Chaos of the Senses

by Ahlem Mosteghanemi

  And I, who’d turned up by coincidence in a black dress, how could I justify my appearance when I’d never connected with the colours of things?

  Trying to get off the subject of colours lest I expose my ignorance in this area, I said, ‘Isn’t it amazing the way our relationship started in the dark? Ever since that day I’ve wanted to shine some light on this story!’

  ‘But we didn’t meet in the dark,’ he replied with a smile.

  I nearly asked him, ‘So where did we meet?’ However, it would have seemed strange to ask a question like this, and it would have exposed me in the event that he thought I was ‘her’.

  So I tried to lure him into a confession of sorts. I said, ‘I love stories about people coming together. In every meeting between a man and woman there’s a miracle, something that transcends both of them and that places them in the path of a single lightning bolt. That’s why, even after they break up, lovers go on being captivated by the beauty of their first meeting, because it produced a state of rapture that can never be repeated, and because it’s the only pristine reality that survives love’s destruction.’

  I expected him to describe some rendezvous or tell me a story. Instead, he said, ‘All beginnings to love are wonderful. But the most wonderful of them is ours.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, feigning surprise.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, ‘since it’s a miracle that repeats itself every time we see each other.’

  And that was all he said. However, his statement led me to the conclusion that we must have met before that film showing. But where, and how? These were questions he didn’t seem prepared to answer. He’d entered into a state of silence, placing between us declarations as opaque as a cloud of smoke.

  I studied him for a while as he sat there distracted from me by thoughts of us, or of her.

  I broke the silence with the first thought that crossed my mind.

  I said, ‘A man who wears black puts distance between himself and others. So there are questions I don’t dare ask you, however simple they might be. You don’t seem to like questions.’

  ‘Who said I didn’t like questions?’ he asked abruptly, seemingly taken aback.

  For a minute I thought I’d made a mistake. But then he continued, ‘I like big questions, scary questions that don’t have any answers. As for nosy, naïve questions, they irritate me, and I think they irritate other people, too.’

  ‘So how do you answer the questions people around you ask?’

  He took a deep drag on his cigarette as though he hadn’t expected my question. Then, with a touch of derision, he replied, ‘People? The only questions they usually ask are stupid ones, and they force you to give them answers as stupid as their questions. They ask you, for example, what work you do, not what you would have liked to be. They ask you what you own, not what you’ve lost. They ask you about the woman you married, not about the one you love. They ask you what your name is, not whether this name suits you. They ask you how old you are, not how much of your life you’ve actually lived. They ask you what city you live in, not what city lives in you. They ask you whether you pray, not whether you fear God. That’s why I usually respond to questions like these with silence, because when we don’t say anything, we force people to correct themselves.’

  This man was astounding. His words were as unsettling as his silence, his logic was as complex as it was simple, and his answers were nothing but the outlines to more questions.

  And although he left me no room to ask him any ‘normal’ questions, I discovered that, by the laws of his own logic, I could legitimately corner him and draw him into telling truths that could only be extracted from him in an upside down, backwards sort of way.

  So, a bit sarcastically, I said, ‘You’re a man who tries to get other people to ask questions in reverse. So, would you have the guts to answer my questions?’

  ‘Well,’ he replied with a playful defiance, ‘that depends on how smart you are!’

  So, upping the ante, I asked my first question: ‘What name would you have liked to have?’

  His reply bowled me over: ‘The name you chose for me in your book suits me quite well.’ He giggled as he said it.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. What he’d said meant that he knew who I was. But who was he to be talking to me as though he’d just stepped out of a story I’d written?

  ‘I haven’t chosen a name for you yet!’ I retorted playfully.

  ‘So be it,’ he quipped back. ‘It’s fine with me to remain nameless!’

  ‘But,’ I admitted, ‘this bothers me. Can’t you take off your cloak of mystery for just a little while?’

  ‘Only love strips us naked, Madame!’

  ‘Am I to understand from this that you aren’t in love?’

  I could see my question dangling from his silence. So I posed it in a different way: ‘Has love ever stripped you naked?’

  ‘It did happen once. After that, I put on my disappointment, and I haven’t taken it off since.’

  With girlish triumph, I said, ‘So, there’s no woman in your life?’

  ‘Madame,’ he replied, ‘how much silence do I need to answer your questions?’

  What I was supposed to understand him to mean was, ‘Madame, how much patience do I need to put up with your nosiness?’ or perhaps, ‘. . . to answer your stupid questions?’

  It wasn’t this politely worded insult that drew me up short, but, rather, a certain polite word he’d used.

  ‘Why do you call me “Madame”?’ I asked. ‘Who told you I was married?’

  He smiled and said, ‘There are women who were born to be addressed with this title, and to call them anything else would be an insult to their womanhood!’

  Before I had a chance to take satisfaction in his reply, he continued, ‘Apart from that, your marital status doesn’t matter to me any more.’

  The way he’d worded his last statement took me by surprise. It seemed to conceal precedents of some sort, or something he wanted to divulge.

