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ALI BADER every day: a couple of barefooted and half-naked men stretched out on the ground being flogged. You saw only the whips rising and falling on their backs and the bright colours. A town struck by a plague, my friend. Without law and without order. A wasteland losing its identity, plagued by people from the desert and with monsters for neighbours. A town invaded by armed men where the biggest battles were over stealing property – houses or flocks of animals. It was the epitome of vice. They halted work and ruined our religion with their demonic incantations, They turned the town into ruins emanating the stink of sewerage. I, however, was in another world! You smile. The niqab was unable to restrain the defiance of my still youthful body. It was unable to threaten my blossoming. But what with being busy in the big house with my mother since the arrival of the armed men, my attention to the sad stories of those miserable women, my hearing the sound of their crying, and my acquaintance with many miserable details, did make a chill appear in my fresh soul and did affect my enjoyment of life. Yes, everything changed for me. To begin with, I felt my womanhood was a flower opening inside me, but that was soon repressed by unparalleled force and violence. What I remember of those days, for example, was how entranced I was by the tone of my words when my voice changed. I started listening to my voice as though I were listening to someone else. I loved it. I felt I was a woman. I knew I had left my childhood behind for good. But afterwards I grew afraid of it. Being a woman meant being desired and wanted by others. I felt this would make one of the men that surrounded me greedy for me. So I hated the transformation and the change to the sound of my voice and the way I spoke. I even started to hate everything around me. I began to live in anguish because of my fear of my body, my fear of my womanhood. No one could endure in the face of the viciousness of those men, bodies without souls. Their mouths were like the mouths of predators. Their voices were loud and annoying like drumming on a metal box. Their hands were rough and carried whips and guns. When they looked at me I felt as though they had murder in mind. I would walk the streets quickly so none of them noticed my firm backside. I easily recognized their depressing faces and brazen looks. They walked around in groups to monitor the enforcement of the 16 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015
page 19
ALI BADER niqab for women. Their eyes were alert, their hearts malevolent. They were anticipating some mistake, a forbidden movement, in order to approach someone and frighten and terrify them. So many times I was walking in the street and saw my father with them, carrying his gun and whip, which he used to frighten people. So many times I saw him strolling happily along, pacing up and down the street, pacing up and down, his guards with him, alert, not for the warm breeze or the whisperings of the trees or the swoop of the birds or the radiant stars, but to humiliate someone or flog a violator, or censure a woman whose niqab had inadvertently slipped. I would return, saddened and panicky. I lived permanently afraid, an outcast among outcasts. * After my father’s death, my mother had no choice but to remarry. After the burial, many of his friends among the armed men pursued her. She did not think of them as respectable men and did not accept any person under her roof. As a young woman she dreamed of marrying a decent man with a recognizable job, good habits, and sufficient means to support her. She lived on that dream, but life treated her cruelly. Her own father, before he died, forced her to marry my father who was a widower with seven children in another town. Despite that, she submitted to her family’s will. My mother was too weak to refuse. She wanted to preserve her reputation and impose her respectability. She was afraid she might ruin her family’s status, as she often repeated, and refused to allow anyone to ignore it. When Radi came and asked her to marry him, she accepted. I said to her: “Mum, what about marrying someone respectable?” In an aggrieved tone, she said: “That’s no longer possible.” She defied the image she had created for herself of the marriage she wanted. She agreed to Radi living in our house, even though he did not conform in any way to her image of the ideal match. That was the least evil for her. To begin with he wasn’t bad to her; if he mistreated her at night, he would approach her in the morning like a puppy. But after the death of his son, he abused her violently and beat her up viciously. Radi wasn’t one of the armed men. She had either to marry one of them and move into that prison, the large women’s room BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015 17

ALI BADER

every day: a couple of barefooted and half-naked men stretched out on the ground being flogged. You saw only the whips rising and falling on their backs and the bright colours.

A town struck by a plague, my friend. Without law and without order. A wasteland losing its identity, plagued by people from the desert and with monsters for neighbours. A town invaded by armed men where the biggest battles were over stealing property – houses or flocks of animals. It was the epitome of vice. They halted work and ruined our religion with their demonic incantations, They turned the town into ruins emanating the stink of sewerage.

I, however, was in another world! You smile. The niqab was unable to restrain the defiance of my still youthful body. It was unable to threaten my blossoming. But what with being busy in the big house with my mother since the arrival of the armed men, my attention to the sad stories of those miserable women, my hearing the sound of their crying, and my acquaintance with many miserable details, did make a chill appear in my fresh soul and did affect my enjoyment of life.

Yes, everything changed for me. To begin with, I felt my womanhood was a flower opening inside me, but that was soon repressed by unparalleled force and violence. What I remember of those days, for example, was how entranced I was by the tone of my words when my voice changed. I started listening to my voice as though I were listening to someone else. I loved it. I felt I was a woman. I knew I had left my childhood behind for good. But afterwards I grew afraid of it. Being a woman meant being desired and wanted by others. I felt this would make one of the men that surrounded me greedy for me. So I hated the transformation and the change to the sound of my voice and the way I spoke. I even started to hate everything around me. I began to live in anguish because of my fear of my body, my fear of my womanhood. No one could endure in the face of the viciousness of those men, bodies without souls. Their mouths were like the mouths of predators. Their voices were loud and annoying like drumming on a metal box. Their hands were rough and carried whips and guns. When they looked at me I felt as though they had murder in mind.

I would walk the streets quickly so none of them noticed my firm backside. I easily recognized their depressing faces and brazen looks. They walked around in groups to monitor the enforcement of the

16 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015

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