Women Who Blow on Knots

by Ece Temelkuran

  Maryam was tall and her body was firm. Like well-mixed concrete, you could pull out all the supporting rods and she would still be standing. The features in her face were well balanced but she had a stony gaze like a sign that read ‘Closed for Business’. But that body made you think long and hard: had she drifted away from the more usual feminine airs because she was born like that or had her body changed over time as she consciously grew more androgynous? When she looked at you she would narrow her eyes, and her chin and her nose would lift. But she possessed a rare warmth and intensity that poured out of her at unexpected moments, which wasn’t common in women like her. This involuntary rush of compassion was directed more at Amira than me. Which is why she quickly tore open the oversized sugar sachet that came with Amira’s coffee. Absently she popped the sugar into her coffee and started stirring. The tiniest details served to solidify their relationship. It blossomed before my eyes: Amira stirring Maryam’s coffee with her spoon; Maryam trying to light Amira’s cigarette and Amira saying ‘you first’; Maryam checking to see if Amira’s bag was safe and Amira saying, as if going through an old routine, ‘just hang it there on the back of your chair’; Maryam taking four packs of cigarettes out of her bag and trying to squeeze them all on the table only for Amira to say, ‘why don’t I just keep this one pack in my bag?’ And when the coffeehouse proprietor comes over with the pretext of emptying an ashtray, trying to get a closer look at Amira, tough guy Maryam holds it out for him before he can get too close.

  In this way they both favour the roles they feel comfortable playing, like a couple sitting across from each other in a Ferris wheel compartment, trying to synchronize movements as they sway back and forth in the air before the wheel starts spinning, making little adjustments to get just the right balance. I could watch these two women for hours, marvelling at the way they worked off each other; they seemed far more interesting than anything in the bigger world, more interesting than the Arab Spring, or the political problems of any other country.

  Observing my two new friends, I hear the word ‘chai’ in a strange accent, and then suddenly a glass of tea is under my nose. One of three older women at a neighbouring table want me to drink it. We are speaking English so she must think we’re tourists. The big smiles on their faces make it clear they want to have a little fun with us. They want to see if I am willing to drink tea out of one of their glasses. Amira and Maryam stop and let the old ladies have a go at me just when the Ferris wheel starts turning. In the face of the male coffeehouse proprietor, I settle for an alliance with this troika of older ladies, plastering one of those silly tourist smiles on my face.

  I pick up the glass of mint tea without a word of protest. Whose was it? Did it come from the one who was drooling because she hardly has any teeth? Shards of white nuts are floating on the surface of the tea. Nodding and arching their eyebrows, their lips opening like mothers trying to get a child to take her medicine, they encourage me to drink. I pretend I’m deathly ill and that if I just down the elixir I’ll be miraculously cured. And it’s gone in one gulp! Ouch! And there is a fresh wave of laughter. When they find out I’m from Istanbul we have a little chat about Turkish TV serials in a mixture of Arabic and English, peppered with ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’. And so we become an even stronger alliance in the face of the coffeehouse proprietor and I ask our group, shall we have more coffee? And they say, but of course. So I order three more expressos! It’s clear Maryam and Amira are having a hard time coming to their senses in the morning. We are going to be sitting here for a little longer.

  Two shadows appear in a doorway opening onto a sun-drenched street. A hunch-backed old man is holding the hand of a little boy with a bald, round head. In his other hand the man has an ice cream. The boy is reaching out for it, tugging on the old man, who raises the ice cream higher and higher as the boy lunges for it. They sit down directly across from us.

  The boy jumps for the ice cream and nearly gets a hold of it. Greedily trying to finish, the old man says, ‘Stop it, you’re going to spill it,’ as a little more disappears between his toothless gums. Finally he lets the boy have the cone, but the man is still devouring what’s left with his eyes: the boy doesn’t have any idea how precious a treat like that is for them as the old man’s heart seems to drool with the ice cream. The boy is in heaven with every bite into the sweet coolness. There is a big smile stretching across his face, but then the old man snatches the ice cream out of his hand. The boy begins to cry while the old man licks the ice cream that has dribbled out of the cone and onto his hand. But before the boy really starts sobbing, the old man shoves the ice cream back in his hand. And the boy prepares for another trip back to heaven as if nothing has happened. But he’s restless, one eye fixed on the heavenly delight and the other on the old man, watching his every movement: a potential threat. If he just goes fast enough this time he’ll finish… But no luck. The old man’s eyes are still locked on the cone; he’ll find no peace as long as it remains in the boy’s hand. The boy is eating all the ice cream the old man never had when he was a child. His nerves get the better of him and he cracks, swiping away the cone from the boy and gobbling up what’s left. The boy starts to wail. Without an ounce of shame, the old man smacks his lips and hands the last bit of cone back to the child. A gooey lump in the bottom. In a fit the boy crushes the cone in the palm of his hand. He wants to shame the old man and make him angry. But instead he gets a beating, leaving ice-cream stains on a table. The boy is like an octopus fighting for his life when his granddad swoops down on him and they are gone.

