The bathhouse looked like a mosque from the outside, with a beautiful marble façade. When we were inside, the noise died away and we were surrounded by a silence that made my heart beat faster. We went in under the great dome, and I saw women bathing, soaping each other and themselves, laughing, pouring water over one another or drinking tea. Somewhere even further in about twenty women, young and old, were sitting in a circle, smiling at us in a friendly way as we joined them, wrapped in our white towels. That was when I met the Moon Women.”
Laila sipped her freshly poured tea, drew on her cigarette one last time, and stubbed it out in the ashtray.
“They were celebrating my acceptance as one of them. I was the youngest member of their secret society. An older woman told me at length, and very emotionally, that from now on I was a special girl, and the sign I would carry on me from that day on represented not a privilege but a duty to commit my whole life to women and to love. I was so excited that I didn’t understand very much of it, but I was impressed to feel her warm, damp arm and see the circle of Moon Women sitting around me. In the distance a bluish glass window gleamed in the light of the sun falling on it. I held my breath, really thinking that the moon would come in.
“And I felt very proud that of her three daughters, I was the one my mother had chosen. In the end they all kissed me. My mother was weeping for joy. Finally one of the women tattooed the sign of the secret society just above my heart. Then we all celebrated in the baths.
“On the way back I felt that now my mother had become a wise woman and my comrade. We sang together so cheerfully that passers by turned to look at us, but that just encouraged us to sing louder. From then on I went with my mother to the hammam where the Moon Women met every Wednesday. There weren’t very many of them at the time, but they kept in close touch and helped each other out with advice and money.”
Laila paused for some time, and Farid felt that she was struggling with herself. He kept quiet.
“I was fourteen, and by now there were over three hundred of us Moon Sisters, when some of the members chose to go the wrong way. Out of sheer impatience, and driven by the hatred of thousands of years, they wanted to put things right all at once. The leaders of that group began carrying out punitive action against obvious misogynists. Their weapon was poison. They didn’t want to wait for the state to see justice done, they made their own justice, and it was deadly. More than ten men died of poisoning in Beirut — judges, a couple of pimps, the chief of police, and two rapists who had been given lenient sentences in the courts. They all died of a dose of the arsenic that women used as a depilatory on their legs in the public baths at the time.
“Finding those responsible was child’s play for the CID after the diagnosis of arsenic poisoning. Several women were given life sentences, the others, including my mother, were shadowed. The whole Moon Women group was broken up.”
“Sounds exciting,” commented Farid, still unsure just what to think of this story. Laila was looking at him with gentleness in her eyes, sensing his uncertainty. Finally she rolled herself a second cigarette.
“We don’t want to make that mistake again,” she continued her story, as if she hadn’t noticed Farid’s remark. “By now I’ve found out one reason why we failed to achieve our freedom as women back then. We know nothing about ourselves, our souls, and our history, or at least not enough. Men have described everything from their own point of view, and when they enslaved us a thousand and one years ago they said we ought to be glad, thankful that they would keep us and feed us.
“Look at Damascus University. Any woman who wants to get a degree mustn’t break taboos or ask any awkward questions. We have to accept that as women we get knowledge as men have mastered it poured into our heads, and it stinks.
“When I realized that, I left the university. It wasn’t because of Simon, as our family always claims, it was because the university wasn’t getting me anywhere in my quest. I wanted to be with other women, looking for our souls and our history, which means ourselves. And how do you get to meet a great many women in this country? As either a hairdresser or a dressmaker. I opted for dressmaking. Now you know.” Laila sighed with relief, sensing that Farid understood her.
“So I’m a Moon Woman, and Moon Women choose their husbands not by the criteria of society, which approves of a man more if he keeps a woman under strict control, we choose by how far he’ll let a woman live at liberty. That’s what matters to me, not the university, not money. Simon knows all about me and accepts me without any ifs and buts, so that’s why he is my husband.”
“And does he know everything about me too?” asked Farid.
“Yes, he knows I love you. He didn’t care for that at first, but when he met you he liked you very much. He understood me, and didn’t feel jealous any more. He turned against you only when he learned that you’re a fanatical communist — he hates communists.”
“Have you found many other women to support you yet?” asked Farid quickly, trying to avoid this tricky subject.
“There are over a hundred of us in Damascus, meeting in small groups, determined to go all the way to the very end. There’s no alternative if we want to preserve our dignity.”
“And why were you crying on the phone?” he finally asked.
Laila sat still. She put her hands around her knees and stared at a point on the floor. He went to her, sat down on the bed, and took her head in his hands. She smelled as wonderful as ever.
Laila looked at him, and sobbed. “They’ve taken Nada away. They beat her half to death in front of all the neighbours, and no one went to help her.”
“Nada? What Nada?”
“Nada Faris who works in the textiles factory. The secret service picked her up yesterday because they don’t yet know who organized the first big strike in the factory after it was nationalized. It employs only women and pays starvation wages. They’re raped and beaten, and there’s always an army of other poor women standing outside begging for work, which makes the state management even more pitiless.”
“Was the strike successful?” asked Farid, rather confused, since he had heard nothing of it either in the press or at his Party meetings.
“There’s been no work done for a week, but none of the political parties will support the women. The secret service was furious. A strike organized by women, without any political backing? They needed someone as a scapegoat, and poor Nada was ideal for them. She had as much to do with the strike as any other woman worker, no more and no less, but she was popular, and she’s a poverty-stricken unemployed academic keeping herself by working in the factory.”
Laila calmed down a little, took Farid’s handkerchief from his hand and blew her nose loudly.
“Three jeeps surrounded the little house where she lives in the village of Kabun. The soldiers set up their big machine guns. A helicopter was circling above the place. You might have thought they were about to attack Israel. Nada didn’t stand a chance. To spare her family, she went out with her hands up. They beat her until she was unconscious, and then the soldiers dragged her over the ground and threw her into one of the jeeps like a bloodstained rag. Nothing’s been heard of her since.”
Laila was still sobbing. Farid pressed her head to his chest, and she clung to him.
“Stay with me. I’m frightened,” she said.
Just before midnight the leaden silence in the street made its way into the apartment. Laila was the first to notice it. She stood behind the curtains at the window and looked down. “There’s something wrong. The street looks as if it had been swept empty,” she whispered in alarm. “Switch the radio on.”