by Alia Mamdouh
Blanche makes things so much easier. Her laugh rings out and her response comes promptly. It’s not your fault, and don’t worry about any of it, she says. When I win the Lotto we will do the necessary repairs to whatever has been damaged. Blanche has more faith and more natural joy than I have been able to manage. When I am standing up, though, I have been working on devising all sorts of ways to make my bones grow. I have been compelling my backbone to stand tall in arrogant defiance. When she hears this from me Asma starts to laugh. And finally she asks, How can this be, Suhaila? And what do you mean by it? Billahi alayki, God help you, now answer me! Kayf? How in God’s name does this help?
Asma, my pet, Usayma! Arrogance rebuilds the bone marrow, I answer her firmly. If you are modest and retiring you will find that your marrow has been consumed—that it is reduced dramatically. I can’t stand modest bones. Asma goes on laughing as I go on explaining. Ayy w-Allahi, I swear to you, I tell her. You know, in Baghdad I was taller by at least five or six centimeters.
When did this meek, enigmatic and obscure kind of rotting begin to set in? No one answers me when I ask this question. Suddenly you don’t come upon your own height. Ferial is slightly shorter than I am and so is Rabab. In the Academy everyone called us The Tripartite Alliance of Short Women, following the pattern of The Three Knights. The long and short of it is that my heart is open and equally is shut tightly. Today expressly I am in need of the epidemic of youth, that which in my case I concealed sadistically. The youth whose taste I have never known. That my illusory youth existed is proven only by the mature years I have reached. It began like this fever-slap on my lower lip; I annihilated it there in Baghdad when I was with him. I invented youth but I did not test it out as one usually tests inventions, in trials and laboratories. There was a time, in Brighton, when I told Nader (between us sat a pretty white candle and two glasses of wine), If you want the truth, I don’t want to hide from life in all of his longwindedness. It is up to us to refrain from annoying life, life as old age. We must leave him to stumble over his own steps and then he will not know how to apologize to us. We must make him visible, all of him. We must proclaim him on our faces and put him where he belongs and not overdo our adherence to him. Then we can hope that he will grow ashamed of behaving so basely when it comes to all of the ways we deceive ourselves. That is what I said to Nader, but I felt rather embarrassed in his presence. I was too ashamed to tell him that every one of my desires was as rampant and foolhardy as it ever was. I had not stamped out even a single one; but that was because I had not yet discovered what my desires were. When I raise my glass high, chez Caroline or Blanche, I find it impossible to believe that I have lived, and I cannot believe all of the seconds that were mine to draw on and all I did was to draw back. I cannot believe that I was thirty-eight when the lord and master, the sayyid, went away and did not come back. I did not know whether he had fled, been imprisoned, killed himself, or been killed. The puzzle of his disappearance and the specter of the refugee camps tore my youth and my desire to live up at the roots. And now here I am squandering these years of living and pacing inside the maze of my life, so that I become an exemplary lesson to warn those who shall heed lessons. The enmity to my body intensified whenever the viruses of desire entered it, so I would vanquish them and exhaust my body by means of the volunteer work I did for various associations, and with dancing lethal enough to make me dizzy and faint. On the day we first met, Wajd listened to me with genuine intimacy. When the examination proper was over, we were heading outside together. She invited me to her apartment in the eighteenth arrondissement, where we drank wine and opened a few tins of food. She talked to me about how lonely she felt, and she was very open and spontaneous about it, too. Were we really so alike?
No, Wajd, I said. We are not alike. But in the end, we are two women alone in Paris.
