“I’m telling you, the first night is decisive. You mustn’t wait until the following day. As soon as he’d climbed inside the dekhchoucha, I saw that despite his enormous height and weight, he was just a little lamb deep down. I knew he would be mine. But he was the kind of man who was bound to resist. I stared him right in the eye and forced him to lower his gaze. The rest was a piece of cake. A man who lowers his gaze will be like putty in your hands. He’s yours, and he’ll stay that way forever. There’s no need for any potions, incense, or magic scrolls. It’s just a matter of willpower. This is what my mother taught me: you just need a little almond milk and a pinch of white powder …”
“What’s the recipe for this powder then?” Fatima exclaimed. “You must take pity on our unhappiness, you can’t be the only one to be able to leave this nightmare, while the rest of us are stuck here like wet rags waiting for our husbands to come home, hoping they don’t return stinking of booze after having emptied their wallets and scrotums.”
“I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again: there’s nothing I can do for you, it’s too late to remedy the situation. You have to cut off the snake’s head on the very first night.”
“What snake are you talking about? We married men, not snakes!”
“You’re doomed … there’s nothing I can do.”
But her friends insisted and had her surrounded. “We won’t let you leave until you reveal your secret.”
“Fine, since you insist, I’m going to tell you what you should have done. You should have eaten your husband, that’s right, you should have gobbled him up and kept him inside your body forever. It’s what I did and it worked out for me. But it’s already too late in your case, I’ve told you that. Your husbands have become too leathery, tough, and uneatable. You can’t turn back time.”
“You ate him, you really ate him?”
“I did, I ate him all up. He’s right here inside me, and he only comes out when I want him to. I had no choice. It was either that, or I would have wound up being his dog, at his beck and call, so he could mercilessly exploit me or beat me up whenever he wanted. And I never would have had an orgasm either!”
“Are you planning to have children with him?”
“Not for the time being. I’ll exploit him as much as I can for now, and then we’ll see. If we have children, there’s a risk he’ll escape. At which point I’ll have to come up with another scheme to keep him completely submissive. I’ll ask my mother, who will ask her mother, but I must be quick about seeing as how she’s dying.”
A few days later, Habiba went to see her grandmother. She was over ninety years old, tiny, frail and thin, but her eyes were still sharp and bright, and she didn’t mince her words: “All men are bastards and cowards,” she told her, “they’ll make your life miserable if you don’t keep them in check. Marriage is nothing but a declaration of war celebrated with music, good food, perfumes, incense, pretty clothes, promises, songs, and so forth. There’s only one way to keep a man in check: you have to eat him.” She visualized her words by bunching her fingers and pointing to her open mouth. “Sometime you can’t do that, but you shouldn’t give up, there are other options. Your grandfather, for example, was completely uneatable. He was hard as a rock, it was impossible to swallow any part of him. So I pretended to be his slave for many months. I did whatever he wanted me to, and crawled on all fours in front of him, never refused anything he asked of me, and did anything I thought would please him. After a few years of careful training, he could only find pleasure with me. Now that’s what I call keeping a man. He never cheated on me. I’m sure of that because I hired a number of spies to keep me informed. He went from the shop to the house and from the house to the shop. He never once paid a visit to those disloyal women who cheat on their husbands. No, he was immune to that. When he was dying, he spent the whole night crying, saying he would be unhappy without me in heaven. I don’t know if God sent him to heaven, but wherever he is, I know that he’s waiting for me. I’m in no hurry to join him. I still have a few years left to live and places to see. God will surely have taught him to be patient.
“That’s the way you make a marriage work, my daughter, that’s the only way. And don’t forget that your husband will take advantage of you the moment you lower your guard. Marriage is a small war that is won through subterfuge, because when the shouting starts and you’ve run out of arguments, then it’s the beginning of the end. When I look around me, I see nothing but failures. Women cry and men triumph. It’s not fair. If everyone followed my example, that kind of thing wouldn’t happen anymore.”
Habiba had listened closely to her grandmother and had kept her lessons closely in mind. After a year of married life, however, Habiba started to get bored. She was no longer attracted to her obedient husband. Habiba only had to make a gesture and he would start to please her right away. She even started to throw up. She wasn’t pregnant, she was just fed up. A man who did whatever she wanted, was always at her mercy, and was only devoted to her was like a dish without any spices, completely devoid of surprises.
Habiba chose to act, and to make changes to the wonderful world of the women who’d eaten her husband. Her mother suggested throwing him up a little. She thought it was time for the next stage of the plan: to give him a little freedom, let him go somewhere on his own, perhaps go on some adventure, and to let him sleep with another woman to put the spark back into their relationship.
Habiba listened to her mother’s advice and spent the entire day throwing up. She felt lighter that evening. After a few days, her man was standing right in front of her, completely free, but she couldn’t bear to look at him. She wasn’t interested in him anymore. She felt better whenever he wasn’t around. She told him that he was free to leave and that she wouldn’t try to keep him anymore.
Habiba decided to gobble up another man. She set her heart on a man who had been married to one of her cousins, who was an invalid, thereby ensuring her new man would come out of a marriage that hadn’t worked. Before her death, Habiba’s cousin had told her: “I’m warning you, he’s tough. Brutal. Don’t try to swallow him on the first night, otherwise you’ll get indigestion. That’s how I got sick. Trust me, take care!”
But Habiba’s legendary beauty triumphed over that young man and overcame his resistance. She ate him up, turned him into her plaything, and did whatever she liked with him. Other women followed her example and that’s how the tribe of man-eaters was born. Ever since then, peace has prevailed in this country where the swallowed men no longer have a say.
After a moment’s silence, Imane burst out laughing, as did the captain.
“Did you really hear that story at the hammam?” he asked her, “I actually think you made it up yourself. You should write it down, work on it and turn it into a novel. I’m sure it would be very successful.”