by Raja Alem
“It was a terrible crime, what happened to the home of the spirit.”
Rani paused to allow her words to sink in.
“It’s not you that needs cleansing, but the thing that happened to the home of the spirit. At sunset, wash the ground under a tree, any tree, then leave a cup of milk or honey there overnight. The spirit should forgive you.”
Sarab was more shocked at the tenderness on Rani’s face than her words of warning; it made the thirteen-year-old girl look like an old woman. Then, in an instant, Rani’s face resumed its blank, solid innocence and she went out, leaving Sarab dumbstruck.
The Stage at Last
“Pascale and i lived in Cairo for five years.”
Rosaline volunteered this statement in poor Arabic spoken with a thick Egyptian accent, drawing a smile from Sarab which did not go unnoticed by Rosaline.
“You’re such a petty little thing!” Rosaline told her.
But it was clear this regal woman had taken to her at their first meeting one hot summer’s day. Sweat dripped down Sarab’s spine as she stood face to face with this retired actress, whose pale skin formed a striking contrast to her bloodred lips. Her nimble, upright figure was clothed in black leather, netted stockings, and knee-high boots. This gothic appearance struck Sarab as bizarre. It seemed to weigh heavily on that slight and delicate body which took a provocative stance, unconscious of having lost its youth. Time had stopped thirty years ago in this sumptuous apartment.
“If you are going to be here often, you should make yourself scarce, do you understand? I won’t have you getting on my nerves or poking your nose into my things.”
Disappearing was the best offer Sarab could have hoped for.
“I know I can’t frighten you; you could terrorize a whole country.”
It was a joke, but Sarab made no response, not even to force a smile. She simply stood there impassively, waiting for her instructions.
“And now, go.”
Sarab thought she was being thrown out. She was horrified at disappointing Raphael, who had found her this job as a caregiver; it was part of an integration program. And now just like that, she had lost her opportunity. She was aghast; a faint gleam in her eye revealed her shock, although her face retained its haughtiness.
But after a short silence, the woman said, “It’s clear that you’re desperate, but you’re honorable; you’re all right.” She contemplated Sarab. “Now, take a look at the apartment, and then leave. And make sure you don’t touch my wardrobes.”
Who cares about your wardrobes? Sarab smothered the thought.
“Actually, just go now and come back tomorrow,” Rosaline said. “After your language class.”
And thus the rhythm of Sarab’s tasks in that place was settled. She came and went like a ghost, cleaning the apartment and caring for the elderly actress from a distance.
Less than a month into her new job, Sarab arrived at the apartment one morning, and as soon as she opened the door she was greeted by a deep wail, like something from a wounded animal. She hurried to the bedroom to find Rosaline collapsed on the chair at her dressing table, her hands twitching, her face powder spilled on the ground and a bottle of Acqua di Parma cologne shattered on the mirror; the scent of lemon and jasmine filled the room like a cloud.
This was one of the fits of what Rosaline’s son called “despair,” which struck her from time to time. He had warned Sarab to watch out for them.
Sarab rushed to help Rosaline back into bed, but the woman regained her composure suddenly. She haughtily pushed Sarab’s hand away and, still clinging to her chair, signaled her with a trembling, red-tipped finger to apply her lipstick for her.
Sarab hesitantly touched the lipstick to Rosaline’s lips, and her whole body quivered. She watched the red color seep into the fine wrinkles in her lips and resisted a wave of pity, careful not to involve herself emotionally. She reminded herself this was temporary work; before long she would acquire a residency permit and she and Raphael would move to Spain.
During the previous month she had passed a lot of time with this woman, although on most occasions Rosaline wouldn’t allow her to offer any kind of help, even when she fell victim to the fits of exhaustion she was prone to. Like a gothic queen all in black, she was resolved to carry out her own needs without assistance—especially arranging her room, which she would undertake as if caring for a sacred shrine, and cooking, when she would order Sarab to keep back and watch while she produced her miraculous recipes.
“I’m conceited, I know—I’m used to having an audience.”
