She took out her slingshot. Stretched it. Inspected it. She was really asking me, it wasn’t a joke. I tried to loosen up the mood with the beginning of a smile, and with no luck because Maryam kept pulling back the rubber and snapping.
The silence went on for a few seconds then in a crystal clear voice Almira asked, “Will the ending be the same for all of us? Are we really not needed anymore?”
Cocking an eyebrow slighter higher and making a sly face, Maryam drew the slingshot at me and asked again, “What do you say?”
We were like three sisters who had all hopped in the same bed to sleep through a winter’s night. Their imploring eyes were fixed on mine. They had pulled the blanket from me and the monster under the bed was about to nibble on my toes. I knew what I had to say to get back under the covers. But I couldn’t.
Amira rescued me, “What could you write without us? There’d be no flavour in it.”
Lowering my head, I laughed. Maryam was still looking at me. Her voice wasn’t as soft as Amira’s. “What will happen if you do write it? Isn’t it destiny you are writing?
“Not yours…” I said, and I fell silent before I went on. “I guess it’s a little bit of my own.”
“And?” said Amira, “what happens in the end?”
The butterfly lifted up off the deck and landed on the table in front of us, as if repeating Amira’s question. Slowly and curiously, it unfurled its wings. It didn’t want to end its brief life before the end of the film. This was a brave, adventuresome butterfly; it deserved so much.
“I suppose in the end,” I said, “I mean I suppose that … hmmm…”
Maryam suddenly stood up, threw back her arm and hurled the slingshot out into the farthest wave. Then she let herself fall back like a sack and laughed.
“And so it’s entirely clear, no? In our story the mademoiselle here will be the character who writes the story.”
“Yes,” I said with such a foolish joy the two of them laughed. Then we heard Madam Lilla say, “No, sir! No, sir!”
Amira stood up and stretched.
“I was just going to the bathroom. Let’s see which cruel tyrant Lilla is waging war against now.”
Amira left me and Maryam alone. Maryam took her chance with a question. “What are you going to write then? I mean really?”
“How should I know? I suppose I’ll go for a happy ending.”
“Maybe you’ll write our destiny?”
“I wish.”
“If you could, how would you do it?” She looked at me, searching for an answer.
“Yours?”
“You know exactly what I mean. What do you think I should do?”
“Well, I think … considering that I’m not going to write something that can’t happen…”
“Are you going to tell me or not, azizi? Get to the point.”
“Alright then…” I smiled. “Then I would write it like this.”
And I told Maryam her story…
*
“What’s up?” Maryam asked Amira who had come back up onto the deck. Maryam didn’t know that her voice was crisp and her eyes were shining because of the story I had just told her, the fate that I had woven for her.
“It’s nothing,” said Amira. “Lilla’s schooling the cabin boy. She’s teaching him how to make a hot toddy.”
“What in the world’s that?” I said.
“I just found out,” said Amira, “you see he was putting a little lemon in hot water and according to him there’s no cognac but Lilla insists on the cognac. Of course it’s his first time dealing with Lilla. He’ll get used to her.”
“How’s the bathroom?” asked Maryam.
“Like the Kremlin Palace. You have got to go,” said Amira.
Maryam stood up and went below.
I was in the mood for stories now. I wanted to write everyone’s story. I turned to Amira. “How do you think I should finish your story if I was going to write it?”
“Mine?”
“Yes.”
“Just make something up but just make sure that in the final scene I’m dancing.”
“Are you sure?”
She placed her arm on the back of the boat, her chin in her hands, watching the foam again. “Is Muhammed there with me?”
“Should he be?”
“In your opinion?”
“It depends how we depict him.”
“Are we the ones writing it then?”
“In a way.”
She was thinking about how she would write her own destiny.
“Don’t look that far down, you’ll get seasick.”
“No, I get that way when I look at the horizon.”
“Allah, Allah.”
“Hmmmm…. That’s the way it is.”
“Are you alright?”
It was as she was looking at the churning foam in the wake of the boat, a thick white line in the Mediterranean sea that she said, “It’s so much busier on land. But the horizon is never moving. It’s beautiful here because you can’t see what’s ahead.”
Her pure childlike air didn’t match those words. But I didn’t write them – she said them. But if I wrote them I wouldn’t have written them like that. I would write it like this.
I told Amira the end of her story…
30
With our wrists on the table covered in croissant crumbs, twirling our oily fingers in the air, coffees swaying to the rhythm of the waves, Madam Lilla said, “The world will fix it. But only sometimes.”
“Of course, of course,” interrupted Amira, trying to get a foothold in the conversation, “a morning like this couldn’t be a better time to solve the world’s problems.”
I forced a smile. “There are these journalists I know in Beirut. We need to tell them what we have come up with as soon as possible so the world can benefit from our brilliant ideas!”
Struggling to smile Maryam got up from the breakfast table and made for the Kremlin Palace. She whispered to Amira, “We need to talk about this.” Madam Lilla didn’t hear. She was too busy trying to get her lighter to work, clicking again and again. Through pursed lips she said, “If they only had something close to a Turkish coffee…”
“Oh, that would be so nice right now,” I said.
