Chapter 8

RASHIDA

17th of Jumaada al-awal l4l7

(September 30, l996)

Rashida had been briefed by the mistress of her dormitory on the protocol of the plea and hearing. She took a quick moment to think of what to say to those men with long beards and curious stares. She searched through her file of close memories of the small university. Men and women were never seen chatting or mingling. They remained within their separate camps: the men on the main campus, the women two miles away on a dust and dirt–ridden land marked by dilapidated shacks and a stench of sewage floating in a nearby stream where they sometimes washed their clothes. The women were occasionally allowed to attend prayer services at the big mosque on the main campus. On these visits Rashida wore her uniform. She became used to it.

She had been accepted early to the university, and at the time she was proud of it, receiving recommendations from two amilsaabs in Cairo and three instructors in her high school. She had made it to the place she had always wanted to study. But things had nagged her, the cloak in particular, which was difficult to draw over herself. She had made it known to her dorm-mates.

“Hey, aren’t you girls sick of wearing this thing before going to the main campus? The men do no such thing.”

None of the women responded. She asked it again and received dirty looks from all of them, except from the younger ones. She dressed in the cloak anyway and proceeded to the big mosque with the younger ones thinking her brave for questioning the rule.

“Hey, don’t you think it crazy that we have to resort to our own women’s library and that we can’t take any books out from the main library on campus?” she asked everyone in the dormitory one night.

Three women confronted her. The tallest one in the middle was Tazula, and she towered in her cloak over the smaller Rashida.

“Did’nt you know the rules before you got here? We do these things for a reason. It is the plan the scriptures have outlined. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

“I never expected things to be this strict. It’s ridiculous. It’s not like this in the city.”

“We are not in the city,” scowled Tazula. “If you don’t like it, you can go back to Cairo. We don’t need any of that here. Be loud someplace else.”

“I didn’t mean to be loud, but the policies here are outdated and unfair. We can’t drive to the main campus, we can’t take out books from the main library, we have to sit in these insect–infested classrooms, we can’t talk to the men...”

“It is not the place for a newcomer to break tradition.”

Rashida saw Tazula’s bookends nodding in agreement. She remained silent before the three of them turned away grunting. Rashida kept her mouth shut to the entire dormitory. Yet she whispered after lights out to the younger ones close to her bunk. She eventually talked of protest. The younger ones, however, were unsure. They did not want to go against Tazula and her bookends. After a week of Rashida’s whispering, one of the younger ones mentioned her talk of protest to Tazula.

On another sultry morning, Rashida awoke to the dorm mistress’ assertive voice. She had slept well. She dreamt of piasters on the ground, picking them up with dirty fingers, leading her to the administration building on the main campus: the brown faces, the men in white dress and the women in black cloaks, eagles floating low and crying her name. She had forgotten the rest.

She lay in the bed ashamed, for money was the root of all evil, and in her sleep her soul had been chasing after it. From the above bunk she spotted two short legs dangling. She did not give her the usual perky greeting. Her bunkmate took a towel from the cubby hole and headed for the showers. Rashida did the same.

She stepped on perspiring tile while eyeing the other women as streams of water ran down their warm bodies. She admired the body of one of the older ones: a slim stomach and firm breasts catching water from the nozzle. She dared not look for too long. She glanced furtively while picking up the rough soap. The older one left the room, followed by the younger ones in the corner. She was alone suddenly.

The huge bulk of Tazula entered. She found a place in the corner where the younger ones had been. Her two bookends soon followed, checking the temperature of the water with their hands. They talked to each other, but Rashida could not hear them. Rashida soaped herself, her back to the wall. As she rinsed the gritty emulsion from her skin, a towel came full around her neck and jerked her clear from the spray. She screamed, but no one answered. Only the pounding of fists into her delicate face and kicks into her body. The blood mixed with the soap while sliding into the drain.

She wore dark sunglasses after her brief visit to the infirmary.

