Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [211]
“Or not even an exaggeration,” Zeyk suggested. “A variation.”
“No, it is an exaggeration. Western women choose much of what they do, they have their lives to live. Not so among you. But no human submits to being property, they hate it, and subvert it, and have what revenge they can against it. That’s how humans are. And in this case it is your mother, your wife, your sisters, your daughters.”
Now the men were glaring at him, still more shocked than offended; but Frank stared at his coffee cup, and went on regardless. “You must free your women.”
“How do you suggest we do this?” Zeyk said, looking at him curiously.
“Change your laws! Educate them in the same schools your sons go to. Make them the equal in rights to any Moslem of any kind anywhere. Remember, there is much in your laws that is not in the Koran, but was added in the time since Mohammed.”
“Added by holy men,” Al-Khal said angrily.
“Certainly. But we choose the ways we enforce our religious beliefs in the behavior of daily life. This is true of all cultures. And we can choose new ways. You must free your women.”
“I do not like to be given a sermon by anyone but a mullah,” Al-Khal said, mouth tight under his moustache. “Let those who are innocent of crime preach what is right.”
Zeyk smiled cheerily. “This is what Selim el-Hayil used to say,” he said.
And there was a deep, charged silence.
Frank blinked. Many of the men were smiling now, looking at Zeyk with appreciation. And it came to Frank in a flash that they all knew what had happened in Nicosia. Of course! Selim had died that night just hours after the assassination, poisoned by a strange combination of microbes; but they knew anyway.
And yet they had accepted him, taken him into their homes, into their private enclosures where they lived their private lives. They had tried to teach him what they believed.
“Perhaps we should make them as free as Russian women,” Zeyk said with a laugh, extricating Frank from the moment. “Crazed by overwork, don’t they say? Told they are equal, but actually not?”
Yussuf Hawi, a high-spirited young man, leered and cackled: “Bitches, I can tell you! But no more or less than any other woman! Isn’t it true that in the home the power always goes to the strong? In my rover I am the slave, I can tell you that. I kiss snake’s butt daily with my Aziza!”
The men roared with laughter at him. Zeyk took their cups, and poured another round of coffee. The men patched up the conversation as best they could; they covered for Frank’s gross assault, either because it was so far beyond the pale that it only indicated ignorance, or because they wanted to acknowledge and support Zeyk’s sponsorship of him. But only about half of them looked at Frank anymore.
He withdrew and listened again, profoundly angry at himself. It was a mistake to speak one’s mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did. Best to strip all statements of real content, this was a basic law of diplomacy. Out on the escarpment he had forgotten that.
Disturbed, he went out in a prospector again. The dreams became less frequent. When he came back in, he did not take any drugs. He sat silently in the coffee circles, or spoke about minerals and groundwater, or the comfort of the newly modified prospecting rovers. The men regarded him cautiously, and only included him in the conversation again because of Zeyk’s friendliness, which never flagged— except for that one moment, when he had most effectively reminded Frank of one of the basic facts of the situation.
One night Zeyk invited him over for a private dinner with him and