Black Book of Arabia (24 page)

My relationship with my mother was the same when I returned from America. We moved out of the mud hut and into an apartment in Cairo for high school and university students. We lived in poverty, sleeping in the same bed and buying only the cheapest food, which always left us feeling like we had not had enough. My mother struggled
between jobs that never paid enough. Her tantrums got worse with age.

Once she beat me so hard that I was hospitalized, again. I could not go to university for several days because the shaking train to university rattled my broken ribs and hurt me. I had internal bleeding that left me so bruised I looked like I had been in a car accident. I was wearing a neck brace, and my arm was in a sling. My eye was black, my lip had a cut, and my cheek had a purple bruise with two stitches. The students all guessed car accident; there was no other explanation. It was easy to agree because I felt like a bus had hit me. One of my professors noticed my bruises and the pain that I was in, and insisted that she be allowed to help me. She saw it as her duty to inquire who or what the culprit was. She wanted to find a solution, and I sensed the sincerity in her voice. When I told her Mother was beating me at home, she reacted calmly. She had seen such things before. She took it into her hands to contact my father and ask him to put me up in the university dormitory. Another angel, another day, another blessing in disguise. God had always watched over me and guided me to safety, allowing people to protect me, take care of me, and help me by becoming my sisters, mothers, brothers, and fathers. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

None of my friends knew how bad my situation was. I disguised the unpleasantness in my home by refusing all visitors, saying that my mother was away in the south tending to my ailing grandmother. I did not want my friends to witness her cruel sarcasm toward me or her acid comments
about those who were better off than we were. Her cutting sense of humor would insult my old schoolmates and scare even the bravest of my mates away. Friends are the family you choose to help you go through your day-to-day battles, and they were all I had in this world.

Once I began living on campus, life began to get easier for me. I took some odd jobs that helped me socially as well as academically and provided a foundation for future jobs. I found that I had many good friends who stood by me, even when they secretly did not believe that my father was rich when I first came to Egypt as a child. I found sisters in the girls' dorms who became soul mates, mountains of strength and support for every lost or lonely soul. The spirit of unity is the strongest of all in Egypt. The people have a utopian belief that one must always be idealistic and that people will do unto you as you do unto them.

It is a strange reality that when fate robs you of something, God in return sends you angels in disguise that make life worth living. I found my peace in the little things such as the kindness of Turki, who would hand me a bun when I did not have enough to pay for it, just because I was a regular customer. The tragic comedy that was my life became easier when I accepted that this was my luck, and I truly began to enjoy everything that came my way—the good, the bad and the ugly. The good, such as how popular I became with my peers thanks to the roles I played in the university community in terms of studies, clubs, and charity. The bad, such as how emotionally detached from my parents I had become, so much so that I formed my own
new family from the friends that I had chosen as my own. The ugly, which was that I was poor in a private and expensive university. At the same time, I was rich with friends who stood by my side in studies, projects, trips, gatherings and odd jobs, always making room for me in their car, their home and at their table when I needed it. I was settled into my own little nest. It was going to be all right.

God is merciful, and I am grateful for everything He has given me. With that realization, I dusted off my past and got up to face the world. I ventured into the business of marketing and events, and currently sit as a successful executive. I believe that in our field of passion, fashion, and madness you almost need to have a personal catastrophe simply to be able to deal with the constant instability. And I am just the person to deal with it now because my history has created in me a savvy mountain that can brave any storm with a smile.

I have not seen my mother in years, as I have moved to Arabia. I go to see my father every Christmas, Easter, and summer break in the States. My siblings now do freelance work in Arabia and come to see me regularly. We have become fast friends. We are all older, and I am more comfortable hosting them. I took them to Cairo and enjoyed their innocence and amazement as they discovered Egypt. I went to the Pyramids for the first time with them, because it is something only tourists do, not the locals. We rode horses at the Haram area, near the Pyramids, after the mile-long graves. People actually live inside the cemeteries, and it was strange seeing them come out of the graves like
they were underground homes with large roofs. I wondered how these children could come out of the graves, smiling. That was life in Egypt.

