Last night I told them to shut the lighthouse. So even if you did come you would never find the pier. Carthage is now in darkness and you will be lost. And, like me, you will drown. Like me you will wrestle with the gods under the earth. I have warned all of Carthage not to light their candles tonight. The entire country is feigning death so that you will have no sign from us. The palace lies on its back like a cockroach so that you will pass by without ever seeing. And so you see the extent to which we fear you stranger.
I pray for the sun not to rise in the morning. I pray that Carthage will be hidden from you even in daylight. Let the gods bring you a dream. Let them call you to other seas, to other women, to other lands. On the shores of this swamp, yes, with tears in my eyes, I am praying to the gods for this.
You have shown me my own misery, stranger. Silk is no longer silk, glass is no longer glass. I will shed the blood of seven oxen at dawn. Let the gods return me to my former self. Let them not allow the reflection of my defeated self to appear in the mirror again. Today I am sacrificing all the wheat of my country to the sun. Let Carthage go without bread, as long as you pass by and leave us. Let your ship take away the nightmare you have brought with you. Bring this shrunken, fearful, wretched Dido back to the shores whence you came. Give me back my old life, stranger. Give me back the birds, and my voice will fade in their song. Judas Trees and lilac-coloured glass. Go and return to me my country, stranger. Have mercy on me. Let not the glory of Carthage fall.
You are the sin of a queen who only for once has chosen to believe in gods and miracles instead of herself. Go back to the hell you came from.
Hey, cruel arrogance! Go and let me lose myself. Let me lose myself so that no eye can see me. Ah! If only it were possible to wipe out the history of this place with black magic. So that no one would remember, not even the gods.
I appeal to the gods, indeed I curse you from the shores of Carthage. I appeal to the gods to try your heart. Let the gods give you fantasies that will never end. So you can never relinquish them, even when you know them to be false. So that you will sail into oblivion. So that you will not sail to victory but to your doom. And your beloved servants should cry out like Penelope when you sink into the abyss. Let neither the hands of the gods nor the doctors touch that dark core of your heart.
Hey, shameless traitor! If I had the courage and the strength to once again sail upon the Mediterranean I would set out at dawn. If it were not too late to become another, I would set sail. But now it is too late to sever life in the middle and become another. So I will fade away and vanish like a defeated wretch. Hey stranger, of course I would one day fall to a fantasy. I would fall to my knees only before my nightmare like all the other rulers who have bested the truth. A ruler cannot disappear, simply go away. Rather she is defeated, falls and dies by the sword. Now looking at my miserable state in the dark of night, I am not such a ruler. I am but a daughter of a shepherdess who has done everything through wits and ambition and now I am losing it all with my heart and my dreams. However I cannot lock myself in a cave nor can I allow myself to be swept away with the sand in the desert like a shepherdess. There is no place left for me on this earth.
And then you too shall be cursed with all my might. Become even more visible when you want to disappear. When you wish to leave your feet shall be locked to the earth. Go stranger! Go so that my eyes will no longer see me.
*
The fire had gone out. The embers were breathing crimson. In the dark night we could only see the tips of our toes. “What if we get lost altogether?” I said. We were now consumed in darkness. Maryam reached out and took my foot. “We’ll be found, azizi,” she said. “Just have faith.” We were just about to laugh when we saw the girl come out of her tent holding a large satellite phone. She disappeared in the darkness. As we were setting out on this journey towards the womb of the desert that strips everything of its name here was this young girl, with darkness in her eyes. We didn’t know that she was hiding a story that told the essence of the desert.
21
“Because women show no mercy! Because time stands still in the desert! That is what makes a desert a desert!” said Madam Lilla. The words came out of her like a knife that she twirled before us. Then she was quiet as if waiting to see which one of us would step up to edge of the blade. We were silent, as if on the brink of a terrible disaster in the middle of the desert, in the darkness of our second night in the tent. Amira and I were waiting for Madam Lilla to tell us how we were going to get out of this mess when Maryam turned to Madam Lilla, looked her in the eye, and said, “I believe we have the right to a question. And you are going to be completely honest with us.”
