from Vienna, prose fiction by Sahar Mandour
Humorous and slyly profound, Vienna is the story of a Beiruti woman who refuses to conform. Beginning with her birth, Vienna relates her life without shame for her vanity and ambition. By turns a news anchor, pilgrim, wife, and widow, she makes friends as easily as she loses them, flaunting the expectations of her family as she looks for wholeness in nightclubs and religious schools. She knows herself through other people — an older French man and potential lover; a pious teacher of religion; a mediocre husband. Her brother, Ahmad, is her mirror. With his friendship and support, Vienna tries on different lives, becoming a hip young reporter, and then a devout Hijabi woman. Her “true” self is more complicated than the labels she acquires and discards. Ultimately, Vienna’s loneliness is matched only by her thirst for experience. She searches for an answer to the timeless question of who a person should be, and when, in this candid portrait of a modern Lebanese woman. Vienna, written in 2007, is Sahar Mandour’s first novella. It was published by the Egyptian publishing house Dar El-Shorouk. The novella has not been published in translation — Nicole Fares and Sara Ramey are the first to translate it into English.
* * * * *
[After trying several careers and going back to college, Vienna, a widow in her forties, doesn’t know how else to change her life. Ahmad, her brother, is a doctor.]
*
So I figured I might as well commit suicide.
I called Ahmad and told him what I’d decided. “Ahmad, I don’t think the universe has a place for me anymore. I’m going to end it.”
“I’m on my way over.”
“Nah, finish your work and then come over. No rush. I’ll meet you at home.”
He insisted.
I greeted him downstairs. He took me to lunch in Ehden, outside Beirut’s city limits. I loved these outings and, since it was cold, wore lots of clothing, bringing a coat for him.
In Ehden, he brought up my declaration. I said, “I just don’t belong in this world,” and told him about my failed attempts to make a life for myself in my work, college, family, and in my relationships. Whenever he tried to help, I shut him down, then complained that he couldn’t fix anything. Our argument filled an hour, until he agreed with me—fine, there’s no hope for you.
He suggested I travel and experience new cultures, a different society, but I couldn’t speak any foreign languages. The only French I knew was “Ça va?”
“You can learn,” he said.
So then I studied French.
I fell in love with my professor, who was old—in his fifties. Ahmad laughed when he heard this, reminding me that the professor was only ten years my elder.
I decided to seduce him. At the end of the semester, I invited the class to my place. It was my last chance to ensnare him because we’d have a new teacher the next semester.
During dinner, I found out he’s happily married. One of the students, who was feeling estranged from her spouse, asked how he managed that. He told her that he and his wife didn’t let themselves get bored. They traveled often, went on dates, and separated about once every decade so they’d miss each other.
I served dessert quickly, turning off the music and yawning. After they took the hint and left, I called Ahmad and we laughed about it.
The next semester, our teacher was a woman who wore a hijab. The French must be very open-minded to let her teach their language, right? I, for one, don’t remember ever seeing a blonde woman teaching the history of the prophetic movement in a Saudi learning institute. But I doubt a Saudi learning institute would offer such a class in the first place. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a Saudi learning institute.
Anyway, I was there to learn French so I’d be good at something in my life, if it was the last thing I did.
Following our first session, I invited the teacher out for tea, trying to befriend her. She didn’t talk much, preferring to listen, and asked a lot of questions about my life. Over our drinks, I told her my life story—how boring it was!
She asked me out for tea again after our second session. I ordered a cappuccino that time and she told me about herself. I like when people believe their lives are the fulfilment of a written story. They don’t obsess over the future. My ex-mother-in-law isn’t like that at all, always taking things seriously, so busy worrying that she doesn’t consider other people’s lives. She passes her waking hours without a minute to reflect.
The teacher told me how she grew up in a socially conservative but open-minded family who allowed her to study sociology at a Christian university. Her parents let her choose whether to put on the hijab, which she did when she was twenty. She wanted to wear it to graduation.
