by Igiaba Scego
“Oh,” I remarked as if I had understood. I was hopeless. I had to get out of the conversation, as quickly as possible.
“Promise you’ll teach me to dance.” My tone was peremptory.
“Promise,” she murmured. I looked at her.
She was beautiful.
Her mother had gathered her long silky hair into a bun, which she’d decorated with a garland of flowers. The white petals reflected the colorful bundle of the sari that Sultana wore with elegance and ease. It was the first time I’d seen her in a sari. At school we wore uniforms: pants and white shirts. But now we were at the cinema and Sultana looked beautiful.
I felt so ugly.
I looked at myself and sadly noticed how monotone I was. Scruffy braids, a potato sack as my only good clothes, half-broken clogs that were a humiliating sight. I was as dingy as a defective lamp.
Despite everything Sultana smiled at me, as if she really liked me.
“Okay, we’ll start with a few steps.” Then her smile faded. “Hey, your dad is coming. We’ll talk about it at school, sister.”
We were partners in crime, true friends. I was happy, but my nerves didn’t go away.
The movie was coming and I had no idea what a movie was.
The lights in the theater went out. My father, with his long, henna-red beard, turned and said to me, “Remember, don’t get up for any reason. And you’ll be in trouble if you wet your pants.”
Dark. Then in succession the sea, a sunset, music so loud it hurt my ears, words bigger than in the textbooks at school and a sense of anticipation that shook my soul. It was the first time I’d ever seen the sunset without the muezzin calling us to the Maghrib prayer. That plastic sunset almost seemed sacrilegious. Born of the son of Satan. I was frightened. I looked at my father and Malika. But they seemed immune to the terror that was consuming me inside, entranced by the words that ran before our eyes.
Then the voice came. It was Italian but at the time I wasn’t very familiar with the language. But I was able to understand that long ago someone called Ulysses had tricked a sorceress called Circe—what a pretty name! There were unusual names going around at school too. There was a Mario in our class and a Ginevra. Skin pink like the pulp of a ripe grapefruit. Red like watermelon when the teacher called on them. Ginevra and Mario often changed colors. Sometimes they were green, especially when they caught cold, or white, when they were really startled. They were funny, with their rainbow. And unlucky. Unlike me, who was always brown.
Sultana was brown too, but not as dark. Sometimes she changed color too. Mario and Ginevra more, though.
As I was lost in these thoughts, a woman in a blue dress appeared on the screen, on some kind of strange boat very different from the ones I had seen in Magalo. The woman seemed to be wearing a kind of sari. But her shoulders were covered by a light veil, much like the garbasaar our Somali women wear. But that blue-clad figure had just appeared when the scene changed. No longer the sea, but a gloomy, dark place like one of my nightmares where the vultures devoured my goats. I closed my eyes for a while and it felt like an eternity. When I opened them again there was the woman in blue with two men next to her. One was nearly naked. He had a leopard-print cloth covering his privates and lots of muscles he showed off very proudly. To his left, there was a strange white man with stuff all over his face and body.
I wondered if Maciste, that blond in the loincloth, at the end of this thing everyone called a movie, would come out of the screen to greet us.
To me, that night, all that fiction seemed a reality. But a reality that was better than my present one.
I don’t know when it happened, but as the story went on and the characters multiplied, my fear began to fade.
By the time the movie was halfway through I was completely won over. That night I didn’t dream of the bush. No goats, no mama, no rains, no vultures. There was just Maciste to soothe me. His hair blond like the horizon.
I slept soundly.
And Magalo no longer seemed like such a horrible place.
14
TALKING-TO
Adua, come here, now. Don’t make me lose my patience. What’s the meaning of this? Come on, out with it. Why am I sending you to school, eh? To read this junk? What is this? Come on, answer! I’ll tell you what it is: crap! It’s a photo novel, paper full of foolishness. Love is nonsense. Love, Adua, doesn’t exist, better get it in your head now. Don’t be like your fool of a mother Asha the Rash, she really believed in love. She called her outbursts love and disgraced us all by dying. The neighbors say I killed her by leaving her alone while she was pregnant. They say she died of love, of love for me.
