The Forbidden Woman

by Malika Mokeddem, Karen Melissa Marcus

Overview

The Forbidden Woman tells the story of Sultana, an Algerian woman doctor who, after years spent living in France, returns to her native village in order to attend the funeral of a former lover. The clash between her origins and the Westernized life she now leads is explored in telling detail against the backdrop of current events in Algeria. A work that combines insight into both political and personal matters, The Forbidden Woman develops a complex portrait of a country torn between progress and prejudice, secular life and Islamic fundamentalism.

In this passionate book, Malika Mokeddem places special emphasis on the position of women in modern Algeria. The frequent indignities and injustices suffered by the narrator reflect the plight of women in a society marked by patriarchalism and religious fundamentalism. Yet the novel also suggests that, along with modernization, there are emerging demands for women's rights in Algeria-demands that might well signal a vastly different future for this tormented nation.

Mokeddem was born into an illiterate nomad family in Kenadsa, Algeria. She had the opportunity, rare for a Moslem female, to attend the university in Oran. Later she completed her medical studies in Montpellier, France, where she currently practices medicine. The Forbidden Woman is her third novel.

K. Melissa Marcus is an associate professor of French at Northern Arizona University. She is the author of The Representation of Mesmerism in Honoré de Balzac's "La Comédie Humaine" and the translator of Nina Bouraoui's Forbidden Vision.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803282407
Publisher:	Nebraska Paperback
Publication date:	02/01/1998
Series:	European Women Writers
Pages:	156
Sales rank:	721,810
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 8.50(d)

About the Author

Malika Mokeddem was born into an illiterate nomad family in Kenadsa, Algeria. She had the opportunity, rare for a Moslem female, to attend the university in Oran. Later she completed her medical studies in Montpellier, France, where she currently practices medicine. The Forbidden Woman is her third novel. Melissa Marcus is an associate professor of French at Northern Arizona University. She is the author of The Representation of Mesmerism in Honoré de Balzac’s “La Comédie Humaine” and the translator of Nina Bouraoui’s Forbidden Vision.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

SULTANA

I was born on the ksar's only dead-end street. A nameless dead end. Thisis my first thought in light of the immensity of what I will have to face. Itenvelops my turmoil with a cascade of silent laughter.

    I would never have believed it possible to return to this place. And yetI've never really left it. All I have done is incorporate the desert and theinconsolable into my displaced body. They have split me in two.

    From the top of the passenger steps, I look at Tammar's small airport.The building has been enlarged. The runways too. Tammar ... in thewhirlwinds of light, the years topple over and pile up to present time. Itmakes my heart sink. My oasis is a few kilometers from here. A ksar madeof earth, a labyrinthine heart, bordered by dunes, fringed by palm trees. Isee myself again as an adolescent girl leaving the region for Oran's boardingschool. I remember the painful circumstances of that departure. Asflight becomes rupture, as absence becomes exile, time itself shatters.What remains? A rosary of fears, the inevitable baggage of exodus. Butwhen distance unites with time, you learn to conquer the worst fears.They tame us. So that we and our fears live together in the same skin,without being too torn. At certain moments, you can even jettison theinner conflict. Not just anywhere. In the most burning moment of guilt.When regret is most hidden. A privileged place of exile.

    Blinking her eyes in the painful glare, the stewardess, with a smile, invitesme to go down the few steps in front of me. I'm holding upthe passengers.

    Why this sudden desire to reestablish contact? Is it because I was sickof the world? A nausea resurfacing from things forgotten, through disenchantmentwith somewhere else and other places, in the harsh light of lucidity?I still found myself undone by everything. Once again, my detachmenthad erased my features, pinned a forced smile to my mouth,banished my eyes to the nether regions of meditation.

    Or is it because Yacine's letter had been mailed from Aïn Nekhla, mynative village?

    No doubt a combination of all that.

