Om Mohammed's butcher knife flashes as she slices the bellies of six talapia she’s brought home from the fish market. Her mouth twists in consternation.
Following tradition, she's called Om Mohammed which means the mother of Mohammed, her first-born son. But her given name is Gamila which means beautiful. With her high broad cheekbones, nutty brown skin, and almond-shaped, kohl-lined eyes, she's a classic , from the village of Mallawi in Southern Egypt.
Now she lives in a one bedroom apartment where she’s been for more than thirty years. Her kitchen, primarily a small gas range, takes up one corner of the bedroom. She stores her utensils on the floor under the bed. Her older sons, Mohammed, 34 and Mustafa 33, are both married and have children. So, too, her oldest daughter, Reda, married by her father to man who forgave a debt in exchange for the girl.
But Om Mohammed still has four of her seven children at home. In addition to her 18 year old daughter, Niveen, there’s Ibrahim, 28, and Ali, 23, both unemployed and thus unmarried. The youngest son, Ahmed, 17, can neither read nor write. He works odd-jobs.
Today she’s fretting again about how to get Niveen married. The girl is already two years late for a wedding. [Note: Niveen finally married in December 2008. See the wedding photos.]
Om Mohammed's daughter Niveen
But Niveen’s a handful. The sixth of the seven children, she alone rebels against her mother’s conservative Saidi standards. Instead of staying in the house, readying herself for a marriage proposal or helping her mother at her housekeeping job (an hour’s bus ride from home), she sneaks out to the mall, where she manages to buy make-up, slather it on and, with her friends, preen. When Om Mohammed presents Niveen with potential husbands, the only approved fate for a lower class woman, the girl refuses on the grounds that the men are too ugly.
Om Mohammed scoops out the innards of the fish with her fingers, tosses them aside and turns to peeling a head of garlic. Then, knife thumping, she chops a couple of large onions, two large tomatoes, three medium hot peppers, a green pepper, and mixes them with a cup of fresh coriander.
One of her sons, Ahmed.
Niveen’s pickiness must burn Om Mohammed who was forced to marry at 13 to a man she and everyone else detests. For the length of her 35 year marriage, she held on while he beat her with broomsticks, whipped her with sugar canes, encouraged his sons to beat their sisters, and screamed insults at everyone in the alley. “Ask anyone," she announces. "The man brings us nothing but shame.” In Egypt, shame is not just a matter of inner suffering but also a loss of crucial social capital.
Om Mohammed tosses a teaspoon each of salt and black pepper and four teaspoons each of cumin and dried coriander into a mortar, pounds them to dust and tosses them with the chopped vegetables.
w.jpg)
Her 70-year-old mother
In the lower classes, people depend on each other for basic economic support. Women especially borrow from each other - money, clothing, shoes - and they form
gammeyas (homegrown micro savings and loan groups). Each woman puts in a few pounds a month and when her turn comes around, she collects a lump sum. Since her husband doesn’t contribute a piaster to the family, Om Mohammed alone must save big money for her daughter’s mandatory dowry -refrigerator, stove, water heater, kitchen and bedding.
A typical neighborhood
Maintaining good relationships in the alley where she lives is crucial. Neighbors not only give one another financial cover, but they come together to resist abuse by bad guys, the government and its police. For example, when her son was falsely accused of storing stolen tires on the roof and the police came for him, the neighbors, who respect Om Mohammed, vouched for the boy, pleaded with the police, and finally threatened to storm the police station if anyone was arrested. The case disappeared.
Om Mohammed stuffs the fish with the mixture, pinches the belly slit together, and squeezes the juice of six lemons over the top. They sit for 20 minutes; then she coats them with a thick layer of bran and lays them on a greased stove-top grill.
Her grand-daughters and their mother, Reda.
She was grilling fish for her family like the ones she was grilling for me and griping about Niveen. Nevertheless, when her husband started pushing his sons to beat the girl for refusing to marry one of the "ugly ones," Om Mohammed went wild. She didn’t know if she was protecting her daughter or finally standing up to her husband but she stormed across the room, butcher knife flailing. "I was ready to kill him. I would go to prison. I didn't care,” she said. "My children could take of themselves. And I would've killed him if the kids hadn’t held me back.
She bent over to check the fish in the oven; then stood and smiled broadly. “He hasn’t been home since.”
Looking black and crackly when they come out of the oven, the fish are moist inside. Steam rises, carrying flavors that have wept out of the dressing.