Story of the Month: The Barren Woman

“The servant of God, ‘Aziz,’ is crowned to the handmaid of God, ‘Jamileh,’ in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!”

When Father Boulos uttered these words on the evening of the tenth of May in the year 1900, in a spacious hall rich in furnishings and ornament in the house of Abu Aziz al-Kirbaj, a mute stillness descended upon the hundreds of guests invited to the wedding, cloaked in a heavenly awe. Children and youths, maidens and young men, the middle-aged and the old — all held their breath as though listening to the fluttering of unseen wings. And Father Boulos himself, who in his lifetime had bound in the tie of matrimony nearly a thousand of the sons of his flock preserved by the Lord, pronounced these words that night in a voice not his ordinary voice, so that his hearers imagined the Holy Spirit was speaking with his tongue. Perhaps that was because Father Boulos, in all the long life he had spent as a servant of the Lord, grasped for the first time the importance of his words, and his soul was illumined so that he saw marriage as a holy, divine sacrament and not as a simple church rite; or perhaps it was that the priest, from the day he received the honor of the priesthood until that minute, had never raised his hand to bless the bond of a bridal pair like Aziz al-Kirbaj and Jamileh al-Bishtawi. But those present felt suddenly that they were in the presence of a power on high, and the hall — with all its candle flames, twisting, dancing, rising toward the heights — was transformed in their eyes into a pure temple in which a deep and holy sacrament was being accomplished. And so they wrapped themselves in silence and reverence.

There is no doubt that the sight of the bridal pair added awe and majesty to the scene. Aziz al-Kirbaj, the only child of his father and mother, was the handsomest young man in the whole town and its surroundings — indeed, in all Lebanon, if we believe what many said of him, that “God created him and then raised His hand.” Tall of stature, full of body, white of skin, round of face, his fairness watered by the blood of youth. In his eyes life laughed, and in his small mustache appeared the strength of self-reliance and self-confidence and pride in what he had done and would yet do in this world. He left his parents when he was eighteen years old. He came to America, prospered in trade, and amassed a fortune of some two thousand liras in a short time. And he found time meanwhile to spend on cultivating himself: he studied and learned and attained what thousands of Lebanese and Syrian emigrants do not attain in tens of years. Then he answered his parents’ summons, returned to Lebanon, and built a splendid house — the finest house in the whole town — and opened a new business. All this before he had passed his twenty-fifth year. The people of the town spoke of his diligence, his intelligence, his gentleness, and the amiability of his character. He neither swore nor cursed; he did not blaspheme religion, did not get drunk, did not gamble, and did not smoke. He called every old man in the town “grandfather” and every old woman “grandmother,” every older man “uncle” and every older woman “auntie,” every young man “brother” and every girl “sister.” He greeted the child and greeted the old man before they could greet him first, and he lifted his hat from his head with esteem and reverence when he greeted women.

And how many of the young men present envied Aziz al-Kirbaj in the depths of their hearts and wished they were in his clothes that night! Some relate on the authority of Father Boulos that this venerable and respected elder confessed that in the fifty years he had spent in the service of the Church he had not once desired to exchange his priestly garb for all the wealth of the world; but when he bade the bridal pair, Aziz al-Kirbaj and Jamileh al-Bishtawi, exchange the kiss of love, in that minute he wished he were in the bridegroom’s clothes!

As for Jamileh al-Bishtawi, apart from her enchanting beauty she possessed qualities rarely gathered in one girl in all that neighborhood or elsewhere. If talk turned upon her in any gathering whatever — whether a gathering of women or of men, or of men and women together — the first thing tongues took up was her marvelous beauty; then the talkers passed on to her disposition, her learning, and her wealth. One says she is an angel, the earth does not feel her tread; another adds that she is “learned,” meaning that she finished a girls’ boarding school “and took the certificate.”

A third continues, saying that she is an only child and that her father left her at his death broad properties and a “chest” of money. A fourth adds that she will inherit all her uncle’s properties, for she is his sole heir. No wonder, then, that her wedding to Aziz al-Kirbaj remained the subject of the men’s and women’s gatherings in the town for at least a week.

