Beyond Babylon

by Igiaba Scego

  Mar thought Elisa was kind. A simple girl, much different from the ones she knew. Much different from Pati and Mama Miranda. Elisa wore ripped jeans, bobbed black hair, and a vividly colored flared tee. She looked like a drive-in waitress, not a serious professional journalist. But she was. Anyone could see that after exchanging a few words with her. She knew about the crises of the globalized world. She could tell you the trends, controversies, perversities, and bullshit. She knew six languages and wanted to add another one, standard Arabic, to the resumé, the one Mar luckily hadn’t read.

  “I don’t want to learn how to speak Arabic. No one can really know how to speak classical Arabic well, not even native Arabs. I just want to understand Al Jazeera.” That was her goal, to understand Al Jazeera and, maybe, why not, a couple of dialects—Syrian and Egyptian—the most common in the Arab world. Did she, Mar Ribero Martino Gonçalves, have goals? Probably not. She only wanted to survive the summer. Everything would be reevaluated after that.

  “I’m late, sorry,” Mar said. “There were people everywhere.”

  “It’s okay, sister, the barbarian hordes haven’t descended here yet. Let’s get in line. We have time to sit down for a nice tea.”

  Mar didn’t order tea. She ordered a caffè latte to spice things up. And at Elisa Mercadante’s suggestion, she got a pastry.

  “They’re good here.”

  Mar took a bite while they waited for their hot drinks. On the first bite, she didn’t get what was so great about the pastry. On the second, she thought it was too sugary. She didn’t like excessively sweet foods. In that way, she was exactly like her mother.

  The waiter came over. He had a white shirt and a moustache that reminded Mar of a nineteenth-century bandit. He wasn’t a boy, but a grown man. He looked at them both. His staring began to annoy Mar. All the men looked at her like that here, with obscenity and innocence. He opened his mouth. “Enti arusa,” he said, “enti gemila giddan ya hubbi.”

  “Ehhh?” Mar intoned. Elisa laughed enthusiastically.

  “What did he say to me? What’d he say? Come on, Elisa, don’t laugh. Tell me.”

  “He said,” the voice came from behind them, “that you look like a bride and are very beautiful, my love.”

  Mar turned slowly. The voice was warm and comforting, a Linus blanket to wrap around oneself and fall asleep in forever. She didn’t often like men’s voices. Usually they disgusted her. This one, however, was warm. She was astounded when she saw that the voice’s owner was a gangly Chinese man no older than twenty-five.

  “My name is Guu Chang Yang, but you can call me JK. It’s my nickname.”

  She, Elisa Mercadante, and JK had breakfast together.

  JK was a Semitic philology student at the University of Rome. He was twenty-three years old and hoped, one day, to continue studying what he was born for: “I’m going to write a book that will revolutionize Semitic studies.” First he had to graduate. He wasn’t far from being an expert. Afterward, he’d be free to do what he wanted. He worked in his parents’ restaurant to get by. They weren’t on the same page. They wanted him to continue in business. Accounts to balance, clients to serve. “If you don’t like the restaurant, you could try apparel,” and if it wasn’t apparel it would be some other nonsense. He was fed up with that life. The Chinese weren’t only about trade and profit. They were a people gifted with sensibility and flair. Refined sculptors, splendid painters, exquisite philosophers, illustrious poets. China was a multi-millennial empire. Not just weapons and money, but culture as well. It seemed the world had forgotten that such a huge country wasn’t merely a conglomerate of people, but a legion of ideas as well.

  Mar sipped her latte slowly. Drinking the insipid sludge repulsed her, but she needed coffee to survive two more hours of class. The beautiful voice of their new friend JK wrapped them in a spiral of joy. She watched Elisa and saw that she was also delighting in JK.

  “Let’s go to the medina district after school?” Elisa proposed. “We’ll eat kebabs and get lost in a bunch of random junk. Sound good?”

  Mar and JK happily agreed. No one had had time to go there yet. They decided to meet in front of the bar when lessons were over.

  I almost want to tell Mom, Mar thought with a surge of affection.

