Women Who Blow on Knots

  “Welcome, Thirina. Welcome to the house of Dido.”

  In the face of the woman’s joy Madam Lilla’s lofty air seemed even more imperious. But this old woman could bring a smile to anyone’s face. She really was funny. Meanwhile we climbed out of the jeep one by one, a chain of rising tension. Maryam seemed keen to get into the garden as soon as possible with no desire to say goodbye to Saida.

  But Saida had something to say before she left us. For the past three days her tough guerilla style kept her at arm’s length but now she must have felt that Madam Lilla had turned us all into her sidekicks. Or maybe she wanted to explain the rift between her and Madam Lilla. She couldn’t say this to Maryam because of her outburst on the road. And maybe because she felt Amira was too beholden to Madam Lilla she didn’t speak to her either. In the end she opted for me.

  “I’ll only say this…”

  Biting her lower lip, she looked like the kind of mother who behaved like her own daughter when she wasn’t around. And like her own daughter her feet were fidgeting nervously.

  “I know she can’t hurt you like she hurt me. I was a child then. My only crime was falling in love. And giving up on myself altogether… Her name is Thirina. A name that means love. But she punished me for my love. She would only ever give up on another man in the name of love, and she never gave up on herself. I know her boundaries and that’s why she hurt me.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes and, turning away, she began to shuffle her feet again. She wanted to say things that would make her seem even more cruel; things about ‘mother Thirina’ but she managed to pull herself together and her guilt overtook her anger.

  “You need to remind her that she has responsibilities. Because she dragged you into this brilliant world of hers… she can’t just kick you out … leave you high and dry.”

  She drove her heel into the ground as if she were trying to drive back the tears. As a woman who knew how to kill in a desert, she was now ashamed to be shedding tears for an old memory in that same desert.

  Meanwhile Madam Lilla was standing over the boot of the car. Naturally she was waiting for someone to come to help her with her bags. Saida was the first to react. She went over to her and muttered, “They’ll come to get you in two days. If they don’t, let me know.” Madam Lilla only waited before Saida added, “I will always be there for you.”

  Madam Lilla didn’t answer and Saida wasn’t expecting to be forgiven. Clearly their stormy relationship was always like this. And then, jumping back into the jeep, Saida was gone in a cloud of dust.

  The young girl came over and whisked the bags out of the boot. Looking up at us, she said, “good morning,” even though the sun was just setting. Then she let out a sisterly giggle. In a flash she gathered up our bags and disappeared into the garden. Behind me was the youngest girl, who must have been about six or seven years old. I couldn’t see her face. For a moment slipping away from her bubbly good cheer, the old woman took each of us by the hand. For a moment, only a moment, a grave expression appeared on her face as if she was checking for a pulse. Like she was carefully taking our temperatures from the heat in our hands. When she finished with each of us she returned to her former lively self, laughing as if she knew a funny story about each of us. The middle-aged woman was more balanced in expressing her joy and putting her arm around the older woman she invited us to come inside, the two of them saying together:

  “Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the house of Dido.”

  Maryam looked at the house. She was intent on working out whether Dido had really ever lived here. She wanted to know. Her intense curiosity made her seem like a humourless judge in comparison to the lighthearted women of the household. The middle-aged woman then took Maryam and Amira by the arm and said, “This is Dido’s home, come in. The door is always open for Thirina’s girls.”

  Madam Lilla put her arm in mine and we stepped into the garden. Which was bursting with blooming redbuds which should have been impossible in that climate and season.

  The middle-aged woman stopped on the threshold, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

  “It’s been years, Thirina. Welcome home.”

  Looking around like a proud interior minister overseeing newly constructed bridges and dams, Madam Lilla took in the place. “We will get some rest, Hatice, are the rooms ready?” she said, and nothing more. For our arrival the woman had thought of everything: everything was sparkling clean and white. There was such peace and quiet. We went into an underground house that was nestled inside a cave. There were no windows but it was elegant beyond belief. Dark red satin, gold studded pillows, dusky rooms. It felt cool, maybe because the walls were covered in wicker. And the soft wicker under your feet gave you the overwhelming desire to kneel down and touch it. The centre hall opened onto three rooms. The bathroom was along another corridor. The kitchen was underground. Candles flickered in every corner. There couldn’t be a better place to tell a story or share a secret. It was underground and windowless but you didn’t feel smothered or suffocated, only this surreal sense of release and comfort. It was as if every bit of lace, every detail, had been designed in a long played game of house. If you were to create a house of compassion in a fairytale this would be it. The desert outside was another world altogether.

  Madam Lilla went into a bedroom with a single bed and we went into one with three. It seemed like Madam Lilla was back in a house she’d only left a few minutes ago. The three of us were watching silently, trying to understand this game of house that had started before we arrived, trying to figure out the roles of the objects and their stories, and waiting for this dream space to settle in our minds so that we could get on with the game.