Little by little, Sarab’s total silence roused Rosaline’s curiosity and her heart warmed toward her, especially when she realized that Sarab exhibited no signs of interest or awe at her eccentricity. Rosaline did not relish this intrusion into her privacy, but neutrality bought her out of her aloofness. She no longer regarded Sarab as an alien in her world and gradually, with the vanity of a performer, she felt insulted by the girl’s indifference; she was dying to dazzle her.
“Come on, take that stone mask off your face.”
Sarab was disconcerted, unsure how to master her features.
“Clack, clack, clack . . .”
Rosaline accompanied the noise with stabbing motions. She spread out her palms like a curtain over her mouth, and then, with another clack-clack, she separated her palms, opening them little by little to reveal her laughing mouth.
“Your smile . . .” Sarab was surprised to hear her say that. “I can hear your smile hidden underneath that mask: clack clack clack.”
Sarab found the noise funny, and the little smile on her face grew wider; she looked very attractive.
“See, you can laugh after all. . . wider!”
And Sarab lost all ability to smother her smile.
“Now come here and mend this.”
Rosaline often gave peremptory orders, putting a torn lace glove or a silk dress in Sarab’s hand and handing over some needle and thread. Sewing was a strange exercise for Sarab, who was more used to rifles and dynamite, and she was preoccupied with clumsily trying to follow Rosaline’s instructions. As she sewed up the tears in silk or lace, she felt something inside her altering and relenting, despite herself.
“It’s clear you haven’t a drop of the seamstress in your blood.” Rosaline mocked her while closely watching Sarab’s progress in the art of sewing. Nevertheless, it was evident Sarab enjoyed it, even when she was pricked by a needle; it made her feel real, like a normal woman doing normal household chores.
One evening, Sarab passed the door of the bathroom while Rosaline was bathing, and she beckoned her inside.
“Don’t stand there like a rabbit in the headlights; come here and scrub my back.”
The regal body was laid out like a mermaid in the perfumed bathwater. Sarab was bewildered at touching the aged body of that baffling woman, the compact, firm backside and the silkiness of two slender legs in contrast with the flabbiness of the inner thigh.
Is this what it would have been like to touch my mother’s body? Sarab dispelled this sudden thought.
Rosaline felt the tremor in Sarab’s hand and was driven to show off.
“No one would have dared to intervene in my life if it weren’t for that silly fall. My legs let me down and I fell on my back like a cockroach on the bathroom floor, and I stayed there till they found me in the morning. My son seized the chance to meddle.”
Sarab listened, occupied with the body in her hands. She scrubbed her back willingly, to scrub away the pain of the fall from Rosaline’s memories.
“What angers me most was my son. I could see it in his eyes. Children are cruel; they watch impatiently for us to go, but I defied all his expectations.” Rosaline stopped Sarab’s hand as it scrubbed her knee, to emphasize her next words. “I want to live.” She was silent for a moment, to carve that wish into Sarab’s consciousness. Then she went on: “I am an actress. I play at living. Do you know what? Life is precious. My husband wasn’t so strong; when
they made him retire he lasted a week, and I woke up one morning to find him lying dead next to me in bed.” She sighed. “I didn’t indulge him. But let me be clear; when men get older, they slow us down. They are desperate for an easy life, and sadly they go quickly. But maybe I prefer being alone like this, with a shining companion like you; I can suck up your youth,” she added, with a peal of mocking laughter aimed at them both.
“I don’t mind. I won’t stop you,” Sarab said in a whisper.
“That’s a sin; you shouldn’t let an old woman like me take advantage of you.”
Rosaline watched Sarab, and her body quivered as she tried to guess the horrors she had been involved in before ending up in her apartment. There was an aura surrounding the girl which made it clear she had sampled terror so thoroughly that nothing afterward could shock her; but at the same time there was a vulnerability that was kept hidden, so she would not be wounded.
“It’s all right if we’re naughty from time to time. I learned a surprising fact in Egypt from some dervishes—snake charmers at festivals. When they remove all a snake’s poison, it goes blind and gets weaker and weaker until it succumbs. A little poison is a good thing.”
