Between Pride and Paradise?

(Reader Alert: Strong subject matter)

The jasmine was dying. She hadn't noticed it until now. Maybe it was the change in perspective that made it all suddenly so clear. It occurred to her that "change in perspective" was severely understating her current position, lying on her back in the dirt with her head under the jasmine bushes, hair tangling with the discarded, dried and crushed blossoms. She felt a chuckle rising from her belly, like a bubble inside her. She parted her swollen lips to let the laugh emerge, and then turned on her side and began to vomit. Her whole body shook and jerked against the dry earth, some areas flaring painfully with each convulsion. Tears rolled down her face, making her cuts and scrapes sting. She remained in the garden, caught somewhere between laughter and tears as she continued to be violently ill.

* * * * * * * *

Nadira was a dancer. She had been dancing since she had learned how to walk; it came as naturally to her as breathing. Everything in her world was the source of a unique movement, crying to be released from her body, which would express these movements almost of its own volition. Even at her mother's funeral, the sobs of the women and the glint of light from their tears came to her as a twisting step across the floor that ended in a sprawling stretch. All she earned with her expression of grief was a sharp slap across her five-year-old face for her disrespectful behavior. In her uncle's house, her eccentricity was tolerated, albeit barely, and explained away by her lack of father from infancy. When her uncle's wife would see her floating from room to room, following the light of the setting sun, she would cluck her tongue.

"This is what comes from being raised by a dreamer like Kamila, no father, no sense and no discipline."

If Nadira made the mistake of dancing when there was company, there would be a swift and painful punishment, which began to increase as she got older. Nadira wished she could be more obedient, but she couldn't stop, no matter how hard she tried. To stop dancing would be as if she had been asked to stop breathing. Luckily for her, there were enough children around that she could manage to sneak in a shoulder wiggle to the dripping faucet when her uncle's wife wasn't looking. There were five children in her uncle's house when she arrived, and two more not long after. The two eldest were boys, but all the rest were girls, so alike in form and face that, if they had not been different ages, it would have been next to impossible to tell one from the other. Indeed, as they grew older, it became increasingly difficult to do so. Nadira was the only one that was immediately identifiable. This was despite the fact that she was mostly unremarkable. Next to her cousins, she was like a weed in a patch of roses.

She was short and quite rotund. Hers was not a face that inspired poetry, or could incite men to go to war; it was not even particularly memorable, with a broad, round nose, full lips and a wide shiny forehead prone to acne, crowned with a pair of thick eyebrows. She had a strong jaw and a chin that almost shouted a stubborn countenance. If one bothered to look however, her eyes were an experience all of their own. They were large and round, and seemed a washed out grey from afar, but, upon closer inspection, swam with flecks of blue, green and just a touch of gold. Her gaze when fixed was that of a sphinx, unwavering and full of all the riddles in the world. You could go mad as the object of that gaze, eyes the color of insanity seeing down to the depths of you.

To top all of this off was her one beauty, her hair. She possessed a head of thick, curly hair, the color of honey when the sun shines through it, which seemed to have an independent spirit all of its own. Her hair did everything it could to defy any and all attempts to tame it. Each day, it would have to be broken into submission, forced into a braid or a knot with a strong comb and pulling, bony fingers. Yet, no matter how tight the weave of the braid or how thick the elastic band holding the knot in place, over the day bits of her hair would escape their confinement and wreathe her head like clouds of spun gold.

As she grew, most people who looked at her did not see gold, or the riddles of existence. She had been blessed ("cursed" she thought) with the body of a Stone-Age goddess. She had wide hips, for birthing and labor, and large breasts for nourishing and feeding and, apparently, for others to stare at. It did not matter what she wore to try and conceal her curves, her clothing always strained across her chest and behind, as if her attributes were trying to escape from her. Once she began her cycle, her aunt started poking and teasing her.

"Good child-bearing hips, girl," the woman would chuckle, pinching the girl's waist, "but you'd best hope those children get their looks from their father. God help them if they end up with your face." She would then wander off, shaking her head at her own cleverness when pointing out the painfully obvious.

