Country of Red Azaleas

by Domnica Radulescu

  It was from my father that I had gotten my obsession with ideas of goodness and political workings of states and governments. I wished I could have asked him what he really thought of my messy painful life. There was a heavy thud as the coffin hit the bottom of the grave. That, and the sound of my mother’s inconsolable sobs. When we got home, my mother broke one by one each of the glass miniatures she had gathered from the glass factory where she worked as a chemist—the black-and-white penguins, the small red shoes, the dolls, the birds—until a shiny pile of colored glass crumbs lay at her feet. She played the Doctor Zhivago theme song on the turntable and cried with big howling sounds until night fell.

  On the exploded street corners and dirty boulevards, I gathered shreds of my youth and of my college years. I walked by Marija’s old studio apartment where we had last seen each other and held each other at the start of the war. There was no possibility of news about Marija in the desolate grayness of the Balkan madness. I walked around her apartment building several times, hoping I would meet someone who knew her. I should have gone back that morning when I’d left her, I should have at least waved back at her. “Doesn’t that Mark of yours have a brother or cousin I could marry, too?” she had asked in a playful, self-mocking whisper before we’d parted. “And don’t completely forget me, all right? Go to that Mark of yours, don’t make this any harder, all right?” She could always joke off all her pain and resentments.

  Living with my mother for a few days in our old Belgrade apartment with its decades of bad smells and cracks in the walls, I started calling anyone who knew Marija in search of a lead. I called Ferida, the sculptor Mirza, a cousin of Marija’s Sonja, Sabina our old friend from middle school, and people from the list Biljana had given me whom I’d never even met. No one would share anything, let alone tell me about Marija or anything that had to do with the war. Only Ferida lingered with me on the phone in a friendly way, sharing news of her daughter, Mira, and her activities with international organizations of poets working for peace. But when I’d mention Marija, there was a hole of silence as deep as my father’s grave. I wanted to go to Sarajevo and see for myself but there was no longer any train there, and the buses were not safe. I went back to the black sadness of my mother, who tearlessly spent her days rummaging through my father’s possessions and clothes, talking to herself as she handled each item. The people I loved the most were disappearing one after another.

  When I parted with my mother at the airport, it was as if she were looking through me. We waited together for my turn to go through the security check. I wanted to cry in her arms, but her arms barely embraced me. With my father gone, she had lost her will to embrace anyone. My connection to my birth country was almost entirely gone. I hurried to my plane that would take me back to Washington, DC, without any tears.

  Provence and Paris, France. Country of Lies

  2001–2003

  My trip to southern France soon after the events of September 11 seemed like an inexplicable and unlikely dream. I had gone to Aix-en-Provence in mid-September of that year, for a conference on Rationalism and the French philosopher Descartes. Although French Rationalism and Descartes were not my specialization, I had decided to attend the conference in a fierce desire to take a break from my Washington life, Mark, and even motherhood. Natalia never clung to me when I went away to a conference just as she hadn’t clung to me when I decided to visit Belgrade under a rain of bombs. Now America had succumbed under a rain of attacks, the Twin Towers and the Pentagon had just fallen, and I was going to France. I seemed to be drawn to wars and dangers. On the eve of my departure Natalia just looked straight at me without saying a word, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned around and fled like a bird. I told her I would bring her something warm and sunny from southern France. She said, “Good-bye, Mama, bring me a hat.” I left in a swirl and with a tickle in my heart as if I was on the verge of something new: a new country, new city, new climate, and Descartes, the father of thinking rationally.