  Slowly we went into the little bathroom, one by one, where we sat in the basin under the cascading water. Silently we swaddled ourselves in white towels. Then we slipped into our nightgowns. After the deadly, panic-struck world of Jadu, world of guns, we slipped into the silence of Yafran that healed everything that crossed our minds, joyfully licking each of our wounds. The room was spotless. And cool. Not a trace of the desert. Madam Lilla appeared before we went to sleep. In her purple silk-satin, dotted nightgown she looked like a wise sprite wrapped in tissue paper. As she walked the purple silk seemed to hover weightlessly in the air. She sat down on the corner of Maryam’s bed. “Let’s leave this matter of how this house in the middle of the desert once belonged to Dido until morning. But as for the blue-faced man … whom I couldn’t tell you about in front of Saida…” Then she told us what we had been dying to know since the morning.

  “It was the night before I saw the three of you ladies dressed in white nightgowns on the terrace of that hotel. Ah! Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this, but I will…”

  Oh the joy and pleasure she got from recounting the story. But we could sense that there was something she wasn’t telling us. She stopped before getting to why the man’s face was blue and the symbolism behind the earrings and the necklaces. Turning to Maryam, she said, “As for why we have come to Yafran. This is a special place. And my… There is something I need to collect here. Something special. Certain private affairs must be handled with special implements. Because…”

  Suddenly she stopped again, “I’m tired. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  No one took offence. Amira said, “You didn’t ask about our dreams. The ones we were going to see after riding a camel for the first time.” Madam Lilla let out a sly laugh.

  “You seem like the kind of women who can decipher a dream. There’s no need to tell me about them.”

  We didn’t push the matter further and she was gone.

  As Maryam drifted off to sleep she said, “I shouldn’t say this but…

  “I know you like Madam Lilla and her secrets and all that but this matter of the blue-faced man. The man is a Tuareg. The Tuaregs are known as the blue people. They are the largest nomadic group in Africa. The men cover their faces with a thick blue cloth. Over time the cloth leaves a lasting blue stain. So they are called the
blue men. The necklaces… Each one is a symbol of a tribe. In other words the symbol on that necklace refers to his tribe. So I guess Madam Lilla doesn’t really have all these wild secrets after all.”

  “The women in those tribes don’t cover themselves then?” whispered Amira sleepily.

  Pleased to use her knowledge to rattle Madam Lilla’s throne, Maryam said:

  “Do you want the truth? Or the fuss to do with the fairytale?”

  We all laughed. Maryam went on.

  “They say that in the Old Wars women fought on the front lines because the men were too scared. Since then the men have always covered their faces in shame. But the truth of the matter is…”

  “Azizi, we couldn’t care less about that,” I said. “And neither do we really trust you anymore, Maryam Efendi. Look, you totally missed something as big as Dido’s house!”

  And we all laughed. The room filled with joy and took hold of us and we drifted off to sleep. It was a room made ready for us by the women of Dido’s home.

  None of us ever spoke about the dreams we’d had the night before, the dreams that, according to Madam Lilla, had to do with the lies we told ourselves. For Madam Lilla it was always tomorrow. She had stories that stopped in the middle because the following day was still coming. Madam Lilla carried the weight of secrets that couldn’t keep up with time. She had blank pages in her stories that were mentioned but never explained. A new day came so quickly that we could hardly remember the troubles of the day before. Saida had called this, “covering with a veil of magic,” and for Maryam it was just a lie. As for Amira, she had called Madam Lilla our Don Quixote. But one way or another this woman kept time moving. And what she was going to take from Yafran was truly special. We waited until dawn for it. Scheherazade had nothing on us! A miserable slave talking to stave off death. With our stories we kept the world spinning for one more day. Oh and what a story we would hear on the following day! And as for our dreams … the time would come for those too.

  17

  Holding the long handle of a broom, Maryam dashed out of the garden tent where we were having breakfast.

  “I don’t want to get better. There is nothing wrong with me! Just leave me alone. I only want the truth.”

  The sun was already high in the sky.

  “Hasn’t anyone ever healed you?” asked Madam Lilla, cold as ice. With a crushing tone of voice dressed in the finest shades of compassion, she said, “Hasn’t anyone ever helped you get better, my child?”

  Suddenly pulling herself together after her ‘therapy’ session (she had been crying off and on ever since), Amira answered Madam Lilla’s question, “No, Madam Lilla. And I’m sure that you already know that. In any event didn’t you tell us that already! Nobody can do anything for people like us because we…”

  Once again it fell to me to finish her sentence. But my mouth was sealed and I didn’t know what to say.

  “People like us have to self-heal. No one would believe that we really needed help.”

  Amira turned to Maryam. And she recited from Dido’s tablet.

  “The Gods love us as they love their equals.”

  The three women of Dido’s home stood in the corner of the pavilion, watching this sudden eruption of emotion. We must have looked really funny. In the face of our three-person, small-scale revolt, Madam Lilla was hardly shaken – she only flashed us a knowing smile from the divan where she was stretched out and said, “That’s what I thought, too.”

  The three women of the house of Dido stood silently together. All our fussing and fighting in the middle of the desert seemed all the more meaningless in the face of their purity. They looked at Madam Lilla to find out what they should do but she only smiled. At last she slowly sat up, left the tent and approached Maryam.

  “So you want the truth, huh? Then you will have it! Samira! You can now bring me what I entrusted to you.”

