by Raja Alem
“And now, you Bedouin sorceress, take a look at your body.” Rosaline was enjoying the role of director, guiding her ingenue in her little theater. “What land did you come from? What magic lamp did you escape from?”
She contemplated Sarab; there wasn’t a shred of criticism in that all-encompassing gaze; nothing but acceptance and pleasure. It was the look Sarab had longed to receive from her own mother.
“It’s hard to believe you’re Arab. I learned things from Arab women I couldn’t have learned from books. The art of loving the body is instinctive there. I really adored Egypt.”
She surveyed Sarab from top to toe.
“This, what you have, is a gift. There’s nothing shameful in the body—it’s a gift, a blessing. And now, take a walk. Go and bring me a cup of chamomile tea.”
And Sarab stood at the kitchen door watching the magician Rosaline arrange her music collection, dozens of records strewn around her on the floor of the entrance hall. On evenings like this, surrounded by music, Rosaline seemed like a teenager, a bundle of excitement and unruly defiance. The apartment swam in the savage voice of Mick Jagger as he sang “Tumbling Dice,” which had driven Sarab mad in the first days of working for Rosaline. But gradually she, too, became addicted to his hypnotizing rhythms. The few hours each week she spent in this Gothic atmosphere slipped into the archive of Sarab’s memories, effacing the files of agony stored there. Space was established between what she had been and what she was greedily plunging into.
“Hand me the scarf for parties, the one with the red roses.” For the first time, Rosaline gave Sarab permission to rifle through the mysterious kingdom of her wardrobes.
Sarab faced the six huge wardrobes brimming with clothes. She opened them one by one and stood there, entranced. She was swept away on a tide of red, and black studded with silver, and all types of lace and leather, and infinite pairs of evening shoes and boots and high heels. Sarab wondered sadly whether Rosaline had enough time left to wear all this again. She inhaled the intoxicating perfumes of the wardrobe. Every piece of clothing whispered daringly, promising her a new existence. She longed to stray through this paradise, even if it was just for a day.
“What a lecherous Bedouin you are! That’s enough,” Rosaline ordered her to close the wardrobe.
One day when the time came for Sarab to leave, Rosaline surprised her with an offer: “Come, stay the night.”
Raphael’s response on the telephone was muted. He felt threatened that Sarab was spending the night away from his house, but he had no choice. He put the phone down without comment.
Rosaline offered her a bed in her dressing room, and Sarab was falling asleep when she felt the actress sit on the edge of her bed.
“If I had worked in film, do you know the role I wouldn’t have minded playing?”
Sarab smiled, not caring or knowing anything about the world this woman was opening to her.
“Fanny, in Funny Girl. Barbara Streisand was a real star: the ugly duckling who turned herself into a beautiful swan. You remind me of her in a way. You have that tendency to happiness but it hasn’t been polished yet.”
“My mother didn’t love me.”
“Ah, I may be a senile old woman but I believe it would be easy to love you, young woman.”
Sarab wanted to be sure of what Rosaline had said. Rosaline seemed prepared to spend the whole night sitting there on the edge of the bed. Sarab wanted to get up and move to where they could carry on their conversation, but Rosaline ordered her to lie back, and gently tucked the covers around her. Sarab resisted a choking desire to weep.
“And you—did you love her?”
The tears streamed down Sarab’s cheeks. “Yes,” she replied, almost inaudibly.
“You know, there are people who are afraid to love. I’m one of them—how love frightens me!”
Sarab stared at Rosaline, incredulous at this statement.
“I was picked up off the streets, a real gutter rat. My success on the boards couldn’t drain the poison out of me—I held the hearts of the audience in my hand without having one myself, and I left many broken behind me. When Pascale entered my life he was like a sun, he resurrected my heart from the grave. He was truly a free soul. I had never seen anyone like him, and he freed me from my inner prison. He allowed my poison to evaporate, and I found myself in love.”