  Maryam, Amira and I turn our heads away to avoid making eye contact as we take deep drags on our cigarettes. “What is it with today, azizi?” I say. As if right on cue, Maryam, says, “Tunisia’s National Oppress the Children Day.”

  Suddenly a jasmine peddler in a white robe shoves a handful of little bouquets under my nose. “Maşmuum! Maşmuum!” he says. Amira politely declines in Tunisian and shoos him away but with no luck. He has that serene Northern-African face of an itinerant peddler, pious, crinkled, compassionate, hopeless, loveable. He is pushing his jasmine, stuffed into large green shells, onto potential customers. Turning to me, Amira says, “Give me a dinar”. I hand her one and she saves me. Taking after the peddler, I stick the maşuum behind my ear. Amira smiles.

  “Woman don’t wear maşuum. Those who do are considered ‘loose’ or ‘easy’. Men wear them.”

  “Oh dear!” I say, putting the flowers on the table. Picking up the little bouquet, Mayram twirls it between her fingers. Very much the opposite of a ‘loose’ or ‘easy’ woman, she flicks it behind her ear and flashes a plucky smile.

  The jasmine peddler takes off his traditional dark red fez, which he clearly only sports for the tourists, and, kicking off his sandals, he sits down on the doorstep, his fat feet and thick toenails dangling over the street. His coffee comes straightaway. Maryam and Amira can’t see him from behind a pillar but I can see his profile. Without his fez his face no longer has that sweet folkloric look and he just looks glum. Two kids come and stand over him. Their hands are stuffed in their pockets. Probably brother and sister. The boy, who must be about ten, stands in front of his sister, who could be no more than twelve. Two hungry workers. Whatever it was they were doing yesterday they aren’t doing it today but no doubt they have to hand over money when they get home. They say something to each other and with the grave expression of a grown man the boy approaches the jasmine peddler. Gazing into the distance, the peddler tries to brush them away, as if these two are poor featherweight fighters in the free market.

  “How much do you sell those for?” asks the kid with a surprising level of seriousness, which suggests he’s been around a while and knows the business as well as anyone. The old man doesn’t even look at him. The boy looks at his sister. Her silence speaks of their desperation. Puffing up his chest, he puts on a sour face that he has probably picked up from his dad, because that’s just how you look if you’re a man, and he says, “How much do yo
u sell those for, uncle?”

  After wallowing in a long silence, the man says, “A dinar”. Like a codebreaker catching the right frequency on the front line, the kid shoots back the next question.

  “How much you buy them for?”

  The peddler doesn’t need more competition; he sees a man in the child, but a man who does not yet pose a threat. He is still a boy holding the anger of a dozen men and the peddler only pities him. But the more the boy is rejected and pushed away the more he becomes a man.

  “You get them from the flower sellers over at the station?”

  All of a sudden the peddler half-heartedly kicks the boy right in his kidney. He falls to the ground. No one moves. I turn to Maryam and Amira and I say, “That man just kicked that kid!” Maryam leaps to her feet and Amira swivels on her stool, her legs still crossed. They still can’t see anything from behind the pillar. The old man looks as peaceful as a cow swatting flies. The boy’s face flushes bright red with rage. His sister gathers him up off the ground before the passers-by can step on him. Drawing on everything she’s learned at home, she’s now acting like his mother. As they run off a few men give the boy a tousle or two on his head – because he’s such a cute little kid of course – and a couple of minutes later the two siblings have pulled themselves together, walking along like two normal kids. Shaking his head, the peddler rearranges his jasmine in his basket. His movements show that he was once beaten as a child so now he has every right to do the same. Shaking his head again, he forgives himself. The way a tyrant might forgive himself with overwhelming compassion.

  “I can’t take it anymore. This is just too much. Let’s ask for the bill,” I say. Of course Maryam handles it before Amira even looks up. The bill comes right away: express! Getting up at the same pace, I stick my jasmine back into the peddler’s basket, just to make a point. He doesn’t even blink. Maryam and Amira both flash him an evil glare in their own ways and hiss in solidarity: “How rude!” I see the boy a little further up the road, he sees us, and how we returned the jasmine to make a point to the peddler. He looks over his shoulder again before he races into the crowd and disappears.

  Off we go jostling through the crowd, a dark cloud over our heads, feeling increasingly suffocated. We arrive at the exit to the Old City and stop under the Bab Baher Gate at the top of the bustling, sun-drenched, broad Habib Bourguiba Boulevard that runs down to the new city. There’s a sea of people in front of the gate, a burning light, and a struggle. Frustrated, Maryam says, “I’ve got things to do. I suppose we’ll see each other later on in the hotel.” Nothing more. Amira says: “Me, too. See you later.” I have nothing to do – which is why I am in this country – and so I keep quiet and as they both disappear into the crowd I slip back into the passageway to make my way back to the hotel.

