I sit on a tufted cream leather stool and observe my blurry reflection: eyes like slivers of wet black satin in a lozenge-round face; skin dull brown like a manila envelope. Smooth. Moustache-less. The face of a woman, certainly.
The face of a new wife, a bride of eleven days, waiting for a husband to come home. It’s not so bad, of course, I tell my reflection. Look around you. See the luxury you live in now: fresh roses and gardenias brought in from your own garden daily by the maid (grown, pruned, and cut by your gardener), set on a rough-hewn timbered table that stands on an art-deco spiral rug imported from Milan, surrounded by custom-painted gold-and-gray green walls and verdigris Corinthian columns, lit up by swooping Murano-glass chandeliers; in this white sugar-cube house in which you now live. The rooms always smelling of orange and apricot blossom, with a touch of sweet cherry. The perfect haven, but for the husband who’s never there.
Oh, come now, scolds the girl in the mirror. What man is available for his woman all the time? He’s a good provider. And he doesn’t beat you. And it certainly beats having to scoop up sheep-shit, or worse, semen, like the time you fell upon your brother and his friends rubbing a male sheep’s penis for fun, and you—being the only girl amongst six boys—had to clean up after them. It beats having to hide from your mother secrets that gnaw at the lining of your gut a little more each day, like the one you discovered when you saw your father fucking the Sri Lankan maid from behind, dirty black beard scratching up and down her dark back, and she—with cooking-oil-soaked scarf stuffed in her mouth—stifling animal moans, one hand on the gold cross at her neck, the other swiping a tear.
Yes, this life in the city is better than the one I left behind in Jahra.
I spritz an uplifting mandarin scent and powder my décolletage with a shimmery-pink pouf, surreal sheen against brown skin, silver-lit on protruding collar bones starved for affection. Yes, being Abu Jassem’s wife is far more forgiving than being the only girl amongst six boys in a Bedouin family that still live with goats in the housh and one Sri Lankan maid to pick up after all fifteen of us: me, father, mother, my six brothers, father’s other two wives, and their four children. So why do I feel my convictions explode like a jellyfish wave-swept onto the unforgiving hot sand, damp and sticky and translucent. Why do I feel a pallet pounding at my head, telling me—with every thudthudthud descending on my skull—that something is wrong?
The sun is setting in my boudoir; its last rays of the day cleaving my curtains—bronze taffeta tied with beaded tassels—illuminating memories: the half-hidden, pockmarked face of my mother close to mine, garlic-familiar breath rasping in my ear through her sooty black veil, whispering about the dowry that Abu Jassem was willing to pay my father, and how happy that would make him, how worthwhile my existence would be, how high my price was—because of my beauty.
I was sold to this fifty-three year old man. And though I only saw him eleven days ago at our wedding, and though he is rich and powerful and makes my father quiver, chin bowed, and though I am only sixteen, he was gentle with me that night, taking care to open my legs gently, thrusting only three times before his hot liquid erupted into my groin, just as the beet-red blood gushed out, streaming onto the burning white sheets. And then he was gone, his heavy, sweaty weight lifted off me, and me—breathing again.
That was when the women came in, took the bloodied sheet triumphantly, and waved it outside for all to see my virtue. And as I lay breathing, one of them, a young, raw-looking woman, placed the crescent charm in my palm, folding my fingers firmly around it. She leaned forward so that I could smell her heady, floral fragrance, and said (low enough so that the others, busy with their ululating and cheers, couldn’t hear): “This will make you bear all.”
I run the tips of my powder-flecked fingers over the crescent charm, aromatic silver, and feel its energy swelling inside me; feel centuries of faith, years of magic healing, the power to soothe a woman’s pain, handed over to me now. I remember hearing about the magic powers of the crescent charm from the women in the family, as I crouched behind the housh-door, eavesdropping on their sodden tales of sex, my eyes widening in awe of the honor to be the recipient of such a charm, oblivious of the knowledge that the healing power of the charm found its way only to those most in need of hope.
