The Haj - Leon Uris [70]
Nada’s blazing curiosity faded to a rising of fear. She had always liked it when she rubbed against a boy. She liked it when she knew she would be working at the threshing floor or when she carried water to the fields for the men. Hagar had warned her a dozen times a day during the threshing season about touching boys. She did not realize it had anything to do with the pleasure button. ‘What happened to you?’ Nada finally brought herself to ask.
Ramiza patted her large belly and told the baby to be still. She was quite uncomfortable and it was difficult for her to work, but she did not want Haj Ibrahim yelling at her. ‘They come at night,’ Ramiza said. ‘You never know when they will come. The daya, the midwife of the clan. She is the one who takes the button.’
‘But my own mother is a daya,’ Nada said.
Ramiza grunted an ironic little laugh. ‘Then they will use another daya. She will come with your aunts. They always come for it when you are asleep. They put something in your food to make you sleep so you won’t be alert. There will be six or eight of them. They will grab you by the arms and legs so you can’t move. One of them will cover your eyes with a black cloth and another will stuff something in your mouth so you can’t scream. They will carry you to a secret tent they have prepared. Your aunts will hold you fast on the ground so you can’t move and then they will spread your legs apart as wide as they can. At the last moment I managed to fight my hands free and screamed for my mother and pulled off my blindfold. When I looked up, I realized that it was my mother who was holding my head down. The daya has a very sharp knife and while they hold your legs apart she hunts for the button with her fingers until it pops up, then she cuts it off!’
Nada screamed. I wanted to run to her but knew that would only cause trouble, so I scrinched up into a ball so I wouldn’t be discovered.
‘I’ve made you very upset. I didn’t mean to do that. They made me swear I would not tell any of the other girls or they would cut my tongue out ... only, that was when I was living in the desert. I thought it would be all right to tell you.’
Ramiza grunted up off the stool and waddled to Nada and patted her head. ‘Poor Nada,’ she said.
Nada’s great brown eyes looked up to Ramiza hauntingly. ‘Does it hurt much?’
Ramiza shook her head and sighed. ‘I bled much worse than the worst menstruation. For several seasons I was in pain every time I tried to pass my urine. I was very sick from it. Finally I was allowed to see a British doctor in Beersheba. My father wanted to keep me alive so he wouldn’t lose my dowry.’
‘Did ... did it make you stop thinking about boys?’
‘Yes, and I obeyed from then on, whatever they told me.’
‘Do you have any fun with my father?’
Ramiza went back to the stool and churned. ‘At first it was fun just to see what the mystery was all about, but you are not supposed to have fun. You can pretend to have fun because that makes the man feel very important. After a few times, there is no fun. It really doesn’t matter whether Hagar sleeps with Haj Ibrahim or I do. I wish she would sleep with him more.’
Nada and I were the youngest and I was still allowed to sleep in the same little cell with her because my three brothers were already too crowded. I didn’t know how much she slept anymore. Any tiny little noise would bring her up trembling in the night. By day she would doze off during her chores and large circles of weariness formed beneath her eyes. When she did sleep at night she twitched all the time and often she cried out.
She would not eat except out of the common plate and not until Hagar or Ramiza ate first. She became weak and frightened to such an extent that I finally told her I had heard the conversation. I begged her to speak to Hagar about it. It came down to a question of Nada feeling seriously ill from exhaustion and fear. One day I threatened to tell Hagar myself. In order to spare me a beating she finally went to Hagar. I waited