  ‘Why do you say “any more”?’ I asked.

  ‘Did I really say that?’ he replied mischievously, answering my question with a question.

  Then he said nothing more.

  It was obvious that he knew something about me. The worrying thing was that I still didn’t know anything about him. So I decided to carry on with the challenge, adopting his own topsy-turvy method of posing questions.

  I said, ‘I’ve never met anybody like you in this city. So I’m curious to know what city lives in you.’

  As though he’d divined the aim behind my question, he retorted, ‘My answer to a question like that won’t do you any good. Like authors who live in one city in order to write about another, I live in one city so that I can love another, and when I leave it, I don’t know which of the two cities had been living in me, and which of them I’d been living in. At present, I’m a vacant flat. I left Constantine for love, and she left me out of disappointment!’

  ‘Are you from Constantine? That’s strange. I thought you were from somewhere else.’

  ‘Let’s say I am.’

  ‘So, what kind of work do you do? I mean, what would you have liked to be?’

  Chuckling at the way I’d rephrased the question and the sarcastic tone in which I’d corrected myself, he said, ‘Actually, I wanted to be an actor or a novelist so that I could live more than one life. One life isn’t enough for me. I belong to a generation that’s suffering from an age crisis, one that’s spent its life even before it’s lived it.’

  Then he added, ‘In any case, I’m an artist, and quite satisfied with my profession.’

  ‘You’re an artist?’ I blurted out in amazement.

  ‘What did you expect me to be?’

  ‘I don’t know, but . . . ’

  ‘But what . . . ?’

  ‘I used to know an artist from Constantine. I just now thought of him. He was so obsessed with the city that all he used to paint was . . . ’

  ‘. . .
bridges!’ he said, finishing my sentence for me.

  ‘Did you know him, too?’ I cried.

  He smiled and said, ‘No, but I’d expect an artist who loves this city to do something silly like that.’

  ‘Why do you call it silly?’

  ‘Let’s just say I don’t like bridges.’

  ‘Strange. He spent months trying to get me to love them. I thought all artists would like the same landmarks.’

  He put out his cigarette as if to avoid an unpleasant subject and said, ‘Who knows! He might have changed his mind since then. The only people who never change their minds are dimwits!’

  Sensing that it bothered him for me to talk about Constantine, I tried to think of something else I could draw him into a conversation about. Before I’d opened my mouth, he looked at me and said, ‘I like you in that dress. Black suits you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. But more than that, I like the fact that we both happened to wear the same colour today. I still remember the dress you were wearing the first time I saw you. Like Cinderella’s prince, who has nothing but a shoe to guide him to the girl of his dreams, I think that if I’d seen a woman wearing a muslin dress, I would have run after her, sure that she must be you!’

  He slowly knocked the ashes off his cigarette and continued, ‘What saddened me that day was that I didn’t get to exchange a single word with you. All the lights were against us, maybe because we were the best-looking couple at somebody else’s wedding. The band had been playing lively music when all of a sudden it stopped and struck up the wedding march in announcement of the bride and groom’s arrival. Women lined up on either side, decked out in their finest traditional garb and beating on ben-idirs and tambourines. Just when you and I happened to come in, both of us wearing black, the women starting to ululate. We weren’t the bride and groom, of course. We were there at that moment by sheer coincidence, just steps ahead of the bride and groom, but it was the loveliest possible mistake. Next to us, the actual wedding procession looked downright dull! It was as though they’d been escorting you to me in that black dress as my imaginary bride, and the scene stayed with me for years afterwards.’

  He puffed on his cigarette. Then he continued, ‘I remember how we were so flustered, we split up after that. You struck up a conversation with some other man, and I began talking to another woman, making a point of seeming interested in her. Wanting to avoid more lights and mistakes, each of us found a place in a different group. Even so, we couldn’t get past each other. Even while we were deliberately ignoring each other, we were still face to face. I don’t think you felt any desire for me at first, and I didn’t feel any for you. It was love that desired both of us, dreaming of a pair of characters like us to play these outlandish roles.’

  I just sat there listening, not daring to interrupt him with a single word. In silence I found a refuge, a way of creating the impression that I already knew everything he was saying. Besides, silence imbues situations like this with a special sort of beauty.

  I felt sure he must be talking about some other woman. I couldn’t recall ever having gone to a wedding by myself wearing a dress like the one he’d described. I didn’t even have one in my wardrobe. Besides, if I had ever walked into a wedding by accident with a strange man as striking as this one, it wouldn’t have slipped my mind. Nor would this scandal-mongering city have given me a chance to forget it!

  I was afraid to be honest with him, since it would have destroyed so much of the beautiful illusion each of us harboured about the other. So I kept quiet, enjoying my ambiguous position between two women, one of whom he was pursuing because she was wearing black, and the other of whom was pursuing him because he’d said, ‘Not at all’!

  Each of us was, to the other, both Cinderella and the prince, and this was the strangest thing about our story!

