A Shimmering Red Fish

by Youssef Fadel

  All of a sudden, sheets of water poured down from the sky, as if buckets were being emptied over everyone’s heads.

  20

  Then she disappeared. Not like the first time. It was a cold night that chilled the bones, but I didn’t care. There were no stars in the sky that might guide me. In any case, this didn’t matter now. The ocean’s fury was hidden, which allowed for a false sense of calm. A December night. I was sitting on the sand of the beach, unable to feel how damp it was because my clothes were wetter than it was. My hair was wet and dripping, too. The cold water penetrated my bones, flowing, seeping deeply into the folds of my soul like poison, drop by drop. On top of all that, I was distracted and tired after the painstaking effort I had exerted looking for her. The ocean, like the sky, was concealed behind the jet-black night. I looked at the glints of light on the waves flashing in the darkness in front of me, and I thought about Farah. No hope. I thought about the eleven days she had spent at my side, with the slight hope that she might return. I blamed myself. I beat myself up over it and told myself that I was the reason for what happened. Farah disappeared eleven days after she arrived. How painful is that for someone like me who had been expecting her to disappear the whole time? They were days filled with nothing but anxiety. I swung back and forth between this shore and that one. She’ll stay—she’ll disappear—she’ll stay—she’ll disappear. I could smell her departure with every passing hour, with every look at her absent face, and in every move she made. During the eleven days she spent in my workshop, I couldn’t think about anything else so long as my thoughts remained stuck on this point: When would she disappear again? As if expecting something like that to happen. I put it off after each passing day, expecting it, waiting for it and for nothing else. It was as if I was counting on her disappearing just so she’d reappear and stay for more than eleven days the next time around. Each disappearance would make her stay longer than the time before. Maybe that’s how she was thinking about it. Who knows? What I wasn’t expecting or imagining at all was that she would disappear the way she did. Farah came at the worst possible time, the least optimal. She didn’t seem hesitant or cautious. Even though, really, she had come back to the place that had been waiting for her. Beautiful and radiant. For the first two days, she didn’t show any aversion to the workshop I had crammed her into. She acted as if she were living in a palace. That was what reassured me, despite the warning bells going off in my head. Isn’t that strange? Like a feral cat you’ve lured into your house. She didn’t say whether she was going to stay for an hour or spend the night. She didn’t say that she was going to stay forever. She didn’t say a thing. As for me, my whole being was turned upside down. After she showed up, everything inside me and around me was transformed. I no longer had to turn to see her, as if I could see her using another sense entirely. I could recognize her without seeing her. Not by the blue dress she had come in the first time, nor by the green coat upon which the colored butterflies flew; not by the uneasy way she stood at the cabaret entrance looking for her friend; not by the cash that was in my pocket and had disappeared, nor by the harsh thoughts that formed in my head afterward; not even by the fragility she displayed inside the workshop, behind her a thicket of painted pieces of wood that almost swallowed her up. Rather, I recognized her by the muddled image she planted in my head. Present and absent at the same time. Despite all that, I was overflowing with a happiness I couldn’t deny because she was there. Eleven full days, short and long at the same time. Eleven days with the feeling that something had changed inside me and around me. This in itself was extremely important. There was also this: Farah showed no signs of joy or sadness. This didn’t concern me any more than was necessary, not as much as did the matter of her staying put, as I said before. I had been worried about her impending absence from the start, as soon as she first stepped into the workshop!