The first months of Jamileh’s married life passed like a day of spring whose sky never saw a cloud at all, whose air and trees and flowers and grasses and rivers and creeping things and insects were all drunk with the wine of life and the delight of renewal, as though at a great festival. And Jamileh, in her new home — between her father-in-law Abu Aziz, her mother-in-law Umm Aziz, and her life’s partner Aziz — was the axis of their daily life. Around her their thoughts revolved and on her their hopes were hung; for her sake they toiled and for her sake they lived. If she laughed they laughed, and if she frowned they frowned, as though she were the wellspring of their life and the source of all their joys and sorrows.

When the season of congratulations after the wedding was over, Umm Aziz proposed to her son that he take his wife to Beirut or Damascus “for a change of air.” The proposal met with everyone’s approval, and the couple visited Damascus, Zahle, and Beirut. When they returned, Umm Aziz rushed to Jamileh, embracing her, kissing her, pressing her to her breast, crying out with eagerness: “My darling, how long you were away! My darling, my heart burned without you!” Then she cast a glance at her daughter-in-law’s hands and saw some new rings on her fingers, gold bracelets on her wrists, and a new watch hanging by a precious chain on her breast, and she nearly flew for joy.

As for Aziz, his love for his wife during those first months was renewed every day. Every day was for him a wedding day. When he went in the morning to his shop he took a kiss from her for the road; and when he came back at evening he found her waiting for him at the door, and he would take her in his arms and press her to his breast, bending over her face, then ask her, kissing her two rosy lips: “How is my qarqoura today?” And she would answer, happiness lighting her eyes and reflected in every muscle of her face: “How is my qarqour today?”

“Qarqoura” and “qarqour” became, in the dictionary of their daily life, proper names that took the place of “Jamileh” and “Aziz.” And Jamileh loved her new name until she nearly forgot her original one; and so did Aziz. Both of them disliked visitors — not for any material reason, nor from shirking the duties of Syrian hospitality, but because visitors took a portion of their precious time, which they wished to spend together; and above all because in the presence of strangers they were obliged to go back to “Aziz” and “Jamileh” instead of qarqour and qarqoura.

Jamileh disliked visitors for another reason, which she did not disclose to her husband. Every visitor counted it among the duties of courtesy and amiability to say to her, whenever she offered him a cigarette or a cup of coffee or a narghile or the like: “God willing, we shall rejoice with you over a bridegroom!” These constant petitions and wishes were like drops of poison in the cup of her brimming happiness. Aziz’s love, Aziz’s nearness, Aziz’s kisses — these were her happiness and the fullness of her life; why then all these wishes, as though her life were not complete without a “bridegroom”?

Once, after the guests had gone and she was alone with Aziz in her chamber, she came up to him gently and took the tip of his left mustache in her right hand to kiss it, then said:

— Listen, qarqour! Aren’t you weary of the endless good wishes of these dull people — “the joy of a bridegroom!” — which they fling at you wherever they meet you, in every circumstance and whatever the subject of the talk? I have begun to recoil from them, until I have come to hate the company of people because of them!

She put this question to her husband certain that he would answer that he hated those wishes as she did or even more, and that he bore them because he had no authority over others to bridle their tongues. How great, then, was her astonishment when she heard his answer:

— Shall we revile people, qarqoura, for wishing us happiness?

That answer assured Jamileh that pursuing the talk in this vein might disclose to her the secret of the first contradiction of thoughts and beliefs between her and Aziz. Until that minute she had trusted with all her being that her life with Aziz would endure, as it had been until that night, a perpetual spring untroubled by the least difference of inclinations, tastes, opinions, or beliefs. So she feared to find even one small point on which her taste did not agree with her husband’s.

When Aziz had been about to buy her jewelry in Beirut, she had refused with all her might, because — as she said then — she did not want to be “a she-donkey hung with gold,” and because she counted adornment with gold and diamonds a disgrace to a woman who had in her beauty, her disposition, and her husband’s love ornament enough for a lifetime. But Aziz insisted on his resolve and silenced her by saying that her argument was “the argument of the poor,” that it was better to dress for every occasion in its proper dress, and that her station in society made it incumbent on her to wear ornaments of gold and diamonds. She yielded to his will, not because the force of his proof convinced her, but because she had settled it in her mind that the happiness of a married pair demands complete agreement in tastes, and for the sake of that happiness she subjected her taste to her husband’s. That is why she feared to pursue the talk, dreading to arrive where she did not wish to go. But her woman’s nature — that same nature which led her grandmother Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit — now drove her to pursue the talk she had opened without supposing it to be of any importance:

— Are we not happy without a “bridegroom”? Is our happiness incomplete without children?

