I said to my wife: "How about going out to work?"
She shouted at me: "You greedy man! You'd sell your honour for a bit more money!"
I said: "Of course not… I don't want you to be a dancer… be a teacher, or even work for a charity, and keep all the money for yourself. I want you to feel your worth as an independent person."
And the gates of hell opened. My wife started screaming: "Independent? Were you mocking me when you said you and I are one? Do you want to take another wife? Oh, what a disaster!"
In the blink of an eye my father-in-law arrived and started to reason with me: "I didn't send her to school, then university, then a master's degree, for you to tell her to go out to work. All that education mustn't be wasted: she must stay at home and bring up her children."
Next to him sat my mother-in-law, chopping parsley for tabbouleh with a giant kitchen knife, which she raised in my face as if to threaten me: "No woman of the Abu Jibs family has ever left her house except for her grave. Do you want to bring shame on us?"
Then my wife's brother joined in: "Aren't you worried about your honour? You'd have to watch your wife all the time to make sure she isn't up to anything suspicious."
My aunt said: "You have the right to marry four instead of one, but there's no need for a scandal… rent another house."
A woman jumped out of the crowd and said: "These are the stirrings of the leftovers from the rubbish heap of the history of the evolution of the anthropology of Western societies." I had never seen this woman before, but I did what everyone else did: I nodded along, so as not to look as if I hadn't understood.
At the end of the long evening, our neighbour the grocer said to me on his way out: "I know what you're trying to do. Forget it. Women give us headaches even when they don't know their own worth. Imagine what will happen when each of them learns she is a complete, independent human being."
And my imagination wandered far away… Yes… imagine if every man and woman knew they were a complete human being who could work to build their country… what a beautiful country it would be…
A dream…
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