"The Barren Woman"... Twenty-six years ago and more, the Lebanese thinker of world stature, Mikhail Naimy, wrote the story of this Lebanese woman... the woman crushed in soul and body... the woman whom man regards as a machine for breeding children, and with whom he is not content for her own sake, as a creature that loves and feels and knows happiness.
And The Woman's Voice, in presenting this story — which it counts among the most brilliant and most profound things written in Arabic fiction to this day — presents an imperishable piece of literature, a strain of storytelling than which fiction has known none more beautiful;
and it presents at the same time a generation of people who, to this very day, still hold woman to be the one first responsible.
"The Barren Woman" is the cry of the suffering woman, resounding in the depths of the selfish man.
For this reason The Woman's Voice presents this story...
"The Editors"
— 2 —
Umm Aziz insisted on having her way this time, and won. Aziz did not oppose her, and Jamila's demurrals were not such as could stand in her path. And so one day she ordered her daughter-in-law to prepare all the necessities of travel, and on the morrow she "went down" with her to Beirut, after announcing to the neighbors that she was going "to let her daughter-in-law take the air," because her daughter-in-law — poor soul! — was "cooped up!"
After an absence of a week the two returned from their excursion, and Jamila went back to watching the gradual death of her love, feeling that she was dying with it a slow death — a death of the spirit.
Beirut did not lighten her pains of body and soul. And Aziz's treatment of her grew ever harsher, above all after a year had passed since her visit to Beirut. If before that visit Aziz would kiss her dry kisses and call her "my Qarqura," if only rarely, now he no longer kissed her at all; he went back to calling her "Jamila," and seldom addressed her even by name. He suddenly took up smoking the narghile, so that when he came home he would sit through his evening with his narghile instead of his "qarqura," speaking to no one — nor did anyone dare speak to him — unless guests came, whom he would receive with his usual courtesy, as though no change at all had come over him. At about nine o'clock he would go to his bedroom and shut the door behind him.
Jamila began to melt away like a candle. She had no one in the whole world before whom to lay her soul bare except her mother. But what did her mother understand? If she spoke to her of the tragedy the days were playing out in her heart, she would sigh and weep and not understand what her daughter was saying.
Her mother, like Umm Aziz, looked upon her daughter's barrenness as a stern chastisement from heaven, a crushing calamity, a great disgrace never to be wiped away among people. She would look at Jamila's companions and see them nursing boys and girls at their breasts, and a lump would choke her at the thought that her daughter, once the "ornament" of the town's girls — her daughter of whose beauty and good breeding stranger and kinsman alike used to talk, her daughter for whose hand young men had come streaming from every corner of Lebanon — now walked with no milk in her breast and no child on her arms.
And so, instead of finding consolation with her mother, Jamila had to console her.
Umm Aziz was not content with her excursion to Beirut; after a year had passed she compelled her daughter-in-law to accompany her to Damascus. This time too the woman announced that she was going "to let her daughter-in-law take the air," because her daughter-in-law — poor soul! — was "cooped up." But the doctors of Damascus and the doctors of Zahle could not do what the doctors of Beirut had failed to do. Then Umm Aziz cursed medicine and doctors in her heart and resolved to seek the help of "the Moroccans." She no longer heard of
Modess — Sanitary Towels
The Beautiful Look
It is more than ordinary beauty; it is also the calm, untroubled look that comes of peace of mind. Use "Modess" to enjoy a poised beauty. Its rounded ends and sides do not show, and it is always soft and yielding.
Modess
Sanitary Towels
Modess
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