“I mean alone or in terms of adopting a new lifestyle…” I said, but she cut me off.
“I don’t think so!” She made a face that made her look much older; I took her hand and smiled:
“For what it’s worth there’s something you can be sure about,” I said, “God loves you.”
She buried her head in her arms. When the waiter came over we prised ourselves away from the table. Suddenly we all had the same tough Middle Eastern woman look. Suddenly we had all buttoned up our souls. “Three more cups!” says Maryam all of a sudden, guiltily emerging from the whirl of the Twittersphere. “Azizi,” I say, “hey, over here.” I had to be sure she would hear me this time.
“Look at me! Our countries are always expecting us to give some reaction. Reaction, reaction, reaction! They don’t even give you time to think! There’s no time to hoover up all the information. You have the right to take a break. This femme fatale of so many years can’t be wrong about that!”
Like a fool I smiled to myself. Biting her lower lip, Maryam looked at me.
“Well what do you know,” she says, “someone has sprung back to life. Asking all these questions, giving advice and everything. What’s happened to you?”
Truth is I hadn’t even noticed.
“Firdevs has had a good effect on you,” says Amira, smiling, “the goddess thing and all that. You liked that stuff. Right?”
“Could be. What do I know? This thing about Artemis. The idea that I could be a ‘virgin’ for the rest of my life. In other words, alone. You see I write and so I am alone, and I’ll keep writing, and to know what I am gives me a sense of comfort. It’s my destiny or something like that. No other responsibilities. Fantastic!”
Maryam flashes me a reluctant smile.
“So far so good, azizi. It gives someone a sense of comfort. We are puppets in the hand of fate and there’s nothing better than that. If nothing else, I could believe in God for just that reason, but that’s just between you and me.”
“You might be right about that!” said Amira as she leaned back in her chair.
“In my opinion life is way too hard for people. Somewhere someone scribbles something down and we do the best we can. And you know, the rest is up to God.”
“This doing-the-best-we-can bit, that’s the issue,” says Maryam, thoughtfully.
“If Firdevs is right,” I begin, “whatever is it that you, well, it gets better with the presence of a god that loves you. Because you grow stronger…”
“I swear everything Firdevs said was really good for me too,” started Amira, but Maryam cut her off.
“It was good to hear what Muhammed was telling you from someone else. You still love him, sweetie, and so you’re looking for approval from someone else…”
“OK,” said Amira bluntly and as she raised her hand she knocked over her coffee cup which loudly crashed on the floor. All the coffee, however, had gone straight into Maryam’s lap and over her phone and the newspaper. But before we could even cry out, someone else had beat us to it.
“Maryam! Ah! What are you doing here?”
With two hands up in the air and a broad coffee stain over her shirt Maryam sputtered and groaned. Startled like a lizard that was suddenly exposed from under a pillow.
“Weren’t you in Tunisia?” interrogated the plump woman who was about our age. On her right shoulder was a computer bag and on her left was a bag packed full of papers and to keep them from sliding off she had to keep hiking one shoulder higher than the other. In jeans, stubby shoes and glasses at the end of her nose she was the perfect academic. With astonishing speed Maryam came up with a lie.
“I was in Tunisia when I caught the trail of a woman’s cult with links to Dido in Alexandria and so I came here. In any case I’m going back. I won’t be staying long. In fact we were just leaving. We’d love for you to sit down with us but…”
She had already picked up her phone and cigarettes from the table. Clearly she’d been caught by someone she didn’t want to see and so we got up too.
“When are you coming back to Cairo? People in Tahrir are waiting for you. We need you…”
“I…” began Maryam and she stumbled into the rest of the sentence clearly not knowing what she was going to say.
“In any case now… I mean, I … You know that I need to be working…”
Amira took Maryam by the arm and made a face at the woman (no doubt Amira thought she looked tough when she actually looked really funny) and she said.
“Maryam will come back when she wants to. That’s just the way it is!”
“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” said the woman, looking Maryam over suspiciously.