“Will you always wear it, or are you going to take it off sometime?” I asked, pretending to care.
She didn’t plan to take it off, she told me, and invited me to join her at a weekly religious study group. That week, they met at the home of a “respectable, pious woman who’s hard of hearing but understands Islam very well.”
*
So I began to wear a hijab, too.
I was forty-one years old, wore a hijab, and looked stylish in it. I spoke French, but I didn’t apply for a visa to a country that spoke the language I’d learned, because I found something vastly more entertaining here.
Religion isn’t just about understanding religious principles, but about building a network of connections and movements. It clarifies what’s permitted and what’s banned, the places you can visit and those you aren’t allowed to enter. In these religious circles, alcohol is forbidden. They smoke hukkah, proudly, and talk about their marriages.
I had a lot of experience doing that from my time with the neighbors, and I participated occasionally. When I engaged in the discussions, the teacher of religion looked impressed, like I was a child who’d spoken her first word. I enjoyed it when someone admired the intelligence I’d fostered in my life and felt rewarded for a trajectory that bent towards failure.
In class — Islamic religion studies — I asked the prestigious lady scholar whether I was allowed a glass of wine at night. She responded by quoting five Qur’anic verses and sharing some of her personal experiences, which ultimately came to the same conclusion: Alcohol was no longer my friend.
I asked her about drugs. She couldn’t find any Qur’anic verses to answer my question, and after excusing herself from class, took me to a neighboring room and explained that I’d been walking a gnarled path all my life, one I needed to abandon entirely.
I was convinced. My old ways had never let me have a personal life apart from my social life. She told me the two couldn’t be separated — my personal life was actually an extension of my social life.
Regardless, my life seemed easier after I started wearing the hijab. My neighbors liked me more and my ex-mother-in-law called me “the moment she heard the news,” as she put it, to happily invite me to lunch. Even the photograph of my late husband appeared to smile more brightly. Overall, the Bazaza family seemed much more cheerful and kind.
As per usual, only Ahmad didn’t like the change in my lifestyle, but his objection wasn’t vehement. “I’m fine with it as long as it’s amusing you,” he said.
It certainly did amuse me, in my social life, after I donned the hijab.
I invited the ladies in my religious studies class to dinner one time and they told me they couldn’t stay out late. They had to be back by 6:30. Their dinnertime was strange to me, but I was delighted anyway that they’d accepted my invitation. I called a local restaurant and ordered dinner sets, and then emptied the food onto plates and waited.
They seemed in a rush when they arrived, as if they were late for something. Apparently, there was a television show they wanted to catch on time.
“Do you have satellite TV?”
I found the question odd—was there any house that didn’t? Oh! Maybe they meant porn. “Of course I have porn!”
They denounced the devil at length before bursting into laughter, hiding their mouths in an attempt to stifle it.
Their program was a talk show on an Arabic satellite channel that was debating the topic of nudity on television, hosted by Amr Khaled. All of my classmates knew who he was and loved him and his “middle-aged sexiness” (their words).
Yes, they were in love, but I doubt “his hotness is killer,” “if only I weren’t married,” and “God bless the woman who brought him and his silver tongue into the world” are fiqh expressions, allowed by the Qur’an.
*
The day of reckoning was upon us.
All righteous and honorable women with a close relationship to Islam go on a holy pilgrimage to Mecca, and so I, Miss Vienna, had to do the Hajj as well. I’d heard from friends who’d completed the pilgrimage that they believed, in their heart of hearts, that they saw the birds in the sky simply refuse to enter and desecrate the great mosque. Birds circled around it instead, disrupting their flight pattern.
Now, that story gave me goosebumps. I had to see it for myself.
The problem was that I didn’t have a Mr. Hajj to accompany me, and Ahmad refused to come. I wheedled him, talking about what a great vacation it would be, but no.
