It's summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern. Reason enough to bring summer and winter together in the August issue of Literatur.Review and publish previously unpublished or as yet untranslated stories from the north and south of our planet.

Yemeni writer and architecture professor Nadia Al-Kawkabani is the author of six short story collections: Zafrat Yasmine (2001), Dahrajat (2002), Taqashur Ghaym (2004), Nisf Anf... Shifah Wahida (2004), 'Adah Laysat Sirriyah (2012), and Al-Asfar Laysa Sponge Bob (2023).
She has also published five novels: Hubb Laysa Illa (2006), ʿAqilat (2009), Sanʿaʾī (2013), Souq ʿAli Mohsen (2016), and Hadhihi Laysat Hikayat ʿAbdu Saʿid (2024).
She was awarded the Souad Al-Sabah Prize for short stories (Kuwait, 2000) as well as the President's Prize (Yemen, 2001). In fiction, she won the Katara Prize for unpublished novels two years running, in 2023 and 2024.
Nadia Al-Kawkabani regularly takes part in literary and scientific events, both in Yemen and internationally.

Even though he knew his gesture would break her, destroy her emotions, kill in her the purest feeling a woman could know or even dream of knowing, and forever deprive her of the noblest pleasure... he didn't care. Because fundamentally, she didn't matter. She simply didn't fit into his calculations. Yet she was his daughter (but which daughter? By which wife? He didn't know. He would only remember if his memory was jogged or he was feeling particular affection for the mother). The sheikh was absorbed by other affairs, important affairs: those of the tribe, the people, the neighbourhood... As for his children, they had their attendants: servants who took care of housework, cooking and education.

The strange thing is that education mattered enormously to the sheikh. He was keen for all his children, even more so the girls, to benefit from it, dispensed by the most eminent sheikhs and the best masters of rhetoric, grammar and morphology. But when things took a different turn, and a letter of admiration addressed to his daughter landed in his hands - a letter sent by a young man whose name, face and skin colour she refused to reveal, for one simple reason: she didn't know him! - the letter was projected into her room, shot like an arrow from an invisible bow.

He never considered, even for a moment, that she might be telling the truth, even though she never went out or arrived back unaccompanied. It never occurred to him to question the maid: how the hell had that letter got there? A letter his poor daughter hadn't even read yet! Her only crime? That her name was on it, clear to see despite the crumpled paper and barely legible handwriting...

He fell into a rage, convinced there was far more behind the story. He set out in search of her: his criminal daughter, not yet ten years old! He found her in front of the house, playing with friends in the women's area. He grabbed her by the neck like an insect. She froze in surprise. She said nothing. She didn't even have time to ask a question. She didn't have time to wake from this nightmare only just beginning..,

He collapsed on her, like a mountain once thought immovable. This great body, this tribal leader, this protector of his people, fell without mercy. He searched her. He stripped her of her underwear, to verify with his own hands that she was still a virgin. That cursed hymen she knew nothing about until that moment...
(This virginity he knew so well how to tear, with ease, renewed proof of his intact virility, which neither the years nor time had scratched. Two deflowerings a year: such was the rhythm of his nuptials, with the youngest and most beautiful girls in his village and those surrounding.)

(1) Mazzayna: woman in charge of accompanying the bride into the husband's house and waiting at the door for the blood-stained cloth to be handed over to her, which she then takes back to the bride's family. This act gives rise to a ceremony known as the "cloth feast".

The poor girl... mouth wide, eyes frozen, she still hadn't understood what had happened to her! He hurriedly sent for a mazayna (1), a hymen specialist, to check again, again, and again, whether his honour had been sullied - this wretch, who already dared to love, to feel, to receive love letters - and if she had, he would have killed her, facing no judgement, not even questioning! Even her mother would not have stood in his way, being madly in love with the sheikh to the point of obsession and ready to do anything to be counted among the four permanent wives as soon as he remarried,

This same mother who had launched a mahjara (2), when the mazayna finally announced to the sheikh that her daughter was innocent, that her hymen was intact, that her sacred virginity had not been touched.
And yet, despite all these findings, the sheikh was never convinced.

