Tuffaha’s Street

AS A MATTER of politeness and respect, people often address their elders as “Uncle” and “Auntie.” In the case of black people, however, they’re expected to address all whites in this way, regardless of how old or young they happen to be, and whether the white person concerned is their owner or someone who’s hired them for pay. So you can imagine how many “uncles” and “aunties” I’ve had in my life!

Auntie Sadina used to cook on special occasions for the big families of Benghazi. Her food was out of this world. When word got around about what a wonderful cook she was, well-to-do families started to seek her out to prepare feasts at weddings, pilgrimage homecoming celebrations, circumcision parties, and that sort of thing. She was always sitting in front of her hut with a metal tray in her lap, picking tiny pebbles, sticks, and pieces of dirt out of aromatic herbs that she would crush and prepare for the next big meal she was getting ready to make.

One morning while Auntie Sadina was preparing spices and crushing ginger and coriander in a tall iron mortar, she told Aunt Sabriya that the people she was going to be cooking for over the coming several weeks had asked her to find somebody to wait on the bride for the week of the wedding. My aunt, who had just come back to the Slave Yards a couple of days before, agreed straightaway.

That afternoon, Mjawir took us into the city to meet the lady we’d be working for so that she could explain her terms and tell us what we’d need to do for the bride. He hit the donkey every now and then to give his riders the illusion that he was a good driver, but his wagon was so wobbly that we nearly fell out a few times. Meanwhile, he tried to break into the conversation Aunt Sabriya and Aunt Sadina were having about the details of the trip. He loved butting into other people’s business, so they both tried to avoid him.

As we got out of the wagon, I held on tight to Aunt Sabriya’s dress. I was determined to keep myself out of Mjawir’s reach in case he tried to pinch me somewhere, and I knew I had to be on my guard. Keeping an eye on his hands, I moved away without turning my back to him, clutching my aunt’s dress from the back. When he climbed back on the wagon, he deftly held the hem of his jallabiya in his mouth to keep from tripping over it. I guess that was his way of showing off in front of the women and girls he chauffeured. Then, once he’d made sure nobody was around but the two women, who were too distracted with each other to notice, he flashed the huge blackened thing between his legs at me.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one who did that sort of thing. In fact, it seemed to be an established tradition among men around there, though none of them would have admitted to doing it himself. They all did it in secret, but they’d blast anybody who got caught doing it in public!

The house of the family we’d come to see was on a narrow, well-kept alleyway paved with dirt that had been moistened and packed down hard. The houses were so close together, they looked as though they were holding each other up. Even though the street was clean, police officers and military patrols avoided coming there alone for fear of being mugged, either by locals or by Bedouins from the countryside. Along the same alley, however, there was a well-known house of prostitution that they frequented in groups. There were conflicting accounts about its owner who, apart from police officers and military personnel, rarely received any visitors, with the possible exception of an elderly woman who was an expert on herbal medicine.

The prostitute in question, known as Tuffaha, was a pretty girl of Bedouin origins whose family had died in an outbreak of the plague. Her village had nearly been wiped out, and she was among a small number of villagers who’d been taken to quarantine and had managed to survive. But after being released from quarantine, Tuffaha hadn’t had anywhere to go. Hunger and poverty were ravishing the countryside, and all people thought about was how to save their own skins. When some men from her village talked to her about Benghazi, she agreed to go there with them, and in return they started to coming to her for sexual favors. As time went on, she made a profession of entertaining men just to survive. But Tuffaha was no prostitute at heart. In fact, she was the kindest soul in the world. Warm and welcoming, she shared her earnings with her neighbors and only kept a little for herself. One time she seduced a high-ranking Turkish officer so that destitute members of her clan could rob him of his money and his weapon. Tuffaha wasn’t alone, either. In fact, there were lots of “Tuffahas” in similar circumstances who sacrificed their personal comfort and honor for others.

