Muhammed was a man of about thirty. His height was average and his build was sturdy. His chest was wide and very prominent and all his limbs most solid. His face was swarthy and very tanned. His eyes were black and exuded a certain fatigue. His beard was shaven, and his moustache was small and black. He was handsome, but his face was very hard, and there was no pleasantness in it.
He worked in my vineyard for several years. Sometimes he would work very hard, and sometimes he was lazy as a donkey. In particular, he was lazy in the morning, before he had cast off of him the ropes of sleep.
Once, when I came to the vineyard in the morning, I found him working very eagerly, he didn’t even stop to say morning prayers as he always did.
“Good health to your body, Muhammed. What is today of all days?”
“And to your body, khawaja! I will work more now and leave earlier in the evening, for I must be in Maghar today.”
While Muhammed spoke, the sound of faint crying started to reach my ears. He stood a minute, turned to the side of the vineyard adjacent to my neighbor’s vacant field, and called out in rage:
“Be silent, you bitch, or else I’ll kill you!”
I was startled and alarmed:
“Muhammed, what was that crying I heard?”
“It’s nothing!”
And he continued working.
The crying voice was heard again and I saw that it came from among the thistles at the edge of the field and so I went over there. When I arrived, this is the picture that revealed itself to me:
Among the weeds lay a young Arab woman, face up, her hands tied with a thin cord whose other end was tied to the legs of Muhammed’s donkey. Her feet were tied, as well. I recognized her: It was Sabha, Muhammed’s wife, about twenty years of age, tall and pretty, her eyes big and black and full of silent sorrow.
“Sabha, what’s the matter?”
She didn’t answer a thing.
“What wrong did you do? Why has Muhammed done this to you? Let me loose your ropes and you can go home!”
“No, khawaja, no…”
I approached Muhammed. He was moving among the vines like a tempest fury, spinning like an acrobat.
“Muhammed, Muhammed!”
He didn’t answer me.
“Muhammed, stop that right now!” I called angrily.
He stopped, then turned to me and asked me to let him finish his day’s work.
“No, take your wife and go to your home and don’t bring her here anymore.”
Several days later, Muhammed returned to his work. Then he told me the following:
“Last summer I returned to my home in Zarnuqa from the tribes where I had worked during the harvest days. On the way, I stopped in Maghar and stayed with my uncle. Early in the morning, I saddled my donkey and set off on my way before the sun had risen. I passed by the well to water my donkey. The sun was just coming up on me to the east, and opposite to it was a magnificent glow of lightning from the west: from the well towards me walked a beautiful girl with a jar of water on her head. I looked at her and there was no more spirit left in me. Many beautiful girls have I seen in my time, but none like her! Her eyes… black as the crow’s wing, a sparkle gleamed in them like the flash of a spear in the moonlight. I loved her unto death and I swore: she would be mine, no matter what. I had to my name one hundred mejidis cash which I had saved from six years of labor. I was thirty years old then and I had yet to take a wife. I spent that entire day in Maghar and I found out that her name was Sabha and that she was an only daughter to her elderly father, who had set her price at one hundred mejidis. Was this not a sign from God that Sabha was to be mine? In the evening, I returned to Zarnuqa and the next day my relations went to Maghar and the whole matter ended well: Sabha was betrothed to me. Two months passed until the wedding and during that time I was happy. I was envied by all. Although once Atallah made fun of me and said that Sabha had eyes in Yibna and not in Zarnuqa. But I paid no attention to what he said, Atallah always delighted in mocking others. But when Sabha came to my house, my whole world became dark. Since the day I had seen her by the well, her face had fallen, and she was like a sick woman. Only her eyes remained beautiful like they had been.”
“And since she has come under my roof, she does not respect my authority and will not be mine… I have asked, cried, yelled, and finally even beaten her… But from her it is always: No!”
“If she would only at least cry or beg, it would be easier for me, but it’s like she is mute! Only one word have I heard out of her mouth since I have known her: No!”
“I thought: let the days pass, maybe she’ll change her mind and submit to my will, and I revealed to no one my shame. But my hope was in vain. Days passed, weeks, even months, and she is silent. She works, eats, and is silent.”
“I did not bring her to my parents’ house. I rented an apartment by myself. I had bread enough from the harvest days to last all winter. I had a cow also. I quarried rocks at that time and earned a lot. I said: she’ll live with me like the sultan’s daughter.”
“At first, Sabha worked. There was none like her for drawing water, baking bread, cooking, and laundering. When I came from the field, I found my meal ready, she had put the donkey into the stall, milked the cow, and filled the feed trough. But since I began to beat her, she stopped working.”
“Tired and hungry I would return from my work, and there was no baked bread, no cooked food, the cow was hungry, the trough empty, and she, Sabha, would be lying there like a block of wood. I had to bake bread and do all the house work. And when it bothered me very much, I beat her, I beat her each and every night… I would bring home a bit of sugar, a bit of rice, and she would ruin it all and throw it outside. And I was forever hungry and angry.”
“One time I beat her until she was lying in her own blood… The next day, when I came home, I did not find her: she had run away to her father’s house, to Maghar. I waited a few days. I thought, maybe she’ll return of her own accord, maybe her father would bring her. And she came not. After a week, I went to Maghar. I came to the village, and here she is going up to the well with her jar on her head, strutting her neck, and completely full of life. I saw her, and my soul desired her all the more. That same day, I told her father everything his daughter had done to me. In the evening, he took her outside, tied her to the fence, and beat her until she fell to the ground almost lifeless, and not a single cry escaped from her mouth! That night, I returned her to my house. For a week, she was quiet, doing all the housework and not speaking, like in the beginning. I was glad and said to myself: she has turned over a new leaf.”
“I approached her, and again she rejected me, and again I heard: No. And it angered me to death. I beat her like I had never beaten her before: with my hands, with my feet, and everything I could find, I threw at her… And it’s as if she were mute.”
“And in the morning, when I rose from my sleep, I didn’t find her in the house.”
“I didn’t find her at her father’s house either. When we left in the evening, her father and me, to seek her, we found her beneath the bridge in the wadi of Yibna: hungry, shivering, and half-dead. There was no one with her. But I remembered what Atallah had told me, and an intense jealousy arose in me… If not for her father, I would have killed her then and there.”
“I tied her up with ropes, put her on my donkey, and brought her to my parents’ house. And since then, I don’t leave her by herself. She is tied all day and my mother watches her. And when my mother went to town, I brought her here…”
I spoke to Muhammed’s heart and told him to divorce his wife, but he became angry and left me.
A year later, I met Muhammed and his wife. He was healthy as he had been, but she was weak, limp as a rag, and in her arms was a small child.
“She is quiet,” Atallah tells me.
He calls Muhammed’s child: Yibnawi.
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