The Year of Rice and Salt

'This is a zawiyya. A kind of boarding house for women.' Then with a bleak smile: 'An anti harem.' She explained that these had been traditional in the Maghrib, and now they were widespread in Firanja. The war had left many more women alive than men, despite the indiscrim inate devastation of its last two decades, when more civilians than soldiers had died, and women's brigades had been common on both sides. Turi and the other Alpine emirates had kept more men at home than most countries, putting them to work in the armouries, so Budur had heard of the depopulation problem, but had never seen it. As for the zawlyyas, Idelba said they were still technically illegal, as the laws against female ownership of property had never been changed; but male nominal owners and other legal dodges were used to legitimize scores of them, hundreds of them.

'Why did you not live in one of these after your husband died?' Budur asked.

Idelba frowned. 'I needed to leave for a while.'

They were assigned a room that had three beds, but no other occupants. The third bed would serve as desk and table. The room was dusty, and its little window looked out on other grimy windows, all facing in on an airshaft, as Idelba called it. Buildings here were so compressed together that they had to remember to leave shafts for air.

But no complaints. A bed, a kitchen, women around them: Budur was content. But Idelba was still very worried, about something having to do with ber nephew Piali and his work. In their new room she stared at Budur with a dismay she couldn't conceal. 'You know, I should send you back to your father. I've got enough trouble as it is.'

'No. I won't go.'

Idelba stared at her. 'How old are you again?'

'I'm twenty three.' She would be in two months.

Idelba was surprised. 'I thought you were younger.'

Budur blushed and looked down.

Idelba grimaced. 'Sorry. That's the effect of the harem. And no men left to marry. But look, you have to do something.'

'I want to stay here.'

'Well, even so, you have to inform your father where you are, and tell him that I did not kidnap you.'

'He'll come here and get me.'

'No. I don't think so. In any case you must tell him something. Phone him, or write him a letter.'

Budur was afraid to talk to her father, even over the phone. The idea of a letter was intriguing. She could explain herself without giving away her precise location.

She wrote: Dear Father and Mother,

I followed Aunt Idelba when she left, though she did not know it. I have come to Nsara to live and to pursue a course of study. The Quran says all of Allah's creatures are equal in His eyes. I will write you and the rest of the family a weekly report on my affairs, and will live an orderly life here in Nsara that will not shame the family. I am living in a good zawiyya with Aunt Idelba, and she will look after me. Lots of young women here are doing this, and they will all help me. I will study at the madressa. Please convey all my love to Yasmina, Rema, Aisha, Nawah and Fatima.

Your loving daughter, Budur She posted this off, and after that stopped thinking of Turi. The letter was helpful in making her feel less guilty. And after a while she realized, as the weeks went on, and she did clerical work, and cleaning, and cooking, and other help of that kind in the zawiyya, and made the arrangements to start studies at the institute connected to the madressa, that she was not going to get a letter back from her father. And Mother was illiterate; and her cousins no doubt forbidden to write, and perhaps angry at her for abandoning them; and her brother would not be sent after her, nor would he want to be; nor would she be arrested by the police and sent off in a sealed train to Turi. That happened to no one. There were literally thousands of women both escaping from home, and relieving those left behind from the burden of caring for them. What in Turi had looked like an eternal system of law and custom that the whole world abided by, was in reality nothing more than the antiquated habits of one moribund segment of a single society, mountain bound and conservative, furiously inventing pan Islamic 'traditions' even at the moment they were all disappearing, like morning mist or (more appropriately) battlefield smoke. She would never go back, it was that simple! And no one was going to make her. No one even wanted to make her; that too was a bit of a shock. Sometimes it did not feel so much that she had escaped as that she had been abandoned.