, I had seen a full-grown man, handsome and broad-shouldered, walking down the sidewalk with a purposeful stride. But when he bent his head and ducked through the doorway of his family home, he seemed to shrink in age and stature, to become once again the baby boy of the family: subservient to his father and older brothers, affectionate and attentive toward his mother and his sisters.
My Accidental Jihad Page 9