She stopped talking and looked at me, and then she spoke before I could do so. Don’t you see, Suhaila, that my skin has started to wrinkle? I feel it. My flesh is sagging. I used to be finer looking than I am now, much lovelier. I was infatuated when I crooked my finger at him. He was my self-esteem and pride. I was stupid. I did not ask him, Are you as in love with me as I am with you? For him I would summon and collect the words of the ancients and the moderns. I thought about him on the Metro, and in the trains that took me to the popular clinics outside Paris, and in bed as I teased my body so that his touch would pass across it and I would break out in sweat and sweetness. I never found it difficult or tiring, Suhaila, to talk to him night and day. I would tell him all the details of everything. Secrets, stupid little things. I got pleasure from finding excuses to talk to him. Every minute, it seemed, I loved him more than I had before. I never repeated the things I said to him. I wanted to take care with every word I said. He would use the secret powers of talk on me. I would whet his appetite just enough so that he would have a taste of me and would enjoy me, so that I was nourished by him. He was my good food; he was the nourishment I fed on and drew sustenance from. I wanted him to swim in my body, which longed for him and to float on my lips which were thirsty for his kisses. I wanted him to form bonds of sympathy with my youth before it began to decay. Yes, he is from North Africa. But there was some sort of curvature in his spine. There was something unsound there, some bruising. At first I wasn’t alert to his deviousness, his artificiality. So be it, I told myself. I will take care of him, not as a doctor or as a mother but as a lover. I didn’t lose patience and I did not give way. He was of some odd, maybe fantastic, species. It was not a question of illness; that is too simple. He would drop out for weeks. He would disappear entirely without having any reason for it; he stayed away in hopes of deceiving me. He was a famous bone surgeon.
I would laugh and answer her. Maybe he enjoyed breaking your bones. She would not pay any attention to my teasing. She would keep on talking. But I did not hate him, Suhaila. He was very weak and he would make threats.
She said that with such sadness. I would make excuses for him and love him even harder and more, she said. Sometimes it seemed to me that I loved him before I saw him. Don’t laugh at me, Suhaila, and don’t say I’m the doctor and you are the patient. Sometimes things blend into each other and people switch roles. And that is what is happening right now.
Three p.m.
I love Paris’s summer: doubt besets its atmosphere at every moment. I put on big, loose flowing shirts and long narrow skirts so that I will look taller. Most days, I put my umbrella into my bag and wear my raincoat. I love the uncertainty that grips us from the month of June to August. A person walks many steps between the splatter of the rain and the heat of the sun. I become many creatures in that season. As for this cold which seeps into the bones and hands and feet, and into the heart most of all, what shall I do with it?
There is the phone again. Layal pleads and insists. I’ll be there, I tell her.
Why am I here, in this very narrow and cold bathroom? My face in the mirror is inescapably close. I will take an anti-allergy pill now, right now, before I find myself in the lecture hall and the scratching and wrangling begin. I do not want to create any disturbance. Allergies are a stupid disease; they are “trivial,” remarks Wajd. Hayif. The general run of my sicknesses are trivial and apparently these are the ones I deserve. It seems that where I am concerned not a respectable illness is in sight. Even high blood pressure is a ridiculous malady that afflicts millions of people all over the world. I have longed to have an illness that would bear some resemblance to me. It would be a sickness worthy of me, and it would be my one and only infirmity. An allergy does truly cause inevitable suffering, as trivial as it may be, because you cannot really anticipate when it will show up or in front of whom, or with whom you will be when it does make an appearance. It begins down the arms, a preface to what will come. Next, there comes an itch in your armpits that descends to the soles of your feet. The itch I would get across my chest and stomach would take such forceful hold of me that as it swept across me I would try my best to vanish from every
one’s sight. My back is the worst culprit, playing such tricks on me and treating me so very badly. It is like contending with a demon. I cannot reach every spot. I bought a mother-of-pearl backscratcher and put it next to my bed. My allergies have gotten worse here. This surprised me so much that I went to Dr. Sallumi, the physician to whom Arabs and emigrants go. How very nice he was, really. He explained the origins and causes of allergy.
It is the only illness that doesn’t kill, he said. But still, it is a malicious one.
Examining my back, he was not as clear and concise. Does it make sense that a woman of your age would carry on her body a bloody map like this? he muttered. And then: Did you feel any pleasure at doing this? He began to touch my back. I shied away and stood up immediately. When she took me to him, Sarah had said, He is not bad. He will give you several kinds of medicine. Six at the very least, and one will be the right one. You will not see immediate signs of improvement, but do persevere with him. Use pretexts or use some charm, it makes no difference. Don’t be put off by his revolting jokes. He is really a very good man.
