The Bride of Amman Read online

  Sometimes I try to shut my eyes and ignore the dreaded number, but everyone seems to insist on reminding me. The latest was Mona, a good friend of mine who finished the ‘marathon’ last year at the grand old age of twenty-nine. She had no shame about sighing with relief in front of me.

  “Alhamdu lillah! Alhamdu lillah! Thank God, I managed to get married before I was thirty!”

  Honestly, the cheek of it. As if fortune had saved her from some near-fatal disaster. Utter disregard for the fact that I am on the verge of turning thirty with no fiancé in sight.

  I have never been one of ‘the fittest.’ Being one of the ‘fittest’ in this contest, to most people, equates to physical beauty. I try to seem confident and happy with my looks, but basically I’m putting on an act, playing up my strong, loveable personality to make up for what I lack in looks. I have to be cheerful and funny to compensate, but, inside, I am fragile. My heart is delicate, like glass that shatters into tiny shards, lacerating me at the slightest comment about my appearance or the slightest hint of a comparison between me and another woman in terms of my looks. I try to dismiss other women who obsess about being attractive as vacuous and stupid, and I’m always the first to crack jokes about women like that. I was the one who coined the name ‘Barbie’ for Lana, Leila’s classmate at uni. Of course, Leila was in stitches when I started that. From then on, whenever I meet the ‘terrible trio,’ they always want me to do my impersonation of her. I get out a bright red lipstick and paint my lips and cheeks, all gaudy and completely over the top. I unbutton my shirt to reveal a little cleavage, tilt my head and pout. It’s never long before Leila, Rana, and Hayat are rolling about in laughter as I strut around, flaunting my curves and fluttering my eyelashes.

  “Omarrrr…” I purr, in a soft, velvety voice. “Do you love me?”

  Rana nods, taking the part of Omar. I twirl my hair flirtatiously in my fingers, plait it and put it in my mouth. I wiggle my bum and mince about all coquettishly, until I fall flat on the floor and all four of us are in fits of hysterical giggles.

  ***

  I fetch the laptop and sit down on my bed, casting a glance at the picture of my nephew on my bedside table. I give him a quick kiss, then put it back. I open up my blog, The Jordanian Spinster, which I began last year under this pseudonym. I started it because I want to communicate with people, and talk about my fears and my dreams, and about the great expectations placed on my shoulders as a Jordanian woman in a society that is full of pressures and obligations. Most of all I write about the obsession Jordanian women have with marriage. What is it that makes us behave in such a maniacal way, often against all logic and reason?

  A few days ago, I was thinking about Ali, my nephew who I’m besotted with. My brother Mohammed got married two years ago when he was twenty-five. It was barely a couple of months after the wedding before his wife was pregnant. Ali arrived nine months later, and since that day he’s been a source of utter joy for the whole family, and for me in particular. I have developed this incredibly strong attachment to him, and he’s one of the few things in my life that still puts a smile on my face.

  But my love for gorgeous little Ali hasn’t distracted me from worrying about myself and my future. I know that time is flying by at lightning speed. My biological clock is ticking away furiously, while as far as my social clock is concerned, time has basically already stopped.

  “Will fortune ever smile on me?” I write in my blog.

  Will I ever be a mother myself one day? My anxiety grows the older I get. The years hurtle by, as oblivious and merciless as a train speeding over the frail body of a child. With each year that passes, my pain escalates and I avoid celebrating my birthday. I switch off my mobile and shut myself up in my room for the day.

  Struggling with this anxiety, I construct another world for myself, immersed in my imagination. I see myself carrying a tiny baby, a little girl I’ve named Yasmine. Her smell is like the scent of sweet jasmine nectar. I hold her close to my chest and shut my eyes. I fill this imaginary world with moments of indescribable joy, all crafted to erase my unhappy reality.

  Where does this obsession with children come from anyway? Is it an inevitable outcome that nature imposes on us women? Or is it a reflection of our social upbringing, the reality of our environment that forces our thoughts in this direction? Is it a selfish need that arises from our fear of death and our desire for a successor to inherit our genes? Or does it stem from the effusive energy that emanates from a woman’s heart, a source of compassion that needs a receptacle to pour into? Is it an innate role she is predestined to assume to complete the cycle of life?

  I sigh, and continue writing.

  Who can I blame in this world for making my whole life revolve around a man who is notable only by his absence? Do I curse Cinderella? Or Snow White? Should I despise Shakespeare for planting the seed of Romeo and Juliet in my imagination? Or is it perhaps all my schoolteacher’s fault for filling my mind with romantic poetry, such as the story of Leila and Majnun, of Qais’s undying love for Leila? Or maybe the poet Jamil ibn Ma’mar is to blame with his eulogies of chaste love for Buthaynah, honouring his passion which would never and could never be fulfilled.