In the mornings as the girls were dressing, Nadira would jealously steal glances at her cousin Narjissa, who was a year older than she, and possessed delicate features, long legs and a slim waist, with a cascade of dark chestnut, almost black, hair that flowed down her back. Nadira would watch Narjissa hog the one long mirror in the girls' room and try on outfit after outfit, or carefully inspect every inch of her face for imperfections that may have sprung up overnight. Her younger sisters, Werdiyya and Yasmeen, would fight like alley cats for a chance in the mirror before it was time to leave for school.

Because of her body's betrayal, her childhood eccentricity was no longer tolerated in the least by her uncle's wife. She was caught once in the garden, dancing her love to the jasmine bushes and the rose trellis and even to the narcissus around the small pond. Her uncle's wife beat her severely, with sharp words accompanying every blow of the wooden spoon with which her aunt had been cooking, "Have you no shame girl? Do you know what you look like? Jiggling yourself everywhere? Do you know what the neighbors would say if they saw you?" She hit her over and over again, spilling Nadira into the dirt in the garden and leaving grains of rice stuck to the girl's shirt and unruly hair.

Once the spindly woman had run out of anger, she helped Nadira to the bathroom, "Clean yourself up and count your blessings that it was me who found you and not your uncle. We can't have one of our girls acting so wickedly."

Never mind Narjissa's habit of going out with boys for "coffee." If it couldn't be seen, it did not happen. Nadira understood that it wasn't about what you did; it was about not getting caught. Since she did not wish to be punished again, she managed to restrain her choreography to the room she shared with the other girls. It meant tolerating thorny comments from her self-involved cousin Narjissa, but she didn't mind and neither did the younger two girls. As long as she didn't have to stop, she could tolerate anything the older girl may throw at her.

"You look like a sack full of yoghurt, shaking like that." Her cousin said one morning.

"When you insult people, your face wrinkles up like a raisin," She responded quietly, fixing her cousin in her steady gaze, "Keep going like this and you'll look like your mother before you reach twenty."

Narjissa glared for a moment, careful not to crease her forehead, then quickly looked away from her cousin's eyes.

"I'll tell Father about your?'dancing'" she threatened, spitting the word out as though it tasted foul.

"Then I'll tell him about your trips to the coffee shop with Anas, or is it Muntasir, or Farid? Who is it this week, cousin?" She looked at the girl inquiringly, doing her best to affect honest curiosity.?

Narjissa's face turned purple as she turned on her heel and stomped out of the room with absolute hate in her eyes and a toss of her hair. Nadira danced alone to the retreating rhythm of her cousin's angry footsteps.

She could not, and would not, stop dancing. As she danced, she felt her heart expanding inside her chest and filling the whole room; breaking through the white walls and kissing the sky, embracing the moon, sparkling like a star spinning in the darkness.In these moments, she found it: a sense of self that her uncle and his family would never know or understand.

* * * * * * * *?

One Saturday, Nadira found herself with the rarest of rarities, an empty house. It was a joy she never could have dreamed of, her uncle, his wife, and the children who still lived at home had all gone to visit her uncle's wife's sister, who had just given birth. She had been excused from attending the endless bore of women chattering about babies, and marriage. If she had to hear one more older woman talking about how many sons she could manage to bear, she would scream and start tearing at her hair. Since Nadira had no real connection to that family, when she pled illness her uncle's wife was more than happy to leave the embarrassing girl at home.

As soon as she was sure that everyone was gone, Nadira padded into the living room barefoot. She couldn't dance in the garden, it was too risky, but she could open the sliding doors to the garden and have the light and the scent of the earth and the flowers to dance with. She flung open the sliding glass, and just stood at the open door for a moment, letting the smell of the garden sink into her skin.

She felt it start, a twitching in her toes that traveled up her legs to her arms and out through her outstretched fingers. She threw her head back and began the dance. Her wild hair floated out from her head like strands of silk waving in a breeze. She traveled across the entire room, dipping weaving, lifting herself upwards, and retracting to the ground. A playful little wind drifted in from the garden and teased her around and around, spinning her through the room. She leaped, defying gravity and for a split second seeming to hover above the ground, before landing lightly and letting her body crumble down. She stayed on the floor, expanding like a cat, then contracting like a closing flower.

She was so involved in the movement that she did not realize that she was not alone until the first blow landed. She felt a powerful jolt across the back of her head. A moment later the stars cleared, and she saw the enraged face of her aunt hovering in her still blurred vision. The woman lost no time in striking her over and over again. She had removed her high heeled shoe and was flogging the girl with the heel, screaming insults all the while.

