{"id":33485,"date":"2024-07-05T10:06:23","date_gmt":"2024-07-05T08:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=33485"},"modified":"2024-07-05T10:59:20","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T08:59:20","slug":"besara-an-excerpt-fromthings-are-not-in-their-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/besara-an-excerpt-fromthings-are-not-in-their-place\/","title":{"rendered":"“Besara”\u2014an excerpt from Things Are Not in Their Place<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
A bittersweet coming of age story about race and self from the novel <\/span>Things Are Not in Their Place<\/span><\/i>, by one of Oman\u2019s foremost woman novelists.<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Huda Hamed<\/span><\/h4>\n

Translated by Zia Ahmed<\/strong><\/p>\n

I stand in front of the mirror, running the back of my fingers over my soft cheek. My skin is brown, just like that of most people in this country. My eyes are beautiful. My curly hair rests quietly under a hairclip. My nose is straight as a sword. My lower lip is thick and doesn\u2019t quite go with the upper one.<\/span><\/p>\n

I may be a <\/span>besara*<\/span><\/i>, but there\u2019s no denying my beauty. I can walk around the market, visit respectable people\u2019s homes, and go wherever I want without anyone recognizing my inner darkness. I\u2019m not like the \u201cslaves,\u201d but I\u2019m also nothing like the pure Mona with her delicate features, free from the nooses that snare me from time to time because my status is somewhere in the middle. I cried in my mother\u2019s arms for hours the day my friend Hanan mocked me that I wasn\u2019t a free person. We were in the first grade at the time. There was no difference between my skin color and hers, or her nose and mine, only my hair, asleep under the white school hijab, and my full lower lip.<\/span><\/p>\n

I could have sworn that Hanan was actually a little darker than me. But when the girls took off their hijabs during free periods and Hanan flung back her hair, soft bangs flowed over her forehead like a waterfall of light.<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother told me: \u201cYou\u2019re not a slave, Amal, but you\u2019re not exactly free either.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh my God! How cruel is this vicious circle, this ember of doubt, this crime that I\u2019m held accountable for without having committed it! I discovered, in life\u2019s first steps, that I was defective.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thinking that academic excellence could conceal my flaw, I tried hard to excel at school, but remained frustratingly below average. In desperation, I turned to my aunt, Ziyoon, who\u2019d\u00a0 married a Zanzibari man without her family\u2019s consent. She\u2019d acquired a substantial library after coming to terms with the reality that she\u2019d lost the love of her sisters, including my mother. My aunt had forsaken a lot by marrying a man of another race, but he gave her something precious in return: the opportunity to learn and read. Despite a late start, she excelled, quickly becoming a book lover.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day she told me her secret. I remember that I gasped at the time, even though I didn\u2019t fully comprehend her meaning when she said: \u201cI\u2019ve rid myself of the burden of the mirror, Amal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I understand her secret, the burden of the mirror, which pushes us to compare ourselves to others and accept their cruel words and accusations. That\u2019s what reading did to my aunt. It made her look at life in a less harsh light than what she\u2019d seen when she was back in her childhood village. In contrast, my parents had a skewed perspective on our place in society, telling me this is what God has destined for us and we have no ability to challenge fate. But I could never believe them, or believe that my fate could be so disappointing.<\/span><\/p>\n

With great difficulty, I was able to visit Aunt Ziyoon in the summer, when she gave me beautiful, precious books and taught me to read fluently. Her children were darker than me, yet they astonished me with their utter lack of concern about how they looked. I myself took pains to appear to be an ordinary, carefree girl who didn\u2019t care about such trivial details as skin and lips and hair, so as not to seem like someone with an inferiority complex. But to no avail. I tried to contain my depression, but the fear of humiliation was ever-present, waiting for the slightest opening to consume me from within.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember the day Hanan got on the school bus and found a black girl sitting behind the driver\u2019s seat. She got furious and flung the girl\u2019s bag away, screaming: \u201cWhen will you understand that slaves must sit in the back?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I felt a painful piercing in my chest, rising up to my throat like a poisonous thorn. I thanked God that I wasn\u2019t black and wouldn\u2019t face such disgrace. I thanked God even more because, unlike everyone else, I actually preferred to sit in the back, even without being told to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mona also liked to sit in the back, sweet Mona who loved to daydream and who, despite her delusions, was kind, sincere and naive. I felt the need to protect our friendship before she thought to run off and leave me to tumble into my fragile loneliness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mona was generally gloomy, sitting in the second-to-last row, sketching the faces of neighborhood boys. I would sit close to her, telling her about the other life that I wanted us to discover together, pretending to be the kind of person who knows everything. I would feign being fun and airy, and poor Mona believed me. She defended me whenever Hanan brought up that accursed word, <\/span>besara<\/span><\/i>, more painful for me than <\/span>slave<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ah, that word! It reminded me that I was neither free, nor a slave, a hybrid somewhere in the middle. That word, like a scalpel from her mouth, cut me, even while she looked relaxed, as if she were telling an ordinary joke. Nobody laughed, but nobody cried with me either. The other <\/span>besara<\/span><\/i> girls in class dealt with that word with infuriating submissiveness. In their meekness, they looked and acted like that word, believed in it, resembling my parents in their subservience.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was the only one who dissolved where I stood, melting with shame when that word pierced all my emotional defenses and destroyed my ego.<\/span><\/p>\n

