Burned alive by Souad Read Free Book Online Page B

eye and people made fun of her and everyone knew that she had never been married.
    From the terrace I could see the villa of the rich people. They would be out there with lights on, and I would hear them laugh. They ate outside, even late at night. But in our house we were locked up like rabbits in our rooms. In the village, I remember only this rich family, not very far from our house, and Enam, the old maid always alone, sitting outside in front of her house. The only distraction for us girls was the trip to the market in the van.
    There were several girls more or less of the same age in the village and they would put us all in a bus to be taken to pick cauliflowers in a big field. I remember so well this huge field of cauliflowers. It was so big you couldn’t see the end of it and you felt you would never get it all picked. The driver was so small that he sat on a cushion to be able to see over the steering wheel. He had a funny small round head with close-cropped hair.
    All day long we cut cauliflowers on all fours, all the girls in a row as usual, and supervised by an older woman with a stick. There was no question of loafing. We piled the cauliflowers up in a big truck. At the end of the day, the truck stayed there and we got back into the bus to return to the village. There were many orange trees on either side of the road, and because we were very thirsty the driver stopped and told us to go get an orange for each of us and to come right back. “One orange and halas! ” which meant “one but not two!”
    All the girls ran back to the bus and the driver, who had parked on a little side road, backed up. Then he suddenly turned off the motor, got out, and started to yell so loudly that all the girls got out of the bus, frantic. He had run over one of the girls. A wheel of the bus had run over her head. As I was just in front, I bent down, I tried to raise her head by her hair thinking she was still alive. But her head remained stuck to the ground and I passed out from fright.
    The next thing I remember, I was in the bus, sitting on the knees of the woman who was supervising us. The driver was stopping before every house to let the girls off as we weren’t allowed to return alone even in the village. When I got off in front of our house the supervisor explained to my mother that I was sick. Mama put me to bed and gave me something to drink. She was good to me that night because the woman had explained it all to her. She had to explain the accident to each mother and the driver waited. I wondered if he wanted to be sure that everyone was told the same thing.
    It’s odd that it happened to this particular girl. When we were gathering the cauliflowers, she was always in the middle of the row, never on the edges. Among us, when a girl is always protected like this by the other girls it means that she might run away. And I had noticed that this girl was always surrounded, that she wasn’t able to switch places in the line, and no one spoke to her. It was forbidden to even look at her because she was charmuta, and if we did speak to her they would treat us, too, as charmuta. Did the driver deliberately run over her? The rumor lasted a long time in the village. The police came to question us and brought us together in the bus to the field where it had happened. There were three policemen, and that was really something for us to see men dressed in uniform. We could not look them in the eye and we had to be very respectful. We were very impressed. We showed them the exact spot. I bent down. There was a dummy head on the ground and I raised it with my hand as I had done with the girl. They said to me: “Halas, halas, halas . . .” And that was it.
    We got back in the bus. The driver was weeping! He drove fast and wildly. The bus bounced on the road and I remember that the supervisor held her chest with both hands because her breasts were bouncing, too. The driver was put in prison. For us and for the whole village this was