Women Who Blow on Knots

by Ece Temelkuran

  Maryam gravely topped up all our glasses. She seemed to be preparing for a major negotiation. “Now, I have a few things to say.”

  Lilla was staring out of the window blankly and Maryam warned her in a soft voice, “Madam, I am serious. Please listen.”

  Lilla reluctantly turned to face us.

  “You were wondering why I speak such good Beirut Arabic…” said Maryam. Turning to Amira, she continued “And about this commune in Tripoli and the Philippine women…”

  Taking a gulp of arak, she looked like either a young man mustering his courage to declare his love or a tough young girl fearing rejection.

  “I had a nanny. Called Nunu. Or at least that’s what I call her. Her real name is Nadine. She’s from the Philippines. When she was young she came to work in Egypt after working in Beirut. She’s a good person. So gentle. Hardly even there. You know the kind of woman you only really feel when they are gone. Anyway, the only Arabic she knew was Beirut Arabic. So I learned it from her. She never liked Egypt. Always wanted to go back to Lebanon. She finally she came back here after I grew up. Now you wouldn’t really call it a commune but she rented a house with a few other Philippine women. And they started running a nursery. When I was close to giving birth … people yearn for that gentleness when they’re close to giving birth. It has nothing to do with the mind or ideas, just that unconditional warmth. Madam … I left the child with her. She’s there.”

  Lilla gripped her glass of arak. She clicked her ring three times on the glass. She was still angry with us. We had rummaged through her secrets. We had taken away all the secret weapons of a woman who was never going to surrender. At last she spoke. Like ice, “And so?”

  “And so,” said Maryam, “I’m going there to get my baby, Madam.”

  Instantly I pulled out a celebratory cigarette and lit up.

  Amira slapped her legs, “You don’t say?”

  Tears welled up in our eyes. Maryam curled her lips to hold back a smile. On her face was that mixture of worry and joy you see on the faces of people riding an enormous emotional rollercoaster. There wasn’t the slightest movement on Lilla’s face; she was still striking her ring against her glass to the same rhythm. In the same icy tone of voice she said, “Well, and then what?”

  “The rest I can’t handle without you. Madam…”

  “Sorry?” said Lilla without a sign of letting up.

  But Maryam had come to a decision and she felt a surge of relief, she was patient and undeterred by any obstacle. Smiling from deep down, she said, “Please don’t be like this. Without you she will never have a grandmother!”

  Lilla let out a bitter laugh, “Ah! Now that really makes me laugh. A granny? Me?”

  She looked long and hard at each of us, waiting to see who might join her in laughter, almost imploring. This woman had never surrendered to a man, to life, to love, to poverty or danger or to anyone. And now? For us?

  I took out the bottle of cyanide and placed it on the table. Beside the lighter. Pushed it between the hummus and the cheese to a point where only we could see it.

  Amira put her hands on the table. “Madam,” she said. In her silence it seemed as if she wanted to gently take Lilla’s hand and not say any more. But she went on, “We have so much more to do than deal with death. With you…”

  Lilla still wore a forced smile to encourage us to laugh all this away, but her voice had turned sour and trailed off. Reaching out she swiped the bottle off the table as if trying to cover up a shameful secret. Then she put it back. She was no longer looking at us. It seemed like I should say something, “Yes, things better than death … like raising girls … just like you’ve said.”

  And Maryam finished the discussion, “We’re not coming with you to kill a man, Madam. That’s been nonsense from the start. But considering we now have a better plan I think it’s time to tell you. You can’t kill Jezim Anwar. You shouldn’t kill him.”

  Arching her eyebrows, Lilla gestured the words, ‘you don’t say?’ Amira and I had bashfully lowered our heads to show our agreement with Maryam and Lilla began to spin her glass. Her eyes slightly unfocused, she said, “So you ladies mean business then. In that case…”

  She downed half a glass of arak and when she slammed her glass down on the table she was directing the scene again, just the way she liked it. She took a deep breath, let out a long breath, leaned back and looked at us. Nodding her head for some time. She worked up such silence that we couldn’t say a word. We were sure that she had agreed with us, and that she hadn’t.

  I put the cyanide in my pocket. Slowly Maryam placed the lighter on the table. There was nothing else for us to do.

