Burned alive (6 page)

The day after the wedding, along with everyone else, I looked at my sister’s blood on the white linen. My mother was weeping, and so was I. We cry a lot on this occasion because we want to show our joy and salute the honor of the father who has kept the bride a virgin. And we cry also with relief, for Noura has passed the great test. The only test of her life, except for proving she can produce a son. I hope for the same thing for myself, it’s expected. And I’m very happy that she’s married, and now it will soon be my turn. It is strange, but at this moment I don’t even think about Kainat, as if my sister who is older than me by a year doesn’t count. But she has to be married before I can be!

And then the guests go home. We have to dismantle the courtyard. It’s the job of the bride’s family to wash the serving dishes, clean the courtyard, and there is much to do. Sometimes the neighbor women come to give a hand, but not always.

After her marriage, Noura doesn’t come much to the house. She has no reason to go out, because she has to take care of her family. But a short time after the wedding, less than a month in any case, she came back to our house, crying and complaining to Mama. Since I couldn’t ask what had happened, I spied on them from the top of the stairs. Noura showed her bruises. Hussein had struck her so hard that she had bruises on her face, too. She lowered her pants to show her violet thighs, and my mother wept. He must have dragged her on the ground by her hair, all the men do that. But I didn’t find out why he had beaten her. Sometimes it’s enough if the young bride doesn’t know how to cook very well, she forgets the salt, there is no sauce because she forgot to add a little water . . . that’s reason enough for a beating. It was my mother Noura complained to, because my father is too violent; he would have sent her back without listening to her. Mama listened to her but didn’t console her. She said to her: “He’s your husband. It’s not serious. You’re going to go home.”

And Noura went back. Beaten as she was. She returned to her husband who had “corrected” her by beating her with a stick.

There was no choice. Even if he strangled us, there was no choice. Seeing my sister in this condition, I might have felt that marriage was good for nothing more than to be beaten as before. But even at the thought of being beaten, I wanted more than anything in the world to be married. It’s a curious thing the destiny of Arab women, in my village in any case. We accept it as natural. No thought of rebelling ever occurs to us. We don’t even know what it would mean to revolt. We know how to cry, hide, lie if needed to avoid the stick, but to rebel, never. Quite simply because there’s no other place for us to live than in the house of our father or husband. Living alone is inconceivable.

Hussein didn’t even come looking for his wife. Anyway, she didn’t stay long, my mother was so afraid her daughter wouldn’t want to leave! Later, when Noura became pregnant and they were hoping for a boy, she was the princess of her in-laws, of her husband, and of my family. Sometimes I was jealous. She was more important than me in the family. Before she was married, she spent more time with my mother, and afterward they were closer yet. When they would go to gather the wheat together, they took more time because they talked a lot together. They would close themselves up in a room. It was a room that was also used for storing wheat, flour, and olives, and I remember that the door to the room was green. I would pass by it, feeling alone and abandoned, because behind that door my mother was with my sister. They were in there before the wedding when my mother was removing Noura’s pubic hair.

I don’t know why this door so brutally came into my memory. I went through it almost every day, carrying sacks. Something disturbing happened behind that door, but what? I think I hid between the sacks out of fear. I see myself like a monkey, crouching on my knees in the dark. This room doesn’t have much light. I am hiding there, my forehead pressed against the floor. The tile is brown, small brown squares. And my father has painted the spaces in between with white paint. I’m afraid of something. I see my mother. She has a sack over her head. It’s my father who has placed this sack on her head. Was it in this room or somewhere else? Is it to punish her? Is it to strangle her? I can’t cry out. My father pulls the sack tight behind Mama’s head. I see her profile, her nose, against the cloth. With one hand he holds her by the hair and with the other he grips the sack.

He is dressed in black. Something must have happened a few hours earlier? What? My sister came to the house because her husband was beating her. Mama listened to her. Mama should not pity her daughter? She shouldn’t cry, she shouldn’t try to defend her to my father? It seems to me that memories around that green door are intertwined. My sister’s visit and me hiding between the full sacks of wheat, my mother being suffocated by my father with an empty sack. I must have gone in there to hide. It’s a habit of mine to hide. In the stable, in this room, or in the armoire in the hallway where they leave the sheepskins to dry before taking them to be sold. They are hung up in there the way they hang them at the market, and I hide inside, even though it’s stifling, so I won’t be caught. But I don’t often hide between the sacks in the storeroom, I’m too afraid snakes will come out. If I was hiding there it’s because I feared something bad would happen to me, too.

