by Mhani Alaoui
~
Leila touched her hair, face, breasts, stomach, inner thighs, and legs. Her hands were cold, and they left a trail of shivers down her body. She thought that she heard the tinkle of glass in the distance, but it was only the sound her heart made as it broke. She bit her lip, and blood dropped on the faded Persian carpet. But it is not just my heart, it is my pride. I am not only hurt in my softness for him but in my sense of pride. He’s trying to break me, isn’t he, to justify his betrayal. He’s showing the world how mad I am that he leaves me but keeps me chained to him for my own protection. And the woman he chose—a woman whose fake sophistication and vulgar wealth would once have repelled him! But I must be mad, or naive at best, to think a woman like her could ever disgust a man. She is what a man dreams a woman to be. She is Eve, light to my darkness, warmth to my abstractness, hopefulness to my sadness. He has left but he has not left, he is my husband, but he has imprisoned me in my father’s house with my daughter.
I am breaking in so many ways that my center no longer holds. I am numb from the pain. I once met a couple in Paris. They were convinced that true social freedom started with sexual freedom. But what I want is freedom from sex, from him and the humiliation he has caused me. True freedom is being alone. I pray that my daughter never knows that dependence on another human being. I pray that she be free from the terror of being let down and relegated to the condition of the unwanted first wife. I used to be free…or I thought I was. I painted suns on my cheek and wore flowers in my hair. We used to dance till dawn, but now, see, I am thirty-three and am already old. My life is used, useless, unused.
Do you remember, Sheherazade, do you remember the description of the harem of one of the greatest palaces in the world—Topkapi? There was no luxury, no oriental luxuriance for the women living there. Cold rooms with bare walls and low ceilings like the monasteries of Eastern Europe. They were made to live like monks but were hunted like prey. It was a community of fleeting friendships and cruel betrayals. They worked hard, ate, and slept little. They had the ascetic lives of nuns until the sultan graced them with his favors, and life became softer for a while. Most women were forgotten there for years until they grew old and filled the palace walls with their solitary breaths. There were hundreds and hundreds of rooms, and I am now in one of those rooms, prisoner of the great political machine that is a man’s lust. To think that my daughter will one day submit to the violence of the world, and to think that I will be a constant reminder of the chains that bind us. How could she ever be free, how could she ever achieve something more if her mother agrees, today, to bend?
Leila sat facing the garden, deep in thought. Her rage and pain gave her a respite, while she forced herself to think clearly. She got up to look for a cigarette lighter and found that Aisha and Zohra were in the room. She didn’t know how long they had been there or what they had witnessed.
“Your father is waiting for you in his office. He told me about Adam and your brother’s whore, and what he has agreed to.”
“He has.”
“It’s your father’s revenge. He has agreed to this farce to punish me.”
“Baba loves me. He believes this is the best way to protect a sullied daughter and a bastard granddaughter.”
“You father is an idiot. Idiots understand other men’s compulsions but don’t try to curb them. Ibrahim has forgotten the true meaning of sharaf, of honor and blood. You are a woman of an ancient bloodline on your father’s and on your mother’s side. The blood in your veins is powerful, a maker of kings and queens.”
“Mama, stop. There is nothing that history or family can do when a person chooses to love another person. But honor, yes, honor is something else.”
“We can get rid of her, child. I will open the skies for you, and you will see her writhe and collapse at your feet. Let me do this for you.”
“No. It will not accomplish anything. History will repeat itself in an endless, vicious cycle, and women will remain stuck in this inferno for all eternity.”
“Don’t preoccupy yourself with other women. Don’t be naive. In the end, you are alone with your destiny. Revenge is the best antidote for rage and humiliation. Sometimes, you have to debase yourself to get what you want. Remaining noble will only lead you to be forgotten at best and despised at worst. Time is not on your side. Freedom is a dream.”
“We’re always blaming the thief, the woman whose heart we don’t know but who becomes our enemy because our man would rather be with her.”
“It’s difficult to blame the object for being stolen. Of course, it’s the thief we blame!”
“But Adam is not an object, and he is not a possession. He let himself be stolen. He chose another woman for her beauty and strength, for the happiness he imagines he will have with her. He is the one to blame. She doesn’t owe me anything. She took something that was not hers. But if she was able to take it, it means it was not mine either. Does it matter in the end? It’s what he wanted. He has decided to save himself.”
“Think about Maryam.”
“I am…so very much. All I think of is her. Possession, possessiveness, marriage ties, these are all forms of enslavement. I will not have my kid be any man’s slave. And what will she think when she hears her mother killed another woman to keep a man? No, I cannot…I know what I must do.”
Aisha turned to Zohra to plead with her.
“Reason with her, she’s not making sense. Tell her that nothing will ever change, that the world has been the same for centuries and as far back as we can remember. Women must fight their battles with the weapons at hand, in the way of the weak.”
Zohra remained silent. She was looking beyond them at an imaginary horizon, and she saw what they could not. She arched like a tense bow, then spoke.
“Come rest in my arms, Leila. Yes, just so…hush, my beloved. You will do what’s right for yourself and your child.”