It quivers in my palm now, as if reminding me of its presence, and a warm flush of numbness shears through my bones. Then, nothing. Now, I am almost ready; now, I can almost bear it, the sex, this life.
He’ll be home soon. I must be ready. He likes it when I’m ready.
I hear the key in the door and wipe a tear, wait until my reflection is no longer blurry, and then I get up, willing myself into my role of whore; his favorite on holy Friday, after he’s paid a visit to his children and other wife, then completed his Friday prayers at the mosque next door.
I greet him with a black-lace-trimmed, slinky red satin slip; an edible pink strawberry-flavored thong; black patent stilettos. And the whip.
Today, my reflection is solid. Mascara-heavy eyes, resilient skin. The face of an older wife; the experienced, childless wife who has grown accustomed to living with a husband who’s never there and a house that’s bare even of echoes.
My fault, of course, for Abu Jassem—all of, what, sixty three now?—just fathered another boy with his other wife, the first one. The one who bore him only boys, and seemed to grow in value with each offspring. So why did he marry me, you ask? I was not made for children. I was not made for love. I was not made for his respect. I was made for sex.
All that sex and no babies. It must be a punishment from God. To my father, for selling me off. And to Abu Jassem, for taking a ruined life and eradicating it completely. And me? My life is punishment enough.
But the crescent charm made it bearable; the crescent charm that is worn on the fragile wrist of every woman for survival, quivering silver, aromatic gleam, numbing coolness, made me tolerate the thrusting with its salty dripping, the heaving and the fighting for air under hair and sweat and bulk, the nights of dress-up and whipping and fucking all the way up to my navel until my labia sagged weary and any egg that may have thought of ovulating within me changed its mind and erupted into menstruation instead, month after month after month.
But enough of all this daydreaming.
Facts are facts.
Fact: My uterus is as sterile as my emotions.
Fact: Abu Jassem’s wedding night is imminent.
And I, not because I have to but because I desperately want to, will enter Abu Jassem’s room on that night with the other women from the family, and carry the blood-drenched sheet outside for all to witness, and I will be the one to tell that hopeful sixteen year old girl—the one who found a way out of her life as a girl amongst boys in her own family—I will tell her about the secret of the crescent charm, and I will place my own silver charm in the palm of her hands when no one’s looking (for the elders must not see).
Just as Abu Jassem’s wife did with me on my wedding night.
God bless her.
And then, a few years later, I will tell that girl, the new wife, another secret to help her get through those lonely days and sweaty nights; just as Abu Jassem’s wife told me one evening as we sat together seeding dates for a tamer cake. I will reveal to her why I don’t need the crescent charm anymore, why it’s not enough; why its powers will not carry her through too many years—only the first years. One day, when the time is right I will tell a woman’s secret.
But for now, Fahad is waiting for me in his apartment. Fahad, with the milky chocolate skin and magical hands that know every undulating part of my body; Fahad, who is now a natural part of my inhale-exhale routine; Fahad, who made me forget the days, the nights, the pain; Fahad, whose presence in my life makes me tolerate the rest; Fahad, more powerful than any charm.
Life always goes on. It goes on for me, for Abu Jassem’s other wife, for all the second, third, and fourth wives, just as it will for my husband’s new fresh wife as of next week. But while she will need the crescent charm to carry her through the next few years, we—the older wives—are too scarred for the virgin charm; we—the older wives—have found an alternative, stronger, more potent charm to help us bear it all: the charm of a lover.
Notes:
- Jahra is a faraway rural area of Kuwait where Bedouins still live.
- Housh is the inner courtyard of Arabic houses.
- Dowry in Kuwait is paid by the man for the woman to buy her
trousseau.
- Islam allows polygamy (up to four wives) on the condition that the man has the financial and emotional capacity to treat his wives equally (which is technically impossible, thus by default not applicable).
- Tamer means dates.
