Fortunately for Sual, Mahmud had grown up in the same neighborhood and was only five years her senior. She wasn’t in love with him, but love, as far as she could tell, wasn’t something she could even dream of, not in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City and not with a traditional family such as hers. Sometimes, when they were together in a room, after checking that nobody was eavesdropping, Sual allowed herself to hold whispered conversations with Lucy about those Arab women who were allowed to attend university and choose their own husbands. For her, this was but a distant dream.
Sual made do with the fact that Mahmud was young. She considered herself lucky that he wasn’t balding or fat or old. Girls like she couldn’t hope for better. Sual was married on her sixteenth birthday.
More than anything, it had pained Sual to have to leave school. She’d been an outstanding student and had dreamed of becoming a doctor. Immediately after the wedding, the young couple had moved in with Mahmud’s parents and his family was adamant: it wasn’t proper for a wife to be more educated than her husband, and Mahmud had stopped going to school after the eighth grade to work at the family bakery. Her school principal had tried to help. He’d come to the family home to attempt to convince them to allow the gifted girl to continue her studies. But Mahmud’s mother, cursing loudly, threw him out of the house, and that ended Sual’s dream of university and medical school. She still found it hard to make peace with the fact that her dream was gone, that she’d never get an academic education.
Sual told no one, but she refused to give up her studies. At the very least, she was determined to complete high school and matriculate, and every night, after Mahmud had fallen asleep and started to snore, she’d take out her books and learn on her own.
The matriculation examinations were scheduled a few months from now. If she could only elude Mahmud’s mother, who observed every one of Sual’s steps with her small, shifty, hawk-eyes, she’d be able to take them. This notion gave her strength and hope. Still, this wasn’t the major obstacle. What had turned Sual’s life into hell on earth was the fact that her belly remained as flat as before the marriage.
In the small, close-knit Muslim quarter community, whispers behind Sual’s back that she was “flawed merchandise” started to circulate and spread. A year after the wedding, she wasn’t pregnant yet. Mahmud’s mother, who’d never been particularly nice to her, started to harass Sual to her face, making her life a living nightmare.
Three more years after the wedding and Sual’s belly still refused to swell. Every time she went out, she was subjected to the neighborhood women’s stares, thinly veiled by pity and scorn.
On one of her weekly visits to her daughter, Sual’s mother told her that people were saying she was barren and that Mahmud should divorce her and marry someone else. Before leaving, she gave Sual a concoction prepared by the scary Turkish coffee reader from the alley near their house. Her mother instructed her to swallow a teaspoonful every night before going to sleep, never mind its bitterness.
Sual did as told. She couldn’t confess the truth, not even to her mother. Three long years she’d compressed her lips and bowed her head in the street, stubbornly repulsing the pitying looks and keeping her secret. Sometimes, at night, she allowed herself to dream of the life she might have had, wetting her pillow with tears.
She thought back to the morning of the wedding. Aisha insisted on having the traditional awkward mother-daughter conversation. Sual, red-faced and embarrassed, listened for what seemed an eternity to her mother’s old-fashioned advice. There was no point saying that she was already sixteen and that the internet had all the information anyone could want. Aisha wouldn’t have understood. Her mother was unwavering in her determination to live exactly the same as she’d lived twenty years ago. She didn’t even have a cellphone, obstinate in her avoidance of all electronic devices.
On the wedding night, after the party was over, Sual changed out of her wedding dress and into a nightgown her mother had sewn. She turned on the nightlight next to her new bed, covered it with a cloth to dim the light, and quickly slid in between the sheets. Mahmud will be here any moment, she thought.
The hours passed without a sign of him. The excitement tinged with anxiety that she’d felt was slowly replaced by fatigue. Eventually, Sual fell asleep.
Mahmud entered the bedroom early in the morning, waking Sual, who pretended to still be sleeping. His hair was a mess and his breath reeked of alcohol. Without looking at her, he turned his back and passed out.
This happened night after night. For three years now, Mahmud would arrive home late, throw her a hurried “good night,” and turn his back. She may have been married, but a man’s hand had yet to touch her.
At first, Sual felt relief. From what she’d heard from friends, the whole business could be really painful. But when the days turned to weeks and months, Sual started to think it was her