Visiting Aunt Ziyoon\u2019s house wasn\u2019t easy. My mother hadn\u2019t spoken to her since she married the Zanzibari man and fled with him to a neighboring village. I used to take advantage of the times my cousins went to that village to harvest dates and irrigate their orchard. I\u2019d ride in the back of their pickup truck, without my mother ever noticing.<\/span><\/p>\n

My aunt would be delighted by my visits, plying me with tasty snacks and then directing me to her library. I used to wonder how my aunt overcame her sense of inferiority, and a strange certainty came upon me that the books she\u2019d read had helped her.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first novel I read from her library was <\/span>Uncle Tom’s Cabin<\/span><\/i>.<\/span> It stayed with me for years, and I could never get rid of the sadness it stirred. At first my aunt was hesitant about my desire to borrow Harriet Stowe\u2019s classic, which she said was one of the most famous novels in American literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlease, aunt, I\u2019ll read it and bring it back next time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut you\u2019re too young for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlease?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, Amal, I promise that if you finish reading it and understand it, I\u2019ll give you a reward. And whenever you return a book, I\u2019ll give you another one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I hugged my aunt tightly, feeling as if she was throwing me a lifeline out of a rotting swamp into a wondrous land of shimmering lights. I started flipping through <\/span>Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin <\/span><\/i>on the drive home as I sat in the back of the pickup truck. Despite the bumpy ride on a dirt road, I kept on reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we got home, I snuck in just as quietly as I\u2019d left. My mother didn\u2019t mind me going to the shop or staying late at the farm, as Mona\u2019s mother did, but she\u2019d hang me by the neck if she knew I\u2019d been to my aunt\u2019s house.<\/span><\/p>\n

Luckily, she was always too busy to pay much attention to me. I entered the room that I shared with my brother and sat down in a far corner to read. It was slow going. I couldn\u2019t read very well but was determined to keep trying.<\/span><\/p>\n

I finished the first page in half an hour without understanding much of it. The novel was thick, and the thought that I might need an entire year to finish it frustrated me to no end.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I never despaired. I thought of my aunt\u2019s face, which relieved me of the burden of disappointment. I had to read. I was lucky to have gone to school, while my aunt had to marry a good man who taught her to read and love at the same time. Any time my mother spoke with annoyance about Aunt Ziyoon, whom she\u2019d expelled from the family, I felt as if she were talking about my own thoughts and ambitions.<\/span><\/p>\n

In her youth, my aunt escaped from that toxic word <\/span>besara<\/span><\/i> and defied social norms by refusing to become a servant in her neighbors\u2019 homes or humiliate herself by kissing people\u2019s hands. She refused to marry a cousin so as not to worsen the wound that her children would inflict by asking her the meaning of the word that people would hurl at them every day.<\/span><\/p>\n

I finished the second page faster than the first, feeling a sense of optimism. The more I persevered, the better I got. My eyes teared up as I read. I felt for Tom\u2019s wife who worked so selflessly to redeem him. I sympathized with the child Eva who wanted to emancipate the slaves but died without fulfilling her desire to free her friend Tom.<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother entered the room as I was wiping away tears, feeling a great burning as if there were thorns in my eye.<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother asked me worriedly, \u201cAmal, why are you sitting here alone? Why are you crying?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I clung to her for a long time, sobbing. I couldn\u2019t tell her about poor Tom, whose only fault was that he was born a slave, the property of others, who couldn\u2019t even own himself. I couldn\u2019t tell her that I was very much like Uncle Tom because I couldn\u2019t defend myself from Hanan\u2019s harassment. I just clung to her and sobbed and sobbed.<\/span><\/p>\n