  I delete the last paragraph and then click the ‘post’ button. I wait a while, then reload the page. I check the number of comments in the hope that someone might have already read it and written something in response. I find the number is zero, so open my emails to kill some time. A few minutes later I leave my email and open my blog page again. The number has changed to one, so I open the comments. There is one posted by someone with the user name Yasmine:

  How I have dreamed of a mother to hold me tight and show me that tenderness you describe in a woman’s love for a baby she has not yet given birth to. Because, dear friend, I lost my mother when I was a young child and I grew up trying to picture how she would look, and imagine the love and affection she would lavish on me. As time went by, my mother’s image has changed in my mind’s eye, but my longing for her loving embrace has never diminished with the years, and since I got married and had children myself, I, too, as a mother have been elated to smell that sweet nectar scent on my sons and daughters.

  If I could turn back time, I would run into your arms, desperate to feel the comfort of your love and affection. I’d throw my arms around you as the mother whom I have never known except in my imagination. I have always wondered what goes through my mother’s mind: has she forgotten me? Does she miss me? Would she recognise me? Does she see me out and about as she goes about her life? Do I pop up in her daydreams like she does in mine?

  Today is the first time I’ve had an answer to my questions, as if God Almighty gave her a way to send me a message through you. In her world, she has indeed always been holding me close and breathing in my sweet nectar scent. Now, at last, I can relax, reassured. So thank you, Mum. I love you, too, and I am so excited about finally meeting you one day.

  And you, dear friend, I’m sure your little girl Yasmine is just as excited about meeting you one day, too.

  Please, for your sake and hers, I hope that day will be soon.

  Thank you,

  Yasmine

  Wow. I am completely bowled over by Yasmine’s words! For a moment I genuinely feel we are mother and daughter. That we are one single entity, bound together by an invisible thread which fate wrenched from us and threw away into the depths of time. I can’t help wondering if there really is a hidden link between us.

  Is it insane to imagine that we could really have been a mother and daughter in another life and another era? Or that maybe we still will be some day in another life to come? Might fate somehow intervene in bringing Yasmine’s life to an end, thus passing her soul to the child I may one day have?!

  I shudder, quickly trying to shake this disturbing idea. Have I completely lost my mind, to the extent that I might rejoice, even for a moment, in the idea of another person dying? How can I possibly allow such selfish instin
cts to rampage through my mind without even being aware of it?

  I desperately need a cigarette. I get up to open my bedroom window and close the door. I rummage around for the packet amongst all the make-up and stuff in my handbag. I take out a cigarette and light it, standing next to the window, on guard in case my father enters suddenly. My eyes catch sight of the picture of the tattered lungs on the packet and, unconsciously, I read the warning, ‘Smoking kills.’

  I take a deep drag and then another, and another. I finish the cigarette and go back to bed. I try to sleep but I can’t. My mind is spinning with Yasmine’s words and my grandmother’s. There are moments when I feel certain that I’ll never get married, and I feel like I’m having a panic attack. My heart starts racing and I can’t catch my breath.

  I close my eyes again and hold Yasmine tight to my chest. A stranger’s arms reach out and take her from me.

  “Yasmine!” I scream, as I see her drifting further and further away from me. I scream and scream, and I open my eyes. I get up, light another cigarette, then a second and a third, and so on until the early hours of the morning.

  Hayat

  Why do I always fall for such losers?

  It took a while for my boss’s words to sink in. She was sacking me from my job in her dressmaking sweatshop and she was saying it with the same mix of patronising bluntness and disdain that I’d got used to over the past few months.

  “I don’t employ filthy girls!” she said, looking down her nose at me. “The reputation of a workplace is the reputation of its employees.”

  So I spat in her face and walked out. My entire body was shaking from nerves. I was shocked by her spiteful tone, and overtaken by feeling of injustice and exploitation, and that oh-so-familiar sense of dread about the future—a fear that’s been with me all my life.

  It was pouring with rain that day in the streets around Swéfiéh, but I kept on walking, aimlessly like a zombie, plodding onwards but without any kind of conscious intention. My modest salary had just evaporated, and along with it my dream of finishing university. How on earth could I pay for the fees now? It was out of the question.

  I’ve had so much going on in my head and in my life over the past few months. It hasn’t been easy working with that emotionless witch of a boss, always speaking down to us and treating us like slaves. She takes advantage of our weakness and the fact that we rely on her measly wages, and she’s always threatening to fire us over the slightest thing, claiming that there are hundreds of girls queuing up to work for her, or even to do the same job for a lower wage. We just have to put up with it, and work overtime whenever she tells us to. We’re used to working at weekends and on holidays, and to having our pay docked for whatever trivial reason she thinks up. And we are powerless to complain because we all need the job: there just isn’t anything better out there.

  I sped up my footsteps, fleeing from a vision of the malicious pleasure my dad takes in hollering at me. The faster I went, the louder his voice rang out in my ears: “And where’s your brothers’ share?” The amount I contribute is never enough; he’s always trying to control what’s left of my wages. Sometimes it seems like he’s jealous of me being able to look after myself, while he himself is struggling to meet our basic needs. He’s always putting obstacles in front of me and coming up with problems out of thin air. And he haunted my mind as I ran home—towards him, towards the house, the question going round and round my head, What am I going to do?

  All I knew was that I couldn’t bear to face him. There was no way I could justify losing my job. He would probe for details and would try to find out what happened from my boss. He might just ring her and ask her straight out, or even go round there and ask her to take me back.