Her faced contorted, Maryam tried to make light of the comment.
“Ah! I did get rid of a couple pounds. You know, the food in Tunisia!”
“And she’s madly in love! It could be all the sex!” says Amira all of a sudden, taking Maryam by the arm and walking away.
“Please excuse us,” Maryam says over her shoulder, “but we need to run, we’re terribly late!”
And we raced around the corner.
“At this rate you’ll never get to be a goddess my, friend” says Amira to Maryam, laughing.
“What was it Firdevs Hanim said, ‘No need to over-explain!?’”
Out of breath, I asked Maryam, “How many months have you really been out of the country, azizi?” As we crossed the street, Maryam had no choice but to shout through the jungle of cars, “For the past three months. I went to Beirut, gave birth and from there I went to London, and then to Tunisia.”
“How many months old, Maryam?” asked Amira suddenly stopping in the middle of the street. Taking her by the arm and leading us both to the other side, Maryam said, “Two months and twenty-four days.”
“How could you leave a baby like that?” Amira said quickly under her breath. Suddenly in that moment and with such conviction … she looked at Maryam as if she had been left behind. When we got to the sidewalk Maryam inspected her clothes; the coffee stain on her shirt looked like dried blood.
“Woman you got it all over my shirt! We need to get back to the hotel.”
With the eyes of a child fixed on her mother, almost hypnotized, Amira asked the question she should have asked days ago but for whatever reason had to ask now. She wasn’t going to move before she got an answer.
“What’s going to happen to the baby, Maryam?”
“When I make a decision, I’ll let you know Amira Hanım,” she said gruffly.
This time I asked, “You’re actually going to see her, aren’t you, Maryam? This ‘far away’ place is Lebanon after all, isn’t it?”
She put her arms in ours. She didn’t say a word.
Now Amira spoke to Maryam as a mother.
“If you go … I mean if you want to go and see her…”
“And?” said Maryam peering into Amira’s face and smiling as if she were caressing a child. Stopping on the pavement, Amira threw her arm around Maryam’s shoulder like an old army friend. “If God isn’t going to love you, you always have us. That’s all I have to say!”
Maryam smiled, sad and sweet. Wending our way through a crowd of men who occasionally threw glances at our hips and our breasts and rarely at our faces, we walked back to the hotel. I thought about how some trips you can’t do on your own, and how some babies you can’t make on your own.
When we got back to the hotel Madam Lilla was talking to a man in the lobby, a bunch of papers in her hand. Dressed in her purple silks and sitting up straight, she seemed engaged in fierce negotiations. I could only hear her say, “No, no. Not Beirut. We absolutely must go to Tripoli.” Meanwhile Maryam and Amira were talking about how they needed to check up on the status of the hamam affair back in Tunisia. Amira was forced to remember that she still had to confront this matter of the bride she had tried to forget about despite all the distress; and that she still had to ask Madam Lilla to what extent Eyüp Bey had taken care of things. Suddenly Madam Lilla pul
led out a roll of cash and placed it in front of the man and the strained negotiations between Amira and Maryam seemed a thing of the past.
“Good sir, you are going to be carrying some very weighty women. We need the best boat there is!”
“You’re not as heavy as you used to be, Esma Hanım,” said the man, flashing a sardonic grin and Lilla said, “Fine then” as she took back half of the money.
Amira and Maryam were watching her and the man, two cats locked in a showdown, poised to scratch each other’s eyes out. Speaking to myself, I said, “So just like Dido we set sail on the Mediterranean, the last leg of the journey, eh? But if Dido was right… What was it she said? ‘There are mortals who write their own stories. The gods love them as their equals. With a harsh and merciless love.’ I mean if a single god were to love us, with only a dash of affection…”
Laughing, Amira came out with (and I really didn’t expect a joke like this from her), “So you say he would just bottle it up?”
We laughed. Madam Lilla and the captain were suddenly reminded of their feline face-off and they turned to us with even greater offence in their eyes.
“What?” shouted Lilla, and with the frustration of a woman being teased she said, “Aren’t we weighty women?”
