The Wild Ones

by Nafiza Azad

  We take a deep breath, and then all of us scream at the same time. The men fall to their knees, their hands around their ears. The lights in the festival flicker twice before returning to their original brightness. The men do not recover. They won’t. They will hear our screams in their dreams. The sound will haunt them. They will lose sleep. Their relationships will suffer. Perhaps they will lose their jobs and livelihoods.

  The irony of having screams as weapons is not lost on us. Our screams work differently on humans and middle worlders. For humans, the effect is somewhat akin to having an excess of electricity in their brains. For middle worlders, a Wild One’s scream means being injected with more magic than their bodies can safely contain. The effect is the same.

  “Let’s go,” Paheli says, and we heed her. We leave the festival before the Sugar Queen is crowned and the city before the clock strikes midnight.

  From the Book of MEMORIES

  TALEI

  CITY OF ORIGIN: SUVA

  Blue. His eyes were blue. Cornflower blue.

  Wet leather, carpet stains, corduroy jacket with brown patches at the elbows. Weathered briefcase and creased pants.

  Shaggy hair, black sprinkled with gray. Crooked teeth and tanned cheeks. Lean. Thin. Craggy. Complicated.

  Love amongst the dusty tomes filled with the words of long-dead poets. Love behind closed doors, locked. Love, extra quiet just in case someone heard. Caresses flavored with guilt. Kisses that felt like despair or maybe desperation. His hands rough on my skin, searching, always searching for the familiar curves of a body that was not mine.

  That ring on his finger, damning him, damning me, damning us and what we did. His tears when he thought I was asleep, tired, worn out, exhausted. Love that tasted like helplessness and felt like regret. Love that cursed itself even in the middle of its making.

  I saw her once. His wife. Another four-letter word.

  She. Blond hair, wide smile, eyes green with laugh lines fanning out. Graceful. Dressed in the soft colors of security. The whole to his half.

  I realized it then. I had no part in their equation. I was the artificial construct. The Other. The personification of a youth too soon relinquished to duty and marriage and desiring to, once again, thrill. I was the sin to be confessed on Sunday to a red-cheeked priest.

  She would be flowers on afternoons, jewelry just because, and dinner out with decade-long friends. She is what memories are made of, what the subtexts in poetry whisper of.

  And he?

  Of the cornflower-blue eyes and fumbling hands?

  He was lost in his need both for what he couldn’t have and what he already did.

  Our lives are never a measure of possibilities. We are always narrated as tragedies waiting to occur. Our mothers didn’t tell us what we could be but expressed once and again what we must not be. We were never told about the roads we could take, but we learned all about the paths we must not wander down. But in the end, their lessons made no difference. Ruin came to us even when we kept to well-lit streets.

  Our mothers. Would they love us still now that we have turned into the cautionary tales they used to tell?

  “Will You Walk into My Parlor?” Said the Spider to the Fly.

  The Japanese have an art of repairing broken things—well, pottery—called Kintsugi. Artists use powdered gold, silver, or platinum to rejoin the broken pieces, making the resulting whole even more beautiful than it originally was. The art celebrates the form as a whole, history and all. Being broken doesn’t mean ceasing to exist or remaining broken forever; it means a chance to recover and reconstruct.

  Just like the City of Beirut. Just like us.

  We can hear Beirut singing through the open balcony doors on our second-floor apartment. A bathtub full of flowers sits in the middle of the living room, and we are arranged in various poses around it. Paheli is hanging upside down from a chair beside the bathtub, her pale pink hair floating in the water with the blooms.

  Just because we talk in one voice doesn’t mean we are of one mind. We are different shades of one color. We do not represent other girls around the world who might be in situations similar to ours. Would you ask a drop of salt water if it represented an entire ocean?

  It is ten in the morning and the city outside tempts. Yet we resist, which is unlike us. Whether we admit it or not, Josefa’s warning has spooked us.