“Yes. I also have some poison.”
Sarab flushed in embarrassment at Rosaline’s roar of laughter at her admission.
“We’re all human, in the end. The angels were ordered to bow to Adam, and it sanctified his weakness.”
Sarab’s hand convulsed over Rosaline’s collarbone. “My brother also gave in very early.” As Sarab said these seven words, she felt a mountain lift off her shoulders. She let her hands fall into the bathwater, somewhat at a loss, and Rosaline’s silence encouraged her to shed more of the worries that burdened her.
“He killed many people before he reached his goal. I believe he always intended to be killed.” And she added: “Me too.” She fell silent abruptly.
“You too?” Rosaline’s question escaped her despite herself.
“I thought I wanted him to live, whatever the cost, but now . . . I don’t know,” she stammered.
“Right. Perhaps you’re better off alone like this.”
A sense of relief washed over Sarab, as she finally summoned the courage to face the guilt that still flogged her for having clung to life when everyone she knew had gone.
“Such immature souls,” Rosaline sighed. “Now, scrub my chest, and put your back into it.”
Sarab was embarrassed; Rosaline must have noticed she was avoiding her breasts.
She obeyed the order and drew the sponge over the sagging breasts. She was careful not to touch them directly, but remained hyperaware of the pulse beating beneath them.
Sarab felt guilty, as if she had abused the privacy of this woman’s body, and she hastily covered its sharp edges with a soft, fluffy bathrobe.
Rosaline’s knowing eye settled musingly on Sarab’s face while she was busy perfuming and freshening her armpits with lavender powder.
When they emerged from the bathroom the apartment seemed to be holding its breath, swimming in the blues music which harmonized with the red and black decor.
A simple activity like bathing was guaranteed to tire Rosaline out. She collapsed into bed, bare of the dark lips that emphasized her pale skin. She was like a marble statue that Sarab had toppled over.
Is she dead?
It was time for Sarab to go, but she stayed stock still in the doorway to the bedroom, unable to leave, though night was falling. She couldn’t even lift her eyes from that body, struck by the shattering contradiction between Rosaline as she was now, old and impotent, and what she had been: a famous actress, wife of a diplomat, and former member of the International Red Cross.
I want to live.
Rosaline’s words echoed through Sarab’s head and reassured her.
*
“Come here. Breathe in.”
Rosaline would accept no objection, and Sarab was afraid of opposing her. She felt that her time in that apartment was like a prison sentence, in that she had to defer completely to her jailer or guide; meanwhile, Rosaline felt Sarab needed to be forced to step outside the rigid limits inside her.
“Take a deep breath.”
Sarab pulled deeply on the cigarette without coughing—it was nothing in comparison to the gas and the smoke she had inhaled during the siege. She contemplated the cigarette’s delicacy between her fingers; it was an odd sight, and an even odder taste was making her head spin.
“Now paint your lips black,” Rosaline invited her, watching her closely, aware that Sarab usually avoided that color.
But as soon as Sarab left and found herself outside, she twirled ecstatically, attracting the attention of the patrons in a nearby café. Cautiously, embarrassed, she pressed her lips onto a tissue, then thrust it in her handbag and hurried back home.
Raphael noticed the smudge of black on her lips at once but forbore from commenting, careful not to utter a word that might make her shrink back into her shell. He sensed a flame of excitement under her skin, and it bothered him.
Sarab didn’t tell him all the details of her experiences with Rosaline. It was her secret, and by drawing a veil over it to protect it she was being another person: her true, unobserved self. And Raphael had a vague notion of what was happening to her; the black color smudged over her lips troubled him deeply.
“Your paradise,” he said, placing a huge file on her knees. The first page bore a picture of the building he had just bought in Spain.
Her eyes gleamed. “No!”
“Yes, it’s ours now.”
