The Stone Woman by Tariq Ali Read Free Book Online

that night. And it always did, Stone Woman. It always did. And not just for the maids. There were a few young coachmen who received the summons. One of them ran away and was never seen again. The maids spoke often of Mahmut Pasha’s habits, but their crudeness offended my ears. I preferred to forget their stories.
    I was, after all, only a kitchen maid, not even permitted near the other rooms of the house. My task was to help the cooks and make sure they had all the ingredients they needed for their dishes. When I was much younger, I never thought of myself as a person whom the master even noticed and so I was never worried like some of the other maids, those who carried their breasts like over-ripe melons.
    He saw me from the window one day as I was sitting on a bench near the vegetable garden and washing cucumbers. I averted my glance from his, but he rushed down and passed in front of me. I stood up and covered my head. He smiled and fondled his moustache. O cruel fate, Stone Woman. I knew I was doomed. I wanted to run away before the night came. As luck would have it, my clean-shaven Hikmet with his dark red hair, who stood daily on guard duty outside the house, had gone back to his village to attend his mother’s funeral. I was alone. I swear in Allah’s name that if Hikmet had been there that day I would have run away with him, but it was not to be. The call came in the shape of the oldest maidservant in the house. She, who boasted of how she had warmed the bed of Mahmut Pasha as well as his father and grandfather, was now approaching her fiftieth year. In the past she had used her privileged position to lord it over the other servants. They had despised and feared her, but that was some time ago. Now she had been reduced to the status of the Pasha’s procuress, but this had made her warm-hearted. I think, deep in herself, she understood the humiliation. To try and make it easier for us she would say: “I have known three generations of this family,” she used to tell us, “and this young master is the kindest of them all. He will not be violent with you. He will not hurt you in any way as his grandfather did when his lust was aroused.”
    Her reassuring words had little effect on me. I lay in my narrow little bed and wept without restraint. Later, when the old woman took me to the Pasha’s chamber, I fell on my knees and kissed Mahmut Pasha’s feet. I beseeched him to spare my honour. I whispered that I was promised to another. I confessed my love for Hikmet. I told of my desire to be a mother and to give my children the love that had been denied me. In my foolishness I thought my honesty might impress him, but it had a completely different effect. He took my pleas for resistance and this inflamed him further. He made me undress and then he pushed me back on his bed and took his pleasure. For my part, and this, I swear to you, Stone Woman, is the truth, I felt only anger and sadness and helplessness. No enjoyment did I feel, not even momentarily. The blood I saw on my legs frightened me. All the while his ungainly body, with its mounds of flesh, was heaving over me. I became inwardly angry with my parents for dying when I was only three and I cursed my grandfather for selling me like a piece of cloth to a passing merchant.
    He noticed my indifference. This angered him. “Return tomorrow night,” he said as he dismissed me in the voice a master uses when reprimanding an ungrateful slave.
    I returned the next night and the one after and every night after that one. My indifference only seemed to arouse him and he became ever more determined to break my will. He wanted me to say that I enjoyed him. He would look at me and ask whether I could ever love him. I never replied to these questions, but I also ceased to resist. He bought me clothes, gave me expensive jewellery and, on one occasion, dressed me in the clothes of a European lady and took me to the reception at the German Embassy, where he introduced me as