With unwavering confidence in the result of my test, I stood before the lab technician. Ever since that particular night, I’d felt an entire universe taking shape inside my womb. In my dream, I’d seen my child, tall and clear-skinned. He approached me, gently stroked my hair, and kissed my forehead. After five years of trying, and failing, to get pregnant, as bitter as gall, I was sure it had worked this time. I folded the lab report and placed it in my purse pocket, which I carefully zipped up.

Shortly afterward, I stepped into the family house. Once inside the hallway, I let out a celebratory zaghrouta that left me breathless. I needed a cold glass of water to bring back my voice. The women of the family swarmed around me, question marks in their eyes. Standing in the center of the hall, I announced, “I’m pregnant!” Their voices joined in unison, letting out an extended zaghrouta that shook the roof and caused the neighbors to open their windows. Celebratory ululations slipped out of every house and soared into the sky over our alley. I wondered if every woman living here was pregnant.

One of the women pulled up a chair and offered me a seat. I felt a strong urge to stretch out my feet in front of them, coupled with a desire to be coddled. I asked another woman to bring me the coffee table so I could put my feet up. She dashed into the living room and brought it. I lifted my legs and gently rested them on the table. A mug of fresh milk with a heart-shaped handle was slipped into my right hand, and a wet washcloth into the other. Hope and eagerness filled their gazes as some of them patted their own abdomens.

Ensconced in my seat, reclining, I took a nap for an hour to rest my weary head. But when I got up, I found myself lying in a bed that wasn’t mine, a quilt covering my body, and a woman sitting at my feet, daydreaming.

The next day, my pregnant belly began to jut out. I left the bedroom, and the women were gathered in the big hall. A stout woman approached me and, wagging her index finger, ordered me to sit in a wheelchair. “From now on, no moving. Rest, rest, rest.” A weird bliss overtook me; I smiled at her.

The women served me all types of food, things I recognized and things I didn’t. They fed and pampered me, wiped the soup droplets off my face, brushed my hair, and dressed me in new clothes and slippers.

My pregnant belly grew even bigger. The women made me dessert, then they sat down to watch my belly as the fetus moved around in my womb. They clapped whenever it stirred, and—to my surprise—one of them whistled so sharply and perfectly that I suspected she wasn’t a woman at all.

For two whole days, they debated the name of my baby-to-be. The women on my right preferred grandiose, traditional names, while those on my left preferred modern, melodious ones. I asked them to hurry up and settle their dispute or the baby would come into the world nameless, and then we would be utterly confused.

They got nowhere, and this aggravated me. The two sides averted their eyes from each other, each pampering part of my body and caressing half of my pregnant belly. I was baffled. After they all fell asleep, one of them whispered, “They want to suggest two names for your baby.”

“What!”

“Your baby would go by two names.”

Horrified, I pretended to be asleep in the wheelchair, so they put me to bed with two quilts over my body and two pillows under my head. “How on earth would my child go by two names?” I kept asking myself.

The next morning, after a deep sleep, I woke up to find them hovering at my bed, with sticks and brooms in hand and soft towels draped around their necks. I got out of bed. My pregnant belly was heavy and huge, and the fetus’s kicks pained me. None of them offered me a seat, nor was I given my morning mug of fresh milk. They just left me standing there. One woman approached: “What’ve you decided?”

“What do you mean?” I raised my eyebrows.

“The baby’s name,” she replied, her tone firm.

I hesitated and then told her my choices for a boy and a girl.

“No!” She was furious.

“We already said no. Those names are archaic,” the stout woman on my left objected.

“They’re wonderful!” The skinny woman on my right shot back. “Just as good as our ancestors’ names! They echo our glorious heritage!”  

Immediately, the first woman swung her stick at the other’s face, and soon all the women raised their sticks and brooms into the air. A brawl broke out: high-pitched voices, screams, injured women falling at my feet.

A sharp pain pierced me, and I let out a loud shriek that forced its way onto the battlefield. The fighters turned their faces toward me in unison, but then returned to their fighting. A warm liquid trickled down my leg. I pulled my dress up slightly and discovered a viscous red liquid seeping out and flooding the ground under the fighters’ feet. They were splashing in it, a chaos of red that stained everything.

I waited for the baby to come out, but it didn’t. So I reached down to pull it out, but I found nothing. I shook my pregnant belly, which shrank and swayed from side to side, as light as a balloon. I dragged one of the fighters off the battlefield and asked her to help me grope around for my baby.

“What are we looking for?” she asked, shaking her head.

“The baby,” I replied pathetically.

“Which baby?” she asked, indifferent. 

“Mine.” I wept, and pointed at my abdomen.

The cold-blooded woman gave me a scornful look and returned to the fight.