This torment was yet another offence committed by Wardah against her. Any other mother-in-law, filled with what ought to have been gratitude at having been presented with two grandchildren in such rapid succession and so soon after her son's marriage—would have insisted that Yumn rest herself beneath the walnut tree at the edge of the garden, where even at this moment her children—two male children—rolled their toy lorries along the miniature thoroughfare created by a space between the old tree's roots. Any other mother-in-law would have recognised that a woman on the verge of another pregnancy should not even be relaxing in the blazing sunlight, let alone be toiling in it. Hard manual labour wasn't good for a woman in her childbearing years, Yumn told herself. But try sharing that bit of information with Wardah, Wardah the Wonder, who'd spent the entire day of her son Muhannad's birth washing every window of the house, cooking dinner for her husband, and scrubbing the dishes, the pots, and the kitchen floor before she squatted in the larder to deliver the baby. No. Wardah Malik was unlikely to see temperatures rising to thirty-five degrees as anything other than a minor inconvenience, just as she'd seen the hose pipe ban.
Every sensible person in the country had met the annual restriction on the use of hose pipes by limiting what was planted in his garden. But this, of course, was not Wardah's way. Wardah Malik had planted as usual, row upon row upon endless nasty row of fragile seedlings that she tended to every afternoon. The hose pipe banned because of the drought, she watered every loathsome plant by hand, hauling water by the bucketful from the outdoor tap near the kitchen.
She used two buckets for this exercise. While she was engaged in filling one bucket and carrying it to the edge of the vegetable patch, she expected Yumn to sling the other bucket round the plants. But prior to that daily exercise, there was cutting, pruning, picking, and weeding to be done. Which is what they were engaged in at the moment. And Wardah expected Yumn's help in this as well. Curse her to eternal, burning, scalding, skin-bubbling torment.
Yumn knew what lay behind Wardah's demands upon her: from cooking to cleaning to slaving in the garden. Wardah sought to punish her for doing so easily that which she herself had been nearly incapable of doing at all. It hadn't taken much investigation to discover that Wardah and Akram Malik had been married ten years before Wardah had been able to produce Muhannad. And another six years had passed before she'd been able to present her husband with Sahlah. That was sixteen years of effort resulting in only two children. Given the same amount of time, Yumn knew that she would be giving Muhannad more than a dozen babies and most of them males. So when Wardah Malik looked upon her son's wife, she saw her superior. And only by enslavement was she able to ensure that Yumn knew and remained in her place.
Curse her to everlasting, freezing, rat-infested, starvation-ridden torment, Yumn thought again as she hacked at the rock-hard earth that the sun had baked into a brick-like consistency, despite her daily ministrations of water. She aimed her hoe at a Gibraltar-shaped clod beneath one of the tomato plants, and as she drove it into the earth, she pretended the clod was Wardah's bum.
Whap went the hoe. The old witch rears back in surprise. Whap. Whap. The nasty crone howls in pain. Yumn smiled. Whap. Whap. Whap. Yumn draws first blood on the cow's backside. Whap. Whap. Whap. WHAP. Wardah falls to the ground. WHAPWHAPWHAP-WHAP. She's at Yumn's mercy with her hands uplifted. She begs for a release that only Yumn can give her, but WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAP-WHAP, Yumn knows that her time of triumph has come and with her mother-in-law at last defenceless, subdued, a slave to the killing whimsy of her own son's wife, a veritable—
“Yumn! Stop it at once! Stop!”
Wardah's cries broke into her thoughts as if disturbing a dream, and Yumn woke from them just as abruptly as a dreamer wakes. She found that her heart was pounding ferociously and the sweat was dripping from her chin onto the front of her qamts. The handle of the hoe had become slick from the wetness of her palms and her sandal-shorn feet were buried in the earth she'd managed to rearrange in her attack. Dust was rising on every side of her and settling against her streaming face and her sweat-drenched clothes like a gauzy veil.
