by Igiaba Scego
“Put this on, go over there,” he orders.
It’s a nurse costume. I don’t understand what it’s for. But I put it on, without a word. I don’t feel like contradicting the bald man with halitosis.
“But don’t put anything underneath. I like bare skin.” I obey.
And then without much of a prelude he has me kneel down in front of him. “Afterward I’ll introduce you to the guests as the cousin of some sheikh.”
And with that, he pulls my hair back and looks at me, hurting me, and then pushes me towards his nether parts.
He’s not old. How old could he be? Fifty, fifty-five?
But he acts like he’s old. He has no imagination. He’s a bully. He doesn’t know how to handle a woman. Maybe he never knew how to approach one.
He trembles. He breathes hard. He starts panting. His sweat drips onto my head. I’m trembling too. With disgust for myself.
Is it worth it, Adua, all this filth for a star, for a dressing room, for movies that mean nothing to you?
I wish I could ask Marilyn, but she’s dead; she died badly, like so many, too many starlets with more tits than talent.
I wish I could ask Muna Kinky-Hair back in Somalia. I know what she’d tell me: “Don’t act like some saint, Adua,” and, “you have to decide if you want to pay this price or not.”
Did I want to or not? I couldn’t tell. The price seemed too high and the product total junk.
I was confused.
I just know that Marilyn died badly. But at least Marilyn had a shred of talent. What about me? Do I?
Though talent certainly didn’t save Marilyn. She died alone. She died badly. What about me? Will I?
Who will save me? I wonder. I want to shout the question. I don’t have the courage. The magnate is already in position like a runner at the starting gate.
“Come here,” he orders.
For the second time in one day I am on my knees in front of a man.
The first time was in the morning, in front of Nick. But that was a scene in the movie.
Fiction.
Nick ... Nick Tonno, my partner, my costar, a homosexual, or as the director sometimes called him, “damned queer.” I loved my crazy partner, that damned queer who the blessed heavens had led me to. Doing things with Nick is ... was wonderful. He respects me. He guides me. He tells me: “This torture will be over soon, you and I deserve to shoot better movies.”
I dream: “I want to be Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, singing and skipping around like a baby butterfly.”
And he says: “What a vision you’d be in Dorothy’s ruby slippers.”
We position ourselves inside a car. We have to pretend we’re making love. That’s all I do in the movie, run naked on the beach and make love in the most absurd places. “Show more of the gap between your thighs,” and with Nick’s help I lift my skimpy slip higher. Nick rubs my head and reassures me: “It’ll be over soon, hold on, think of Judy Garland.”
Action, scene one, we’re in a convertible. He kisses me. Nick is a good kisser. He’s so tender. He doesn’t want to eat me alive. “Do you want to get married?” I whisper to him. It seems like a line from our script, but it’s actually from my heart. In that scene we don’t need our voices. Arturo told us that the moans will be added in the dubbing studio. We just have to fake love talk and orgasm. I repeat the question: “Would you marry me, Nick?” And he replies:
“You know I can’t, Adua, I’m a homosexual.”
And I say:
“That’s why I want to marry you. You wouldn’t touch me like those other brutes, like Arturo does when he gets bored with his wife. You would respect me. I’d introduce you to my father and my aunt Fardosa.”
“Are they nice?” Nick asks me. I don’t know how to answer, just that I miss them. I feel like crying, but I don’t want to ruin the scene. I cling to him desperately. He makes one of his killer faces and fake bites me on the neck like a vampire. It tickles and I start laughing, but to keep from ruining the scene I mime something that I have never experienced, that orgasm thing everyone’s always talking about.
Nick always smells good.
Whereas the distributor, that bald magnate who I have to play nice with, the man who Sissi enigmatically calls the marquis, smells like garlic.
I go to open his fly. I want to get the whole thing over with quickly. “Just put it in my mouth and then it’s good-bye, never see you again,” I think. A flawless plan, I tell myself.
I open his fly. I avoid looking at that snake. It still repulses me. I don’t look at it, I turn my eyes away. It scares me.