At the end of Tuffaha’s street there lived an expert Jewish seamstress by the name of Manita who made holiday outfits for Arab customers as well as uniforms and other clothes for soldiers stationed at the garrison. One day my aunt decided to take me to this woman’s house to have a dress made for me—quite a luxury for a little black girl from the Slave Yards! In preparation for the outing, Aunt Sabriya wrapped a heavy shawl securely around her head and upper torso. As for me, she had me wear the same dress I always wore, but she tied a small scarf around my head to hide my hair—or maybe to hide me! When my girlfriends in the Slave Yards saw the scarf on my head, they said, “Where are you going, Atiga? You look like you’re getting ready for a trip!” They knew, of course, that nobody in the Slave Yards traveled anywhere. The farthest we ever went was downtown Benghazi, where we served in people’s houses for a living.

As a way of keeping me on his wagon for as long as possible, Mjawir took his time getting us to our destination. I was feeling excited, and every now and then my heart would skip a beat. My aunt seemed excited too, and as we rode along she sat taking in the city streets as if it were the first time she’d ever seen them. Or maybe she was just thinking back on things she remembered seeing before.

As we rode along, my hair started to frizz up and peek out the back of my scarf in a little tail. My thick lower lip drooped even more than usual as I gaped at the sights in the city. I’d always thought everybody everywhere was poor like us and dressed the way we did. I figured they all walked around barefoot for most of their lives, lugging water from wells and doing all sorts of other exhausting menial tasks. But I saw now that this wasn’t true after all.

A short distance from Tuffaha’s street, I saw a woman who was all dolled up and dressed in a wedding gown even though there was no wedding going on. She stood inside a large archway that had a smaller door in the center of it, chewing gum and showing herself off to everybody who walked by. At the alleyway entrance, a little girl stood staring at the woman in a kind of fearful fascination. The woman tried to lure the girl over to her by waving a piece of colorful bambila candy in the air.¹

Suddenly a hairy hand reached out and grabbed the girl. The hand belonged to a young man—her big brother, apparently—who started beating her mercilessly with a shoe, screaming, “You little bitch!” The girl cried out in pain, but no one intervened to rescue her even though there were people everywhere. Writhing in agony, she begged him to stop, telling him how sorry she was and calling on the Prophet, God’s righteous saints, and the local Sufi adepts as her witnesses. I had no idea what she’d done wrong. After all, she’d just been standing in the street watching! Even so, the shoe kept coming down on her little body as violently as ever, without the righteous saints’ being moved one iota.

Terrified, I held on tight to Aunt Sabriya, who didn’t seem the least bit shocked, or even surprised. Neither did the people walking down the street, or even Mjawir’s donkey, which got bonked with the shoe as it sailed past the fleeing girl. To them it was a completely ordinary scene, but it wasn’t to me. As far as they were concerned, this was just a “little man” disciplining his sister. In fact, to them it was admirable that he was so “manly,” and keen to preserve his “honor.” I concluded that if anybody else there had been in the boy’s place, he would have done the very same thing, with or without the help of a shoe.

In the end, the floozie stormed back into her house and slammed the door behind her, and we continued on our way to Manita’s house. When we got there, we found a heavy woman stretched out on her belly in the middle of her inner courtyard. She had her head pillowed on one arm, while another woman, equally heavy, sat next to her checking her head for lice as the two of them chatted. As we walked in, Aunt Sabriya murmured, “Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim” (“In the name of God, most merciful, most compassionate”) before greeting the seamstress, who paid no attention to us at first. Summoning the protection of the Prophet and our master David, Aunt Sabriya added under her breath, “Ya Rasul Allah, ya Sayyidi Dawoud, al-baraka lana wassukhtu lil-yahoud!” (“Oh messenger of God, Oh Master David, send blessings on us and curses on the Jews!”).

Raising herself up on her side, the woman asked us what we wanted.

“We’ve come to have a dress made for the little girl,” my aunt replied.

