Between Two Worlds (24 page)

“Zainab, I
beg
you not to do this,” Baba said, finally turning to appeal to me directly, tears in his own eyes. “You don’t have to do this. Don’t let your mother impose her choice on you. It is
your
life, honey, not your mother’s.”

I loved him very much at that moment. Despite our disagreements, I had never, ever doubted how much he loved me. Part of me thought he was right. How could I marry a stranger I felt no attraction for? But I also understood Mama’s point, and the one thing I felt good about was that for once I was being the good, dutiful daughter to her. I hated to see her cry. Besides, what were the alternatives if I went back? No one was talking about that, really, but there it was. Was anything better waiting for me there? If I went back to Baghdad now, I would embarrass my whole family. People would think there was something wrong with me—twice engaged, twice failed.

“I will take responsibility for my own marriage,” I said finally, coming up with the only answer I could find that avoided taking sides. “I will have a talk with him, and then I’ll make my decision.”

When we got to Fakhri’s home, where the religious ceremony was to be held, guests were already gathering downstairs. We went upstairs where we could be alone, and I had a serious talk with him for the first time about my expectations for this marriage. I told him that I expected respect, a college education, a meaningful career, and financial independence. I told him he should not expect me to cook and clean—or to do anything at all just because I was a woman. I wanted to be clear, given what had happened with Ehab, so that there were no misunderstandings. I was almost surprised to find that he listened to me.

“I promise that I will love you and cherish you, Zainab,” he said. “I respect what you are asking for, and I assure you I will try to give you a happy life.”

He still wasn’t handsome, with his small eyes and long nose, but for the first time I saw the possibility of love coming after marriage. In that upstairs room, with his family waiting below, he was gentle and respectful. He told me he understood and that he would support me in becoming whatever I wanted to be in life, and it occurred to me that maybe we just hadn’t had enough time to be alone together. When we walked back downstairs together, I was nervous, but relieved.

I could face my father and mother and tell them both in good conscience that I was willing to go forward.

As I came downstairs in my
sayya,
I saw my brothers, Haider looking out of place, and Hassan, not quite ten, standing very close to my father, who had clamped down the disapproval on his face. Other than my family, I knew only a few of the two dozen people assembled there. I sat down next to Fakhri on the sofa as we had arranged, with the imam in front of us, and prepared to witness my first traditional Iraqi religious marriage ceremony—my own. It was a beautiful ceremony, rich in the symbols of Islam from all the cultures that contributed to Iraqi culture, from Iran, Turkey, and the Middle East. Two happily married women—one of them my mother—held a swatch of fabric over our heads while two others rubbed sugarcanes together to sweeten the marriage. My feet were dipped into a silver bucket filled with mint and rose petals, a Quran was placed in my lap, and cardamom seeds were tucked between my fingers. I felt as if I were watching a play.

“Zainab, do you accept this man to be your husband and to marry him in front of God and his prophet?” the imam asked.

I didn’t answer. Mama had told me that he was going to ask me this same question twelve times, once for each descendant of the prophet Shia believed were the rightful leaders of the Muslim nation, before I was supposed to respond. Fakhri had already said yes, and it felt like an eternity each time the imam repeated the question to me, an eternity to consider and reconsider, with everyone in the room quietly staring at me, my head filled with voices frantically arguing with each other. What would happen if I just said no? Was it too late? I saw my father, looking miserable, across from me, and I felt the weight of Mama’s presence above me, giving me blessings for a happy marriage when she no longer had one herself. I wanted to scream, No! How could I possibly do something so
ayeb?
Hadn’t I just had a perfectly nice discussion with him a few moments ago? Again and again, the imam asked, and finally against all my instincts, I heard myself say “Yes.”

Fakhri looked at me with relief and kissed me on my forehead. I couldn’t look at him.

Hassan ran out of the room screaming, and Baba ran after him. “Well, this isn’t a funeral!” Fakhri’s mother commented to her son, as she kissed him in congratulations. “This is supposed to be a happy occasion!”

