I hope it will be soon. Do not try the patience of a man in love holding a razor to his throat.
JAN MORRIS
O fy nghariad, fy nghariad, carissima mia!
I am on my way home to you, my love, and my pulse is beating faster already, my head is awhirl with sweet memories, my mind alive with fancies! This is the condition the great poets were in, when they penned their immortal sonnets. The beauty in their imaginations was no more exquisite than the beauty in mine, as I speed through the twilight past Dolgellau. My passion is no less, my thirst as demanding, my longing – so soon to be fulfilled! – just as urgent.
Well, almost as urgent. It is true, my dear, that neither of us is as robust as once we were, but to my mind that has only enhanced the grace of you. I love you the more for your laughter-lines, as it were. When I first knew you long ago there was something melancholy about your beauty – as though nobody had possessed you for years, and you had been waiting, waiting for me to come! Am I right, dear heart? When I arrived that evening at your front door, did you feel, as I did, a magical sense of fulfilment, even of reconciliation?
Just over the bridge at Llanelltyd now, with a rising moon shining in the water, downstream from Abaty Cymer – the same moon, as lovers always tell themselves, that is shining now on your own roof, not so far away. For me the rush of the river below is the music of our own sweet Dwyfor, and I can almost smell the scent of the woodsmoke drifting from your kitchen – just as evocative to me as Proust’s madeleine. And you yourself, I can almost see you there in the half-light, clad in Beauty, ‘like the night …’
The sounds of the river, the scent of the woodsmoke, the pale suggestion of you there in the dusk, in the shadow of the sycamore – all these triggers of the memory are there for me always, whenever I want to summon them, but they are more immediate than ever, and more sensual, driving now through the empty moorland in the gathering dark. Of course they are essences of you, but they are also essences of Wales itself.
You don’t think, do you, that one can love a whole country in the way I love you? You are right really. Wales is too wide for my embrace! But still in my mind the pair of you are one. I see you in the hills of Wales. I hear you in the sweet language. When the sun shines I see the laughter of your eyes in the ripples of Bae Abertawe, and when it rains or drizzles, when all Wales seems to be in tears, my love, my love, I know you are crying too.
But not tonight! The moon shines bright tonight, and I know that you are happy, as I leave Trawsfynydd behind me and can see the mass of the Moelwyns looming ahead. Past the turn to Gellilydan now, and soon I’ll be in Penrhyndeudraeth. I love the old familiar names – for me they are part of you too! Does it show I’m getting old, cariad, that I like the familiar best?
For yes, I suppose – don’t laugh, don’t be sad! – but yes, I must count you among the old familiars. In a way you always were. When I first found you – when we found each other – you seemed to me curiously like an old acquaintance. You were younger then of course (but no more beautiful), but somehow you were not new to me. I was instantly at home with you. Were you at home with me? Did we perhaps know each other in a previous life? Or is it just that, after our half-century together, the emotions of the present have become blurred with the emotions of the past?
Or perhaps, once again, it is just the Wales in you. Wales grows older too, and not always gracefully either, but there is to its very presence something always young. Call it romantic, call it foolish, but the Wales I have cherished for so long remains changeless in my mind, always young like you, impervious to the creeping assault of caravans and executive homes all around us. Aros mae y mynyddau mawr, the poet sang long ago, and he didn’t simply mean that the mountains were eternal, but that the idea of them, the idea of Wales – the idea of you too, my darling! – would never alter.
But now I’m almost there, and this love letter in the mind must soon end. I’m just crossing the Cob causeway into Porthmadog, and the traffic is thickening. Here are the desolate High Street shops, here the rival supermarkets, youths loitering, a smell of fish and chips, some lout leaning on his horn behind me – English, you can bet your life.
Yes, my dear one, I know, a letter of love should not dwell upon the squalid, or even the ordinary, let alone the prejudiced. Love one, love all, one ought to feel, I suppose – love a cottage, love an executive home! But in a moment or two I am out of the streetlights anyway, the town is behind me, the moon rides gloriously high above and I am scudding along the coast road towards Llanystumdwy. Ah, I feel the ecstasy rising! That light beyond the woods up there? Can it be your light? Is the breeze from the sea stirring your heart at this moment as it stirs mine? Is your kitchen door open for me, with a flicker of your firelight brightening the yard?
