by Raja Alem
A sudden jolt restored Sarab to full consciousness. They had landed in Mogadishu Airport in Somalia, where they were greeted with friendly smiles. Eyes like torches hurried them toward the private jet waiting on the runway.
Raphael was speeding her up the steps to the airplane when Sarab froze with sudden terror; she had awoken from the trance that had overwhelmed her.
“No!” She clung to the steps, refusing to go any farther, repeating maniacally, “No, no!”
“What do you mean, no?”
Sarab was nailed to the spot as a charge of joy and fear and rage exploded in her veins.
Raphael squeezed her hand. He realized she wanted to run away and hide; the danger of the previous months had become embodied in the gaping mouth of the airplane, and in the light streaming from it, which was blinding after the darkness she had suffered. A searchlight paralyzed her.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? I’m taking you to Paris, to safety.” Words were powerless to break through the fumes in her head. He began to repeat, “Do you want to stay here?” while resisting the urge to slap her.
“Enough.” She seemed lost, incapable of stringing together a meaningful sentence, randomly putting up words as barricades, trying to gain some time, trying to grasp the shock of having survived that nightmare.
“Enough?” Like a demented parrot, he was repeating her words.
“You, the Mahdi, from here to there . . . enough.”
“Sarab, pull yourself together. I understand you’ve had a shock but we don’t have any time to waste.”
“No, please.” Tears poured down her cheeks. Somewhere inside her a dam had burst and was drowning her; all the frustration and terror she had suppressed for months had exploded. “Please take me back.” She was horrified to hear herself repeating the same request she had made to the Mahdi. “To my country.”
Her hysterical tone blinded them both.
“What will you be going back as? As a terrorist, a fugitive from justice?”
Her whole body shook from her thudding heart, which threatened to burst; from her joy at surviving, which scorched like acid; from the terror that this dream might collapse.
“Where are your documents, your identity card, your passport?” Her eyes bulged, and the bubble of her ramblings was burst. She stood stock still, in disbelief that she was completely naked; she was no one.
I am cursed. That was her first lucid thought, but she was soon swept away on a tide of satisfaction. She sighed with relief that she was finally free of those identities dragging her down. Another charge of joy gushed through her; her whole life would begin again, with a new identity, one she wanted to be.
Sarab faced Raphael, foreigner and supposed enemy, who was dragging her into situations that dared her to choose. She stood in the middle of a sea of faces which were waiting impatiently for them to climb the stairs. She was lost in a frenzied tangle of battling emotions, unsure whether to embrace her enemy, slap him, tear him to pieces, or run away.
At last, Sarab stopped resisting and Raphael led her up the steps to the airplane door which gaped like the unknowable future. Sarab climbed those few steps, aware that the first step she took inside would mean the end of Sarab as she had known her till then.
When Raphael fastened the seatbelt around her waist, Sarab resisted an urge to seize his hand and kiss it in gratitude.
Black Cresent
Raphael sat opposite sarab in the airplane while she was trying to grasp an overwhelming feeling of freedom. She was afraid to move in case she shattered that fragile state of being. Her tongue was dry and stuck to the roof of her mouth. She racked her brain for something to say to express her gratitude, but words failed her. She was still living the nightmare she had left behind her, and spent the journey in total silence. When the pilot announced they were preparing to land, a question burst out of her.
“How did you find me?”
He stared at her, relieved she had returned to life.
“You must know that I can’t live without you.”
Her eyes wandered around the airplane interior, incredulous at what was happening.
“Am I really out of the camp?” Her gaze wavered over the accumulations of cloud below her. For a moment she recalled the Mahdi’s icy fist around her throat. She was certain he would follow her, even after his death.
But was he really dead this time?
Suddenly she saw the tunnel leading to his hiding place. Had the attacking forces discovered it?
Raphael took her hands and kissed them, pressing his face into them.
“When you disappeared, I lost my mind with rage. I thought of your Mahdi at once. By good luck, we have influential friends who wanted to find him, and we followed the trail you left us in smuggling him to Yemen. Swift inquiries led us straight to his camp in those warehouses left over from the British occupation. As you see, in the end it’s a small world.”
Her eyes bored into him. “So, you went back?”
“Went back?”
“To being a soldier.”
“Ah . . . no. This was my last operation. They wanted the Mahdi and I wanted you; that was our deal. You are considered an agent who supplied us with intelligence, and now you can be granted asylum.”
Terror engulfed her; her initial reaction was to refuse and plunge into her protective cocoon. But instead, she revealed the depth of her fear.
“What if I’m not ready to close all the doors on what I was, on where I come from?”
“You have to understand; you don’t have a choice.”
His words didn’t do much to assuage the notion of total exile.
“What if I hate you for this?”
“Perhaps you will, but we’ll deal with that. Even if you loathe me and reject me. I understand.”