“Time will heal these bruises,” said the nurse. She did not listen to her. The nurse applied ointment to her cheeks. Rashida was half–way out the door before the nurse asked how she got the bruises. Rashida remained silent, licking the split in her lower lip.

She rushed out of the infirmary and headed for the women’s campus. She had missed two classes already and was almost late for a third. The quadrangle on her way down was blank and uneasy. Tension surfaced on the brown lawns, the dust floating in the air, the sun beaming hot and heavy. She could have hid herself with a veil. But there was no point in hiding. She was not going to suffer the defeat of quitting the university.

Through open windows on the quadrangle she could see the heads of students. She could hear the faint tapping of chalk on blackboards. She could not go on. She did not know where to go or whom to tell. She sat on a line of steps near an empty classroom facing the cement wall. This wall barred the campus from the sprawling city. The administration building to her left, the men’s dormitory to her right. The breeze, the echoes of full classrooms, her throbbing lips, and then the pleasure of feeling sorry for herself. The quivers of release came and went in intervals. But it did not work. She could not force a single tear.

While her face reformed and the bruises on her body shrank, she remained silent and buried her nose in books. She avoided Tazula as best she could. She wrote her mother short lines about longing for the city and her old friends. She hungered for her mother’s hand upon her fine hair, gently stroking it free of all the wasted time and uneasiness of being in a place where the walls stank of hate and injustice. It was all around her: in the younger ones who giggled, in the men and their chauvinism, in the older women who clung to tradition. On the walk from the women’s campus to the big mosque it hung in the air. Her opposition rose through mornings of sitting in decaying classrooms and noticing how the men were given better treatment by instructors and administrators and how the women followed the path towards enslavement.

An outcast, the women had said. A product of the Jinn, they had labeled her. She entered the administration building on a balmy afternoon. She found the president’s office within a vacant corridor. She opened the door and yelled at the top of her lungs:

“My name is Rashida Husseini Pendi. The methods and policies used to denigrate women are abominable. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. All of you are cowards, hiding behind your scriptures, hiding in your isolated tombs where Allah shall keep you, to awaken at the day of judgment and cast you into the fire where the flesh is roasted. Allah will understand the torment you inflict on women at this university of hypocrites. If this is the type of Islam that you preach and practice, I want no part of it. I want no part of this university. This is not true Islam. Islam is better, and if you think that yours is the true Islam, think again. I spit on your version of it.”

She shattered the door window on her way out. She did not look back. She had interrupted an important meeting. The guards caught her at the entrance. They escorted her back to the women’s campus with their hands clutching her arms. Her name was immediately given to Dr. Farrukh’s office.

Dr. Farrukh never received the message from his secretary that a woman had been summoned for judgement. Rashida jumped at the opportunity to stand in front of these men. She knew Khozem, the ringleader, was responsible. She wanted to make a fool of him. She wanted to hurt him in some way. The fleeting fear before she entered the chamber changed into a form of anger. Her anger put her on the offensive, but this anger was ill–defined. She hoped it would lead to a victory. There is no glory in futility unless one has won, and her darting mind searched for something to crack these impregnable seven.

She concentrated on Khozem. She knew she would be expelled, and she could have left the university before the hearing. Nevertheless, her protests, the hallmark of chronic disobedience for a better Islam, would not end with her alone. Other women would follow as the atrocity of living on a campus saturated by filth and paralysis developed like algal scum over a pond.

“Before we expel you and send you to Mecca for the high crime of apostasy, we give you this moment to hear your plea,” said Khozem. “It’s no secret that you are the first woman this university has ever judged...”

“So no matter what I say, I will still be expelled and sent to Mecca?”

“Yes, to put it bluntly.”

“So then what’s the point in saying anything?”

“Allah will hear you. That’s the point.”

“Doesn’t Allah already know what I’m about to say?”

“Yes, Allah knows everything, but he is waiting to hear your apology to this committee and this university for betraying the faith.”

