The Bride of Amman Read online

  I walked on and on through the streets of Amman, distracted, aimless. I didn’t stop for a bus or a taxi, but kept on going in the pouring rain, plodding on from Swéfiéh to Sports City, as if the growing discomfort in my feet would numb the pain inside, as if the rain would cleanse my wounds and wash away the pain. I willed my feet to hurt more and more to distract me and clear from my mind the fear of the days to come: fear of a life without Qais, fear of an unknown future, fear of my father who waits for my monthly pay packet even more impatiently than I do.

  Rana

  My mind was also infected with love

  He is like some kind of magnet that pulls my eyes towards him wherever he goes, no matter how I try to resist looking when I know he’s nearby. I liked him the first time I clapped eyes on him, and I liked him even more when Hayat told me the feeling was mutual and that he wanted to get to know me. I was as high as a kite until I suddenly realised something else: he’s Muslim. His religion is not the same as mine, and we live in a society that allows relationships between the two sexes only within the same religion. Even if I allowed myself to fall in love and get into a relationship with him, it would inevitably be short-lived and would end in heartache. I’m from a conservative Christian family. It’s impossible to imagine them condoning a relationship with a Muslim guy.

  But Janty won’t let me forget him; he is constantly hovering around me at uni. He’s always trying to get to know me through friends, sending me love letters from afar. He must be one of the best-looking guys at the university. I particularly like his dark features, his height, and how he dresses. He’s got plenty of friends, including girls, and no shortage of admirers.

  Well, I guess I’ve never been one for sticking to the rules. I’m rebellious by nature, and stubborn; I don’t listen to anyone except the voice in my head. I do what I think is right and what makes me happy. Even if that happiness is sometimes a long time in coming. Of course, this isn’t easy in a society that restricts a woman’s freedom, regardless of her religion, and imposes strict guidelines on how she should live her life, including every aspect of her character and how she should behave in every given situation.

  Perhaps it’s my personality, or because my mum is foreign, from a different culture, or perhaps it comes from the ethos of the private school I went to, but I’m always very conscious of the contradictory messages I get from the world around me. Everyone seems to want to construct my moral framework for me, in a society that strikes me as schizophrenic and very masculine. Whereas I’m a female, a young woman trying to feed a craving for gender equality and personal freedom. I gather up all the contradictions I see around me and stir them into the melting pot of my personality, mixing them in with what my instinct tells me is right.

  I’ve got used to his bashful glances at me from afar when I’m hanging around with Leila and Hayat in the Business faculty courtyard at our uni, the University of Jordan. Sometimes I forget myself and find myself gazing back, until Hayat’s laughter wakes me up from my reverie.

  “Who are you staring at?” she laughs. Of course, it’s perfectly obvious, and I can’t help feeling a bit embarrassed when they catch me drifting off when I’m watching him.

  The other day I saw him going into the faculty building for a lecture, so I tugged them both and hurried them into the lecture hall. It was one of those moments when I kidded myself into thinking there was nothing wrong with me getting to know him as a friend, that a platonic relationship was nothing to be afraid of. I desperately wanted to get to know him up close, and I never wanted those admiring glances to come to an end.

  In the end, I took the initiative. I spotted him as soon as I came into the lecture hall. He was sitting in the third row, and the two seats next to him were free. I rushed over to the empty seat next to him and asked him, blushing, if it was reserved for someone else. He smiled and said no. I grabbed Hayat’s notebook and put it on the other seat, and asked Leila to quickly go and take the empty seat in the row behind.

  “But there are three seats free together there,” she started to object. I gave her a look as if to say, “Just do it!”

  “Go on,” I urged her. “I’ve already sat down. I’m not moving now.”

  That was an odd experience, as we sat alongside each other in the lecture hall, strangers, but as if we had known each other for years. My heart raced every time I imagined that he might be just about to strike up a conversation with me. It raced even more when I decided to start it myself. But then I stopped myself at the last minute, as all I could think of to say seemed boring, and the last thing I wanted was to appear dull. He made one comment. I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or not, and I didn’t catch exactly what he said, but I nodded and smiled silently, like an idiot.

  Outside, after the lecture, I hesitated, and then I headed over to him. He had lit a cigarette and was standing alone near a window. I walked halfway and then almost changed my mind, but it was too late. He saw me approaching and smiled. I babbled like I was speaking for the first time in my life. The words tumbled out of my mouth one at a time, as if they were shy and were waiting to be pushed out. I fumbled about for the right words to utter, anxious to dress them with the right tone of voice, not too warm or too cold.

  “Hi. Could I possibly borrow your notes to photocopy them? I didn’t catch everything he said.”

  He replied with a beaming smile. I sensed his embarrassment, too, as though he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. The girl he had had his eye on for months had just walked up and asked to borrow his notes? It clearly meant just one thing: that the feeling was mutual.

  “Of course you can. If you want, we could go and copy them together?”

  Like a kid playing with fire, I felt a tingle of excitement mixed with fear. I moved closer to him, gingerly, cautiously watching my steps and my words. The closer I got, the more I felt his warmth, and the more I felt that warmth, the more I craved heat, like a piece of ice longing to evaporate.

