Alaa Al Aswany - Chicago

“Stay a little. It’s early and it’s so nice out here.”

She looked at him irritably, then adjusted her glasses with her finger and said in exasperation, “Enjoy it all by yourself.”

“Wait a minute, Shaymaa,” Tariq shouted to stop her, but she moved away quickly. He got up and almost hurried after her, but a few moments later he returned to his seat and followed her with his eyes until she disappeared in the crowd.

Despite the fearsome aura that surrounded Ahmad Danana, a closer look would uncover an ambiguously feminine side to him. This doesn’t mean that he is a hermaphrodite, God forbid, for he was born fully male, but there are various traits that make him look more like a shrewish woman than a stern man: his soft body is chubby with no visible muscles; the way he raises his eyebrows when surprised; the way he purses his lips and places his hands on his hips when angry; his fondness for details and secrets and his passion for gossip and use of expressions that have double meanings; his always kissing those he meets on their cheeks; and his use of womanly terms of endearment such as “darling” and “my heart’s love.” This feminine side came as a result of the influence his late mother, Hagga Badriya, had on him. For even though she was illiterate, she was a strong-willed and intractable woman who ruled with an iron fist a large household of four boys, two girls, and their father. One glance from her was enough to confound any member of the family, beginning with her husband, who with age had turned into something akin to a private secretary or an obedient underling. Danana had so internalized his mother’s personality that, unconsciously, especially when he became tense, he started adopting her mannerisms in expression, emulating the tone of her voice, her glances, and all her gestures.

Thus, after he quarreled with Marwa and slapped her, he began his machinations: he shunned her and whenever he saw her he would pout and glance at her contemptuously or sigh and throw his hands up in the air and ask God’s forgiveness in an audible voice. Or, after performing his ablution on his way to the prayer rug, he would pass by her as she watched television and throw a loaded expression at her, such as saying, for instance, “God suffices unto me, He is my best defender. May God enable me to withstand my misfortune.” Or he would say, “I hereby recite the Fatiha for my mother’s soul, she was a model wife.” This was his way of punishing his wife. Someone might ask, why was he punishing her to begin with? Shouldn’t he be apologizing to her because he slapped her?

The answer is that Danana belongs to that class of people who never blame themselves. He always thinks he is right while others make all the mistakes. He believes that the only blemish on his character is the excessive goodness of his heart, which the wicked — who were so numerous — exploited to further their own interests at his expense. He was convinced that Marwa had wronged him, that it was she who had behaved insolently toward him, forcing him to hit her. Besides, what was wrong with administering to her, from time to time, one slap of moderate strength to return her to her senses? Didn’t the unimpeachable canon law permit a man to beat his wife to discipline her? And what was wrong in his borrowing money from her father? Wasn’t it a wife’s duty to stand by her husband? Didn’t Khadija, may God be pleased with her, help her husband, the noblest of all creation, prayers and peace be upon him, with money? His wife had committed a terrible wrong against him for which she had to apologize. Were he to go easy on her this time, she would continue in her misguided ways until he lost control of her.

As for her complaint about their sexual intercourse, he considered that, with total confidence, a kind of woman’s coquettishness, no more and no less. Pleasure and pain for a woman were so intertwined that at the peak of her pleasure she cried, as if someone were beating her up violently. Hence, everything that a woman complained about in sex was, most likely in reality, a source of happiness for her. Danana once heard from one of his friends something that he came to be convinced of: that every woman’s deepest desire was to be violently raped. That indeed was what women wanted, even if they pretended otherwise. So that made woman a mysterious, incomprehensible, and contradictory being that said no when she meant yes! Didn’t the old poet say, “They show reluctance when [in fact] they desire it”? It is true that women are lacking in reason and religion, and a true man has to subjugate a woman in life as he does in bed; he should control her and lead her and, at the same time, never give her his full trust. The good ancestors handed down to us several sayings to this effect:

“Consult women, then do the opposite.”

“Fools are known by three signs: playing with lions, drinking poison to try it, and trusting women with secrets.”

And, “Avoid evil women and be cautious with good ones.”

That was how Danana viewed women, even though his experience with them before marriage had been confined to the few occasions when he had slept with maids and female farmhands for measly sums, which he had agreed to beforehand but which, once he’d had his way with them, he haggled hard to pay less. Perhaps the fact that his experience was limited to prostitutes could explain his understanding of sex not as a two-way human interaction, but rather as a violent, one-sided male act during which a woman enjoyed being raped.

Danana tightened the siege of his wife and intensified his campaign of innuendo, waiting for the moment when she would cave in and offer him an appropriate apology. But days passed and she still avoided him. In fact, the slap she had received, despite being a horrendous insult, liberated her from any feeling of marital commitment, and the shunning spared her the physical torture she had suffered several times a week. That reprieve gave her a chance to think carefully about her life with him: What did she intend to do? Her hatred of Danana had reached its utmost, but she hadn’t told her mother yet that she wanted a divorce. She was waiting until she sorted out her thoughts and knew exactly what she was going to say, like a lawyer giving herself time to study a case so that she could organize her documents and brief in such a way as to guarantee that she would prevail. She was certain of her parents’ support if they were convinced of her suffering. Her father, who burst into tears as he saw her off at the airport, and her mother, who couldn’t sleep at night if she had a simple common cold, wouldn’t leave her in that hell. She was going to call them the following Friday, when Danana would be at the Student Union meeting and her father would be just coming home. She was going to talk to them at length and tell them everything in detail. Even that private matter, she would hint at. She was giving them one option: separation and return to Egypt at once. As soon as she made up her mind she calmed down. She no longer paid any attention to his insinuations, sighs, or provocative comments. Why should she waste her energy on a new quarrel? In a few days she would leave this torment behind.

Something unexpected happened, however. The first of the month came and Marwa didn’t give Danana the thousand dollars that her father had sent. She had forgotten the matter in the midst of the problems, but Danana had not. When several days of the new month had passed, his worries increased and he was beset by apprehensions. He even suspected that she had initiated the problem between the two of them deliberately to withhold that monthly sum or to blackmail him with her demands or, more dangerously, to establish the principle that her father’s money was negotiable, that she would give it if she was happy and withhold it if she was not. All those considerations made him change his methods; so he stopped his harassment and whenever he saw her would say right away “peace be upon you,” then look at her with an understanding, loving glance tinged with a little reproach. Yesterday he took a further step and sat next to her in front of the television. She was watching an Adel Imam movie and he began to laugh out loud as a prelude to speaking with her. But she ignored him completely, as if he were not there. So he gave up and went to bed.