By PLS
Rufrad was a temporary settlement of tents and huts on a very dry plain. Cattle couldn’t live there, and even goats didn’t last long under that relentless sun. In fact, the people of Rufrad survived only because outsiders sent them food—bags of rice and wheat, sacks of lentils and beans, cases of powdered milk. All in all, it was boring if nutritious diet, so the women did what they could to make it palatable.
These women were amazing. They and their daughters trudged long distances across a parched earth under that hot sun to fetch odd bits of firewood and enough water for drinking and bathing as well as cooking. And then they cooked. At mealtimes, assuming the Marauders had let the supply trucks through, which wasn’t always the case, there was hot food for the men and the children and, once the men were burping with satisfaction, for themselves. Actually, no one was fat in Rufrad, but the women were the skinniest.
With no animals to herd and rainfall too scanty to get any farming under way, the men had little to do. However, by stretching faded old wrappers over sticks they appropriated from the firewood stash, they managed to make little verandahs where they could sit together in the shade. They gathered there to chew khat and recall the good old days in their home villages before the Marauders had driven them out. The stories often made them sad, but the khat helped them to feel better.
Sometimes a reporter or anthropologist would arrive with the sacks of grain. The people of Rufrad were always courteous to such outsiders whose heart-rending reports, they knew, helped to keep them alive. The women were usually too busy to talk much, but the men did their best to display a semblance of the hospitality that had been integral to their former lives. After the women brought glasses of precious water, the men launched into long tales of the good old days when they had fertile land and real houses—and respect.
Much as they relished the pleasure of reliving the past, however, the men also knew that the best way to cultivate sympathy was to emphasize the worst of the bad times, too.
“My brother’s wife was raped on the way to the well. He had to put her aside, poor fellow.”
“My mother was beaten with her own sticks of wood. They abused her, too—a gray-haired old lady. But she does not have to live with the shame. She died on the spot.”
“My daughter was violated. How will I marry her now?”
At this point, chewing sagely on their khat, the men would grow silent, hardly noticing their women as they trudged off to draw water and gather firewood.
One day the reporter who sat asking questions and making notes was a woman. She watched the women at their chores. She drank the water they brought and she ate the food they served to the men. She listened to the litany of horrors perpetrated by the Marauders and, as she listened, she had an inspiration.
“I understand that you men feel dishonored when your women are molested,” she began.
“It’s an abomination,” nodded the eldest man, burping politely. The other men nodded in agreement.
“You could stop it,” she reporter said. “You could stop it tomorrow.”
The khat-chewing ceased. Every eye was focused on the reporter.
The reporter was aware that city people in that country had a way of making raped or foolish young woman into virgins again, but she knew better than to openly suggest recourse to the miracles of modern medicine in Rufrad. Her simple idea would protect the women from violation and she felt very pleased to have thought of it.
“Tell the women to stay here by the huts,” suggested the reporter. “You men can fetch the water. You can gather the firewood. Your sisters and daughters and wives will be safe.”
There was a long silence and some very nervous coughing as each man seemed to be waiting for anyone else to reply. Finally the eldest cleared his throat and spoke. “A man does not do women’s work. It is beneath his dignity.”
“Then the Marauders would kill us instead,” observed another old man, quite logically. “Or they would laugh, which would be worse.”
“Excuse me, but I have a better idea,” said one of the younger men. “If your people would give us guns as well as food, we could shoot the Marauders who dishonor our women.”
“Yes,” agreed the man who sat beside him. “And after that I would mercifully shoot my miserable dishonored niece to restore the honor of my family.”
The men nodded and the eldest pointed to the reporter’s notebook. “You may write that,” he said. “We wish to be men again.”
And the reporter wrote exactly that.