She said this with the tip of her husband’s mustache still between her fingers, playing with it, her eyes fixed on his eyes as though reading in them what her question had wrought in his heart.

— Why these questions, qarqoura? ... But if God granted us a “bridegroom,” as these people you are so weary of wish for us, would not our happiness be complete, and our love be doubled?

No sooner had Jamileh heard this answer than the fingers of her right hand went slack and her husband’s mustache fell from between them, and she turned her gaze to the floor. So then — Aziz’s happiness in her love was not complete. So then — his love for her had not yet reached its limit, and was still capable of increase and doubling. And why had her own love for him stretched and widened until it flooded her whole life like a sweeping wave, so that Aziz had become the all in all of her life? Why did she seek no increase of happiness, and ask of her Lord only that what she now possessed should remain hers? She did not hate children — no; she desired with all her heart to become a mother. But that desire — whether fulfilled or not — neither added to her happiness nor took away from it, so long as Aziz’s love warmed her and circled with the blood of her heart to every member of her body. Why then did Aziz speak of “the fullness of happiness” and the doubling of love? ... These thoughts turned in Jamileh’s head in less than the twinkling of an eye, and she found herself driven to sound her husband’s depths to the very end. So she raised her eyes again to his face, trying to restore to them all the gentleness, tenderness, and surrender that had been in them before, and said, taking her husband’s right hand:

— Forgive me, qarqour, these dull questions, but ... but suppose ...

She said this and stopped, as though afraid to utter the rest of the words turning on the tip of her tongue.

— Suppose what?

— Suppose ... suppose God did not grant us ... suppose God were grudging toward us with a “bridegroom” or a “bride” ... would ... would your love for me weaken then, and would you count your happiness lacking?

— God — how many questions you have tonight! I told you: if God favors us with a “bridegroom,” our happiness will be complete and our love doubled. And if ... and if God should not will to give us offspring ... (here Aziz swallowed as though something had choked him) and if God should not will to give us offspring ... wh— what could we do? Nothing would remain for us but to submit to His will. Let us leave this talk — it is useless — and come, let us sleep!

Aziz took his wife by the hand and pressed her to his breast. And for the first time since their crowning he kissed her without feeling any warmth steal from her body into his, without sensing the beating of her heart against his breast or the coolness of her breath upon his face.

As for Umm Aziz, no aim remained to her in this world but watching over and guarding her daughter-in-law’s comfort. And that, in her understanding, was confined to not letting Jamileh do any of the work of the house. So when she was absent from the house one day for an hour or two and came back to find her daughter-in-law in the courtyard with the broom in her hand, she nearly went out of her senses: “Woe is me, woe is me! Would I had never been! Would I were under the earth! Should one like you sweep? Hands like yours are fit for nothing but gold and satins and silk. Give it here — give it here — give it here, and go find yourself a book to read!”

In vain Jamileh tried to prove to her mother-in-law that there was no shame in housework, that sweeping did not tire her, and that she had grown weary of sitting and reading and therefore wanted bodily exercise. Such proofs might convince Abu Aziz, but Umm Aziz had drunk from the spring of another philosophy. Her philosophy was that “daughters of the great” must do no work at all except eating, drinking, and dressing elegantly. Otherwise, what would the world say of them?

When Aziz came back that night and Jamileh received him as was her custom, his mother hurried toward him and began to complain to him — in a voice one quarter jest and three quarters earnest — of what she had seen from the “qarqoura” that day in her attempt to clean the house. Aziz agreed with his mother in all she said — that sweeping, dusting, dishwashing, and the like were “no business of well-bred girls” — and he at once exacted a promise from Jamileh, against her will, that she would never return to such work.

And the next day he went and hired a maidservant, in answer to his mother’s urging and in accordance with his own opinion. And so that Jamileh might have something with which to pass her long hours of leisure, he would bring her from time to time a novel or a magazine or a newspaper, and Jamileh read every novel her husband brought her.

