Black Book of Arabia (25 page)

Kareem assumed the role of the husband, but as proper as he was, he was short and curt with his emotions, both in conversation and in intimacy. My wedding night was a disappointment, as were the days and nights that followed. I grew lonely, but soon became pregnant. With my babies, my career, and my life, I found my own happiness.

I abandoned my activism in the airport in Algeria. I loved my country, but when you are not recognized and you are not allowed to exist, you can only send your prayers, blessings, and wishes. And surely, in due time, things slowly and painfully came together in a full circle. After things began to go well, I visited Algeria often and was happy at how it was developing.

I excelled in my studies in France, rising to the top of the class. Later, when I was employed, I was one of fifty out of 3,000 applicants accepted to specialize in investment banking and eventually selected to manage my firm's biggest and most important European portfolios. The energy I had put toward my former political activism was now channeled into my career.

I succeeded and prospered professionally, but I felt empty and unsatisfied in my marriage. Despite my disappointment, I held on to the marriage, partly for the convenience of having a father figure for the children and partly so my family could feel satisfied that their daughter had a man to take care of her—something as important to the older generation as it was irrelevant to mine.

Thanks to my business success, my paycheck was larger than my husband's, and I made sure that every franc stayed in the family home. Jealous of my success, my husband reacted by looking for ways to throw his money away. He developed a gambling problem and took a double mortgage out on the house in order to indulge in his hobby.

Fifteen years passed by with their fair share of happy family moments, thanks mainly to my two beautiful sons and our lovely home. But my marriage went from bad to worse. Kareem had two affairs, each of which shook the marriage—the first because I didn't expect it, and the second because after the first one he said it would never happen again. After the second one ended, it hit me that I had never been in love with Kareem. Our marriage was arranged; he was not my choice. We both tried to make the marriage work, especially at the beginning, but sometimes you just cannot succeed.

One day I realized that I was only thirty-two and still had many good years ahead of me. My emotional intelligence simply refused to accept the perennial monotone of an empty marriage. I gathered my courage and asked Kareem for a divorce. He refused and became quite angry.
He was shocked that I even dared to request a divorce, for how could a woman live without her man? He could cheat, but he never expected that his wife would tire of her empty life, pack her bags, and leave. Unheard of. Blasphemous. Immoral. Madness. But then again, I was never one to follow reformative ways, and I divorced him anyway.

Despite the debts that I was left with on Kareem's behalf, the biggest loss was the emotional hole that my two sons now felt without a father figure. Nevertheless, I knew that I had made the right decision.

It took a few grueling years, but eventually I covered the installments, paid off the debts, and owned my home. I had conquered the money mountain and regained my independence, but it was a feat that shook me to my core. I struggled for some time to overcome my feelings of failure and desertion, the guilt that I felt for breaking apart my family. But I knew that I could not let myself be defined by one man, that I had a greater purpose to fulfill. Had it not been for my determination to provide the best for my sons, I might have succumbed to a provincial life in Algeria with my elder siblings and relatives, hidden and safe from any possible scandal that I, a divorcee, could possibly get into. But I defied expectations, as it had always been in my nature to do. The fire that had burned inside me when I was seventeen was rekindled to cleanse, purify, and strengthen my life.

After securing my sons' futures and my own, I left Europe to be closer to my cultural and religious roots: I relocated to Dubai and made it my new homeland. I sold what I
could and carved out a new life for myself. I was successful because in Dubai, if you work hard, you are recognized for it and lifted up to where you deserve to be in this world regardless of your gender, race, or religion. I am now a manager of an important bank and I stand tall, proud of who and what I am. I speak the language and enjoy the culture that I, an Algerian-French woman, embrace and love. Life has been hard but fair to me. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. And I regret nothing that I did when my heart longed for it.

I hope we all learn to live the lives we choose for ourselves, not the ones dictated for us by the colonial French, or the extremists, or the family; that we overcome sexism and the nightmares that haunt us, that tie us down to the ghosts of our pasts, that make us live in fear of being on our own and of exploring our future and all that it may hold for us.

As the popular French singer Edith Piaf famously sang,
Je ne regrette rien.

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my mother, Mahra, and father, Dr. Faisal, and all my sisters and brothers for their love and support. Thank you to my grandmother who showed me that it is never too late to follow your dreams.

I want to thank Bradley Steffens for being my biggest support in properly presenting the stories and this book.

I am deeply indebted to the women who have shared their stories of perseverance, survival, and triumph with me. I have protected their identities by changing names, but the events have all happened in the land of the desert.

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing
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Copyright © Hend Al Qassemi, 2015

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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ISBN: PB: 9789927118098

      ePub: 9789927118104

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