    It was on a very windy day. The violent north wind thrust the beginningof autumn's harsher weather into the warmth of a Montpelliercaught off guard. It was also a day when nostalgia blew hard. Nestled inits howls, I listened to the north wind, I heard in myself the sand wind.And suddenly the need to hear Yacine, to be with him in that house,started to stir in me behind my censoring bars. Something still not subduedburst brutally forth from my prolonged lethargy. My thoughts, outwardbound, suppressed my nausea, rekindled my homesickness. Northwind outside, sand wind inside, my resistance dropped. Telephone,search, ringing, and this unknown voice:

    'Who is this, please, Madam?'

    'Sultana Medjahed, a friend of Yacine's. Is he there?'

    'A very close friend?'

    'Uhh ... yes, why?'

    'Madam, where are you calling from, please?'

    'I'm in France. Why all these questions? Isn't Yacine there?'

    'Madam, I regret to inform you that he died last night.'

    'Died? Last night?'

    'Yes, Madam, may Allah rest his soul. We discovered him in his bed. Helooked like he was just sleeping. He, the athlete, in the best of health! Yesterdayafternoon he played soccer with the village kids for a long time.I'm the nurse who works with him. We're waiting for the doctors fromTammar, the next town.'

    'Died last night.' My nausea had started to boil, to cook me. To calm it,I rocked myself in the blowing of the north wind and the sand windmixed inside me. I lied to myself: This is only a nightmare, a black ramwho has broken into the white field of my indifference. These are just liesor hallucinations, born of the meeting of two demented winds. These arenothing but reminiscence, the past lashing out against the desert of thepresent. Tomorrow nothing will remain of them. Tomorrow the sandwind will have buried the fears of childhood and adolescence. Tomorrowthe north wind will have swept my Midi. Tomorrow my indifference willhave once again filled in its gaps.

Suitcase in hand, I go toward a taxi.

    'Can you take me to Aïn Nekhla please?'

    'Whose daughter are you?' inquires the driver in a curt tone of voice, ashe puts my suitcase into the trunk, amid the heap of tools and grease-stainedrags.

    'No one's.'

    I get into the car and loudly slam the door to discourage the interrogationthat I sense coming. He pushes back his chechia, stares at me,scratches his forehead, spits on the ground, and finally consents to takehis place behind the steering wheel. He starts up the engine, glancing atme frequently in the rearview mirror. Little burning glances, hungryglances that size me up as if I were a puzzle all in pieces that he didn'tknow how to begin.

    'So, whose place are you going to in Aïn Nekhla?'

    'No one's.'

    'There's no hotel in Aïn Nekhla. How can you go to no one's place?Here, even a man can't go to "no one's place"! "No one" doesn't existhere!'

    I have forgotten nothing. Neither this biting curiosity nor this meddlingthat asserts its rights over all.

    When the inquisition is posed as civility, these questions are like asummons, and remaining silent is the admission of dishonor. The manstares at me in the rearview mirror and yells, '"No one" doesn't exist! Andthere's no hotel!'

    I have forgotten none of my past terror either. Under its influence, Iclosed my eyes to everything, banishing even those who showed me compassion.Only two women had been able to approach me and conquerme: an elderly neighbor and Emna, a Jewish woman from the mellah.Mine was an isolation armored with silence.

    This harassment makes me tense. I can no longer see the desert. I bringmy eyes back to the man. Now I think I recognize him. One of the anonymousgrimacing faces from the horde that used to persecute me. One ofthe faces of hatred. In that moment I withdraw. A moment from which Iexclude him. I carefully envelop myself in my dissident and different Sultanas.

    One is nothing but emotions, exaggerated sensuality. Her voluptuousnessis painful, and bursts of sobs split her laughter. A tragedienne havingso worn out her sorrow that it tears at the first assaults of desire. Unsateddesire. Impotent longing. If I let her run free she would annihilate me.For now, she devotes herself to her favorite pastime: ambiguity. Sheswings the pendulum between pain and pleasure.

    The other Sultana is sheer will. Demoniacal will. A curious mix of insanityand reason, with an outer layer of contempt and the sword ofprovocation permanently raised. A fury that exploits all, cunningly or ostentatiously,starting with the weaknesses of the other. Sometimes she delightsme, only then to terrify me all the more. Vigilant and rigid, shecoldly scrutinizes the landscape and with her goad keeps me at a respectfuldistance.

