Saud Alsanousi - The Bamboo Stalk

Aida plunged into this world. She drank alcohol and smoked marijuana. To her everything was permissible and nothing in life had any value. She got pregnant several times but her pregnancies didn’t last long because she had abortions as soon as she found out. She didn’t want the babies and she was under pressure from her parents, who wanted her to keep her wretched job. Then, at the age of twenty-three, she became pregnant with Merla. She kept the pregnancy a secret from everyone except her younger sister, my mother, because she realised it was the only way out of work she had accepted under duress.

Aida didn’t tell her parents she was pregnant till it was too late, after she was fired from her job. By then an abortion would have been impossible. She told them she wasn’t going back to work. Without her income her mother could no longer afford medical treatment and her health deteriorated. Her father, as ever, was more interested in entering his birds in cockfights.

The family lost one member at the same time as a new member arrived. Just as Merla drew her first breath, my grandmother breathed her last.

Merla looked different. She had the features of a Filipina but she also had a pinkish white complexion, blue eyes and a sharp nose.

By that time my mother was twenty and my grandfather saw her as the perfect alternative source of income for the family, a guarantee of its survival while Aida was out of work bringing up her daughter. Since Pedro, the only son, was always busy looking for work and kept his distance from the affairs of his father and his sisters, the time had come to exploit Josephine.

3

Just as my mother was about to start on the same miserable career as Aida, one of our neighbours came round with a newspaper cutting announcing that an agent in Manila was taking applications from women who wanted to work as domestic servants in the Gulf countries. My mother took the cutting from him as if it were a ‘get out of jail free’ card and she was behind bars and starving. Aunt Aida looked at my mother and the neighbour in silence. My mother was already thinking about the suitcase she would have to buy and the other things she would need for a new life abroad. Her imagination was running riot, though of course she didn’t yet have a job. Before she had time to build up her hopes, the neighbour with the cutting added a cautionary ‘but. .’ Everyone fell silent for him to finish his sentence. ‘You have to give the agent some money to accept your application,’ he said. He went on to talk about the details and how much money was required. Everyone was stunned when he said how much, because the family couldn’t possibly raise such an amount. Aunt Aida went off to her room and my mother burst into tears from disappointment.

‘Stop crying!’ my grandfather shouted. ‘You know I’ve arranged some work for you here. Live with it.’

The neighbour left and my grandfather lay on his back on the shabby old sofa. My mother sat on the floor lamenting her fate.

My Aunt Aida came out of her room after a while, carrying Merla on her hip and holding an envelope that she handed to her younger sister. ‘My father had started to snore,’ my mother said later, recalling the moment. ‘Aida came up to me and whispered, “This is some money I’d saved for Merla. You can do what you like with it, Josephine.”

‘My father stopped snoring,’ my mother went on. ‘He opened one eye and raised his eyebrow, then sat up like a corpse that had suddenly come back to life. “While the elders sleep, the children whisper secrets!” he said.

‘He lunged towards Aida with his eyes shooting sparks. I was still on the floor. He twisted Aida’s arm in an attempt to wrest the envelope from her hand.

‘‘‘Josephine, take Merla!” she shouted. Merla was about to fall but I caught her and stood in the corner watching Aida push my father, swearing at him as he punched and kicked her. Aida was crazy. Who else would dare do that?

‘I was begging them to stop and Merla was crying in alarm. Despite the pushing and the punching, Aida and my father kept talking.

‘“Aren’t you satisfied with selling me to men and. .” said Aida.

‘“Shut up,” my father interrupted, pulling her hair and slapping her on the mouth.

‘He pushed her hard against the wall. With her front pressed to the wall, he pulled her head back by the hair.

‘“Merla,” he whispered in her ear with a snarl. I imagined his lips parting to reveal fangs and a forked tongue. “A whore’s daughter, with an unknown father.”

‘Aida couldn’t speak but her eyes were wide open in a silent scream. He continued to hiss at her.

‘“I’ll kill her if she keeps bringing trouble to this house,” he said.

‘“Trouble?” Aida asked, then burst out laughing. She looked like a madwoman, with her clothes torn and her hair dishevelled.’

My mother stopped and looked down, then turned her face towards me. ‘Do I have to tell you all these things, José?’ she asked.

I nodded and urged her to continue, so she went on. ‘I swear my father almost pissed in his pants at the sight of Aida. He took his fingers out of her hair. She moved slowly towards the door leading to the yard outside. My father followed her, and I went after, carrying Merla. Close to the low bamboo fence around the pen where he kept his cocks, under the big banana tree, Aida stopped. I stood behind my father at the back door of the house. “It’s you betting on these cockfights that’s the real trouble,” Aida said, in a voice that was hardly audible.

‘My father didn’t say a word, and Aida continued. “You’re all cockerels!” she said.

‘“It looks like your sister’s gone mad,” my father whispered to me.

‘I didn’t say a word, because she really did look mad.

‘“You’re a cockerel,” Aida said, pointing her finger at my father. “All the men I gave my body to were cockerels,” she added.

‘My father’s face showed a trace of remorse, or maybe fear, but he didn’t move an inch.

‘“Ah, ah, Aida!” he said. All he did was say her name.

‘But Aida didn’t hear him and she continued. “And I’m fed up with playing the role of hen!” she said.

She hitched up her dress above her knees and stepped over the low bamboo fence around the pen. She stood in the middle of the pen, puffed out her chest and looked up to the sky.

“Cockadoodledoo!” she crowed.

‘Then she pounced on the cocks and began to rip their heads off one by one with her bare hands. She threw the four lifeless bodies towards my father, who almost collapsed in a faint. Aida stood upright, facing us, her hands covered in blood. “Next time it’ll be your head,” she said, pointing at our father.

‘The next morning Father left home early with Aida’s envelope. He came back a few hours later carrying a wicker cage with four new cocks inside.’

4

My mother continued her story. ‘Aida and I ran into Father with his cage of birds in the narrow passageway that leads to the lane at the end of the front yard. He didn’t look in our direction. He’d been avoiding looking at Aida since the incident with the cocks. As soon as she came into sight, he looked aside as if he thought she had some eye disease and he was frightened of catching it. Aida had freed herself from slavery and put a stop to my father’s tyranny. I wanted to escape from slavery too, but I’m not Aida. That morning she took me to the grocer’s shop at the end of the lane. The grocer knew us well and had often lent us small sums of money when my mother was alive. Aida told him the whole story. She said I needed money to work abroad as a maid. The man was sympathetic, as he usually was with us, but he said he was sorry he couldn’t provide that amount. As we were about to give up and go home, he said, “I can vouch for you with the Indians. They trust me. I’ve been dealing with them for years.”