Umm Latouf — A Lebanese Story

Jamileh reached forty and balked there: the years rolled on while she stood fast, not budging. Whenever you asked her age, her eyes dropped and she answered: about forty. Anyone who did not know her would take her for her daughter-in-law's sister, not her mother-in-law. The pens of the years had not traced a single coarse line on the page of that radiant face; there was nothing there but fine lines like the watering of a sword blade. For Umm Latouf was the rarity of her age: a captivating beauty and a tall, straight figure, neither stout nor slight; two almond eyes that would bear out the tales of Harut and Marut, in which the water of youth went on shimmering until they were snuffed out. Whoever looks closely will see that her nose was no small one, but its bulk was lost in that broad plain.

The late lady was a headstrong tyrant, ruling by her own decree, holding sway over her husband and his cousins; no order of hers was disobeyed, and she was consulted in knotty matters. A word from her small mouth could set the village aflame; and when trouble flared she would trade volleys of stones and lay about with a stick. Had she not lived within the village's narrow circle, she would have amounted to something far greater than she did.

Like the girls of her generation, she bound her head with a band strung with jihadiyyas — gold dinars — so that one could scarcely tell the pure gold from that broad brow. She plaited her long hair so that it hung down to her waist, braid upon braid, with three dinars at the tip of every braid; and on her head a silk kerchief, which she knotted beneath her sweet chin. The "coquette" walked as though she were a girl of fifteen. She passed sixty and her spirit stayed green. She always said: age counts for nothing; it is all in the spirit. She was ever-smiling, famous for generosity and open-handedness, and nothing ever troubled her mind until she thought about her son's marriage.

She tried to marry into the great houses and did not succeed. Her son was a handsome young man of sound mind, but decent men's daughters feared his mother's arrogance and despotism and shrank from storming her house.

Umm Latouf never curbed her tongue about other people's daughters. Whenever her son mentioned one to her she scoffed and rebuked him, saying: I thought you had sense. A boy with no taste — low! This one's father is thus, and that one's mother is thus and so. And so the days ran out, and Latouf reached thirty-five unmarried, and his mother never got the daughter of decent folk she was forever claiming.

Umm Latouf had no wish to see her son wed. She refused to become a mother-in-law, and her flesh crept when she pictured herself become a grandmother, hailed with "ya sitti!" She would be angry if we called her by her kunya instead of her name. Whoever said "ya Jamileh" to her — she flashed her teeth at him and hailed him with welcome, as though he were one of the winners of a doctorate in letters and philosophy...

At last Latouf grew weary and fed up. The gray hairs advancing on him with drum and fife took him with alarm. So on one of the nights of Carnival our friend took fire and brought his mother the girl he had chosen — and she welcomed him with the slipper, slapping his face and the back of his neck. The father stepped in between them, and she rebuked him with the phrase kept ready for his use: Shut your trap; sit off yonder. So he shook his head and held his peace. He was a man of the field whom his wife managed, more obedient than the ring on the little finger. And for this meekness of his, people traced his son to his mother.

Umm Latouf insisted on sending the bride back, but her son said to her: We are married, mother; do not keen. What God has bound, man does not loose.

She screamed at him: Would you were laid out for your funeral before the Lord! So you've turned philosopher, you jackass! And she began to go yellow and green and red, and to tremble as though stricken with the ague. At last she fainted. The swoon dragged on, the pulse vanished, and the priest was summoned. She woke after a while and saw the reverend father crouched at her head, and made to seize his beard; he took flight, hearing as he went: If my eye lights on his eye there will be a reckoning. He crowns my son and never asks after me? His beard must be mowed!

With the passing of the days Umm Latouf's temper cleared, but her life was soured. Her daughter-in-law treated her sweetly, and she only grew the more averse and disgusted. If the girl walked, she found fault with her; if she spoke, she traded winks about her; and she would scarcely taste her cooking. All this

while the daughter-in-law bore with her, humoring her and coaxing her — and she waxed ever more overweening and tyrannical. At last the scales came level, and the battles that flared were savage ones.