What could reading do for me? Aunt Ziyoon slipped cash into my pocket whenever I returned a book to her. She was amazed by my quick wit, my grasp of details. She noticed, more than my mother, the sadness hiding behind my cheerful demeanor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once she asked: \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with you, Amal?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNothing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re sad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat will happen when I read too much, aunt?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll find yourself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDoes that really happen?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She nodded with an affectionate smile and told me that knowledge turns life upside down, transforming a clueless person into one capable of differentiating among the world\u2019s myriad details, someone able to make her own decisions, without anyone\u2019s oversight or guardianship.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her words were beautiful, wondrous. Although I barely understood some of her sentences, I felt a wave of pleasure surge through my body, as if she were sprinkling cool, refreshing water on me on a stifling day by saying: \u201cReading equals freedom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Should I have believed you, aunt?<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowledge increased my sense of the relative importance of things and words. I hadn\u2019t yet learned how to scream at Hanan, to tell her that she and I were the same, that my curly hair\u00a0 didn\u2019t justify her resentment. I hadn\u2019t yet reconciled with that word, which I heard whenever someone proposed to a girl in our neighborhood, because the first questions the groom\u2019s family would ask about a prospective bride would be about her origins and tribal lineage. A free man wouldn\u2019t marry a <\/span>besara<\/span><\/i>, while she would refuse to marry a slave so as not to worsen her lot in life.<\/span><\/p>\n

I recall the tragedy of the beautiful <\/span>besara<\/span><\/i> from our village, with a face like a princess\u2019 and gently flowing hair, graceful and soft. Half the young men were in love with her, but she was devoted to one man, a sheikh\u2019s son, who loved her madly. His father did evil spells to keep him away from that beautiful girl. Eventually, the young man lost his mind when his father schemed to marry her off to a black man.<\/span><\/p>\n

I saw that crazy man once when I was young. He\u2019d escaped from the room where his father kept him locked up, repeating a sentence that hurt my heart and still rings in my ears to this day.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did jasmine blossom on a crow? Why did jasmine blossom on a crow? Why?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading made me bolder.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t shy like most of the other neighborhood girls. I didn\u2019t bother playing with dolls. I didn\u2019t spend my time in quiet contemplation and sketching like Mona. Fortunately, my brother Saud was two years younger than me, so he didn\u2019t boss me around. I treated him with great tenderness and he would often run to me whenever the neighborhood boys bothered him. My other, grown brothers, who never did well at school, had simple professions and only came to the village during holidays. My sisters were married, so there was no one to quarrel with me or disturb my life with orders and warnings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mohsen was the only person who filled my heart, even before I matured. He was calm and easygoing, just a few years older than me. Even as a child, he didn\u2019t like to play with us, content with watching me from behind his thick glasses. Once he noticed that I was reading a collection of translated short stories for children. He sat down next to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDo you like reading?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy aunt says reading is like eating.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you, what do you say about reading?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy aunt also says reading equals freedom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His face betrayed his astonishment. I wanted to look and speak like an adult. I wanted him to be impressed by me, to admire this child prodigy who spoke words beyond her age. Instead, he said: \u201cRead for knowledge, for pleasure, to nourish your young mind. But never read for freedom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Anger cut through me like a knife. I felt like I was going to punch him in the face. He\u2019d intended to insult me, I was sure of it. Then, he corrected himself, saying: \u201cI liked what one of my professors said to me once. \u2018Whoever seeks knowledge is free on the inside.\u2019 I think you don\u2019t need freedom because you\u2019re naturally free.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His words nearly brought me to tears. I almost threw all my sadness into his lap as he sat there beside me. Neither my mother nor my father had ever said anything like this. Even Aunt Ziyoon hadn\u2019t said it, not even when I was at my most vulnerable. Nobody, nobody had said it, ever, not even as a joke or a lie.<\/span><\/p>\n

Except Mohsen. The words had come out of his mouth, quietly, with no pretense, without my asking. The words had simply appeared, like fairy lights, and I pinned all my unfulfilled\u00a0 desires on them. From that moment, I decided to believe that Mohsen was the sole truthsayer in my world. I\u2019d cling to these words, plant them like roses in my heart and water them with infinite love. Yes, I wouldn\u2019t read only to claim my right to freedom. For I was already free, as Mohsen had said. There was no ulterior motive for him to have complimented me in a way that shook my entire being, no special benefit he expected from me in return for the words that lifted my mood so drastically, curing my depression.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after that incident, I became addicted to reading, no longer satisfied with the novels that Aunt Ziyoon gave me. I raided the school library, in addition to the books I got from the Arabic teacher, a kindly man who\u2019d noticed my passion for reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