  I told myself I’d deny whatever she told him and accuse her of lying. Surely he’d believe me? No, I couldn’t count on it. Perhaps I’d just tell my mum; she’d give me a bit of breathing space for a few days, and who knows, I might even find another job that could save me from a confrontation with my father.

  I should have known that my boss would hear about me and Qais. Girls are such gossips and I haven’t been particularly secretive. Especially as I fell in love so bad: I’ve found it impossible to keep my feelings to myself. I couldn’t help sharing snippets about our relationship with my friends at work, letting them know how things were going.

  Of course, it’s not like I’ve been going around bragging about it. There were only two girls there that I trusted: one of them was always there to support me, while the other friend warned me to be careful. She was uneasy about the fact that Qais was married, she didn’t like the age difference between us, and she didn’t believe he would ever leave his wife and ask me to marry him. I didn’t listen to her, of course, and I particularly resented the way she put it, in no uncertain terms.

  “Hayat, Qais is taking you for a ride. You’re still young. Just be really careful.”

  I’m not young. I’m more mature and aware than most girls my age. Partly because I’m curious by nature and have an intense desire to learn, and partly it’s because of the challenges I’ve had to live through that have made me need to grow up quickly. Life is a harsh teacher, because it makes us sit our exams way before we’re ready, before we’ve even started revising. It forces us to learn from our mistakes and tough experiences, rather than having the luxury of learning from the mistakes of others. Well, let her say what she likes; I’m not your typical nineteen-year-old girl. Life has been hard on me, it’s shown no mercy, and I’ve learnt a lot of lessons the hard way. Never mind the fact that my name means ‘life’—life isn’t interested in making me any concessions! “Give me a break, life!”, I sometimes find myself saying. “Couldn’t you be a bit gentler on your namesake?”

  Life, Hayat—maybe it’s my name that keeps me going. I repeat it to myself in my darkest moments, and it gives me the energy and the will to move forward. But what I’d do for a normal life like other people. I want to live, to soar, and to wipe out the memory of the past. I’m exhausted by the burden on my shoulders, always holding me back. But I won’t let it break me, I won’t let it!

  I broke down into tears once, in the street not far from our house, when a butterfly landed on my shoulder. I saw life in the flutter of its wings and, since that day, I have clung on to life and my right to soar—even if it does sometimes feel like my wings are clipped.

  Qais got really frustrated with me the day before yesterday. He’s no longer satisfied with just cuddling, touching, and kissing. He wants to penetrate me. He says he wants to feel that our relationship is complete. He doesn’t want me to be just half a lover, but a full woman he can form a union with in the same way as he can with his wife. I asked him to wait, to leave his wife first and marry me. I’m not going to squander my virginity before I get married. He didn’t like that. He says he can’t leave her right now; he still needs a few months to end things with her.

  I’m not sure I believe him, although I wish I could have more confidence in him, and part of me wants to give myself to him fully, but I just can’t. Maybe it’s my friend, the girl from work, or maybe it’s the voice of reason, or maybe it’s a survival instinct that’s stopping me, I don’t know, but there is a red line and I know full well that it shouldn’t be crossed.

  Anyway, my relationship with Qais in no way justifies me losing my job! This is my life and it’s my business—that woman has no right to judge me like that. She hasn’t got a clue about my relationship with him and neither do I know the ins and outs of his relationship with his wife. I didn’t think I could ever allow myself to fall in love with a married man, but I’ve been drawn into loving him unconsciously, without really reflecting on what the consequences would be.

  I needed a man who could restore hope to my life, a knight in shining armour who would deliver me from my father’s house and crown me as his queen. But why do I always fall for such losers? I have no idea. Perhaps it’s because pleasing my father and putting a smile on his fa
ce was a challenge that plagued me throughout my childhood? Or perhaps because my unhappiness finds companionship in other people’s misery? I guess it means I don’t feel strange in their arms.

  Qais was pretty down the day I met him on the Internet. I felt relaxed with him, like I’d never felt with another man before. Our conversation flowed effortlessly, as he talked freely about his life and what was on his mind. He read passages from his life to me like an open book, page after page, without hesitation.

  He said he felt suffocated at home with his wife, so he’d turned to the Internet in search of a lifeline. He was looking for someone to open his heart up to, a girl who could bring a smile to his face—something long forgotten. He was right about that: life does sometimes throw a stranger in our path who brings out a smile, when even the people closest to us can’t. We both planted that seed of happiness within each other’s hearts, but as it grew it turned out to have been the seed of love.

  So, the first love of my life is a married man. I’ve learned to accept this fact and live with it. I understand his circumstances and usually I believe his promises. I have been patient and endured it, hoping that fate would look kindly on me and he would one day make me his wife. I live in the hope of a better life. Real life is too hard without daydreams.

  But the day I lost my job, I had no hope; my daydreams were smothered. I was enveloped in a vast, black spider’s web, its crippling threads deliberately woven by fate to catch me. One fearsome thread choked off my sense of physical security; another cut off any hope of a better future; a third tightened around me, leaving me vulnerable, easy prey at the mercy of my father.