  We didn’t exactly make the most of those few minutes to get to know each other on our way to the photocopying room. We were both just a bundle of nerves. But we realised that even though we stumbled over our words, our hearts were somehow deep in conversation, in their own secret language that was plain to see on our faces and in our gestures. We realised that we both felt strangely comfortable side by side: a feeling I don’t think either of us had ever really felt before.

  To my surprise, when we went our separate ways afterwards, my head was pounding, as if I was addicted to his presence after just one dose. I felt intoxicated, staggering between a heart that was drawn to a man who was forbidden, a body that longed to inhale the heavenly breath of love, and a rational mind trying to corral those two instincts into behaving sensibly.

  Or so I thought at the beginning, until I realised it was too late and I was already infected with love. Any logical capacities I had ever possessed were warped by this fever as I fell under his seductive power.

  Part Two

  Leila

  Securing the best chances of bagging a husband

  Barely a few days had passed since I got my exam results before my mum started piling on the pressure about finding a job. It wasn’t my future career or the salary she was thinking about, although my parents would certainly be glad of the extra income. No, her main concern was about me securing the best chances of bagging a husband.

  Most men looking to get married these days are unable to support a family on their income alone, so they hope to find a wife who can help share the financial burden of raising children. This has ironic implications for women in our society: our hard-won right to go out to work has turned into a duty, another chore that doesn’t reduce the long list of other chores waiting for us at home. A working woman is still a housewife, too. It has become expected of women now that they should do the housework, tend to the needs of their husband and children, and somehow find the energy for a job outside the home. They have to juggle all these demands at
the same time. Meanwhile, men only have to focus on their jobs and on providing for the family financially. A Jordanian man isn’t ashamed of accepting his wife’s help economically, but it would be shameful for him to help share her burden of cleaning, cooking, and washing.

  A man is considered a good catch if he has a job with a good salary. Meanwhile, to qualify as a potential bride, a woman has to be beautiful, the right age, morally impeccable, a talented cook and cleaner, and have a degree and a job. Maximising the chances of finding a fiancé is a very difficult and complex game, so a job has become a precondition.

  My sister Salma was extremely frustrated, though, by the response when she got a promotion last month. She had expected everyone to be delighted and to want to celebrate her success with her, but she was shocked by people’s reaction, just as I was when I finished my degree—with a distinction, no less! She had also failed to see the bigger picture, namely that the ultimate goal is to find a husband, not to progress in your career. Instead of being showered with blessings, she faced a hailstorm of reproach and warnings. Most people think that the higher a woman gets promoted, the less chance she has of ever getting married!

  What kind of madness is this? The logic is that a Jordanian man would never marry a woman with a higher salary or a more important job than his. It must be an inferiority complex. In our society’s public consciousness, the man is still seen as superior, and a woman is only worthy of praise and admiration when her good fortune and success are shared with her husband. The man is the master of the house and it is he who holds the reins of power, including the purse strings, even if the financial role has become more difficult for men these days.

  As for me, I assumed my first-class degree would make it much easier to find a job. I was pretty confident that I would find something suitable without too much trouble, although everyone around me seemed intent on crushing my optimism with talk of the economic crisis and the need for contacts.

  “No one can get a job these days!”

  “If you don’t have contacts, there’s no way you’ll find a job!”

  But I refused to listen to them. I found advice online about how to write a CV, and I included a bullet point you couldn’t miss about coming top in my year. I started sending it off here and there, and it was only two days before companies started contacting me to ask me in for an interview.

  I was delighted when I got offered a position in a bank. It’s seen as a respectable job for a girl and a sensible working environment, with reasonable hours, meaning it meets society’s requirements for a woman to work and be a housewife at the same time. And, of course, my mum was over the moon and immediately started showing off to all her friends.

  I didn’t know what to expect of my first day at work, because I’d never had a job before. It was a mix of excitement, terror, and feeling alone. I felt like an outsider in a system made up of hundreds of people who all seemed to know precisely how to behave in an exact and measured way, according to an agreed plan they were all party to and knew like the back of their hands. I was the youngest by far. I watched everyone, I watched my footsteps, and I tried to make sense of the baffling instructions I was given.

  ***

  My boss is middle-aged, quite short, with white hair. They call him Abu Issam (‘Issam’s dad’), but I’m wary of being so familiar with him. I would usually address a man his age as amu, ‘uncle,’ but now, in a different context, a work environment, amu might be inappropriate. But I’m also embarrassed to call him Abu Issam.

  Abu Issam, on the other hand, has no concept of shame. Nothing gives him any cause to feel ashamed, regardless of his position, his age, the age difference between us, or even the fact that his son Issam is the same age as me. He is constantly looking at me in a creepy way that makes me feel really uncomfortable. I wouldn’t want to misinterpret his looks or rush to judge him, but the way he stares at me makes me feel flustered and desperate to escape from his office. And that just makes him grin and stare at me all the more. Perhaps my discomfort turns him on, or perhaps he interprets my reaction somehow as a green light to pursue his prey.