  34

  After the sun sets in Tunisia and before the sky darkens there is a precise sliver in time. I call it the Lilac Hour. Though it only lasts about ten minutes. Maryam from Egypt, and Amira, Madam Lilla and one-eyed Eyüp from Tunisia also call it that. In the Lilac Hour birds come together and warble. From now on they are called the Birds of the Lilac Hour. They are silent throughout the day but at this time they take to the jasmine trees and sing hurriedly to one another before nightfall. In such chatter they must be telling their stories to the end… I hear it all. The construction work at home that’s been going on all day is over.

  In Madam Lilla’s back garden I am sitting at a little wooden table that Eyüp Bey has put out for me. I am sitting on a two-person swing, which squeaks sweetly as it swings. When it hits the table I fear it might knock over the jasmine rakı Lilla has made, spilling the contents over my ticket to Istanbul. I have put paper on the table and I have a pen but I haven’t written a word. I look up at hundreds of blue beads Lilla has strung up in the trees. The Siamese kitten we brought back with us from far away is winding round my feet. Taking herself for a tiger, she lies in ambush, ready to pounce on a bug.

  I can hear Amira inside, walking on the second floor. So slowly she must be dreaming. Lilla is on the first floor with Eyüp, planning something together. Maryam is taking a bath. The baby must be sleeping. A sign freshly painted in oils is leaning against a wall, waiting to dry.

  They come into the garden. Lilla and Eyüp Bey. Both holding clippers. They are going to trim the jasmine that has overtaken the wall of the house. The moment they touch or clip a branch the birds take flight. The stories they have to tell are left untold. As the stories take flight Lilla and Eyüp Bey keep trimming branches and soon the house seems to breath again. The wall looks like the right-hand page of a primary school pupil’s notebook, cool and clean. Peering up at the upper branches, the clippings fall on their heads that now and again touch. Madam Lilla and Eyüp Bey, standing there like that, two matches stuck together when they burn. Calm, warm and soft. “Is that the same woman?” I ask myself. Holding her clipper and narrowing her eyes, she looks up at the birds swirling overhead, jasmine raining down on her head as the branches tremble, pausing when her hair touches the top of Eyüp’s head … where is that woman in that car that raced from Tripoli to Dar al-Amar?

  *

  The driver doesn’t ask questions. He needs to get these four strange women out of the place, and fast. He steps on the accelerator and every piece of the old Mercedes seems to shake and rattle. Amira is holding a Siamese kitten in the palm of her hand and she places it in Lilla’s lap. Lilla is laughing and crying. With her handkerchief she wipes away tears of joy and sadness. She looks down at the kitten in her lap as the snot of tears and the spit of laughter meet in a stifled sneeze. Now Maryam is riding shotgun. Lilla is back right, Amira in the middle and I am on the left. In the long silence Lilla cries and the driver looks disturbed. Gently he asks, “Madam, shall I put on Fairuz? Oum Kalthoum?”

  Slowly we all start to laugh. Even Lilla. Opening and closing her trembling palms over the kitten, she squeezes love into the little creature, “Oh little, little you! Little lovely! Lovely!”

  For a moment we all look at the kitten. With those blank and fearful eyes, she is the one to tell the new ending or beginning.
>
  Maryam says to the driver, “Put on Fairuz … good sir, do you know the shortcut to Dar al-Amar? The mountain road?”

  His mood brightening, he says, “I do,” and he throws a good-humoured glance in the rearview mirror, taking on the role of a vagabond, “A smile does you a world of good, sister!”

  We all let out another round of laughter. Maryam says, “Wait, we’re just warming up. Let’s make sure we pick up the little one first.” Wiping her face with her handkerchief, Lilla lets out a sigh. She looks out the window and smiles.

  “Life is so strange!”

  It sounds especially poignant coming from Madam Lilla. After everything that’s happened the night before and earlier that day there is nothing else to say.

  *

  The cyanide was still in my pocket when we left Abou Hassan. Lilla was silent and we were too. We split up in the Hotel Cavelier and somehow drifted off to sleep. In the morning we all packed into the old Mercedes with a nasty group hangover. But the driver was in his element. It must have been Lilla’s mood. He was dressed in a suit. Jumping out he opened and closed doors for us… these were formalities you didn’t normally see from Beirut taxi drivers.

