*C'est la vie*! *Life*!

They're all married. Most of them. Do the 0.1% singles remaining out of my 100% friends count. Do. They're either committed or engaged. When I go visit them, their mothers ask me: “are you single?” I answer “no am Fatma (Fitèna is my how-mum-calls-me-name). Nah. I don't, but I wish I could. Too bad sometimes as such a polite-good-mannered-girl (sigh). Some grandmas call me a spinster. Am 24 years old. Hilarious really, if it wasn't so sad.

I had this friend. B was her name. We did three classes together. Form 2 (back when englishacally ignorant) up to form 4. In form 3 we get to choose our subjects. In form 4 some of us go to either science, literature or accounts sections. I was in no particular section. I took English, French, Maths – which are compulsory – Arabic, Commerce, economy, Accounts and Home Economics. What Home Economics had to do with all the other subjects, I don't know, I just loved cooking, eating and wanted to know what i shouldn't be eating in order to lose weight put on from eating the food I loved cooking. Anyways, B and me were in Home Economics together.

We used to do mock exams every two weeks to help us cope with the real exams pressure and be able to make good use of the 2 hours alloted to us to do our cooking, setting, serving and washing up. We're all assigned questions like: your mother is sick. She has a deficiency of calcium and suffer from High B. P. Prepare and serve her an appropriate breakfast. I hated those questions. I loved the ones where you're told to prepare stuff for a birthday party or a summer buffet ouvert. Those were great. You cook almost whatever you want. Home Economics was super. We had to start and end it all in two hours. Not a minute more. You lose marks if you take more time.

So, B. B once had an easy question question. She just had to prepare a meal for 4 teenagers. All she had to do was bearing in mind the fact that they were in the process of growing up etc... and needed extra proteins etc. her Time Plan (we have to submit it prior to the cooking) was fine. Our teacher said GO and we started.

I baked a cake that day. A sponge cake. Finger licking good fruit and whipped cream sponge cake. That was the dessert. For the meal I prepared a Salade de Couscous, Grilled spicy chicken, Tomato Chutney, Creamed Lentils and a fruit cocktail. My teacher beamed at me when she came over to my already set table. And I'd already done all my washing up. I went to sit and watch my fellow class mates at work.

What was B doing? I learned it soon enough. Mrs O, our teacher, started yelling at poor B. Why? Because, Miss B was still in step one of part one of first meal. She was deep frying a drumstick. You won't believe this ( even I couldn't), but this girl had been frying chicken the whole two hours and done nothing, nada, rien at all apart that. And you know what? The year after, she did not come to school. She'd gotten married during the holidays. I wonder sometimes what her husband, if he's still alive and hasn't starved to death, looks like.

I have a friend, 23 years old. She has 3 kids. Another one married at 17 and divorced the year after. Found out her hubby did drugs. She's a divorcee and she's pointed at. No one would marry her. They are like that here. And the sad thing is it was no fault of hers. She didn't chose the guy. He was imposed on her.

What sells the papers here are domestic violence issues. This one man burning his wife, that other one stabbing her to death. The last one who stabbed his wife, no longer that two weeks ago, also killed his daughter of 3 in the process. Sad.