But I can’t be scared right now. It’s just a few seconds. I close my eyes. I grab it firm.
I take it in my mouth. It’s done, I tell myself.
But the guy, this marquis, doesn’t have an erection. His contraption dies in my mouth and a slimy rivulet drips pathetically onto the floor.
“Move, whore,” he calls me.
The word doesn’t offend me. That’s what I am now. A whore, a sharmutta. That’s what they’ve turned me into. In Somalia I was a young girl who was full of dreams and wanted to see the world. In just a few months they’ve manipulated, abused, used, transformed me. It feels like years, not months, have gone by. I feel so old, practically decrepit.
I wish I had some water. To get that sour taste out of my mouth. But the room is so dark. I can’t see anything. Only the shadowy mahogany wood.
I see him crawl around the room like he’s blind. Then he switches on the light. He puts himself together. I do too. We don’t speak.
“You were good,” he tells me. And he gives me a manly slap on the shoulder.
“Good?” I wonder silently. “We didn’t do anything.”
But I say nothing, it’s better not to talk to that man. He’s a bully, you can tell that he always wants to be right.
“Do you know how to dance?” he asks me.
“No,” I reply curtly, irritated by such a personal question.
“Then you’ll learn tonight. The other girls will teach you.”
“Are we already going back out?”
“Yes, pet,” he says, all sweet. I’m confused. I don’t understand.
“Oh, and out there don’t mention our little encounter, they wouldn’t understand.”
“I won’t say a word, sir.”
He likes being called sir.
“Tell Sissi that we’ll distribute the movie well, we’ll make you a little Negro star, you have nice legs, you deserve success.”
We’re almost at the door. I’m about to open it. He stops me. “Wait,” he says.
“What?” I ask, a little dazed.
“I have a gift.”
And he gives me a diamond gold bracelet. I don’t know how to respond. “I’m a generous man, didn’t Sissi tell you that?”
I say nothing. Better to keep quiet in certain circumstances.
I thank him. We return to the party.
His hand on my bottom. Like on the way there.
Back in the main room, he distributes big smiles. The other girls look at me and my bracelet with envy.
“Good, our little Adua,” Sissi says to me, and fingering the bracelet she adds, “I see that you’ve done your duty.”
I wanted to tell her the truth. But if I did that man would ruin me. He has the power to. He’s filthy rich. He knows lots of people. Even in places where an honest person shouldn’t be.
I keep quiet. I’m shaking. “I want to go.”
“But now it’s the best part, we’re dancing.”
“But I don’t like to dance,” I yell.
Everyone looks at me. A little stunned, clinking their glasses of champagne. “Don’t yell, this is an elegant dinner,” Sissi says.
And I don’t yell. I bow my head. I cave.
Today I wouldn’t bow my head. Today I would yell.
But today I’m old. Minutes, days, years have passed since that dinner. I’ve had a miscarriage, bad men, countless disappointments.<
br />
Today, though, I wouldn’t bow my head. I wouldn’t sell myself for a star on a dressing room door like that little girl I was.
The memory makes me yell.
Now I’m not quiet anymore. Yesterday, for example, I yelled so loud that I scared my husband, my sweet little Titanic, nearly to death. In my sleep, I said: “No, it’s not worth it to eat dirt for a star.” And then I added: “You can’t kill me without thinking I won’t put up a fight.” I started shaking violently.
And then my husband’s big, strong, capable hands held me still.
“Adua, what’s wrong? Adua, calm down! You’re at home, with me. Adua ...”
I looked at him with my eyes gaping. At first I didn’t even recognize him. I was still lost in the haze of the distant past.
“Did you have a nightmare?” he asked me, concerned. How could I tell him the truth?
How could I tell him that unfortunately it wasn’t a bad dream, just an unpleasant memory that comes to torment me every night? Later, I sold the bracelet. But the memory won’t leave me alone. Every so often it comes and throws dismay in my face.
“Sorry,” I whispered to my clueless husband.
