It was an honor no family could refuse. So at the age of thirteen she became part of a harem.
Life was good in many ways. Plenty of food. She was given little balls of dough to eat continually to make her larger, softer.
Her new shared husband wasn't much. Older. Bald. Bad teeth. Somewhat distracted.
She joined the younger wives in jeering at him as he passed the pierced windows of the women's compound.
There was much talk of sex. Ways of pleasing and being pleased. But their old husband remained inert.
``He wants boys only,'' one said.
``I think he wants nothing,'' said another.
She was bathing one morning when one of the older wives joined her.
``It is possible,'' the older woman whispered, ``to live an eventful life. A woman has much freedom - if she is discreet.''
And the girl learned the careful pleasures of a hidden life.
And in her new life she often saw her husband and her father and her brothers and she mocked them with vile expressions and gestures hidden within her chador.
True, once as she walked in the moonlight a gold bangle reflected brightly through the thin material of her chador and her husband, drinking tea with friends, experienced a subconscious start of recognition for the bangle he had given her, but it did not surface to his conscious mind.