of them died. In childbirth. From infection. One died from snakebite. In any event—and I learned this from Adam, who liked to recount the old man’s, as he called them, “negative blessings”—at last Torabe married a young woman who ran away from him, and could not be brought back. He’d been notorious for tracking and bringing back his runaway wives before. This one drowned herself, in water that didn’t even reach her knees, rather than return.
She’d gone to her parents and asked them how they expected her to endure the torture: he had cut her open with a hunting knife on their wedding night, and gave her no opportunity to heal. She hated him. Her parents had no answer for her. Her father instructed her mother to convince her of her duty. Because she was Torabe’s wife, her place was with him, her mother told her. The young woman explained that she bled. Her mother told her it would stop: that when she herself was cut open she bled for a year. She had also cried and run away. Never had she gotten beyond the territory of men who returned her to her tribe. She had given up, and endured. Now her mother stood in the shadow of the girl’s father, a man she despised, waiting for death, but, in the meantime, longing for grandchildren, which she hoped this errant daughter would provide. There is nothing in the world to kiss but small children, said the mother, turning away from her daughter’s tears.
Torabe was thrown out of the village because he lost control of his wife, a very evil thing to do in that society because it threatened the fabric of the web of life. At least the web of life as the villagers knew it. He died deserted, filthy and in tatters. The girl’s family too was ordered out of the village, and the girl herself was dragged from the river and left to rot, her body food for vultures and rodents.
Now, said my mother, rising to place a log on the fire, your father always mentions the fact that he and I had “lively” conversation there in Torabe’s hut, as he reluctantly washed the old man, but he never remembers what our conversation was about.
It was, said my mother, about a young woman in Algeria who worked for us, and who nearly suffered the same fate as Torabe’s wife. It was about how, at last, I recognized the connection between mutilation and enslavement that is at the root of the domination of women in the world. Her name was Ayisha, and she ran to us one night screaming from the sight of the variety of small, sharp instruments her anxious mother had arranged underneath a napkin on a low seating cushion that rested beside the bridal bed.
My mother suddenly shuddered, as though watching a frightful scene. It’s in all the movies that terrorize women, she said, only masked. The man who breaks in. The man with the knife. Well, she said, he has already come. She sighed. But those of us whose chastity belt was made of leather, or of silk and diamonds, or of fear and not of our own flesh… we worry. We are the perfect audience mesmerized by our unconscious knowledge of what men, with the collaboration of our mothers, do to us.
After a long pause she said: This episode with Ayisha, who was returned to her family, who beat her for running away—and actually we never knew what became of her—is at the root of my refusal to marry; even though in France there are no instruments of torture beside the bed.
And the Marquis de Sade? I asked.
Thankfully only one man, she said, and thankfully not in this century. She laughed. And thankfully not beside my bed.
Perhaps, I said. But surely his cruelty to women is lodged in the collective consciousness of the French? Like the zest of Rabelais, the wit of Molière?
Perhaps, she murmured, and seemed to lose herself gazing into the fire.
PART NINE
EVELYN
I FELT NO COMPUNCTION about opening letters that came from Lisette to Adam, letters which sometimes contained copies of letters she’d received from her uncle Mzee touching on my case; or even,
She’d gone to her parents and asked them how they expected her to endure the torture: he had cut her open with a hunting knife on their wedding night, and gave her no opportunity to heal. She hated him. Her parents had no answer for her. Her father instructed her mother to convince her of her duty. Because she was Torabe’s wife, her place was with him, her mother told her. The young woman explained that she bled. Her mother told her it would stop: that when she herself was cut open she bled for a year. She had also cried and run away. Never had she gotten beyond the territory of men who returned her to her tribe. She had given up, and endured. Now her mother stood in the shadow of the girl’s father, a man she despised, waiting for death, but, in the meantime, longing for grandchildren, which she hoped this errant daughter would provide. There is nothing in the world to kiss but small children, said the mother, turning away from her daughter’s tears.
Torabe was thrown out of the village because he lost control of his wife, a very evil thing to do in that society because it threatened the fabric of the web of life. At least the web of life as the villagers knew it. He died deserted, filthy and in tatters. The girl’s family too was ordered out of the village, and the girl herself was dragged from the river and left to rot, her body food for vultures and rodents.
Now, said my mother, rising to place a log on the fire, your father always mentions the fact that he and I had “lively” conversation there in Torabe’s hut, as he reluctantly washed the old man, but he never remembers what our conversation was about.
It was, said my mother, about a young woman in Algeria who worked for us, and who nearly suffered the same fate as Torabe’s wife. It was about how, at last, I recognized the connection between mutilation and enslavement that is at the root of the domination of women in the world. Her name was Ayisha, and she ran to us one night screaming from the sight of the variety of small, sharp instruments her anxious mother had arranged underneath a napkin on a low seating cushion that rested beside the bridal bed.
My mother suddenly shuddered, as though watching a frightful scene. It’s in all the movies that terrorize women, she said, only masked. The man who breaks in. The man with the knife. Well, she said, he has already come. She sighed. But those of us whose chastity belt was made of leather, or of silk and diamonds, or of fear and not of our own flesh… we worry. We are the perfect audience mesmerized by our unconscious knowledge of what men, with the collaboration of our mothers, do to us.
After a long pause she said: This episode with Ayisha, who was returned to her family, who beat her for running away—and actually we never knew what became of her—is at the root of my refusal to marry; even though in France there are no instruments of torture beside the bed.
And the Marquis de Sade? I asked.
Thankfully only one man, she said, and thankfully not in this century. She laughed. And thankfully not beside my bed.
Perhaps, I said. But surely his cruelty to women is lodged in the collective consciousness of the French? Like the zest of Rabelais, the wit of Molière?
Perhaps, she murmured, and seemed to lose herself gazing into the fire.
PART NINE
EVELYN
I FELT NO COMPUNCTION about opening letters that came from Lisette to Adam, letters which sometimes contained copies of letters she’d received from her uncle Mzee touching on my case; or even,
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