She looked me harshly up and down, clearly contemptuous of my color and my scruffy appearance. After asking my aunt who we were and what relation she was to me, she told the other woman to bring her the measuring rod and the scissors. When she asked what kind of fabric she’d brought, my aunt said, “Rose chiffon.”

Shaking her head in disdain, the seamstress broke into a popular song: “Rose chiffon, rose chiffon, take a rose and give me one!”

My aunt took out the piece of cloth she’d brought, and Manita told me to come up closer so that she could measure my chest, neck, and arms. That’s as “tailored” as clothes were back then. I was apprehensive, and I felt her eyes going straight through me. For all I knew, she didn’t believe a black girl like me was good enough to wear fabrics that were usually reserved for free folks’ daughters. The woman might not actually have been thinking this, of course, but it’s what was going through my head.

As Manita was taking my measurements, there was a commotion outside. We heard the woman who’d been checking Manita’s head for lice talking in a loud voice. Then she came back in crying. Manita dropped what she was doing and went out to the roofed-in area at the front of the house. The other woman told her in a language I didn’t understand about something going on in the street. At first I thought the boy we’d seen earlier had gone back to beating his sister, or that the dolled-up lady had come back out to her doorway and caused somebody else to get a beating they didn’t deserve. But something in the two women’s demeanor had changed, and they began beating their left shoulders and chanting an agonized Jewish lament: Woooh, woooh! Hamiyu jiranu ras bila tagiya, sadr bila suriya! Part of it had to do with somebody going around with a bare head and chest, but I couldn’t make out the rest of it.

The longer the refrain went on, the more upset I felt. I didn’t like this place, and I didn’t like what was going on. Manita’s body gave off an acrid smell, and I could hardly stand the sight of the bushy hair on her legs. She also had a slight mustache along her upper lip, which I didn’t like, either. It seemed these things were only true of Jewish women, since no Muslim woman I’d ever seen, black or white, had had whiskers or hair on her arms and legs.

My feelings were all mixed up, and it seemed that something catastrophic was happening. I wriggled up as close as I could to Aunt Sabriya and held onto her tight. I told her I was scared.

“Don’t worry,” she replied calmly. ”I’m right here.”

Despite the visible questions in my eyes, and whatever it was that had people rushing out into the street, I was reassured by Aunt Sabriya. Nothing seemed to scare her, as if she knew ahead of time everything that would happen in this world.

When we left the seamstress’s house and I caught a glimpse of Mjawir’s wagon, I raced over to it as fast as I could, not because I was anxious to see Mjawir again, and especially not that thing that dangled between his legs, but because I couldn’t wait to get away from this weird, scary world with its strange people and strange-looking clothes. The sight of the wagon meant going home to the Slave Yards.

As things quieted down in the street, I realized that the uproar had been over a Jewish man’s funeral procession that had been passing by. Egged on by some adults, a number of street children had lobbed clods of manure at the bier. This had made the funeral goers angry, of course, since now they would have to wash the dead man’s body all over again before they could bury him. This used to happen whenever a Jewish funeral procession passed a bunch of troublemakers, who got a kick out of mean pranks like this.

After that we went to see the family hosting the wedding. We sat in an open, roofed-in area adjoined to their house, where there was a long discussion of the agreement relating to the service we were required to provide for the bride. I didn’t understand most of what was said. I did understand, though, that I would have to stay near the bride night and day so that I could bring her whatever she asked for and make sure she was comfortable and happy.

One term of the agreement was that I’d have to wear a dress that was suitable for a wedding, which was why Aunt Sabriya had taken me to the Jewish seamstress’s house. I would also have to bring the bride a basin of water and wash her feet, clear away her food when she’d finished eating, bring her whatever she needed to wash her hands with, and pour her used bath water into the street whenever she performed the ritual washing required after having sex. I’d be expected to do all these things wearing my new dress! And this two-week celebration was all on account of the mere fact that a woman was getting together with a man for the first time!

1. Also known as halwa az-zawiya, or “zawiya candy,” bambila was a kind of sweet often distributed at religious retreat centers.