    A gaping inner rictus distorts my attention.

    Having arrived in Tammar, the cabbie stops his heap in front of a grocer'sstore. He gets out without a word. I look at the street in alarm. It'scrawling with people even more than in my nightmares. It shamelesslyinflicts its masculine plurality and its feminine apartheid. The street ispregnant with every frustration possible, is tormented by every type ofinsanity and dirtied by all of its misery. Its ugliness hardened by a sunwhitened with rage, it exhibits its welts, its wrinkles, and splashes aboutin the sewers with all of its urchins.

    Some of them immediately congregate around the taxi. 'Madam!Madam! Madam! Madam!'

    Long French-sounding onomatopoetic tirades from which emerge,here and there, a few rare words identifiable in Algerian and French: 'Ilove you ... fuck ... dick,' accompanied by gestures that couldn't be anymore suggestive.

    I have not forgotten that the boys of my country had a sick and gangrenouschildhood. I have not forgotten their clear voices that ring onlywith obscenities. I have not forgotten that from the youngest age, the oppositesex is already a ghost among their desires, a confusing menace. Ihave not forgotten their angelic eyes, when they simper and pour forththe worst insanities. I have not forgotten that they viciously beat dogs,that they hurl stones and insults at passing girls and women. I have notforgotten that they are aggressive because they have never learned what acaress is, be it only that of a look, because they have never learned to love.I have not forgotten. But memory never shields one from anything.

    The cabbie returns. He glances complicitously at the children beforestarting up the car. They grab onto it. Laughing, the man accelerates. I'mso afraid of an accident that I cry out. His face lit up by laughter, one ofthe children calls at me before letting go.

    'Whore!'

    I start. 'Whore!' More than the sorrowful spectacle of the street, morethan the view of the desert, this word drives Algeria into me like a knife.Whore! How many times as an adolescent, still a virgin and alreadywounded, did I have this word vomited onto my innocence. Whore!Treacherous word, for a long time I was able to write it only in capital letters,as if it were women's only destiny, their only divinity, the lot of rejectedwomen.

    With satisfied eyes, the man observes me in the rearview mirror. Oureyes are glued to each other, size each other up, confront each other.Mine defy him, tell him how vile he is. He's first to lower his eyes. I knowhe'll hold this offense against me. I try to concentrate on the countryside.

    How many years did I travel this road twice a day? In the morning, togo to the secondary school. In the evening, to return to Aïn Nekhla. Atwenty-kilometer stretch between my village and the town. Twenty kilometersof nothingness. I have forgotten none of this nothingness, either.The straightness of its tarred line. Its threatening sky that scorches thepoetry of the sand. Its palm trees, poor exclamation points forever unquenched.The endless scrawl of its gravel deserts. The wind's sardonicfifths. Then the silence, the weight of eternity consumed. I even recognizethose little dunes over there ... How silly of me! From their crescentshape, I've just realized they're shifting dunes formed by sandstorms.They move about at the mercy of the wind.

    The hardly audible sound of a flute flows in me. It took me some timeto notice it, to hear it. Its slitherings reach me, overtake me entirely. Idon't know what it's saying.

    The man drives so erratically that he elicits strange moaning soundsfrom the dying transmission. The shocks are so worn that I'm shakenabout as if on a racing camel. When the wheels dig into the side of theroad, a breath of sand sweeps through the taxi. The scent of this sand isthe only welcoming embrace. It's perfumed with a plant that bubbles incracked wheat soup.

    'Has it rained lately?' I can't help suddenly asking.

    'Yes, a little,' answers the man, his eyes wide open with surprise.

    Three drops of rainfall suffice for a low-growing plant to conquer thedryness and immediately explode two days later into yellow flowers witha heady fragrance. I still don't know its French name.

    Encouraged by my question, the man makes a fresh attempt: 'So, you,where do you come from?'