“Sorry for what, Adua, you’re delirious, you were yelling, did you know that? You screamed loud, you scared me. I’ll go get you a glass of water.”
“No, don’t get me anything, just hold me.”
And he did it even though, to tell the truth, he was a little annoyed.
26
TALKING-TO
It’s so strange not having you around anymore, Adua.
Why did you leave? After all, I never treated you badly. You had a roof over your head, and food too. I always gave you the first fruit ... remember that sweet papaya that day? From Afgooye. You liked it so much. You smiled at me. And I smiled at you too. In my way, I smiled at you. Sure, my mustache hides my mouth, but I can smile like everybody else. All of you always described me as a grouch. When you were under my roof you had meat on your bones, you were pretty, solid, like a woman should be. And I raised you. I raised you well. There’s not a girl raised better in this whole dirty country. I worked as hard as I could to make you into a woman of fortitude. I couldn’t bear the idea of you becoming like your mother. Your mother was a zombie. Inept, starry-eyed, sluggish. She was slow, your mother. Extremely slow. I was the only thought she had.
Her brain, besides me, contained nothing.
27
ZOPPE
Zoppe loathed Mogadishu. He couldn’t stand its slightly sweet odor. Mogadishu made his stomach turn, with its well-to-do air and white buildings. In Mogadishu he felt like a foreigner. Someone from down south, a yokel from Magalo, whom the residents looked at snobbishly and even with a certain pity. When he was little, his father often dragged him to that city “to which we owe so much, my son.” Zoppe would come up with a million excuses not to go. Once it was an upset stomach, another time a high fever. He didn’t want to set foot in the capital. And he didn’t care that he owed his life to it, he truly didn’t. But Haji Safar, who knew how to read his boy’s heart, tugged him affectionately, saying: “Come on, lazy. That won’t work with me. Get your bag ready, we’re going.” And that’s how the boy bowed his head and obeyed his father every time.
But everything was different that day. Haji Safar wasn’t by his side. Zoppe had come with the Italians. Returned as a servant. A tool in rapacious hands.
During the trip from Massawa to Mogadishu, Zoppe couldn’t manage to think of anything else besides his misfortune.
On the ship, he wrestled with the dark visions that appeared to him so vividly.
Detached rooster heads, tongues hanging from pomegranate trees, a sea red with blood, and him with wounds all over his back. And as the voyage slowly progressed and he could feel Mogadishu approaching, his visions became even more outrageous. A man riding a leopard laughed wildly, while a crow made a nest on the snakelike head of a monster with swollen lips. Zoppe didn’t recognize anything. In those monstrous visions nothing had a human form. People with three layers of teeth were talking to oxen that had rabbit ears, and crouched down next to them was a creature with a giraffe’s head excreting butterflies over a pile of corpses. Massawa ...
Damned city! The memory of it was driving him mad.
“Mister, mister ... are you all right?”
It was Uarda, one of the serving girls from the farmhouse where they were staying, who jolted him back to the present.
“Yes, fine,” replied Zoppe. “The air of Mogadishu is dizzying.”
“You were talking to yourself, did you know that?” the girl laughed.
Zoppe was annoyed by the impertinent observation, but he didn’t reply lest he feel even dumber. He examined her. Uarda was pretty, very pretty. Tall, perky breasts, heart-shaped derriere.
“I have a headache,” Zoppe said.
He wanted to say more to her. Like: “Run, get far away from here.” Instead he just looked at her. Maybe she was an orphan. Otherwise no one would have sent her to serve an Italian. Everyone in Mogadishu knew what happened to Uardas in Italian houses.
Zoppe suddenly felt drained. Weak. “Damn count,” he muttered to himself.
It was a nice house, the one that the Italian governorate in Mogadishu had provided Celestino Anselmi. A typical colonial structure with a Moorish staircase leading to the upper floors. The stark white building fell into a certain harmony with the lush tropical garden surrounding it. “I’m going to have a big party here tonight. I deserve it.”
Zoppe only replied, “Yes, sir.”
