by Igiaba Scego
We arrive at the beach.
I see someone else. The black man doesn’t show up and I’m about to lose myself again in milk. The black man isn’t here and I’m sad. I’m going to make another mistake. My black pride is becoming farcical. Am I a traitor?
Here he is. I recognize him, the one who got me excited the other day in front of the Bourguiba School, the guy with the drooping face. A beautiful little man who is in the same Tunisian dialect class as me. He seems cool, though it may be too good to be true. The guys I like have the skin every girl wants, but it turns out they’re all depressed. God knows how much I need lightheartedness. I want to make a frank declaration of love. I don’t know your name, white man. What does it matter? You’re tearing me apart. Surely you’ll make me suffer. You’re acting strange. Peach-pink flesh, smooth as a pig, hairy like a turkey, a tad chubby, shaved, deodorized. Downcast eyes and an ambiguous smile. Irony or shame? You’re not wearing swimming trunks like everyone else, but a 1950s-style blue speedo.
You wear a speedo, but you close your thighs like a boarding school girl. You’re sitting on a towel with a Donald Duck print by Andy Warhol. Pop art kills me too, gringo. We should put your towel on display at the Guggenheim Bilbao. It’s a relic. And if we displayed you, gringo? You’d be perfect in a museum exhibit case. Isolated and self-contained. Honey, you’d clamp your thighs tighter than you already do. You’re consumed by panic. Don’t be afraid of us, we’re just four elegant young girls. Valeria, Manuela, Miranda, and myself. Between us four, I’m the most harmless. We’re all from the same place, the same mabit. We’ve caught up with the others from the mabit. I barely know anyone. I don’t know you. Are you from our mabit? I don’t think you are. It’s maktoub, maktoub, already written. Fucking destiny, in other words. The Cuban, who I do know, is also there. A shame I’m not into him anymore. I think it’d be healthier to have a fling with him. There are a lot of boys, a few gaunt girls. I see a Chinese man, too. You rule above them all, gaal halouf, incredulous, clamp-thighed piglet. Peach man, I feel like you’ll be one of my worst downfalls. You’re not a fag, are you? You never want your man to be a fag, you know?
He’s peeling, I think, he’s peeling! He’s melting in front of us. I’ve never seen anyone so pink in my life. It’s a bit disconcerting. Some people are very pale, very white and evanescent, though I’ve never met anyone peach pink. Where did he come from? A Japanese manga? He has manga eyes. Huge, ball-shaped eyes the color of a murky lake. You could see the little stars. He could be Candy Candy’s twin. His hair is straight, a little white, a little yellow, clearly neglected. It makes him look like an enterprising intellectual. He’s probably a bookworm. He definitely is. I recognize bookworms. The library types are my specialty. I bet he goes to his city’s Libla.
Why isn’t there a handsome Senegalese man around? The ones with long bones, a frank stare, a bold way with words. I know I’d be happy with one of them. I wouldn’t wear too many masks. They would say to me “sister” and I would say “brother.” “Gimme five” and “Black power.” I would dare to sing “Redemption Song,” even if it was out of tune. I’d pretend to be a griot for my Senegalese brother. Our skin would unite us and Bob Marley would, too, the Prophet, glory unto him.
But the pale-faced halouf? What do I have in common with him? Beats me. My heart doesn’t want to face itself. I hate when it’s pounding in my chest like this.
The men I’ve chosen up to this point have been walls. Doctor Ross says it’s my fear of the penis. I don’t want one inside me. She says I won’t let anyone in. In my circle there are only innocuous people with their own problems, with whom I can’t build anything. They have nothing to do with walls, and that’s why I chose them, that’s why I keep bumping into them. She says the walls represent my fear of violence. The fear that it’ll happen to me again. Doctor Ross also says I’m afraid of building a relationship with a man. She says I’m afraid of trusting myself again. “Evil wasn’t only done to your body,” she says, “but to your soul.” My soul is fabric, permeable to pain. It absorbs and withholds, not always permitting things to leave.
How do I let it out? I can’t live like this anymore. I want someone to bring back my stolen dreams. I had so many before. I had colors. I don’t know where they are anymore. I want all my colors back, all my dreams, no exceptions. I close my eyes. When I open them again, it’s still too dark.
“Ciao.” The word is spoken by a chorus of refined young women.
They’re my friends. I’m with them on a beach a few kilometers from Tunis proper. Ciao is the only Italian word they also say in Arabic.
