From Paysage Maure by Paule Valette, éditions Terre du Ciel
To open this chapter on women is, without a doubt, to run the risk of meeting head-on the most widespread prejudices, summed up in one peremptory, unnuanced sentence: Islam enslaves women. And yet I meet quite as many fulfilled women in Mauritania as in France. Perhaps because, being very realistic, the former do not ask one man to be at once companion, friend, parent, child, lover, husband, and so on, and because they have the art of making the most of what they have — which, on closer inspection, is a great freedom, provided one is not taken in by the male verb and the billowing of rustling boubous. It even seems to me that Mauritanian society is at a matriarchal stage of its evolution. I would venture that this society "feels" itself, apprehends itself, in this way through seemingly trivial facts.
One has the feeling that women are present everywhere; they have their own ministry for women's affairs; women serve as ministers, teachers or heads of institutions. Even the festivities seem reserved for their use, not for the men's.
The baptism, for example, is a feminine moment par excellence, and two thirds of the wedding ceremonies are lived among women only; the men take part only for the wedding nights. It is moreover an established fact that nothing in daily life brings spouses together. The separation of the sexes is total, each living with their own kind — men among men, women among women; they come together to spend the night. Mauritanian women are very free in their comings and goings and gather whenever they wish for endless chats over tea. In everyday life, if a young woman wants to attend a wedding and her own husband does not know the groom, or is younger than that man, the husband cannot — socially speaking — accompany his wife to the ceremony. It is not his concern and, for reasons of propriety, of social code, he must stay at home. His wife will go to the celebration alone.
Conversely, if it is a friend of the husband whose wedding is being celebrated, whatever his age, and even if the groom and his bride are complete strangers to her, the young woman may accompany her husband without any problem. Society fully accepts that a woman should go out to enjoy herself without her husband's presence; it does not, however, accept that a man might go out without his wife.
In the same way, a woman can say to her husband: "It's the holidays, I would like you to buy plane tickets. I want to leave with the children." The husband complies even if he himself does not go, held back by his professional obligations. The wife travels alone and it is no problem for either of them.
The reverse, however, is impossible. A man cannot say: "I am tired, I feel like taking a few days on my own." Either he must give up going, or he must take his wife. The weight of custom is considerable, and that is that: a man does not travel alone for pleasure.
Of course, a superficial glance at the buzzing salon might suggest a segregation of women; nothing of the sort — it is a humming beehive where each woman speaks her mind, the conversations are very free indeed and the sharing of experiences is punctuated with fits of laughter; one does not feel surrounded by muzzled persons reduced to the state of objects.
At bottom, the Mauritanian woman does not have a fusional image of the couple she forms with her husband, but shows great pragmatism — and one could speak, without seeking to provoke, not of women's rights but rather, here, it seems to me, of men's! For inside the house he does not seem to have many, and his own wife hardly appears to attend to him. Because of that famous cultural code, she must let none of the positive feelings she may harbour show in public. Disdain, offhandedness — yes. He comes home weary from work, weighed down with worries and responsibilities? She must play detached, not see his fatigue, and call for someone to bring him something refreshing: Zrig!
When an old woman is told that such-and-such a young girl is to marry, her first question, suddenly anxious: "She is not in love, at least?" — which means not that she wishes for a total absence of feeling, but that it would be a touch vulgar to reveal said feelings by appearing eager; such an attitude would be very badly perceived.
Affection, attachment — the man has the duty to demonstrate them; the woman does not: she need only let herself be courted. "A man is an animal you keep on a leash," a beautiful young woman, sure of her power, told me.
From time immemorial, mothers' talk to their daughters has been the same, and has induced behaviour one might call flighty, even capricious: "A man is an ornament for a woman: he pleases you, he is handsome, he suits you? Keep him; the day he becomes soiled in your eyes, throw him away."
Other testimonies are less categorical, and a whole range of behaviour exists in Mauritania too. True, in some couples the wife still has no say. But at the same time, some husbands and wives have made alternating responsibilities and mutual support their goal. Generally, the man has no right to raise his voice at home, for if he happens to speak too loudly, his wife may leave him on the spot and return to her family. She may indeed threaten to leave on the flimsiest pretext: to obtain a present, for example — for the Mauritanian woman seems a little... self-interested. Depending on the man's material means, it may be no more than a simple jewel, but sometimes it is a house or a car — blackmail, of course, but also a way of checking that she still has the upper hand; the husband must answer favourably if he wishes to keep his wife.
And if, despite everything, the wife leaves for her family's home, then her husband must follow her, thus keeping a slim chance that the quarrel will not degenerate further. If she leaves and he does not follow, all is broken; it becomes a scandal and divorce is systematic. "Give us back our daughter's neck," the son-in-law is told, in allusion to the animal held by a rope tied around its neck. If it is the husband who refuses to divorce, he is mocked: "She no longer loves him, he clings on — he is not even a man"; and if, once divorced, he fails to provide the money needed for his children's upkeep, he signs his own social death warrant; no family will ever again allow him to court their daughter, for what he did to one — proof of his stinginess — he may do to another: abstain. Women want money for themselves and for their own family.
People divorce a great deal in Mauritania, and it is very often the woman who asks and obtains satisfaction without difficulty. These successive divorces are, moreover, the signature of her charm. The more she marries, the more irrefutable the proof of her seductiveness. She is indomitable.
From childhood, little girls hear the same formative discourse: "Always try to work everything out with your husband." It is better, indeed, for the family to be kept away from certain things it could not bear and which would bring about the irreparable. "But there are three things you must not tolerate under any circumstances:
- Your husband speaks to you in a tone other than courtesy and begins, for example, to remark on a badly placed beauty spot or your nose being a little too straight (or too flat). If he no longer sees you with the same eyes, it is because he wants to separate. Do not insist!
- Money — the Mauritanian woman always needs it: he has money and does not give you enough? No point in staying with him.
- He is unfaithful? Do everything so that he is not, but if he is, pack your bags and leave. If he has deceived you once, he will do it again."
The only point against which the woman can oppose nothing is the divorce demanded by the husband, which can come without warning. He announces "that he divorces her"; still married in the morning, by noon she may be divorced, since the procedure is reduced to a minimum: a letter. Islam does, however, recommend not divorcing a woman before she has recovered from childbirth. The man may perfectly well divorce and remarry within the same week. The woman, for her part, may only remarry after the expiry of the three-month waiting period.