  She left her friends and went to search for her mother. She went into bathrooms, her classroom, the faculty lounge, the little garden. No trace of Mama Miranda. Mar was disappointed. She’d really wanted to tell her mother. The bell rang again, less insistently, almost cheerful. For the next two hours, Mar thought of how happy she’d be with her two friends. If only I’d seen Mom earlier. The thought of not finding her brought a cloud over Mar.

  When the bell rang the end of lessons, Mar dashed from the classroom like a restive little girl. That was when she ran across her mother. They hadn’t seen each other at all that morning. She’d stayed in bed while her mother was probably already sitting at her first row desk like a diligent student.

  “Buenas tardes, Mamá. ¿Qué tal? You all right?”

  Mar used a hospitable tone, which was never the case in exchanges with her mother, who was pleased and cheerful. Mar made her proposal. She’ll never accept. Mama never accepts anything from me. Her predictions were wrong. Miranda accepted joyously. To emphasize that joy, she hugged her. Mar thought Tunisia was doing a lot of good for her mother. She responded to the hug by squeezing tightly. Tunisia was also doing a lot of good for Mar.

  “I know a great place. Do you trust me?”

  They’d reached an agreement. Elisa Mercadante’s prodding was rewarded.

  “Sweet, you’ll start salivating from how good it is!”

  The kebabery was like thousands of others in that city of the Maghreb, though this one had special bread. It was an Indian chapati, soft and made right there in front of the hypnotized clientele. The toppings were like everywhere else, but the bread made everything softer and flakier.

  They took their stuffed chapati and sat like four adolescents on the top floor.

  “Kids,” said Elisa, “did you know I’m in withdrawal?”

  Miranda was smiling, but Mar grew worried.

  “Me too,” JK commented.

  Miranda bit off a piece of her chapati.

  Mar didn’t understand. She took a sip of water. She saw Elisa’s finger pointing at her. It was threatening, neurotic. Mar feared it. She didn’t want to come off like a fool. She expected her new friend to elaborate on the vague warnings.

  “Mar, you’re not saying anything? Don’t you miss alcohol?”

  Ah, that’s what they were talking about. Liquor. She calmed down.

  “No, I’m straight-edge like you, remember?”

  “Since when?” her mother asked.

  “You know since when, Mom,” the girl said bluntly.

  Miranda thought of nipping that conversation in the bud, which would inevitably lead to a skirmish. She shifted the focus of her words.

  “I heard that you can drink pretty well in the hotels here.” She said it like a public service announcement.

  “Yeah,” JK confirmed, “the hotels have everything. If you’re a foreigner you can buy alcohol at the supermarket, but I can’t really remember…there’s some kind of restriction.”

  “Yes, yes,” Elisa Mercadante said, “I know all about it. There are times when you can’t buy it, Thursday and Friday evenings. People told me they overcharge you at the hotels, but fuck it. I’m going tonight. I need a damn beer.”

  “This chapati is good. Well done, Elisa,” Miranda commended.

  They spoke of many things. The political situation in the Middle East, the fashion trends in New York, the time when every Chinese person would have a car, the World Cup that had just happened.

  “Where did you all watch the game?” Elisa Mercadante asked.

  “I saw it at some friends’ place,” JK replied.

  “I caught it at Circus Maximus,” Miranda said. “When Cannavaro lifted the cup, it was like the world was endi
ng. I had a blast.”

  “I didn’t see it actually, I don’t like soccer. Mom is the soccer expert in the family. Didn’t you play goalie when you were little?” It was one of the few things her mother had told her about Argentina. She couldn’t see her as a goalie. She couldn’t imagine her mother in Argentina. She had no image of the country in mind.

  “Yes, but it was a long time ago,” Miranda said, shaking her head.

  “Come on! Don’t keep us in the dark.”

  “I was the goalie for a neighborhood team. It was called Santiago. I was good, but nobody knew I was a girl. I played six games.” Miranda offered a half-hearted smile.

  “Did anyone from Santiago go pro?” Elisa Mercadante blurted. “Did you play with anyone famous?”

  Miranda’s expression changed. She put her chapati on the plate.

  “You don’t like it, Mom?” Mar was concerned.

  “No, I have to get back now…it’s just that, after a while my stomach…all this bread.”