Madam Lilla seemed to have lost her resolve and her eloquence. And considering Maryam’s state there seemed to be something far more pressing than finding a way out of our predicament. Madam Lilla was trapped in the middle of the desert and she needed our help. Maryam asked, “There is something else you didn’t tell us, Madam.”
Madam Lilla looked at me and Amira. No one was going to help her out of this one. She had no choice but to respond to Maryam. After everything that had happened that morning there was simply no other choice.
*
The sun was high in the sky and we had been on camelback for hours. In front was Tariq then came Madam Lilla, Maryam, me, Furkan, and finally Amira and Tin Abutut. The order didn’t fall into place naturally. An hour after we had set out in the morning Tin Abutut tentatively made her way over to Amira while Furkan kept riding between me and Maryam. Tin Abutut and Amira fell into conversation. It was impossible to hear. I could see Maryam now and then looking over her shoulder, trying to make out what they were saying or catch Amira’s eye. And it went on like that throughout the day and on until nightfall. When we stopped for a break Amira kept away from us. Something like fear was swimming in her eyes. Maryam was growing more and more tense. Only after the fire was lit and we had eaten and Tin Abutut and Lilla retired to their tents did Amira get up and come over to us. Her head bowed, she whispered,
“We’re in deep trouble. The girl … seems she’s up to something. Her dad, the blue-faced man, doesn’t know she’s here. I couldn’t figure out if she has Tariq and Furkan involved in this. But this certainly has to do with Madam Lilla. I suppose she… I don’t know. She’s either going to kill her or hand her over to the English.”
Turning she looked at us out of the corner of her eye. She lowered her head and playing with the sand she whispered, “She wants to take revenge on Madam Lilla for her mother. This love for Madam Lilla turned out to be a nightmare for all of them. Her father even gave his own daughter the name Tin Abutut. The name Madam Lilla goes by around here. As far as I can understand, when Madam showed up they gave this girl here the job of finishing her off. So when our good old Lilla ends up in the desert … the girl is determined … just so you know.”
“And?” said Maryam, hanging her head and staring into the fire. Amira looked at me and tried not to be angry with Maryam, “And she said to me, ‘I have no business with you. If you leave me Lilla I’ll send you back to Tunisia by helicopter.’”
“And if we don’t?” I asked.
Amira buried her head in her chest, “I’m telling you the girl is determined. Is that clear enough for you?”
Taking a handful of sand, Maryam let out a deep sigh and said, “No one is going to kill that woman because I am going to do it myself.” And she went over to the tent. We went in after her. Madam Lilla was sitting on the ground, cross-legged, looking at numbered pieces of paper under the light of a torch. As soon as we stepped inside she looked up and said calmly, as if she had been expecting us, “we need to make a plan.” Maryam sat down on the ground and swiping at the papers said in a hushed voice, “Do you have any idea what is going on around here?”
Raising her eyebrows, Madam Lilla was silent to show how inappropriate it was to behave so rashly. Then running her eyes over the pages on the floor again she said, “so just as I expected,”
and she went on without pause: “We need to make a few minor adjustments in the plan. This means that I will have to call upon the help of someone I would rather not see at all. Which is problematic.”
“Madam, this girl is going to kill you. And if we don’t leave you she’s going to kill us too. It seems you don’t know what’s really going on here.”
Madam Lilla sharply cut her off:
“Everything is perfectly clear … a girl stigmatized by my love has come to avenge her mother. She thinks she’ll gain her mother’s love if she murders me…”
Maryam opened her eyes wide and leaned so close to Madam Lilla. I thought she might bite her:
“Why do you think she would do that?”
She looked up without an eyelash trembling and said those words.
“Because women never show mercy. Because time stands still in the desert. That’s what makes a desert real.”
Then she looked up at me and Amira, her head held high.
“Don’t be afraid. Nothing is going to happen. If you help me we’ll get out of here.”
Before she could turn back to her numbers on the slips of paper, Maryam said, “just a minute, just one minute, Madam!”