  The colors of Provence burned desires into my soul, and its sharp winds swept over me with inebriating flutters. It was all unexpected, reckless, and impossibly brilliant. At the conference I first felt out of place and slightly awkward among the crowd of Descartes lovers, although I spoke French fluently. In the afternoon of the first day, I felt ravenously hungry after an entire morning of bathing in the French Enlightenment. I stepped outside to get a sandwich at the next-door café. A man brushed by me and said “Bonjour.” He was one of the conference participants. I said “Bonjour” right back and before I knew it we were having warm panini and espresso and laughing like teenagers. He was Tunisian and taught at the University of Tunis. He wasn’t a Descartes specialist, either, and had also just come to the conference to get away, hear new ideas about old ideas, and see friends he hadn’t seen in a while. His name was Karim and he was smoldering in his smoothness, like a mix of Clark Gable and Omar Sharif. Mustache, dark velvety eyes, a way of tilting his head to listen to you, a spontaneous laugh that made you think the whole world was in a state of hilarity. There was a film of melancholy over his dark eyes that made him seem the incarnation of Mediterranean cool. And I was not immune to it. That kind of masculine charm may have been as old as the world itself, but it was new to me. We sat talking and drinking coffee and wine and lemonade and eating small savory snacks and luscious desserts and then more coffee and wine and lemonade until my head was spinning and Descartes and the French Rationalists were as far away as a floating island lost on the horizon. The city of Aix-en-Provence came ablaze at twilight, the wine was flowing in the outdoor cafés, the streets were swarming with people chatting blissfully, the last sun rays graced the multicolored buildings with magical puddles of light. Before I could even understand what was happening, Karim Rachid, the Tunisian professor and scholar of existentialist philosophy and political theory, was removing my clothing in my tiny hotel room with delicate and maddening precision. That night, amid Karim’s intoxicating caresses and kisses, with the full moon of Provence shining shamelessly in our window, occasional troubling thoughts darted by like comets: I have become an adulteress. What will happen with Natalia? I will never be whole again. I am living the adventure of my life, I am on a path of no return. Karim was sleeping and his body was warm, with a lemony fragrance, in the Provence night. A delicious feeling of irreversible sinfulness flooded every one of my senses and every corner of my conscience. I felt depraved and I loved it. Sleeping with a stranger in a hotel in southern France, I had finally taken a bite out of the fruit of life, the real fruit of life that came with a roller coaster of guilt and thrill and delicious torments. I heard myself giggle in the middle of the night, the fragrant Provence air cooling my heated body. I was greedy for happiness.

  For the remaining three days of the conference Karim rented a car and we scorched the roads of Provence at 120 kilometers an hour like a couple on the run. We were on the run from French Rationalism, from our own lives, from the whole world. We stopped by the side of the road and made love in lavender fields. The sun poured its demented scarlet sunset over our heaving bodies. Washington, even Natalia, my university career, my own sister, my father’s funeral and my mother’s weeping, they were all worlds away. Marija’s face glided surreptitiously into my conscience only once, a fleeting reminder of something that I had lost and I was continuing to lose in never-ending lavender fields and lustful whispers. The rhythm of my own perdition was both fast and slow—a fast-forwarding of my life that also moved in slow motion where I saw myself glide into an endless abyss. We returned to the conference only for a few hours so Karim could deliver his paper on existentialism and postcolonial consciousness. It seemed to me he was speaking a cryptic language and yet I absorbed every raspy word that he uttered that morning thinking that his lips had traveled the length and width of my body. It all came to an abrupt halt the evening before my return to the States when I saw my face in the window of a boutique jewelry store. Between sapphires, amber, and turquoise stones g
lowing in the Provence twilight, I saw a disheveled face with poufy hair and cat eyes. It was Lara Kulicz staring back at me with a look and a face from a different realm. I felt a sickening rift between the real me that was standing transfixed by the luscious jewels and the image that reflected back. I touched my face and the person in the window did the same. I stuck my face to the cool window and prayed to her for wholeness. She blinked, she closed her eyes, she whispered incomprehensible words, she mentioned Natalia, Mark, Biljana, Marija, a list of people and countries that made no sense: Serbia, Bosnia, America, Mexico, France, Tunisia. People were countries and countries went to war with one another. Karim touched my shoulder and asked me if I wanted a piece of jewelry. When your world collapses, buy jewelry. The person in the window with cat eyes laughed at my thought and said that yes, she wanted a piece of jewelry. The next moment I was trying on a silver-and-turquoise necklace. Karim said it looked “fabuleux,” and it matched my eyes. He told me of the jewelry bazaars in his native city of Tunis and how he’d bring me an emerald necklace the next time we met. Emerald was a popular stone and gold was cheaper than saffron. What was I going to do with saffron? I didn’t understand what “next time” meant. I didn’t understand what saffron meant. I tried on the necklace and had a snippet of a memory of a morning when I gave my turquoise necklace to Marija. A war was starting nearby and we cried and held hands. The world was a fucking mess and I was trying on a turquoise necklace that was the price of some precious spice in another country. The woman at the counter smiled the most fake smile in the world and said the necklace looked “fantastique.” She didn’t mention any spices, but she asked: “Would you like some earrings to go with the necklace, mademoiselle?” And Karim asked her: “Yes, could we see some?” before I gave my answer. They were both deciding about earrings as if I were absent or a child. I tried on turquoise earrings that were dangling alongside my neck. I had seen women like that before: women who stood in jewelry stores while a rich man bought them expensive jewelry and satisfied their whims. I had never wanted to be a woman like that and now I was one. I didn’t know if Karim was a rich man or just trying to impress me. He whispered in my ear that he loved me; he said “mon amour,” which sounded as fragrant and light as that expensive saffron must have tasted. I hadn’t thought of love one bit through the ride of those reckless days and now he was whispering love words in my ear as I was trying on turquoise earrings. The woman turned her head away discreetly and I thought I deciphered a surreptitious smile back at Karim. Then I turned to look at Karim and a big smile stretched across his face. It seemed fake, too, like a simulacrum, the copy of another smile. Then I had a sharp moment of clarity, edgy, piercing, and swift: Who is Karim? He could have been the Tunisian mafia for all I knew, a drug dealer, a saffron dealer, a terrorist, a heartbreaker, a miserable wretch trying to pose as a rich man, a married man. Oh yes, the blade of clarity struck again: He was a married man and I was a married woman. What was I doing in that store? I turned down the earrings and wore the necklace. Somewhere in the world Marija, whose entire family had been killed on one sunny July afternoon, and who had been raped by Serbian soldiers, was wearing a turquoise necklace, too. The evening was limpid and we strolled back to our hotel holding hands. I wore my necklace as we made love. For some reason I cried. For some reason Karim cried, too. I said I didn’t know when I would see him again, maybe never. I had a family and a career. It sounded hollow in the tiny hotel room. Yet my body felt full to excess, only my heart felt hollow. I wanted my body to be my heart. I knew Karim and I would meet again. The next day I was on an airplane back to the United States and all of me was an empty crater adorned by silver and turquoise.

