The Loved Ones

by Alia Mamdouh

  Applause resounded through the hall and my hands moved in spite of myself. But applause was not enough to satisfy them. I felt myself on the verge of the nonsensical itching of my chronic illness, the allergy; it would happen, I knew, if I were to stand very soon in front of Tessa.

  Layal obtained honors with the committee’s congratulations —there could be no higher distinction for a doctorate. The tears flowed without my being particularly aware of them. I didn’t hide any of it and I did not wipe my face dry: they were more stubborn than I was. Caroline did not comment, but Nur, being Arab and bearer also of some of the distress I have borne, appreciated the value and meaning of this. Through the filmy veil of my tears she saw her own, anticipating them a few months later in an occasion just like this one.

  I was the last to leave the lecture hall. We began to climb the stairs that would take us to one of the reception rooms where we had prepared a private party for Layal. On an elegant table, platters of Lebanese delicacies were set out: kubba, spinach pastries, cheese and meats, tiny meat pies, falafel, makdus, olives, pickles, and wine. I saw Marwan, Layal’s brother, and he was bursting with pride. Tessa and the other professors collected around the table. No matter where I turned, I found that Tessa and I were somehow always approaching each other, certainly not by any prior agreement but rather with considerable wariness. Venturing that step forward, we were scrutinizing each other and holding back. What were we waiting for? I don’t know. Layal stood still for a few seconds only; I hugged and kissed her and then she fled from my embrace. I sat down with my glass and a plate piled with good things. Tessa drinks according to her mood and whim, but eats by constant monitoring of what and how much. She plays tricks on the food so that it will not really enter her stomach. I estimated that her weight could not be more than fifty kilos although her height was over 170 centimeters. How could that be? Clearly, she needed to fatten up a little. If I were to stand up to greet her, I would appear to be overdoing it. A little too much formality. Odd—she doesn’t eat like Caroline, or like me, or even like Blanche or Narjis. Mingling with the other thesis directors, she was extending her hand to someone but she was looking toward where I sat. Where will you go? May death be yours, O you who abandons prayer! What will I do? Here she is walking silently to the back corner where the coats are piled up. Her back is directly in front of me. This is the moment in which I come to know assuredly that she is the goal that fixes my eyes.

  I stood up as quick as a flying arrow leaving its bow and walked toward her. She was raising the right sleeve of the coat. I put out both hands as if I wanted to help her with the other sleeve but then I faltered and hung back. No doubt she would find such a gesture far too dismissive of all formality. I decided to retrace my steps. Suddenly she turned toward me, just as I was raising my hands toward the edge of the wall as if I were about to fly. That was the best I could manage at that moment. She put on her coat and began to button it as my voice sailed ahead of me. I tried to avoid letting her gaze fall on my ill-at-ease confusion as I said in English, in a nervously cheerful voice, Stop.

  And then the words that were churning inside of me spilled out. I am so-and-so, daughter of so-and-so. I’m an Iraqi actress and theatrical dancer. My father is a theater producer. I don’t have a book to dedicate to you, nor a play that you can read, nor a film on videotape where you could view some of my best roles in the past. But I wanted to introduce myself to you. I don’t know why! But, I thought this was the best way to get you to stop so that we could talk.

  There was some sort of unspoken agreement, some sort of collusion between us. She was waiting for me. It seemed as though she had been expecting me. Our eyes met. I put out my hand and she extended hers. She took my hand and pulled me behind her without saying a word. At the end of the room, away from where the guests clustered, a few chairs were grouped. We sat down. She opened her bag, took out a red pen and a small notebook and began to write. She tore out the page and gave it to me. Name, address, and telephone number. She handed me the notebook and pen wordlessly but with an unforgettable gesture. I wrote down my information exactly as she had done. It amazes me how we spoke without uttering a single word. Nur, Ahmad, and Caroline were coming toward us. Raising my gaze to her, I introduced them one by one, stammering over their names. I did not hear much of what was said. I was watching her surreptitiously as she brought out her ammunition, which turned out to be openness and a capacity for listening that one would not readily have guessed were there. Her eyes bring together disparate expressions and her voice communicates tranquility and reassurance even if the words she is hearing are flimsy, as mine were, or oh-so-proper as were Nur’s as she introduced herself and then her thesis proposal, or tedious as was Caroline’s going suddenly quiet in her presence after having edged closer and interrupted softly to tell her about staying every Saturday at the Sorbonne to attend her session for graduate students. Ahmad broke in, too, making a comment about the thesis of his exquisite beloved as if his sole purpose was to announce that they were partners. Standing up to announce her departure, she said, Come to those classes whenever you wish. They are conversations, introductions, summings-up of events, books, ideas, and names from all eras. In one way or another they are steps toward perpetuating humanity and knowledge.

