It’s only now that I realize that since I first arrived Andrea still hasn’t really looked at me. And I cannot tell whether he’s happy to see me or not.
His body used to be lean and taut. Hip bones, ribs and knee caps showing under baggy jeans and faded T-shirts. Long hands and nimble fingers that touched things gently. I loved his feet too. Once I told him, “You have the hands and feet of a dancer,” because there was a special gracefulness in the way he moved in space. He never brushed his hair, which was a tangle of light brown curls, often shading his eyes—those green, bright eyes that changed with the weather—and I suspect he didn’t wash it often. Whenever we’d be all together—me, our friends—discussing something we’d read, whether it was politics, literature, ethics, he’d sit back while we made our loud arguments. His silence made us edgy, we felt observed and judged. We wanted him to level with us, so we’d turn to him and say, How about you, Andrea, let’s hear what you think, and often what he said was just the opposite of what we’d so fervently maintained till then. He always seemed to come at things from another perspective, and what we had thought was right suddenly seemed wrong, what we thought was daring seemed banal.
We all wanted to be a this and a that: a writer, a photographer, an actor, an architect, a political activist, whereas he didn’t seem to strive to be anything. He was good with his hands, he knew how to fix things and work with wood, he worshipped his motorcycle and spent hours adjusting and calibrating its mechanisms. We were aware that he knew a lot—more than us—that he loved to read and the books he chose were unusual and difficult, as though he had already read and digested what we were reading and was way ahead of us. He read essays, literary criticism, obscure playwrights and poets, but he never lectured, never quoted from them. I think he found it pathetic, the way we showed off, always keen to sound wittier, more well read, more up-to-date.
We never met his parents and knew very little of his background. He was an only child and apparently his father was a strange man who drank too much and didn’t seem to have a real job. His mother had left the family when Andrea was a teenager and he didn’t like to talk about her. Once he said he thought Freud had given all of us an alibi to whine.
At a time when we all strived to be reckless, he was the most fearless with drugs, though he never seemed high, only more concentrated, sharper. We made love the first time under a shower, while tripping on LSD. I still remember how the yellow mosaic of the bathroom glimmered, and how I was convinced I was inside an Egyptian palace, shimmering with gold and sunshine. I don’t remember whose apartment it was, and why I was alone under the shower—the sprinkling water felt like a cascade of yellow diamonds—but suddenly there he was, smiling, getting out of his clothes, entering the magic circle of gold with me.
I was already in love with him by then and I wasn’t the only one. We all fought to get his attention, to spend time alone with him—men and women alike—and some of us fought harder to become his lover. There were jealousies and treacheries, though he never used the power we had given him to manipulate us.
One day he announced he was going away. Someone he knew had offered him a place as a volunteer to teach English to children in Africa. He mentioned the name of the island, a name so difficult to pronounce that it became impossible to remember.
The last time I saw him it was on a winter day on the street right below my apartment. He had come around to say goodbye right before getting on the plane. He must have buzzed the intercom and I had come down. I was living by the Via dei Riari then, in a small studio at the end of the street, at the foot of the Gianicolo Hill, and I remember the feeling of sorrow clinging to my clothes as I walked out on the street. It was drizzling and cold and he wasn’t wearing a coat or a jacket; all he had on was a thick black turtleneck and his old leather gloves. I also remember how he was leaning against a brick wall next to his motorcycle and how the wind ruffled his hair.
He has a wife.
She must have been the one throwing water on the floor. She is only a girl—a very thin, very young girl like so many I saw along the island road with sloshing buckets balancing on their heads—who looks frightened to see me. She wears a threadbare kanga wrapped around her waist and another one with the same pattern over her shoulders. As she advances, she pulls its edge over her hair, which is braided in thick cornrows, as though she needs extra protection. Andrea speaks quickly to her in Swahili, and she whispers something inaudible. She lowers her eyes to the floor as she stands before me like a schoolgirl in front of the principal.
