One day, for instance, the topic was a new marriage that had met trouble. “Not a drop of blood on the sheets,’’ said Aunt Najla, who had heard the story from one of her friends. “As there would have been if her husband had penetrated a virgin,” she added, for the benefit of the younger children. There were sad noddings; it was every decent woman’s nightmare. “Did her husband divorce her immediately?” asked Amira’s cousin, Fatima. “Did he send her back to her family?” A bride proved unvirgin could expect nothing more. “Did her brothers kill her?” asked Halla, a neighbor.

“No,” Najla replied. “She was neither divorced nor killed. Naturally, questions arose. It wasn’t a matter of money: the groom is rich and not at all miserly.” She was referring to the fact that even if the bride were not pure, her husband would still owe half of the bride-price—a large sum—to her father, but would have no wife for the expense.

The women nodded again, this time with understanding, and someone said, “I see.”

“Yes,” said Najla. “Obviously, the fault was his. Either his male member was not up to the task, or for some other reason, he would not do his husbandly duty.”

That changed everything. Now it was the woman’s right to divorce the man. Islamic law said so. Yet, this course of action presented its own problems and was rarely taken. For one thing, divorce, regardless of the reason for it, greatly diminished a woman’s prospects of making another marriage. “But what’s wrong with him?” asked Fatima.

The others groaned at her naivete. Certainly, everyone knew that normal men could not contain their lust if it were provoked; it was the whole reason women hid their faces, their hair, even their arms. “Have you never heard that there are certain men who cannot perform?” Halla demanded. “For example, some prefer boys—or even men—to women.”

“I hardly think that this is such a case,” said Najla authoritatively. “But it’s well known that otherwise normal men can sometimes become disabled, from illness perhaps, or injury—”

“Not my husband,” Halla cut in. “When he broke his leg, he was like a goat the whole time it was mending.”