  The world we live in has three levels. The basic level, the third world, is that of humans who are mostly not aware that they’re not the only sentient beings in existence. The second level, the middle world, belongs to the magical beings that appear only as fancies in the literature and other media of human beings. The third level, the first world, is of the divine, and of that we know nothing. The divine is separated from the human and the middle world by an iron curtain that no one has been able to shift. Not for lack of trying either.

  We dip in and out of the human and the middle world without regard for the laws governing either of them. Now that Josefa has alerted us to danger, we are skittery.

  Still, we can’t hide forever. After all these years, we have become the kind of people who poke tigers simply to hear them roar.

  “I’m hungry,” Sevda announces a little piteously.

  Daraja throws a ripe mandarin to her. Kamboja eyes Daraja contemplatively.

  “This is the last one and it’s mine,” Daraja says, peeling another mandarin.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Kamboja grumbles.

  “Your face said it for you,” Daraja replies, stuffing herself with the mandarin. She saves half of it and passes it to Kamboja, who takes it happily. “My heart is so kind, I impress myself at times.”

  “Modesty, I remind you of modesty,” Sevda says.

  “Let’s go!” Areum says without moving an inch. She’s wearing a bright yellow dress that clashes with her blue hair. It’s a statement we appreciate.

  Beirut is one of the oldest cities in the world, so the magic here is thick and strong. She was devastated in the last civil war, but Beirut refused to capitulate to the hate and the violence that emptied her streets and shelled her buildings. She wears her scars proudly and stands strong, blooming with the new buildings that dot her landscape.

  Her strength gives us hope. Her beauty lets us dream of a time when we, too, will be more than the hurts that seek to define us.

  Our apartment is in Saifi Village, an upscale neighborhood, but we see no reason not to indulge. Following Areum’s words, Valentina stirs. She walks over to Paheli and pulls one lock of her hair. Paheli promptly slides down the chair she was hanging from and onto the floor. She opens her eyes.

  “If you have finished being a monkey, we would like to go exchange diamonds for money. Some of us want to do more than just sit in one place letting the moss grow.” Valentina has a bite. The gold tips of her black hair are the exact shade of her eyes. She’s the tallest amongst us. She weaponizes her height against us and looks down her nose at us with a flair none of us have yet been able to match.

  Paheli raises a hand and gestures, lazily, to the door. “By all means, go.”

  “We won’t go without you,” Valentina replies. “You know that.”

  “Why not?” That’s the question, isn’t it? Have you wondered too? Why do we stick to Paheli? To each other? It took us a long time to understand why we insist on a sisterhood when the language we speak most fluently is pain, and pain usually insists on solitude.

  The reason is simple. We see ourselves reflected in each other’s eyes, and we are reassured of our existence in worlds that turn unfamiliar with the passing of the years. We anchor each other, if not in time then in existence.

  “Because,” Valentina replies evenly, with a steely look. Paheli sighs and gets to her feet. Apparently, that is answer enough.

  * * *

  We take to the streets dressed in colorful outfits. All of us, yes, every single one of us, are devotees to sartorial splendor. We take pleasure in putting together outfits that are bursts of col
or. Tassels? Oh yes. Sparkles? Of course. We wear glitter on our faces and flowers in our hair. Even bees sometimes look to us for dew.

  We construct ourselves daily in different types of clothes and brilliant daubs of makeup. We have become so skilled at putting our outer selves together that the cracks in us are barely visible.

  Our first destination today is an antiques store located on Hamra Street. We take our time walking there; so many things demand our attention along the way. Some buildings in Beirut display their battle scars with a grim grace while others have new facades to help them face the future. Arched balconies spill over with greenery dotted by multihued flowers.

  The city is healing, true, but like us, she is wary and always prepared for the pain to begin anew. A tension simmers in moments. Questions rise with the sun every morning. Will there be blood spilled today? Will the streets echo with the sound of gunshots? Or will the city witness the fanaticism of a suicide bomber? Or suffer the consequences of a corrupt government?