  He is always giving off contradictory signals. Sometimes he treats me like a daughter, taking on a fatherly role, and sometimes he exploits the fact that I’ve let down my defences to reach out and touch me. He tries to make it look accidental, and his age helps him pass it off as a paternal gesture, but I shudder when I feel him press against me; I’m amazed at his brazenness. He knows that his authority makes him infallible and gives him free rein to harass me.

  I’ve been agonising over what to do. This is my first job and it’s the first time I’ve found myself trapped in such a horrible, humiliating situation. I’ve tried to ignore it and push it out of my mind, but he just won’t leave me alone. I know I can’t escalate things within the bank, because my reputation is at stake. After all, he is a man and, no matter what happens, as a man he won’t be judged as harshly as I am; even though I am the victim, I’m the one being violated. I’ve been wondering about telling my dad. Or maybe my brother? But do I really dare speak out and risk exposing my family and friends to trouble they could certainly do without?

  I’ve started to count the hours until I can leave at the end of the day. I’m getting used to the palpitations every morning. I’m always on tenterhooks, listening out for Abu Issam’s footsteps, trembling like a kitten trapped in a corner, anxiously looking for a way to escape. I’ve started to change the way I dress, doing everything I can to downplay my appearance. I’ve stopped wearing my knee-length skirt and now only wear a much longer one.

  I’ve even been considering the veil as a last ditch attempt to protect myself, because some men do judge women by their appearance and Abu Issam might be reading something into what I wear, thinking I’m encouraging him. In fact, I’ve been wondering about the veil for some time now. I try to adhere to the teachings of my religion and to fulfil the duties expected of me, and I do believe that the veil is one of them. I find comfort in prayer, which has been part of my life since I was a child, but I am somehow slightly terrified of the veil. Although I believe in the importance of it as a tenet of our faith, it’s not as simple as that. It’s a big decision that you can’t just go back on; it’s a decision you make for life, like marriage. If I choose to wear one, it will affect every aspect of my life, changing forever the way people see me and how I see myself.

  The other day when I got home, after closing the door to my room behind me, I found a stretch of fabric and started to wrap it around my head. I stared at myself in the mirror.

  “Am I still pretty like this?” I asked my reflection. My nose was first to reply. It stood out more than usual, as though it had assumed a bigger area of my face. Horrified, I pulled off the fabric and flung it aside, spreading my hair out over my shoulders. Picking up my brush, I gently combed it, carefully smoothing it out. My hair, with its rich colour and delicate curls, is what makes me who I am, what makes me feminine. Like any other woman, of course I care about my looks and want to be beautiful. I love it if I get an admiring glance; it’s a little buzz which reminds me of my femininity.

  I could never be described as strikingly beautiful, but I’ve learned over the years how to take care of my appearance and make the best of my features, and how to emphasise my femininity. I think my hair is my best weapon, and having my hair done always makes me feel great, like a new woman. At the end of the day, every woman wants to look attractive, and her hair is one of her most important assets. I do worry that wearing a veil would hide away my best feature and make me less pretty. And I’m afraid that it could also reduce my chances of finding a husband.

  I had previously decided to put off the issue of the veil until after I’d got married, but now I’ve started thinking about it again. Perhaps this whole Abu Issam thing is a test from God, or punishment from him, or a sign to remind me that the veil is important and that I shouldn’t put it off. This is a tough decision, one of the most difficult I’ve ever taken
, with perhaps the most impact.

  So in the end I approached my mother about the veil. I needed her help to decide what to do. But I was surprised by her frosty reaction. I had expected her to be pleased I was considering it, at least. In fact, I genuinely imagined she’d throw her arms around me and congratulate me, or even shriek with joy, and then rush to brag to her friends about how mature I was being, taking my religion so seriously.

  But once again, I completely misjudged how she’d take it, and how she sees the issue. I realised she is really worried about me. She shares the responsibility for me finding a husband, after all. If I fail, she fails too, and my fears are her fears. Or perhaps it’s the other way round? Her fears fill me with fear, and if she fails in her role it means I’ll be a failure, too.

  She already blames herself for failing Salma, as far as she’s concerned, and she’s determined to make up for it with me. She worries that if I wear a veil I’ll have much less chance of getting married. So she asked me to put it off for a while. I was just about to tell her about Abu Issam, but she beat me to it and started telling me instead about a possible suitor.

  Oum Mohammed, our neighbor, has a young male relative who’s looking for a bride. Oum Mohammed approached my mother about him and filled her in on the essentials, namely his social status and financial situation. He’s from a good family, apparently: they have a food-manufacturing business that this guy runs together with his father and two brothers. He’s the oldest brother. He studied in England and now he’s looking for a nice girl to settle down with and have a family.

  Of course, I’m the ‘nice’ girl in question here. I’m the one who now has to steel herself for a gruelling inspection visit from this guy and his family so they can judge whether I’m ‘nice’ enough. We’ll all have to dress up and look our best, my entire family and I, to try and impress the groom and his family. My mum will sing my praises and list all my assets, and his mother will do the same for him. My mum will harp on about my looks, my manners, my extraordinary housework skills, while his mum will dwell on their family’s wealth, the guy’s degree, his job, and his future prospects.