Khalouf Shawana, a foul-mouthed class dunce, used to come to school with cheap magazines from his city cousins. He offered to loan me the filthy mags, insisting that they were great fun. I was reluctant at first because he was a vulgar boy with questionable morals, the only person my mother told me to avoid because, according to her, he came from a low-class and immoral family.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t tempted by the magazines with explicit pictures as much as I was obsessed at the time with the desire to get to know my own body.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nobody paid attention to me as I blossomed like a butterfly from the cocoon of childhood. Even Mohsen ignored me during the few times he came home from university. I was waiting for the slightest hint from him to jump into his arms and make love to him like the people in the novels I\u2019d read.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only Khalouf was paying close attention to my body and my indifference to committing sin as long as it didn\u2019t get out of hand, or greatly affect my status in the village. So he would often suggest that we try it together, away from curious eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like me, Khalouf was a virgin; like me, he was burning with lust. At first, I was unwilling to go all the way, not because I feared people\u2019s words or my mother\u2019s wrath, but because I was afraid of losing my chance with Mohsen, the man who\u2019d set me free. I was trying to suppress the urge that came upon me whenever I read a novel about love and the unstoppable longings between lovers, but I never imagined myself with Khalouf, who was eager to pounce on any woman like a wild animal. On the other hand, waiting for Mohsen wasn\u2019t easy. He was remote and aloof. I had no guarantee that Mohsen might turn to me one day. He was a mystery, a man whose mind I couldn\u2019t read, who perhaps saw no further than what his father had planned for him, or the wall around his house, or the thick glasses that indicated his diligence as a student.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what would happen if I gave myself to Khalouf? Like me, he too was the child of a low family, whose questionable morals he\u2019d inherited through no fault of his own. What if Khalouf had been born to another family, a decent one with a good reputation? Wouldn\u2019t he have a different character, with different habits and interests?<\/span><\/p>\n

Since his birth, Khalouf had been shouldering the burden of his neglectful parents\u2019 many mistakes. At the age when children try to say mama and dada, he learned only cruelty, pain, and insults. My mother told me about the night his parents got into a violent argument. The father took nine-month-old Khalouf to the barn, tied him to the cow, and locked his mother in the house so she couldn\u2019t rescue him.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a chilly night. Little Khalouf ultimately cried himself to sleep, thanks to God\u2019s kindness. The cow, more affectionate than his parents, didn\u2019t harm him. The neighbors finally heard his mother\u2019s screams and let her out. By the time she got to him, it was time for the dawn call to prayer.<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of his birthright, Khalouf was more like me than Mohsen. He was branded with the traits of his alcoholic father and slut mother, who opened her legs to every man she came across. I, too, carry a sin that isn\u2019t mine, but I\u2019m forced to identify with it, or else be expelled from society.<\/span><\/p>\n

Khalouf couldn\u2019t go against the entire village to say anything other than what they believed. He couldn\u2019t choose a path other than the one others chose for him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only now do I see these similarities between us. I, too, can\u2019t say no to my hair or my thick lips. Sure, I can disguise myself for a bit by putting on makeup or straightening my hair. But on the inside, I remain black. This is the deep scar on my soul that I can’t get rid of. My index finger can\u2019t magically become huge and shush the tongues eager for gossip.<\/span><\/p>\n

One night, after Khalouf urged me to run off and try out our lusting bodies, to test their ability to meld and enter unknown worlds, I grew curious. I longed for those rosy dreams that I\u2019d only encountered in romance novels, dreams that give wings and scatter tiny stars like seeds from which love grows.<\/span><\/p>\n

I left the house without makeup, with no preparation for that intimate moment that I\u2019d awaited for so long, perhaps because I\u2019d expected my first time to be with Mohsen. But fate had pushed me in another direction. I didn\u2019t know how my legs carried me to Khalouf. But I went to meet him in a distant field after making sure that everyone was asleep and nobody would follow me.<\/span><\/p>\n