  Samira shuffled towards us with a little velvet pouch. We might have been frightened to discover what was in it if we hadn’t been through so much over the last few days. Indeed if we hadn’t been through so much that morning we might have been surprised.

  *

  We didn’t realize how early it was when we got up that morning. As she made her bed, Maryam seemed to pick up a thread from the night before.

  “But of course it would have been impossible for me to know. I mean who would have guessed that Dido had a house in the middle of the desert in Libya? In any case this is more a tourism matter than academic. I mean three strange women, including a mother and child, get swept away with the wild idea of opening up such a place to the public. What does that have to do with academic research? It’s entirely normal for me not to know anything about this.”

  “Of course,” I said, teasing her. “Azizi, it’s nothing but a piece of information for tourists!”

  Amira woke up in a totally different mood, laughing and messing around. She had the sweet madness a loner has when she is joking with herself, “I wonder if I should set up my dance school in the middle of the desert? Wouldn’t that be something? I could dance without anyone ever seeing me.”

  Suddenly it seemed like she’d heard a voice in her head, and her eyes were on a fixed point in the distance, like she was trying to catch the slippery tail end of a dream. Both Maryam and I were quiet because we knew what a subtle game that was. Then grabbing the tale and the gist of the dream, she said, “I’m travelling from somewhere. Holding suitcases. Maybe from New York. There’s a big house. Made up of boxes of little houses. It’s our house. I go inside. Then… wait… This part’s confusing. I think I see my mother. Yes, yes, I see her and she says, ‘We’re going to have something to eat. Everyone’s here.’ I go to my room. No, no, I can’t find it. Mother isn’t surprised that I’ve come, and I’m upset. Then I go into a corridor but the house is like a maze and I can’t find my room. Then I do. It’s full of light. I’m confused. I wonder if this really is my room. Then I start to change but I stop, naked, looking out of the window at all my relatives. They see me like that. They wave. But in a garden far away. I think to myself, no they can’t see me. I’m not sure. Then I leave to go to the garden but this time the house is even more of a maze. I can’t find the front door. I get frustrated and scared. Finally I find the door and I step outside. Mother is there waiting for me with all our relatives. ‘Oh I was so worried about you,’ she says. Angry with her, I say, ‘If you were that worried you would have called.’ Turning to our relatives, she says, laughing, ‘Ah she’s so angry with me!’ I’m about to cry. Actually I think I did cry. Then I woke up.”

  We listened carefully to everything she said, as if it had really happened. My own dream had just left the station of my mind and the moment I began thinking about it the train was already roaring ahead, “Did I cry, too? I think I did. But why in the world would I?” They didn’t break the silence. They were waiting for me to race after it, jump on and walk up to the engine room from where I could explain the entire dream. Finally it came.

  “There was this young girl I really adored. She said, ‘I am going out to get the news.’ She’s going to a really dangerous place, and I’m upset about it. There’s a press meeting going on in a room, all men. Laughing. No one is paying attention to the girl. I go inside and shout, ‘don’t you see what’s happening? The girl’s leaving!’ When no one even turns to look at me I feel like crying. I go out right away. I say to the girl, ‘Look, no one said anything like that to me. But I am with you all the way.’ Stuff like that. Then the girl takes a carpet and throws it over her back. The carpet is her home. I feel even more upset. I feel ashamed for having just lost my cool in front of those men. I go out straightaway. It’s night and I look up at the clouds. There’s something Godly there. God has written something in the clouds but if I read it I know I’ll lose my mind. I go back inside. I am going back to the meeting room and I’m going to be strong. But my legs are shrinking. So I start pulling up my skirt so they won’t notice. When I go in I see all these little bo
ys licking the men’s penises. Everyone is laughing. I feel like I’m going to lose my mind. Then I wake up.”

  “One of those dreams that makes you pity yourself when you remember it,” said Maryam, chuckling a little. For a moment I also felt sick at the meaning behind the dream.

  “And you?” I said. “Did you have a dream?” Letting out a sigh, she threw herself down on the bed she’d just made. Running her hands through the hair newly sprouting on the back of her head and looking up at the ceiling, she recounted her dream.

  “That damned Madam Lilla must have got to me because I certainly had one of her famous camel dreams. We were in Mecca.”

  Playfully Amira recited a prayer of good fortune, imitating an old auntie. Maryam smiled and continued.

  “But it turns out Mecca was Tahrir. Or we were in Tahrir but it was really Mecca. Some kind of dream trick. We are spinning, then running, then we stop and start spinning again. Sometimes I was really angry when we stopped because there was a well in the middle of the square. Someone’s fallen in. If we don’t spin she’ll never get out and while we keep spinning it’s like we are turning something. It’s someone very small. I’m totally serious and they’re all laughing. And that’s when it happens…. Now no talking to Madam Lilla about this dream. No way. She already takes herself too seriously.”

  Impatiently we vowed we’d never bring it up and Maryam went on again.

  “That’s when I feel a hand on my back. Madam Lilla has slapped me on the back. With that I begin to spin the whole crowd. And spinning like that we come closer to the well. I hear a scream from below. And that’s it,” she said, jumping to her feet.