Joy and disbelief battled inside her. It was an old palace in a surfing village in Cádiz. Sarab particularly adored the endless white sand sloping down to the sea. It reminded her of the sea in Aden and the total freedom she had found—and just as suddenly lost—in the sunlight and the saltwater. She felt the building was a promised paradise.
“I can imagine being naked there,” she said dreamily, unruly as a child, as the touch of the sand and the seawater purified her of her sins. She vowed to reach that sea. “I will be entirely immersed in that white foam, and nothing will ever blacken me again.”
Raphael realized her need to disappear without a trace, both from the Mahdi and her inner demons. “And I’m planning to renovate it all,” he said, enthusiastic and proud. “We’ll stay in the annex while we decide on the renovations in the main building.” Even he felt transformed by this dream. “We’ll choose everything together, the furniture and the decoration of every bedroom and reception room.”
“But I don’t know anything about decorating,” Sarab said.
“We’ll manage in our own way, like amateurs.”
Sarab adopted his frivolity. “Everything in white?” she teased him.
“Be more adventurous.”
She was haunted by the red and the black in Rosaline’s apartment.
One day Rosaline surprised her by holding out a bloodred lipstick.
“Red is a transgression. It’s confusing, because it’s joyful and a riddle at the same time. Don’t let it scare you—ride its flame.”
Rosaline had changeable moods; she could be very eccentric, and flipped easily between the superciliousness of the worshiped and the lunacy of the clown; from laughter to the mysterious grief that drove Sarab to be braver; from red to black, which made Sarab triumph over her fear of revealing her long-buried femininity.
“You could be my partner in crime,” Rosaline scoffed as she watched.
The moment Sarab rolled the red over her lips, a serpent of lust coursed through her blood. She hurried to the bathroom and wiped it off.
When they first met, Sarab had felt this woman was playing games with her, and she resented her for it. Then, when she realized she had underestimated Rosaline, she was appalled at the absurdity of this reaction. It was simply her way; just an actress’s ploy, a game to help others escape their gravity. Sarab felt secure in shedding her seriousness, and relaxed enough to be driven further into this venture.
/>
“Come on, take off your shirt.”
Rosaline insisted on Sarab’s undressing.
“Now face the mirror.”
Sarab was struck by the vitality coiled in her small breasts. There was excitement and defiance that caught the eye, but she was certain that they were nothing when compared with Rosaline’s.
“You should have seen them in my glory days, when I was young,” Rosaline said, pointing at her own breasts. “I left a considerable number of broken hearts in my wake.” She sighed deeply. “But that’s life. Your body reminds me of my old figure.”
Sarab faced the mirror and, for the first time, saw herself in a different light. She whispered to herself, “It’s lovely.”
It was the most tender praise she had ever offered to the body she had repressed and despised; merely acknowledging it sent the blood to her cheeks.
“Stop that shyness!” Rosaline ordered.
Sarab felt she was falling into a trap of that eccentric leader, who seemed to be able to read her mind. She didn’t know why her mother Bunduqa suddenly burst into the apartment, a stark contrast to Rosaline.
“Yes, pull your shoulders back.”
And Sarab tried to push her shoulders back.
“Ahhh!” Rosaline laughed, wagging her finger, warning her not to collapse in on herself. “Wider, wider!” Like an acrobat, Rosaline pushed her shoulders back in an exaggerated movement, imitating a bird flapping its wings, and Sarab couldn’t help laughing—which was what Rosaline intended.
“And now, set these little rabbits free,” Rosaline ordered her, almost touching her breasts. Sarab realized she was howling with laughter, astonished at the excess of it, but giving in to it all the same. What harm could there be in following these embarrassing instructions?
“Let them breathe,” Rosaline ordered playfully, taking a deep breath.
“Breathe, little rabbits, breathe,” she said rhythmically, making Sarab’s breasts swell with life.
“Spread out, fill up all the space.”
Sarab realized they were being ridiculous, she and Rosaline, but she was enjoying herself. She breathed deeply and was filled with pride; it made her feel like one of the female statues that had caught her eye in the parks in Paris, turning her nose up at the world like a goddess.