  I walked toward her with some of the food that I brought from my mother’s house. She was standing at the open window waiting, leaning her arm on the windowsill, blinking as if her eyes hurt from the rays of a sun that wasn’t there. I was happy, thinking she was waiting for me to come back. She is the mosque’s baraka, its blessing. She let her two short braids tumble down over her full chest. She looked like the lady of the house. For the first time, this Farah had matured, after only eleven days. I placed the bundle on the table. She walked forward and opened it up. She looked down at its contents. She sat eating hungrily, while I worried about my deteriorating financial situation. While it’s true that most people are born poor, no one wants to remain poor. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it will always be. The idea of going to the Gulf became more immediate, more so than getting a new shirt or a pair of pants. It was just as tempting as it had been before, but now the question of whether or not to join my brother Suleiman was no longer as pressing or important. Remaining at Farah’s side was the most important thing in life from now on. I contemplated this confined space—a workshop constructed of wood and sheets of tin, smelling of sawdust and glue and paint and sweat. I was absorbed by the misery Farah and I were floating around in together. No shiny mirrors or soft cushions or generously set table. Shelves in place of a cupboard, a furrowed mattress (like a plowed field), an old rug with some pillows thrown on top of it, an ancient radio held together with pieces of string, a forest of wood rising up around us with its heavy smell, a crummy table with a rusty candlestick on top and a threadbare cloth with leftover potatoes and eggplant on it. Was this all we deserved? Was this living? But Farah didn’t seem to have any misgivings about the place. And why should she feel such misgivings? She now possessed a bed and a mirror. She now possessed what a girl without a girl’s experience needed. She now possessed what a woman without a woman’s experience needed. Still, it was true that in the last two days before disappearing, Farah had changed. She spent hours silently passing her hand over the wood, and because people don’t like to feel total isolation, or at least they’d rather not be isolated for no reason, she would sometimes make an effort, saying for example, “Cedar wood is a noble wood that loves to be taken care of.” Words that held no meaning, but that let me know she was there. Maybe they held a meaning I didn’t get, but they were words regardless. Or she would lift her skirt up above her knees when she saw me looking in her direction and flash a shameless smile. Or she would say with feigned anger that she had lost half of her weight and that her hair, once black as coal, had lost its luster. In those last two days before disappearing, she changed. Those two days weren’t like the ones that had come before.

  On the last day, she took a turn for the better, as if she had awoken from a long slumber or had decided all of a sudden to brighten up. This started first thing in the morning. I suggested that there was no better day to go to the movies, to see The Sins starring Abdel-Halim Hafez and eat lunch in a popular restaurant with the few dirhams we had. Like any woman accustomed to doing housework, she opened the window to air out the room, standing for a little bit to look out at the ocean then turning toward me with a smile because, from here, she could see the ocean and hear the crashing of the waves. Farah was beautiful with her cheerful eyes. I watched as she cleaned the workshop. She swept all around the room, making it her little kingdom. I watched her small red fingers as she wrung out the rag and plunged it into the black bucket. Then I watched her swaying as she walked, picking flowers along the side of the road, yellow wildflowers awakened from their slumber by the recent rain—their spring having arrived—shooting up along the entire length of the sidewalk. Then, having remembered the housework, she returned home. I walked toward her but she ran away with the cloth she was carrying as I followed her into the workshop. She let out a flirtatious scream because I grabbed her. I placed my hands on the curves of her hips. I stood there looking at her for a long time, submerged in her hazel eyes. Then I heard her say, “Do you still like me or is the magic gone?” From a prolonged silence to nonstop chatter. She talked about how short she was, about her fingers that tur
ned red when she scrubbed the floor, about her hands that weren’t good at anything—plates shattered in her distracted fingers. She asked if I liked singing, because singing was all there was in life, and whoever doesn’t like singing doesn’t love life. In the end she said that she came back to see what sort of creature I had become. She came closer and told me to open my mouth. She spit into my mouth, then gave me her open mouth for me to spit into. For a few moments we tasted the flavor of each other’s fresh saliva. For the first time I realized that saliva had a sweet taste, sweeter than rainwater. Then she pulled my head toward her with a delightful violence, leaned over, and planted a furtive kiss on my lips, or rather on my lower lip, a single kiss that was closer to a bite. I wondered whether this was a new type of punishment. After that she picked up the bucket and went back to her work, as if she had forgotten what had just passed between us. I wouldn’t say that the pain I felt was sweet. Does being pricked with a needle made of gold make the pain feel any different? I wouldn’t say that this was what I had been expecting from her. I don’t know what I was expecting. I was expecting something the essence of which I didn’t clearly understand, as if I had been waiting for a delayed promise. Finally, she sat down next to me and began to talk about her father and her two sisters. For the first time she felt like chatting—the father who had come back from the Western Sahara missing a leg; his friend who would bring him cheap tobacco from the base; the veil she had put on her head because of the wind, but that her family and neighbors and friends understood differently. This last story made her laugh a lot.

