Chapter Imen
Imen
Itouch Imen more than once to be certain, doubting myself.
I am so used to the beats of Ibrahim’s frustration and my own wretched guilt, to Zaynab’s pitiful cravings for a love that is not given, to the pulse of Djalila’s endless secret fears, that to touch someone and feel only happiness, only innocent joy in life, is startling to me.
I return to her again and again, drawn to feel her gentleness.
I pull up the hood of a heavy robe over my face and walk the streets of the souk to find her and when I do I let one finger brush against her and find once again her light heartbeats, bright and full of certainty in the goodness of her life.
When I walk on, I hope that perhaps her light will enter my darkness and take away the bitterness within me.
She is not from a very great family but they are good people, no-one can say anything against them when I listen for gossip. Ibrahim’s sisters beam when I murmur to them of a possible match.
***
Ibrahim is wary, as well he might be. He does not trust me. “I must see her for myself,” he says.
I watch him leave the house for a visit to her father’s house and want to call him back, want to lean from the rooftop that was our secret place and cry out his name, but I bite my lips and clench my fists instead and know that I must not.
***
He cannot help smiling at the thought of her when he tells me that he has asked for her hand.
He tries to hide it from me but I can see that her sweet face and gentle demeanour have awakened hope in him.
I lower my eyes and murmur that I am glad, that I will see to it that all will be done to please her in this house.
“I must tell Djalila,” he says.
“No,” I say too quickly. “I will do it.”
He shakes his head, stubborn in his knowledge of what is right. “No,” he says. “It must come from me.”
There is silence from her room when he emerges and I pause for a moment as I pass him. “Did she cry?” I ask.
He shakes his head and walks away.
I take a breath and then enter.
Djalila sits with a bird in her hand. It pecks lightly at the grain she holds for it and she gazes at it as though it is all she can see.
“Did he tell you?” she asks without looking at me. “Or did you already know?”
“There is no shame,” I say. “You are his first wife and you have given him a child.”
“A girl,” she says.
“A healthy child,” I say. “And you nearly died in doing so. The new wife will bear more children but she will never be the first wife. You will have all due honours. You are not set aside.”
“Go,” says Djalila.
I hesitate. I have never known Djalila to dismiss me in all these years, since the very first day I came to her. Usually, she asks where I am going when I leave her rooms, as though to keep me with her always. She does not even like it when I am gone too long in the souks.
“Go,” says Djalila, her voice sunken to a whisper.
I go. I do not know what to do with myself.
I make my way to the kitchen where the servants all stop speaking as soon as they see me.
I inform Hayfa, while the others pretend to get on with chores, that her master will be taking a new wife.
That she is to be shown all due courtesy but that Djalila is still his first wife and that she must be treated with honour.
I designate rooms that are to be set aside for Imen and order them cleaned and prepared for her arrival.
I tell Hayfa that Ibrahim will send new hangings and carpets for her but that any other comforts are in Hayfa’s hands and that she has Ibrahim’s permission to purchase whatever is necessary to ensure a warm welcome for Imen when she joins us.
I warn Zaynab’s nursemaid, Myriam, of the impending changes but I cannot bring myself to tell the child myself.
She will find out soon enough and I can only hope that it is a welcome surprise for her once she meets Imen.
Meanwhile Djalila keeps away from me, she dismisses me from her presence without reason, she asks for other members of the household to serve her and I wander the rooms like a lost child, searching for peace and finding none.
***
The engagement rituals must be enacted. The house lies in readiness; the whole family has fine new robes. From today Imen will be promised to Ibrahim and her arrival here will be measured in days.
“I will serve her myself,” I tell the slave girl whom Djalila has asked for, a mute who only nods and shrinks away from me.
I make my way into the room and stop in horror.
Djalila stands naked, her back to me. In her hands she holds a thin strip of leather, which she brings down suddenly across her thighs, the whip-crack making me startle.
At my gasp she turns to face me. Red weals are spread across her arms and legs, her belly. There is even one on her neck.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my voice strangled.
“It takes away the pain,” she says.
“What pain?”