I get it. He didn’t want to be known, from the moment of our return, as Hajj Ahmad, which he’d be called for completing the pilgrimage.
So I told my club that I couldn’t attend hajj with them, as I had no man to travel with me, and the ladies asked, “What about your brother?” to which I said, “My brother’s a sinner.”
My brother isn’t a sinner, but I didn’t want them pestering him to go. They’d keep calling me and harassing him until he snapped and did something that would make him a sinner for real.
Thus, to put an end to the matter: Ahmad is a sinner.
They cursed the devil, as usual, while I mentally prayed that he’d get a nice spot in heaven with a view overlooking the sea and mountain.
That was the end of that conversation.
For some reason, I was relieved not to go. The Hajj is such a grand and majestic thing to undergo, and I wasn’t feeling especially grand or majestic. Not until, one day:
“Hello, sister Vienna? It’s sister Samira.”
I don’t strongly hate the name Samira, but it is repellent, as is putting sister in front of our names.
“Yes?”
“Kneel and pray to God. We’ve found a way for you to go to Hajj.”
“A way to Hajj — for me?”
Samira’s brother, who was going to Hajj anyway, agreed to a temporary marriage with me so I could go as well.
*
So I became Hajjah Vienna.
I hated the crowding but liked the place. I related how impressed I was with everything, leaving out the bit about the crowd because the ladies didn’t approve of hate. They were all “good” women with “good” noses and “good” chin hairs, and the sun that shone on their cheeks was equally “good.”
I could never be good like that, and their goodness annoyed me, but I was fine leaving my hatred unvoiced because I was part of their subculture now, and in every subculture, there are people who must adapt. I learned that in French class.
Water from the Zamzam Well. They brought it back with them, so I did, too, gifting it to Ahmad. We passed an evening laughing at his new nickname, Mr. Zamzam. He said, “Dr. Zamzam, paging Dr. Zamzam Water to the operating room.”
At some point during our get-together, Ahmad offered me a glass of wine, which I took.
Drinking wine can hardly be a sin if I’m drinking it with Ahmad.
I’d fallen asleep when the doorbell rang. It was sister Samira, of course, paying me a friendly visit after the end of my temporary marriage to her brother. She just couldn’t wait till evening to tell me how jealous her neighbors were of her pilgrimage and the Zamzam water she brought back.
Her brother, on the other hand, hadn’t been very interesting during the pilgrimage. He mostly just held his prayer beads, caressing them gently as if they were me, then frowning and saying “Subḥānallāh, Subḥānallāh, Subḥānallāh” to resist temptation, after which he’d wash for prayer and pray. Then he’d repeat the cycle.
In our hotel room, he constructed a wall of white bed sheets separating him from my devilish wiles.
The whole situation was comical. If I asked him a question or to hand me something, he looked away, at the ground, while responding. He appeared irritated but answered enthusiastically, like his behavior was securing him a better spot in heaven.
Sister Samira’s brother is the kind of sibling no sister dreams of having. He’s the prince of a group of seven men, taking paid leave from work to visit their villages and spread the word of Islam.
In short, a disaster.
*
I got tired of them but hung out with them anyway. I wasn’t about to abandon my last hope for social belonging because the word “Zamzam” didn’t sound very holy to me.
I hated when sister Sahar would look up abruptly from reading her Qur’an and start explaining a passage she’d read. I wished she’d shut up.
She’d recline on her throne, an armchair with a gold frame, reading the Qur’an aloud in a voice that no one would describe as melodic. She read like she was a student in a classroom, manipulating some sentences to emphasize the feelings behind them while skimming over others like she’d learned and understood those long ago.
Then she’d close the book and start explaining what she’d read, but never truly explaining it. I mean, after listening to “Surit Maryam,” I waited for her to talk about Mary in relation to Sayyid the Christ and our brothers, the Christians. I’m interested in that stuff, too. But no, Sister here digressed deep into the topic of fornication and its origins instead. Everyone around us looked like they’d expected her to broach the subject, as if the day’s lecture would, naturally, be a biology lesson on “How do parents conceive?”