  “I completely get it,” Elisa Mercadante nodded. “I remember the day my Grandma Rita…”

  Lost in the anecdote about Grandma Rita, no one remembered to revisit the question about Santiago. Miranda’s appetite returned. The bread hadn’t nauseated her at all. Only the memories were indigestible.

  Distribute, bicker, jostle, wink, bargain. This is the medina. The souq. Market of dreams.

  I, a lonely merchant, love you already. I meet your eyes and already I love you.

  Will you let me, señorita? I sell trinkets by day and night. May I? May I show them to you? Here are the beauties of the African land. Hammocks, lampposts, hookah, fake carpets, real Persians, oil extracts, myrrh, incense, (black-market) beer, ashtrays, the hands of Fatima.

  Will you let me? What language do you speak? From your bearing, I would say you are…? Yes, you are…? We understand one another, señorita, eh? Did I wink at you? I don’t think so, I would never, señorita, I am a gentleman. I am Arab and noble. A shopkeeper. I don’t make uncouth gestures. Your hand is not used to these tourist vulgarities. You are the daughter of the children of the world’s nobles, deserving of sapphires and diamonds. Ah, if I were your husband I would cover you in emeralds. I would take you riding on my camel and perfume you with oils in a pavilion. I would make myself yours…yes, yours, completely yours. Your slave, your devoted lover. We would love each other and live in joy and prosperity with the aid of Allah, architect of man and creation. But we were born on two continents, into two worlds. Into two opposing ideas. In between there is a sea. You are busy. I am as well. Love was not made to wound. I thank the Clement and the Merciful for allowing a poor sinner to rest his eyes on so great a beauty. And as the poet says:

  Mild the afternoon on which you were born, friend.

  Mild the day you became a woman.

  Mild the hour in which your light kissed me.

  Drunk on you, I shall die contented.

  Now, between you and I, pearl of my heart, are these wares. Vile money. Rummage. Look, shatter, touch. Afterward, in solitude, I will inhale your scent. And, drunk, I will dream of the Lord’s virgins. Oh, were you but one of them.

  Take what you will. I will not make you pay much. I cannot donate it. I would offend you. I must negotiate. I do not want serpents jeopardizing your purity.

  You, woman, patron. And me, merchant. This is all the multitudes must know. Neither jinn nor man need know of the love spoken only by our eyes.

  The medina was a fever dream. If they couldn’t swindle you with merchandise, the merchants swindled you with promises of love. Whatever it took to sell a measly lighter.

  “It’s wild. They name prices while reciting Nizar Qabbani,” Elisa Mercadante said.

  “Who is Nizar Qabbani?” Mar asked. She was ashamed of her ignorance.

  “Hija, he is the poet of women. Some guy with a henna-red beard recited him to me a little while back.”

  “You can’t even escape the elderly. Old sleazebags, these Tunisians,” Elisa Mercadante said.

  “I would just say great businessmen.”

  They’d gone there to take a leisurely walk and already the day was full of bags and knickknacks. Mar didn’t want to buy anything, but the colors, and the courtesies, got the better of her. She loaded up on key rings, vases, oils. She smiled like a simpleton.

  Her companions were thrilled. Elisa and JK were full of life, and her mother had blossomed again. It was the first time in years they’d spent a moment together without snapping at each other’s throats.

  The commotion was driving Pati back. Mar was pushing her lover down into the circle of the damned, where she’d put herself voluntarily with a pistol shot in the mouth. Even the Pati lookalike, the girl who, in Mar’s eyes, resembled her dead lover, had vanished. Maybe it had been a hallucination from too much shisha. Mar finally felt whole, a girl with the blood of the North and South commingled. For the first time, she could think of nothing bad about herself. This sense of peace reminded her of when her mother sang Víctor Jara’s “Alfonsina y el mar.” It was her favorite. Miranda had a voice filled with dolor, like the Alfonsina of the song, dressed in the Sea. Her arms were waves. An ancient voice de viento y sal.

  She didn’t sing that song for Mar very often. She preferred singing Dylan, it was easier. But every time Mar would throw a tantrum and shout “Alfonsina!” beating her fists on the ground, Miranda would give in. Sometimes she grabbed the guitar. Her voice was mellifluous, de viento y sal.