But he is always picking at me in the most irritating manner, I say to her.
Eh bien? One day I will tell you about my other Arab doctor. He would have killed to sleep with me, and that was when I was unconscious from poisoning. I smelled disgusting but he tried anyway. They all try. We are all projects for each other, but the men are always in such a hurry, more so than we are, I think. Why do you expect it to be otherwise, Suhaila? And afterward they will have a lot to say to us or about us, whether they got us or not. It isn’t your problem. You are free to take it or leave it. Sallumi is not the worst of them. Can’t you see yourself? You look like dead wood. You have dried up; everything about you is arid, desiccated, dry as a bone. All you are now is remains, ruins. Don’t you trust what I am saying? What did you do to yourself there, my dear, and what will you do here? Look, they are just like us, young pullets with our feathers all plucked. Maybe they are not in such a bad way as we are. Maybe they are not as unhappy or alienated because at least they are clear in their minds about it. You don’t seem to get it. Why don’t you?
Sarah isn’t very good at giving comfort. On that day, Dr. Sallumi gave me a long white pill, breaking it in half. Take this half now, he said, and the other before you go to bed. It will make you drowsy, but that’s okay. Do you have a car? Don’t drive in this condition. Go home right away. These pills are not to be combined with alcohol consumption. Do you drink wine?
Four p.m.
I really must get my hair cut. Just enough so that it will look like it did three months ago. Where is the rose-pink card on which they have recorded the number of haircuts I have had? The coiffeur stamps the card and says with a feminine lilt, There you are. The tenth haircut will be free of charge. Each time I am there, I sit in front of him like a failing student. When I am on the point of losing my mind from depression and despair, I open those magazines and I point to one of the models. At the end of it all, I have a haircut that bequeaths me trouble and foolishness. I ask the coiffeur to shear off as much hair as he wants to, so that I will look a disaster. And then I disappear from everyone for a period of weeks or sometimes months, and I do not suffer in the least for it. Asma is the only person I see. When she sees me, she is always the first to speak and she is always forthright.
You are really overdoing it, Suhaila, why? Ayy, all right, it isn’t as nice as it was, but zayn, it’s fine, it isn’t a big issue and yaani, it isn’t horrible.
I flip my hair forward, brush it, and stare at some hairs falling into the basin. I shake my head to the right and the left and return some locks to the back. Combing out my hair with my fingers, I have seen that around my temples the gray roots are showing. It looks as though the dye makes no difference, as if I am dyeing air. Why is that?
Your hair is like sand, Sarah insists. Even the coloring slides off it. Stop this idiocy and go over to Sonia’s genealogy—isn’t your son’s wife half Iranian? So, the only thing to use is Persian henna—it is so rich!
If Umm Diya had been standing there, she would have slapped me with the saying one always hears. Pigment shows no mercy to the cherished child of a people abased.
The Spanish dance director, who was roughly my age, said to me, The thing about you, Madame, is your short, compact, and supple build. And your slim legs, too. Bodies like this are treasures buried in clothing. All we have to do is strip off the layers and return these bodies to the earth. To the world, right here.
Hearing words like this, I was already seeing a brighter professional future for myself. Only days later, though, I would be stumbling over my feet at the slightest provocation and trembling from head to toe. I was clueless as to what the very next step should be. It was nonsense, all that praise. Garbage. I would stay away from lessons and the exercises led by that kindly lady, a friend of Tessa’s. It was Tessa who introduced me to her and got her to take just half the usual fee for lessons. Do it for my sake, Tessa said to her. Later, after we had become friends, she made do with just a quarter of the fee, and that was for my sake. But with the passing of months and years my body ebbed, reduced from what it had been the year before. The facts were there before me in flesh and blood. It was not a case that required lots of additional evidence. One day, returning from those evening lessons in the School for Spanish Dance, I said to Narjis, with Hatim right there, The bastard has no shame at all! I was boiling with frustration. Narjis, that poor dear, was completely knocked over by my swearing. She fancied that someone had been bothering me, and between laughter and gravity, she exclaimed, Shu? Khayr in sha’ Allah! You’re all right, aren’t you? What happened? Nothing bad, surely?