  Graffiti, bold and beautiful, covers the walls of abandoned and inhabited buildings. The street art is defiant, seeking to reclaim the city from those who would see her burn again. Li Beirut, as the singer Fairouz names the city, is no maiden who hides her blushing face. She is an embattled matriarch, looking the world in the eyes, daring it to look away.

  We look around as we walk, catching glimpses of the middle world here and there. That glint you see in the corner of your eye or that time you thought you saw something move in the shadows is the middle world. The store you swore you had never seen before, or the alley that springs up suddenly one day only to be gone the next. Human beings are, as a rule, completely blind to the middle world. Even when they see middle worlders who are not at all human-looking, their brains normalize whatever they are seeing. They are unable to see the true selves of middle worlders unless the middle worlders want them to.

  The antiques store on Hamra Street is full of shadows, dust, and memories. Each item in the store contains the memory of an experience. Should a consumer purchase one, they will be able to relive the experience as if they were the one it occurred to. In Beirut, all memories smell of smoke and have the taste of tears. We once asked the proprietor, Idrees, about the kind of people who purchase the sad memories. He told us that there are beings in the world who desire to remember what sadness feels like because it is during emotional turbulence that a person is most alive.

  Idrees is out in the front when we enter. A seemingly frail not-human man, his white beard and stooped figure hide the strength in his body. He glances over at us without saying anything before returning his attention to the customer he is currently serving. We look at her and she turns, as if sensing our gazes.

  Not a single word is spoken, but the air suddenly takes on an electric charge. We draw close to each other and to Paheli, the sun around which we orbit.

  Idrees’s customer is unlike any middle worlder we have ever seen before. Her hair is made of dappled feathers of various lengths. Several of these feathers are missing, and her scalp is covered with either scars or baby feathers. Her eyes are the silver of mercury. Her skin is dark like the night, and when she smiles at us, she reveals teeth with sharp points. We thrum like the strings of a guitar; our senses flood with warnings of danger.

  “My name is Assi,” she says. “I bear you no ill will.” We remain unconvinced. She walks closer to us and we tense. “Will you show me your palm?” She addresses Paheli directly, but we all hiss, putting our hands behind our backs. Paheli tilts her head, looking at the woman without betraying any of the tension we are stiff with.

  “Why do you need to see my palm?” she asks the middle worlder.

  Assi, if indeed that is her name, gives Paheli an inscrutable look. “I am searching for a group of girls who call themselves the Wild Ones.”

  “To what end?” Paheli again.

  “I heard they frequent Idrees’s store, so I came to leave a message for them. What serendipity to meet them here.” The woman smiles. With all her teeth.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Paheli says.

  “I have an invitation for the Wild Ones,” Assi replies. She really doesn’t want to answer that question.

  When Paheli doesn’t respond except by silence, the woman continues. “In two days, there will be a gathering in Byblos. The stars you wear in your palms—the one to whom they belong will be present at the gathering. He asks to meet you there.”

  Paheli starts at the middle worlder’s words. Her eyes narrow and a quicksilver expression of panic freezes her features.

  “Will you attend?” she of the sharp teeth asks. We look at Paheli.

  “We might,” Paheli replies very reluctantly.

  “Excellent. I will tell him to expect you,” Assi says. Without another word, she disappears, leaving us unsettled and curious.

  The Best Ice Cream in the World, Teddy Bears, and a Tree Creature.

  Hanna Mitri in Beirut, according to various sources, sells the best ice cream in the world. After our run-in with Assi, we find ourselves in severe need of sustenance of the sweet kind, so we make our way to El Saydeh Street, where the ice cream parlor is located. It is a small, unassuming place, manned by an elderly gentleman who cannot quite control his surprise when we pour into his shop and fill it, almost to bursting. The walls are white, the television set in a corner is old, and the oven has bullet wounds.