  “Mama, why don’t you tell me what happened in Argentina?”

  While she was lost in her thoughts, she saw the girl who resembled Patricia as if she were a drop from the same pond. The same white skin. The same lost stare. Mar said goodbye to her friends and mother. She decided to follow the captivating girl. She wanted to get to the bottom of this. In that very moment, the girl decided to run. She was alone. Her stringy hair fluttered as she dashed through the hordes of bartering jackals. Mar was behind her. She thanked the heavens that she’d put on her gym shoes that morning.

  THE NEGROPOLITAN

  I want the black man. Yes, I want him, I want him, I want him, until death do us part and beyond.

  I want to fall in love with a man whose skin is the same color as mine. I want his muscles, his joy, his intelligence. He might love me briefly, but at least he would love me. He wouldn’t make me feel inadequate. No, he wouldn’t make me feel like an idiot. My black man, the only one, the essential. Me, his black woman, the only one, the essential. United forever in melanin.

  Enough with the gaalo. I don’t want to hear any more about white-skinned dolls. White no pasará, nunca pasará, it will never, ever do. Enough with dairy products and their derivatives. The ivory creature is a thing of the past. You stripped my land, you will never strip me. I want to give myself to my skin brother. The man who knows my natural pH is no one to spurn. I am the sister of Cam, in Cam, for Cam. I am full of black pride and that’s that.

  A beautiful speech infused with wisdom about black pride and black promises. Calibrated words. Ivory creature. My goodness, it sounds so dignified! I repeat it a couple of times. I taste the sound. I’m euphoric, it’s a marvelous phrase. Dante must’ve used it, certainly. I’m delighted by my genius.

  I repeat the speech countless times, from Tunis Bahria Station all the way to Carthage Amilcar. I have to internalize and start to believe it. I cannot fall in love with a white man again. I don’t want to. Whites do nothing for me. They mock me or, heaven knows, think of me as some exotic animal. That, or they’re gay like the last one. I have to stay away from white men. I don’t like suffering. I have to be reflected in the man I love. White blinds me. I can’t see myself in it.

  Whites are set on wronging black people anyways. Granted, Lucy is white, but she doesn’t destroy, she’s a woman, an exception. White people usually demolish. You have to keep a hundred eyes on the lookout. Defend yourself. I have to get it through my skull: they’ve got the colonial vice. Then they have the gall to say: “W
e did it to civilize you.”

  I repeat my speech. I have to imprint it on my memory. One, two, three, repeat. I have some time. I’m on the train connecting Tunis proper with its seaside surroundings. I’m with friends. The train is exactly the same as the one to Ostia Lido, down to the very passengers. The kids are more boisterous. They open the doors of the moving train to look tough, rebel against the man. Miranda knows French. She exchanges a few words with them. They snicker and tease her some. They tell her they’ll visit her and give her “the caresses and kisses your husband doesn’t give you anymore.” They make maps of their family trees. Tunisians have relatives all over the world: in Italy, France, Spain. Somalis also have thousands of relatives, everywhere. The boys tell Miranda they’ll soon join their relatives in the other branches of the family tree. “I’m going to make a ton of money,” one boy named Yousef tells us. With both his hands, he exhibits his future abundance. “A ton of money like this,” opening his arms as wide as they’ll go. “Then I’ll come back here and marry Uarda. She knows. She’s waiting for me.” Dreams, so many dreams. They have nothing else. This is a country that pretends to be rich although it is incredibly poor. I know why the boys open the train doors. For a second, pitching themselves from a moving train seems like the only option. This lasts only a moment. The urge to play prevails. Thoughts of jumping recede as the train pushes onward.

  Black man, I want you. Black man, I need you. Black man, where are you?

  I’d like the black man to rescue me from my mistakes.

  Maybe you, Black Man, could have saved me from being raped.

  A large white man raped me in my school’s bathroom. My little girl underwear was smeared with dishonor. Where were you, black man? Why didn’t you come for me?

  Sometimes I want to ask Maryam Laamane for my father’s name. If he were with me, he would’ve stopped her from taking me to school. Maryam, I love you, but why did you put me in that place? Why, Mom?