Then old age fell upon Umm Latouf, and before it she was routed. Her gaiety forsook her when her dominion forsook her, and the press thinned at the spring whose water had been sweet; and she would answer the company by saying: Jamileh has grown old — and Hanneh is young.

And the lady Jamileh made ready a counterattack, to win back something of the strongholds of her beauty: she dyed her hair, and powdered, and rouged, and penciled her brows. She would take fright every time she saw that beauty being routed, pressing hard in its flight.

Then all at once she resolved on a visit to Beirut. No one knew what she was about until she came back after a week, having changed her Heraclian garments for new fashions — nor did she forget the handbag and the parasol. She sold her coin-band and her braids and bought the choicest and costliest of stuffs, and came back to the village like a bride. She cast off the sash and bound her hennaed head with a rose-pink kerchief, as though to rival her daughter-in-law and preen over her. But she met with no regard from the people, and the sallow laughter mixed with bitter mockery was killing her. She was at her wits' end, and grew fierce in quarreling; she fled her own house — nay, every house —

and fancied all the people her adversaries. She would sit beneath a historic oak under which her own mother-in-law had so often sat before her... and talk to herself as though she were talking to some other person. She would remember the days of glory and greatness, and weep. People, to her mind, were traitors, backing her daughter-in-law against her because she was young; and everyone had turned from her, even those who loved her.

One day she came in upon me with her grandson. She seated him beside her and sat down — no "God keep you," no "God's peace." She was absent, as though she wished to say nothing, or did not know where she was. I did not provoke her, lest the whole quarter be set in an uproar. When the waiting had drawn long I said to her, smiling: It seems you have swallowed your tongue. God be with you.

She answered with a listlessness shot through with aversion: Neither God be with you nor peace upon you. You are all against me. The Master has no friend. So saying, she drew from her bosom a ka'keh left over from her provisions from Beirut, handed it to the boy, and said: Do you know why I love this lad?

I hitched my left shoulder by way of saying no, and she burst into a witless cackle and said: Because tomorrow he will take my revenge. I reared, and met with nothing.

I said to her: Do you want the truth, Jamileh? The fault is all yours. Let be — your turn is over.

She wagged her head and said: I am worn out. My daughter-in-law is a she-ass and my son is a jackass. It was I who built up the house; it was I who made it a house. And then some scrap of a beast, a stranger's daughter, comes to lord it over the place, and never asks after me. This is what God has sent down in a book.

I said to her: The world goes by turns; your turn is over.

She said: She eats only just as she pleases; her talk is all without savor; her chatter is jaw-clacking, more wearing than the mill-clapper. She consults me on nothing, as though I were a bitch. It never crossed the baggage's mind that I am the mistress of the house.

I said to her: The world goes by turns; your turn is over, Jamileh.

At hearing "your turn is over" she blazed up. She had been sitting; now she stood and swept on with her talk, at one moment bearing down on me and thrusting her fingers in my face, at another falling back like a colt. At last she said: My son loves his wife more than his mother; our boy is an ingrate. The proverb says: the world is a mother. The proverb lies — the world is a wife.

I said to her: Don't rave on; your turn is over, Jamileh.

She shrieked like a madwoman: And soon enough your turn will be over!

And she flung out in a rage and slammed the door behind her, and I heard her saying: He who cuts from another man's hide cuts it generous. They are all of one feather. People side with the man on his feet.

The boy screamed when the door proved too much for him to open, so she came back, her lips dancing the Charleston, snatched him up with a jerk, and said, biting her lower lip: May the monkeys drag out your mother's soul!

I moved to stop her, meaning to say: Your son is dying, Umm Latouf; he has grown like a consumptive. But she would not stop, so I pelted her with my words as she went; and she hurried off, saying: For a mule, death is the decenter cover.

Latouf, meanwhile, was in grievous straits of life between his mother and his wife. He was always silent as a fish, saying neither yea nor nay. He weighed his problem and could not find his way to the lesser of the two evils.

Then came a decisive battle between the mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law, and Latouf leveled his pistol at his own head in threat. His mother screamed and clung to his hand; the pistol went off and ripped open the belly that had carried him nine months. And so the knot of the tale was undone thus: the mother in the grave, the son dead in prison, and the wife under another man.

"From Faces and Tales"