    In Oran I had learned to scream. In Oran I always held myself in a positionready to fend off attacks. The anonymity of large foreign cities hastaken the edge off of my anger, moderated my retorts. Exile has softenedme. Exile is the territory of that which cannot be seized, of rebelliousindifference, of the confiscated look.

    I resolutely keep my face turned toward the car window. I let myself goin the bath of my familiar scents. I tune my ear to this tenuous flute hiddenwithin me. The car swerves. My fear makes the man laugh jeeringly.With big turns of the wheel he does it again. Now the rearview mirrorshows me the look of an insane man. It's only then that I notice the beardthat blackens his face. I should have distrusted him.

    'Nobody's daughter, who's going to nobody's house! Are you trying tofool me, or what? Since you refuse to speak, you might as well wear aveil!'

    I feel a sense of relief at the first glimpse of Aïn Nekhla's houses in thedistance.

    'Can you drop me off at the hospital please?'

    'Are you the tabib's sister? He's the only foreigner, a Kabyle!'

    I don't respond.

    'But you, you don't look like a Kabyle. They say he's not married ...Maybe you're his ...?'

    Is he going to dare say his whore? I challenge him with my look. Turninghis eyes away from the rearview mirror, he mumbles, 'Why did thisKabyle come here? Even the Sahara's children go north or abroad whenthey become doctors or engineers. People don't come here unless they'rein prison or because of some punishment! We in the south, we are a punishment,a prison cell or a garbage can for all of the Tell's nabobs. Theyonly send us the country's riffraff. The proof is that he's in with the RCD,the tabib is! But he died two days ago. They're going to bury him this afternoon!'

    Beyond the vengeful tone that triumphs in his voice, I hear 'They'regoing to bury him this afternoon.' That empties me of all indignation. Ihad counted on the fact that here the dead are buried the same day, thevery afternoon of their death. I deliberately put off my trip for two days.But the doctor undoubtedly had the right to special treatment. Yacineawaited my arrival.

    I think of this burial at the end of my travels. A yoke of fatiguecrashes down on me. I lose the sound of the flute, wild and immodestin my innermost being just a short time ago, before I had recognized itsmelody.

    'The city tabibs cut into him just like a sheep. I hope they put him inthe refrigerator the day before yesterday; if not, he's not going to smelllike a sheep but more like a hyena!'

    With disgust he spits out the window and continues in his surly tone.'They were looking for the cause of his death, so they said! Does Godneed to justify taking back what he's given?'

    I ought to slap this vile person. The fire of this wish passes through meand goes out. I content myself with careful observation of the man. Hisjacket is dirty and torn. His eyes, crazed in the rearview mirror, have twodrops of pus in their corners. A fly leaves one eye only to go to the other.His eyelids are red and swollen. Conjunctivitis, I think with detachment.How many children is he responsible for? Eight? Nine, ten? How manywomen has he worn out?

    My staring irritates him. He turns away and continues his monologue.His voice is no longer any more than a distant annoyance. Everythingseems so distant to me. The memories coming back to me have merely abland, faded taste. I try to retrieve the lost serpentine sounds of the flute.

    A moment goes by before I realize that the car has completely stopped.The volleys of words have gotten the better of my last vibrations of emotion.After fifteen years of absence and a haunting nostalgia, I've arrived inAïn Nekhla without even noticing. Had this man not been here, I wouldhave burst out laughing. I have the horrible feeling that my reunion withthis region is going to lead straight to confrontation, and that a thousandnostalgic sentiments are still more tolerable than Algerian reality.

    On my right, the hospital, just a little smaller, just a little more dilapidatedthan I had remembered. I pull myself out of the taxi. My suitcasehas already been thrown to the ground. I had had the time to change a littlemoney during the brief stopover at the Algiers airport. I give two billsto the man. He pockets them and sticks out his hand again.

    'How much do I owe you?'

    Now he's the one who remains silent. I take out a third bill. He seizes itand quickly leaves. Three hundred dinars? It's way too much. He undoubtedlythinks that my misconduct is worth at least some sort of ransom.If only this trip would cost me in money alone.

