Princess Sultana's Daughters

fabric. Then,
without warning, Lawand began to curse. She made a sudden wild leap
in the air, twisting her body in midair to face me.
    I saw that Lawand was eyeing my new pearl
necklace, and remembered too late Kareem’s warning that I should
not wear jewelry in her home.
    Lawand’s pale ascetic face, twisted in
passionate and divine conviction, awed me, and I felt the acute
danger that she posed. I quickly dug in my small bag and brought
out the Mace, warning my cousin that she should quit the room or
sit down immediately, or I would be forced to defend myself.
    Lawand’s mother began to scream and to tug on
her mad daughter’s sleeve. I braced myself for an attack when
Lawand pushed her pawing mother from her side and rushed at me,
forcing me into a small corner between a lamp and a chair.
    The worst was yet to come. Sara, who had
agreed to meet me at Lawand’s home, entered the villa at that exact
moment. I saw that she held her youngest child in her arms.
    Sara’s jaw dropped when she saw that Lawand
had cornered her youngest sister between a chair and a lamp, and
that I was holding a weapon in my hand.
    Knowing Lawand’s weakness, Sara quickly
regained her calm and subtly attempted to persuade Lawand to stop
her foolishness. For a short moment Lawand, with feline deception,
pretended to submit to Sara’s wisdom. She dropped her aggressive
stance and began to rub her hands together in a nervous manner.
    Doubting her sincerity, I yelled for Sara to
take her baby and run from the room! At the sound of my excited
voice, Lawand swung about and then, with all the fury of one who is
insane, bounded toward me with outstretched hands, making for my
pearl necklace.
    I squeezed the Mace container with both hands
and Lawand dropped to her knees. In the back of my mind, I
remembered reading that it takes double power to disable the
insane, so in my excitement, I emptied the container and maced not
only Lawand, but her mother and one sister, who had come to
Lawand’s aid.
    Lawand recovered from the Mace attack
rapidly, but had lost her will to fight.
    Her father finally realized that his daughter
needed long-term professional attention, which she received in
France, enjoying a full recovery within a year’s time.
    Lawand’s mother and sister required immediate
medical attention. The Pakistani physician summoned to treat the
women had difficulty maintaining his professional seriousness, when
informed that one royal princess had maced three other princesses
who were members of her family.
    Everyone in Kareem’s family thought I had
acted with too much haste, but I refused to let myself be crucified
for defending myself against a woman who had lost her mind, and I
told them so. Indignant, I added that instead of criticism, I
deserved their appreciation for my deed, for the event had led to
Lawand’s recovery.
    While there is a tendency among some to
dismiss my actions as those of a female of excitable emotion, I am
a woman of deadly seriousness when it comes to women’s issues.
    A wise man was once asked what was the most
difficult truth in life to uncover. His reply was “to know
thyself.” While others might harbor doubt, I know my own character.
Undeniably, I have been endowed with an overabundance of
spontaneity, and it is from this exuberance that I gain my power to
do battle against those in command of females in my land. And I can
claim some degree of success in bending the bonds of tradition.
    Now, remembering Lawand’s temporary and
unhinged obsession with unhealthy fundamentalist fervor, I attached
great significance to my daughter’s extreme infatuation with our
religion.
    While I believe in and honor the God of
Mohammed, it is my contemplative interpretation that the masses of
humanity who are engaging in loving, struggling, suffering, and
enjoying are living life as God intended. I have no desire for my
child to turn her back on the rich complexity of life and reaffirm
her future through the harsh asceticism of a militant
interpretation of our religion.
    I ran to my husband and said in a rush of
words, “Amani is praying!”
    Kareem, who was quietly reading the Koran,
looked at me as though I had finally lost all reason.
“ Praying ?” he asked, his voice tinged with disbelief at my
extreme reaction to another’s communication with God.
    “Yes!” I cried. “She is exhausting herself
with prayer.” I insisted, “Come! See for yourself!”
    Regretfully, Kareem laid his Koran on his
desk and,