  As we head north the car stops in the Christian neighbourhood before turning onto the mountain road. We are completely silent. It still isn’t clear where we were going. The driver pulls over, saying, “Ladies, I’m just going to pick up some künefe. You’ll have some, won’t you?” His words seem entirely out of place. Humbly he crawls out of the car and comes back with künefe in slices of white bread. It’s a Beirut breakfast special but it’s wasted on us. He looks downcast when his noble gesture is unappreciated. Lilla is in the front and we are in our usual places in the back. When we finally get out of the city the poor man has to ask, “Just where are we going, Madam? I heard talk of Tripoli but this morning Maryam Hanım said that…”

  Lilla cut him off without even glancing at us, “To Tripoli! And when our business is done there … we can go wherever Maryam Hanım wants to go…”

  There’s dissent from the back and Lilla explodes in exaggerated rage, “After travelling so far, ladies, I will not go back without seeing him! What was it Maryam hanım said? I can’t do it alone. I can’t do anything without you. Isn’t that right?”

  The three of us knew she was capable of doing it. She did it in the desert. She pulled out a gun and pulled the trigger. She could do it again. And when it came to Anwar she would definitely shoot. I was startled and Amira looked hurt and Maryam was angry but Lilla turned, and in her most Madam-like air she issued the holy decree to the driver who was standing by.

  “To Tripoli, good sir! And at the double!”

  Two hours later we were at a fork in the road…

  “Yes, this is it. His mansion is at the end of this road.”

  Pressed up against the front window Madam Lilla pointed to the mountain road. And so we made our way up the road towards the mountains before forking off again onto a thin winding road that climbed even higher and which was lined with trees.

  “Wait!” she cried, and the driver stopped the car. “Yes, yes, it’s this one!”

  She is pointing at an old mansion. It has an old iron door. A majestic door but the lock was broken and the paint was peeling from the metal while the wings were tied up with thick rope.

  Lilla took a deep breath as the car ame to a halt. Carefully she pulled her burgundy velvet pouch out of her handbag. Her hands were steady. She took out the gun. She looked long and hard at the driver.

  “Good sir,” she begins. “Good sir… this is a matter of honour. I am about to take the life of a scoundrel. And you will wait for me here. In return I will pay you one thousand dollars. But that’s not the issue. You seem a gentleman of some life experience. So you should understand why a woman of my age would take up arms. Isn’t that so?”

  The driver nods like an aide-de-camp and without a flicker of fear in his eyes he seems thrilled to have been tasked with a sacred duty.

  “Fine then,” says Madam.

  “Now wait just a minute,” says Amira holding her back but she has nothing more to say. She looks at me, and then at Maryam, who has that angry look on her face, and opens her arms to say, ‘what else can I do?’

  “But this can’t happen,” stutters Amir. “Madam how could you? On your own? You…”

  Wasting no time listening to Amira ramble, Lilla flings opens the door and gets out.

  At the same time Amira says, “I’m coming, too.”

  So I get out too. Maryam gets out of the other side, an empty look on her face. Lilla doesn’t even look back. She’s hardly concerned whether we come with her or not. Maryam is so angry she’s not even grumbling, her face has gone dark. Amira is hurrying after Lilla, looking back at us to make sure we’re coming.

  Lilla is now in front of the door quickly untying the ropes. She opens the door and steps inside then stops. Looking straight ahead, she says to Amira, “I spoke to Eyüp Bey last night.”

  She slightly turns her head in my direction but doesn’t make eye contact, staring into space. “As for the matter of the bride in the hamam … no one has testified against you. The prosecutor still wants to open a case but Eyüp knows of the crimes he’s committed under the Ben Ali dictatorship … Eyüp Bey has worked it all out.” Turning to Amira, she makes her point, “In other words, there is no need for you to come with me, dear Amira.”