I closed my eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was excited, lust dripping from his eyes. Wordlessly, he pounced on me. So it was that I suddenly found myself in a spiral of pain and vertigo. My eyes were like someone\u2019s who\u00a0 doesn\u2019t want to commit a bleak experience to memory, who doesn\u2019t want any light to shine on a traumatic moment, or admit any possibility of pleasure. I closed my eyes tightly, like someone who wants to reach down into the farthest reaches of the soul to push a small button, the one for forgetting and tears. That\u2019s all I recall of that night, no more, no less.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I cried for a long time, like a child who\u2019d lost her favorite toy.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t crying about losing my virginity. That meant nothing to me. Now I could say to any man who proposed to me: I\u2019m a used woman. My femininity is defective. Please stay away.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, that lost thin membrane was like a burden that I\u2019d needed someone to free me from. I remember when my father beat me up because I rode Saud\u2019s bicycle. \u201cYou\u2019ll bring scandal upon us, slut!\u201d he shouted. I also remember my extreme stupidity in washing public toilets for fear that someone might have left sperm on them. My first misunderstanding about sperm arose when the science teacher refused to answer my questions, leading me to believe that it was an animal the size of a worm. Turns out, it\u2019s more brutal, preying on girls everywhere, destroying their honor. I also learned from the religious studies teacher that honor is the equivalent of a woman\u2019s respectability. I suspected that honor had many aspects, but my mother and the other village women reduced it to the thin membrane that I\u2019d lost. Only later did I understand all the desperate attempts girls make for fear of losing their membranes, their honor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mona was the only girl who believed in my ideas, but she never had the courage to act on them. She trembled at the thought of reading a single book about the relationship between men and women. She was deathly scared of her mother, so I couldn\u2019t tell her that I\u2019d gained freedom while she was still enslaved to that terrible idea called honor, even though afterwards I cried for three days straight.<\/span><\/p>\n

I cried, not because I\u2019d lost my honor, but because I\u2019d discovered that there was no pleasure in sex, only disgust and pain \u2014 those were the two feelings that captured the act for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did this happen? Why hadn\u2019t I felt pleasure like I\u2019d expected? I\u2019d been trapped under his bulky body as if I were punishing myself or silently washing away my sins. I\u2019d expected my body to surprise me, but it gave me only pain and nausea. So I surrendered to Khalouf and let him take me with my eyes closed, without moving a muscle until he\u2019d finished and rolled off.<\/span><\/p>\n

Afterwards, I forced my lame, exhausted body to run through the fields before the morning light could reveal what had happened. I bathed in silence. The bloodstain on my dress wouldn\u2019t come out no matter how hard I scrubbed. I put the dress in a black bag, wrapped it in another bag, then threw it in the trash.<\/span><\/p>\n

Luckily, my brother Saud, who shared my room, was a heavy sleeper. A cannon going off wouldn\u2019t have awakened him. I spread my bedroll next to him and burrowed into a comforter to overcome the chill that was crushing my bones. Then, I succumbed to a torrent of silent tears, thinking of Mohsen\u2019s face and his kind words.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps if it had been him tonight, I would have felt something else. Perhaps it would have happened to me as it happens in romance novels. Perhaps I would have been filled with warmth instead of these emotions that shatter me into tiny fragments and make me unrecognizable to myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t I think of your face, Mohsen, when I closed my eyes and bore the pain in every muscle of my body? Why did you run away from me? Were you angry? Did you feel that <\/span>my betrayal of you was serious? Believe me, I didn\u2019t do it for Khalouf\u2019s sake. I was tired and I had to open up my body, to see the world from viewpoints other than the narrow one that makes girls giggle and preen, dreaming of men who come to them at night to scatter rose petals on their pillows and have long, meaningful conversations.<\/span><\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t wait for you, Mohsen. My soul separated from my body, and what my body wanted was completely different from what my soul longed for. Could you believe that? I wouldn\u2019t lie to you. Trust me, the soul and the body are never alike, never.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Translator\u2019s note: <\/span>Besar<\/span><\/i> (female form <\/span>besara<\/span><\/i>, plura <\/span>beyasir<\/span><\/i>) is a person whose ancestors were outside the tribal system as indentured servants of uncertain lineage, or otherwise marginalized in society. Slavery existed in Oman from antiquity until the 1970s, and the <\/span>beyasir<\/span><\/i> were in many ways better off than the enslaved. However in other ways, they fared worse, since the enslaved carried the tribal name and could count on the tribe to protect them; the <\/span>beyasir<\/span><\/i> could only count on themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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