Before I could say anything Hatim jumped in with his usual slyness. His voice sarcastic, he addressed Narjis. He—who else could she be talking about—he is Age, isn’t he? Life? He is the life span she has lived, and the age she has reached. Right?
We all laughed. The bastard moves along to his own music, I said. He keeps moving, so stubborn he is, and he is quiet. No screaming or moaning from him. And I can’t even accuse him of overstepping the boundaries.
I press on my temples and all but scream. But I do not scream after all. What is the use of any of it? I was witless and the whips of the young republic curdled my blood while the husband swung the cane of obedience across my body and I did not even scream, not then. I look at my body, from the roof of my mouth, to the vivid redness of those lips—a color to dispel my fear. From my toenails tinted death’s yellow, with the adulterated poison I was ready to swallow that I might sleep alone, to my small frame always there at any hour of night and day, my body ready to toil the moment it was necessary and always in his hands. My mother moistens the sheets at night—and you, Suhaila, at any time of day or night—with tears. What stumbling luck! I didn’t have a care for the time still to come, the years still left, the men and youths, everything in God’s creation. I found excuses for all of them. And I began to go to evening concerts with Caroline who always purchased two tickets. Foolish circumspection was my downfall. My footwork started to improve, day by day; my hair flapped against my forehead and bounced down across my cheeks. With kindly seriousness, the obverse of Sarah’s way, that teacher made me aware that I should leave the little white hairs on my temples as they were. There’s nothing wrong with them, she said in an affectionate voice. Everyone is doing it these days, she would often say in my hearing. It’s moda.
She would say such things as she got the music ready for us, and the lights, and as she put film in the VCR. Come on, Suhaila! The final commotion around my face, a light dusting of powder across the nose which has shifted its position slightly, and one light line of Indian kohl, more gray than black, on each heavy eyelid. Caroline gave me this kohl one day; there was no particular occasion. I didn’t put mascara on my lashes. Across my shoulders I draped the heavy coffee-brown and purple Afghani shawl, wrapping it around my neck. The final glance in the mirror. Beneath those eyes, the hideous blackness
, the site of first and final revolt, or of blasphemy: that blackness smiles into my face and thwarts my will. The powder no longer delights either friend or foe. Sarah would respond to me in her usual manner. Her voice would be inaudible at first, as long as we were still inside the dance institute, but it would get louder and louder as we emerged onto the street.
You have to show some respect for the wrinkles and pockmarks, Suhaila. Even the light spots you should leave alone. It’s nicer that way. Why don’t you believe it? The droop of your lids, those crooked teeth, short or shrinking bones, your shriveling blood vessels and the dryness of your skin—if you want me to, I will spell out even more than this. I am a specialist in such things. Everything comes along and encounters no obstacle in the path. It all comes as easily as if it is gliding across ice. Listen, Suhaila, we will stay this age for a long time, longer than we prepared ourselves for in our earlier years. The years constantly renew themselves, and they suit us. Don’t stare at me like that. Come on, come out of that illusion of yours and think about how you can serve your self instead of assuming that your body always serves you. You have already blasted apart those fortresses so don’t walk in your sleep—in the sleep of your ghosts and specters. Don’t raise the crown of your head high for all to see, like a single, strutting, peacock, and do not puff out that big chest of yours, because you are no longer particularly sexy. Ayy, you were beautiful—you were! But no longer, not now. The past will never return.
I kept up my smile and my air of unconcern as I heard Sarah out, for I do not put too much stock in anything she has to say. I smile at myself in the mirror. I squeeze myself into my heavy old black coat. I push all of my hair into my wool hat and tug the brim lower until it covers my temples. I shove my feet into low shoes and close the door behind me. Ya ayni ya Suhaila—you poor dear thing. Sarah is outrageous. She doesn’t offer comfort or sympathy to anyone. In the first place, she gives herself no comfort. She is worse than I am.
