The other day I found a disk. I was told it had been recorded by Khadija. To my surprise it said filmed by Sayd Almokhtari. Apparently he was the man Khadija rented the cameras from. Honestly, I was not surprised to find the disc under his name but it still angered me. People would not pay her a fraction of what they would pay a man for the same work and Sayd still had the guts to steal the credit.  Shameful. No wonder no one remembers Khadija.

My mother was childhood friends with Khadija. She always said that people should be ashamed of how they spoke of Khadija. “How is it that she is supposed to make a living?” she told me one evening with great anguish after Khadija left for work and my father was out in a café with his friends. Most of what I know I learned much later. I was too young to be told about that stuff. Well, things are confusing and yet simple when one is twelve.

I never met her husband but my mother had told me that he was a bad man. Women around the neighborhood spoke of him as if they were speaking of the shaytan [devil], careful to ever mention his name, especially in front of Chadi, Khadija’s son. If someone ever mentioned him they would add an insult. I think I never heard anyone say anything but bad things about him. Even I was warned not to mention or ask about Chadi’s father since, without understanding what it really meant, “Chadi was better off not talking about him.”

My mother and aunts would always paint a grim picture of Chadi, as if he had been struck by the worst of all fates, but I remember him as a cheerful child. Never did he ever cry about anything. When his team lost at street soccer, he would never complain but instead scream “wallah [I swear] that we will beat you next time!” while laughing as if he had been on the winning team. The kids in town were kind to him and he was always a nice addition to any game as he would bring that jolly spirit along when we played. Sometimes, when playtime was over, and everyone was called back home by their parents, a father or two would get a bit harsh with their children. They would grab them by the arms and pull them away from the other kids. This only happened when Chadi was around. It was much later that I understood it was because Chadi lived with his mother.  As if living with the parent that fed the family was a sin. His father, my mother told me, had been a lazy man who never worked and blamed his wife for their poverty. If that was the case, then Khadija was definitely better without him. My mother also told me Khadija had the misfortune of having her child look like his father. She would say “what a shame that he looks like her husband, it keeps reminding her of the shit he was.” He had darker eyes, much darker than his mother’s which were light brown. His hair was black and curly and his mother’s straight and brown, his face long and hers round, his body thin and hers thick. If you had seen him you would have guessed that he was not her son. She loved him anyway and would tell my mother “Chadi is my reason to live.”

Even though men around town said that it was her husband who had requested the divorce, my mother knew that it actually had been her. Of course men would say that sort of thing. What sort of man is left by his woman? Her husband must have really been a piece of shit if what they said in the neighborhood was true. Some of my mother’s friends even said that he had raised his hand against her. My mother did not believe this although no one seems to really be sure about it. 

It was known that her husband never stood up from the couch to do anything, it had been up to Khadija to do everything in the house up until the divorce, and continued so thereafter. What is there to do for a divorced woman after she leaves her husband but to move into her parents’ home? She ended up there with her yet-to-be-married brother and divorced sister. Her sister resembled her and it was clear that they were siblings but her brother did not. He had the face of a prick and his eyes looked at others as if he was better than everybody else. His look was dark and condescending every time I had seen him walk through the town. Yet with all that pride, he amounted to nothing.

Even in her family’s house, where two men lived, she still had to go out and work to feed not only her son but also the others.  Things must have been bad with her husband if she decided to go back to her parents’ where she had to feed more mouths. It seemed that Khadija would live in those sorts of conditions for the rest of her life, going from the house of a useless father to her husband’s to come back to her father’s. What is it about misfortune that invites more misfortune?  At least back in the house Chadi had his cousin, Isa, who was like a brother really.

Khadija worked at night. My father and other men at the café said in ignorance, “Women should not work at night! How can she go back to see her son after coming back so late? No wonder her husband left her!” The men would yell all sort of bigoted comments to each other with grins on their faces.  One day, I asked my mother what the men meant with those comments and she explained “You know how men are. Ignorant. Khadija is an honorable woman and works an honorable job. She is a wedding photographer.” Even though it was clear that my mother thought highly of Khadija, she never mentioned her in front of my father and I followed her example. 