“The senses dance in this city, my dear boy.”
Zoppe looked up at the sky. There wouldn’t be any party. The southwest monsoon, the one that made even the jinns tremble, was coming. “Soon it’ll beat down on the city and the damned count’s head,” Zoppe thought. And that consoled him.
.
He and his father didn’t have an appointment with a date, time or place. There was no “See you then,” between them. Father and son could meet just by thinking of each other.
And Fakr ad-Din was the only place where his father would have met him in Mogadishu. It was their treasured place in that foreign-seeming city.
As a little boy, Zoppe spent hours contemplating the verses from the sura of The Cow from the Koran magisterially carved in Kufic script over the door. It was pure joy for him to just stand there at the threshold where the light chased the shadow between the thin marble columns.
“There was a time,” Haji Safar had told him, “the time of our ancestors, when this mosque was as big as the portion of sky contained in the eyes of an angel.”
In that mosque, repentant jinns asked forgiveness to heaven before taking their last breath, and souls brimming with love for creation sought refuge from the evils of the world.
“If for some reason I don’t die in our holy city,” Haji Safar said, “you, my adored son, will take me, emaciated and near death, on your shoulders, and bring me here.” At Fakr ad-Din anything was possible. Zoppe had experienced it for himself.
It was there that he had seen a pink man for the first time. Zoppe was small for his age and much bonier. In fact the women insisted that Haji Safar have him eat chicken broth and dates to keep him alive.
“Doesn’t this child have a mother?”
“She died bringing him into the world. But he has my wives to take care of him. Fawzia, Alia, Halima coddle him as if he were their child, fruit of their own womb. He couldn’t be in better hands.”
“But why do these sticks hold him up, like an old paralytic?”
It was in those moments when Haji Safar deplored human souls. Men of dust who condemned their neighbor’s every flaw.
And he, Haji, didn’t want to yield to that brutality. Of course his son had suffered, a high rheumatic fever had struck him in his sleep a year earlier and nearly killed him. But it wasn’t his time and he was spared. That’s all that counted. Ultimately, just that.
“You will overcome, my son,�
� he said. “You won’t notice the difference between you and your peers. And I swear to you on my name and my honor that soon I’ll see you run like an ostrich through the endless savannah.”
Zoppe looked at his father with trust. He really hoped he would be able to run and play like the other kids.
Then one night, one of those agitated by dreams and chimeras, an image was imprinted on Haji’s mind. “That,” the old wise man said with surprise, “is the door to the Fakr ad-Din mosque. So Mogadishu is the place where I must take my son, that’s where I will finally see him run.” And the next day he prepared for the journey.
He spent two nights and two days mixing the ointments he would rub onto his son’s battered legs.
“This herb, husband, is called devil’s claw, but really it’s made from the nails of angels. If the little one’s muscles are inflamed it will dull the pain,” said Fawzia, the first of his wives.
“And this one is blackcurrant,” said his second wife, Halima. “My brother, the merchant, brought it for me as a gift. It is from the rocky mountains of Asia. Its bark is smooth. If fear comes to torment little Zoppe’s leg, this plant will know what to do.”
“Here, dear, in my hands is prickly little aloe,” said Alia with a laugh, his last wife. “It will bring you good dreams and helps with digestion.”
Haji Safar thanked his three wives for such sweet gifts. He said “thank you” because those were the only right words to say.
After the morning prayer, father and son set off for Mogadishu, heading away from their beautiful blue sea.
They immediately entered the barren bush. No living thing crossed their path the first day. Only a vulture followed them overhead in hopes of seeing them take a wrong step. But Haji Safar had traveled those paths for years. He knew the secrets of the seemingly hostile land. Zoppe, to entertain himself, watched the ants, intent on their endless work. Diligent, they hauled bits of meat on their little backs, perhaps left over from some hyena’s meal. The first night, restless owls made the little one nervous. “They’re trills of love,” Haji Safar explained, and Zoppe, who had no interest in that explanation, said: “Father, when will we see the sea again?”