In Marrakesh, Fez, or perhaps Safi—I no longer remember where exactly—I saw a woman in a chador for the first time. All I know is that it was a late, warm afternoon. The streets, parks and squares began filling with women and children, while men settled into restaurants. Evening was beginning. It was time to leave home, meet friends and go shopping. Life was beginning to flow through the medina streets again, amid the smells of meat roasting on grills, fried doughnuts, mint, oranges and spices.
On one of those very streets, I noticed a young married couple. He had the black beard of an Islamist, an impeccably white silk djellaba and white leather babouches on his feet; she was dressed in black. The chador covered her completely, while a veil concealed her face. She wore long gloves on her hands so that, even accidentally, not a scrap of her body would be revealed.
They walked beside each other without touching, not even holding hands. When crossing the street, the man moved ahead and looked around carefully to make sure that nothing was approaching. He guarded her against dangers from outside: the crowd, a careless passer-by, a woman carrying large bags who might soil her dress. He checked that no one was passing too close.
Out of respect, unfamiliar men lowered their eyes when they saw her, leaving her undisturbed by intrusive gazes. I wondered what they might think of her—of someone inaccessible to their eyes and hidden from them like the most precious treasure. They could not examine the shape of her body, smell her skin, or even catch a glimpse from beneath her modestly lowered eyelids. Her thoughts, desires and aims were unknowable to them. Why was she like that?
She disappeared into the crowd, which parted before her and then began pouring into a narrow alley of the souk. Bidding her farewell in my thoughts, I envied her for being a mystery.
In a culture that for centuries has placed such great emphasis on covering the body—and where this principle applies to both men and women—nudity is not merely a fleeting stimulus. Intimacy is reserved for those closest to us. It is a person’s secret. A treasure. Descriptions of naked women in Arabic literature are so magical and refined because physicality is linked in them with a transcendent experience.
The experience of Eastern men at the sight of a naked woman is so different that it is difficult to compare it with the Western reception of déshabillé. Contact with a naked body is like entering another dimension, an unknown world. It is the discovery of another galaxy. Foreign and ineffably beautiful.
I found one of the most magnificent metaphors describing this experience in the book by the Moroccan Mohamed Choukri, “Le pain nu” (For Bread Alone). In his autobiography, the author describes one morning when, as a young boy, he decided to steal some fruit from a fig orchard.
When his hands and pockets were full of ripe figs, he noticed the orchard owner’s daughter, Aziza, approaching. He wanted to run away so he would not be caught stealing, but the girl’s behavior intrigued him. She looked extraordinarily wild. Her hair was loose, and something disturbing and demonic burned in her eyes. She approached a pool dug in the middle of the orchard, looking around as if afraid. Intrigued, the boy remained hidden among the trees.
After looking around and making sure she was alone, Aziza untied the belt fastening her covering. “Her dress opened like the wings of a bird vainly trying to take flight.” For one instant, before the girl turned her back to him, Mohamed saw her dazzlingly white breasts. That half-turn she made was a painful pleasure. The fruit fell from his hands, and his body, startled by the sudden experience, trembled. Aziza’s dress slipped from her body in the blinding radiance of the rising sun, amid the squawks and trills of awakened birds and the piercing bray of a donkey. The din forced its way into the voyeur’s brain. Naked Aziza was to him like a planet stripped of life. “Trees that had lost their leaves, dwellings abandoned by people, animals losing their fur.” The emptiness of an immeasurable cosmic space equaled the nakedness of the young woman. When, entering the water, she turned toward him again, his eyes saw her uncovered nipples and the black fleece of her pubic hair. He confessed: “Pleasure shook my entire body. I was there, happy among the fig branches.” The girl bathed, the water flowing around her body and being the only thing that could touch her. Mohamed stood there, desperately aroused. The only man in the world able to admire her nakedness.
I was reading this description in a small café in Casablanca. A young couple sat down at the neighboring table. They ordered a fruit cocktail for her and coffee for him. Their hands held the vessels, but did not touch each other. They were absorbed in conversation, leaning so close that they breathed the words into each other’s mouths. They did not even brush one another with their fingertips. Desire thickened in the warm air. I thought that the distance between them was impossible to maintain and too painful. Perhaps they touched each other with their feet hidden beneath the table? I glanced over. But even there they maintained a minimal empty space, covering their innocence like a chador.
Grażyna Hanaf