She took the torch out of her hand and held it under her face.
“We are here because of you. And you can’t get out without our help. I am going to ask you a question and you are going to give me an answer.”
Madam Lilla turned up her nose and waited for the attack.
“Just one question,” said Maryam, “but this time you’re going to tell us the whole truth. I am asking you about a detail you have overlooked.”
They looked like two gods that had risen up above the clouds, lightning crackling in their eyes. Maryam sat back down cross-legged and asked, “Madam, who was that young woman? At the hotel, in Baghdad, beside Jezim Anwar, the one who was carrying the same lighter he gave you.”
She looked up at Maryam for only a second before turning off the torch. In the dark tent she began:
“After I tell you this, there will be nothing left to hide. I’m not telling you this to get you to accept my plan and not because you have forced my hand. I am telling you this so you’ll know. You need to know that if you strive for a great life you must risk the penance of your sins…”
She paused. When she began again her voice seemed to come from another world:
“The one with Jezim Anwar … she was my daughter.”
I heard Maryam swallow a massive lump in her throat. Madam Lilla began her story.
“I saw her three times in my life. But she only saw me once, that day in Baghdad, in the hotel lobby. I first saw her when she was born. A black birthmark ran down her neck all the way to her collarbone, it looked like a vine… I took it as a sign that I should leave the baby and forget about her. When people decide to do shameful things they look for signs. I was so young and I couldn’t stop. I had just begun to take my revenge on life. A baby would soften me… I wouldn’t dare give birth to another me. So I left her in Alexandria. One day I would return. Always one day. When I was strong enough, when I had enough money, enough … when I was no longer afraid. But she came to me before that day came. When I had thrown myself into the middle of a war in a fit of madness, tracking down a man who made off with zoo animals, she was there, an abandoned daughter searching for her mother. Who was crazier? We were two women risking our lives for people who didn’t love us. Who was Jezim Anwar? The scoundrel whom we took to be a film star was nothing but a two-bit extra in our story.”
She stopped again. For a few seconds it seemed like she was asleep. Waking, she went on, “I am telling you all this so that you will understand – the greatest crime is to betray one of your own. The price is too high to pay. If you betray your daughter or your sister your soul will never recover.”
All of a sudden I remembered Nana Fatima in Yafran. She had said something like this when she was shucking beans: “Never betray a daughter or a sister.”
Then I thought of another scene that had almost slipped my mind. That morning, right before we set off, in the pavilion Nana Fatima placed her broomstick on Madam Lilla’s stomach and said, “Go back to him, Thirina.” How did it go? “Go back and surrender to him, Thirina. He learned his patience from the persistent butterfly not the angry camel.” The details rushing back into my mind were so overwhelming that I suddenly interrupted Madam Lilla in the middle of her story.
“Who was Nana Fatima talking about, Madam? That morning in the tent she said, ‘Go back to him and surrender.’ Who was she talking about?”
Even in her lowest moments Madam Lilla could pull herself together like an army rising for battle when there was talk of surrender. “That is not the matter at hand,” she snapped, cutting me off. And with that she went back to the lobby in Baghdad. With every turn in her story her voice sunk deeper into the mire:
“It wasn’t hard to recognize her. There was the birthmark on her neck. And her face… She looked so much like me… Maybe I would look like her if I were the one who raised her. But when I suddenly saw her like that… I was terrified. Lighting her cigarette with Jezim Anwar’s lighter … she knew the whole story. Why I was there and what Jezim Anwar meant to me. I don’t know how she did it. Let’s just say she was her mother’s daughter. She was very young, so young. And while I was covered in mud and with no shoes, and Jezim so coldly passed me by… I was already a stone. My daughter … then I didn’t even know her name … Leila … Leila … she walked over to me and … looked at me. She said…”
She couldn’t go on. She turned away from us. And for a little while we listened to the muffled sobs of an old woman. It wasn’t hard to understand that she was telling this story for the first time.
“I am telling you all this because… The day we met…”
Maryam asked, “What did Leila say?”
