Trust (Part 2)
But
there came the time when she was too old and too attractive to
help her father sell out front without harassment. It also wasn’t
proper. Neighbors would watch and start talking. Jobs for women
are few and limited. When Khadija was about fifteen, men began to
get too aggressive. It had come full circle: this was the age at
which her mother married. One day Khadija was standing in front of
one of her father’s tables out on the street. A stranger came up
beside her and asked her name and if she would go with him. She
told him to leave her alone. He didn’t know that her father was
sitting nearby. The man mistook Khadija for a customer. She was bold
with the strange man because she knew her father would protect
her. The man didn’t leave her alone. He grew more insistent and
made rude comments. Abdul told the man to walk away, but the man
told Khadija’s father to mind his own business. He must have thought
that a pretty girl, all alone and snagged by the attractive goods
at a merchant’s table, was fair game. Seeing his chance, he became
a wolf.
Abdul stood up and smashed the man’s head with his
own head. Blood flowed. He struck him and shouted. The strange man
fled, wounded and banged up.
Khadija told me the reason Arab women use the veil
is because there are 999 things that will tempt a man. She said
she would like to wear a veil and she would if her husband asked
her. But in Morocco, as in all the Arab world (maybe the entire
world), young women are most fiercely protected. In Morocco it is
against the law for a young unmarried woman to be alone with a man
who is not a relative. Khadija told me once, “If my father ever saw
me alone with a boy, he would kill me.”
In recent years conditions got so bad for Khadija’s
father that he had to travel alone to Casablanca (five hours by
bus) and stay for weeks at a time with a briefcase filled with
knives and wander the streets from morning to night in search of
buyers. At this time Khadija managed to get a job in a copy store
and telephone boutique. She earned $50 a month, and she helped
with the family.
By now Yousera had been born, so there were four
girls and a boy. If Jane Austen says that a man with a fortune
must be in search of a wife, then it certainly can be said that a
poor man with four daughters in a Muslim country must be in search
of husbands. And if husbands are not found? In Morocco the
daughters would then live permanently with the parents. Khadija
pointed out an older woman next to their house who was unmarried
and living at home at 35.
When
I arrived in Fez, Khadija’s father was selling knickknacks and
keychains on which he would write people’s names and inscriptions
from the Quran. He had spread over his table other items like
small wooden boxes, fossils, mufflers, and small purses... well a
whole assortment of inexpensive, “dime store” things. Abdul had
also been known for many years for his cooked snails. On the day I
stopped to bargain over some wooden boxes, Khadija was three floors
up, on the roof, doing the family’s laundry. He called for her to
come down to help with a customer who only spoke English. If women
have 999 things that captivate men, when Khadija stepped before me I
was hooked by 975 of them. But I felt in no danger because she was
some twenty years younger than me.
After we agreed on a price (in Moroccan dirham)
for the boxes and fossils, I told Khadija I owned a bookstore in San
Francisco. I said I would be happy to mail her some books in
English. I was invited upstairs for hot sweet Moroccan tea with
green mint leaves. Then Khadija's
family insisted I stay for a meal. Khadija sat beside me and
treated me like I was somebody really wonderful and special. She
quizzed me about what I thought of Moroccan women. She told me a
Moroccan wife would be the very best and she tapped my knee as she
smiled and laughed. She said I needed a wife because I was alone.
It was never too late. She said my age didn’t matter; what
mattered was that I be a good man. She said I was. While she
signed my journal, she looked at me mischievously and said, “What
if I write: Khadija Harrison?”
It has taken me years to reconstruct what was
happening because I certainly didn’t know back then. But from what
Khadija told me much later, her father saw that day how she acted
with me. He saw that she looked happy and made the decision to
marry her to me.
On the morning before I departed, Khadija and her
father took me aside for a serious talk. First they asked if I
could help Khadija go abroad. I said I didn’t know of any way to do
that. Then they suggested (Khadija did all the talking to me because
she knew English) that I marry Khadija so she could get papers. I
said I could not do that. I said I wanted to be really married
someday so I couldn’t. Then Khadija asked if I would consider
marrying her if it was a real marriage. I said I was very honored
but I couldn’t agree to that. I would go back to San Francisco and
think more about it but, well, I felt my age would make it
impossible and it was so sudden and really it wasn’t the way
marriages were done, after only a few days.
Later Khadija took me alone up to the roof, and she
told me her father wanted her to marry but she wasn’t ready. She
liked me and wanted to be friends, but not husband and wife. She
cried and said to please not let her father force her. I gave her
my word that no forced marriage was going to take place. And
paradoxically, from that point I believe I started to win her
trust. It was respect for her that I think touched her. Or maybe
I’m just imagining this. But I do know that on the last day, when
I returned one final time, Khadija told me to forget what she said
up on the roof, that she did wish to marry me. I could not accept
this because her father was standing right beside her.
I returned to San Francisco and wrote a letter
thanking Khadija for the offer of marriage but telling her my answer
was “no.”
I started getting love letters from Khadija. She
vowed that she loved me and wanted to spend her life with me. She
laid the butter on very thick. What I didn’t know was that these
letters were only partly from Khadija. Her father, Abdul, had
gathered together a letter-writing committee. He worked with two
others, and Khadija was only a partially willing participant. That
first New Year’s they sent me a tape with greetings, music, and
good wishes for my family and me. Khadija sounded cardboard on the
tape. I missed the warmth I had experienced in person.
The sad thing is that the letters worked. I even
showed one of them to my friend Anna and she was fooled too. Anna
said, “I think she really cares about you, Scott, but my goodness,
her English is so bad! It actually has a charm to it. I like this
girl.” I said, “Yes I like her, too.” The letters fooled me,
because I didn’t know who really was writing them.
