The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  The next day, Nawdar plays with his beloved Zara. Playtime ranges from more intellectual pastimes, like having her remember where a certain playing card lies among many spread out on the floor, to more physical activities, like tag or hide and seek. Sometimes Nawdar plays at being Zara’s horse to ride, and the game she loves most is the floor game of sheep and wolves, where two black stones represent the wolves and twenty white ones represent the sheep. She loves being the wolves, trying to eat the sheep before they surround her. And the few times her father’s white stones surround her black stone, he surrounds her with his large, warm arms.

  Zara so loves her father. He can do anything and shares these things with her. She says to him, “Mama says she is so blessed to have you. Zara says Zara is so blessed to have you.” And Nawdar puts his warm hands on her cheeks, kisses her softly on her forehead, and gives his little Zara a big, warm bear hug. It is these hugs that Zara will remember with the greatest fondness throughout her life. That is, until one day.

  After lunch is Maryam’s time to take Zara for a hike into the hills. Because the mountains are the Kurds’ only friend, Maryam fears Zara needs to know mountains, know them well enough to save her one life one day. Zara, the happy child that she is, runs, and skips, examines every plant, every butterfly, and sings with each bird. And when her two-year-old engine runs low on oil, they stop and rest.

  As she does each and every day, Maryam sits and talks with her precocious Zara. For Zara, with a working vocabulary of maybe eighty to ninety words, is advanced for her age, and she will surprise her mother each day with something new that she says. Zara repeats a simple Sufi poem from her great-grandfather, which her mother has taught her. Maryam then recites some of her own favorite poems from Rūmī, the great thirteenth-century Sufi poet, scholar, and mystic. She whispers to Zara not to tell her great-grandfather that Mama likes Rūmī’s poetry more than his. Zara loves it when her mother plays these “don’t tell anyone” games. She senses her special place in her mother’s heart.

  And though Maryam recognizes that Zara is too young to understand, she is committed to drilling a specific line of thought into her at the earliest possible age. And so she tells Zara of her deepest wish for her happiness, her wish that she will one day find a husband as good and kind as her father. Maryam pledges that, as her mother, she will do everything within a woman’s power to ensure that Zara has a compassionate, loving husband. Maybe she will have her own choice. If not, then Maryam will do everything a woman is permitted to see that an arranged marriage is with someone who is caring and loving, and most importantly, someone who respects Zara. And Maryam adds her corollary wish, “I hope you have a child who is as good as you are,” after which she kisses Zara and they spin around and around and around like her grandfather and her great-grandfather. She and Zara pray together.

  And so every day, every month, every year of Zara’s childhood is spent this way. Although she is too young at two to fully comprehend, these moments are what mark the close relationship she will have with her mother by the time Zara becomes a young woman.

  After dinner, when Zara is in bed, Nawdar confides in Maryam about a letter he has received from his brother, who lives towards the east. The letter speaks with graphic and violent detail about how the villages around him were attacked and completely destroyed by the Baathists, who first sent airplanes to bomb the villages, then helicopters to shoot what was left, and then the armies to gather, shoot, or take to torture camps any survivors. The leaders of the Kurdish community have heard that this is called the Anfal Campaign, where the Arab majority intend to exterminate the Iraqi Kurds like they were insects. His brother intends to join the Peshmerga, the military arm of the Iraqi Kurds, to fight back.

  Maryam, having listened to the part about killing hundreds of women and children, and having heard the horrible, just horrible rumors of what happened to women in those torture camps, expresses how frightened she is for herself, Zara, and their unborn child. But even more, she fears for her Nawdar, as she knows that the police or soldiers could come at any moment and take him away on some false charge to be tortured, maimed, and maybe killed. Nawdar takes her into his arms as she cries and cries and cries.