She even talked about positions: No taking it from the back—that’s haram. It’s haram to take it from the right. Haram by the wall. Haram under the staircase. Haram during Ramadan. And haram during “that time.”
“What time?” I asked.
“The time of menorrhoea,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She got snappish. “When you bleed from down there!”
Oh! When I’m otherwise indisposed.
She picked up her lecture: It’s haram to do it abruptly. Haram today and tomorrow, haram after watching TV, haram before Adhan, the daily prayers. Haram in the dark. Haram, haram, haram!
She mentioned halal a single time: When both husband and wife have showered, he’d lay on top of her. Afterwards, he must shower first, and then she must, before they exchange two kisses on the cheek.
God, I guess I’ve spent a lifetime having sex the wrong way. But, really, who’s still going to be in the mood after all that prep work? Even if I tried it once, why would the man want to do it again? This halal way of having sex, it’s one step short of putting a stamp of the sperm and sending it to a woman by mail.
Ha, Ahmad’s going to crack up when I tell him that.
Deciding not to contain my curiosity, I asked her about Surit Maryam. After all, if I claim to participate in a club, my contributions should make it suit me better, and me it.
Withholding questions would have the opposite effect. (Yes, another thing I learned from the French Education Center.)
I said, “Hajjah, might we discuss Surit Maryam? How do the Christians stand with us? Do we like them?”
She replied, “The prophet Mohammad said, ‘And I made you the best nation.’” And she smiled at me.
That was it? That was her answer?
I insisted. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, “that one must not be shy to speak the truth in religion, Vienna. Why are you dodging the topic of sex? We aren’t here today to discuss Christianity, and we’ve set aside Surit Maryam to talk about sex. Christianity is a religion that follows a God and came before ours, so we respect it, but we thank Allah that we’re Muslims.”
Still incomprehensible.
So I stayed quiet. I was good all through Ramadan and Eid-el-Fitr, though I was only allowed to eat during my “monthly visit.” Still, it was truly a happy holiday. I can’t remember another time when I enjoyed the holidays as much as I did that year.
I had dinner with Ahmad at a restaurant that night. I left the house wearing the hijab and came face to face with an enormous sign hanging between my balcony and that of the building facing mine. The sign read:
And we made from water every living thing
(God Almighty has spoken the truth)
It was signed “Sheikhah Sahar — President of the Sahar association of virtuous women believers.”
I almost passed out.
I was one of those “virtuous believers.”
I went straight to our evening meeting and told the Sheikhah (as she’s self-styled now, rather than Hajjah; she promoted herself to make a bigger impact) that the gigantic sign didn’t seem like something believers would exhibit, so much as a boorish display. I said no one on my street knew who she was, and most of the neighbors were Christians, anyway, despite that it was once Muslim-majority West Beirut.
Which meant her sign would mean little to them. I asked what the point of the sign was, what enlightenment she hoped to provide through it, what was the special occasion, what was her goal here? Did she see herself as a fountain of hope? The source of all that lives? An artisanal aquifer?
I also asked about the “virtuous believers” bit. Wasn’t that label rather outdated?
And how did she respond?
Smiling, she told me in a soft and steady voice, “I believe it’s time for you to change your name. Vienna isn’t the name of a believer. I’ll choose a new name for you, something modern that showcases your personality. How about Hanan, meaning compassion? It’s a cute name, and modern. What do you think? Here, I’ll say it again. Hanan, Hanan. Don’t you love it?”
The instant I removed the hijab, oxygen reached my brain again.
I felt unbound. Ahmad threw me a party to celebrate and invited his doctor friends and a bunch of women who are fans of doctors, and we danced until dawn. Then, and only then, did I sense that happiness was within my grasp.