“Sabah el kheer,” someone responds in Tunisian, chewing on every vowel of classical Arabic.
The girls and I get undressed. That’s when I know. I can sense it, fuck. Everyone is looking at us.
Generally, I don’t like being watched. It’s a horror show. Tunisians make me feel like a whore. We’re only taking off our jeans, keeping on our swimsuits and sarongs. I shouldn’t be surprised. We’re all from the same parish. Mosque, I mean. Sort of. The Maliki school in Tunisia is going strong. Somalis are Shafi’i. I never understood the difference. My mother barely taught me the fatiha. I’m trying to make up for lost time. I recently learned to pray. Mom is always on my ass about religion, but she should’ve taught me. I’m fine. I put on shorts—hardly a thong. I wear shorts at the beach in Rome, too. They still look at me, but not as much. I’m properly dressed for a Tunisian beach, like the other girls from around here. Stop looking. Maybe they’re not looking at you because of your exposed body (mine can hardly be called that), but because you’re different. Unfamiliar.
The Tunisian men on the beach have something obscene in their stares. From fifty-year-olds to little boys with baby teeth. All of them. The women aren’t much better. Women seem discrete on the surface but analyze you from afar. Jesus, it’s embarrassing! I see love nests in their stares, pubic hair, sweat, ejaculate. If you’d told me that the men here undress you with a look and the women stick you in a lab phial to analyze you under their microscopes, I would’ve hightailed it out of there on a ship to Roma Caput Mundi.
Lucy is soaking it up. “Don’t you feel more like a woman here? At least they appreciate the goods, not like our gutless men.” I don’t want to feel like merchandise. I don’t care much for being treated like a commodity. “Holier than thou,” she says to me and laughs. She has a beautiful smile. After school, I invited her to the beach. She told me: “No, thank you, I’m going with Malick, we’re going to Hammamet.” As if to console me, she added, “Tomorrow, though, I’m all yours, let’s go shop in the medina.” Damn, I was hoping she’d forget. The shopping threat has been looming over me since Palermo. She’ll make me buy horrible, uncomfortable high heels and hooker’s clothes, I know she will. I don’t want to succumb to shopping. I love my coveralls, jeans, and large pearl-gray pants. Let’s hope Malick asks her to do something else.
These guys aren’t even looking. I wouldn’t be that upset if they were. I’m used to ribald glances. It happens in Rome, you bet. I’m upset because their stares go beyond the skin. X-rays of the torso, legs, and back. They count your vertebrae, watch the blood flow in your arteries, push against your spleen with desirous eyes. No, I’m not here. My spleen is mine and I alone command it. Look at how these brazen boys study Valeria’s left tit, to say nothing of Manuela’s ass. She’s powerless. Poor thing, she’s got nun’s bloomers on, too. Show a little respect, fuck!
Our group seems to have descended directly from Mars. It’s not a tourist beach, I know. Only locals here. I don’t care if they look at us, it’s normal. I’ll get used to it. Besides, we’re being noisy. We’re making a racket, speaking a thousand tongues, inserting Arabic words, laughing and singing. We draw stares like magnets. Those who speak Arabic are halouf. Some in the group speak it excellently.
The curiosity goes both ways. Valeria and Manuela stare in disbelief. “So what, do these women come to the beach fully dressed?” They have clothes
on, skirts, shawls, and everything. Some go into the water with sunglasses and faux-Vuitton handbags brought by their émigré brothers who came over on Alitalia. They dine in the water, they drink tea. Men and women become friendly, flirt, hide. The water is the only place where boys and girls can meet. It is the only place, besides the cinema, where love is born.
My mother says that in Somalia she also went into the ocean clothed. “Isn’t it uncomfortable?” I asked her once. “It depends,” she said. She thought men’s careful analyses of her backside were more uncomfortable. “I never went in the ocean with an overcoat on. Not even a jacket or hat. I wore shorts.” Good idea, Mom. I copied her. I put on shorts before coming here and tied a sarong around my waist. They look at me, but they don’t count my vertebrae and, most importantly, they don’t fixate on my ass like poor Manuela.
It’s strange being watched all of a sudden. At Libla, no one ever watches me. I’m invisible to the customers, otherworldly, like an elf.