A silence surrounded the three women. Zohra’s eyes had turned a filmy blue, and her arms were wrapped around Leila like a protective shield.
~
Leila rose to perform her final act of obedience. She went to her father’s office and knocked on the closed door. Ibrahim was waiting for her, his white hair and white hands clearly outlined in the shadows of the room. The objects in the room were bathed in the soft shadows cast by the setting sun. Their corners cut the air like the ragged edges of cliffs cut the skyline. Perspective appeared flattened, and presence was denied warmth. Leila stepped hesitantly inside this space with the feeling that she had just penetrated a cubist painting. After her shattered heart, it was now her body’s turn to crack and break into hundreds of jagged shapes diluted into the flatness. She looked into her father’s face and breathed in the incense burning near his right hand. Her eyes melted behind the pain of remembrance and the fear of what lay ahead.
“Is it true, Baba?”
“It is true that, as your father, I have made a decision for you and for my grandchild.”
“You have sacrificed me. You have agreed to keep me tied to a man who has chosen to leave me.”
“A man? He is not a man. He is a dog. He would never have protected you, and he will let others abuse you and your child. This is the only way to keep you from harm’s way, to keep the demons and the bloodsuckers at a distance from you. You are fragile, vulnerable, a ready prey for all the wolves to feed on. I wanted to keep you safe. Here with me…safe. That man no longer carries you in his vision of the future and of himself. I don’t give a crap about him, and neither should you! But for your sake, you must remain his wife. You must have that status. A woman who has gone through what you have gone through in times like these, and in a country like this one, is worth nothing!”
“You want me to remain a despised first wife and my child to grow in the shadow of a discarded mother? What you are offering is not protection, it’s a slow death.”
“I’m offering you a home.”
“You’re putting me in jail.”
“Enough! I
will not be questioned. You will obey me. And one day, you will thank me. Now get out.”
Leila’s head reeled from the impact of those words on her broken heart, her shattered body, her fugitive spirit. She looked one last time at her father and turned to leave. She paused in her footstep. She went back to him and kissed his hand, “Baba.” She then walked to the room she shared with Maryam since her birth, less than forty days ago.
Forty days, a gap in time, a newfound thinness in the earth’s crust as I stood with my newborn child in my arms, and together we discovered the extreme vulnerability of life. Forty days where it is known that a mother and her child can fall back into the darkness to which they still belonged for those forty days. I held her in front of the precipice of my own solitude and paused at the edge, while a terrible, terrifying lightness hissed at the brink of my consciousness and told me of the body that falls through the air and of the joy it brings. But then as I was dreaming the fall, her scent of fruit about to bloom, of hope and perpetual possibility, wrapped my wounded ego in a blanket of love.
Leila kissed Maryam’s mouth and rocked her softly till her eyes closed. She then sat at the table and wrote. She wrote till her fingers turned blue, till her wrist ached, she wrote till her mind became numb. When she was done and the ink was completely dry, she brushed the words off the paper and into the milk. She watched as they twirled and settled between the ivory molecules. “Perfect,” she sighed. “It is done.” When Maryam woke up, she held her in her arms and fed her the milk. She whispered little nothings to her. The words dropped in her ear like pearls in a pure stream. Leila told Maryam many silly, absurd, and delightful things she had never told anyone before. She shared lightness and delight with her and let those fizzle joyfully through her, a powerful protection against loneliness and fear.
“I must leave you, my darling. It is my act of love for you. You must believe it to be true. My one, only, and ultimate proof of love for you. To reveal your strength, to provide you with your own destiny. I want more for you. I want you to experience the devouring leap forward and the understated delights of the introvert. I will watch over you from the tears between worlds, and perhaps you will see me and I will see you…There is one last thing you must know. I have written a story and inscribed it within you. You are the bearer of the oldest story in the world. You hold the pages of a willfully forgotten story whose power is now yours. When the time is ripe, the story will reveal itself.”
Leila turned to see Zohra standing behind her, her face stripped of any emotion. She placed Maryam in her arms and said, “You are now Maryam’s Godmother, Zohra of the Ait Daoud. Your tribe is the mighty tribe of the Guardians. Protect my daughter with all your power.” Zohra kissed Leila on the mouth, deeply. “She is now and forever in my keep. No harm will come to her.”
~
While this scene was being written in the sunlit room overlooking the garden, Hamza stalked to the kitchen, intent on finding Zeinab. It had been thirty-nine days since he had been called to the house. He had raged against the djinns and the ghosts, slid his sword Zulkitab across the stone floors till sparks rose, scattered gathering diseases, and defied the cold-eyed demons that had hungered to enter. He had debated with the trees about good and evil, planted daylilies, jasmine, birds of paradise, asters, alyssums, impatiens, lupens, ferns, marigolds, orange blossoms surely, and brought peace to a house built on strife and greed. And every night he kept watch outside of Zeinab’s door, near the garage.