“This is Farida,” Andrea says. “She hasn’t met many Western women.”
I stretch out my hand and she hesitates before moving hers tentatively toward mine. I rush to grab it. It’s limp, and still wet from the washing.
“Hello, Farida, very nice to meet you,” I say in English.
I realize my voice has taken the hideous inflection I sometimes can’t help myself from having when talking to Africans. I tend to stretch all my vowels, in an unconscious effort to imitate their accent.
“Women don’t shake hands here,” Andrea warns me.
“Right. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, foreigners don’t always know.”
Farida has beautiful eyes with long, curled eyelashes and her skin looks soft, flawless. She must be eighteen at the most. Her pupils dilate with apprehension, so I let go of her hand.
“She doesn’t speak any English,” he says.
Farida whispers something to him, he nods, releasing her, and she rushes off, back where she’s been hiding.
He shows me where I am to sleep. It’s a small room in the back, behind the kitchen, with a Spartan four-poster bed and a mosquito net. He stands by the door for a moment and I feel his eyes on me for the first time. I look at him and again, for a split second, I feel that flicker of recognition, a tiny leap of the heart, as though we both know what the other one is thinking. Snippets of the past are hovering between us. I am about to say something—I am not sure yet as to what—but I need to say something that will shorten the distance, make us close again. He cuts me off before I open my mouth.
“I’m going to the mosque for prayer, then we’ll have dinner. You must be hungry.”
It’s beginning to get dark outside when he comes back. I hear more water splashing, this time from the plastic bucket he showed me in the bathroom we are meant to share. When he knocks at my door to call me for dinner he has changed into a pair of cargo pants and a faded T-shirt. We sit on the mat under a bright fluorescent light and Farida brings out our dinner. Andrea scoops up rice, fish in coconut sauce, thinly cut greens mixed with sweet potatoes and chapati from warm aluminum pots covered by lids, while Farida retreats again to the back room. He hands me a full plate and begins to eat skillfully with his fingers, using the chapati to gather the food and mop up the sauce. I take a moment to study his technique. No food reaches past his first knuckle, I observe. A trick I’m unable to imitate.
“Would you like a spoon?” he asks.
“That would be great, actually.”
He says something in the direction of the kitchen, and after a moment Farida reappears with a spoon, then departs again.
The food is not bad but it is bland. I am disappointed; I was counting on some delicious surprises coming out of that kitchen. Instead it’s an unhappy sort of food, without zest, like one finds in hospitals or schools. And the buzzing light overhead washes everything in a deathly pallor.
“Isn’t Farida eating with us?” I ask.
“No. She eats later.”
“Why?”
“It’s just the way it is.”
“Women eat later?”
“Yes.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Relax, Stella. It’s okay.”
He throws an amused glance at me.
“And trust me, she much prefers it that way when there are guests.”
“Why? Am I that scary?”
He smiles. “It’s very likely she thinks
you are.”
There is tenderness in his voice when he speaks of her. I see now how protective he is of her and that he won’t let me intimidate her more than is necessary. I am the stranger here.
“So,” I say, suddenly eager, as if it’s time to get down to business, “where is your office?”
“Which office?”
“The NGO you work for.”
“This is the office. Right here.”
I look around. There is no trace of a desk, file cabinets, papers. Only an antiquated telephone sitting on the bookshelf.
“We’ve lost a few big donors because of the recession, like everyone else, and we had to get rid of staff. I’m alone right now. In fact, there’s not much activity at the moment.”
He explains how for the past five years he’s been working for this NGO that offers microloans to women. He was hired, he says, because of his expertise with the local culture. He says all this with an ironic tinge. I tell him I’ve heard a lot about microcredit and how very successful it’s proved in developing countries. He says that yes, it is a good template, but it needs to be adapted from place to place. Here on the island, he says, the idea is to give the women two goats each to start with, so they can slowly build a herd and sell the milk. They can also get chickens, for eggs. Theoretically within a few months they should be able to repay the loan and start saving some capital.
