10.03.2009

Spit

Wind and Water by Pat Steir

I keep seeing that slime ball's face spitting on me and grabbing his crotch and swinging his straight edge as close as he could get to us, after us, because we as women had violated his position, his power.

I see the crowd forming and the others spitting and yelling, directing all of their attention towards us, shoved in a shoebox of a
shoe store with shoes in our hands, ready to knock that bastard over the head if he got too close.

I imagine trying to tell the men in my family, my village family, what happened and how it happened and what language I would use and how much sign language I would use and wondering if my true feelings will show through. Will the anger, the rage of yes, you too are a man and not giving me as a woman the respect that I so rightly deserve. Damn you all.

Would they show compassion, explaining that not all Moroccan men are this way?

Or would they say by damned you deserve it, going off and hitting a man in public like that, don't you see what country you're in Woman?

I'm reading
Beyond the Veil, by Fatima Mernissi, about how women are not allowed in the public sphere, the only sphere I've spent extended time in, the sphere that only men occupy, and the reason women are veiled in public is to appear invisible as if not really there.

And so, that night, through the
medina at night, were we just asking for it, putting ourselves in a place we did not belong?

Even last night in calm safe
Tata, walking Sheryl back to her hotel, I tensed my shoulders, walked stiffly and quietly, staring at the ground, past men that thought I could be their property with their whistles and suggestions.

When I walk the sphere of the man, everything but that of the home, am I deserving of any shit I get because I'm not supposed to be there in the first place?

He got right in my face and spit. I had to wipe it from my eyes and mouth.

You don't just haul off and slap a guy that gets in your way driving by on a moped and saying
hey, baby.

She said before, right before actually, she said one of these days I'm gonna just haul off and hit somebody. Then she did.

I heard we all will flip out at one time or another, will pick that last short straw, hear our limit of gazelle and I want to fuck you. We'll hear the limit and the time will seem right, the moment perfect, for that hand to reach out across their clean-
shaven cheek and slap.

But what you don't know is, the time might not be perfect. The moment might not be right. The guy might be on drugs with a knife and when you say,
Respect yourself and slap the shit out of him in a public space, and a lot of people might witness you slapping the shit out of a man in a sphere that belongs to him, not you, by damned you can sure bet he's gonna be pissed.