Amina stopped outside the door of the clinic. “I can’t, Charlie.”
“You can, Amina. You need to be sure. You said so yourself.” The home pregnancy test that Amina had sent Charlie out to buy had been positive. But Amina hadn’t wanted to believe it. So here they were, in the center of Fès, in front of an ugly, three-story red brick building that reminded Charlie of her dentist’s office back home. “I’m here for you.” Charlie took Amina’s arm and ushered her friend through the door.
Inside the reception area, the chairs were nearly all occupied by waiting women. Amina checked in with the person at the front desk and took a seat next to Charlie, her hands clenched tightly around the strap of her purse.
“You okay?”
Amina simply nodded.
“He’ll be back.”
Her friend shrugged.
“He will. He just needs some time. Think about how hard this must be for him.” Earlier that day, as the occupants of the riad were just sitting down for their morning meal in the courtyard, Max had appeared with his stuffed duffel bag slung over one shoulder.
“You are leaving us?” Amina’s father rose from his seat, a glass of tea in his hand.
Max turned to look at Amina before answering. “I am. I figured I’d pop over to Paris for a bit, as long as I’m so close.”
“I hope you have not found our hospitality lacking,” Naziha said, one eyebrow arched.
“No, no,” Max insisted. “Not at all.”
“My friend Hanan will miss you. She has been asking where you are,” Tarik teased.
Max blushed.
Samira appeared with a tray of bread in her hands. “But, Mr. Max, you must stay. I am preparing a special tagine today, just for you.”
“That’s sweet, Samira. But I seriously need to go.” He shifted nervously from one foot to the other.
“Amina,” her father said, “tell your guest he must stay for the wedding.”
“Why should I? Max is free to do whatever he wants.”
“Where are your manners, habiba?
At this Charlie leaped from her chair. “Don’t mind my brother. He’s got some research to do in Paris, at the Sorbonne. Don’t you, Max?” She threw an arm around his shoulders and gave him a little squeeze.
“Sure,” Max said, now clearly unable to make eye contact with his wife. “Research.”
Bea placed her coffee cup on the table in front of her. “Have a wonderful trip, Max. Maybe you could drop in on my friend Robert, give a little hello from your grandma?”
Max seemed at a loss for words. He muttered his thank-yous, and was gone.
Now, in the harsh light of the clinic’s waiting room, Amina really looked as though she might be sick.
“I can’t be here, Charlie,” she said, almost in a whisper.
Charlie jumped to her feet. “Are you going to puke?”
Amina shook her head. “It’s not that.” Amina stood and turned toward the door.
Charlie reached out to hold her arm. “Listen, Amina. You really should find out for sure. No matter what.” She thought her friend was about to start crying. “Max will be back. I swear! It’s obvious he loves you. Think about it. He wouldn’t have followed you all the way here if he didn’t.”
“It isn’t that,” Amina said as she sat back down.
“And maybe it’s a good thing that he left. You can deal with your father on your own terms.”
“Charlie, are you listening to me?” Amina’s voice was shaking. “I said it’s not that. It’s this place.”
Charlie looked around. To her, it seemed respectable enough, clean enough. Not much different than any clinic back home.
“I’ve been here before.”
“So? It’s a doctors’ office.”
“It was with my mother.” Amina lowered her voice.
“You accompanied your mother to an appointment? I don’t get it.”
“It wasn’t for her. It was for me. She forced me to come.”
“Well, every young girl at some point should—”
“It wasn’t like that.” Amina glanced around before continuing. “I was fifteen. There was a boy I was friends with. Nassim. I used to have to sneak out of the house to see him. My parents always insisted on knowing who I was with, every second of every day. They would have never let me spend time with a boy. So I snuck out. It was probably a reaction to their strictness, more than anything else. Who knows?” Amina took a deep breath. “Anyway, my mother found out. Naziha told her, after she saw me sitting with Nassim outside the medina wall.”
“So she was angry?”
“It was more like panicked than angry. She demanded that I never see Nassim again, and warned me not to let my father know.”
“Huh. Sounds familiar,” Charlie said. She’d shared with Amina her own story about friendship with a boy that had led her stepfather to exile her from her family.
“It’s about honor, Charlie.” Amina swallowed loudly. “But it gets worse.”
“What happened?”
As Amina continued her story, her eyes were fixed on the floor in front of her. “The next day, the day after Naziha told her, she dragged me here, to the clinic, after school. I had no idea what was going on.”
“And?”
“We went in to see the doctor. I was told to lie on my back, and put my feet in the stirrups. The next thing I knew, his two fat fingers were pushing inside me.”
“Oh my god. And your mother was there?”
“It was my mother who asked him to do it. She wanted him to perform a virginity test.”
“What the fuck? Amina!”
“I know. It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Amina was still staring at the floor.
“It’s not just horrible. It’s assault!” The heads of the other women in the waiting room all turned at the outrage in Charlie’s voice. “So were you?” she asked, a little more quietly.
“Was I what?”
“A virgin.”
“Of course I was!”
“I’m just asking.”
“I may have been a little rebellious, but I wasn’t crazy.”
“That must have been so traumatic.”
“Do you know how scared I was when I first had sex with Max?” Amina asked, tears pooling in her eyes. “I kept thinking about that day, about how humiliated and frightened I was, and how much it hurt.”
Charlie took Amina’s clammy hand into her own. “So, can I ask you something?” she said after Amina had calmed a bit.
“Sure.”
“What would have happened if you weren’t?”
Again Amina breathed deeply. “Well, there really would have been only two options. One would be to force me to marry Nassim. Nobody else would have wanted me, if I had already been with him.”
“And the other option?”
“To have my virginity restored.”
Charlie looked as though she might laugh.
“No, Charlie,” Amina said, sensing her friend’s disbelief. “They do that here. Hymen reconstruction. It happens all the time.”
“Are you serious?”
“Look around you,” Amina whispered. “I’ll bet you at least three of the women in this waiting room are here for that.”
“Wow.”
“Even if a man doesn’t care if his bride is a virgin or not, there are families that insist on proof of virginity before their son’s wedding.”
“Oh my god.”
“And sometimes, he might be the only person she has ever had sex with, and they decide together to do the surgery, to save face for their families.”
They waited forever in that room, Charlie trying to fathom the reality Amina had grown up with. Finally they were shown into an exam room, where Amina was told to change into a paper robe. Then they waited again.
At the sound of a knock on the door, Amina’s face turned the color of snow. “What if it’s him, the same doctor who did that to me when I was a child? I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Thankfully, before Charlie could answer, the door swung open to reveal a tall woman in a crisp white coat, a stethoscope hanging around her neck.
Forty-five minutes later, Charlie and Amina were standing in the blaring sunlight outside the clinic, traffic whizzing by, horns honking, people passing in all directions. It’s so odd, Charlie thought, how someone’s life can change in an instant, how they can receive news that completely alters their future, while, for the rest of the world, everything remains business as usual. She gave Amina’s arm a little nudge and turned them toward the busy street.
At that moment, she saw him again: the man who had been following her in the medina, and, come to think of it, also that night in the Ville Nouvelle, when they went to the nightclub. There was no mistaking that ridiculous mustache, that leather vest he wore even in the midday heat. He was headed straight toward them, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, another man walking by his side. Charlie had never noticed how tall he was. Amina froze in place. Words were exchanged in French that Charlie couldn’t follow. Amina looked confused. And before she knew it, she and Amina were practically shoved into a black car, and driven away.