They arrived at their apartment in Paris in the middle of a summer’s day. A sense of excitement enveloped them. Raphael moved through the apartment restlessly, making sure all the windows were wide open to the air, the light, the birdsong from the surrounding trees, and the sound of the fountain. The light gushing through the apartment was so radiant it seemed unreal. Sarab’s body was starved from days of subjection and tension, and all she wanted was to fall into bed. But instead, she stood in the middle of the living room and, slowly but resolutely, began to take off her clothes. Raphael was rooted to the spot, his heart clenched. He observed the impulsive, flowing movement of a body emerging defiantly into life, savoring the intoxicating ecstasy of the act of baring itself. The flowing black sack that passed for clothing fell to the ground, followed by the even wider black trousers. Next there appeared the black bandages that were tied around her chest instead of a bra, erasing the swell of her breasts. The black bandage harmonized enticingly with the black crescent mark that bloomed all the way across her left buttock. That mark seemed like a wound or a birthmark, and an incitement of violent desire.
Slowly, gradually, her clothes accumulated in a black pile by her feet. She left the pile behind her and went haughtily to the bathroom. She left the door open as she stood under the shower for what seemed like forever. The sound of the water gushed over Raphael, washing his senses as he stood in the living room, turned to stone where she had left him.
At last, the water stopped and Sarab emerged from the bathroom, dripping water. She stood still and he moved. She went to the bed and curled up there, and he followed. Quietly, he lay down behind her on the bed, his body cradling hers. Their bodies lay against one another, and Sarab fell at once into a deep sleep.
Raphael lay there, paralyzed; he was hyperaware of her wet hair tracing a dark, damp circle on his chest, her calves entwined with his knees. He wasn’t breathing for fear of disturbing this moment of pure being. The phrase “Perfectly content, perfectly content, perfectly content” echoed through his head, and he fell asleep.
His sleep was disturbed by an urgent buzzing. His hand convulsed involuntarily at a sharp sting in his shoulder. Opening his eyes, he spotted a bee flyi
ng away, and he felt a chuckle rumble inside the chest pressed against his own. It was morning and sunlight warmed their skin. Neither was sure how long they had slept, or even what day it was. They surfaced like two primordial beings, as if from death.
He pulled her close, fiercely pressing her against his body.
“Wait.” She wasn’t objecting to the violence, but she was unsettled by the sudden, intoxicating shock of pleasure. “You’re stung.” Her words were dazed and incomprehensible, even to herself. They were both consumed by a ferocious need to break out of their limits, a need to howl with brutality, with the specters of her mother, brother, and rebel comrades hanging in the air.
“I’m female.” She took a deep breath, rubbing both their faces in this sin of her femaleness. She didn’t have the slightest feeling of wrongdoing, despite the voice inside insistently rebuking her, telling her, No one has the right to feel this bliss.
A gasp ran through their bodies and their heavy breathing became entangled. Their feverish hands tore at the twenty-two years robbed from her life, and pulled her toward an overwhelming, overflowing vitality nothing could disturb.
She caught her breath to whisper resolutely, “I’m never going back to that camp. The women were all drowning in dynamite.”
Her words fell into his ears like a vow.
“You know, I discovered there that the real enemy is this false messiah, Dajjal. My mother did what she did to me and my brother to drive one messiah out of her head; Mujan dragged us behind another. I believe that we carry Dajjal inside us—it’s our own enemy that we give a false messiah’s face. I touched my own Dajjal; for me, it was the saltpeter I was stuffing into those bombs. I hope I’ll never come across it again.”
The burning sensation and the swelling on his shoulder pushed Raphael’s thoughts in a shallower direction. He raved at the bee; now that it had snapped off its sting in his body, it would surely die.
“What a petty death for such a petty insect!” He shivered. “But what death is important?” He paused that bleak train of thought, unsure whether the burning sensation he felt had its source in the bee sting or in Sarab’s vow.
All of a sudden, the fire that had been spent sprang up again and blinded them. Fire was consumed by fire. Raphael plunged into her fiercely, and a taste of blood welled up in Sarab’s throat. She was sure that the last bridge to her past had been burned, closing the door to her masculine side forever. It was the point of no return, sealed with blood.
Two months passed after their return to Paris. Raphael was proceeding with his plans to open a restaurant, while Sarab was still soaring in her new feeling of independence and freedom. She had surrendered the flag at last, allowing herself to be no one, without a past, looking for a new “I.” She was prepared to acclimatize to her new life. At the same time, she was prey to changeable moods, swinging between her love for Raphael and the guilt that came from loving an enemy. She couldn’t ignore the occasional nightmares and flashbacks; she would once again be captive in the Grand Mosque and Raphael was the attacker pumping gas into the lungs of her comrades and her brother. Often, she would be so terrified of going to sleep, she would choke and her heart would almost stop. The more she surrendered to her happiness with Raphael, the more her nightmares escalated.
Aden had been added to her nightmares, and Sarab had begun to feel an explosive belt clasped around her torso whenever she moved. She would wake from the depths of sleep, convinced that she had triggered the detonator. She sat up in bed, deafened by the roar of the blast, seeing her limbs scattered all over that room in Paris. She sat in bed for hours, afraid to sleep in case she made the mistake of detonating the belt all over again. The belt had a physical existence she could feel on her waist, and especially in Raphael’s arms; when they embraced, her first reaction was fear, in case she felt their bodies explode.