I'm right in front of the hospital. In some places, the low wall encirclingit is almost entirely covered in sand. Men are crouching or standingalong the whole length of the building. They stare at me. Here, presenttime seems to me nothing more than a decrepit past, my memoriesbroken and dusty. It must be noon. I can't check the time. My watch isin my bag, and I feel hypnotized. My heart is in my head and bangsaway.

    I end up climbing the four steps to the landing. I push open the heavywooden door. A shadowy light, like that in a mosque, fills the entryway.To the right I recognize the door of the consultation room, to the leftthose of the two waiting rooms. The scraping sound of a chair beingpushed back reaches me from the back room, the treatment room. A manin a white smock appears. He comes toward me.

    'Hello, madam.'

    'I'm a friend of Yacine's.'

    Taken aback, he looks at me for a moment.

    'Did you call from France, the day before yesterday?'

    I nod my head.

    'Ah! That's fine, that's fine. I'm glad you're here, madam. I'm the nurse.In his death, I believe, Dr. Meziane will be glad to know that you're here.He had no family left.'

    'No. They were all killed during the war. He had only his mother. Shedied about two or three years ago.'

    'The Tammar doctors were also his friends. They did an autopsy onhim. He was in good health. They said "sudden death." That was quite asudden death all right! The ambulance brought him back this morning.He's just had the last ablutions. He's being buried at three o'clock.'

    His eyes fill with tears. He turns his back to me and says, 'Come!'

    I leave my suitcase and follow him. At the very end of the hallway, nextto the treatment room, he opens the door to the morgue. The enormousform of a body lies wrapped in a shroud. Another one, a child, lies on aboard on the ground. The odor of cadavers is strong.

    'If you want to see him one last time, I can uncover his face.'

    'No!'

    My panicked cry sounds out of place in the silence. I'm ashamed of it.The nurse looks at me. I move toward the table. I hold out my hands andgrab the form by its feet. Two or three layers of starched cloth separate mefrom it. I feel like I'm touching cardboard. What have I come to look for?The certainty that I'll never see him again, never again? Suddenly, Yacineappears before me, the way he would meet me in the hallways of the Oranhospital when we were students. He's in black corduroy pants and a greenshirt, the same dark green of his eyes. His smile digs a broad dimple intohis chin. He opens his arms to greet me. I rush toward him. But the atmospherecuts into my breath. The shroud's whiteness burns my eyes. Ihate this white, a scar in the half light. I hate this silence where the unspeakableexplodes. I hate this stench. I would like to be able to scream,scream. My breathing blocked, I can't manage a moan or a word. I leavethe room.

    The nurse is at my heels and grabs my suitcase.

    'I'll drive you to my house. My wife will take care of you. It's better thatyou go there.'

    'No. I'm staying here. I'll go to Yacine's after the burial.'

    'They won't let you attend his funeral. You know that women aren't allowedat funerals.'

    'We'll just see who's going to stop me!'

    'The mayor belongs to the FIS. He didn't like Dr. Meziane, but he'llcome. He won't miss an occasion so favorable to his propaganda. They'rea few guys all stirred up and doing their best to enroll a populace dozingin its misery and taboos.'

    I can't think of anything to say. I turn the door handle of the examinationroom. Everything is like before, except perhaps, for the examiningtable. A long white smock hangs behind the desk.

    'Okay, you can just wait there, but ... have you eaten?'

    'I'm not hungry.'

    'I'll make some coffee, at least.'

    Visibly disappointed, he disappears without waiting for my answer. Iclose the door. My eyes go around the room. The window with its eternalmosquito net projects the light here and there, on the partly rusted X-raymachine, on the lead apron whose big tear is mended with adhesive tape,on the little glass-windowed metal cabinet where the few small bottlesseem orphaned, on the cart emptied of its instruments, on the old tileflooring. The hanger. The long smock. Over there, the body under theshroud. An abandoned shroud here, in a heap of whiteness. To one sideof the desk, an old armchair, to the other, three fake leather chairs. At theend of the room, the examining table. I'm going to sit down in the armchair.I back it up to the wall. The smock brushes lightly against my back,my shoulders, my neck, my head. I caress it, sniff it, bury my face in it. Isthis Yacine's odor? I no longer know what his odor was like. The cadaver'sodor is still blocking my nose.