Oh my love, my light, my glory! I am coming! You are waiting! Up the bumpy lane (my heart bumping too), round the last corner – there’s the cat Ibsen, his eyes like little embers, there’s the gate open for me, and there you stand before me, with all the welcome of Wales in your stance – dear heart, fy nghariad, carissima mia, my one and only house.
HARI KUNZRU
Dear Aisha
I suppose this letter will come as a shock. It’s so long since we met. You’re probably surprised I even know how to contact you: we never swapped addresses and the way we left things I can’t believe you’d expect – or want – to hear from me again. Blame the Internet. In the digital age, none of us can hide forever.
I need to tell you how it was for me, why I behaved like I did. And why, when you rang me in London, I hung up. By doing that I probably confirmed all your worst suspicions – of the foreigner who only wanted one thing, who used you for a night and then threw you away. When I heard your voice, the atmosphere of my time in Jordan came rushing back and I was seized by what I can only call a blind panic. Not an adult reaction. Not a compassionate one. I told myself you’d ring back, but you never did. I’ve always been ashamed I didn’t speak to you, and this letter is an attempt to rid myself of that feeling. Maybe it will make things better for you too, hearing my side of the story. I don’t know.
When I first saw you, swimming in that hotel pool, I thought I’d never seen a more beautiful girl. You and your friend Maryam were sitting on the side, dangling your feet into the water. I tried not to stare, but I found myself taking in every detail of your face – the long black hair plastered against your cheek so that one strand curled into your mouth, your brown eyes, the long straight nose, marred by a little pink patch of sunburn. And I noticed your body too. How could I not? Droplets of water clung to your brown skin, running between your breasts, whose nipples were clearly visible through the fabric of your yellow bikini. I swear when you saw me swimming towards you, you opened your legs a little, showing me the dark ruck of fabric between your thighs, a gesture I found so shockingly sensual I had to turn away, treading water and feigning interest in some point in the middle distance while I tried to compose myself. I wanted you so much, Aisha, I didn’t think about the consequences.
And of course, in that moment – and everything that came afterwards – we gave ammunition to all the bearded moralists, all the angry ascetics and woman-haters who would have wanted to beat and burn us for displaying our bodies to one another so shamelessly. Only in that place, that five star hotel, was such an encounter possible in your country. Outside on the street, most of the women were veiled, escorted by male relatives as they shopped or took their children to school. Behind the high white walls, where the staff were paid to keep their opinions to themselves, the mores of international tourism prevailed. Money breeds pragmatism, but only among those who get to spend it: that was one of the lessons I learned from meeting you, under the disapproving eyes of all those barmen and pool boys and waiters. In the years that have passed since then, pragmatism has fallen out of fashion. I wonder how you’ve fared, as the religious battle lines have hardened, you who were already feeling torn apart by the pressures of your life.
The
trip was supposed to be a perk, a reward for late nights and weekends in the office. In the three years since leaving university, I’d been working for an events management company, organising corporate junkets and meetings. The job bored me senseless, but there was nothing else going on in my life, no girlfriend, no big dreams or ambitions. I worked like a dog because it distracted me, stopped me feeling so hollow and scared. In retrospect, I think my boss was worried. You should have more fun, he said. We were planning a conference in Amman for a software company and he announced that, although I was very junior, I could research what was quaintly termed the ‘wives programme’, day trips and excursions to run in parallel with the formal events. The Jordanian tourist board had supplied a guide and a driver, two middle-aged men with paunches and heavy moustaches, with whom I’d just spent a week tearing round ‘highlights’ in a large air-conditioned Mercedes. Mr Mansour and Mr Hussein were unfailingly polite, but after sharing breakfast, lunch and dinner with them every day since my arrival, conversational topics (soccer, makes of car) had dried up and the parade of resorts, rug factories, luxury spas and ancient ruins had begun to pall. People stared when we walked into restaurants, trying to work out why I was accompanied by what looked like two bodyguards. I felt stifled. I wanted to go out on my own, to lie on a sun lounger without them smoking cigarettes and talking into their mobile phones beside me. You and Maryam looked like heaven, giggling and whispering to one another, shooting flirtatious glances in my direction.