We signed the standard marriage contract, a form with blanks for the dowry and signatures and, ten days later, on the arm of my new husband, I walked into our wedding reception. Two hundred people celebrated in a rented hall. I knew very few of them. I put on my plastic smile, greeted them, and danced with my husband. He had a victorious look on his face, as if he had caught a big fish.

 

We had a suite in a hotel that night and planned to have breakfast with our parents the next day before leaving for a honeymoon in Hawaii. I was nervous about the wedding night. I went to him in my new nightgown feeling shy. I had never had sex before, but I also knew how a kiss can melt the heart. He asked me to lie on the bed and spread my legs apart. I did. Then he suddenly was on top of me, an uncomfortable stranger pressing into me. He didn’t say anything. There was no kiss, no caress at all, no tenderness or effort to help me relax. There were just humiliating shoves and then he stopped. I felt hurt and invaded, but there was no blood on the sheets; we each looked. I knew that in some parts of rural Iraq, men still had to produce the marital bedsheets with virginal blood or the bride’s entire family was shamed. Our family was far more sophisticated than that, and my mother the biology teacher had explained to me that there isn’t always blood.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Come on, open up! I’m sure you know how.”

“What? What are you talking about?” I said. “How could you say that to me, Fakhri?”

“Well, you’re not a virgin,” he said. “No blood came out.”

“I
am
a virgin, Fakhri,” I said. “But, just so you know, there doesn’t have to be blood to show you’re a virgin. It depends on the woman.”

“Well, I don’t know what you are, but you are not a virgin,” he said, and he turned over. “I’m going to sleep.”

I can’t even describe all the feelings that passed through me in waves that night. Alone, wide awake, I lay there in the dark trying to figure out what I had done wrong. My mother’s anatomical drawings had not prepared me for this. I was a virgin. The closest I had come to sex was kissing Ehab. But I remembered hearing stories of girls losing their virginity through sports accidents, and I searched back through my memory, trying to think of a time I might have injured myself without knowing it. Was there something else I was supposed to do? I moved as far away from the man next to me as I could and curled up on the edge of the bed like a child, holding my confusion and fears within as I realized that this was only the first of thousands more nights to follow.

The next morning, when our parents came to have breakfast with us and take us to the airport, I managed to take Mama aside.

“Are you sure what you have told me about blood is correct, Mama?”

“Yes, honey, but from what you are describing, I don’t think you had sex.”

Only a virgin would have failed to understand that her husband had impugned her innocence to cover up his own inability to perform.

 

 

We flew to Hawaii for our honeymoon, but the only beauty I saw there was a deep blue horizon that made me wish I were far away. Other newlyweds, langorous and in love, celebrated with tropical drinks and intimate hugs in the Jacuzzi. Their happiness only made me feel sad and isolated. Almost the only time Fakhri was kind to me was when we were in front of others and they took pictures of us and made
ooh
and
ahh
sounds when he told them we were on our honeymoon. When we were alone, I felt as though I had married an entirely different person than the man who had listened to me so attentively before the religious ceremony. They had buffets at the hotel, and he lied so we could eat free, claiming he had lost complimentary tickets that came with some show. Then he told me to eat as much as I could at the buffet so I could get all the food I needed for the day. I was shocked and embarrassed. This was not the world I had come from. I had been taught honesty since birth and trained never to lie or steal. Now I was married to a man who did both of these things and was rude and cheap as well. At night, he started telling me I wasn’t “womanly” and didn’t know how to please a man.

The third or fourth night of my honeymoon I couldn’t even stay in the same bed with him. I lay on the sofa and cried. Love comes after marriage, I kept reminding myself. If Luma and others had managed to be happy, I told myself, why couldn’t I? It was just getting to know each other that was hard. I tried and tried to think of a way out of my quandary. I contemplated my own failure to be womanly. What was I doing wrong? I felt none of the pleasure my mother had told me about, and I certainly wasn’t wearing the kind of smile on my face that I came to recognize on hers after I knew she’d had sex with my dad. I thought that if I could just prove to him that I was a virgin, he would treat me better. I tried imagining that this painful trial period was over and that I had somehow learned to love him. What would I do when that day came? How would I behave? A small, logical answer came to me: I would kiss him. The next night, I went to the bed, kissed him, and tried as hard as I could to
imagine
that I loved him. By the end of the evening I had my proof; there was blood on the sheets.