“What are you doing?” Wardah demanded. “You stupid girl! Look what you've done!”
Through the haze of soil sent upwards by the flailing of her hoe, Yumn saw that she'd hacked down four of her mother-in-law's prized tomato plants. They lay like storm-felled trees. And their fruit was thoroughly mashed into crimson pellets, completely beyond redemption.
As, obviously, was Yumn herself. Wardah threw her secateurs into her trug and advanced upon her daughter-in-law angrily. “Is there nothing you can do without destroying it?” she demanded. “What do I ask of you that you don't ruin?”
Yumn stared at her, feeling her nostrils flare and her lips move into a sullen line.
“You're thoughtless, lazy, and completely selfish,” Wardah declared. “Believe me, Yumn, had your father not paid us handsomely to take you off his hands, you'd still be at home tormenting your mother instead of exasperating me.”
This was the longest speech that Wardah had ever made in her presence, and Yumn was at first startled to hear her normally docile mother-in-law say so much. But her surprise quickly dissipated as her muscles coiled in a desire to strike the other woman across the face. No one was to speak to her like that. No one was ever to speak to the wife of Muhannad Malik without deference, subservience, and solicitousness in her voice. Yumn was gathering her wits to reply, when Wardah spoke again.
“Clean up this mess. Take those plants to the compost heap. Repair the row that you've ruined. And do it at once, before I act in a way that I'll later regret.”
“I'm not your servant.” Yumn threw down her hoe.
“Indeed you're not. A servant with your talent for doing nothing would have been dismissed within a week. Pick up that hoe and do as I say.”
“I shall tend to my children.” Yumn began to stride towards the walnut tree, where her two boys—oblivious of the altercation between their mother and grandmother—zoomed their toy lorries along the old, exposed roots.
“You will not. You will do as I say. Get back to work at once.”
“My boys need me.” Yumn called to the children: “Lovely ones, shall your ammī-gee play with you now?”
The boys looked up from their game. Wardah ordered, “Anas. Bishr. Go into the house.”
Confused, the children hesitated.
Yumn said gaily, “Here comes Ammī-gee to play with her boys. What shall we play? And where shall we play it? Or shall we walk to Mr. Howard's for Twisters? Would you like that, darling boys?”
Their faces lit with the promise of ice cream. Again, Wardah intervened.
“Anas,” she said sternly, “you heard what I said. Take your brother inside the house. Now.”
The older boy grabbed his little brother by the hand. Together, they scooted out from under the tree and made a dash for the kitchen door.
Yumn whirled back to her mother-in-law. “Witch!” she cried. “You filthy cow! How dare you take my children and—”
The slap came hard. And so unexpectedly that Yumn was rendered speechless. For an instant she forgot who she was and where she was. She was thrust back to her girlhood, hearing her father's shouting, and feeling the solid force of his knuckles as he railed against the impossibility of finding her a husband without paying a dowry ten times what she was worth. And in that instant of forgetting, she surged forward. She grabbed Wardah's dupattā, and as it slipped from her head to her neck, she jerked its two ends savagely, crying out and pulling until she had the older woman forced to her knees.
“Never,” she cried. “You never, never … I who give your son his sons …” And once Wardah was on her knees, Yumn shoved her shoulders towards the earth.
She began to kick: at the neatly turned earth along the vegetable row, at the plants, at Wardah. The ruined tomatoes, she began to hurl. And as she did so, she shrieked, “I am ten times the woman …fertile …willing …desired by a man. … Whi
le you …you …with your talk of talent for doing nothing …you …”
She was so intent upon finally venting her fury that she didn't at first hear the shouting. She didn't know anyone had come into the garden until she felt her arms pinned behind her back and her body dragged away from the crumpled form of her husband's mother.
“Bitch! Bitch! Are you stark mad?”
The voice was so enraged that for an instant she didn't recognise it as Muhannad's. He shoved her roughly to one side and went to his mother, saying, “Ammī, are you all right? Has she hurt you?”