  That night, our final night, she didn’t give the impression that it would be our last. A calm night, normal, but still cold, like any December night. I was leaning against the side of the workshop looking at the minaret. It looked like it was about to take flight, cloaked in the pale light from the lamps that the workers had left on before leaving. Then I began to count the many stars in the sky. I could hear her inside humming along to the music coming from Father’s radio. I felt intoxicated for no reason. All of this—the night, the stars, the ocean—deeply affected me. So much so that this night seemed clearer than it should have been, its stars so close, fixing themselves in the heart rather the sky. I entered the workshop. I found her looking at her face in the mirror. Perhaps she was scrutinizing her new situation by its light, saying to herself, “How did I get here? I’ve made pretty decent progress since I left Azemmour.” She said that strange things she hadn’t experienced before had happened to her ever since she first settled in this city, and that these changes were what made her behave so strangely. Then she apologized and asked me to forgive her for everything she did that I didn’t like. I wasn’t able to hold back my tears this time. I too began to look into the mirror at Farah. As if I wouldn’t be able to see her true face without the mirror. As if only through the mirror could I measure how sincere she was being. I went back to where I had been sitting and wiped away my tears. After a moment, Farah came over. She took my hand and we went down to the beach. We walked for a little while, hand in hand. My hand was sweaty and sticky, and this caused me some alarm. I pulled my hand from hers and sat on the sand, lifting my eyes up to the sky. Farah walked away, looking delicate in the moonlight. She came back and sat down next to me without making a sound, as if afraid of disturbing the clearness of the night. I gathered some wood and lit a small fire. I stretched my body out like a lizard in the sun. A moment of profound, pregnant silence passed between us. She placed her head gently on my shoulder and I felt my heart beating in my ribcage. I wished that this moment would last forever. I had changed. I had become sensitive, light-spirited, weak. This had never happened to me before. And it wasn’t what I would have expected from myself. I gave her a sidelong glance. She looked green. Instead of looking red in the firelight, she had taken on the color of tarnished copper. I thought about throwing my coat over her. She stood up and threw her sandals down, walking toward the little waves that were gently breaking on the sand. She began to laugh and play in the water. I looked at her and thought that I felt just as she did in every possible way. I stretched out on the sand, content to listen to her silvery laughter. The night carried the echo of this intoxicated laughter back to me. I could see the color of her laughter, and I could see her in all the images that had accumulated during this whole irreplaceable period of time. I could hear her moving in the water. Maybe she was swimming, although this wasn’t the season for swimming. I turned toward the water but I didn’t see her. She had gone underwater. What was she doing underwater at this time of night? I heard a light stroke like the movement of a fish when it jumps in the water, but I couldn’t see a thing, waiting for her to appear with the lightness and grace of a sea lion—first her hair, then her laugh—but neither appeared. She hadn’t laughed for a while now. She hadn’t yelled or screamed for help either. I imagined her movements receding and growing fainter as they moved away. I looked toward the water where she had been, or where she went under, or where she disappeared. There was nothing in front of me except a black curtain upon which long, white bands appeared and disappeared. I walked toward the water, staring at it again. No sound. No real cry for help or even a pretend cry. I looked toward the waves where she had been playing. I walked toward the water, then I walked in, but all I could see was the night in every direction. Wherever I fixed my gaze, all I saw was night. Farah had disappeared. She had drowned. The water had swallowed her up while she laughed. I dove in, looking for her. The salt burned my eyes. No trace of Farah and no sound except for the crashing waves. My eyes attempted to penetrate the intensely dark confusion but were prevented from doing so by the salty spray. The cold of the night chilled me to the bone. I got out of the water and continued to look for her, shivering. I waited futilely for the stars shining above to guide me. A wave knocked me onto my back. I clung to the notion that she was still fooling around. Then, after more than two hours of walking around barefoot, searching for her between the sharp rocks, on sand dunes and in the dark folds of the night, looking in the seaweed spit out by the ocean or sliding on the slippery rocks, I went back home without having found her. I stopped every once in a while, looking around in every direction, but no shadow disturbed the blackness of the night, nor was there any movement or rustle that might have provided some hope in the darkness. I listened closely but no sound came to me except for the crashing of waves as they rolled onto the sand or smashed on the rocks, accompanied by my heavy breathing, because I had begun to pant without realizing it. I climbed a tall rock, but could see only my own shadow reflecting in the mirror of the water below. Finally, I went back and sat on the sand, my clothes dripping wet. The water burned my eyes. The night around me floated over everything. I looked at the flashing waves and told myself that she might appear now, but nothing appeared except for endless darkness. Without hope. Sitting like a rescued stray cat, trembling, unable to get up, unable to make even the slightest movement, I peered into the emptiness Farah had left behind her. I lay down on the sand and cried like I had never cried before.