  When her tears subside a bit, he tells her that tomorrow she should pack two bags with the bare necessities in case they need to flee. He describes where in the nearby mountains they should go for safety, over an hour’s fast hike away. He says that tomorrow, as she plays with Zara, he will go into town and search for gas masks, as his brother told him of many villages that were subjected to this barbarity, which was supposed to have been banned after Europe’s first Great War. Hearing this, Maryam cries and cries and cries. Nawdar carries her to the bedroom, where she can cry herself to sleep.

  The next day, Sunday, Nawdar has a shortened session with Zara, but not without the warm hands on the cheeks, the kiss to the forehead, and the big warm bear hug. Maryam engages in her usual routine with Zara, this time sitting only minutes up the hill near their home. After the terrifying discussion with her beloved husband, she feels compelled to add to her daily teachings with her dear Zara. She says to her today, after the future husband discussion, “You are a very special girl, Zara. In you is a woman of great inner beauty, wisdom, and strength. Never forget this, and never let anyone or anything make you feel or believe otherwise. Say, ‘Inside I am strong, beautiful, and wise.’”

  Somewhat confused, little Zara replies, “I am wise, strong, and beautiful, Mama. What does this mean, Mama?”

  Smiling at her most precious girl, Maryam replies, “For now, say, ‘I have beauty within, Mama.’”

  In her superbly cute voice, Zara says, “I have beauty within, Mama. I do. I do. I do.”

  “Zara, if you say that every day of your life, you will always be pretty inside,” says an endeared Maryam. “Zara, if you say that every day of your life, you will always be pretty,” says an endeared Maryam. “Dear Zara, I hope that your world is one of peace. Zara, I hope that you will be a leader of peace in your time.” And she hugs Zara as if it were the last hug she would ever give.

  The beauty of their special moment together is broken as they hear yelling in the streets below. And they hear the buzzing of aircraft coming in. Maryam picks Zara up and carries her, running down the hill back to the house. Once there, her heart falls out of her chest. Nawdar is nowhere to be seen. The bombs now explode in the village. She panics and screams, running around the house. Zara follows her, thinking this is the new game for today. Maryam trips over one of the bags she packed this morning and remembers what to do. She grabs one, and in her other arm she carries Zara. As the bombing deafens her, she runs up the mountain to where Nawdar said they should go. She is afraid to turn around and look, but one of the explosions must have been near the house, if it didn’t destroy her house. She concentrates on holding her daughter, knowing she must stay focused to save her little Zara.

  Never before has she needed to carry so much so far and so high. After an eternity, she reaches the spot where Nawdar said to go and collapses with fatigue, arm cramped and screaming in pain. She looks and looks and looks. No husband to be seen. She calls and calls. No one. She sits and cries and cries. Zara looks at her and decides she should cry with her mother.

  So Zara cries too, little cries. But after a minute, Zara stops the game and comes to her mother, saying, “Mama, it will be all right. You will be safe. You will be safe with me, Mama.” Her mother looks up at her, wiping her own tears off her cheek, and Zara says, “I have beauty within, Mama. I do. I do. I do.” And with that, Maryam smiles at her daughter, picks her up, and hugs her.

  Other villagers eventually come by in their flight from the village. They tell of the gas attack and the hundreds that are dead. Many have skin already showing signs of blistering. Others have to be guided along by hand as they cannot see. Maryam asks if any has seen her husband. No. No. No. And Maryam sinks to the ground and cries and cries and cries.

  Little Zara comes up to her, k
isses her mama’s forehead, and says, “It’s time to be a brave girl, Mama,” mimicking what her father has told her. Zara takes Maryam by surprise, reciting one of Maryam’s favorite poems from Rūmī that her mama only once recited to her father in front of her:

  A moment of happiness,

  You and I sitting on the verandah,

  Apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

  Feel the flowing water of life here,

  You and I, with the garden’s beauty

  And the birds singing.

  The stars will be watching us,

  And we will show them

  What it is to be a thin crescent moon.

  Maryam hugs Zara and says, “I love you, Zara. You are the prettiest and loveliest daughter a mother could ever have.”