The thing is, at Libla, I’m mistaken for the cleaning lady. That’s why I’m otherworldly. No one ever asks the cleaning lady for information, abadan. It’s like she doesn’t exist. The equation says that black is equal to maid, never to saleswoman. At least for some people. Hell, don’t you see it? Don’t you see this phosphorescent yellow card with my first and last name, my badge number? Why do you think I have it? It has nothing to do with a residency permit. Wrong answer. It’ll seem strange to you, but I’m a citizen of the Republic, this republic, and I believe in the Constitution of ’48 and its values (I know that for certain lunatics it’s out of style). This awful sweater that makes me look like a hot-air balloon on a Segway, why the hell do you think I put it on? The color is disgusting, shit green. Do you really think I have such horrible taste? Understand this, Libla customers: like it or not, the Eternal City is changing around you. We are also here. I’ve been here for more than twenty years, which is no small feat. There are others older than me. Your panic is belated, customer. You should’ve shit your pants thirty years ago. Too late now.
I’ve seen some pitiful things! Sometimes I watched Libla customers wandering anxiously, looking for a sales rep. Some white man or woman who could assure them, who could show them the shelf with the De André CDs or the Deutsche Grammophon box set with the divine Mozart arias. They walked around me. I was invisible despite my nametag and sweater. Once they lost every hope of finding pale skin, they’d indignantly start, “Really! Where are all the salespeople? It’s a disgrace!” Whereupon suspicion was born. In the early days, I brandished Mozart like a weapon to show that I was the saleswoman, but I got tired of it, and now I limit myself to casting the evil eye at vapid customers. Their faces are always so eloquent. What is Mozart doing in this Zulu’s hand?
In the off-hours, there is only this Zulu! I’m a stocker and, as such, I have the worst shifts. It lasts until eleven on Saturdays and Sundays, which amounts to me having basically zero social life. My friends on the outside say to me, “Lucky you, living in Rome.” Of course, all my friends go to the movies, see Ascanio Celestini—powerful stuff—attend jazz concerts and lectures, exhibitions, festivals. All in all, people have fun in Rome. They make money. Tourists come. The metro falls to pieces, but in the end the balance is positive. The Colosseum wasn’t built by accident, after all. It’s a city hungry for glory and glorification. It sucks being outside it all. With my hours, sometimes I can’t even catch a movie. All these cultural events and I can’t make it to a single one.
In Tunis, though, my social life is a dream. Everyone seeks me out, everyone wants me. I almost don’t have time to study. Almost. I’m trying to make up for lost time here on the beach. I’m lying down and doing my best to read a children’s fairytale in Arabic. Every six words, I open the dictionary. Every sixth word is a recalcitrant verb. It’s a cute story about a Chinese emperor, a nightingale, and a girl, a bint jamila, a beautiful girl. I feel like I’m reading a Harmony romance. What’ll happen next? Will the opulent emperor marry the poor, beautiful little girl? At the pace of six-words-then-dictionary, who knows? I’ll find out in a hundred years. The slow pace calms me. I reflect on my thought process.
Luckily, Miranda is with me. She’s beautiful in her swimwear. She’s secured a sarong around her waist. The Tunisian boys stare at her suggestively. They’ve gone to mush in the sun, held in check by their desire for golden skin. Only Miranda and I are beneath the umbrella. She’s under it because she’s too white. “I’ll burn in the sun,” she says. And I, as a good black girl, don’t want to become charcoal. I announce it to the world: black people, Muslims and non-Muslims, tan. Yes, noir, dark, black becomes plus noir, darker, blacker. So much so that, in response, they invented that trashy whitener. My mom and I agree that it’s junk. Fardosa, my older cousin who lives in Manchester, applies it heavily. She puts the ointment on like a woman obsessed. She waits thirty minutes. She transforms from a black Muslim into an off-white Muslim. Impressive. I read somewhere that the stuff causes skin cancer. Fardosa doesn’t want to believe it. She’s on her own.
Miranda has a lovely voice. In our group, I’m the only one who knows she’s a celebrity. She’s won prizes all over the world. She writes in every language. Her native Spanish is mixed with all her other belongings. Echoes of Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, English, French. There are also Arabic words and, unexpectedly, Somali. That’s why I know of her. One of her poems is entitled “Return to Mogadishu.” The poem bowled me over. Now that I have her in front of me, talking about her poems is embarrassing. Maybe it bothers her. I don’t want to bore her now that we’ve started becoming friends.