Have you ever heard such colossal nonsense? Dying for love, as if that were possible. She died, your mother, because she was a fool, to spite me. I won’t have you, my daughter, go down the same road to perdition. Get all your photo novels and bring them to me. We’ll burn them. We’ll make a nice bonfire. That way you’ll see what happens with love. Love, my child, always goes up in smoke.
15
ZOPPE
“Maria, come out, I love you!” “Maria, I worship you!” “Maria, you’re gorgeous!” “Sing me something, Maria! Please, sing me something. I left my girl back at home and I’m homesick.”
“Maria, will there really be war?”
“Maria, bless me in case I die, I’ll die happy thinking of you!”
Zoppe couldn’t understand the gaal. They were all huddled at the steamship landing to see that woman decked out in the Italian flag, greeting the legionnaires about to leave for East Africa.
“The war is coming soon,” said a soldier on his right.
“And Maria Uva is going to boost our spirits for all the hardships we’ll have to face.”
Zoppe’s desire to run from that landing was strong. What did he have to do with those pink people and their dirty colonial war?
Avenge Adua, stand on the side of the empire, make way for the virility of Rome ... He pissed on that propaganda.
All he wanted from the Italians was the money to buy a big house in Skuraran for his Asha.
Everything else was of no consequence to him.
“What am I doing here?” Zoppe asked himself, watching the throng of Italians grow on the unsteady steamship landing. The Italians clamored, waving their hands, sending their enamored sighs toward the bare cliffside.
Oh, Maria, love me, take me, hold me, kiss me, squeeze me, smother me. Pray for us sinners, Maria, now and in the hour of our death.
Amen.
.
Zoppe was hot and his head was fuming. Getting all worked up over some whore, especially one who was pudgy and plain. That Maria Uva must have had some advantage. Maybe she earned money from these shows for the troops, or was even the kept woman of some big fish in the regime.
Meanwhile, the clamor continued.
The soldiers confused their hard-ons with the old catechism lessons they’d learned by heart as children.
And any Maria Uva would rise up in their hearts as if she were the Virgin Mary in the flesh. A sister, a mother, a wife, a goddess.
Maskiin ... Zoppe thought. Poor kids. Was this how Italy betrayed its youth?
Zoppe felt his breath falter on that landing heavy with sighs. The pungent odor of cheap cologne combined with the soldiers’ smelly armpits was making him woozy.
Maria, Maria, Maria ...
Come out, love, sing for us, blessed are you among women. Was bringing out some hairy old cunt all it took to convince them that Benito Mussolini’s war was good and just?
.
When Maria Uva appeared on the rocks, the cries of the worked up men drowned out the sound of the sea. A wave of repressed manhood crashed over the bulkheads and every surface was bathed in desire. Maria Uva’s voice was shrill, high, almost irritating. But for those little soldiers the show was paradise.
It was in that moment of general captivation that Rebecca appeared to Zoppe.
The vision was clear. There was Rebec
ca, and she was holding her little girl’s stuffed bear.
“I didn’t think you would cross the sea,” Zoppe said. “I thought I wouldn’t dream of you anymore.”
“How are you?”
“I don’t know.”
The vision started growing dimmer and Rebecca’s face less clear.
“Atrocious news is coming,” she merely said. “My husband minimizes it, almost doesn’t notice. He keeps talking about his father who died fighting in Vittorio Veneto, his uncle Nathan’s medal of honor. He’s a nationalist, my Davide. Just the other day he told me, ‘If Mussolini goes to war with the Abyssinians, it would be nice to enlist and go to East Africa.’”
“There’s money in this war.”
“But don’t you feel pity for your people? Don’t you feel pity for the deaths it will cause?”
“Money is the only thing that really counts in this life. You can’t wipe your behind with pity and I need to get married. There’s a woman waiting for me down in my country.”