  I did not say another word. Startlingly, she turned and hugged me. She had helped me out of my embarrassment; I was rid of my stutter. I hugged her back. I did not understand why she had made this gesture toward me alone.

  I am someone who often needs a long spell of time alone with my self. Right now, I did not want to share what I was feeling with anyone. I did not say goodbye to Layal—even to Layal. I did not speak to Caroline nor to Nur or Ahmad, not even to tell them that I wanted to leave by myself. I had a need beyond compare right now, which was to be in my own company. I felt that I was being stingy and selfish and yet bighearted at the same time. What I wanted was to be in touch with Nader. Alone. Yes, Nader was life, life and age, my life span itself as I have lived it. A life that was so definitively sundered and yet now was coming round again. We are the children of our children; and all of this love, so agonizing to bear, burns all of our capital out of existence and carves into living flesh without compassion. What was unanticipated was that I loved Layal now more than I ever had, for at the end of the day here I was, here, in place of Nader and of Layal’s mother. Here I was as a witness to a small but decisive victory, a triumphal residue of all of those victories so hollow at their core, victories that indeed collapsed even as they came into existence. For the first time, I was witnessing an Arab victory in a foreign place and in a direction beyond and leading away from cannon and tanks, in a bewitching conversation around the revolution of children against mothers and fathers, in a rebellion of loved ones, beloved men and beloved women who were proud and perplexed. Layal’s logic and intelligence were unassailable, her voice was hers but it was also different. The intonations in that voice were half Nader’s and half hers. It is a voice that does not complicate or confuse the present in the name of the past. If Tessa had asked me as we greeted each other . . . she did not ask anything, but if she had said to me, Who are you, feverish frantic woman? I would have said, without a pause, Layal. Nights. I am the nights, al-Layal, I am all the nights and all of the Layals.

  One day we were backstage, he and I, in the Théâtre du Soleil. The producer was not reading the notes she had set down. She looked to me like a herdswoman from the days of the ancient Greeks. She was a big woman and the expression on her face suggested her penchant for sarcasm. I imagined her as a creature without a sex, achieving production of the greatest plays as she prowled the theater by night. Her hand, beckoning me over with a grand sweep, was very large. Her eyes, though, were eagle-like. Her intelligence was unnatural and not out there for everyone to see: she was sharp as if she were sleeping with him in front of us and letting us imagine what we could find in our imaginations. Her commands seemed physical movements generated through the energetic timbre of her flu
ent English. I walked over to her. She appeared to have eaten very well today; her food is not light like Tessa’s who sat far away from us, all politeness and elegance and perfume, traces of sleepiness still on her features. She did not interfere at first. She left me in the hands of this trainer to whom she had introduced me two hours before, when I had come in through the back door to the theater which is located on the outskirts of Paris. I had taken the Metro and then a bus, and then I had jumped out like a monkey, walking the rest of the way so that I would not be late for this first meeting with the writer and the producer.

  My name is Maria, and this is Faw, your dance partner.