He was happy when he saw that blood.

“So you are a virgin after all,” he said with a laugh.

I was relieved, but confused. I actually looked at the bedsheet with spots of blood and considered taking it with me as proof, doing the same thing that my mother and I always ridiculed Amo’s village family for doing. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He never mentioned the subject of my virginity again, and he began treating me more nicely.

We talked for a while about how to make marriage work. I was nervous about the impact his parents, particularly his mother, might have on our marriage. I had often heard stories about in-laws interfering in a couple’s life, and I wanted to make certain that didn’t happen to us. Fakhri agreed, and we promised each other that we would abide by a rule in our marriage: to keep our problems to ourselves and not involve our families. But I was surprised when we got back to Chicago to find he had other rules in mind as well. He informed me as he was dressing to go to work for the first time that I was to get up with him, make him breakfast, and press a shirt for him each morning. He brought the iron into the bedroom and began to recite my wifely duties as he plugged it in. He gave me a twenty-dollar bill and told me that was my allowance for the week.

“Twenty dollars?” I asked, staring in shock at the bill in my hand.

“That should be more than enough for your needs.”

He kept the keys to the car he had presented me at the airport and handed me keys instead to a car that turned out to be so old and battered it barely ran. We also had an argument about my education. I told him that I wanted to enroll in certain classes to help me prepare for my exams in Iraq, and he told me he thought it was a waste of time for me to get a college degree and recommended that I get a real estate license instead so I could start making money.

He was going back on everything he had promised in our little talk before the religious ceremony, and I had no proof it had ever even happened. I reminded him of our agreement, and he responded that he was abiding by it; I was welcome to do whatever things I chose to do as long as I performed first the wifely duties that we both understood superseded them. I was to be his wife, keep his house, and start giving him children as soon as I got my real estate license. I argued and I protested, but what was my alternative? If I called my parents, they would just get into more fights with each other and suggest I at least give the marriage a chance. We compromised on the education front. He agreed to give me enough money to enroll in two classes at a local community college, and I agreed to take a real estate course along with an English writing course in preparation for my finals in Baghdad.

Finally, I theorized that if I could prove I could do the house-work the way I had proved I was a virgin, he would meet me halfway. My shirts never looked like Radya’s, but I ironed. I cooked, though he ridiculed my painstaking efforts every night at the dinner table, sometimes in front of guests. I felt poor and vulnerable and utterly dependent on him, both financially and emotionally. When I asked him for more money midweek, he made me recite everything I’d spent the first twenty dollars on and criticized me for wasting money on two greeting cards for friends in Iraq.

I began to feel I had escaped prison in Iraq only to wind up in solitary confinement in Chicago. I felt depressed and trapped. I looked around my apartment and thought of the farmhouse and did now what I had done then: I read. With no money and no one to talk to, I turned to Danielle Steel. There were so many of her paperbacks in the used bookstore near our house, I could only hope they would last me until I learned the secret of how to love a husband who didn’t seem to care about loving me. Danielle Steel wrote about women in abusive relationships, and in the end she rewarded them by setting them free. Actually, I’m not sure now if that’s what her books were about; I do know that is what I read into them.

We had been married a little over a month when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, whose oil fields Iraq had historically laid claim to, setting off an international showdown that would lead to the Gulf War five months later, in January 1991. I found out about the invasion over dinner at Fakhri’s parents’ house. Instead of launching another invective against Amo across the dinner table in my direction that night, my father-in-law announced that he had just called the Iraqi embassy and left a message saying congratulations! Kuwaitis are the Arabs that Iraqis and many other Arabs love to hate. In Baghdad, what we saw of Kuwait was arrogant rich sheiks who came to Baghdad to spend their ill-gotten gains on Iraqi prostitutes and Iraqi property, driving up the prices for both. This resentment of Kuwaitis was so ingrained, it trumped even Fakhri’s father’s hatred of Saddam. There would be time enough to get rid of Saddam after he did the dirty work of retrieving Kuwait.