Burned alive by Souad Read Free Book Online

across one. I don’t personally remember having seen one but I know that the danger was always there. It was better not to pick up a stone and to pay attention to where you stepped.
    My father wasn’t there when we got home. It was a relief because we had lost time and it was already ten o’clock. At that hour the sun is high, the heat strong, and the figs at risk of shriveling and softening. They had to be in good condition and carefully prepared for my father to be able to sell them at the market. I liked preparing the crates of figs. I would choose beautiful fig leaves, big green ones to carpet the bottom of the crates. Then I would place the figs delicately, in neat rows like beautiful jewels, and put large leaves on top to protect them from the sun. It was the same preparation for the grapes: We cut them with a scissors and cleaned them carefully; there couldn’t remain a single damaged grape or a dirty leaf. I also lined these crates with vine leaves and covered them the same way as the figs so the grapes would stay fresh.
    There was also the season for cauliflower, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, and squash, and my father sold the cheese that I was assigned to make. I would pour the milk into a large metal bucket. I would skim off the yellow fat that formed on the edges, and the cream, which I set aside for making laban, which was sold in separate packets for Ramadan. The laban were put into large buckets for my father, who made up the packets with heavy plastic so that the product wouldn’t spoil. It was my job to label them in Arabic: LABAN.
    With the halib, the milk, I made yogurt and cheese by hand, using a white transparent cloth and an iron bowl. First I would fill the bowl to the top so all the cheeses were the same height; then I turned them into the cloth, tied a knot, and squeezed very hard so the liquid would run into a receptacle. When there was no more liquid, they were placed on a big gilded platter and covered with a cloth so the sun and the flies wouldn’t damage them. I would wrap them then in white packets that my father also marked. My father went to the market almost every day during the fruit-and-vegetable season, and twice a week with the cheeses and the milk.
    My father would not get behind the wheel of the van until it was completely loaded, and woe to us if we hadn’t finished in time. He would get in front with my mother and I would be wedged in between the crates in back. It was a good half hour’s ride, and when we arrived I would see big buildings. It was the city, a pretty, very clean city. There were stoplights to control the auto traffic. I remember a shop window with a mannequin in a bride’s dress. I twisted my head to be able to see the shops for as long as possible. I had never seen anything like that, because I wasn’t allowed to walk about and certainly could not look in the shops.
    I would have loved to visit this city, but when I saw girls walking on the sidewalk wearing short dresses and with bare legs, I was ashamed. If I had encountered them close up I would have spit on their path. They were charmuta and I thought it was disgusting. They were walking all alone, without parents next to them. I thought to myself that they would never be married. No man would ever ask for them because they had shown their legs and they were made up with lipstick. And I didn’t understand why they weren’t locked in. Were these girls beaten the way I was? Locked up like me? Slaves like me? Did they work the way I did? I wasn’t allowed to move an inch from my father’s van. He supervised the unloading of the crates, collected the money, and then gave a sign, as if to a donkey, for me to climb in and hide myself inside, with the only pleasures being a moment without any work to do, and catching sight of the inaccessible boutiques through the crates of fruits and vegetables. I understand now that life in my village hadn’t changed since my mother was born, and her mother before her, and