Sarab was driven to confess: “I’m not sure if I’m in love now. Perhaps I don’t have a choice.”
“So what the hell are you doing in my house?”
They laughed, and Sarab longed to shout that, at that moment, she had a choice, and she loved Rosaline, through choice.
“Come here. Look at this.”
Rosaline led Sarab to the window which overlooked part of Les Invalides. They stood side by side, welcoming the refreshing night breeze, and Sarab was entranced by the artful illumination of that historical landmark.
“This building,” said Rosaline, pointing at Les Invalides, “heals the wounds we humans inflicted on the world. It’s a graveyard and a hospital; we created monuments from our battle scars. I chose this apartment because none of its windows look out onto Les Invalides, apart from this one, which overlooks the corner of it. It’s a reminder of this side of life; a reminder of its pain.”
Sarab listened, distressed. She relived the sights of the siege, and the pain of it cut her like a knife. “Do you pray?” she whispered.
“Bien sûr.” The reply came spontaneously in French. “Everything I do, I do to the full. I don’t accept half measures. That’s my way of praying.” The sound of her own conceit rang in Rosaline’s ears, and she added: “At least, I try!”
“Are you afraid of God?” Sarab asked.
Silence unfurled between the two women.
“I’m not sure if it’s fear,” Rosaline said slowly, searching for the words which would translate what the question had stirred up in her. “When I was a young girl, I never paid much attention to this.” Her voice emerged as if from crushing depths, rummaging for God in every detail of her life. “But when life laid its burdens on me, even when it laid success and flashing lights on me, I felt empty.”
Sarab wasn’t sure whether Rosaline had understood her question, but she was content listening to this great actress speak about her past.
“I trust God. If He wasn’t waiting for us on the other side, aging would be terrifying,” Rosaline went on.
Throughout, Sarab had been aware of Rosaline’s heavy breathing; she shouldn’t have been so exhausted.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s true,” Rosaline concluded. “We’re all so busy there’s no time to stop and feel God, but He is always there to pick us up.”
As soon as Sarab got home the following day, Raphael exploded.
“Your job doesn’t include staying the night! You have a contract that protects your rights. Don’t let them abuse those rights.”
She was taken aback by his hostility, and he hurriedly embraced her in apology.
“Forgive me; I get upset so easily when it comes to you. I’m so afraid of you coming to harm.”
Raphael hadn’t slept the previous night.
He felt he had been robbed of the girl he had plucked out of the battlefield. Some hidden instinct made him wish he could put an end to her visits to Rosaline, but he didn’t dare to disturb the self-confidence Sarab was beginning to regain. Clearly she was settling down, she almost belonged to the city, but he wanted all that to end soon. The moment she got her residency papers he would fly her to Spain, to that promised paradise, and there she would find her true self, and there would be nothing to come between them, no rival affection, no one to snatch her away from him. The girl he had glimpsed kneeling in frantic prayer in the Holy City would return—the girl he had stripped of her military uniform.
Raphael’s outburst left Sarab unmoved; she needed the optimism she found with Rosaline, to plumb the depths of this involvement with her, to clean her waste and trim her nails, to peel the thick skin away f
rom her delicate anklebones. These actions, she had discovered, were an act of faith, and made her realize her humanity and her connection to God. Like prayer, it was a way of making atonement, of seeking forgiveness—but for what?
She wouldn’t stop burrowing into that mask.
As summer waned, a pistachio-colored dress appeared in the window of a shop in Rue Bonaparte. Sarab would peek at it whenever she passed. It was cheerful and radiant as a sunbeam.
On the day Sarab received her first salary for her work for Rosaline, she rushed to the elegant shop.
She entered the shop with a mixture of inferiority and self-confidence. She moved among the hangers holding other dresses, but was too shy to approach the pistachio-colored one.
At last she came to the window where it was hanging and she smiled, besotted.
“It’s the last piece we have, Mademoiselle. The silk is splendid,” the assistant said encouragingly. “Would you like to try it, Mademoiselle? It’s silk.”
