Yesterday I visited one of my neighbors, Mrs. Sitting Bull, for the first time since lockdown began. When we were younger, we were closer friends because her three sons used to play with mine. Up until the university, they would also come over to my house if they needed help with their homework. (The Sitting Bulls had not made it past the eighth grade.) In exchange, my children would visit her apartment when they had arts-and-crafts projects, which were usually beyond my understanding.
Now that our children are all grown up, we are still friends, but we see each other less. Still, I wished to discover how she and Mr. Sitting Bull had weathered confinement. Some of us are blinking our eyes as we gradually emerge from our coronavirus cocoons into the sunlight whereas others still cling to their cloistered existence. I had not seen her, not even in the grocery store line, and I was wondering how she had been affected by the pandemic.
When I was ushered into the living room by Mr. Sitting Bull, I found her sitting in her reclining chair. Apparently, on 15 March, she had solemnly placed her prodigious hindquarters on the seat of her chair and had not left it for the next three months. In fact, she still has not gotten up from her armchair (except to go to the toilet during the day or to bed in the evening).
For three months, she has not ventured outside, not even for a waddle during the exercise shift for the elderly. The grocery store has sent all of her purchases up to her. She still believes that evil virus hordes are lurking outside waiting to attack her. So, she continues to staunchly defend herself against them from her living room chair. She seems rather proud of the fact that she has barely moved during all this time, and thus has not provided the viruses with a moving target.
The only great risk that she had taken was to ask a hairdresser (wearing protection equipment) to come to her home to cut and dye her hair. Her coronavirus look made her feel deeply depressed. Grey roots were a fate worse than death, and she wished to be buttercream blonde again.
For the last three months she has spent her day doing crossword puzzles and gazing at the video intercom to monitor who goes in and out of the building. For this reason, she knew more about me than I knew about her.
I amiably told her that I would continue traveling on my highway to Hell, and hope for the best. I asked her if she had stepped on the scale lately because she seemed somewhat heftier than usual (and she had been fairly large before confinement). If she were not more careful, her sedentary lifestyle might very well kill her before the virus did.
Eternally sitting in one’s armchair is a high-risk occupation and infinitely more dangerous than touching the elevator button or going across the street to buy fish. Couch potatoes generally suffer from obesity, heart disease, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and a long list of etcetera.
In her case, her armchair existence during the pandemic had caused her to gain at least 10 kilos (22 pounds). Her ankles and knees were also very swollen because of poor circulation, but she did not want to go to the doctor because going outdoors was dangerous, and any medical consultation would doubtlessly be infected with viruses of all types. She also did not wish the doctor to tell her that she should lose weight.
In contrast, Mr. Sitting Bull had lost the kilos that his wife had gained. He has been doing all the buying, cooking, and cleaning because she has sworn off all exercise for the foreseeable future. Since he can no longer go out for long walks and stop for tapas along his route, he rides the stationary bicycle, which was originally a gift to his wife and which she has never used.
Throughout the day, he lovingly serves his wife huge trays of food as she sits immobile on her throne. She accepts these edible tributes of his devotion and slowly consumes them as he watches her ingestion with delight. If she did not eat, he would worry that her health was failing. For them, eating has become the new sex.
This whole scenario reminded me of leblouh, an ancient custom that still persists in Mauritania, northern Mali, and rural Nigeria. All of these areas were conquered, along with half of present-day Spain and Portugal, by the Almoravid dynasty in the 11th century.
Leblouh involves overfeeding girls to fatten them so that they will gain prestige and stature in their communities, especially in the eyes of eligible men. In this society, heavy girls are the most beautiful whereas their slimmer counterparts are a source of shame to their families.
The goal is to weigh at least 80 kilos (almost 180 pounds) by the age of thirteen or so. In order achieve this objective and thus attain true beauty, girls are expected to follow a daily diet of red meat, egg-sized balls of oily couscous mixed with crushed dates and peanuts (around 300 calories each) along with vaious pints of goat or camel milk and gruel. If this does not work, some may even take pills to make them fatter.
Women are also taught to sit in the lotus position, speak softly, use utensils, and to emulate the exemplary lives of the Prophet Muhammad's wives. The desire to be corpulent is heightened by the fact that a woman's size supposedly indicates the amount of space she occupies in her husband's heart.
Historians say that leblouh dates back to pre-colonial times when the white Moor Arabs of these regions were nomads. The richer the man, the less his wife had to do. The preference was for her to sit still all day in her tent while her slaves saw to household chores. Members of that society believed that men with large wives were rich because they could afford to feed them well. A woman’s girth was a symbol of her husband’s wealth.
Even today this practice continues in the form of fattening rooms or centers. Wealthy grooms may ask prospective brides to attend a fattening room for six months previous to the wedding. After eating prodigious amounts of food, the bride takes a bath, then sleeps, eats, and sleeps again. This ultimately results in a dramatic change in body shape, much to the delight of her husband. Rich husbands require particularly large wives, who do honor to their status.
Mrs. Sitting Bull also seems to have a few Almoravid genes because in Times of Coronavirus, she has now become an African beauty queen. The pandemic has transformed her apartment into a fattening room. She has become the ideal mate for a Nigerian Prince because her weight now exceeds the African beauty threshold by at least 20 kilos. She is a permanent presence in her living room and the center of gravity around which all domestic life revolves.
This is evident in the culinary delights that Mr. Sitting Bull creates for her though as yet he has not served her any camel's milk. If not representative of great wealth, her size indicates that she holds a very large place in her husband’s heart.