Life in Death.

The fear of nothing.

Life's melody.

I am happy and strong, and most importantly grateful that I am a survivor of life.

Thank you, Egypt.

Bleeding Freedom

Blood trickled down my forehead as the prison guard shaved off my long locks of mahogany hair. My lip was split, and a slow stream of warm, sticky blood was running down my face to my neck. He was using a rusty, broken straight razor that had cut many women before me and would cut many more after me. He said it was the effective way of punishing defiant women. He claimed it was the Islamic way of doing things. But I knew the holy verses, and this man was inventing his own religion in the name of defiance. All I had wanted to do was vote, to have a voice, to exercise my individual right, to take my proper place in society.

I, Jameela, a Muslim half-Arab, half-Berber Algerian, was bubbling over with freedom ideologies and bursting with ideas to help develop the country and encourage us as its citizens to grow and express ourselves. We had suffered under the tyranny of injustice for decades; our nation's death toll under the French was one million martyrs. The attitude of the French toward my people was summed up by Lieutenant-Colonel de Montagnac, who wrote to a friend in 1843:

I personally warn all good soldiers whom I have the honor to lead that if they happen to bring me a living Arab, they
will receive a beating with the flat of the saber . . . This is how, my dear friend, we must make war against Arabs: kill all men over the age of fifteen, take all their women and children, load them onto naval vessels, and send them to the Marquesas Islands or elsewhere. In one word, annihilate all who will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs.

Under the French, Muslims made up ninety percent of the population but earned only twenty percent of the nation's income.

Believing the European tradition to be vastly superior to any other, the French eradicated Arabic studies, replacing them with an entirely French curriculum. Algerians were not allowed to speak or write in their native languages, Arabic and Berber.

Although champions of liberty and democracy for their own people, the French created a quasi-apartheid system in Algeria. Even as late as 1947, when the Algerian Assembly was created, half of its members represented the 1.1 million non-Muslim Algerians with the other half representing all of the 6.85 million Muslims.

The under-representation of Algerian Muslims in the Assembly was bitterly resented, especially considering that during World War II, Muslims had made up more than half of the reconstituted French Army. These Algerian fighters in the French Expeditionary Corps helped to liberate parts of Italy, Germany, and France itself.

While demonstrating for their political rights in Sétif in May 1945, the Muslim Algerians clashed with police
officers. About 100 police officers were killed in the riots. In retaliation, the French army killed 6,000 Muslim Algerians.

French rule did come to an end eventually, but 132 years under the lash of the French oppressors left scars on our nation. Algeria and its inhabitants were left struggling to rediscover their own identity, language, and destiny. Even people who do not believe in or know of God sometimes pray to a deity in their hour of need. The nation was struggling to find its roots, and the new shoots it sent out trembled with every brush of the wind. Algeria was at war with its own people, who were confused and suffering the consequences of a cultural invasion.

My story took place against this backdrop of repression and its aftermath. I was top of my secondary school class and excelled in all of my subjects. I was nominated by my peers to be prefect, the next celebrated “fingerprint” in the nation—destined to be a doctor, a scientist, or an engineer who would make a mark on the nation and help my fellow citizens forget about the shackles of France. It did not register in my mind that being female made me inferior in any way or any less likely to run for president of my nation had I wanted to do so.

At seventeen, we are at our most rebellious and invincible stage. We have the energy to defy tanks and governments, mothers and fathers, strangers and rabid dogs, presidents and even men with guns they are not afraid to use. I was seventeen when a mad regime took over Algeria; I was at the frontlines of the anti-regime protest movement. I spoke
out in public. For my defiance, I was put into prison and my head was shaven. My family had to pay bribes to have me released. Only my family's name and money saved me from receiving heavy beatings and being thrown into a cell with a forgotten lock and rusted key. Others were not so lucky.

