(A Berber Woman with Berber silver and amber/wood jewelry, note also the striped cloth, distinctive of her tribe and location. These were woven on narrow hand looms and strips of cloth sewn together)
Section 4
Three days later I had recovered my senses under the loving care of my kinswomen. I could now sit up in my mother’s bed, for she would not have me leave her. I drank mint tea until I was tired of walking out into the desert to squat . I thought my senses had taken leave of me, for one night I started to walk out, after dark, when the desert turns dangerous, even more so than by day. The old women told me there were Zars out there, waiting to claim my liver, but I knew there were desert snakes and scorpions and these alone were trouble enough.
I did not care. I was torn between love, a pitiful, self-effacing sentiment where I cried out for the man I had never really known. But then, like a limb that has fallen over a high rock, and teeters, first one side then the weight of it on the other, I fell to hating Hasim with all my heart. My hatred for him made my fingers curl and a lump of burning pain in my stomach rise up to my throat. If he were before me now, I would savagely kill him with my bare hands. He had brought shame on my family; he had disgraced me, the woman who was his intended, the woman who was to bear his many sons.
Until a new moon rose in the sky at night, I walked a part each night in the desert, tailed by the girl Takama, who was sent by my mother to watch me. I bore her presence until finally annoyed, I yelled for her to go to the devil. Takama was a good girl, a slave in our family, and she fell on her knees and threw her apron over her face. I took pity and told her she could follow, but only at a distance of three camels. I turned and continued to pace out in the desert, always in a wide circle around our community’s many tents. I was trying to make up my mind what to do. I knew my parents would take some kind of action, but I had my own to decide.
On the third night of my pacing, I went out into the desert, and forbade Takama to follow. I had bathed myself in a ritual bath in the narrow river that ran through our oasis, and had thrown off all jewelry. I unbraided my long black hair and drew on a white cotton dress, and barefoot I went into the desert. There I chanted and prayed to my goddesses for I wanted their help in deciding my course.
Isis was the first goddess I prayed to, lifting my hands to the heavens and imploring her. It was Isis who gave justice to the poor and orphaned, and though I was neither, I knew she would hear my plight. Isis was all-seeing, but apparently busy.
I next prayed and chanted to Tanit and Tinjis. I needed all the answers and ideas I could find. They were silent, but suddenly I shivered. I knew one of them had listened. Or perhaps it was a Zar that tickled my spine, for Zars were known to attack a woman when she went alone in the desert. They delighted in that. It made access to souls so much easier.
But I was looking for something else. I was enraged at the treatment by that man. Now, my anger was such I could not speak his name except to spit it.
I closed my eyes, threw out my arms to the heavens, to the moonless sky above me and gave myself over to the vortex of my misery. Ayyur, the Moon God was one I exhorted, and then Ifri, the war goddess. I needed some answers, some plan of action. I mumbled and prayed and exhorted them all until the constellations in the sky above me revolved with the passage of hours.
Finally, it came to me. I knew what I would do when I heard the sound of the imzad, the violin only a woman can touch and vibrate. I heard its sad sound floating over the desert in the evening air. My destiny was staring me in my face.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2009, 2012
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