Ula

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I am Ula of the smashed face.

I live in the house that belonged to my husband – my man of yesterday – next to the temple. A place of great dignity here in the village. I grind spelt and wheat. I am not comely, but I grind more spelt than any other woman. My face is flattened on the right. Two fingers are missing in my left hand, from the bite of a rabid dog. A minor bite, but I almost died from the infection, even though I covered my hand every day with fresh leaves from the medicinal plants, harvested at dawn. Flies tormented my wound that would not heal, my mind was confused and I had dreams, day and night. My father decided to cut, and in a few days the fever went away. Today I hold the grinder with only three fingers. But they say that my eyes are the most beautiful of the whole village, and this is a big village: there are two thousand of us, even more during the harvest. My eyes are green, light, almost yellow. With my crooked face and my yellow eyes, when I’m angry I look like an evil spirit; men are afraid of me. My man of today is afraid of me. He is a man of the south, a sturdy half-dwarf with curly beard and short legs, a frog-shaped torso and no hair on the head. He resembles our mighty god Baal when he decides to take on the beastly semblance of Bes. Bes, who watches over childbirth. Bes, that never protected me.
I do not think badly of my man of today because his body lacks beauty – I am not beautiful either  – but because of his evil soul. His people have killed the men of my family. They killed all the males of the village and took the women. The strongest, the bravest, chose the most beautiful of us. I, among the last, was given to him.

He, my man of today,  did not kill our men. When these people attacked us, he was ordered to remain behind to guard the ship. There were others to kill my father, my man of yesterday, and my son. It is only for this reason that I decided not to kill him with my bare hands while he is sleeping. But his people are guilty.

My man of yesterday was beautiful. He had mixed blood, his father was a merchant of the people of the Phoenix and his mother came from the Island of Crete. I loved watching his body. When carrying weight or drawing the bow his muscles moving under the skin filled me with desire. Nu-hut, my man of yesterday, a good and strong man, was the most beautiful male in the village. How did it happen then that he married me? He liked me. For an incredible gift of the goddess Tanit, he found my body desirable, my smell intoxicating and I could often see the desire of my flesh ignite his eyes, black as the volcano stone.
Nu-hut was not afraid of me. He said I was beautiful, and that a distorted cheek did not dim the splendor of my eyes and the magnificence of my body. He said it just like that, the magnificence of my body. Only he and my mother have ever called me beautiful. But mothers, we know, they only say the good.

My face was flattened at the time of birth. My mother was a strong and courageous woman, but small of bone and body. I was her first and only daughter. Her womb was not made to generate. When my head began to press between her legs, I ripped her and caused pain. The umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck.
Trying to save me the women pulled and crushed. My mother was ill, and I crippled in the face. They say that in the beginning I was much more distorted, flat at the top of the head. The priest kept my head bound for six months. A strong and healthy girl, who had just given birth to a son, was nursing me. Treatment fit for a queen.

My man of yesterday was a noble man, and my child had already been presented to the village, he had an identity and a name, Thmos. And for this reason both had a right to lie with honor in the underground tomb intended for our people, with the effigy of Tanit, upside down, guiding the soul in the Nether World, but both were dragged by foreigners to the other side of the hill, and burnt without ceremony along with all the other corpses. I recovered their remains and have them hidden in a niche, and I have prepared them for the other world. A coin under the tongue, to pay the entrance door to the afterlife, and the two jars: one with water and one with perfumed oil. I put the earring in my son’s ear, and the bronze bracelet that protected the wrist of my man, when drawing the bow and shooting the arrow.

The mother of my man of yesterday, the Greek, was a soothsayer and a healer. She taught me to gather herbs, and I learned from her to prepare the medicine and the ability to dream.
I dreamed the moment of her end, in Crete. I dreamed her in fever, drenched on an outdoor couch, muttering incomprehensible prayers with eyes wide open toward the full moon, the last she would see. Two months later, a merchant announced that she was indeed dead.
The night before foreigners invaded the village killing our men, I dreamed that the dog that had bitten my hand silently penetrated into the city, in the moonlight. He drank from a bowl full of blood and his dirty muzzle smeared the walls of our village with blood.

I dreamed of the inhabitants of the marshes and understood why we do not suffer from malaria. I saw the shape of man’s body, I explored its inside, I realized in my dream its secret and invisible work. The body is like a village, a village in the shape of a man, made up of houses, a multitude of tiny houses. The houses of the body of my people have very thick and strong walls, stronger than those of other men who live far from here. Bad influences do not penetrate them. It is fortunate for us. But, I have seen, many good influences do not penetrate as well. So our blood is poor. Many of us get sick.

I dreamed of a third dream. I saw the body of my man of today. I saw that his houses have thin and weak walls. His blood is not as poor as ours. He is a strong man, in fact, can lift huge stones, he is a skilled boatman and if something falls out of the boat can swim to the bottom of the sea to retrieve it. But the walls of the houses of his body are thin. Bad influences can penetrate easily. And so in my dream I knew that when he turns to me in lust I have to get him away, take him to the swamp, and only there satisfy him. There it is full of small aquatic animals, insects and larvae able to break the little houses of his body and soil his blood. He is not protected like us, and one of these days, soon, he will die. I have dreamed of that moment.

(Inspired by a primitive skull seen in a museum. A Sardinian woman, suffering from osteoporosis and anemia).