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Translated from Arabic by Roger Allen
An American cowboy movie has just arrived! It's tonight at the outdoor cinema. Don't miss it, folks!" Wardiyya asked the taxi driver to catch up with the pickup truck carrying a huge advertisement for a John Wayne movie. It was driving along the streets, passing cafés, markets, and barbershops. The truck driver's voice boomed from a loudspeaker, announcing the new screening and tempting boys and men in the city to spend an entertaining evening with horses, pistols, and bows and arrows. She caught up with the truck and signaled it to stop. The man knew her and got out to see what she wanted.
"Everything okay, doctor?"
"Hello, my dear. Here's a quarter dinar. Please, I'd like you to go around in your truck and use the loudspeaker to announce the opening of a new birth clinic at the hospital. It's clean and safe, and a female doctor from Baghdad's in charge."
The fact that she was a doctor from the capital would not be enough to get people to trust her. Every milieu has its own set of symbols and every lock has a particular key. For the women of this city the key involved the pocket of Shadhra the Elwiyah. She would have to visit that woman and obtain her blessing. Without that, sick women would never come and see her and allow her to treat their illnesses or help them with their births. After all, she was a stranger from Baghdad; not only that, she wasn't a Muslim.
Shadhra the Elwiyah was a remarkable woman. Her looks were probing, her words pure rose water, and her prayers balsam for the soul. The respect she was held in was derived from her religious name, Elwiyah, which showed that she was descended from the family of Prophet Mohammed. There may have been many women called Elwiyah, but she was the one who had a huge reputation in the city and the neighboring countryside. Her hands were blessed, and no problem was too difficult for them to handle. She would read Quranic verses over the heads of babies, break up magic spells, and write charms to make desires come true. Every new female administrator in their entire region had...