by Amin Maalouf
“At some point, she was about to take off her bathrobe, but then, as if she sensed something, she looked out the window and upwards. And she saw me. Our eyes met, and I couldn’t tear myself away. I’m sure you know the story of the birds on a branch held spellbound by a snake staring up from the foot of the tree? To escape, they have only to fly away, but their wings refuse to obey them, and they fall into the jaws of the predator.”
That morning, I was just like those birds, Adam later wrote in his notebook, in terms that were very similar to what his friends had heard him tell. Rooted to the spot, spellbound, unable to turn away, to move a muscle. And the “predator” swooped. In a flash, she had opened the door in the wall and stepped outside. Still in her pink dressing gown, her hair still wet, the towel now draped around her shoulders.
She ordered me to get down immediately. And I obeyed. Not because I was afraid that I might be thrown into a dungeon, all I felt was shame, but that, too, is a kind of fear.
She ushered me through the door, gesturing for me to bring the stepladder, so I folded it, put it under my arm and brought it with me. She followed, closing and locking the door behind her.
I find myself standing there in front of her, like a soldier standing to attention, the stepladder under my arm like a makeshift rifle, while this lady looks me up and down. She takes her time, probably because she doesn’t know what to do with me. I stare at the ground. On her bare feet, she is wearing pink open-toed slippers made of the same fabric as her dressing gown.
“Are you proud of yourself?” she says when she has finished sizing me up. I shake my head. “Do you want me to talk to your parents?” I shake my head again. “Are you planning to do this every morning?” I shake my head again, still unable to say a word, my eyes still moving restlessly over the ground between the lawn, the pink slippers, and the nail polish on her toes, also pink. “Cat got your tongue?” Again, I shake my head. “So, why haven’t you said a single word?” I take my courage in both hands and say, “Out of politeness.” She laughs, and repeats my words in a mocking tone as though to an invisible audience. Then she asks, “So I assume it’s out of politeness that you’re staring at the ground?” I nod vigorously, as though finally we understand each other. “You’re right to bow you head in the presence of a lady. It’s a sign of good manners.” I’m just starting to feel reassured when she adds, “In the same way that it’s good manners for a young man to climb a stepladder so he can peer at ladies over the wall, isn’t it?”
At this point, I don’t dare venture an answer. I simply look up at her as though waiting for a judge to pronounce sentence. The lady smiles, I smile. She knits her brows, still smiling, and asks, “So if you’re not spying on me out of politeness, then why?” Feeling somewhat comforted by her smile, I say, “Out of curiosity.” This, of course, was the simple truth.
She falls silent, never taking her eyes off me, studying me from head to toe, as though deciding on my punishment. “If I wanted, I could keep this ladder here and tell your parents to come and collect it themselves.” She pauses for a few seconds before reassuring me. “But I won’t do that. I’m sure you’re going to apologize, and promise never to spy on me again.”
I hurriedly promised as much. But she was only half listening as she mulled over an appropriate punishment. “In order to be forgiven,” she said at length, “I want you to leave your stepladder here, against the wall, and go into the kitchen, where you will find an elderly woman in a blue apron. Her name is Oum Maher. Tell her I want my morning coffee. You’ll need to raise your voice, because she’s very hard of hearing. She makes the best Turkish coffee in the country, but she has trouble walking. You’ve got a good pair of legs, you can help her …”
The house was a long, low building, measuring at least thirty metres from the kitchen to where we were standing. The lady tells me to wait in the kitchen while the coffee is prepared then bring it to her on a tray without spilling it. “Would you like a cup, too? How old are you?” “I’m ten and a half!” “… and a half?” she says, frowning as though this half makes a significant difference. “In that case, you’re a big boy, you can have some. Do you like it with sugar?” I nod. “Very well, your punishment is to take it like I do, without sugar.” I nodded again. “I see you’ve swallowed your tongue again. You can’t even manage to say yes or no.”
In the presence of this woman, I feel like I’m four years old and simultaneously like an adult. Eventually I manage a timorous “Yes.” Immediately she corrects me: “Yes, Hanum! You will address me as ‘Hanum.’” Until that moment, I’d never heard of this old-fashioned honorific. During the Ottoman period, it was the polite way to address a lady, apparently, but in my day, and even in my parents’ day, no one used it anymore, except for a handful of very conservative old men.
Our neighbour asks me what I am called. “Adam.” I pronounce my name the way I used to before I moved to France, emphasizing the initial A and lingering on the final m. She repeats it after me, as though practising. “Adamm. That’s what I’ll call you. Adamm, just Adamm, because you’re young. But you must refer to me politely as Hanum, as though I have no first name, because I am old enough to be your mother.”
“Yes, Hanum,” I say, meekly and politely, then I head off to the kitchen, where Oum Maher menacingly looks me up and down as though I were a fig stealer. When I loudly tell her that Hanum would like two Turkish coffees without sugar, she screams in my face that she’s not deaf. Then, as though she, too, wants to punish me, she makes me carry a huge tray with two glasses filled to the brim with cold water, two cups of coffee, a plate of thyme in oil, another of goat’s cheese, and a basket of bread from the village. Although the tray was not particularly heavy, it was so large that when I carried it in front of me, I couldn’t see where I was going. I had to move very slowly so as not to trip.