On the fortieth day of the child’s birth, the doors between this world and the next will close, and she will be safe. On the fortieth day, he will leave for a new adventure. On the fortieth day, he will have to say goodbye to Zeinab forever. He walked into the kitchen with beating heart and the sound of waves in his ears. The ground shook under his feet and sand swirled around his boots, yet he coughed softly to announce his presence. Startled, Zeinab stopped her cleaning and looked up. She straightened her back and waited, her eyes large and bright. Hamza took her all in, and his backbone bristled like leaves in the wind. He bowed and presented her with a bouquet of flowers larger than she. Zeinab thought that she could hide in there, and her employer would never find her. Hamza touched the bouquet with his right hand, and it shrunk to fit snugly in Zeinab’s hand. “Hmm...I think I may have overdone it a little. I created it for you.” He paused and, encouraged by her smiling silence, he continued. “I have been watching over you.” Zeinab smelled the bouquet in her hands, and the flowers chanted their names for her in their floral tongues. Zeinab buried her head in their petals and tasted happiness. Hamza said softly, “The desert flower has found her home.” But tears soon filled Zeinab’s eyes. Hamza stood there at a loss, wondering why such sadness when he only cared to make her happy.
Zeinab had forgotten the taste of happiness. To be exact, it had been hammered out of her since she was seven years old. To rediscover that giddiness and contentment was like rediscovering goose bumps on her skin or the taste of chocolate in her mouth. But it also meant that she must come to terms with hope. She would need to let her guard down and allow dreams to rush to the fore. She would be more vulnerable than the seven-year-old child she had buried at the back of her mind. As for Hamza, he was mortified by the helplessness in her eyes.
“Ya Zeinab, I am not who you think I am. I will take you with me, and we will build together a small house in the mountains of your childhood. We will reclaim the land that your tribe has lost and transform the desert into a paradise. Not that I mind deserts. Deserts have the bravest and most beautiful of shrubbery. You will be a queen. Not a fairy-tale queen with a crown and jewels, a queen who can make her land lush and grow olive and almond trees at will. You will have the purest joy of all: that of seeing the planted seed grow and bloom. Come with me. Leave this place and I will stop everything for you. I will grow old for you, and with you.”
Zeinab had scars on her lower back from a beating many years ago. When she was thirteen, a woman had beaten her with a leather belt because she had seen her husband leave her room in the early morning. Zeinab was never quite the same after the whipping. She had recurrent nightmares of a dark man dripping with oil lowering his weight on her bed. A kindly neighbor heard her scream and offered to take the child out of the woman’s hands. She was immediately let go. Since that day, whenever she woke up, her lower back would ache as though she had been whipped with that old leather belt in her sleep. The neighbor then took her to a woman whom, she told her, was once a great lady but had fallen on hard times and needed cheap labor. This is how Zeinab began working for the Nassiris.
Ever since her first encounter with Hamza, the nightmares had stopped, and the scars no longer burned. For all she could think of was him. She believed him when he said he had watched over her, but she feared him when he said he wanted to take her away. A man’s touch on her skin would certainly burn it, and a man’s weight on her would crush her.
“My life cannot be fixed, Hamza. It has been broken for too long. I don’t know what happiness means. I wouldn’t know how to bring joy into your life.”
“You are my joy. Don’t you see, you don’t need to do anything for me. I am not your master, you are not my slave. You will be free. When I am with you, my hands stop aching and I am whole. I have looked for you throughout the ages and across worlds for thousands of years. I did not know what a painless life was until I met you. I did not know I hungered for you until I laid eyes on you. You are who you are. And you are the one for me. That is all.”
“I don’t know what freedom means. I know it’s terrifying. I don’t know whether returning to my homeland would break me or fix me. I don’t know that I need to be free.”
“Don’t you love me?”
“Yes, I believe I do.”
“I am the Destroyer and the Creator. I make way for humanity in this world, and I create wondrous life. I destroy wilderness and curb thunder to my will. I offer you my hands and my sword, my powers and my love, and still you fear! I ask you one last tim
e, Zeinab of the Sraghnas—will you leave with me?”
“I would probably never make it out the door.”
“Oh! If you could only see what I see. If you could raise your eyes to my height and see the vastness of the world reflected.”
Zeinab remained silent, for how could she tell him that she had seen the world in his eyes and that it terrified her. How could she explain to him that resilience had replaced courage in her life view. She knew that he had changed her forever, but there was nothing she wanted to do about it. She held the flowers close to her heart and watched as golden tears flooded Hamza’s eyes. She thought she saw a large boat floating in his pupils, a boat welcoming all the animals of the world in pairs and one lonely man. Then the mirage disappeared, and all she could see was a bawling giant.
Hamza kissed her hands and bade her farewell. As he was about to step through the kitchen door, he turned to her and said, “The flowers will never die. They are my love for you. My soul is in their veins, see, there, the stems are grey and green like me,” he explained, his face crimson. Then Hamza left, his boots thudding the ground, tears rolling from his eyes in gallons, and a tsunami of pain in his heart. Possessed by a formidable sadness, he went to the old orange tree, planted Zulkitab in the ground, and lay face down in the earth. He sobbed like a lion and beat the soil to a pulp. He ate the flowers, dirt, and roots while sinking his hands deep into the belly of the earth for comfort. When he woke up the next morning, his arms from his wrists to his shoulders had turned a warm, dark brown, and his burning heart was cold.