She looked deeply at me “Maybe you could read my fortune, mademoiselle? It seems you’re going to be writing story endings for our friends.”
Though there was no reason for me to feel guilty, the way she blew smoke in my face implied I should. “I told you,” she said, “people who write end up alone. Be careful. You might end up all alone in the middle of the sea.”
“How would you know anything about writing Madam…” I asked.
She only smiled. “If only they had Turkish coffee,” she said again. Madam Lilla didn’t know how she was going to bring her story to an end. Did she want me to write it? Maybe I just had seasickness. I had been writing all morning without looking up.
*
“That’s enough! Azizi, what are you doing!?”
When Maryam woke up and came out onto the deck I’d had two coffees, five cigarettes and I had filled three toilet covers with text. On the fourth one I was drawing a plan for the narrative technique. Before I could say, “Notes on our journey”, Maryam leaned over the scheme to have a closer look. She didn’t ask for an explanation but I gave her one all the same.
“I’m coming up with narrative techniques in light of the material at hand.”
“Hmm…” she replied.
I wasn’t sure if she was asking for an explanation. So I went on, “Seeing as these toilet covers are round I thought this kind of narrative would work. A circular narrative. A ring whose ends never touch. When I pulled one out it ripped into pieces and I couldn’t patch it together. This is how women tell stories. They begin somewhere in the middle then go back to the start and from there they carry on till the end. Don’t you agree?”
“Are you writing everything down?” asked Maryam. She sounded neither cold nor encou
raging. It was if she was asking someone she had never met.
“Well, like I said yesterday, I might,” I said. I forced a smile. She wasn’t convinced.
“How would I know … when I see you like that … oh God, whatever. Just write whatever it is you are going to write. In any case…”
“In any case what?”
“In the end you’re just going to make it all up.”
“Of course,” I said, “I’ll just make it all up.”
“But don’t go overboard,” she said, teasingly.
“I won’t go overboard,” I said, laughing. Coming back up on deck, Amira joyously announced, “The cabin boy has made croissants. And they’re divine.” I gathered up my papers so quickly she didn’t even see them. Her hair was a mess and she looked like a shimmering but groggy seabird that had just woken up in the sea. On top of her white night gown she wore a long woollen sweater. She called out to the sea, “Good morning!”
To the right and left, she curtsied to the Mediterranean.
“Breakfast must have something to do with happiness,” I said. “Cemal Süreya had a poem that went like that. A Turkish poet.”
“The guy wrote an ode to breakfast?” laughed Amira.
“You wouldn’t know, sweetheart. You don’t have a real breakfast where you’re from. You could write poems about the breakfasts in our country.”
Madam Lilla came out with her face made up, and her hair all done up in glimmering hair clips. She was going to have her breakfast in the ballroom of the Titanic.
“Ah! Breakfast in Istanbul,” she said, “you are right, mademoiselle. They have an Ottoman breakfast there. Long and leisurely. A gentleman’s breakfast.”
“Good morning, Madam,” we all said. As she settled into her corner, smoothing out her skirt, I lingered a bit longer on the topic. “If you could crack the problem of breakfast in northern Africa you could solve all sorts of other problems. You definitely need some kind of cultural exchange. I mean for the happiness of Arabs!”
The cabin boy came out with the croissants still steaming on the plate.
“I mean how much longer are you going to have to put up with dried-up croissants? In the spirit of a Mediterranean union…”
My speech about breakfast naturally fell flat in the face of the crispy appeal of the croissants. Only after taking her second hurried bite was Maryam able to talk, “Don’t worry, azizi! When the revolution pulls through in Tahrir we’ll see to the matter right away. We’re considering a breakfast reform, it’s in the programme.”
“That sounds perfect. In fact you might even be better off creating an emergency action plan. We need to end this torture as soon as possible.”
“Of course, azizi. In fact we could even add ‘breakfast as betrayal to the nation’ to the list of Mubarek’s crimes.”
“Exactly.”
Madam Lilla and Amira laughed as they watched Maryam and I conduct our ‘revolutionary diplomacy’.
Maryam went on, “What we have been dealing with until now has to do with finding a way to collect the political method experiences accumulated in the squares and gathering them in a single pot at the centre of breakfast.”
“Where do you think that should be done, azizi? I might have a suggestion,” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“I’m thinking Cordoba. When you think about it you see that throughout history Andalusia is a key crossroad of civilizations, a geography of so many different breakfasts.”
“Sounds good. I’ll inform the Egyptian delegation right away. We should call for an emergency meeting. So….”
Gravely taking a big bite out of her croissant and munching, Maryam went on, “I wonder if we could use Andalusia as an umbrella concept. ‘Andalusia Reinvented’ for example? Would that work for you?”
“With my respects. Of course you know best. To my mind, ‘Andalusia Again’, is just the right name.”
“In that case let’s get on with it, azizi”
“Right away.”
“In fact,” said Amira, she wasn’t just joking around like we were. “This isn’t such a bad idea. I wish there was some kind of solidarity group. If the revolutionaries of Egypt, Tunisia, Spain and Greece could all come together, I mean to talk about more serious things than breakfast, just a thought.”