I want an aunt like her. Her skin caresses the sand like a flower petal. One night she’ll take me to a beautiful place beside the sea. She’ll offer me a bit of mate and tell me of her Argentina. You can see she has the temperament of a heroine. Perhaps she is one.
Halouf—the pink man—got into the water. He hasn’t said a word to me. His skin is revolting. I can’t imagine someone like that taking me by the hand, kissing me, embracing me. His skin is offensive. It’s like pork. I wonder if you’re not supposed to waste any part of him either. Peach skin. It’ll be useful for party favors. He got in the water twenty minutes ago, he might get out soon. He looked pained when he stepped in the ocean, the water touching his porky flesh. He’s scary. I’m scared for him. I don’t know what his name is, but I pity him. I should only be concerned about myself. I should take care of me. I never knew how.
THE REAPARECIDA
I have always been duped by appearances. I fall for them. I’m a dolt. A ragin’ idiot, my butcher would say. His name is Davide. He’s a kind man of slight stature, born here in Pigneto. Actually, now Pigneto is over there, across the Mediterranean. Sometimes I forget I’m on a crowded beach in another country, with a notepad and thoughts lost in chronological chaos. When I think about Pigneto, Mar, I think about my newly bought, well-lit apartment and the sounds my neighbors make. The thoughts make me happy. I feel at home. I’m glad I moved. Pigneto is comparable to San Lorenzo. History conceals itself in quaint nooks and crannies. Davide says that when he was little his mother took him to Piazza Vittorio to see Rome. For Davide, Rome began there at that strange crossroads which, for many people today, means the future, degradation, culture clash, too much stuff for one piazza alone. It depends on one’s point of view. Davide’s Rome began amid the fake Piedmontese porticos of a rustic piazza. “All the men in Pigneto died from heroin,” he tells me. “Ragin’ idiots, all of ’em. They gambled with their lives, ma’am.” He found his brother Giorgio, three years his elder, in a bathroom with the syringe still in his arm, his mouth foaming with hot saliva. He wasn’t even twenty.
Davide gives me good meat. I never ask about the price. I don’t think he’s an honest butcher, but with the state of the euro, who is? Who can afford to be honest these days? I know Davide doesn’t care. I think he was tipped off about my origins, about me being Argentinian and having a certain fondness for meat. Despite the fact that
my mother cured fish, I’ve got to say I get by pretty well with meat. It’s a shame you’re vegetarian, otherwise I would’ve made you my specialty: Venetian-style liver. Papa went crazy for it and I made it all the time. I’m from Venice, you know? Oh, Mar, you have so many cities within you. You represent Venice and also Genoa, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Mogadishu, Rome. And who knows how many others, hija. What absurd journeys your ancestors made to be able to create you, star of my sky. Perhaps even Davide the butcher isn’t only from Pigneto, even though he tells everyone he was born and bred there. It’s very important to him: “I’m from Pigneto. Right around these parts. Not like the polished dandies, those educated artists who’ve come to live in this neighborhood. It’s only a pretense, ma’am.”
I, too, am only a pretense in Pigneto. I am a pretense everywhere. I’m attracted by pretenses, every flicker seduces me. It doesn’t take much to trick me. A nice tie, a cocksure step, a fancy perfume, Italian shoes. Since childhood actually—we haven’t talked about this—I’ve been completely subjugated, a serf. A barefaced slave to pretenses. That’s why I rooted for River Plate when I was in Argentina. That soccer team was a front. The players gave the impression of prosperity, despite being born of poor, penniless immigrants. Boca was more carnal, truer, alive, but I liked the ties, the smooth hands, the traitorous stares. I liked the salmon, the caviar, the evening joyrides in hurtling vans. That’s why I let myself be taken from behind by Carlos. His uniform enchanted me, as well as his authoritative behavior. I felt a man inside me. Now I know he was only a frigid rabbit.
I’d thought of Carlos as the type of man in perfume ads, the man who never needs to ask for anything. He took me without warning, without asking, without foreplay. He put his penis where he wished, as he decided, when he wanted. He entered and exited at his leisure. He splattered me with sperm, sometimes forcing me to swallow it. Then he would lie on his side in silence or, if he was in a rush, he’d run to put on pants. I remember the stickiness he left me with. Usually he doused my face in semen. I don’t know why it excited him to death. Stopping me from spitting out his mess was another thing that got him going. It was like glue, the kind that makes even the impossible stick. With no other man have I felt this way. His fluids dribbled down my skin. They made me feel greasy.