Free The Shadows of Ghadames by Joelle Stolz Page A

Bilkisu lectured me at length: “Whatever you do, don't use the word
veil
. Avoid it like the plague! He must not feel insulted or think that you're making fun of him!” Bilkisu repeated this advice over and over again. I am doing my best. My jaws are aching from suppressing any semblance of a smile.
    But to my astonishment, in the space of a night he has gotten used to an idea that infuriated him a day ago, and this morning he is as gentle as a lamb.
    “You'll have to help me,” he says simply.

    Today is a special day for me too, because my mother gave me my first young girl's veil, a dark blue fabric that I've draped over my
malafa
. I show Abdelkarim how to keep the veil drawn shut, with the edge wedged between one's teeth, and how to walk so as to outwit our vigilant city guards. For, as everyone knows, men and women walk differently.
    “Look, men step putting their heels down first, in manly, self-confident fashion, whereas women put their toes down first, timidly, in a way that befits an inferior creature. That's how we're taught to walk by our mothers when we're very little, and heaven help us if we forget it!”
    Abdelkarim stares at me, wide-eyed. “Do you mean to say that women have to learn to walk like women, and that if their mothers did not correct them, they would tread on the ground as men do?”
    Now, it's my turn to be troubled. This had never occurred to me.
    But I am even more embarrassed at suddenly being the teacher, and at Abdelkarim being the student, a strange student with a beard and mustache. I bite my lip painfully several times so as not to burst out laughing. We certainly make an odd couple, tangled up in our veils, taking cautious, little steps as though the room were carpeted with fragile eggs or feathers. I only hope the guards will not be looking our way when we go through the city gate.
    Silence now. The time has come to weave our way through the streets next to my mother and Bilkisu, both as snuglywrapped as we are. Whispering figures file ahead of us and we are joined by more and more of them, as the discreet but repetitive scraping of dozens — no, hundreds—of leather soles tread on the hardened mud—toes first!
    Each time a door opens, we see the oil lamp in the cavity of the entryway conforming to the immutable code: the master is at home. He may be home, but his wife and the women next door are all making their way through the dark torchlit alleyways. This female procession in a flickering half-light is a rather bizarre sight.
    We cross the small Mulberry Square, where the slave market is located. I have always found the dark arcades sinister, as if tragedy were permanently ingrained in the walls in spite of the purifying layers of whitewash regularly applied to them.
    The procession must then cross Gâddous Square. This is the name we give to the iron cup that is held by a child seated in a cement niche. Under the niche is a
seguia
, one of the narrow ditches that brings water to the palm grove. For centuries this is the way we have been measuring the outflow of our spring so that we can divide it equitably.
    Day and night the child fills the cup with water and hangs it above the ditch. From a small hole at the bottom of the cup, the water slowly empties out. Each time the cup is filled, the child ties a knot in a long palm-leaf filament. The
Amine el Mâ
, the water controller appointed by the city residents, must be able to check the outflow at anygiven moment. So the cup serves as the measuring unit for irrigation. This is accomplished by blocking the openings of the
seguias
with earth, or unblocking them, depending on the time and the size of the gardens.
    Filling and tying, day and night. The children take turns in the niche but they all end up looking the same, with sad, prematurely aged faces, worn out by the monotonous work. Whenever I see clear, fresh water flowing through the
seguias
in the palm grove, I think of the child sitting in the Gâddous niche.
    When we