As if using a part of her voice she had never used before, Madam Lilla said, “‘You stole my heart, mother. And so I stole yours.’ That’s what she said.”
I was the only one who noticed Maryam crying in the darkness. A tear had fallen on my hand resting on the ground.
I assumed that was the hardest part for Madam Lilla to tell. I assumed that was the end of her dark story. But it wasn’t. She went on. We didn’t want to listen but she wanted to share. She took her gun out of the velvet pouch and placed it on the ground.
“When something horrible happens – it’s been like this ever since I was a child – I tell myself, ‘now you have two choices. You either fall or you get up and keep walking.’ I don’t know any other way. I turned around and walked.”
Caressing her gun she was an eerie image, silently crying: “It was this gun. Leila took her own life with this gun.”
We were frozen. Without looking at any of us and with her hand still on the gun she let out something like a scream from her soul but as low as a cat: “But I paid for it.” She stopped again and this time spoke to convince herself: “I paid for it.”
For some time we sat in silence. The effort it took her to tell her story surpassed the terrible weight of the story itself.
“Once I was afraid … so afraid … I thought I couldn’t raise her. They scared me. I was afraid and now… there’s nothing left but the empty pride of Madam Lilla. Don’t be afraid. You mustn’t be afraid.”
When she found the strength to raise her head she looked at Maryam. She had something to say. She was exhausted. Silent. Only when she caught her breath was she able to speak: “This is the real reason I have set out on this journey with you. I am trying to atone for a sin. I shall take revenge for her … with her. A revenge for both of our hearts… I saw her three times. The third time… I thought I’d lost my mind, I thought everything was over. They gave me the gun. I told the men who were burying her that I was her older sister. I suppose you can go insane if you choose to. But it didn’t happen like that.”
Looking at Amira, she went on: “I heard you talking about losing yourself. Losing yourself is s
omething else. After I left Leila in Baghdad I went out into the desert. I wandered far and wide. If I could have dared to die before Jezim Anwar, I would have killed myself with this gun. But I had to kill him first. I left this gun in Yafran so I wouldn’t take my own life with it. I said that when I find a girl who is worthy enough to set out on this journey with me … I can’t do this alone. I need to have my daughter’s heart with mine. So that is the real reason we have set out on this trip together.”
Amira asked, “Why are you telling us this, Madam? Don’t you think you’ve already punished yourself enough?”
There was a strange cruelty in her voice and I didn’t expect this from Amira.
“Because, my dear Amira, only my equals can judge me. Was I supposed to explain myself to the vengeful who are thirsting for blood?”
A second tear fell from Maryam’s cheek and struck my hand. But her voice was strong: “We will inform you of our decision, Madam Lilla.”
Taking her notebook, she left the tent. I followed her out. We sat down at the fire. A little later Amira came and joined us. Maryam didn’t say a word. She only opened her book and started to read.
*
Dido’s Fifth Tablet
I am praying for the dead, stranger… For now they must die. The dead do not hear me and the gods lash me with their whips. When they are to forgive me they are asleep and when I remember my crime they are more alive than the living. Hey warrior! Do the sleepless dead come to you in your dreams?
O honourable sailor, I know that everything will sour. The gods will not bring down a miracle from the sky. For I am guilty. And you will not come. Because Dido is cursed by her crime. Dido should have died with her dead. My victory is proof of my sin. My soul is a tangle of corpses.
My husband the king of Phoenicia and my guards and sweet ladies of the kingdom … none of them died so that I might live, stranger. But now the gods are asking me to account for the dead because I am still alive. The sea had made for you a gilded passage and the sun has lit a pathway on the water for your ship. A golden road that I can tread upon. When I stand on the hilltop where my palace stands and look out we come eye to eye. And like the locals here can you see the cursed fate in my eyes? O brave commander! Do you also carry in your body the bodies of those you betrayed? When Phoenicia was burning I carried them all to the Mediterranean. Even the sea has not yet cleansed me. Every night my sin pulls me deeper down, the hooks in my flesh.
Women Who Blow on Knots Page 28