I must have been thinking that sometimes even Lilla’s goddess didn’t love her enough when Amira let out a peal of laughter and cried, “They couldn’t even get us up on the scales, Madam!”
Like a child who had won all the marbles in a game, lights flashing in her eyes, Amira looked at me and Maryam.
“Friends, I’ve got the seventh rule: ‘A goddess is never weighed on someone else’s scale!’ How’s that?”
From a distance Madam Lilla flashed Amira a look of pride.
“Eh? And so what do you say, Captain?”
“As you can see the ladies are right here. Can you carry them?”
26
“On the contrary – life is long. No twinkling of an eye. And there’s only one condition. You must embrace fate with a fresh heart. Only apathetic lives are short. There is always the time to do everything you want to do. There is no wrong story. Whatever your fate or your trials, just be sure that you are truly in the moment. Life is short if you are not.”
With a Stella in hand, Madam Lilla said all this in the Spit Fire bar, the TV showing Tahir Square in yellow lights. The mass was moving in the night, like the interconnected organs of a body pressing into each other. Now and then the roar of the body drowned out the voice of the worried broadcaster. That night there was a new clash in Tahir and there were even rumours that one of the young protestors had been abducted. Now protestors with startled and worried expressions on their faces were giving statements about the betrayal they had suffered at the hands of the army and how plainclothed soldiers had fired on their friends, wounding and even killing some. Then Muslim Brotherhood politicians appeared on the screen with the air of ‘responsible’ statesmen who had long since figured everything out, speaking as if the revolution was over. Maryam was watching her other life unfold on a TV screen while Amira and I were looking at Madam Lilla.
“Only when you’re afraid,” said Madam Lilla, tapping her beer into Maryam’s, “Only then are you pushed out of your own life. We will keep walking, ladies. Whatever happens. Come on then, to our health.”
We clinked glasses. Distracted, Maryam spilled half her beer over the table. Finally ungluing her eyes from the screen, she looked at us, “Wake up, mademoiselle!” laughed Madam Lilla. “There’s nothing you’re going to miss. No need to worry, life does not come to an end without being fulfilled.”
“Or until you surrender?” I asked.
Unsure of what I was implying, she raised an eyebrow and looked at me. I went on, “Who is this person you’re supposed to surrender to, Madam Lilla? Fatima Nina in Yafran mentioned him and so did Firdevs Hanım. Who is it?” The speaker on TV was announcing, “Soldiers in Tahrir have begun their largest push against the protestors.” And the mass in the square shook like a creature straining to readjust its body parts. Everyone in the bar stood up. History had let in another goal. It was one of those moments when there was no referee to call an offside and on the faces of the Egyptians in the bar fell the dark shadow of wounded pride. People suddenly stood up, knocking over beers, which dripped off tables and onto the floor – but no one cared. Tahrir was at war and the Spit Fire was watching its defeat. These people in the bar watching the protesters being beaten in Tahrir seemed the most afraid and as spectators they seemed the first to accept defeat. Maryam and Amira were up on their feet, their eyes locked on the screen.
Madam Lilla stared at me like she was looking at a snake. People always look like that when I ask the hard, unwanted questions that need to be asked. I considered how long it had been since I’d experienced such a moment. So long since I had asked a question that touched the core of a person’s life … for the first time in a while I felt like I was really breathing. Madam Lilla asked, “So you really want to know? Or are you just curious to see if you can get me to talk?”
I suppose this time I looked at her like I was looking at a snake. People were now talking across tables, occasionally looking down at their phones, checking Twitter feeds, sharing new information. People twisting their moustaches; hands on hips, hands in the air, hands over their faces as they communally cowered. Tahrir was not about to surrender and with blood, sweat and tears on its cheeks the communal crowd, men and women, surged at the violent plainclothes police force. Tahrir would rather fall than be taken and the bar was grieving as they watched on.
“I don’t know,” I said, “today Firdevs said something like, ‘if you ignore a woman’s scar she might think you don’t care about the story behind it.’ I guess I believe that.”