  Despite the thousands of miles, the marriages and children that separated us, Karim and I continued to plan incognito meetings at conferences over the next two years. We met mostly in France and stayed in small hotels on side streets as if worried someone familiar might see us on one of the main boulevards. I prepared my travels with great precision as if I worked for a spy operation. At home I overcompensated for my delinquent absences by taking on more chores, being kinder to Mark, cooking an abundance of Serbian meals to his great surprise and delight. For a while, the more entangled I became in my affair, the better I was as a wife. As for Natalia, I spent intense hours with her involved in all her activities, wrecked with guilt for lying to her, hoping that some of her purity and innocence would rub off on me. I taught my courses with more attention and dedication than ever. I did everything with a higher degree of truthfulness and passion in an attempt to melt away the shameful, adulterous slivers of my life.

  Between the events of September 11 and the beginning of the Iraq War, Karim and I steadily built a shiny web of lies and a second life of illicit encounters across the tumultuous ocean that separated us. When the bombs started falling over Baghdad, we were making love in a small Parisian hotel room. We had burst into the tiny room furnished with fake antiques all heated up, each arriving from our different corner of the world: me from America, him from Africa. We turned on the news right away because the beginning of the war was imminent—and we needed to know the fate of the world. The ominous lights of the explosions broadcast by the French television flickered on the dark-red flowery wallpaper. Karim’s flesh smelled of lemony cologne, a whiff of Parisian spring air entered through the half-open windows, and all of my American problems dissolved in our chaotic embraces and breathless whispers. It seemed to be all there in that moment: fire and ice, burning snows and cool sands.

  I had found a new survival strategy for the messiness of my life when I was with Karim: I created pockets of pure oblivion in which all things past melted like a spring snow. I hid inside those pockets in the illusion of safety and happiness and pretended everything was as it should be, floating in a womb-like cavity carved inside memory and history, where nothing and no one could reach or touch me. In those pockets of oblivion I willed my entire past out of my present, even Sarajevo, everything good and bad, beautiful and horrific; the entire mosaic of my life became white and shimmering nothingness. Oblivion was white and merciful.