(2) Mahjara: dialect form of the word "zaghrouda" (festive ululation), used mainly in the northern regions of Lebanon.

(It's hard enough to convince sheikhs of anything, especially when it comes to trivia... so imagine when it comes to the greatest of secrets, the most buried of mysteries.)
And so he decided to settle the doubt once and for all: he would marry his daughter off. And without delay. The very next day.
To whom? To one of his loyal servants, a man whose tongue he could silence if it turned out he'd been mistaken in the matter of his daughter's virginity.... or if, by chance, the mazayna had lied out of fear of punishment.

The whole tribe knew about the sheikh's daughter's wedding preparations, except her.
She'd been led, without explanation, into a carefully decorated bridal chamber. Still recovering from the shock of her father's rage, she found herself dazed all over again: locked in, alone, with a man she didn't know, whose name she'd barely heard. A man introduced as a loyal servant of the sheikh.
The bewilderment as he approached, touched her, violated her innocence! and then welcomed her tears with a hesitant compassion, before finally deciding to postpone what the sheikh was waiting for behind the door.

- Are you crazy?! Now, you idiot?!

That's how the sheikh burst into the room. He kicked in the door and ordered a rope to be brought in, for the rebel. With his own hands, he bound her wrists and ankles. He reveled in her screams, her pleas, which reached no one. He relished breaking her to the very depths of her flesh.
He forced his servant to rape her in front of him, to see, with his own eyes, the red blood flowing before his eyes.
He saw it. Finally. Gushing forth, dense, warm, from a place he imagined hidden in the innermost depths of her being.
Then, his face lit up: ecstasy, joy, relief, pride.
That famous hymen was broken at last, the very one that had obsessed him, that had exhausted him with doubt, with the uncertainty of its existence.
A burden that had weighed him down for a day and a half, ever since that cursed letter had fallen into his hands.

(3) Zaghārīd: ululations of joy uttered by women at weddings or celebrations, particularly in rural Arab societies.

Now he jumps for joy. He approaches her, embraces her: his pure, chaste, blameless daughter. He apologises for what he's done. He had to make sure she wouldn't betray him.
He apologises, while his body still trembles with fear, while his blood, hot, continues to bubble to the four corners of the tribe.
He decided to celebrate. He ordered the largest quantity of fireworks to be brought, to be exploded in the village sky, at the top of the mountain - just a stone's throw from heaven.
The zaghārīd (3) of the women rang out for half the day, until they reached the distant tribes. The shots of joy rumbled so loud they deafened the ears.
She looked at him with all the bitterness of the world frozen on her face.
But he didn't flinch.
He didn't glance once at that spitting gaze.
All that was of no importance, in the face of the immense feat of her proven virginity.

(4) Maḥrās: annexed shelter or surveillance space on a farm, common in rural settings.

In the midst of the thunderous festivities, the sheikh made a decision: to avoid further humiliation by marrying off the youngest daughter, aged eight, to one of his men. The consummation of the marriage would be postponed until she was twelve. He never wanted to bear such a worry again.

(5) Ghawāth: dialect word for a small dish, a meal taken at mid-day. As villagers eat breakfast early, the gawath falls between breakfast and lunch.

But the man to whom he had entrusted the burden of preserving the child's virginity for those four years, could not wait.
With disarming calm, the little girl went to see her father. She told him, with all the innocence of her age, that her man had taken her into the maḥrās (4) of the farm, when she had gone to bring him his ghawāth (5) of the day. There, in the dark, he had hurt her, a wound between her thighs, blood had flowed.
She hadn't seen anything. It was too dark to understand.

The sheikh searched for this traitor for a long time.
But never, never did he see his face again.

(The English adaptation is based on the French translation from Arabic by Rita Barrota.)