  That’s how I was for days afterward; content to sit on the rocks in front of the door to the workshop like someone sunning himself and waiting, wondering why she came and then left like this. In a bad state, like someone sunbathing without a sun, waiting for other disasters to come. It was as if an enormous void had inhabited me. Things around me had no life—the workshop, the rocks, the mosque, the minaret, the ocean—all were suddenly emptied of meaning. My eyes couldn’t see a thing. They had turned into empty holes. As if a kind of death had taken root inside me and risen up rebelliously against the shell that contained it, consuming everything around it, the way lava does. There was no longer anything but me, empty, contemplating the emptiness all around. I thought of her. All of my thoughts revolved around Farah. Farah used to love fish. I’ll wait for her to show up to buy her lots of fish. She didn’t last long in this life because I didn’t manage to care for her as I should have. I remained sitting on my rock like someone who wouldn’t be
able to utter words like these next time. I’ll have to show her how much I care for her and how much I want her so she’ll be able to regain her optimism for this life. The image of the white skin between her collarbone and her shoulder. The delicate fingers. The small white fingers that used to animate her special life were all gone far away. Where was she now? Floating in the water with little fishes swimming in and out of her empty eye sockets, swimming around ecstatically inside her empty skull after having eaten what life it had contained? Was she at the bottom of the ocean where the seaweed tied her up, keeping her from being able to return to the surface, jellyfish having stopped up her mouth so she couldn’t scream? Or was she in the belly of an enormous whale? Were the fish all done with their feast or were they still savoring the taste of her succulent bones? I went down to the beach and walked up and down it for days, morning and night. I was barefoot, my clothes soaked. I rolled around facedown in the sand. I found the same worries I had before. Inside me an old hatred for myself boiled like a volcano, hissed like a snake. Oh, how I needed someone to tie me up and take me to an asylum—I generally like asylums. How I needed someone to give a full-throated yell, to insult community and religion, the mosque, the flag, the nation, just to allow others the opportunity to watch. So they could get an eyeful. To smell what the earth smelled like from the time of its creation. I left my skin for a little bit and hopped around like an acrobat. I turned. I twisted. I leaped and danced, giving others a chance to laugh at me, mock me, or just insult me. In desperation I stopped in front of the ocean, mulling it all over, like someone who no longer had work at the mosque, here or anywhere. I’ll join my brother Suleiman in the Gulf, or maybe I’ll go with Mother, who has dreamed for years of performing the hajj pilgrimage. Or perhaps I’ll travel to Milan and join the Mafia that we used to see in the movies with my uncle Mustafa, before the gendarmes opened fire on him. I was feverish. I had to find Farah so I could save her from drowning. I sat down and closed my eyes so I could see with greater clarity. I went to the same bar, the Saâda Cabaret that bore witness to our first meeting, and asked about her inside and outside. I stood in front of the bar waiting for her in the same place we had stood before, but I didn’t find her because she had preferred to drown. That’s when I started to see her everywhere. She was always there—when I was awake, and when I slept. I saw her tonight too. A gentle morning brought us together, lulled by a clear sun as we lay on the white beach so bright that it was difficult to look at the water, or our naked bodies, what with the sunbeams dancing all about.