Sarab had started learning French at a language institute alongside other female migrants and asylum seekers. One day, her eyes blurred and she could no longer hear anything the teacher was saying; she felt she was suffocating. She stood up and rushed to the bathroom; she needed to hide from the inferiority she felt when she compared her meager progress in learning French to the achievements of those brilliant girls in her class. Their sharp tongues contorted effortlessly into French constructions, in contrast to her tongue, which struggled to lighten the heavy letters of the Arabic alphabet, the emphatic s and the deep h.
Sarab sat in the bathroom, trying to curb her longing to surrender to a new sense of belonging. Her classmates could be the sisters she had been deprived of, but all the same she felt them hanging on her like another suicide belt. A threat lay in the increasing affection they had shown her since she started her lessons; she would become attached to them and soon, at any moment, she would leave them behind. She was used to being kidnapped and taken who knows where. So, unconsciously, Sarab kept the language barrier in place, a final defense against dissolving into those girls who came from every catastrophe-ridden corner of the globe, and losing the last traces of her links her to her past. A suicidal impulse drove her to involuntarily cling to that past in her isolation.
Sarab had hidden herself away in one of the bathroom stalls, as if she was being hunted by her own stupidity. She was at a loss, possessed by the thought of turning her back on this institute and its daily humiliation. Suddenly, from nowhere, a voice emerged, surging and receding against the tiled walls like a sea of sound:
“Padam, padam, padam . . .”
The drumming voice thundered in Sarab’s chest. She knew that voice; it belonged to the thirteen-year-old Cambodian girl, Rani. The skinny girl used to escape the classroom to sit on the bathroom floor and sing that Edith Piaf song, always the same one. She had memorized it from a cassette that had played incessantly in her last pimp’s house.
The voice rose like a national anthem, driving a hidden ghost out of Sarab’s head, a duplicitous ghost that slipped away like mercury whenever she tried to take hold of it and name it.
Sarab couldn’t understand the words, but the spirit in the song reached her, harmonizing with the ghosts in her head.
Suddenly the singing fell silent and a moment of silence unfurled between the two girls, each in her own stall. No doubt Rani was aware of Sarab’s presence; she often cast a glance at her. Her eyes were like two cracks above her hollowed-out cheeks and sparkled with a fear that surpassed human understanding. However many languages Rani accumulated, she would always be the little girl who was found sitting by a mass grave, keeping watch over the bodies of her family and neighbors. Day after day she had kept to her post while the stray dogs snapped up an eye here, made off with a foot there.
Rani had never exchanged a word with Sarab although in time it appeared she had picked up some Arabic from her Algerian friend, Jamila. Rani was an ingenious mimic; she could copy any voice she heard, and languages were no obstacle to her. It wasn’t long before the teachers discovered that she could speak Chinese, Vietnamese, English, Spanish and French.
The song broke out again and the drumming of the voice swelled in Sarab’s chest cavity. A door cracked open in her heart, and she burst into tears at how shallow her pain was compared with Rani’s.
Sarab had never seen her chatting, unlike the other girls who never stopped chirping, but Rani occasionally took everyone by surprise by exploding into a torrent of words that were never taught in their classes. The teacher would calmly take her out of the classroom, trying to quieten the hysterical flood, and when she came back, Rani would be plunged into crushing silence for days. Her closest friend was Jamila who followed Rani around like a puppy wagging its tail. If Rani was absent for a moment, Jamila would seize the opportunity to bait the other girls’ interest with stories of the ghosts that haunted the Cambodian girl: the Khmer Rouge, who had wiped out her village when she was eight. The word ‘red’ successfully conveyed a sense of danger and reflected the oceans of blood from which those girls sprang. Aside from that, none of the girls knew or cared any
thing about the Khmer Rouge.
“Rani is originally a queen.”
Sarab envied Jamila for the effortlessness with which she had picked up the French language, and more particularly for her ability to dazzle an audience with her trivial nonsense. Jamila herself was an expert in exaggeration and she stretched her talent to its utmost on the strength of Rani’s name, which meant ‘queen,’ and her tragic story.
“It’s not even her speaking all those languages; it’s the spirits speaking through her. Rani is a mirror for all those dead people.” Jamila felt the shock on their faces like a refreshing breeze, and she was encouraged to go further in her extemporization.
“The man who took her from the mass grave harmed her, he bit off a piece of her backside so she wouldn’t have one, then he sold her to a Vietnamese slave trader. And he sold her to a Vietnamese family, but she ran away and found herself a French boyfriend, and they are working on her adoption papers.”
The queen sat in the bathroom, at one with the freezing floor, and her heart melted into the melody.
When Sarab left the bathroom stall, Rani was waiting for her. Without preamble she said in Arabic, “Are you in danger?”
“I expect to be killed.”
“By who?” Rani asked.
“By someone who might be dead,” Sarab smiled sadly. “But I’m not afraid.”