  She gave me nothing more than a cursory look; neither my appearance nor my build nor even my eyes seemed to interest her. She moved across the stage in front of us. Suddenly, it was as if she had gone into a spell of heightened consciousness that seemed to have a ritualistic gloss to it. In a matter of seconds, her force with words became physical struggle, a rocket capsule on the point of take-off. I felt completely paralyzed by alarm. With a fleeting glance I took in Faw’s state. This Maria, it seemed, furnished him with a sort of blissfulness I had never seen among any people before. She repeated the gestures and movements several times for us. She had a way of emptying out completely whoever was before her to the point where that person would no longer have the slightest notion of personal, intimate identity. She wanted to grab us; she wanted the dream to shake us to the core, she wanted to set us trembling before anything inside, any part of our earliest, most fundamental selves, could settle. Indeed, Maria did not settle for anything; she was never satisfied; nothing was ever enough. She wanted the actor to disavow and disbelieve his own ability to clasp the fire such that no one would hear his cry of pain. She said the words through dance and then her body appeared utterly delicate and transparent. Tessa and Maria did not let me get to know Faw anywhere but onstage. They would always prefer this kind of acquaintance, immediate and explosive. I forgot—or I repressed or ignored—all that Maria said. I slipped my arm into his and began to rise and soar and descend. He was bare-chested. I could see his blood vessels beneath the expanse of his body in my hands. I hypnotized him; I stuck hash cigarettes in his mouth and took deep draws on them myself, blending their fragrance into my breath as I looked into his eyes. His features became submerged in me and our bodies clung together. No space separated our organs. Both hands were extended, open. Faw gathered himself together like a bouquet of flowers that he meticulously arranged. Our fingers conversed and our limbs trembled together. Flying locks of hair, a neck twisting, shoulders bending and fire in the thighs. Faw was years younger than me, though by how many years I could not tell. This body was a deep watercourse into which I had only to dip. Music assailed us from both ends of the theater, ancient music that simultaneously pained me and delighted my anxious heart. In his body’s particularity crouched the untamed harshness of Enkido and the divinity of Gilgamesh.

  It is as if you are bent on atonement for something or other. I don’t like repentant women. As he spoke, he nipped at the tip of my nose. He had attacked me from the first moment. He took my hand and put it to his mouth, then fell back slightly: Maria was between us.

  Pull him to your chest as fiercely as you possibly can—no, more than that, with more force.

  For the first time I hear Tessa’s voice. My dear, she says in English, and then in French, don’t mix up your cards, please. Put everything you have learned behind you. Go far away, so far that I can no longer see you and I do not recognize you. Spy on your own body, drain it drop by drop, burn it one millimeter after the next. Forget legend, and tragedy. Do not search for any solutions and don’t be afraid of renunciation and pollution. Devastate and sneer at death, though not any one death; not your death or mine or that of your man. You must know that your only ally is yourself, alone, and your art. Faw will acquire only what you propel into him.

