Layla AlAmmar - The Pact We Made

My heart throbbed in my fingertips, and I pressed them into the fabric of the sofa. My scalp tingled like a million insects were crawling across it. This uncomfortable feeling, which I should have been used to by then, strangled me. I had an urge to bolt, to feign illness – and wasn’t I sick? – and leave. But I stayed put and struggled not to fidget.

He tried, asking me what I liked to do in my free time, and I confessed my illustrations. He seemed genuinely impressed and asked what it was I drew.

‘Monsters, mainly,’ I said, gritting my teeth when Mama’s fingers pinched the skin behind my knee. ‘Big hairy ones with ugly teeth.’

Mama laughed it off, pinched me again, then quickly changed the subject. She hadn’t seen my new Ariel obsession, only the Goyas that were multiplying on the walls in my room. She’d begged me to take them down, but I refused.

The Caprices. Eighty etchings in which Goya condemned the follies of eighteenth-century Spanish society. I often thought the Europe of that time was remarkably similar to twenty-first-century Arabia: the ignorance and shortcomings; vices and marital foolishness; the rationality infected by persistent superstitions. It was all there, in those grotesque images, with the anthropomorphized asses and the scheming witches and the yawning maws of terrible men. I’d printed out a third of them already, taping them to the wall even though Mama had yelled at me that it would ruin the paint, and why would I do that for something so hideous.

They were hideous; I couldn’t argue with that. At times, I confess, I struggled to see the ‘art’. But there was something there that stayed in my mind long after I’d stopped looking at the prints, and perhaps that was essentially what art was. It was not light and shadow – those belong to Doré – nor was it the playground of Blake, full of prophecies and symbols. It was not the chilling details of Dürer or the Gothicism of Harry Clarke. I couldn’t name it, but there was something there that required my continued attention.

When they were gone, Mama followed me upstairs to my room. I was already unzipping the dress, letting the petal skirt and cream bodice fall to the floor. I nearly tripped over it in my heels and did a little side shuffle in an attempt to stay upright. Mama watched from the door with a frown, but I managed to get the dress off the floor and into a heap on the bed without injury.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘he’s perfect, right?’

I chuckled, stepping out of my shoes and rubbing my toes. ‘That’s what you said about the last guy.’

‘He was perfect too, and if you had put in a bit more effort maybe you’d be engaged to a doctor now.’

‘So he was better than this guy?’ I asked. She made a noise of frustration and threw her hands up. I shrugged on a robe and let down my hair, pulling out the strong, sharp bobby pins to free the heavy curls. ‘Does it not matter at all who I marry?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘As long as it’s a good match, I don’t care who it is.’ I turned to her, eyes wide, and she crossed her arms under her breasts. ‘And if you don’t like my choices, maybe we’ll go to khataba and see who she can find.’

‘A matchmaker?!’ I gaped at her. ‘Are you insane?’

She shrugged. ‘Many people use them nowadays. What do you think, Dahlia, that there’s one perfect man out there for you? Do you think you’ll fall in love, and then he’ll come seeking your hand?’ It was on the tip of my tongue to mention Mona’s love match, but I swallowed the words down and yanked out a tangled pin, pulling three long black strands with it. ‘Children think that way,’ she continued. ‘You’re much too old for such nonsense.’

‘I’ve never said anything about a love match.’

‘Your actions speak loud enough! Tell me; tell me what’s wrong with this one? What do you object to?’

I shook my head down at the little mound of bobby pins before me, and I could only speak the truth. ‘Nothing.’

I didn’t have to look to know a smile had spread across her face. ‘So, I can tell his mother “yes”?’

The moment felt monumental. The expectations, Mama’s hopes and dreams, my fears and any courage buried in me seemed to dance in the air between us. It was not a dance; it was a battle, a frigid war I hadn’t agreed to. I could have said yes, if only to avoid another fight, on the off chance that he’d say no. I saw his warm brown eyes, his white smile, his nods and jokes. He wouldn’t object. And in any case, I couldn’t risk it, not with a voice like that.

I shook my head, and it was all she needed. Crossing the threshold, she took hold of my arm and jerked me towards her, grabbing my other bicep and shaking me hard.

‘Are you trying to kill me?’ Her fingers dug into my skin; I was not at all protected by the flimsy robe. ‘Why are you doing this to me, Dahlia? Why!’

‘I’m not doing anything to you.’ In my head it was a scream, but it came out as a whimper. ‘This isn’t about you.’

She was still shaking me, and she was so mad, when she spoke, I was hit with spittle. ‘Is this your way of punishing me? Tell me! You’re punishing me, aren’t you?’

‘No!’

‘Then give me one reason, one good reason to say no to him.’

‘I don’t have to give you any reason!’ I broke her hold, inadvertently shoving her away so she hit my dresser with her hip. The vanity swayed precariously, the big, heavy mirror threatening to tip over, until I rushed to steady it.

I was breathing hard. I didn’t look at her, my eyes focused on where mirror and table met, trying to keep it upright. ‘You can’t force me to marry him, or anyone, no matter how much you wish you could.’

She was quiet for a long moment. Long enough for me to set the mirror right. Long enough for me to pick up the toppled-over perfume bottles and tubes of lotion. Long enough that I no longer had an excuse not to look her in the eye. So quiet, and I thought there could not be anymore to say and why wouldn’t she leave and how much worse did she want me to feel?

‘Do you never want to get married?’

There were tears now, but I wouldn’t let her see them. ‘I’m not even thirty yet. It’s too soon to worry about that.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ she replied, turning to leave. ‘It isn’t at all.’

In the shower I scrubbed myself raw, until my skin was an angry red – just like the showers when I was fifteen.

I realized a long time ago that, in a lot of ways, my body is not strictly mine. It’s a shared entity, something to be criticized, guarded, commented on, and violated. I learned it at twelve when Nadia said I should start shaving my legs. She sat with me in the bathroom, showing me how to lather up with lots of soap, how to go against the grain – ‘So it cuts at the root, idiot!’ – and how to tear off tiny bits of tissue to plug up nicks. At thirteen Baba decided I wasn’t dressing right. I had to wear skirts with hems below the knee and long shirts that fully covered my butt. Why I should have to hide my thirteen-year-old body from strange eyes I never asked, although I soon learned if you caught a man’s attention, no amount of baggy clothing would deter him. Sleeveless tops were forbidden and V-necks couldn’t dip too low (though at the time, there was nothing to conceal). At fifteen any sense of self I had, any sense of control, was ripped away from me, taken to a place where I feared I would never find it. At seventeen, when I was eating non-stop, Mama forced me to the memsha , a public walkway that stretches around our neighborhood, driving the car on the parallel road while I ran because nobody would marry a fat girl. At weddings, appraising eyes dissected me. In the street, men with greasy eyes let out catcalls.