“And how did I betray the faith?”

“By what you shouted in the administration building, in the president’s own office. Don’t play games with me.”

“I never betrayed anything. Your president got what was coming.”

“And we will give you what is coming. This is no game. This is not a debate. Say what you have to say and get out of my sight.”

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“Of course you do. Didn’t someone tell you how these proceedings are run?”

“Yes, but these proceedings are absurd. You sit there in ignorance, pretending to represent what Allah wants. You don’t know the first thing about what Allah wants. You go against His will.”

“How’s that?” laughed Khozem.

“Just look at the condition of women. Our living conditions are deplorable, our food is second rate, the library has no books. You are not educating us. We are learning only how to be submissive. We are slaves down there.”

“Nonsense. If that were the case we would be hearing from the lot of you. It’s obvious that it is you alone who has turned against Allah and His will. The punishment for apostasy is severe, not only in this life but the one after.”

“I had no other choice. You people gave me no other choice but to shout those things. And by all means I do not take it back. The people running this pit, especially you, should know that women have the same rights in relation to the man.”

“I think you are grossly misinterpreting the Qu’ran. The Qu’ran clearly states that women have the same rights only in marriage and the man will always stand a step above them. It is very clear in sura two, aya 228.”

“Well I don’t believe in that. Something must be wrong with the Qu’ran.”

“That is exactly why you have been called to this committee.”

“This committee is a joke.”

“Then I guess you’ll be laughing all the way to Mecca.”

“There are no punishments prescribed for apostasy in our scriptures. Apostasy remains the greatest of all sins, but there are no real world punishments for it. My plea is based upon ‘no compulsion in religion.’ Sura two, aya 256, and that our holiest of scriptures does not outline any punishment for apostasy. Our prophet never had an apostate put to death or sent to Mecca.”

“You are quite right, but this committee will make an exception starting with you. We interpret apostasy in a different way. Apostasy is a fixed punishment, not a discretionary one. Because it is fixed, you will be expelled from this university and sent to Mecca for another hearing in front of the religious police.”

“Then why say anything at all?”

“We are waiting for your apology.”

“You will never get an apology. It is you who ought to apologize to all those women who are learning to be nothing more than slaves to these corrupt clerics. Some women may be happy being the caretakers of the family. They may be happy rearing children and depending on the husband for all the decision–making, but I warn you, Islam will die without reform, and reform begins at the women’s college. Can’t you see what I’m getting at? Islam cannot survive unless its women are treated with dignity. All you are doing is training housewives and baby-sitters.”

“I don’t think we need to hear any more of this,” said Khozem. “The women must remain women, and if you take exception to this then I suppose you were never meant to be a part of this fine university.”

“You will realize things when it is too late,” responded Rashida. “I almost feel sorry for you. While the world changes, you will be stuck in the dark ages relying on a book that is too old to be practiced anymore.”

“We follow the words of Allah, and his words transcend time. What you call slavery Islam calls the most direct route to heaven. Don’t feel sorry for us. Rather it is we who should feel sorry for you.”

“Oh really? Take a good look at the women of this university.”

“Certainly they did not choose you as their mouthpiece.”

“And who elected you? No one did. You clearly do know the condition of women, but you refuse to do anything about it. Not only are you a coward, but you are an ignorant coward. A dumb coward. A coward who doesn’t even know he is a coward. You can get away with expelling those who are smarter than you are, all because you wish to build your reputation, or maybe it’s because you think your power is something special...”

“I don’t need to hear any more of this,” said Khozem. “Get her out of here.”

“No. You will hear this. You act as though you have some divine right over the minds of the students who have stood before your committee. Always remember that these ideas will remain. They do not go away through torture, expulsion, or death...”

“Get out of here, or I’ll have the guards kick you out!”

“Well that’s just fine,” as Rashida ripped off her headdress and veil. “Take a good look, all of you. This is the only time you shall ever see a woman, so take a good look.”