“Why theoretically?” I ask.
“Stuff happens all the time. Either it’s the animals that die of mysterious diseases, or they’re stolen by neighbors. Or the husbands take the money and use it for whatever they need. So actually most of the women have failed to repay the loans.”
“That’s disappointing.”
He nods and keeps eating in silence. Somehow I had expected him to feel more passionate about this project. That he’d find it a rather noble task to devote one’s life to lifting women from poverty.
“So, what happens now?” I asked. “Are you out of a job?”
“No. They have kept me on a salary while they try to figure out how to change the modus operandi.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“A bunch of Norwegians,” he says. Now I do hear a bit of passion—just shy of a sneer.
He shrugs and looks into his plate.
“As if they’d have any idea of how to operate it. They show up twice a year and they don’t even speak the language.”
I resist asking more. Though I have so many questions, clearly he doesn’t particularly like to talk about any of this; he must know that this bare room looks nothing like an efficient NGO. Maybe there will be another opportunity, later. Maybe we both need a little time.
He fills my glass with water. I wonder if it’s filtered but I don’t dare ask. I could do with a drink, actually. It would really help me to soften up the edges and get through this more smoothly.
When I retire to my room in the evening I discover that Farida has scattered pink frangipani petals on my bed. The scent is sweet and heady. I would like to take a photo of it, but the power goes off just as I start fumbling inside my bag for the camera. A couple of minutes later, Farida knocks lightly at the door and brings in a kerosene lamp that fills the room with a warmer glow. Now that we are alone, she covers her mouth, repressing a laugh, and reaches for my hair. She holds a strand between her fingers for a moment, testing its texture.
Later, once the sounds of closing doors, splashing water and coughing have ceased next door, I lay awake on the hard mattress, lending an ear to the other side of the wall. I am not ready to handle any intimate sounds that might seep through their bedroom walls.
Time here moves as slowly as inside a dentist’s waiting room.
I am trying to figure out what Andrea’s routine is, to get a sense of his existence, but his life keeps eluding me. There has been a procession of visitors throughout the whole morning, all of them men who sit out on the porch with him and talk very loudly in Swahili. I watch Andrea as he slaps his thigh and raises his voice, joining the chorus. He’s a different person in this new incarnation—that cool aloofness, that lightness of touch he had when I knew him, seems gone. Swahili sounds like a language that needs a strong vocal emission, wide gesticulation and theatrical facial expressions. The men wear shirts over colorful kikoys wrapped around their waists, bantering and laughing on the stone bench that I’ve been told is called baraza. It could be local gossip, or perhaps they are just recounting a fishing expedition; I notice one of them is moving an open hand like a knife slicing his forearm, perhaps demonstrating the size of his daily catch. Andrea hasn’t introduced me to any of them.
After lunch—another disappointing meal of plain white rice and fried fish with too many bones—I tell Andrea I’d like to go out and take some pictures of the village. I have begun to feel hostage to the house, as though—inexplicably so—there’s an unwritten rule that I am to stay put and not wander out. It is decided that Farida is to accompany me in my wanderings. Apparently it doesn’t look good for any woman—mzungu or local—to be out on the streets by herself. This has of course not been openly stated, but somehow I get the drift. Farida reappears clad in her black buibui, showing an unforeseen eagerness for the assignment she’s been given, and off we go. The minute we are alone she urges me in sign language to enter a neighbor’s house. I try to protest—I’ve had enough of being shut inside—but she won’t relent. Evidently she’s no longer so scared of me.