I swam over and said hello.
When I told Mr Mansour that I had other plans for dinner, I was surprised by his reaction. Who are these girls, he asked abruptly. Are they Jordanian? Yes, I said, you were students from Amman, in Aqaba visiting relatives. He wrinkled his moustache and frowned. And these girls are making dates with you? Tell me, what are their surnames? Suddenly I felt I was being interrogated. I looked at him, his narrowed eyes, his pursed imperious lips, and decided he could fuck off. It was none of his business who I chose to spend my time with. I shrugged and said I’d see him in the morning. Six-thirty, he said, petulantly. We had a long drive ahead of us. I suspected the early start was a punishment.
Mansour and Hussein were watching, sitting on a sofa in the far corner of the lobby when you and Maryam arrived to pick me up. You were wearing a cotton print dress which exposed your shoulders. Your eyes and mouth were heavily made up and you smelt, even at a distance, of some strong, musky perfume. You had an air of expectancy, a nervous tension which mirrored and heightened my own. Maryam, also dressed up, looked worried. Maybe she knew what was coming, how obstinate you were, how desperate and confused.
We decided to go for a drink, an activity which in my ignorance I assumed was acceptable for young people in that tourist town. We sat upstairs on a restaurant terrace and I ordered a beer. You asked for one too. The waiter, a sullen young tough with an adolescent moustache, shook his head and tutted. You and Maryam spoke sharply to him in Arabic. Reluctantly he brought bottles and glasses. See how we are living, you said. Even this guy thinks he can tell us what to do, how we should behave.
I noticed other patrons staring coldly at us. I didn’t feel we were doing anything wrong, but I began to feel nervous, as if I were walking through customs or talking to a policeman. We chatted a little, finding out about each other. You told me you were twenty-one, studying literature. You wrote poetry. Your parents wanted you to get married to a banker, the son of family friends. Reading between the lines I realised you were a rich girl. Rich and bored. Then it all tumbled out, how you were sick of living in Amman, sick of being told who you could speak to and what to wear, sick of being called a prostitute just because you were having a conversation with a man. Is that what the waiter said? I asked. You shook your head angrily. He didn’t like it that Arab girls were with a foreigner. He didn’t like it that we were drinking alcohol. What did his honour have to do with anything? What business was it of his?
I noticed Maryam was trying to soothe you. Don’t take it so personally, she said. Forget about that guy and enjoy your evening. You snapped that it was all right for her. She was living abroad. She had a boyfriend in Germany. She could go out late. She could wear a miniskirt and get drunk and walk down the street if she chose. In Germany no one would say a word. Maryam shrugged. Soon, she said. Soon you’ll be able to leave.
We sipped beer and you asked about my life. I said there wasn’t much to tell. You pressed your leg against mine, looking fiercely at me, as if you wanted to gobble me up, squeeze me dry. I couldn’t tell whether you were hungry for me or the freedom I represented, my stories of living in a flat on my own, travelling in foreign countries. There was something wild, even a little insane in your look, but you took my hand and twisted my fingers in yours and it was all I could do to stop myself leaning forward and kissing you there and then. Maryam looked balefully at us across the table. We have a curfew, she told me. Aisha’s aunt wants us back by ten. Well, I said, then we should eat. No, you insisted, waving your empty bottle at the waiter. Why eat? Let’s drink more. Then you grinned wolfishly and started talking about sex. Did I think all Arab girls were innocent? I said I didn’t know. Did I realise I was sexy? By the way, you said, I wasn’t to think I was dealing with some fool who didn’t know about the world. You’d had a boyfriend, the previous year in Amman. He was good to begin with, but then he started acting like an asshole. Casually, you let your hand stray under the table, on to my lap. Maryam stared into space and smoked. When I offered to pour her more beer she shook her head.
The sun set. We drank. Maryam finished a packet of Marlboros and sent the waiter for another. Finally, she pointed out that ten o’clock had come and gone. Well, I said, I was going to be in Amman in a couple of days, just before I flew out. We could meet again. I was a little drunk and was trying to be sensible, which was difficult, because your hand had found its way into my trouser fly. I had the sensation of being on the edge of a precipice. I kept meeting the scrutinising eyes of men at other tables. I felt that everyone was aware of what was happening, the erection you were massaging between your thumb and forefinger. I knew Maryam was only pretending she couldn’t see.
