He grasped her shoulders when she made to turn away. “I take all the responsibility for whatever happened between us. And you wanted to join this mission, wa b’Ellahi’l allei’l Uzeem, you’re joining it even if I have to haul you there and keep you under lock and key.”

He let her go as if her flesh burned him, stalked to the door.

Before he closed it behind him he rasped over his shoulder, “And, Janaan, don’t worry. The three-feet rule is over. During the coming two months, I promise to keep my distance.”

CHAPTER TEN

MALEK KEPT HIS promise. For two weeks so far. They’d felt like two bleak—if madly busy—years.

Jay didn’t know what she would have done without Hessuh and Saeed’s companionship. They’d made it possible to bear Malek’s alienation, and had also become her guides to the ways of the land and communicating with its people.

They’d embarked on their mission the very next day in a convoy of a mobile surgery unit, ob/gyn, dentistry, internal medicine and ophthalmology units, twenty accommodation trailers, six Jeeps and two ambulances. It was mind-boggling the resources Malek had made available to GAO.

They’d reciprocated by sending thirty volunteers, including her. And knowing that Malek couldn’t spare enough medical staff post-disaster, in addition to the logisticians, health educators and cultural experts who made GAO rise above other humanitarian efforts, a good percentage of the thirty were doctors. She was the only emergency doctor. Malek was the only surgeon.

He had brought along the same number, including his aides and core team from the relief efforts. As far as humanitarian missions other than in time of disaster went, this one was a whopper.

They’d traveled south through Damhoor, bypassed all reasonably self-sufficient towns and villages, made their stops at communities of semi-settled Badu in their winter camping grounds along the borders.

The third tribe they were with, Bani Hajjar, was like the other two before it, leading their lives according to customs that hadn’t changed in millennia. But while that was efficient for the most part, it hadn’t done their health much good.

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In the desert you survived if you were born robust and stayed that way. Acute illnesses and injuries were usually fatal, and chronic diseases that modern medicine had long since found cures for or controlled were treated with tribal remedies, but it was accepted that the afflicted would be aleel, sickly, and remain so until they withered and died.

They still had a major job of convincing the tribe to accept what modern medicine had to offer them. When they succumbed, she felt it was only due to their awe of Malek.

He organized both teams’ efforts, gave her the leader’s position within GAO’s medical team. When she wasn’t fulfilling the demands of her position, she was sharing the ob/gyn unit with Hessuh, her trailer-mate, and together they’d taken care of hundreds of women, in an incredible variation of conditions. More incredible was what these women put up with health-wise, and still functioned well, practically supporting the whole tribe’s way of life.

Although they were less segregated than town and village women, and weren’t generally veiled, they had a much lower status than men but certainly worked the hardest. Tending flocks, doing housework, cooking, raising children, drawing water, spinning and weaving, setting up and dismantling tents. She’d invariably overestimated a woman’s age by ten to fifteen years. It was accepted here that a woman would be worn out and old by forty.

With each case Jay felt her blood boil at their conditions and, worse, their acceptance of them.

Hessuh had just finished examining a woman who, after looking her and Jay over, had launched into a defense of their way of life, extolling how women were protected by a strict code of honor, could move about relatively freely and were allowed to sing and dye their long hair with henna.

“Protected, strict code, relatively freely—allowed!” Jay mumbled as soon as the woman stepped out.

Hessuh gave her a placating pat. “It’s too entrenched. They know nothing else, think there’s nothing else to know, or should be known. So don’t you start preaching women’s lib.”

“You’re saying they should be left as they are?”

“I’m saying it’s sometimes not right to import our views of what’s right or fair,” Hessuh said, making Jay feel like an over-zealous fool. Her next words defused the feeling—on purpose, Jay bet. Hessuh was an astute, thoughtful woman. “And then time and the march of civilization work wonders. This woman was my grandmother. Look how far I’ve come since her generation.”

“If you’re the example of what waiting for natural progression to install changes brings, I’m all for it,” Jay said. “You’re one amazing woman, Hessuh.”

Hessuh laughed. “The way you speak your heart and mind, whether it’s good or bad, never ceases to amaze me, Jay. We’re not big on that here and it’s aib … shameful to express what you genuinely feel or think. Another reason it’s such a pleasure to be around you is that you don’t make digs at me.”

“Who can make digs at you? You’re great, all around.”

Hessuh smirked. “Other women, of course. Feminine jealousy is elevated to an art here, so it’s something to bear in mind when you’re judging women’s conditions. Some of women’s worst and most vocal enemies here are women. I am unmarried, so a danger to every woman’s husband, especially as I’m also loose and naked.” She looked wryly down her modestly attired, lithe, curvaceous body. “I’m a doctor so I make them feel underachieving and so on. But instead of wishing or trying to change their status, they attack mine.”

“A case of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, huh?” Jay chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I guess every victim has some responsibility in perpetuating their suffering.”

Hessuh sighed. “Apart from the social ranks at the top, it is women who single-handedly raise children here. It’s they who raise their male children to think of women as lesser beings.”

“Why?”

“As I said, patriarchal conditioning has become a part of the female psyche here. And then there is another feminine side to the equation. A man here brings his wife to the family home. A mother wants to make sure her son will bring her a subordinate as she’d been to her own mother-in-law.”

“But—that’s sick!” Jay cried.

“It’s how it works. But as I said, time is changing things. My sister is married to a Damhoorian engineer who thinks her more than his equal. So it’s not all doom and gloom. The less advantaged classes are where social rigidity and injustices are most perpetuated, not only here but all over the world.”




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