“A woman? Really?”
“If I gather up the money I’m hoping to, then yes, there will be a woman.”
“Davide told me that we could have a plot of land there just for us, even servants.”
Rebecca pulled her knees to her chest. In an instant, she disappeared. She would never come back again.
.
Zoppe touched his head, fingering the folds of the turban that Count Anselmi made him wear.
“Ah, bravo Zoppe, look at you, you’re a vision. That blue turban gives you class. My mother, rest her soul, was English, my father, Count Ludovico Anselmi, met her during one of his trips to India. She and her family were in the retinue of the ambassador to the greatest empire on earth. There, my parents admired the class of Indian soldiers with blue turbans.”
The British Empire, that’s all Count Celestino Anselmi talked about. It was his great obsession.
“Italy deserves one just like it,” he went around saying in every drawing room. “We’re the ones, after all, who gave the world Augustus. It’s up to us to civilize the savages, we’re the ones who must bear this heavy burden.”
Despite the imperial conceit that made him unpalatable at times, Count Anselmi was the best employer Zoppe could have had in those circumstances.
He was a delicate creature, Count Anselmi, of medium build, with a pearl-gray face. Long hands, thin fingers, ideal for the piano. His straw-colored hair clashed with the dark hair on his arms and his full brown eyebrows. Zoppe suspected that the count manipulated more than one aspect of his body. He was so feminine, polished, evanescent.
It was in Tivoli, at an eighteenth century estate, where the count had received him for the first time two months before.
Zoppe was stunned by all that wealth. Rhinoceros horns and Murano glass, fabrics from Goa and furs from Kazakhstan, Turkish kilims and Persian rugs, miniatures depicting emperors in erotic poses and bound volumes on the holy British Academy.
Next to the rhinoceros horns, Zoppe noticed a stuffed buffalo head. On its face there was almost a sneer of satisfaction.
The room had a pungent odor, like sweaty bodies. Zoppe felt nauseated. Past orgasms and cries of terror resounded in his ears. What had gone on in that house? If he could, he would have run away that instant. But he was no longer free to do anything. The count, with his benevolent air, had bought him. Now Zoppe was his. If he wanted to return to Magalo, if he wanted to see Asha the Rash’s beautiful eyes again, he had to get in line.
“Do you know how to dance?” the count asked, starting a pas de deux. “Ah, silly me, you must practice savage dances where you come from.” His words had a mix of arrogance and prurience. “Those dances where you’re all naked and thrashing around. Like snakes, you know what I mean.”
“We don’t dance,” Zoppe said. “I’ve never seen anyone in my family dance.”
“If affairs of state didn’t summon me to higher duties, I’d stay here and dance out my most extreme fantasies. But now I’m thirsty, we need water.”
He picked up and rang the bell.
“Teodoro, there you are finally. Bring us a carafe of cold water, I’m dying. Be quick.”
The count was pale and not even two glasses of water brought back his color. Zoppe had the impression he was trembling. The count pulled a blue vial out of his pants pocket, brought it to his nose and sniffed hard.
“Listen to me, Zoppe, I pulled you out of trouble because I’m good and you can be of use to me. Show me your tongue.”
Zoppe obeyed. By then that was all he knew how to do.
“What a nice, thick, red tongue. Mmm ... I like it. It’ll be useful in Africa, and if it proves itself, it will be well compensated. Count Anselmi is generous.”
16
ADUA
I feel so tired. My face in pieces.
I feel so tired. My eyes swollen. I feel so tired. My back broken.
I want a shower, a pillow, a dream.
But at home my little Titanic is sulking. I don’t have the courage to go back. We had a fight, my little elephant.
He and I always got along. Always sweet words between us. Always affectionate. But today this fight, and I’m really not used to it. I’m a softie. I love sinking my hands in my man’s spongy, curly hair. I fall asleep there and I feel younger, with more energy.
But today he didn’t let me anywhere near his head. “Leave me alone,” he said.