Sarab trembled at the thought of squeezing her body into such a short dress, but the assistant gave her no chance to object. She took the dress off the mannequin and said, “Follow me please, Mademoiselle.”
She led Sarab into a changing room, hung up the dress, and then went out and closed the curtain. Sarab found herself alone with the dress in that narrow space. On either side, below the short wall, she could see two bare female legs, and others emerging into the corridor half-dressed. The assistants were helping them, fastening a zipper here and adjusting a seam there.
“I won’t buy it; I just want to touch it.”
Recklessly, she took off her blouse but kept on her trousers, and she slipped into the dress. She felt the cheerful silk, loaded with sin, embrace her skin thrillingly, and without thinking she took off her trousers and pulled the dress down over her hips.
She stood there, staring at her image in the mirror. She felt like a sunbeam; she felt dizzy at the sight of her slender legs, her thighs exposed to the whole room. A dizzying mixture of guilt and joy.
She turned around, seeing how the pistachio-colored silk draped over the graceful curves of her body, and started laughing like Rosaline. Sitting on the velvet-covered chair in the changing room, she crossed one leg over the other. The sensation of direct contact with the silk and velvet made her burst out laughing again.
“Do you need any help, Mademoiselle?”
The assistant’s question interrupted her lunacy.
“No, no thank you.” She was afraid that the woman would pull back the curtain and peer at her shamefully exposed body.
She bought the dress recklessly, spending more than half her pay on this frivolous indulgence which she then hid in the back of her wardrobe.
She felt dizzy at starting her own collection of Western clothes.
Peeling the Pistachio
The next morning, sarab woke early. She spent hours bathing, recalling what Rani had told her about how to make amends for a crime against the spirit. Sarab was becoming utterly convinced that purity was perhaps simpler than all the water she wasted and that never left her feel purified. What can milk and honey offer the world? The spurting of the water increased, and she was pleased to think that at least water might damage the ignition switch on the invisible explosive belt.
She was suddenly struck with guilt toward the pistachio-colored dress, for having snatched it out of the sun and buried it in darkness. Now she hurriedly dug it out; she reclaimed it and lightly spun around in it, allowing it to breathe. She went to the kitchen, conscious that her legs, bare from ankle to thigh, were breathing deeply for the first time. Zolo was there waiting, watching her curiously. Sarab had stopped walking the dogs, apart from Zolo. His owner, the elderly psychologist, had died the previous week and his relatives were looking for someone to care for his pet.
The dog had spent a week in mourning, and whenever Sarab took him to the bedroom or the living room he would skulk back to the kitchen, determined to stay on the margins. He lay down on the kitchen floor without showing any emotion or interest in anything, staring vacantly at nothing.
But that morning, with every sign of enjoyment, he swallowed a biscuit that Sarab had dipped in her coffee for him. It was morning and the apartment was bathed in a dazzling light, particularly the kitchen. Raphael told Sarab he had rented this apartment especially for the kitchen; the French window reached the length of the wall from ground to ceiling like another door, overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens.
Sarab opened the window as wide as it could go, welcoming the scent of flowers rising from the gardens. She was fascinated by the thought of having such a lofty door in the sky that opened onto the world, while she remained safe in a nest, occupying herself with simple everyday tasks like those she was performing at that moment: watching her coffee on the burner, taking a seat at the wooden table, sipping the coffee peacefully.
Her gaze fell on the knives arranged in the form of a star decorating the kitchen wall. A warning rang in her head: You’re wounding the angels with your nakedness.
She hurried to the bedroom, where she put trousers on under the dress, and added a jacket to cover the delicate pistachio color.
“I look ridiculous,” she thought, unconscious of her charm.