“I hurt her?” Yumn demanded. Her dupattā had fallen from her head and shoulders. Her hair had come unbraided. The arm of her qamis was ripped out. “She hit me. For nothing. That bloody cow—”
“Shut up!” Muhannad roared. “Get in the house. I'll deal with you directly.”
“Muni! She struck your wife in the face. And for what? Because she's jealous. She—”
He shot to his feet. There was a burning intensity in his eyes that Yumn had never seen there before. She retreated hastily.
She said in a quiet, more afflicted tone, “Would you have your wife struck? By anyone?”
He cast her a look of such aversion that she recoiled. He turned back to his mother. He was helping her to her feet, murmuring and gently brushing at her clothes, when Yumn turned from them and hurried into the house.
Anas and Bishr were cowering in the kitchen, both of them in the far corner on the floor behind the table. But she didn't stop to soothe their fear. She went straight to the bathroom upstairs.
Her hands were trembling like a palsy victim's, and her legs felt as if they wouldn't continue to bear her weight. Her garments were plastered to her body by sweat, soil crusted in their every fold, the juice of ripe tomatoes staining the material like blood. The mirror showed her that her face was filthy and her hair—caught up with spider webs, caterpillars, and leaves—looked worse than an unwashed gypsy's.
She didn't care. Right was on her side. No matter what she did, right was always on her side. And one look at the mark of Wardah's blow upon her face was going to confirm that.
Yumn washed the dirt from her cheeks and forehead. She bathed her hands and her arms. She patted her face upon a towel and examined herself once again in the mirror. She saw that the mark of Wardah's blow had faded. She renewed it by slapping herself repeatedly, stinging her flesh with the strength of her palm until her cheek was crimson.
Then she went to the bedroom that she shared with Muhannad. From the corridor, she could hear the two of them downstairs: Muhannad and his mother. Wardah's voice was back to that patently false tone of subservient womanhood which she reserved for speaking to either her son or her husband. Muhannad's voice was …Yumn listened carefully. She frowned. He sounded unlike he'd ever sounded, even in their most intimate moments when they first looked upon their infant sons together.
She caught a few words. Ammī-jahn …never to hurt …didn't intend …the heat …apologise and make reparation to you,
Apologise? Make reparation? Yumn crossed the corridor and went into the bedroom. She slammed the door so hard that the windows shook in their frames. Let them try to make her apologise. She slapped her face again. She scored her cheeks until her nails drew blood. He would see how ill his beloved mother had used his wife.
When Muhannad entered the room, she had combed her hair and returned it to its braid. She'd done nothing else. She was sitting at her dressing table, where the light was the best for him to see the damage his mother had done to her.
“What would you have me do when your mother attacks me?” she demanded before he could speak. “Am I to let her kill me?”
“Shut up,” he said. He walked to the chest of drawers and did what he never did in his father's house. He lit a cigarette. He stood facing the chest rather than her, and as he smoked, he leaned one arm against the wood and with the other he pressed his fingers to his temple. He'd returned home from the factory unexpectedly before noon. But rather than join the women and children for a midday meal, he'd spent the next few hours on the telephone, both making and receiving calls in a hushed and urgent voice. Obviously, he was still preoccupied with his business affairs. But he shouldn't be so preoccupied that he failed to note what his wife had suffered. While his back was turned, Yumn pinched her cheek so hard that tears came to her eyes. He would see how she had been abused.
“Look at me, Muni,” she demanded. “Look at what your mother did and then tell me I'm not to defend myself.”
“I said shut up. I meant it. Shut. Up.”
“I won't shut up till you look at me.” Her voice rose, changed keys. “I was disrespectful, but what would you have me do when she wants to harm me? Shouldn't I act to protect myself? To safeguard the child that—even at this moment—I might be carrying?”