"Ungrateful wretch! Worthless orphan! How dare you? How dare you mock all we have done, all we have sacrificed for you? How dare you?"

There was a pause in the abuse as her uncle's wife stopped to draw breath. Panting loudly, Nadira pulled herself up to her knees, and grabbed the bottom of the older woman's dress.

"Please Aunt," she gasped "please, I did not mean to offend. I am inside and alone, no one can see me. Please?" Her uncle's wife brushed her hands away, and spat at the girl.

"You slut! Narjissa told me what you were up to, why you really wanted to be alone today. Who is he Nadira? When is he meeting you here?" the woman's eyes burned with an unholy rage. Nadira was shocked into true stillness, possibly the first of her life. In a flash she saw, so clearly, what had happened. Calmly, she looked her uncle's wife dead in the eyes, fixing her with a sphinx glare.

"I am meeting no one Aunt, I only wanted to dance" The older woman slapped her backhanded across the face with a blow that was enough to rattle Nadira's teeth. She felt one of her teeth gash open the inside of her cheek.

"Don't lie to me, girl. Narjissa told me the truth" the woman hissed "or would you like to call MY daughter a liar?"

Nadira spat blood from her mouth and looked back up at her aunt, gazing at her steadfastly.

"Yes" The next clout sent her sprawling back on the floor, knocking her head into the ceramic tiles. The woman heaved, taking huge gulping breaths. Nadira slowly, and dizzily pulled herself back to kneeling before the incensed woman.

"Your Narjissa has been meeting different boys after school for the last year," she said quietly, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor. She waited for another slap, expecting it to fall at any moment. When it didn't, she dared to glance upwards. Her uncle's wife was standing above her staring into the garden with her hand to her mouth. Her high heeled shoe dangled in her other hand, seemingly forgotten. Suddenly, her aunt seemed to come back to herself, her face turning purple just as Narjissa's had that morning in the bedroom. She swung at Nadira, sending the girl falling onto her back on the floor. The woman fell upon her and began battering Nadira with her fists, screaming "NO!" over and over again. Nadira tried to twist away, to get her face out from below the rain of blows.

Her uncle's wife continued to wildly assault Nadira, hitting everything she could reach, as if trying to beat the truth she wanted into being. She stood up, dragging Nadira up by her hair, with murder on her face. Nadira twisted away, kicking her legs out and accidentally kicking her aunt in the foot that was still wearing a shoe. The high heel broke and the woman fell backwards, arms flailing. Her head met the tiles with a sickening crack, and she was still. Nadira lay on the floor next to her in the sudden silence, just trying to breathe.

A playful little wind from the garden, scented with jasmine, rose and narcissus, ventured into the room, and teased her, lifting her hair from the floor, and beckoning her outside. She managed to get her bruised, trembling legs under her and tottered to the door. She stumbled over the door jamb and into the garden, falling with a thud on the dry earth under the jasmine bushes.

The jasmine was dying. She hadn't noticed it until now. Maybe it was the change in perspective that made it all suddenly so clear. It occurred to her that "change in perspective" was severely understating her current position, lying on her back in the dirt with her head under the jasmine bushes, hair tangling with the discarded, dried and crushed blossoms. She felt a chuckle rising from her belly, like a bubble inside her. She parted her swollen lips to let the laugh emerge, and then turned on her side and began to vomit. Her whole body shook and jerked against the dry earth, some areas flaring painfully with each convulsion. Tears rolled down her face, making her cuts and scrapes sting. She remained in the garden, caught somewhere between laughter and tears as she continued to be violently ill.

She wiped her face and spit the last of the taste of sickness from her mouth. She lay back on the ground and continued to chuckle and cry. As she laughed and cried, she felt her heart expanding inside her chest and filling the whole world; breaking through the white walls and kissing the sky, embracing the moon, sparkling like a star spinning in the darkness.

Submitted by Dori

About the Work: "I really am not sure how much I should tell you about it except that it is both a story from the perspective of an Arab woman in the Middle East, and a story from the perspective of an American girl who had to put aside her dreams due to not meeting certain arbitrary standards."