It would make sense for a woman to have been a wedding photographer. That way the female guests feel more comfortable. How are women supposed to take off their hijabs in front of a man or the bride to show off her assortment of dresses to another man but her husband? It was easy to find women who worked as waitresses and musicians for the women’s side of the wedding, but to find a camerawoman? That was unique.  If you ask me, Khadija was a smart woman to find herself work of that sort. She was smarter than most women and definitely smarter than the men she had to interact with. Regardless of how smart she was, it must have been hard to work like that, looking at people getting happily married day after day knowing your marriage was a mess. She told my mother once, “I don’t know why people blame me for what happened between my husband and me. You can even see people start arguing with their spouse before they even get home for the first time.”

Not everyone thought of her as I did. Her parents disagreed with her lifestyle. I imagine her mother would tell her with a condescending face, “Khadija, you are not to be working anymore. I am sick, don’t you see?” Naturally, Khadija would answer with her ever-tired look, “Why are you sick?”

“Working, that is man’s thing.”

“Who will take care of us, of my son and of you?”

“We will find a way.”

“Yeah, sure we will…” she would say, ending the conversation to continue doing the house chores while her father and brother glared in disapproval.  Her mother and sister expected her to succumb to the measly conditions that they had decided to live in.  That is how days went on. I never saw Khadija cry, but you cannot hide such a thing for long. A person that has been crying shows it in their eyes and even I, a twelve-year-old kid, had seen it.

I think her sister agreed with her but never expressed it and like many others she had decided to do what her parents had suggested and stayed at home. The family wanted Khadija to remarry but no divorced women ever did. To marry a divorced woman from a family known for its lazy men seemed impossible for any self-respecting man, and a self-respecting man is what a woman who has gone through something like that needs.  I guess that is when her sister got tired of listening to Khadija argue with their mother, she would grab her and the kids to go down to the beach (where I saw them often) to relax and hopefully wash away their tears. People get married all year long expect in Ramadan, so business is slow and it was especially hard for Khadija to make it through that month. It was then that Khadija would visit my mother the most since she did not have work. Ramadan is the only time of the year when kids do not leave the house to play so those months I would see neither Isa nor Chadi in the streets. Those nights, Khadija would come over to our house after breakfast to talk to my mother and bring Chadi with her so we could play inside. Khadija’s fatigued eyes were worse in Ramadan; I suspect she cried more then than before.

Things got really bad in the final three days of the last Ramadan she spent with us. Gossip was rampant and I barely understood what was going on. Chadi had disappeared and was nowhere to be found. Khadija came without Chadi to our house when my father was not around to cry in front of my mother. Just before she did my mother screamed, “Go to your room now!” And like an obedient child I did, yet from my room I overheard that Khadija’s own parents had asked Chadi and her to break their fast without the rest of her family. She had been rejected by her own brother, who told her he would not speak to her if she continued working. Who said she disgraced his reputation and that of his family. His reputation? The one of the family? The reputation of a family of men who do not work and depend on women to eat? Shame on them for treating their sister like this! When Khadija’s brother turned his back on her, he told her he was not his brother anymore. It was then that she had left her house and came to ours, leaving her child with his grandparents. As she told my mother tears kept pouring from her eyes. “They want me to remarry but I cannot. They do not know what it is like to have a husband who does not love you,” she cried. “They will never understand my Khadija,” my mother would answer in a comforting manner. She had always been that way, forgiving and soothing to those around her. “What will you do?” my mother had asked.

After Ramadan ended, I knocked on Khadija’s door to ask Chadi to play with me. “She is gone,” her brother told me with that face of his, of a man who strives for nothing. “Where?” I asked. “I don’t know and I don’t care.” I thought of asking my mother but never did.