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they were ripe. Once, by mistake, I picked a green tomato. I haven’t forgotten it, that tomato! I often think about it now in my kitchen. It was half yellow and half red and was beginning to ripen. I had thought about hiding it when I brought it back to the house, but it was already too late, my father had already arrived. I knew that I shouldn’t have picked it but I was working too fast with both hands. Because I was expected to work very fast, my movements were mechanical, my fingers turned around the tomato plant, left right left right down to the bottom. And the last one, the one that had received the least sun, was in my hand before I knew it. And it was there, very visible in the basin. My father shouted: “You fool! You see what you’ve done? You picked a green tomato! Majmouma! ” He struck me and then he crushed the tomato over my head and the seeds fell on me. “Now you’re going to eat it!” He crammed it into my mouth and he rubbed my face with the rest of the tomato. I’d thought that an unripe tomato might be eaten, but it was acid, very bitter, and smelled bad. I was forced to swallow it. I couldn’t eat anything after that because my stomach was upset. But he pushed my head into my plate and made me eat my meal, almost like a dog. He had me by the hair. I felt sick but I couldn’t move. My half sister made fun of me and laughed. She received such a slap that she spit out what she had in her mouth and started to cry. The more I said my head hurt the more he persisted in crushing my face into the semolina. He emptied the whole plate and made little balls of semolina that he forced into my mouth, he was that enraged. Then he wiped his hands on a napkin, threw it at my head, and went and calmly settled himself in the shade on the veranda. I wept as I cleaned off the platter. I had food all over my face, my hair, and in my eyes. And I swept up as I did every day to pick up the tiniest grain of semolina that had escaped my father’s hand.
    Even though for years I forgot events as important as the disappearance of one of my sisters, I never forgot this green tomato, and the humiliation of being treated as less than a dog. And to see him there calmly sitting in the shade, napping like a king after my almost daily thrashing, was the worst of all. He was the symbol of an enslavement that was taken for granted, that I accepted, bending my back and lowering my head under the blows, like my sisters and my mother. But today I understand my hatred. I would have wished him to suffocate in his head scarf.
    This was everyday life. Toward four o’clock, we brought out the sheep and the goats until sunset. My sister walked beside the ones at the head of the flock, and I always took the rear position with a cane to move the animals along and especially to scare the goats. They were always agitated, ready to take off anywhere. Once we were in the field there was a little tranquility because it was only us and the flock. I would take a watermelon and tap it on a stone to open it. We were afraid of being caught when we returned because our dresses were spotted with sugar juice. We would wash them on ourselves in the stable before our parents saw us. Since it wasn’t possible to take off the dresses, it was lucky they dried very fast.
    The sun would take on a special yellow and then fade on the horizon, the sky changing from blue to gray. We would have to return before nightfall, and since night came very quickly, we had to move as fast as the sun, scurry close to the walls, and then the iron door would clang shut on us again.
    When it was time to milk the cows and the sheep, a big milk can was put under the cow’s belly, and I sat on a stool almost at ground level. I would take a cow’s hoof and squeeze it between my legs so the animal wouldn’t move and so the milk wouldn’t go anywhere but into the bucket. If there was a puddle of milk on the ground, even a few drops, it would mean trouble for me! My father would