    The hospital door opens abruptly. I immediately hear the nurse exclaim,'Si Salah!'

    Salah Akli? Yacine's best friend?

    In the entrance hall, the two men exchange a few words. Suppressedsobs strangle their voices. I hear them going toward the morgue. A momentlater they're back, and they come into the consultation room. I hadseen Salah on only a few rare occasions. He was studying medicine in Algiersat the time, and I had always invented a thousand pretexts so as toavoid his meetings with Yacine. Was it out of jealousy? Was it out of fear?His jaundiced gaze is unforgettable.

    'Madam ...?' the nurse asks me.

    'Sultana Medjahed. Salah Akli and I know each other.'

    'Oh, very good, very good.'

    Quite obviously reluctant, Salah shakes my hand, looking at me withhis mysterious cat's stare, while the nurse slips out.

    'You never bothered to visit him or even answer his letters. But you arrivein time for his burial! He carried you in him like a deep abscess.Maybe that's what killed him! I've always wondered what he found in youthat another less complicated woman couldn't have offered him,' he muttersbetween his teeth.

    His words suffocate me. I'm looking for a stinging retort when Khaledreturns carrying the coffee. For the moment, I rein in my anger. The manhands us the cups. The three of us drink in silence.

    'Did you buy the sheep, Khaled?' Salah asks.

    'Yes, I sacrificed it yesterday. This evening I'll take some plates of couscousto the mosque. I asked the talebs to be there.'

    'Thank you. Let me know what I owe you.'

    'There's already a crowd in front of the hospital.'

    'Yes, there are a lot of people outside,' answers Salah.

    'Now we're just waiting for the city doctors and the officials from here.'

    Khaled hasn't finished his sentence when we hear a commotion in thehallway.

    'Here they are!'

    The office door opens on a group of men who block the entryway.Some of them move toward the end of the hallway. A droning sound ofmuffled voices, a dull sound of trampling feet, and Khaled reappears atthe doorstep.

    'Let's go!'

    Salah and I leave. Outside, a male crowd. A broad age span, but predominantlyyoung. The stretcher, carried by four men, bursts throughthe wide open door. They take their places at the head of the funeral procession,lining up with the men first, and a large number of adolescentmales and children crowding in behind.

    'La illaha ill'Allah, Muhammad rassoul, Allah!'

    The oneness of Allah, chanted, is the signal to leave. The processiongets underway. Khaled, Salah, and I follow. In the lead group, a man turnsaround several times. The fire in his eyes is unequivocal. He ends up retracinghis steps and coming toward me.

    'It's the mayor,' Khaled whispers to me.

    'Madam, you can't come! It's forbidden!'

    Salah takes me by the arm. 'Forbidden? Forbidden by whom?'

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from THE FORBIDDEN WOMAN by Malika Mokeddem. Copyright © 1993 by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle.
Translation copyright © 1998 University of Nebraska Press.Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Editorial Reviews

“Through the narratives of Sultana and Vincent, Mokeddem creates an interesting dual perspective on the plight of contemporary Algerian women struggling to preserve female strength in the midst of sexist culture. While Sultana’s pain seems irremediable, hope lies in the fresh determination of Delila and also in the active resistance of the village women who finally band together in solidarity with Sultana to defy oppression.”—Rachel Stein, Multicultural Review

Multicultural Review

“Malika Mokeddem, through her autobiographical character of Sultana and an intriguing supporting cast, gives us a rich and relevant description of the steep divide in the geography of her soul—one educated beyond the boundaries of the extreme element of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria, and one that yearns for home. The Forbidden Woman is a short, lush, and provocative novel. It provides a piercing view of the inner life of anyone who must live in exile, both physically and emotionally, along with a necessary and practical understanding of the current prognosis for most of Algeria’s women. At once unsettling and enjoyable.”—Bloomsbury Review

Bloomsbury Review