Free Amour Provence by Constance Leisure Page B

same vineyard as Mohammed. Amina was free to do as she pleased, and because of her various jobs, she had plenty of money to spend. As for herself, Rachida was often alone and idle, increasingly aware that there were plenty of people ready to hire an energetic young Moroccan woman to do a variety of chores. But whenever she discussed her desire to get a full-time job, Mohammed always replied, “You hope to conceive a child. We both want that, Rachida. Please be patient and wait a little longer before you make any decisions.”
    Rachida had never mentioned to her husband that she secretly worried about the fact that after nearly three years of marriage she had not become pregnant. Her sister had waited even longer before conceiving and now had four children, so Rachida comforted herself with that fact and hoped it would be the same for her. But recently, in additionto the normal monthly discomfort that was always a bother, she had begun to experience new sorts of pain. She sometimes found herself doubled over, pressing her belly, hoping to assuage the unpleasant feeling. But these symptoms were things she kept to herself, not even telling her friend Amina. She hadn’t considered seeing a doctor because she’d heard that French doctors often treated Muslim women as if they were ignorant animals and prescribed medicines that did more harm than good.
    Even with Mohammed’s attentiveness, not everything had been as smooth for Rachida as he might have wished. When she first began working at Corinne Chave’s house, Rachida had been surprised that there was no man in residence, a fact that would have been considered an oddity in Morocco, where women in the countryside never lived alone. There was always a brother, a cousin, or an uncle to step in as head of the household in the absence of a husband or a father. More confusingly, Corinne had a roommate named Sophie d’Aigouze, a small woman with thick rough hair, white as a baby goat, who worked as an accountant in the nearby town of Fenosque. One morning, while Rachida was ironing, she’d glanced out the window as the two women were leaving for work and saw them in the driveway embracing, not a simple bisou on the cheek, but lips upon lips like man and wife! At first, Rachida had been so shocked that she had hidden behind the curtain, wondering if she should sneak away and never come back. But then she thought it better to wait to see what Mohammed would say. After all, he’d known Corinne for fifteen years and was bound to know more than Rachida concerning his employer’slife. Still, a part of Rachida felt that such behavior was haraam , forbidden in the same way eating pork or drinking alcohol was prohibited for Muslims.
    That night as she tended the couscous they would eat with dinner, her words began to erupt like the steam from beneath the cover of the couscousière . “Hamidou, do you know that Corinne Chave and her friend Sophie live together like a married couple!”
    â€œThat’s not your business,” Mohammed replied. “Corinne has always been fair to me, probably better than a man would be. Her private life is none of my concern. Remember, Rachida, France isn’t Morocco and we can’t judge people by the same standards that we would if we were home.”
    That was her husband’s answer to the majority of her questions about the differences between the two countries. “You can’t compare them as if they were loaves of bread,” he often told her. “It’s much more complicated. You will come upon many things that surprise you, and then you must make your own judgment about what you accept and what you don’t.”
    So that’s what Rachida tried to do, simply accept that Sophie and Corinne were Frenchwomen free to live life the way they saw fit in accordance with the words on the town hall that proclaimed their liberty.
    When Rachida had first arrived in France three years