It is maybe the day my father tried to smother me with a sheepskin, in a room on the ground floor. He wants me to tell him the truth, is Mama cheating on him or not? He folded the wool in two and he pressed it against my face. I would rather die than betray my mother, even if I’d seen her with my own eyes with a man. If I tell the truth he’ll kill us both. Even with a knife to my throat, I can’t betray her. And I can hardly breathe. Does he let go of me or do I escape? Either way, I run to hide downstairs, behind that green door, between those motionless sacks that appear as monsters. They have always frightened me in this room that is almost dark. I used to dream that my father was going to empty out the wheat at night and fill the sacks with snakes!

There, this is how pieces of my life from before try to find their place in my memory. A green door, a sack, my father who wants to suffocate my mother or me to make me speak, my fear in the dark, and the snakes.

Not long ago, I was emptying a wastebasket into a large garbage bag and a piece of plastic remained caught in the basket. As it fell back into the wastebasket it made a particular sound. I jumped as if a snake had risen up out of this wastebasket. I was trembling and started to cry like a child.

My father knew how to kill a snake. He had a special cane, with two hooks at the end. He would trap it between the hooks so the snake couldn’t move, then he would kill it with a stick. If he was capable of immobilizing snakes to kill them, he was also able to put them in the sacks so they would bite me when I plunged my hand in to take out flour. That is why I was so afraid of that green door, which also fascinated me because my mother and sister were inside and were doing the ritual hair removal without me. And because I still had not been asked for officially in marriage. But I heard the rumor when I was barely twelve or thirteen. A family had spoken to my parents about me, officially. There was a man for me somewhere in the village. But I would have to wait. Kainat was ahead of me.

Assad

I was the only one to run to him, to cry when his horse slipped and he fell. I will always have the picture of my brother before me: He was wearing a colorful green shirt, and because it was windy, his shirt billowed behind him. He was magnificent on his horse. I loved my brother so much that this image has never left me.

I think that I was even nicer with him after Hanan’s disappearance. I was at his feet. I wasn’t afraid of him, I didn’t think he would harm me. Perhaps because I was older than he? That we were closer? But he beat us, too, when my father wasn’t there. He even attacked my mother once. They were arguing, he pulled her by the hair and she was crying. I see them clearly but don’t know the reason for the attack. I always have this great difficulty reassembling the images, or finding their significance. As if my Palestinian memory has been scattered in little pieces in the new life I have had to build in Europe.

It is difficult to understand today, after what my brother did, but at the time, once the terror had passed, I certainly didn’t understand that Hanan had died. It’s only today, seeing again the scene that has appeared in my memory, that I cannot think otherwise, linking the events together, logically and with perspective. On the one hand, my parents weren’t there, and every time an honor crime occurs, meaning that a woman is condemned by her family, the executioner is the only one present. Afterward, I never saw Hanan in the house, never. Assad was crazy with rage that evening, humiliated at being kept away when his wife would be giving birth, demeaned by his in-laws. Had the news of the death of the expected baby arrived by this telephone? Did Hanan speak rudely to him? I don’t know. Violence toward women in my family and in our village in general occurred daily! And I loved Assad so much. The more my father detested his son, the more I adored this only brother.

I remember his wedding was an extraordinary celebration. Probably the only memory of real joy in the madness of my past. I must have been about eighteen, already old. I had even refused to go to another wedding because the girls were obviously making fun of me, nudges with the elbow, unpleasant laughter when I passed by. And I cried all the time. Sometimes I was ashamed to go into the village with my flock, afraid of the looks. I wasn’t any better than the neighbor with the defective eye whom nobody wanted. My mother allowed me to stay away from the neighbor’s wedding, she understood my despair. That’s when I dared to speak to my father: “But it’s your fault! Let me get married!” But he refused, and he hit me in the head: “Your sister must be married first! Get out!” I said it once but not twice.

But for my brother’s wedding the whole family is happy and no one more than I. Her name is Fatma, and I don’t understand why she comes from a strange family, from another village. Was there no family near us with a marriageable daughter? My father rented buses to go to the wedding. One for the women and one for the men, the men’s in front, of course.

