A Tunisian Tale. Hassouna Mosbahi
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reality isn’t so. In our country mothers are like cheap racks where everything gets hung. People wipe their hands all over their mother as if she were a scrap of paper in a public toilet. She’s cursed and insulted all the time. A child bickering with one of his peers starts cursing the other one’s mother early on. He shamelessly uses her any way he wants, this little pipsqueak who still pisses his pants and wets the bed, who still relies on his mother to tie his own shoelaces. Anyone who wants to confirm that what I’m saying is true needs only to stand outside our primary and secondary schools for a few minutes when people are coming and going, and I swear to God Almighty you’ll hear things that will make you wish you never had a mother. The taxi driver who retired from public service five years ago sticks his ugly bald head out the window during the glorious month of Ramadan and insults the mother of the old man driving an SUV who wraps his head in a towel spotted with filth and grime. In a rage, the old man hurriedly curses the taxi driver’s mother until the listener believes that she might just be—even if she’s dead or very, very old—hanging out in that place of ill repute near Nahj Zarqoun that I don’t want to mention by name because everybody knows it, including the people of Bin Qardan, al-Ala, Bourj al-Khadra, Beni Kheddache, Sajanan, and Talabat. Anyone who walks the streets of the capital or other cities listening to people of all ages and backgrounds as they curse and insult one another and get into fistfights or butt heads with each other will have no choice but to conclude that mothers are the root of all evil, responsible for all the sins and mistakes committed from the highest echelons down to the popular classes, that all mothers are like this or like that. Even someone who can only read sign language would understand. Our high school first-year Arabic teacher—a short, jolly-faced native of the Jerid region with a light heart, a sharp tongue, and small cunning eyes like those of a fox waiting for the opportunity to attack the henhouse when the family isn’t looking—used to enjoy reminding us almost every day how the Jerid had produced great men, legal scholars, judges, lawyers, writers, and poets. It’s enough that the region produced Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi. Then he would close his beady little eyes and begin to recite his famous poem: “If, one day, the people desire to live, then fate must respond.”
Ahh, that time seems so distant now . . .
The newspapers were interested in my case from the very beginning right up until the bitter end, so it wasn’t odd for the courtroom to be filled with such a crowd, teeming with women and men who were fired up and eager to know what destiny had in store for me after having appalled millions of people by what my hands had perpetrated on a hot summer day out in that ravine, where I didn’t hear anything but the chirping of cicadas. I think it was natural for all their stares to fall upon me as the verdict was read out, searching for the expressions that would appear on my face, which might reveal what sort of emotions and excitements and feelings were coursing through me. But this huge mass of men and women must have felt great disappointment because they couldn’t possibly have seen anything in my features resembling remorse or fear. Instead I may have even cracked a crooked smile upon hearing the verdict just so that they would know how absolutely satisfied I was with the outcome. They stared back at me, as astonished as clowns. Meanwhile that smug, plump, older woman in a black dress who had attended every court session as if the matter concerned her personally began to grumble angrily to herself as something washed over her long, pale face, the face of a decrepit old nag, something indicating her readiness to pounce on me and teach me one final lesson before I drifted away into the eternal darkness. Could it be that the verdict handed down against me wasn’t enough to satisfy her thirst for revenge? Maybe I had defied all of this woman’s expectations, maybe she had been waiting for me to burst out crying from remorse over what I had done, so that she could go home at peace in order to instruct her children and her grandchildren about how the young man who had committed that heinous crime they read all about in the magazines and newspapers had broken down in the end, had cried in agony in front of the judges and the lawyers and the packed audience in the courtroom when he finally understood that what he had done was an act of the wicked Devil and not the act of someone who believes there is one true God and that loving one’s mother is one of His commandments.
The court reporter was also outraged and started making me nervous with his fiery glances, as if he wanted to yell at me that the verdict handed down in my case was too lenient, and how if he had been in the judge’s shoes he would have immediately started a fire right there inside the courtroom and thrown me into the inferno. The truth of the matter is that this misshapen, ashen-faced, middle-aged man with worm-eaten teeth had despised me from the very first session, and I hated him with equal measure. He seemed to be one of those people who pretend to be chaste, truthful in speech, sincere in action, and noble in their dealings with others, but who turn out, in fact, to be savage beasts that would tear the teeth out of a barking dog. My affable lawyer was blessed with the friendliness of a spinster who still hopes to get married in spite of the fact that she is over forty years old and lives in a country where the most recent official census has confirmed there are more women than men. He whispered something to me I couldn’t totally comprehend, something about a presidential pardon. But I didn’t respond. I wanted to be taken away to the prison cell as soon as possible. That’s all I really wanted!
THE MOTHER
It’s better if I start with my mother. My mother—may God have mercy upon her—who used to tell me I was born in a hard year, one that was destabilized by upheavals and painful events. The earth was parched, the water wells had run dry, and the olive and almond trees were all shriveled up. Famine had begun to threaten the country. Despite the sacks of flour the state provided for the needy, many people would go to sleep hungry. My mother also used to tell me how in the hotter-than-average summer of the year I was born, military vehicles showed up and motored around like crazy in our village and neighboring regions in order to haul young men off to Bizerte to fight in the war that had broken out against the French. Bashir, my maternal Aunt Warda’s eldest son, was one of them. According to my mother, Aunt Warda, and a number of other relatives, everybody adored him for his good manners, his kind heart, and his pleasing appearance. He had only just mustered up the courage to ask a young woman he was in love with for her hand in marriage when they carted him away to Bizerte. One day after he arrived there he was killed by a bullet to his head and buried there along with many others. Our family mourned him for a long time, and Aunt Warda nearly lost her mind from the tragedy. My mother used to claim that the leaders and anyone with connections to the state in our village were overjoyed because we had offered up a martyr to the Battle of Bizerte and God would now grace the village with rain and abundant good fortune and the satisfaction of important people in the capital. The other misfortune that befell us that year was the death of my uncle Omar, my mother’s younger brother, in a car accident in Sousse. He had gone there looking for work. But crossing the street downtown at sunset a truck ran him over and killed him instantly. When I got older, my mother told me how she remained in mourning out of grief over his death until I was a year old. From time to time, with a grave face that preserved her classic beauty until the last day of her life, and as dark shadows of profound sadness continued to haunt her soul, she would tell me, “My daughter, you were born in a barren, black year. I pray to God, glory and praises be upon Him, that He won’t bring it upon us ever again or upon any part of the Muslim umma!”
As for my father—may God also have mercy upon him—he didn’t have much of a presence in the house compared to my mother, who was so ubiquitous that nothing could ever be done without her approval and consent. I can’t remember my father ever doing anything large or small without consulting her first. He was her blindly obedient disciple who never dared to oppose her or disagree with her, even when she was wrong. He would remain perfectly content as long as she was pleased with him, and he would flit away in joy with so much as a smile from her. When she got angry or her features took on a glowering expression and her eyes got all red, he’d slink away and wouldn’t come back home until he was certain her bad mood had passed. Aunt Warda started taking a keen interest in me that aroused the jealousy of my three sisters. She told me that the beauty God had bestowed on my mother had caused a lot of problems for her when she was younger. From the age of fourteen the men in our village as well as in neighboring villages started hovering around her like relentless flies. Every one of them wanted her for his bride and was prepared to offer the best they had in order to win her, but she wasn’t interested in any of them. Not a single one ever received a kind word or a glance or