  Chapter 23

  Hidden behind the veil of mystery, Beauty is eternally free from the slightest stain of imperfection. From the atoms of the world, He created a multitude of mirrors; into each one of them He cast the image of His Face; to the awakened eye, anything that appears beautiful is only a reflection of that Face.

  —Nur ad-Dīn Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī,

  fifteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet

  11:30 p.m. GMT+3, May 15, 2021

  MoxWorld armored private jet, somewhere over the northeastern Black Sea

  Joy. Rapture. Introspection as the peripheral noise within her mind fades and blends into the colors of her inner visions. Zara has not felt this way at any time during the past two decades. Something she lost along the journey of life, along with many other things, including her grandmother’s headscarf. Her loss of innocence, back for a brief moment of time.

  A short nap, but one that rested her more than any other sleep in her adult life. She stretches her arms and legs out like a cat, with her muscles streaking pulses of ecstasy. And nowhere in her being can be found the consciousness that she is seated in a jet pummeling through the skies above the eastern shores of the Black Sea at nine hundred kilometers an hour.

  But across from her, Peter Gollinger has a thousand percent consciousness. Not of his geographic location or air speed; he is solely focused on this woman, who had kissed him in a way no other had, who only hours ago threatened to drive his gonads into his intestines, and who now has one foot pressing into his chest and the other hanging precariously in his lap above his you-know-what, pressing right above his pubic area. In utter fear, perhaps of his personal mortality, he is doing everything he can to focus on her feet and divert all blood flow away from his nether regions, lest something extremely warm poke into her precariously placed foot.

  As Peter tries to distract his blood flow, he thinks, How did her feet get onto me? And where is the table that separated us as I fell asleep? And what this scent, this aroma, does inside my head. I’d love for this never to end. Well, never end and she doesn’t hurt me when she awakes.

  And she slowly opens an eyelid, exposing an eye still basking in the glow of joy. As this eye begins to focus on the external world, Zara pulls her legs back and snipes at Peter, “Ahem, why are you staring at my naked feet? Is this your little sexual perversion, foot fetishes?”

  Aghast with visions of all the horrible things that might befall him, Peter mumbles the last thing he was thinking. “I was smelling them.”

  “Are you saying my feet smell? I just washed them before boarding the plane,” Zara asserts as she pulls her feet up onto her chair and rubs them.

  Apologetically, Peter replies, “No. No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean they smell bad. They smell nice.”

  Again, he gets too close to her. She puts on her aghast face, pulls her feet under her to hide them. “Go back to your Mei and whiff the perfumes she and the priest concocted. I do not wear magic potions made by some chemist. My body is all natural and has no fragrance or malodor.”

  Peter says, “No, I didn’t mean fragrance or malodor, but your pheromo—”

  Jean-Paul cuts him off with a hand signal across his throat. Peter would gladly have anyone save him from this conversation, which could only go downhill. But that hypercurious gene sparks and commands his mouth to ask, “How did your feet get where they were, anyway?”

  As the corner of her mouth quirks up, Zara responds, “We have a saying: ‘Stretch your feet according to your blanket.’ And I did. Because of your afflicted person’s sleep, you were kicking and screaming. Your priest friend here said I could stop your insanity if I just pressed my foot into your chest. And his advice worked. You muffled your cries and your movement subsided.”

  Needing some space to think about what has happened between them, Peter excuses himself to go to the lavatory to freshen up. Zara glances at Jean-Paul, slips her treasured black ankle-wrap sandals back on, and moves over to him, sitting on the armrest of his chair.

  “Priest, what happened back there? Do not play coy. I know you and Alexander conspired to force me to touch that man,” Zara asserts, staring right into his eyes.

  With his methodical blink, Jean-Paul replies, “Tell me, from your perspective, what did happen?”

  Zara turns away and reflects. She says, “I cannot explain it. His palm was so sweaty. But so was mine.”

  “What did you feel?” probes the good Father.