“What pain?” she says, half-laughing in a way I find more frightening than the red marks across her body. “The pain of this day. Of being set aside for a younger, more beautiful woman. Of being a failed wife.”
I step closer, hold out my hand for the leather strip, which she clutches to her.
“You cannot do this,” I tell her. “You must attend the engagement and you cannot be seen with these marks.” I begin to dress her as though everything is normal, although my hands are shaking.
I lift the elaborately decorated robes I have chosen, the heavy jewellery, there to give her confidence but which now must also hide the marks on her body.
Slowly I pull the leather from her hands and let it fall to the floor.
“I cannot bear it,” she says and tears flow down her cheeks. “Make it stop, Hela. Make it stop.”
“It is too late for that now,” I say. “If he has another wife, you will not need to have him in your bed. You will always be the first wife; you can continue as mistress of the house. Imen will provide sons for Ibrahim …” I have to stop for a moment, for my own voice is trembling too much to speak clearly, “… and all will be well.”
“You are shaking,” she tells me.
I hear bleating from the courtyard and know that the servants are standing ready with the traditional engagement gifts, which Ibrahim must take to Imen’s family. A live sheep and a large jewellery box. Dried fruits and the engagement cake.
“We have to go,” I tell Djalila. I pull up the robe on her shoulder so that the red mark there cannot be seen.
“Why are you shaking?” she asks.
“They will be waiting. We need to go.” I tell her.
I try not to look at Ibrahim. He is so handsome, dressed in his finest robes. I clench my hands into fists and call too loudly for Myriam to hurry up, where is Zaynab?
Myriam is flustered, she leads down Zaynab, dressed in new robes. Zaynab looks fearful and confused. I want to embrace her, to promise that all will be well but how can I know that, much less promise it to a child?
***
“We are come to ask if you will give your daughter to be married to Ibrahim an-Nafzawi!”
The crowd cheers and I feel Djalila’s grip tighten on mine.
Somewhere behind us, Zaynab is being buffeted by the crowd, too small to see what is going on.
I want to pick her up and leave this place but instead I stay by Djalila as the ceremony goes ahead and blessings are read over the bowed heads of Imen and Ibrahim. It is too late now, too late.
Standing at Ibrahim’s side, Imen is tiny.
I am not sure she is much taller than ten-year-old Zaynab and her feet and hands are smaller.
She has a little waist but plump cheeks and a rounded behind which speak, one day, of a woman who will grow pleasantly fat on good food.
She reminds me of Ibrahim’s sisters, their good-natured greed for sweets and gossip, their generous embraces and dimples.
Djalila’s face is a mask-smile set in stone and yet Imen smiles, smiles at everyone and everything until even Ibrahim’s lips have to curve to meet her happiness.
***
I cannot keep away, do not keep away. I let myself into Ibrahim’s bedroom and hear him take her, hear her little cries and his deep groans as he thrusts within her, watch his hands grip her soft flesh and his lips close around her dark nipples.
I see her eyes close and her mouth open to receive him, see her own hands grasp him and pull him more tightly to her, as though she cannot get enough of him.
I hear their loving whispers one to another and I want to block up my ears so that I may not hear what hurts me.
In the mornings he orders warm breads and sweet honey and feeds her from his own fingers until her kisses drive him to desire.
They are insatiable the two of them: she, shown what it is to desire for the first time in her life, he, finding for the first time a woman who openly desires him, who begs for more, who gasps and cries out at his touch, who does not hold back from his need for her, who loves him even as he loves her.
Their nights torment me, their days apart when he must work torment the two of them.
Imen spends her days in a sun-shined daze of exhausted, contented lust while Djalila retreats ever more from what she does not understand, from what she is only able to resent.
***
Imen is kind to Zaynab and in return Zaynab, who has never known true kindness, emerges like a flower from a bud.
She stops running wild with the street children of Kairouan and instead spends time at home.
Her face shines when she is with Imen, she draws closer and closer to her until she will lay her head in Imen’s lap as the lazy afternoons drag on and kiss her cheek each morning.
She chatters to Imen as though she were her friend, asks her endless questions and listens to the answers as though Imen were the fount of all wisdom.
I hear her sing sometimes, her usually quiet voice set free by love.