  Suddenly the reason we hit the road is gone. Everything we have experienced, which is about to culminate in the killing of a man, seems meaningless. We are jumping into a new world in which the air is nothing like we know and we have forgotten how to breath, and this is happening at the most exciting part of the story. I suppose that’s why when Lilla stops speaking, takes a breath and walks ahead without looking over her shoulder we follow. She puts her gun in her belt, in the middle of her waist. We hurry along after her. We are going to war, to a killing. We should have been the ones who were angry, but it was Lilla who was angry with us.

  “You still haven’t understood that I am doing this for all of us!” she hissed between her teeth.

  A dilapidated, two-storey villa with a veranda opening onto a garden. Surely it was once white but now it’s the colour of mud. The garden is filthy and there aren’t any flowers. There are some cabbage, green onion, dried cucumber saplings and rotten tomatoes. It is a garden in ruin. In the middle of the veranda are dirty jars of cheese and in one corner is a pile of mouldy green olives. The ground is littered with everything from plastic coffee cups to bags of pasta. Chickens graze over the rotting rubbish scattered about the garden. And there is an army of thin, stray cats. In the garden on a rusty cast-iron table that must once have been white sits a bowl of lentils. On the veranda is a large gilded armchair, the upholstery torn to pieces. In front of the door lie bottles of arak, most of them broken. Under the foot of one of the chairs is a TV remote – for balance. In all her glory Lilla stands in the middle of all that rubbish. Settling her breath, she opens her mouth to cry out that name. And then…

  “The whole lot of you can go to hell! I’m fed up! Let this house of a pig be a grave for you all, and I’ll be free of this place!”

  Shooing away chickens, stumbling and cursing, a fat woman hurries out from behind the house. Lilla slowly closes her mouth. Like a bundle of bad vibes the woman nearly rolls right into us. Wrapped around her waist and tucked into her belt is a whip. Her sour face is all crinkled from the heat and the sun. Her dress is completely faded. Her hair is bleached blonde. She hardly has any teeth. Seeing us there she stops in her tracks. But she doesn’t look at all surprised. Her hands on her hips, her eyes squinted and her jaw dropped in disgust, she croaks, “Cat, pigeon or snake?”

  We are rooted to the spot. Our silence probably makes her think we’re dense and not startled. Almost spitting, teasing and ironically polite, she asks:

  “Pray tell, ladies, which one do you desire?”

  As if offering another choice with every word, sh
e twirls her hand from side to side “Cat? Snake? Or shall it be a pigeon?” she shrieks.

  Lilla is silent and the woman wearily walks over to us. Coming close she sizes up Lilla’s shoes, her clothes and then her face. She goes straight for the personal ‘you,’ keeping the tone real rude. “Hah … you must be one from Jezim Efendi’s youth. Did you come to have a look at his pigeons? I look after the cats and the snakes but as for the pigeons you’ll have to speak to Jezim, lady! And he’s not here so get going and come back later.”

  “And who are you?” asks Lilla in her loftiest Arabic. Madam’s courtesy is like a starched handkerchief in the hand of madman walking around in his underpants. The woman must find the grand-dame style amusing because she puckers her lips and apes Lilla’s style, “Alia, my sweet! Married to that asshole Jezim! Oh do come in! Perhaps you have something to say?”

  And she steps closer and squeals, “What’s that? Is that a gun? A gun?”

  Unruffled, Lilla maintains the Dartanyan grace that befits a duel. Her head high, her words come out like a white glove snapping across the woman’s face, “This has nothing to do with you, madam!”

  The woman starts to laugh, “And? So you’ve come to knock off that idiot, Jezim? Ha ha ha!”

  While the woman laughs Lilla looks at us. Lines she has prepared for her dramatic scene are now almost certainly meaningless and she seems to be asking us for a prompt. Maryam was about to say something when the woman suddenly goes berserk.

  Through crazed guffaws she says, “Do it girl, shoot him! Let the flea-infested dog die in the dust! You see cause he’s only got one left…”

  Lilla’s eyes are wide open in surprise and the woman dressed in rags realizes Lilla hasn’t understood her meaning. “But don’t you know, sweet tea? He’s only got one leg. I fed the dirty bastard’s other leg to the lions!”

  She opens her eyes wide to mock ‘ladies’ like us for being afraid and she keeps laughing. Then one of the cats sneezes under Lilla’s skirt, shooting snot over her shoes … there is definitely nothing left of the scene Lilla had in mind.