Saturday Night Widows (38 page)

“Tell her she is our hero,” said Marcia.

Saida translated, and Naima laughed, a firm, barking laugh, the first break in our guests’ restraint.

Silence descended again as the next course appeared. According to Saida, it was called
b’stilla
, a dense creation of seafood, vermicelli, and black trumpet mushrooms infused with lemon, saffron, and cinnamon and wrapped like a present in sheets of flaky phyllo dough. While we picked through the crust to vent a fragrant steam, I noticed the Moroccans studying Tara’s embellished silver top and dangling earrings with sidelong fascination. The rest of us had
introduced ourselves. Tara was the only one who hadn’t yet shared any particulars.

As if on cue, she cleared her throat in a manner meant to attract an audience. “My husband died almost two years ago,” she began. I thought she’d leave it at that, but her smile was fixed and so was her mind, as if accessing a memory bank. “Um … he died of, um … heart failure, but it was due to … to an illness.” She sighed audibly and shot me a what-the-hell look, barreling ahead. “He was addicted to alcohol,” she said decidedly.

Naima, our guest from the country, following a moment later in Arabic, reacted as if jolted by an electric shock. She interrupted in a staccato, guttural dialect.

“Her husband was also very sick,” said Saida with surprise, “and it was almost the same problem.”

Naima and Tara locked eyes, and a whole new dynamic took over. We all began to talk at once, a riot of conversation, in whatever language. Even Rashida, the silent one, broke her affectless composure. She still did not speak, but she was newly alert to the heightened exchange.

“But I am dating a lovely man now,” Tara assured everyone over the din.

“Becky is married again,” Lesley tossed in. “And I also want to say I’m dating somebody.”

Our Moroccan guests perked up at this hint of gossip and congratulated our seeming good fortune. “They ask you, Lesley, are you going to marry him?” Saida asked.

“I don’t know. He has children who are difficult.”

“Because for us, if you are dating somebody or know somebody, you
have
to marry,” Saida said. “It is not acceptable to be dating. In
Morocco, you should not be with your husband before you marry. You should not even have coffee with him. His family will come to your family, and you can see him then and decide. My husband saw me at university, but this is what he did before we could speak.”

Of course we knew this was the custom in some countries, but it was so far outside our ken, to our Western ears, it sounded barbaric. Dawn wore her disbelief like a billboard. “But what if someone who wants to marry you is totally wrong?” she stammered.

“How can you know this person? How?” Saida answered. “It is, as we say, like a pomegranate.” She cupped her hands to illustrate. “You take the pomegranate, open it.” She turned her palms upward and lifted first one, then the other. “It could be red. It could be white. It could be sour. It could be sweet. It is up to fate how lucky you will be.”

“If you date someone, that’s it? You’re
done
?” Dawn was still incredulous.

Saida and the other Moroccans nodded in unison. “This is what we do as Muslims.”

The soft-spoken Magda directed a remark to Saida, then turned her grave, shy smile toward Dawn.

“She says she feels so sorry she cannot communicate with you.”

Dawn looked at the childlike Magda, conscious of her youth. “Ask her whether she wants to marry again.”

“Yes, she would love to, but her son forbids. Someone introduced her to a man who wanted to marry her, but her son cried.”

“See? More problems with children,” Tara said, exasperated. “Why does a fifteen-year-old have so much power?”

The Arab speakers held a vigorous discussion, and Saida cut through it. “She is sure that if she marries, the husband will not
treat him like a son. All women who are divorced or widowed find it hard if they have children. And when they are grown, when a woman is more than forty, she becomes too old.”

I saw Magda’s options shrinking before my eyes. All the obstacles we faced in starting over paled beside what she had to contend with. Saida explained what was considered the correct attitude toward the loss of a spouse: “God gives you this person but takes this person. When we are born, we know we all will die at a certain time. So we should not be sad. We should accept our fate.”

“How does Naima keep finding husbands, if it’s so difficult?” I asked, indicating our guest in the brilliant blue robe.

“Some things are changing. She is very strong, like a
rebellion
woman. And now a friend has sent her
another
proposal. This man has a house he will give to her.”

So Naima was a Moroccan
widow provocateur
, in opposition to strictures that imposed a circumscribed destiny. Men, we learned without surprise, had few such concerns. They often selected a new bride from the crowd that came for mourning. Sounded familiar, I thought—sympathy marriage instead of sympathy sex. “He can marry as soon as the first night, the following day,” Saida said. “Usually he marries a young woman. My father is seventy. His wife is younger than me, thirty-seven years old.”

“But she will be a widow!” Dawn cried over our general objections.

“She’d rather be a widow
with a house
.”

I considered how far our romantic visions differed from the transactional nature of marriage in this poor country, and from the look on Lesley’s face, she must have been thinking the same. “Did they love their husbands?” she asked.

Magda nodded, and Naima looked impatient to answer, but she checked herself abruptly as waiters arrived to pour mint tea. As soon as they left, she spoke in a straightforward way. “With her last husband,” Saida said, “she wished it was she who passed away and not him, because he treated her well. She loved him a lot. The first one, too. She is lucky woman.” Then Naima’s words turned rapid and harsh, and she shot sideways looks toward Tara. “But the second one, the one she divorced,” Saida continued, “because of the drinking, he did not treat her well.”