To tell the truth, I was out of my depth. I wasn’t sure where the boundaries lay. I’d never been in an Arab country before, but even in London what we were doing would have been risky. Besides, I was beginning to think that you seemed very young, perhaps even younger than twenty-one. Something about your forwardness, which might have come across as a sign of experience, felt gauche, the clumsiness of a teenager clutching at pleasure, heedless of what other people were thinking. But you were turning me on, Aisha, making me stupid. I had my hand on your thigh, one finger pressed into your sex, moist and slippery through what felt like a pair of silk panties.
Finally Maryam insisted you had to go. When we got outside, you pulled me into a fetid alley where you kissed me, your tongue darting in and out of my mouth like a little dagger. As I crammed my fingers between your legs, you clawed at my back, digging in your nails as if you were trying to draw blood, all the time making little anguished movements with your pelvis. You seemed so angry, overflowing with rage and frustration. Finally Maryam dragged you into a taxi. I told you the name of my hotel in Amman and said I’d see you there. As I stood on the corner, watching you go, I felt excited, relieved and scared all at once. I wondered if I’d just had a narrow escape.
Half an hour later, as I sat on the edge of my bed at the hotel, flicking through satellite channels looking for an English movie, the phone went. It’s me, you said. We’re in the lobby. They won’t let us come up to your room. The man says it’s not decent. I asked why you’d come back. We’ve run away, you said.
Then I was really scared, Aisha. I was a long way from home and things seemed to be getting out of control. I went down to the lobby and under the suspicious gaze of the concierge, tried to find out what was going on. Maryam was with you, looking glum and apologetic. I was having too much fun, you said, gripping my hands. I don’t
want tonight to end. Let’s go somewhere we can be together, now.
I was at a loss. It was too much for me, what was happening, too intense, too strange. With nowhere else to go, we took a walk along the hotel beach and sat down on a plastic sun lounger. You kissed me and cried about your horrible parents, about your brother who was only interested in his computers and his Koran, about all the men who wanted to put you in a prison cell because they were old and jealous and stupid. Maryam sat a couple of loungers away, the orange tip of her cigarette flaring in the darkness. Every couple of minutes, one of the porters would walk past, peering at us. I realised the concierge was sending them, checking in case we were committing acts of immorality. It made me angry. Who were these people? What was it to them if we wanted to be together? Let’s go dancing, you said, clapping your hands together. All right, I thought, let’s go bloody dancing.
After midnight there was only one place in Aqaba to dance, and that was the hotel nightclub. We walked down a flight of stairs into a dark thickly carpeted basement, lit only by a glitterball, which turned forlornly over a little circular dance floor. This empty space was surrounded by tables, at which sat groups of men, smoking water pipes and watching a middle-aged singer perform on a tiny stage. She was plump and garishly made up, dressed in a skimpy belly-dancer’s outfit. Her love songs (Habibi! Habibi!) were backed by the plink-plonk rhythm of an electric keyboard, played by a sallow man in a red sequined waistcoat. We were shown to a table, but at once you stepped out into the light and abandoned yourself as if you were in the middle of a rave, twirling your arms in the air, thrashing your hair from side to side. Instantly all eyes were on you. And on Maryam too. I knew what those men were thinking. One was even beckoning to me, wanting to open negotiations. Apart from you and the singer, the only other women in the place were two prostitutes, Thais or Filipinas, who sat with their European clients, big brick-red men in floral-patterned shirts. I got up to join you. Maryam did the same. We had no alternative, really. The three of us danced together, swinging our arms and shaking our hips. Sometimes you stepped forward and draped yourself around me, hanging from my neck so that I staggered and had to hold you tight to stop you falling. All the time we were watched by dozens of intent, hostile, appraising eyes. Go on, I thought. Watch, you bastards. Watch and weep. I’m with two girls, who’ve come here out of friendship, not because I’ve paid them. I don’t hate them for being beautiful, or for showing off their beauty. Not like you. In my world, this happens. My world isn’t like this place, so seedy and repressed and full of shame.
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