But she was not content with reading; she felt that the powers of youth in her demanded bodily work along with the work of the mind, and she grieved to see herself deprived of that pleasure to please her husband and his mother and his father.

Yet this emptiness in her life would not have troubled her mental and spiritual repose had it not begun to widen with the days until she could no longer avoid seeing it — above all when she began to feel a coldness from her husband in her relations with him.

A year passed after their marriage, and a second followed it, and every new day confirmed to Jamileh that an abyss had opened its mouth between her and Aziz. He still called her “qarqoura,” and she still called him “qarqour” and received him every evening at the door or at the foot of the outer stairs. But that tenderness in his voice and that eagerness in his eyes had evaporated like the tears of dew from the cheeks of flowers after sunrise, and no trace remained of that gentle smile, the lover’s smile, on his handsome face. His face was no longer, as before, a polished mirror reflecting every movement of his spirit and his heart; it had become now the face of a limpid sea beneath which life plays out hidden scenes the eye does not see and the ear does not hear. And that divine light in his eyes, which used to fill her heart with the sweetest melodies of happiness and love, was extinguished now, and in its place had settled a deep black thought, from which cold breezes blew upon the soul of Jamileh — who still loved with all her powers.

This strange revolution had not come suddenly, but by degrees. Jamileh began to notice it after the first year of her union had passed; and now she saw it increase day by day. Her heart ached, and she did not show the ache on her face, for fear that the last drop of the happiness her soul and her whole being still craved should evaporate from her spirit. It seemed to her at times that what had come over their life was only a cloud passing across the sky of their happiness, which would soon clear away — above all when she asked herself the causes of the change that had come about in her husband’s relations with her, and could not find them. She still loved him as before, if not more. Her lips still longed for his lips, and her breast for his breast. She still awaited his return every evening with burning impatience, standing at the door, her eyes fixed in one direction — the direction from which he would come. In short, Aziz was still her “qarqour.” What, then, had come over Aziz?

This question went on tormenting Jamileh day after day and night after night, until once, by chance, she overheard this brief exchange between her mother-in-law and Aziz:

— My son, how long will you be patient? Look to your wife and manage her.

— And how shall I manage her? Am I a lord, to create children?

— Come now! Is this how people do? Take her to Beirut. Take her to Damascus. Or let me manage her. Is our line to be cut off like this, when our hands are full?

— For God’s sake, mother, let me be. What is in my heart is enough for me. Do as you please! ...

This short talk between Umm Aziz and Aziz explained to Jamileh everything her aching soul had long yearned to know; but knowing the secret did not lighten her pains — rather it added constriction to her heart and aches to her soul. And what was to be done? She loved Aziz and would not hesitate a moment to die for his sake, and there was nothing in the world she would find it hard to sacrifice to bring his love back to her. But Aziz demanded as the price of his love what neither she nor the whole world had it in their power to offer. He demanded children of her — and what was her sin, if she was barren? She no longer cared about the pains of soul caused by her realization that what she had feared had now become an irrefutable truth: that Aziz’s happiness with her had not been complete without a “bridegroom,” and that Aziz’s love for her had been a partial love, not a whole one. All her thoughts turned upon a single point: was there any way to rekindle the fire of love in Aziz’s heart? ... The only way was the bearing of children. And her mother-in-law had hinted at Beirut and Damascus. What, then, could she have meant by that? Were there in Beirut or Damascus physicians who could make the barren woman conceive and bear? Her mother-in-law had promised to take this matter upon her own shoulders; and she was a seasoned, experienced woman — was it not best to do everything her mother-in-law said? But she had wronged no one in this world — why had the world wronged her? The days had fed her love for Aziz into nothing but flame — why had the fire of Aziz’s love for her died down? She was content with him without children — why was he not likewise content with her? Was it not he who had wronged her — why then should she strive to atone for his wrong? Was it not better to repay him in kind, and to meet coldness with coldness? Was it not better to rebuke her heart into stillness, and to quench with tears the burnings of her love and her pains? But — perhaps! .... perhaps there was some hope in her mother-in-law’s promise. Why not follow the gleam of that hope?

Jamileh remained for a time wavering between doubt and resolve. Her tears would well up to pour, and she would hold them back. And her heart came near to bursting in her breast like a shrapnel-shell, and she would say to it: “Gently, heart! ...”