But then, since every transgression deserves both punishment and reward, my jailer bids me come inside. By now, she is in her living room, already dressed and made up, her hair held in place by a silver headband that looks like a tiara. She points to the table where I should set down the tray and the seat where I am to sit. I didn’t feel remotely comfortable, but it was clear that my status had changed. I was no longer the pilfering kid about to be punished, I was almost a guest.
Having picked up her cup, she gestures to mine. I sip the bitter coffee, forcing myself not to wince. She watches my every movement, her eyebrows once more furrowed, which makes me clumsy. It takes an effort for me not to spill my coffee.
Then she says: “So, what does Adam do when he’s not climbing walls?”
I say, “I read.”
People often talk about the magic of books. But they rarely say that it is a two-fold magic. There is the enchantment of reading books, and that of talking about them. All the charm of a writer like Borges is that, even as we are reading his stories, we are imagining other books of fictions, dreams, phantasmagorias. In the space of a few pages, we experience two enchantments at once.
It is a magic I have experienced many times. But this was the day I first discovered it. You are with a stranger, she asks what you are reading, or perhaps you ask her, and if you both belong to the universe of those who read, you are about to step, hand in hand, into a shared paradise. As one book conjures another, together you will discover feats, emotions, myths, ideas, styles, and expectations.
In response to my declaration “I read!” the lady keeping me prisoner in her house did not, as she might have done, vaguely ask what sort of books I read—a trivial question—she asked what I was reading right now. I remember it was an adventure novel called “The Prisoner of Zenda.” She was reading a book by a German archaeologist named Schliemann, the man who rediscovered the ancient city of Troy. We did not quite favour the same reading matter, but she took the time to ask me about my book and talked at length about hers, and we discovered similarities between the two. Then she suggested that, when we had fini
shed, we swap.
After that, whenever I chose a book, my first thought was of her. Her passions were history, archaeology, and biography. At the time, I mostly read comic books and spy novels, I gorged on them thirstily the way I gulped down fizzy drinks. Thanks to Hanum, who would not have appreciated me turning up at her house with episode thirty in the adventures of some secret agent, I was forced to expand my horizons. I wanted to impress her, or at least earn her respect. To do this, I had to introduce her to books she didn’t know. I don’t think I taught her anything much; I do know that I learned a lot from her. About ancient Egypt, classical Greece, Byzantium, and especially Mesopotamia.
All through that summer, and the next, and even the next, I visited her regularly, sometimes three or four days in a row. We would talk endlessly about this and that, but sometimes we would simply sit in our corner and read our books in silence.
I wasn’t surprised when one day she told me that she had been married to an archaeologist. She was from Iraq, as I had guessed from her accent, and her husband had worked at the Museum of Baghdad. When the monarchy was overthrown in the July 14 Revolution, 1958, they had been on holiday abroad, something that may have saved their lives. She was the niece of a former prime minister of the old regime, and they had often been invited to the Royal Palace. In the days following the coup d’état, many of their relatives had been slaughtered. It would have been foolish, even suicidal for them to go back to Iraq. So they built this house and shortly afterwards her husband had died. I assumed he was much older than she was.
One day she showed me his collection of ancient coins, explaining where each of them came from. Some were emblazoned with the heads of Roman emperors, others with Ottoman mottoes: “Khan of Khans of the Two Lands and the Two Seas.” I was impressed, and promised myself when I was older, I’d have a collection of ancient coins. Of course, I never did. I’m not a collector by temperament, it requires more dedication than I am capable of. But I am convinced it was thanks to ‘la Hanum’ that I first became interested in history.
Up to that point, under my parents’ influence, I wanted to be an architect. Not that they ever talked about it, I was much too young, but as far as I was concerned it went without saying. The plane crash, the closure of my father’s practice bureau, and the loss of our house turned me from the appointed path. I wanted to take a very different direction, and that was history. In a sense, the career I chose had its roots in this chance meeting with our blonde neighbour.
But to get back to the coin collection, since it resulted in an incident that I would never forget. I was so fascinated by what Hanum had shown me that from that day, I stared at the ground wherever I went, as though it was enough to be vigilant to stumble upon ancient coins. This was not as ridiculous as it sounds, since there were vestiges of the Roman and Byzantine empires in our village; buried statues had been found there, carved columns, and probably old coins.
Then, one day, I see what I think is an ancient coin lying between two stones. Having picked it up and rubbed it a little, I see the outline of a head and an inscription that is partially worn away. I race to Hanum’s house at full speed as though it is a matter of life and death. It is three, maybe four o’clock in the afternoon and I know most people take a siesta at this time, especially in summer; but in my excitement, this doesn’t occur to me.
The garden door is unlocked, I slip inside and wander through the garden, then the living room. No one. I come to the wide veranda overlooking the valley where she and I sometimes sit with our books. No one.
