The Bottom of the Jar Read Online Free PDF Page B

heavily loaded donkeys and mules coming from the opposite direction, all without failing to stop and exchange pleasantries with the shopkeepers and passersby he was acquainted with.
    Trying to keep pace, Namouss followed in his slipstream. Little by little, he began to acquire the same stride that would later make him such an experienced surveyor of that gigantic open-air theater that is the Medina.
    T HAT DAY , G HITA had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. The previous day, she had dismissed the young girl who helped with the daily chores. When faced with the work that lay ahead of her, Ghita’s spirit had sunk.
    Ghita’s track record with the help would make for an interminably long book and the conclusion of each chapter would come as no surprise. After a handful of incidents – always brief and stormy – the young girl or woman in question would be shown the door. The reasons for these terminations were always bountiful, as were the number of times Ghita contradicted herself. It was like squaring the circle, what else? Also the identikit of her ideal employee wasn’t easy to fulfill. The first criteria: age. The candidate in question shouldn’t be too young, as they would have to be taught from scratch; neither should they be too old, as they would lack the stamina to carry out their duties to Ghita’s satisfaction. The second criteria: physical appearance. Ghita didn’t want someone that “a brief glimpse of would cut one’s life short.” That meant nohunchbacks, eye patches, or skin infections, since any physical oddities were considered, according to widely held popular beliefs, retribution for past misdeeds. But neither should they be too good-looking, which might arouse the passions of Driss and the teenage boys whom Ghita kept under strict surveillance. “I can’t very well invite the devil into my own home. As soon as you introduced a piece of fresh meat, the men wouldn’t be able to keep their eyes off it.” The third criteria: manner of dress. Ghita wanted neither someone decked out in rags nor stylish flirts, who as Ghita put it, dressed like the dancers at the Circus Amar. The fourth criteria: honesty. That prerequisite proved impossible to fulfill since, according to deep-set beliefs found in modest and affluent families alike, by their very definition, servants were invariably thieves.
    The result: Except for short periods of time, Ghita could therefore only count on herself, and – temporarily – on her daughter Zhor who, as she was well aware, would soon “run off” to her husband’s house to go “clean up after strangers.”
    Before making a start on her day’s work, Ghita began by launching into one of her litanies, whose set themes were subject to periodic inflections.
    â€œOh dear Mother, my beloved, you have gone away to be with God now and I am bereft of everything. There’s no one now to push open my door and look in on me. I am alone, a stranger in my own family. Neither my husband nor my children take pity on me. I am everyone’s servant, a slave with scars carved into her cheeks. The housework is mine; the kneading of the bread, mine; the dishes and laundry, all mine. Even everyone else’s shit belongs to me, I’m the one who pushes it down the hole and rinses it with water. I feel like I might suffocate. The others come and go as they please, they’re off to the Kissarya, to Batha Square, to the Boujeloud cinema, while I remain a prisoner behind these four walls. I have to wait until my skin groans under the weight ofits filth before I can go to the hammam. Have I ever stolen, murdered, or sinned? I am condemned to duck my head in shame, swallow my anxieties. Heart, oh heart of mine, you’re going to burst. Marriage is a cursed thing. Had I been an old maid, I might have at least had some peace. And who cares what they would have said. May those who know my father bring him to