She left her hair wet and left the apartment. When her hair was struck by a cold breeze, one of her grandmother’s phrases surfaced in her mind, one she used to repeat whenever she washed and combed her white hair: “A true woman grows her hair long enough to dampen her shroud when her body is washed, otherwise she will be uncovered when she rises from the grave on the Day of Resurrection and she will be naked in front of everyone. How disgraceful!”
Sarab reflected that her grandmother’s only concern had been her damp shroud. She was relieved that her hair had raced ahead and grown with amazing speed in the last few months, in such profusion that it already covered her shoulders this morning.
Sarab broke into a smile. On this important day, she would be absent from the language institute for the first time. At exactly two o’clock in the afternoon she would receive her permanent residency card and her identity card. The word permanent carried with it a mysterious foreboding.
Sarab walked aimlessly through downtown Paris, heedless of the life blaring around her, torn between rapture and a sense of ignominy and anguish. The voice in her head lashed out at her, repeating, Enjoy your new documents, you traitor. You’re nothing but an agent of Satan by choosing to belong to this godless foreign country.
Zolo came up beside her and rubbed his nose into her left hand. It was the first time the dog had shown her such overt affection.
Sarab was crossing Boulevard Haussmann when Zolo suddenly became agitated. Sarab felt a tremor pass through his body, and then he wheeled around and leaped straight toward the gray car that burst out of nowhere and careered toward them. Zolo’s body was hurled through the air as the car slammed into Sarab’s body and disappeared.
For a second that seemed like an eternity, Sarab observed her body lying on the tarmac in the middle of the street, alone. It had finally relinquished control, and was liberated from having to find a way of clinging to safety. The thing she had feared for so long had finally happened. Finally, the suicide belt around her body had been broken; she had been punished at last for her sins, both real and imaginary, and there was no more need of it now.
She lay there, observing the historic buildings on either side of the boulevard in slow motion. They were magnificent structures, made of solid stone. Hundreds of years had probably passed over them; thousands of faces, countless sensations of pain and joy had all slipped over those stone facades, and they were fully comprehensible to her in her profound relief at having surrendered to all she had feared. She felt like she was floating in the air, content rather than wretched. The shattered body seemed to belong to some other person, and its expiry meant nothing to her. Zolo was whining and hovering over her, his broken legs straining to keep standing over her as a thin trickle of blood ran from the side
of his mouth and down his splendid silver neck. He wouldn’t allow anyone to approach her and harm her further. His eyes, which were no longer just two but had become four or more, widened as he gazed at her apologetically. At last he lay down, pushing his nose gently against her neck as his body fell onto the tarmac, and his soul departed. She felt his last breath warm on her face, like a healing balm for the devastating damage spreading over her body.
Sarab compassionately observed the kind, terrified faces hovering over her, who were besieging her helpless body and trying to see what was happening. She watched the world spin slowly while the ambulance arrived. They put up screens around her to protect her from the curiosity of passersby. She felt cynical about this concern for her privacy; such protection would have created a greater rift in her past life. They pulled Zolo’s body away and she didn’t object; she had to let him go. A hand carrying a pair of scissors cut open the pistachio-colored dress, making a long tear from neck to navel. A drop of blood widened on the simple neck opening, failing to diminish its radiance, and they peeled it away from her chest.
She felt the paramedic’s hand on her body, cutting a hole in her throat, perhaps to drain the blood filling her lungs and making it hard to breathe. She wanted to tell them there was no need, no need to carve more wounds into her poor body while she was still drugged by Zolo’s breath. But they were struggling desperately to allow air into her crushed lungs—it was a matter of life or death to them. She felt the paramedic’s lips open hers and puff air into her lungs, and his breath smelled of sweet basil. She wanted to tell him he had blessed breath, but her voice had dried up and she couldn’t make it come out. In any case she didn’t need a voice. Her soul communicated with the paramedics and touched their racing hearts. Sarab represented a challenge for them, liberated as she was from signs of life. They wanted her body to show some response, while the body, with its destroyed lungs, was perfectly well and felt no need to react; it was assured and finally, totally, at absolute ease.