Chronicle of a Bedouin Girl

              Anita Steckel. Pierced, 1970 

The other day I dreamt that I was 12 years old. I was playing with the boys of the neighbors and we made noise. We laughed, smiled, and yelled; maybe we also scratched each other’s faces like jealous cats fighting for their territories! The story is closed on us, happily smiling and see-sawing. Another story begins with mom’s calling me louder and louder to come back home! “I should no longer play with the boys because now I am old”, she said in an imposing tone.


“I am old, I am old, I am old”, I breathed. At first, the argument went in one ear and out the other. Yet, Sooner I learned my lesson! I have my periods! But then, what does that mean to the teenager I am, to the little girl I was? Doesn’t this mean I am getting pregnant because we shook hands, eyes and balls?


Yet, not sole in her belief, my mother has deep-rooted fears of rape, loss of virginity and illicit and unwanted pregnancy. For her, the alarm rung to begin the armament of her girl! And that had different ways!


Though very grueling, my first menstrual cycle was not as tough as the inner feelings of cruelty and oppression I felt and which were no doubt more tiring and torturous!


That is the encroaching verdict of an entire masculine society. It is cruel how a girl’s present and future become dependent on, reduced to her periods! Not only does it assassinate her potentials of a self confident and self-determining girl, but also it blurs at once the child evolving into an almost silent female voice riding away from her likely wonderlands, off to where dreams turn into unattainable imaginings.


Under patriarchy and masculine culture, female puberty is commodified, exploited and toughened. Instructing female biological and physiological difference may risk to undo the young female sense of security and fortitude. Thinking of themselves as mere preys to a unique and ultimate foe does not intensify these girls’ future growth or imminent movement towards agency and empowerment. To these girls, it cannot bring any possible agency. It only keeps them struck and bamboozled in the yoke of both predator and prey.


Ever since, this has colored my own primal perception of sex/gender and representation of what is social coercion. I understood that gender roles are biologically determined. I was afraid that these biological differences would provide boys/men with much power and domination over girls/women. By now, I begun thinking that I had to be hostile to boys and men. Hostile even to my periods which were by excellence my worst guest! My periods are but the Scarlet Letter A on Hyster Prynne‘s breast in The Scarlett Letter.


But could I have felt more confident if I was taught otherwise? Would it have changed my fears of rape, reconsidered my notions of gender, reshaped my views of sex? Would it have turned the tide and made of me much more in harmony with me!


It is 6: 00 am. I wake up twenty years later, a Tunisian woman all in tune with my body, my periods and my past.


Yesterday I heard lots of women’s ululations in the neighborhood. Living close to my family- in law, I rushed to my sister-in law to know more about the seemingly joyful happening. Surprisingly enough, it is revealed that they are celebrating a young daughter’s fasting for Ramadan. I was rooted to the spot, for never did I expect such answer. Otherwise stated, they are ceremonializing the girl’s first periods or menarche. What was a grey moment of cloudy percepts and shame to me in my home village, has turned out to be a ritual of joy and worship of the body in here.


Indubitably, the young girl’s construction of her gender/sex identity is going to be unleashed upon other socio-geographical and cultural legacies. The ululations are getting louder as I am interpenetrating this new culture where in gender stereotypes are likewise forced onto children.






07:40 am. I am thinking about my own daughter who is 7 months and now is craving for my breast.