The day after my release, my family flew me to neighboring Tunisia, to stay with a cousin. I was ashamed of my shaved head and the scars that the blunt razor left. My parents were afraid of the repercussions that could follow my release, as I had stood first in line against the regime that took over Algeria by storm.

Before I left, my family told me that they had arranged for me to marry an educated man with a promising future. I asked at least to see a picture of my future husband, but they refused to show me anything so I would not be distracted from my education and career.

After spending a week in Tunisia, I was scheduled to fly to Paris to attend college. Despite France's history of occupation in Algeria, I could not wait to return to Paris, which was two hours but seemed ten centuries away from the madmen who now persecuted me in Algeria. I had no resentment toward the French, for the French in Algeria were soldiers persecuted almost as much as we were. It was the war-mongering egoist at the top who wanted to control more than what was rightly his. The French friends I had were good to me and received me kindly.

After waiting for the women with children and the disabled to board the aircraft, I walked down the gangway and
entered the cabin. The flight attendant directed me to my seat. When I reached my row, I saw a handsome gentleman occupying my seat. I placed my carry-on luggage in the overhead bin, then reached into my bag and took out my boarding pass. “I'm afraid you're in my seat,” I said, indicating the seat number on my boarding pass. “I always get an aisle seat,” I explained.

With that, the stranger stood up and smiled. “You are even more beautiful in person than in your pictures,” he said.

“Excuse me?” I said. “I'm afraid you have confused me with someone else.”

“I certainly hope not,” said the man with an admiring gaze.

The way he was staring made me uncomfortable, but the girl who had stood up to a regime was not afraid to stand up to a leering businessman. “Here is my seat number,” I said, holding out my boarding pass.

“Of course, my dear, if you wish to have the aisle seat, it's yours. I was raised to believe that a man should walk and sit to the outside of his wife, to protect her. But after all, this is not a street in Algiers, and these are not the Middle Ages.” He forced a laugh as if to break the tension.

“Wife? Sir, I do not know who you are or why you are talking to me like this, but I find it extremely disrespectful and upsetting. I'm sorry if I sound angry, but I happen to be engaged and I do not appreciate your behavior. If you won't agree to stop speaking to me for the duration of the flight, I will ask for another seat.”

The man looked shocked. “You're Jameela, right?” he asked.

I searched his eyes for signs of a joke, or malice. All I saw was confusion. “Yes,” I said. “And you are?”

“I am Kareem,” said the man with obvious relief. “Your husband.”

I stood there in disbelief. My family had forgotten to mention that they had married me off without telling me!

“Please take your seat,” said the flight attendant, coming down the aisle.

I had no choice but to sit next to him. I began to cry. Soft tears turned to hard sobs as I tried to figure out how my family could have done this to me.

My husband tried to calm me down. He told me he was not a bad man. He was highly educated, having attended universities in the United States and Canada. He promised to take me there to show me the sights—New York City, Niagara Falls, Washington DC, the Rocky Mountains.

It didn't help. I cried through the whole trip. He tried to distract me with pictures of our house in Paris, our pet dog, our plants and neighbors, and his workplace. He told me how he would drop me at the university and collect me after work. It all seemed surreal. I simply sat there, sniffling and gulping coffee, wanting to snap out of this bad dream.

Handsome and educated, Kareem was neither bad nor backward. In all fairness, he seemed like every woman's dream come true. He took my hand and held it throughout the flight. When we arrived in Paris, he checked us into a hotel for our “honeymoon” and led me to our room,
holding my hand the whole way. He even carried me over the threshold. He was trying to make me feel special, but as I got ready for bed, I stood in the bathroom, shaking. I was about to give myself to a man I had known only a few hours. I felt like one of those women in a Hollywood movie who goes home with a man after only meeting him in a bar. I was only seventeen, and this was my virginity. This was not how I had imagined my wedding night would be.