We cross the mountains and every time we pass a sharp bend the women give thanks to Allah with ululations for protecting us from the ravine, which is very dangerous. The countryside resembles a desert, the road isn’t paved, it’s dry black earth and the wheels of the men’s bus stir up a huge cloud of dust in front of us. Everyone is dancing. I have a tambourine between my legs and I accompany the women’s ululations. I dance, too, with my scarf, I’m very good at it. Everyone dances, everyone is joyful, the driver is the only one not dancing.

My brother’s wedding is a much bigger celebration than my sister’s. His wife is young, beautiful, short, and very dark. She is not a child, she is almost Assad’s age. In our village, they made a little fun of my father and mother because my brother “has to” marry a girl of mature age, and not known in the village. He should have married a girl younger than himself, it’s not normal to marry a girl your own age! And why have to go looking for her outside the village?

She’s a very beautiful girl, and she is lucky to have many brothers. My father gave a lot of gold in exchange for her. She wears many jewels. The wedding lasts three entire days of dancing and feasting. I can see myself with my scarf and my tambourine, my heart is happy, I am proud of Assad. He is like a god to us, and this love for him that will not go away is very strange. He is the only one I’m incapable of hating, even if he struck me, even if he beat his wife, even if he became a murderer.

He is in my eyes “Assad the
ahouia,
” Assad my brother.
Assad ahouia.
Hello, my brother Assad. I never go to my work without saying to him: “Good morning, my brother Assad.” A real devotion. As children we shared many things. Now that he is married and he lives with us with his wife, I continue to serve him. If there is no hot water for his bath, I heat it for him, I clean the bathtub, I wash and put away his underwear. I sew them if needed before I put them away.

It doesn’t seem right that I should serve him with so much love because he is like all the other men. Very soon after the wedding, Fatma is beaten and shames him by returning to her parents’ house. And contrary to custom, her father and mother don’t bring her back to our house by force the very same day. They are perhaps richer, more advanced than us, or as she is their only daughter, they love her more, I don’t know. I think that the scenes between my father and brother began because of that. My brother had wanted this woman from another village, he had obliged his father to give a great deal of gold, and the result was that this woman had a miscarriage instead of giving him a son, and she brought dishonor to us by returning to her family. I wasn’t present, of course, at the family meetings, and there is nothing in my memory to justify what I’m saying today, but I remember perfectly my father on the terrace with the basket of stones, throwing them one after the other at Assad’s head. And that armoire that Assad had wedged against the door of his room to keep my father from entering. Assad perhaps wanted the whole house to himself. He behaved then as if it belonged to him. I think my father didn’t want him to have any authority in our house; he felt Assad was taking over his place and his money. My father would often tell my brother that he was still a child. In our culture, it’s a serious humiliation to tell a man he is still a child.

Assad rebelled all the more because he was very sure of himself and much too spoiled by us. He was the prince of the house. Assad would shout: “This is my house!” My father wouldn’t put up with that. People in the village were asking what foolish thing Fatma might have done, why she went back so often to her father’s house. Perhaps she’d been seen with another man? Gossip spreads fast. They said bad things about her but it wasn’t true at all, she was a good girl. Unfortunately, if someone says just once that a woman is bad, then the whole village takes it up and it’s over for her, she has brought the evil eye on herself.

My mother was unhappy about all of this. Sometimes she would try to calm my father down when he would go after Assad: “Why are you doing this? Let him be!”

“I want to kill him! If you try to protect him, you’ll get the same!”

I saw Fatma lying on the ground and my brother kicking her in the back. One day her eye was red and her face all blue. But you couldn’t say or do anything. Between the father’s violence and the son’s, there was nothing for the rest of us to do but hide to avoid being beaten ourselves. Did my brother love his wife? For me love was a mystery. In our culture, you talk of marriage, not of love. Of obedience and total submission, not of a loving relationship between a man and a woman. Only of the obligatory sexual relations with a virgin girl who had been bought for her husband. Where is love?

But I do remember one woman of our village, who lived in the nicest house with her husband and her children. They were known for being rich and having a luxurious house. Their children went to the school. It was a big family because they always married between cousins. They had tiling everywhere; even the path to the outside was tiled. In the other houses, the path was just pebbles or sand, or sometimes it was tarred. In front of their house was a beautiful path, with trees on either side. There was a man who looked after the garden and the courtyard, which was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that shone like gold. You could see this house from a distance. In our culture, we love everything that shines and shimmers.