  Zara reflects more and slowly replies, “Nothing. Nothing, but then all was bliss, peace. Only a little moment of it.” She pauses again. “A long, long time ago, with my great-grandfather, I felt a similar way. He was a Sufi imam and taught me their whirl, their form of meditation, their way to be closer to God.”

  Still facing him, she reaches out to his shoulders and massages them, now with her chest at his face level. And the good Father simply smiles serenely. She says, “You are a calm one. No tension in these muscles.” She continues her massage and draws her hands to his chest. “What is Alexander not telling me?” And the good Father continues to smile serenely at her and blink methodically.

  Seeing she is getting nowhere with him, she strokes his neck lightly and in circles. He does not flinch and remains his serene self. She says sensually and softly into his ear, “You know, you are a very good-looking man. A woman could easily lose herself to you.”

  She hugs him and says, “What you did back there with your hug, we felt the chemistry between us. You know it and I know it.” And she kneels and lays her head on his chest. She tries to imitate Mei’s seductive voice and says, “Is it possible for a man to truly love a woman, not her body, but her spirit? To seek joy in her in prayer, not in bed?”

  He nods yes.

  “Are you such a man?” she softly asks into his ear as she strokes his crucifix upon his chest.

  Nothing. Nothing. No response from this man. For her, it felt as if she stroked her father. Or in his case, a Father. Zara stands up, straightening her tunic and sleeves, and in her commanding voice, she says, “You still are a priest. I knew it. You did not renounce your vows, did you?”

  And Jean-Paul simply smiles at her serenely with a quick blink. He says, “Zara, you are the kind of woman who could make a priest think twice, thrice, about his vows.”

  “I was not sure about you. Now I know what I needed to know,” Zara asserts as she sits back in her chair. She makes eye contact with him and affirms, “This will not happen again. I am sorry if I did anything that offended your faith.”

  Jean-Paul replies, “Do we have trust now? I will be there when the time comes. I will be there for you, behind you, next to you. You need not worry about me.”

  “Priest, after what has happened in my life, trust does not come easily. All whom I have misguidedly given my trust have failed me. Have broken their promises. As you must have to poor Mei.” Zara glances away and says, “We have a saying: ‘Expect the worst from your enemy so that you won’t be disappointed.’ And I do not trust, so I will not be disappointed. Or dead.”

  Zara reflects on the implications of what she has confirmed in her mind about the good Father as she stares out the window. She then rises and goes to the lavatory door. “Sasha’s
boy. Be a gentleman. It’s that time of the month, and a poor suffering woman needs this room.”

  A minute later, Peter comes out, still buttoning up.

  “Did you leave the lid down?” Zara teases as she peers into the little room. “Good, your mother has raised you well.” And she closes the door behind her.

  Peter comes over to Jean-Paul, who again is listening to his earbuds, but looking a little more flushed than when Peter last saw him. “Are you okay?” asks Peter. “That French singer. She’s making you blush, isn’t she?”

  Peter taps a few times on his MoxWrap and says, “She’s really elegant. Wow, were you watching her videos from the eighties? No wonder you’re flushed.”

  Feigning embarrassment, Jean-Paul says with a grin, “If she had been available and liked younger men, a lot younger, I might not have become a priest. I have made more than a few confessions during my youth that featured my thoughts about her. And others like her.”

  Looking around to make sure Zara is still in the lavatory, Peter says, “You saw what happened. The sweat. The pheromones. It’s not just me. It’s her too, isn’t it?”

  Jean-Paul smiles serenely and methodically blinks. “Remember, keep being patient with her. You are starting to do so. Let what must happen unroll slowly at her pace, at the pace of the Lord,” he says, ending with a pause to allow Peter to reflect. “There is nothing you can do, Peter, except get in the way of what she needs to have happen and derail her.”

  Peter says back, “But, the wetness of the palms. Our kiss. Is something transferring with our bodily fluid? And the pheromones. You knew her foot beneath my nose would do something. Is something passing between us?”

  Continuing his serene smile, Jean-Paul simply states, “Simply be patient with her. Do not overthink it. Be patient and open and let what happens come.”