We enter another squared house with a small inner courtyard where an old lady wrapped in a bright pink cloth sits quietly next to a goat with her withered legs stretched out in front. She looks blind, and strangely beautiful. Farida ignores her and we enter a dark, stuffy room. I hear giggles coming from its depths. There are two young women about Farida’s age who get up from the floor and come toward us. Farida shows me off to them with pride, like a girl with a new doll. I have a feeling that news of my arrival has been spreading and the neighbors are expecting to get a glimpse of me. There is a brief discussion, then the young women decide I have to follow them to the next room, darker than the first one. Here they pat the floor mat till I sit down. More women, both young and old, join us now, appearing from the recesses of what looks like a big house, and sit across from me, making sounds of appreciation. I am surrounded. The room smells of cheap lotions, cloth, sweat, boredom and sleep. Farida must have told them it’d be okay to go ahead and touch me, because now they tug at my hair, at my clothes, they inspect the fabric, grab my wrist, discuss my rings, my watch. The room is stifling; my clothes stick to my back as sweat rolls down my spine. I glance at my watch and I see it’s only half past three. The end of the day still feels a long way ahead.
After two more visits in the neighborhood, we are back on the road, although the way Farida grips my arm enhances the feeling of being her prisoner. We walk past the mildewed Soviet tower, toward what looks like the center of town, but soon I realize there is no center, no pretty square as such, no leafy gardens, no latticed verandas, no bustling heart of the village, but only more cement buildings decaying among heaps of trash. The market—the destination I have so eagerly prepared for—sits underneath yet another concrete structure, built by the same ghastly planners. At this time of day it’s half empty except for packs of stray dogs wandering through the leftovers of market day.
I look around, searching for a view of the ocean. It comes to me that since I’ve landed I haven’t seen a single shade of blue. I look in every direction, walk this way and that, but the sea is nowhere to be seen. How can this be possible? How can an island—especially such a small island—conceal the water surrounding it? My anxiety mounts. There must be an outlook, a promontory, a belvedere from which one can see water. I pose the question to Farida. Where is the sea? The sea! I ask in an almost desperate tone. Water? But she shakes her head, amused. I try with Italian. Mare? Acqua? Eau? No, she doesn’t understand a word, and I didn’t carry my Teach Yourself Swahili with me. Suddenly I must see water. My heart pounds. This must be what a real at
tack of claustrophobia feels like.
It is then, from out of the corner of my eye, that I get a glimpse of khaki. My brain registers the shade, the texture of the fabric, and instantly flashes a message. Your tribe. It is indeed a man in his thirties, in a light blue shirt and shorts. Right behind him are the loafers of Carlo Tescari. He and his friend Jeffrey Stone—tall, with thick blond sideburns and round across the waist—are chatting as they come out of the fishmonger’s with a parcel wrapped in newspaper.
My brain flashes again. I know exactly what’s happening here. They will have delicious peppered shrimps in chili sauce for dinner. I raise my arm and yell.
“Hey!”
It has not been easy to get rid of Farida. She was very upset when I began to smilingly signal “You can go home, it’s fine, I know the way. Just go home now, I’m okay.” But the stubborn girl didn’t want to move.
“Who is she?” Jeffrey Stone asked. We had just been introduced by Tescari, who had rejoiced when I had invited myself for a drink.
“You need a break from that madman, eh?” Tescari said, and I think he winked, too. “What did I tell you?”
“Who is this girl now?” Jeffrey Stone asked again.
I didn’t reply and Farida didn’t budge.
“Can you speak to her in Swahili? Please tell her she can go home, that I’ll be fine, I know my way back.”
Both Tescari and Stone spoke to her with the brisk tone people use with servants in this part of the world. Farida seemed hurt. She gave me a look under her long eyelashes, perhaps expecting me to explain her role to these men. She was my hostess, her face said, she was responsible for me. We must go home together. But I didn’t obey her silent request. Instead I moved my hand again toward what I figured was the direction home.
Please. Please go.
Then a couple of words from the Swahili book resurfaced.
Nyumbani, tafadhali.
Reluctantly she turned and started walking away.
The Other Language Page 10