In a Fertile Desert by Denys Johnson-Davies

Author:Denys Johnson-Davies [Johnson-Davies, Denys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781617971686
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Old Woman

Maryam Al Saedi

Her children and everyone else call her “the old woman.” She’s an old lady from times back. Her clothes have the smell of her sheep and that rusty smell of the ancient trunk in which she keeps her things. She could never understand why she had to be ‘appropriately dressed,’ for she never thought that she wasn’t. In fact, she’d never once paid attention to what she looked like. She was one of those women who had had a lot of children without allowing their husbands to see their faces, the face being—as she believed—a shameful part of the body. Those same women didn’t call their husbands by their names but solely by the words “the man,” for this is what they were. She was one of those women who had lived without it occurring to them for an instant that they themselves could be something other than the wives of So-and-so and the mothers of So-and-so or the owners of the sheep having such-and-such a brand. She had got used to the faraway life of the Bedouin: desert, sands, and thirst for as far as the eye could see. The young children would be in the tent and before nightfall one would have to finish milking the ewes. A crust of bread all mixed up with the ashes of the fire would be the most delicious meal after a day of never-ending heat and hardship. No, there was no hardship. No, it was just a day. There was nothing never-ending. No, it was just a day. She knew only that days had to be like that. Her ewes were her daughters and her rams were her sons. She knew them by their names, their colors, their shapes. They were more precious than her own sons. In those days she was “the woman” and was not known by any name. Her children only became aware of her name when they had to obtain a death certificate. Her relationship with the husband was something understood and accepted. Many were the quarrels she had with him because of her sheep and his sheep, but in the end he was the man, and in the end she was the woman. It was something understood and accepted.

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