Nodding our heads gravely we continued to munch the croissants. Madam Lilla, however, was taking little bites. She was that much more refined. Her words rang out clearly “I agree.” It was an unexpected ovation. And she went on, “Who knows, maybe they would even solve the question of Palestine.”
“That question will never be solved,” said Maryam. “I agree,” said Amira. The croissants no longer tasted so good. No one at that table was willing to joke about Palestine. The mood turned awkward and we fell silent.
“To my mind,” said the cabin boy and we looked up to see that he was listening to us from a corner. He paused, uncertain if he should continue. The glances we shot him suggested that we found him rather suspect. With the severity of a board chairman, Madam Lilla said, “Please, good sir.” No doubt surprised that someone had just addressed him as ‘good sir’ he was so startled that he went on despite our discouraging looks.
“I have an idea. An idea.”
“In terms of solving the problem of Palestine?” asked Lilla, her gravitas still very much intact.
With some effort the cabin boy went on, “To my mind … a nuclear bomb and boom! There’d be nothing left of Israel. Then all the surviving Palestinians and Israelis move to Cyprus where they all get Cypriot citizenship. And they carry on from there.”
Narrowing her eyes and nodding, Lilla listened as if she were up against a diplomatic genius. The three of us concentrated on our croissants. If we looked at each other we might have cracked up laughing but the cabin boy went on.
“Just finish the matter once and for all. There’s no other way!”
Then he waved his hand in the air as if saying, damn it all. It was the revolt of someone who cursed the same problem every night. He spoke like a man who was trying to accept the fact that his girlfriend, whose picture he still carried around in his wallet, was never coming back, that sort of pain.
“Don’t you think it’s like that?”
We were silent while Lilla kept nodding, lost in thought. She must have thought that his far-fetched theory needed some grounding so she raised the bar.
“And considering it won’t be very long before Cyprus is completely under water they will all have to find another place. Or live on boats.”
Trying to develop his theory with this added Atlantis element, the cabin boy realized he was sinking and he started collecting plates. After sweeping up croissant crumbs and the remnants of our astonishment, he was about to go inside when Lilla said, “but perhaps you’re right, sir. We have all suffered enough. Arabs don’t like the Palestinians but they are in love with Palestine. Perhaps it’s time to do away with this lie.”
Maryam and Amira were now meaningfully munching again as they nodded their heads in agreement. Maryam said, “They are despised and driven out of every other Arab country but Palestine is always the ‘apple of the eye’. All the Arab countries have exploited the situation there and they’re still not done.”
Satisfied that he had started a new element of the conversation based on his strange solution, the cabin boy picked up the last few plates and went inside.
“Palestine is their land of milk and honey,” I said when the captain, whom we’d hardly seen since we left, lurched onto the deck with the weight of a galleon.
“Good morning, madam! May I have a word?”
“Of course, captain!” said Madam, like a sailboat unfurling its sails.
“Perhaps a tête-à-tête…”
“Oh no, please go ahead. I have no problem with the ladies hearing.”
“Fine then, Madam … I’m afraid we won’t be able to take you as far as Tripoli. We have no choice but to leave you in Beirut.”
“I don’t
understand, captain. That was not our agreement,” said Lilla with the certainty of winning the discussion.
“The arrangement has changed, Madam. Our boss is on to us.”
In her softest voice and with all her good intentions, Amira said, “What difference does it make, captain? It will hardly take more time to go as far as Tripoli.”
Angrily, Maryam turned to me and said, “I told you so.” Looking at me, her lips trembled, she said bitterly, “OK. We’ll get off in Beirut. There’s no need to draw this out. We’re in no mood for yet another adventure, Madam.”
The captain jumped on the opening, “I’ll refund a portion of your payment. There’s nothing else I can do, Madam. Please forgive me. I don’t want a bullet in the back of my head. You know how Russians can be.”
Not entirely grasping why leaving us in Beirut instead of Tripoli was such a perilous matter, Amira asked Madam, “We could get off in Beirut and go…”
Lilla cut her off, “Out of the question! That was not the plan.”
“Just what was the plan then, Madam?” asked Maryam, fed up. Lilla leaned back and looked at the captain with pouted lips.
“My apologies again,” the captain said and hurried back inside.
After he had left, Lilla looked at us. Maryam didn’t repeat the question and in a softer tone of voice, Amira said, “Just what was the plan, Madam?”
“First Tripoli … to take care of … business. Then travel to Beirut where we would celebrate!”
“So you were thinking of putting a bullet in a man’s head and then celebrating? How pleasant,” grumbled Maryam.
“Madam, are you still … I mean … are you still planning…” said Amira.
“What did you think? That I would abort the mission?”
“No, not that,” said Amira, “it’s just that we’re here now.”
“And?” Lilla asked, imperiously. It was as if in a moment she had brought everything back to the start. Something snapped in Amira’s expression. Lilla wasn’t even looking at her any more. The end of her story wasn’t going to pan out the way she’d expected and she was angry. Maybe we had got too swept away in everything that had happened to us along the way but Lilla was still locked on her target.
Women Who Blow on Knots Page 39