Sipping from her beer, Lilla looked up with a smile and nodded, “Well when it comes to scars it isn’t quite like that, Mademoiselle. You must have understood that when we were in the limo… when I was speaking to the driver. But you still insist on asking. If you’re so fixated on knowing who Madam Lilla needs to surrender to … well then give me a cigarette!”
She dramatically lit up. Blowing out the smoke without really inhaling she started to explain.
“My little lady, it’s easier to love other people’s scars. The problem is learning to love our own. That’s when we really start to think about what we’re doing with our lives. Do you know what real darkness is? Let me explain…”
As the images on the TV grew more savage the clamour in the Spit Fire crested into a painful howl. Edgy as a racehorse about to be released from the starting stall, Maryam looked up at the screen with tears in her eyes. Amira was on her feet, looking at Tahrir Square as if she was watching the fate of her own country unfold. Maryam went over to her and they held hands without looking at each other. Two women witnessing the end of a revolution they both believed in, and it seemed to me they had nothing left but themselves. But for Madam Lilla life was longer than the revolution and her story was greater than her country’s story. I suppose that night was the first time I decided to chronicle this trip, while the world was going up in flames around us and in a hushed voice Madam Lilla told me her story.
*
“Why don’t we drink tonight?” said Amira full of energy. Right after she’d said those words: “They can’t get us up on those scales, Madam!” There was a joy in her voice that called out for celebration. Or maybe it was calling out for us to soothe Maryam in her melancholy. Or maybe both at the same time.
Reluctantly Maryam said, “There is this place the protestors in Alexandria would talk about but Madam Lilla … I don’t know if she’d go to a place like that. A place called Spit Fire.”
“Aren’t you afraid of running into someone, azizi?” I asked Maryam. Laughing, she answered, “Amira would rough up anyone who asked too many questions.”
Then Lilla turned to the captain and said, “We came to Alexandria earlier than planned. So the boat we’ve booked isn’t ready yet. We cou
ld still wait for that boat but then you would be deprived of the joy and honour of meeting women like us. Think about it.” And she got up and held out her hand as if gracing the man with the opportunity and they shook. She came over to us “Ladies, I say we get drunk in some beautiful setting tonight. What do you think?”
Steeped in woman-to-woman camaraderie, Amira said “We’re going to the Spit Fire tonight … just to let you know!”
We all packed into the limo. Lilla was in a cheerful mood, full of life. Leaning over to our driver she quickly said, “That hat looks great on you, my good lady.” And our male driver suddenly shifted into womanhood. She almost giggled. Like a man flirting with a young woman, Lilla went on “But if you ask me, little lady, you might want to try lighter colours. Yellow for example. Yellow and hmm … bright green.”
As Lilla spoke the man-woman in the driver’s seat became more of a woman. And there was no longer any trace of a scar or any awkwardness. I thought about what Firdevs had to say about openly talking about a person’s scar. Madam carried on with her jokes. Without creating any tension, she alluded to the question of gender and downplayed the issue at the same time. Lilla took off the flower she had pinned to her lapel. “Oh! Just a minute! Now don’t move,” she muttered as she deftly stuck the needle through the driver’s cap. With a shy smile on her face she inspected the flower in the rearview mirror. She was pleased. She mumbled a short thank you.
Sweeping away the awkward moment, Madam Lilla said, “Ladies, I was thinking that seeing as we nearly burned to a crisp during our trip through the desert we should at least give our souls a cool cleaning as we cross the Mediterranean.”
Maryam smiled. “If we’re going to drown then we should do it in a big sea?”
Opening her eyes, Amira took Maryam by the arm. “Now that should be your seventh rule! If a goddess is to drown she does it in a big sea!”
I told Lilla about Firdevs’ spiel about our goddeses. She smiled. And she said to Maryam, “Now there’s no need for us to drown. Just like your Dido, we are off to found our own Carthage. You can be my girls and you can raise your own. That way…”
Women Who Blow on Knots Page 35