  In the evening of the first night of the war with Iraq, we went out into the streets for a reality check. We wanted to make sure the war had actually started and it wasn’t just a trick of the French television. We joined a group of French students demonstrating against the war and against the American president. With the young voices screaming against the bombs over Baghdad in the chilly March evening it all seemed pretty real. I was nervous about my American passport, so I relied on my Serbian identity as a fallback. The French liked me as a Serbian, much more than they did as an American; they didn’t seem to care that my country was run by a genocidal makeshift government at that point in history. They were just mesmerized by the idea of the “exotic” Balkans. Karim had his Tunisian passport to rely on, not quite a trust-inspiring identity at that time. We held hands and joined the voices of the students, and once in a while Karim whispered my name and French love words in my ears. The thought that we’d make love in French again later on made me smile proudly. When back in America, caught in the mire of my marital problems, staring at the blue wall of my kitchen in anger and confusion, I could always say to myself—with bitter satisfaction—what Humphrey Bogart told Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca: “We’ll always have Paris!” That was Marija’s favorite movie line, which she uttered with childish delight in difficult situations. I was stealing our movie lines for my affair with Karim, and that wasn’t by far the worst thing I was doing. My sense of right and wrong was all sagging at that time in my life and I didn’t care much. The layer of oblivion made it better.

  I was terrified of those American bombs that kept falling and, selfishly, of what they were going to mean for my clandestine meetings with Karim. I felt strangely exhilarated chanting hand in hand with Karim in the streets of Paris. I was part of a bloody moment in history. I felt cornered by history and somehow that was exciting. After the students’ demonstrations, Karim and I stroll
ed through the narrow hilly streets of Montmartre. In Place du Tertre, one of the portrait artists offered me a 50 percent discount to draw my portrait when she heard I was Serbian. I didn’t say a word while posing but just smiled my most seductive smile as Karim stood next to the artist, watching her every move and letting me know that my portrait was coming along nicely. I hungrily watched him watch me and I prayed that we would freeze, just like that, in the bustling corner of Montmartre and that my American husband, personal and professional worries would all vanish from my life and memory forever, leaving only my pearly daughter Natalia as the one palpable fruit of my otherwise questionable choices. After the portrait was done Karim took my hands in his, turned them over, touched my life line and kissed it many times, after which he gently closed my palms. “Pour garder les baisers quand tu seras sans moi.” To keep the kisses for the time you are without me. There was one thing that did make him anxious, though, and that was the new war, the growing hatred toward the Arab world, his passport, the visas, the profiling in airports and embassies where he had to keep asking for visas so we could see each other for a few days.

  “It’s not going to get easier for us, you know,” he said, later that evening. “Americans and the rest of the Western world are going to make it harder for people from my part of the world. What am I saying… it already is harder… this time it was harder than ever to get the French visa. What do you want, look at me! I don’t look very Swedish, do I?” And he laughed with a twinge of bitterness. Karim was calm even when he was worried and the shadow of the new war, though looming above us and sneaking all around us in the piano bar in Montmartre, seemed to leave him unfazed. He just pulled at his mustache a lot more when he was nervous. I, on the other hand, fidgeted, bit my nails, grabbed his hands across the table, laughed nervously, and gulped down my oysters like a hungry cat. Karim had one daughter, Arina, and I had my Natalia. The symmetry made us say we were meant for each other and helped us to weave the illusion that our respective divorces would somehow solve themselves miraculously just because of that apparent cosmic synchronicity that balanced the lack of synchronicity of not having met a decade earlier. We were determined to part with a clearer plan for our future than we had at the beginning of our Parisian reunion. We were also determined to make the most of every second and fill it with magic, sex, and wine despite the guilt and the worries about our messy family situations and the bombs blasting over Baghdad. Karim and I left the restaurant dizzy from the wine and strolled around Montmartre tightly enlaced, admiring the view, kissing at street corners, hurrying to our little hotel room in the Latin Quarter. But as I lay awake for much of the night, next to Karim’s warm body, scenes from my home life forced themselves into my conscience: the heavy silences at breakfast time, Mark’s concentrated or absent look, his hurried rush out of the house to make sure he had enough time to prepare for his class. And then my own Tunisian makeshift Prince Charming would wake and ask me gently: “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a, Lara mon amour?” What is it, Lara my love? “Rien, rien du tout.” Nothing, nothing at all, I would lie with conviction and cuddle in Karim’s arms, pulling over me the magic white layer of oblivion.