We could barely hear Saida finish, because a wild clamor of Arabic erupted. The previously silent Rashida, initially afraid to speak, was galvanized to do it now, and whatever she said lobbed a grenade into the dialogue. If we had assumed she was a timid creature, her full, strident voice set us straight, and the others’ reactions matched her in vehemence. The Americans, uncomprehending, turned to Saida for guidance.

“You have to hear this,” she finally said. “Rashida did
not
love her husband. She felt so happy when he passed away.”

Now that Rashida had found her voice, it would not be stopped, and Saida translated in tandem with diplomatic efficiency. Rashida was turned not toward Saida, but to a disconcerted Tara, as if willing her to understand, and smacked her open palm against the table for emphasis, over and over, until the teacups clattered.

“Her husband used to drink a lot,” Saida said intently, “and he would come home, where she had kids. He would tell her, take your clothes off now. He would tell her, have sex now. In front of the kids, it doesn’t matter. He will make her do this like she is an animal, you know?”

Tara held Rashida’s furious gaze.

“When she says no, he beat her. The kids are seeing this. They are suffering. Eventually, she says she has no feeling toward him, because she
hates
him. Now finally, she is happy. She is safe.” Tara reached toward Rashida’s stout arm. Inwardly, I rejoiced that the creep would trouble her no more.

Dawn didn’t hold back. “Thank God he’s gone,” she said. “Wasn’t there someone who could help her?”

“That is what family is for in our culture,” said Saida with resignation.

Lesley began to say something, but the Moroccan women’s words grew more vehement as Rashida continued slapping the table and Naima, the strong one, the rebellious one, raised her voice to match.

She explained that she too had been abused, by her second husband, before she divorced him. “He drank, he beat her, and he broke her nose. He had a big knife, and he put it here”—Saida stretched her neck and bared her throat—“and she cannot move; he holds her like she is a puppet. When the kids come home from school, they saw her face was red and there was blood and everything. She divorced him, and now she is safe.”

Everyone around the table, Moroccan and American, was fired by anger beyond speech. I wanted to express everything I was feeling, but I didn’t have the words, even in English. Our troubles, however slight in comparison to those of the Moroccan widows, had made them believe that they could trust their stories to us and that we would understand. I wanted to tell them that I couldn’t know what they had suffered, but I appreciated the grit it took for them to survive. I wanted to tell them that they had made me appreciate that sometimes a woman is better off being a widow than subjecting herself to degradation and abuse. Even Magda—I recognized
the boldness in her refusal to seek the support of another man who might be cruel to her son. These women were anything but meek. How could I have thought otherwise? I hoped that my face projected all that I was feeling. I looked to the other Americans and saw it on their faces, too. The voices of Rashida and Naima grew even bolder, fiercer, seeming to draw power from the unity all of us felt.

“They should do what we have done,” Lesley said. “It’s good to know other women. It’s good to talk.”

Saida translated, and the others exuded assent. “Yes, we do this, too,” Saida said. “In Morocco we have women who are suffering, who are not happy, but they have fun sometimes together. Women organize parties with their friends. We contribute money for tea and hire musicians, only women. And all the bad things inside come out. Sometimes the women dance and turn until they fall on the ground, and they lose consciousness until we spray orange water on them. Then—how do you say it?—all the genies come out of you. The bad spirits.”

“You find release,” Tara said, nodding with slow comprehension.

“Yes. You are with other women, away from your other life. And the genies are gone.”

I saw relief on the face of the once-silent Rashida, even a hint of triumph. She had survived her brutal marriage, and she had found the strength to tell the tale to strangers from a world away and make them understand.

She asked Saida to translate another thought. “This lady,” said Saida, “she asks me to tell you, it is international. It is good to talk.”

Rashida stood, beaming broadly, and clasped a startled Tara to her sizable frame. “Do they mind if we embrace them, too?” I asked.

“Of course not,” said Saida. We stood and embraced, and walked
out into the night together. At last we had hit on common ground, the one remedy we shared—the company of like-minded women as a balm against trouble, a force for good in the battle with genies.

W
E MADE OUR WAY
through the cat’s cradle of the medina, passing through medieval ramparts to a square where we said good-bye.

“We’ll likely never see them again,” Tara said in her theatrical way. The words hung in the sudden hush when a van pulled away to deliver the widows home. I was aware how much history had transpired on this spot, how little changed was this place, this people. “But we formed a bond in a moment, don’t you think?” Tara turned pensive eyes on our dazed and sobered group. “We all love. We all hurt, no matter where we come from. I felt they were our sisters, our friends in shared tragedy.”

“But they were so different,” Marcia demurred. “For us, it’s a matter of emotions, psychology, doing what we need to do to motivate ourselves. But they have this additional layer of difficulty because of their society. They don’t control their destiny, whereas we do.”

Like a pomegranate, I thought. It is up to fate how lucky you will be.

“Yes,” Tara agreed. “How much lighter we are. How scared they were … lonely … ostracized. We have already decided to lead rich, full lives. It was a stark reminder that we have a choice.”

“It was depressing,” said Dawn, still haunted by the genies we’d unleashed.

Tara shook her head. “No, I feel we lifted their spirits, and they lifted us … to keep going.” She looked at each of us with firm resolve. “Because we can.”

chapter
TWENTY-EIGHT