  Suddenly Tessa was not there; she was standing a long way off. Who is Faw? Who are you? He enticed me but he was a liar. How did I find him in my path? He had come into my thoughts, someone whom I had put together in my mind before I ever saw him. I told myself, One day I will see him without exhausting all that is in him. And I can enjoy him to the fullest. I put my imagination truly to the test only when I was with him. My life was mundane as I made my way and kept my eyes on reality. And then he took me in his arms and I took him like one hypnotized and put him under my tongue, and so he slipped into every part of my body. And it began to sicken. This is what reality is. He made me dance as he wished; he screamed into my face; he gnawed at my life, kicked at my body, bombarded my fervor and fixed in place the glands that held my talents. Reality had gotten its revenge on me through law and principles, by means of government, officers, civilians, rows of medals and rows of generals, to the point that reality could take me perfectly for granted. I did not go off and fabricate ghosts and chimeras as some of my fellow artists did as they delivered resounding arguments against reality, opening fire on it as if it were merely a mangy dog and erecting electric chairs that would carry them off and into the world of dreams. Reality had not changed me into a valiant hero as it had them, even after that husband surprised me on stage, dragging me off in front of all of those workmates and friends, dragging me by the costume of the last role I ever played onstage. No one said a word. Not a word, not a sound. He caught my head under his feet and struck it with a practiced hand, and I did not protest as they did, wailing of woe and ruin. Perhaps, I told myself, it was just that he was shutting his eyes to reality while my simple presence spoke it out loud—and this was prohibited. Nader did not understand the reason for our separation, each into his own room, me and his father. Nader did not understand how it was that he extended the period of my convalescence and announced in front of everyone that I was very ill. Every time she goes up on stage, he thundered, her illness grows worse until she is no longer fit for anything. And then my sickness went on for a long time and it was true that I was no longer fit for anything. I began to despise my beauty and appeal. I began to do away with my youth and my longings after I had amassed them all for him. He mocked them, struck them down precisely like the finest of marksmen. A failure. That is what I was. I failed; I was defective; I grew smaller and smaller. I did not even have the strength to cry. Everything was coming undone and falling apart and I stretched out my hand and took the failure. I took the crude behaviors of that master. Whether he meant to or not, Faw kissed me imprudently, incautiously. He did not lay out a plan and then test it for viability, nor was the space of the theater the other name for the country. He did not retreat by even a step; he did not bat an eyelid. For ten years Faw had been awaiting me. With her own hands, Tessa prepared things I was not used to: perfumes, oils, incense, minerals, sprays that sent their mist across the stage and our bodies. I did not look. We sweated and perfumed ourselves and the salts of our bodies led us each to the other. Tessa guided us: the dew glistening on our skin grew heavier and our lips took moisture from our shimmering bodies. Breathing heavily, I would want to scream at the top of my voice and in my own language, Stop! Stop, Faw, please! It’s enough. Don’t overdo your act of refinement for my sake. I did say that to him in a voice he could hear. No one was surprised. I was not tired and my years were not pressing painfully on me. The Suhaila I regained was released now from reality and from the son and the father. That evening I appeared with that same hated body of mine, with the stinging and itching that had been. I emptied myself of those thorns as I fell to my knees behind Faw, smelling the incenses of his body, the sweat flowing from the hair in his armpits and down his calves. I got closer, awaiting our passage between the two rivers. I paid no attention to our instructions—let Maria and Tessa go to hell and let the final practice flop—it did not matter. In that moment, we turned in unison to each other. I drew my finger across his high forehead and dropped to his nose and then his neck so that I would not go shy or resist. Concentrate, Suhaila. Take him now in your arms and don’t move apart
. But Tessa’s voice is there again.

  Don’t translate your dance. Just dance. Give in to everything that has accumulated inside of you. Come on! Leave yourself behind.

  How can that be, when that master is waiting for me, to take me, like a digger of graves? and when I am driven to him like a corpse that is no longer fresh? He commands the darkness of the room and focuses the power of the light beam on my pelvis. Swiftly, so very quickly, in his clothes, those khaki pants with the cap still on his head, he undoes his buckle, not saying a word, not looking me in the face. He empties me out but he does not grow empty. I become a dreadful, fearful, emptiness. He is over me, above my past life, arriving from the direction of my pain. He comes in and goes out as if it is something learned by heart years ago, its newness forgotten; and my heart—my insides—churn. He pushes me away; I go to the bathroom and throw up. I lied to Nader and to my own soul, I lied to Blanche and Narjis and Asma. That is how he waited for me, that sick man, the civil servant, the hero, the vanquisher. I blame him and I curse him in my sleep and I follow him in my wanderings. To Tessa without shame, and to Wajd without fear, I can say: I am empty; I am desolate and damaged. I would love to love; I would love to be loved; I would love to be a beloved woman, a loved one. I love all of the words that waited for me but I said them to no one. I love speaking to an unknown one whose existence I could not be sure of. I love that hand that moves across my body without any regulation or command or target, with the excess that did not overflow and with the scarcity that did spill over, and with the men whom I left of my own accord, having slept with them one after the other but without ever really meeting them. With the naked civilians who possess nothing more than the authority of their weakness in its middling stature. With the weak whose forces have been depleted, who answer every time I say to them, Come, and bring. . . . With those who are weaker than me, with those who have been deceived and tortured, who make no distinctions between themselves and me. All of them slept with me and our tears poured out; we entwined our arms and fear held us captive. Tessa listens; my tears drench my face.