  I had only one comment to make on what he’d said, and it was a statement that I wanted to be subject to multiple interpretations.

  I said, ‘So we might have all sorts of beginnings for a single story!’

  ‘Yes,’ he concurred. ‘And that’s why I was so sure we’d meet up. In fact, I’d imagined us having a time together just like this one!’

  He paused slightly before asking, ‘Do you know why I risked ruining our first date by letting the taxi driver decide where to take us?’

  Before I had a chance to say, ‘Why?’ he went on, ‘Because in love, more than in anything else, you’ve got to have a relationship of trust with Fate. You have to turn over the wheel without giving it any particular address or telling it what you think is the shortest way to get where you’re going. Otherwise, life will amuse itself by working against you, and either your car will stall on you or you’ll get stuck in a traffic jam, and at best, you’ll arrive late for your dreams!’

  ‘Something like that takes a lot of patience,’ I said, ‘and I’m no good at waiting!’

  ‘You’ve never experienced love, then!’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I have!’ I objected. ‘It’s just that my experience of it has only made me more impatient. Maybe that’s why I’ve got it wrong so many times. Love taught me not to believe it, but I believed it anyway. It taught me to recognize it before celebrating it, but I couldn’t. So I’m still waiting for love’s train. Every time a passenger gets off, I think love has arrived. So I carry his bags for him and ask him how his trip was. I ask him his profession, the names of the cities he passed through and the women who passed through his life. Then, as he talks to me, I discover that he got on the wrong train and ended up in the wrong station. So I head for another passenger and leave the first one sitting on his suitcase!’

  He was listening to me with interest, perhaps on account of the possibility that he, too, might be sitting on his suitcase without realizing it. Maybe this is why, as he flicked his ashes into the ashtray with studied leisure, he said, ‘I hope you’ll leave that station and never go back.’

  Some silence passed between us, and I didn’t know how to break it with anything but a question which, after what he’d just said, struck me as naïve.

  It would have made more sense for me to ask, ‘How?’ But instead I said, ‘Why?’

  The reply came with an unexpected sternness. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘I’m the last passenger to get off that train. I had to travel a long way to get to you, and now that I’m here, trains have stopped running. So, wait no longer, Madame. I’ve declared you a closed city!’

  How could a woman resist a man so intoxicated with conceit? Is there anything more wonderful than a love that’s born out of the fervour of jealousy, out of the conviction that we have a legitimate claim over someone who doesn’t belong to us, and whom we’re seeing for the very first time?

  There was an alluring, unstudied manliness about him as he delivered this first romantic pronouncement. He uttered the words with a composure so disconcerting and so utterly self-assured that it left no room for a logical question such as, ‘By what right do you say such a thing?’ By virtue of a single sentence I’d fallen under the sway of love in all its insanity, and I began conversing with him outside the bounds of logic.

  ‘But I don’t know anything about you,’ I said.

  ‘That makes it all the nicer.’

  ‘And all you know about me is whatever illusions you harbour about muslin.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Do you believe you can keep the trains from whistling inside me?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And do you think it will be easy for us to be lovers at a time like this that’s so opposed to love?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But we’re headed for a romantic involvement . . .’

  ‘Quite necessarily, Madame!’

  By the time I’d gathered my astonishment-scattered wits to say something else, he was signalling for the waiter to bring the bill and call us a taxi.

  Within minutes we were headed for a farewell when we were still approaching love’s door.

/>   Like my voice, his cologne wasn’t high-pitched this time.

  ‘When will we see each other?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ he said.

  He left me no room for anything but an exclamation mark.

  ‘Call me? How?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I know everything.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  As the taxi descended with us towards Constantine’s usual noisy bustle, we, with one bend in the road after another, were climbing love’s steep mountain path, whose silence grew ever deeper as we ascended.

  Then suddenly, as we were waiting at a traffic light, he asked the driver to let him out. As I looked on in amazement, he handed him a note and told him my exact address, instructing him to deliver me to my doorstep. He leaned towards me as though he were going to plant a kiss on my cheek. Instead, he whispered in my ear, ‘It’s better for us not to come all the way back together. It’s safer for you this way.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘I’ll miss you.’

  Then he got out, leaving me in a state of stunned surprise.

  * * *

  It was love, then. This was the way it always presented its credentials.

  In a state of emotional fluidity, along would come a man against whose directness and unpretentiousness I’d taken no precautions. I’d reassure myself that nothing was in the offing, since he wasn’t that handsome or charming. Then, when I was least expecting it, he would say something confusing that no man had ever said before, and suddenly he would become the most important of them all.

  It was usually when I was in a state of bewildered amazement over him that catastrophe would strike. After all, love is nothing but being struck by the thunderbolt of surprise!

  So here it was again, going away and leaving me hanging on question marks. I found myself in a state I’d never experienced before. As I got out of the car, a mix of peculiar sensations suddenly came over me and I rushed into the house as innocently as a woman who’s just come back from a shopping trip or a visit, not from a tryst in an unknown location with a man she doesn’t know but who knows her!