At the far end of the veranda is a glass door. As I race towards it, I come face to face with Hanum. Pale, undressed, almost naked. Though I did not know it, having never been there, this is the door to her bedroom. She has, visibly, just woken from her siesta and taken a shower, and is getting dressed.
When she sees me appear she gives a surprised cry, throws her arm across her chest, and takes a step back. I am even more startled than she is—in fact, I’m terrified—I stammer something, turn to run away, stumble, and end up sprawled on the floor.
I feel so embarrassed, so helpless, that I don’t move. I play dead. When she bends over me, I don’t react. She says my name; I don’t respond. She pats my cheeks worriedly saying, “Adam! Adam?” I slowly open my eyes as though waking from a long sleep, oblivious to where I am. Then she says, “Shut your eyes, I’m not dressed!” I do as she says, though she has already clapped her hand over my eyes. “Will you give me your word as a gentleman that you’ll keep them closed for three minutes?” I say, “Yes.” She disappears and then reappears wearing a dressing gown. “That’s fine, you can open them now.” Which I do. Then I sit up. “Are you hurt?” I shake my head. “That’s good! Now, go wait in the living room! I’ll just get dressed and then I’ll join you.”
While I wait, and I prepare my apology, I realize that I’m no longer holding the coin that prompted me to race here in the first place. I must have dropped it on the veranda. When the lady joins me in the living room, now dressed, perfumed, and made up, I ask permission to go and look for my lost treasure. I can’t find it. Did it slip between the railings? Did it roll into a gutter? I have no way of knowing. I had it in my hand and must have dropped it when I tripped. In that moment, I felt devastated. Not simply because I was proud of my discovery, but more especially because this was the “piece of evidence” that excused my rude behaviour.
That said, Hanum wasn’t angry with me, and she never mentioned the incident again. Looking back, it seems to me that, in introducing to our relationship a secret that no one in the world could know about, my blunder brought us closer together.
Sometimes teenagers have a torrid rite-of-passage experience. Mine was nothing like that. But I was marked by its gentleness, its subtlety. When I think back on it sometimes, the word that comes to mind is “clemency.” I made my childish blunders and there beside me was a beautiful stranger who responded to my unruliness with kindness, who patiently, delicately, tenderly, taught me to be a man.
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4
“Do you know what happened to her?” Sémiramis said when Adam had finished telling the story of the lost coin.
He said that he had no idea. He had last seen her in August ’66, the day after his parents died.
“When news of the accident got around, the whole neighbourhood showed up at our house. Hanum was among the women in black, and she hugged me as they did, to console me. Shortly afterwards, I moved away from the village and never set foot in it again.”
“Do you think she might still live here?” Naïm said.
“No, definitely not!” Adam replied, without explaining how he could be so definite given what he had just said.
“If you give me a leg up, I can look over the wall,” Sémiramis suggested.
“No. And I’m not going to fetch a stepladder like last time. Come on, that’s enough, I’ve told you everything, let’s go.”
Had he been alone, Adam would almost certainly have knocked on the door. And had he not just told the preceding story, he might have done so, even with his friends in tow. But having recounted how he had come face to face with Hanum naked, he no longer felt he could introduce them to her without betraying her kindness, proving himself unworthy of her trust.
“God bless your days, Hanum,” he murmured to himself, “in youth as in old age, in this life, and in the hereafter!”
Then, loudly to his friends:
“Come on, that’s enough, let’s go!”
But the happenstance of doors and paths had decided otherwise.
As the three friends walked away, there came a sound from behind them. Turning first, Sémiramis saw the door open and a lady emerge wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat with a pink ribbon.
It was her! There was no point weighing the evidence, it could only be her. Adam retraced his steps, as though compelled by some greater force.
“Hanum?�
�� he said, his voice quavering with emotion as much as politeness.
“Do I know you?”
“My name is Adam. I used to live …”
“My little boy!”
Ashamed, she clapped her hand over her mouth. Adam took the hand and pressed it to his lips, then let it go and said:
“I was a little boy when you saw me last, Hanum. My parents had just died.”
“Yes, yes, I remember, my poor boy!” she said, this time without embarrassment.
“Then the house was repossessed by debtors, and I never came back.”
“I know,” she said, as though she had been watching over him all these years. “How big you’ve grown!”
“I’m forty-seven now.”
“I didn’t ask your age for fear you might ask me mine.”
She laughed, and it was a youthful laugh. Sémiramis and Naïm who, until now, had been discreetly watching this reunion, joined in the laughter. Adam took the opportunity to introduce them.
“Sémiramis,” Hanum echoed melodiously. “To me, it’s always been the most beautiful name, and you wear it well.”
Adam’s friend blushed.
“Your names are also very interesting, gentlemen. ‘Naïm’ is another name for Paradise, and ‘Adam’ was chosen by the Creator Himself. But you’ll forgive me if I still prefer Sémiramis. As you can tell from my accent, I’m from Mesopotamia.”
As she uttered the ancient name, a sad smile played on her lips.
“My husband said that, to him, the most beautiful melody on earth was to hear the names Mesopotamia, Euphrates, Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Gilgamesh, Sémiramis. He was an archaeologist.”