He was surly, hostile.
That cowardly boy I saved from the street is now rebelling against me. I should have let him rot on Via Giolitti with that cheap gin he bought from the Bangladeshi for some spare change. Toxic hooch that would have wrecked his arteries and his breath. I should have left him there at Termini station, at the mercy of the elements and the skinheads. At least now I wouldn’t have to put up with his sulking.
But my little Titanic is under my protection now. I am his armor. It’s my money that protects him from the elements and the skinheads. He has a roof over his head, a belly that’s always full, and even time to chitchat with his little friends who have found refuge in Northern Europe. I’m sure he’s there all day writing “darling” or “my love.” He’s glued to Facebook. He sits at the computer spying on the lives of others. And these other people are always young women. Their names are Howa, Halima, Habshiro, Anisa. They live in places where Somalis can count on subsidies and housing on the state’s dime. And now that every day my little husband sends his insipid declarations of love to Norway, Finland, Great Britain, Sweden ... damned Sweden. I have the impression there’s a girl there he really likes. Some Zahra, I think it is. Every time I ask him, “Who are these girls?” he hastily replies, “Cousins.”
I’ve forgiven him these virtual distractions. I know he’s going to leave me sooner or later anyway. I know our union is temporary. I’m old, after all. I have skin like a checkerboard and it’s not like I feel like having sex all that much at my age. He wants me to take it in my mouth ... I feel so dirty telling you ... but that’s what he wants ... and, you know, I try to do it. But I always get horrible neck aches. I do it to make him happy. Plus it’s the only thing like that he asks of me. Other than that it’s him making me happy. But today he got all sulky and I can’t stand it.
You know what we fought about, my little elephant? He saw my movie. Yes, the one movie I made.
It was showing on one of those regional channels with a strange name. He saw the whole thing. From the first frame to the last.
He saw me running naked on the golden sand at Capocotta, he saw when Aldo de Luigi put his hands on my butt, he saw me making out with Nick Tonno in a 1953 Chrysler and he also saw what my privates looked like then. Yes, he saw everything.
Now he has all my kisses and moans imprinted on his mind, and he too was sucked into my headlong expressions of love dubbed at the Via Margutta studio. They gave me a languid, honeyed voice for the movie. “Yours is too harsh,” the director told me. Then he added, “If it’s dubbed, your sacred body will get the drawl
it needs to make every man in the world go head over heels.” I nodded like a spring, a forced yes I didn’t understand.
Just standing there in front of a movie camera like Rita Hayworth seemed incredible. What mattered was being a diva, the adrenaline, wanting immortality more than anything else.
I wanted to explain to my sweet little Titanic, to my little suckling husband, that I was young then, inexperienced, lost in my celluloid dreams and so alone. I wanted to explain to him what my life was like then. That of course his had been hard, and I understood that it had been difficult to escape from desert marauders and sea junkers, but mine too, as far as difficulty goes, was no joke.
I wanted to tell him how I used to be. How I had imagined my future self. The things I’d wanted for myself when I was younger.
But as usual he didn’t let me talk.
He sealed my mouth with his own shouting.
And then he finished with the word sharmutta, whore. My heart was pounding. I was afraid I was going to burst from pain right there in front of that boy.
I pulled myself together and threw a pan at him. Then he started sulking again.
Him judging me. I wanted to strangle him.
17
TALKING-TO
Are you crying, Adua? Do you dishonor me like that? Good girls never cry. Did you see your sister Malika? She didn’t even shed one tear, and you, what are you doing now?
Trying to drown me? Did you expect just a tiny cut, Adua? Don’t make all this fuss, come on now, you’re irritating me. Aunt Fardosa called the best midwife to do your gudniinka. Now you’re free, Adua, just think about that. You don’t have that damned clitoris that makes all women dirty. Snip, it’s gone, finally! Thanks be to God. The pain will pass. The pain is momentary. Whereas the joy of this liberation, Adua, endures.