Princess Sultana's Daughters

Since Amani’s religious conversion, she liked
to tell people what she thought of them, never hesitating to
enumerate the immoral actions of her brother and sister, searching
endlessly for a pretext to censure her siblings.
    My son, Abdullah, was loath to fight.
Dreading Amani’s incalculable and apparently unappeasable wrath,
Abdullah, more often than not, simply ignored his sister. On the
rare occasions that Amani’s demands were simple to fulfill, he
capitulated.
    Amani did not find such agreement possible
with Maha. In her older sister, Amani was dealing with a female
whose character was at least as strong as her own, for Maha’s
violent temper had been apparent from her first breath.
    I followed the sound of my daughters’ shouts.
Several of the servants were standing in the doorway of the
kitchen, but they were disinclined to interrupt what to their eyes
was lively entertainment.
    I had to push my way into the room. I arrived
at an opportune moment. Maha, who is much fiercer than her younger
sister, had reacted violently to Amani’s latest regulation. As I
rushed toward my daughters, I saw that Maha had her younger sister
pinned on the floor and was rubbing her face into the pages of the
morning newspaper!
    It was as I had thought! Just the week
before, Amani and her religious group had come to the conclusion
that the kingdom’s daily newspapers were made holy because their
pages contained the word God, the sayings of the Holy Prophet, and
verses of the Koran. The committee had decreed that newspapers were
not to be walked upon, eaten upon, or thrown into the trash. At the
time, Amani had given notice to her family of this religious
decision, and now she had evidently apprehended Maha committing an
irreverent act, heedless of her noble instruction.
    The result had been predictable. I shouted,
“Maha! Release your sister!” Spurred on by her anger, Maha seemed
not to hear my excited command. I made a futile attempt to pull
Maha away from her sister, but my daughter was determined to teach
Amani a lesson. Since Maha was stronger than Amani and I together,
she was the victor of our three-way struggle.
    Red-faced and breathing with great effort, I
looked to the servants for assistance, and one of the Egyptian
drivers moved quickly to intervene. The man had strong arms and was
successful in separating my daughters.
    One battle always invites another. Verbal
insults replaced physical force. Maha began to curse her baby
sister, who was weeping bitter tears while accusing her elder
sister of being a non-believer.
    I proposed to mediate but could not be heard
above the mayhem. I pinched the skin on my daughters’ arms until
they were silenced. Maha stood in smoldering sullenness. Amani,
still on her hands and knees, reached to straighten the pages of
the ripped newspaper. My daughter kept her devotions to the
end!
    The causes for religious fervor are many, and
the results are endless. It occurred to me that some people appear
at their worst in their religion. Certainly, that was the case with
Amani. In the past I had felt both doubtful and hopeful that
religion could, in time, soothe rather than incite Amani. But now I
felt with dull certainty that such would not be the case.
    My patience did not equal my anger, and I led
my daughters by their ears into the sitting room. With a firm
voice, I called for the servants to leave us to ourselves. I glared
at my children, thinking ungallantly that I had made a grievous
mistake in inflicting upon the world such troublesome
characters.
    “The wailing of the newborn infant is nothing
more than a siren of warning sung for a mother,” I said to my
daughters.
    My face and glance must have made me look
like a madwoman, for my daughters’ expressions were stricken. They
held a curious respect for their mother’s moments of insanity.
    Thinking to avoid a second, larger quarrel
with three participants rather than two, I closed my eyes and took
a deep breath. Once calmed, I told my daughters that each of them
would have an opportunity to speak but that there would be no more
violence.
    Maha burst out, “Too much! Too much! Amani is
driving me insane! She will leave me alone, or...” I could see that
Maha was searching through her mind for the worst possible insult,
“I will slip into her room and rip up her Koran!”
    Amani gasped in horror at the thought.
Knowing how spirited and daring Maha could be when she was
determined, I forbade my daughter the irreverent