If a man has a gold tooth, he must be rich! And if you’re rich, everyone must see it. This house was modern and quite new, magnificent from the outside. There were always two or three cars parked in front. I never went inside, of course, but when I passed with my sheep, it made me dream. The owner’s name was Hassan. He was a tall gentleman, very tan, and elegant. They were very close, he and his wife, you always saw them together. She was pregnant with twins and was going to give birth. Unfortunately, the birth went badly, the twins lived, but the lady died. Peace to her soul because she was very young. That is the only burial that I ever saw in the village. What struck and moved me was that her whole family was crying behind the stretcher where the body rested, and her husband more than anyone. In his grief he was tearing his long white traditional shirt as he walked behind his wife’s body. And her mother-in-law, too, was tearing her dress. I saw the naked breasts of this elderly woman who fell facedown on the torn pieces of cloth. I had never seen despair like this. This woman they were burying was loved, her death afflicted the entire family, the whole village.

Was I actually there or did I witness the burial from the terrace? Probably from the terrace because I was too young. In any case, I was crying, too. There were many people and they moved slowly into the village. And this man who was crying out in his pain, who was ripping his shirt, I will never forget him. He was so beautiful with his cries of love for his wife. He was a man of much dignity.

My mother’s parents and my uncle lived in the village. My grandfather Mounther was quite tall like his son, clean-shaven, always very well groomed and properly dressed, even if he was just wearing the traditional clothes. He always had his prayer beads in his hand and would be counting the beads with his long fingers. He came sometimes to our house to smoke his pipe with my father, and they always seemed to get along. But one day my mother left the house to spend the night at her parents’ because my father had beaten her too severely. She left us alone with him. In our land, a woman may not take her children with her. Whether they are boys or girls, they stay with their father. And the older I got, the more he beat her, and the more frequently she would leave. It was my grandfather Mounther who would bring her back by force. She would leave sometimes for a week, sometimes a day, or for a night. Once she left for at least a month and my grandfather stopped speaking to my father.

I think that if my mother had died, she would never have had a burial like that woman’s, and my father would not have wept or torn his shirt like Mister Hassan. He did not love my mother. I should have been convinced that love didn’t exist at all in our culture, at least not in our house. Finally, I had only my brother to love despite his violence and his outbursts of madness. My sisters loved him, too. Noura had left, but Kainat was like me—she protected him and would clap her hands when he got on his horse.

Apart from the little sisters, who were too young to daydream about marriage, there were only the two of us in the house, two unmarried girls. I think Kainat was resigned to it. She wasn’t homely, but still not very pretty or pleasant looking. Kainat was different from me. We were two badly dressed, unkempt peasants. But I was small and slender and she was rather robust, and her breasts were too large. The men liked the women to be a little fleshy but they didn’t care for such a large bosom. She couldn’t please and she didn’t know how to make herself more attractive, which made her sad. Kainat grew heavy even though she ate the same thing I did, it wasn’t her fault. And anyway, neither of us could make ourselves prettier than God had made us. With what? We had no beautiful dresses, always the same white or gray pants, no makeup or jewelry. And locked up like old chickens, scratching at the dirt, nose down, eyes on our feet, as soon as we set foot out of the house with our sheep.

If Kainat has no hope and closes the door to marriage for me, I at least know that a man has asked for me. My mother said to me: “Faiez’s father came, he asked for you for his son. But we can’t discuss marriage for the time being, we have to wait for your sister.” After that, I imagined that he was waiting for me and that he was growing impatient at my parents’ refusal.

My brother, Assad, knows him. Faiez lives in the house opposite ours, on the other side of the road. They aren’t peasants like us; they don’t work much in their garden. His parents had three sons, and Faiez is the one who still isn’t married. There are no girls in the house, that’s why it’s surrounded not by walls but by an attractive low enclosure, and the door is never locked. The walls are pink and the car that is always parked in front is gray.

Faiez works in the city. I don’t know what he does, but I suppose he is in an office, like my uncle. In any case, he is much better dressed than Hussein, my older sister’s husband. Hussein is always in workmen’s clothes, never very clean, and he smells bad. Faiez is all elegance, a beautiful car with four seats, which starts up every morning. I begin to spy on his car to get a look at him. The best observation spot is the terrace where I shake out the sheepskin carpets and pick grapes and set out the laundry to dry. If I pay attention I can always find something to do up there. I notice that he always parks his car in the same place, a few steps from the door. I can’t stay too long at a time on the terrace, so it takes me several days of watching to discover that he leaves at about seven every morning, a time when it is rather easy for me to find something to do on the terrace.