  We pay fleeting attention to the details and concentrate, instead, on the ice cream. The flavors on offer are apricot, rose water, milk, lemon, peanut, strawberry, chocolate, and croquant. After we have been served, we leave the store as suddenly as we entered it. And the ice cream? It is everything the newspapers, the food blogs, and the social media posts boasted it would be. Rich, milky, ice-creamy.

  We walk silently around the city with no destination in mind. Conversations flow around and through us, but we are quiet, none of us wanting to ask the question all of us want the answer to.

  “Well?” Valentina is the first to break. She is an impatient sort, so we are surprised she has held out for this long.

  “Shh, shh. Let’s not spoil the taste of the ice cream with conversation,” Paheli replies. “Give me a minute. No, an hour. Perhaps a week?”

  “Paheli.” Valentina flicks her with a manicured nail. Her nails, if you are curious, are red.

  “All right. Fine.” Paheli finishes her ice cream, licks her fingers, and leads us to the painted Saint Nicholas Stairs. She flings herself down on a step near the top of the stairs while we arrange ourselves on the lower steps. She gazes down at us, much like a queen gazing at her misbehaving subjects.

  Some of us flinch and turn away, not wanting to see her displeasure. Others meet her eyes warily. She is our savior; without her intercession, we would have been lost. We will never forget this.

  “Stop with the theatrics and tell us. Are we going to Byblos?” Valentina, of course, has no such compunction. She has been a Wild One for the longest time after Paheli. She takes liberties when none of us would dare.

  “I have to. I don’t want to, but I have to,” Paheli says softly, looking down at her hennaed hands.

  “We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to,” Valentina replies.

  “This person, he was the one who gave me the stars. He gave me and thus you the escape without which… Where would we be right now?” Dead. Either by our own hands or someone else’s.

  “So, we are going to waltz into what could potentially be a trap?” Etsuko says. She has sharp cheekbones, and a tattoo she doesn’t ever talk about peeps out from the short sleeves of the bejeweled shirt she is wearing.

  “I owe him a debt. I need to hear him out,” Paheli says, and pauses. “It is not necessary that we all go.”

  “Of course it is,” Sevda replies with a roll of her eyes.

  “I have never been to Byblos,” Ligaya says.

  “None of us have,” Valentina says, then stops and looks at Paheli. “You’ve been around long enoug
h to have visited, right?”

  “Are you calling me old?” Paheli stands up and puts her hands on her hips.

  “You are old,” Valentina replies. “But like cheese…”

  “I think you can stop there,” Kamboja says. The rest of us snicker at Paheli’s disgruntled expression.

  We turn our sights to Beirut once again. The ice cream, delicious as it was, has been eaten. The decision has been made. We are going to Byblos or, as it is now called, Jbeil. Before we do, though, we have to find out more about the he Josefa mentioned.

  Valentina accompanies Talei, Ghufran, Ligaya, and Widad back to the apartment as they are not comfortable with the creature the rest of us are going to meet. Our destination is not too far, so we decide to walk. It takes us an hour instead of the usual thirty minutes because Paheli keeps getting distracted by the shops along the way.

  When we reach Bourj Hammoud, it is early afternoon and the air is spiced with the aroma of food emanating from the nearby restaurants. Before Paheli decides she’s hungry, we march her to a patch of greenery found between Armenia Street and Mar Youssef. The pavement surrounding the greenery is a checkered pink-and-once-white. The pink is pervasive in the area. Narrow buildings, tightly squeezed together, also boast a pale pink color.

  The green patch is not just a median strip but also contains umbrellaed tables where people can seek shelter from the sun. Though the day is bright, apart from one or two old men, the place is empty. A few flowers wilt sadly on one side of the strip while some art installations do their best to bring culture to the space. We head straight for the tallest palm trees growing near the tables and chairs.

  Sevda breathes deeply of the air that admittedly smells little like a forest. Of all of us, she struggles the most with the lack of green in our lives. We are currently invisible to humans (and thus more comfortable), and so we garner no attention from the people sitting at the tables.