This reminder of her most treasured capability roused Muhannad to take the action she wanted. He turned. A swift glance in the mirror told her that her cheek was mottled and blood-caked appropriately.
She said, “I made a simple mistake among her tomatoes—an easy enough thing to do in this heat—and she began to beat me. In my condition”—here, she rounded her hands beneath her stomach to encourage him to believe what he would—”am I to do nothing to protect the unborn? Do I let her vent all of her rage and her jealousy until”—
“Jealousy?” he snapped. “My mother is no more jealous of you than—”
“Not of me, Muni. Of you. Of us. And of our children. And our future children. I do what she could never do. And she makes me pay for it by treating me worse than she would a servant.”
He observed her from across the room. Surely, she thought, he could see the truth of what she claimed. He could see the truth of it in her damaged face and upon her body, the body that gave him the sons he desired, quickly and effortlessly and repeatedly. No matter her unappealing looks and a figure best left hidden beneath the draperies that her culture required her to wear, Yumn had the single quality that all men prized in a wife. And Muhannad would want to safeguard it.
“What am I to do?” Yumn asked, casting her eyes downward with humility. “Tell me, Muni. And I promise you: I'll do as you tell me.”
She knew she had won when he came to stand in front of the dressing table's bench. He touched her hair, and she knew that afterwards—when they'd been to each other what they were meant to be—he would go to his mother and inform her that she was never again to make a single demand of the mother of his sons. He wrapped her braid round and round his wrist, and Yumn knew that he would pull her head back and find her mouth and take her even in the terrible heat of this terrible day. And after that—
He jerked her head back brutally.
“Muni!” she cried. “You're hurting me.”
He bent and examined her cheek.
“See what she did to me.” Yumn squirmed under his grip.
He lifted her hand and examined it and examined her nails. He used one of his own to prise out from beneath hers a bit of the blood and the skin from her own face. His lip curled in disgust. He flung her hand to one side and released his grip on her braid so suddenly that she would have fallen backwards from the bench had she not grabbed onto his leg.
He disengaged her hands from him. “You're useless,” he said. “All that's required of you is to live with my family in peace, and you can't manage that much.”
“I?” she demanded. “I can't manage?”
“Go down and apologise to my mother. At once.”
“I will not. She struck me. She struck your wife.”
“My wife”—He sneered when he said the word—“deserved to be struck. You're lucky she hasn't struck you before.”
“What is this? Am I meant to be abused? Am I meant to be humiliated? Treated like a dog?”
“If you expect to be forgiven your duties to my mother because you've produced two children, think again. You'll do as she tells you. You'll do as I tell you. And you'll begin by taking your fat bum downs
tairs and apologising to her.”
“I will not!”
“And after that you'll go outside and clean up the mess you've made in her garden.”
“I'll leave you!” she said.
“Go ahead.” He laughed abruptly, not a friendly laugh at all. “Why do women always assume that their ability to reproduce should give them rights reserved for others? It takes no brains to put yourself in the club, Yumn. You're expecting to be worshipped for something that takes as much talent as having a crap or a pee. Now get back to work. And don't bother me again.”
He strode to the door. She felt rigid, hot and cold at once. He was her husband. He had no right …She was going to give him yet another son. … Even at this moment, that son might be growing within her. … And he loved her, adored her, worshipped her for the children she bore him and the woman she was and he could not leave her. Not now, not like this. Not in an anger that might make him seek or want or turn to another or even think of …No. She would not allow it. She would not remain the focus of his anger.
The words came in a rush. “I do my duty, to you and to your family. And my reward is the scorn of your parents and sister. They're spiteful and vicious to me. And why? Because I speak my mind. Because I am who I am. Because I don't hide behind a mask of sweetness and obedience. I don't lower my head and hold my tongue and pretend to be your father's perfect little virgin. Virgin? Her?” Yumn hooted. “Well, in a few more weeks she won't be able to hide the truth underneath her gharara. And then we'll see who knows what real duty is and who lives precisely as she wishes.”