  I see the siblings walking ahead of me in slow motion … the same boy and the girl bouncing like two tangerines in the skirt of a woman hurrying down a hill. It feels like my forehead has the mark of compassion. For Arab Muslims, the mark is left by a round, grey leather prayer tablet, which is made of mud from Kerbala, and comes after prostrating before God. Somehow hungry children and beggars can always recognize the mark. The little girl is holding one of those three-fingered Hand of Fatima prayer talismans. No doubt they have decided to try selling those after ruling out the jasmine. Feeling for them, I buy three talismans from the girl. When I get back to Istanbul, I’ll give one to Ayşe. Casually I give the girl what turns out to be far too much money. The boy seems guilty about it and says, “Sister, why did you come to Tunis? Are you another journalist?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because they don’t think much of kids in my country either.”

  His sister tugs on his arm and they disappear into the dim alleyways of the bazaar so quickly it seems like they were never there.

  As I am stepping inside the hotel two street dogs start growling at my feet, the hair on their backs bristling. But they suddenly stop before pouncing. As if they both have a sudden and deep moment of clarity, they understand the futility of the fight and they back off. I watch them slink away, feeling the deep sense of relief that comes when you back out of a fight. Having left behind the growing conflict over political corruption in my home country, I feel like a child who has just got her first taste of her own snot; I am a slug holed up in a hotel room in a country I hardly know, a place that doesn’t really interest me. I am a street dog that has pulled out of a fight, without any knowledge of what might have happened.

  When I go into my room I find a jasmine-scented envelope with an invitation inside. I don’t know this invitation is for three and that it will unlock all our secrets. Perhaps the scent of jasmine gives me the slightest premonition of the adventure that is to come. But when I tell you how it happens you’ll see how it took us by surprise.

  3

  Night. We are in some kind of forest. Trees all around us. We see the feet of a woman. Running. A mature woman. My own two feet. The camera pans out and we see her running away from something or someone. Panicked breathing. There is the sound of other feet beside her but we only see hers. They are running together. Every now and then she turns to look over her shoulder. There’s a howling behind her. A crowd is chasing them. She starts running again. She runs on and on. Then a close up of her feet again and suddenly they stop. The sound of heavy breathing. Desperation. The camera pans out just a little and we see her up against a wall! Slowly the camera rises and we see her completely surrounded. There’s no way out. We see her slowly step back, then turn to face the crowd. The camera now directly overhead, we see the crowd from her point of view. Getting closer and closer and then they stop. The camera swings up even higher and we hear clicking. A volley of clicks. People in the crowd are cocking their guns. They take aim and wait. The camera slowly rises again. Looking from behind the woman, we see who is with her: a pelican and a baby bear! We see her confused, panting face, drenched in sweat. Reluctantly she raises her hands and says, “I’m sure your story is more interesting than mine. But now it’s my turn to tell!”

  A short pause. Opening her eyes like someone at least fifty years young, she asks, “What do you think? Gripping?”

  Maryam, Amira and I are sitting on the other side of the dinner table, our mouths open in surprise. We could have stayed like that for hours. And we did. Well, we stayed like that for a while.

  And then she let out a laugh that stampeded across the room. A long, hearty laugh. A caravan of laughter. She laughed at the sight of our open mouths and the more she laughed the more we stared in wonder. And that was how Amira, Maryam and I came to know the magnificent, one-and-only Madam Lilla.

  We were shocked. When we had spotted the woman the night before drinking wine and listening to Oum Kalthoum, we were startled when she suddenly raised her glass to a toast in our honour, but this had now become more than we’d expected: she was, after all, the esteemed Madam Lilla. But we didn’t know that yet. The jasmine-scented invitations had certainly piqued our curiosity but nothing could have prepared us for the one-woman wonderland this altogether magnificent personality presented to us. Besides, none of us were in any position to judge because earlier that evening things developed far too quickly.

  *

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Amira, holding her invitation. We were sitting on the hotel terrace, where we had met and drunk together the night before. Our eyes were swollen from the humidity, not tears! That’s just what happens when you travel, she said. Amira’s verve seemed to have died down and I didn’t push her – eventually she’d come out and tell us whatever it was that was bothering her. I said, “What kind of invitation is this anyway? I don’t get it.”

  My dear ladies, I would be delighted if you were to honour my residence this evening

  Menu

  Mint turkey marinated in distilled jasmine

  Rice with prunes and almonds cooked in tangerine juice

  Blended powdere
d thyme salad with apple and sumac

  Semolina halva with currants and mastic

  Food served with homemade rose wine

  “What I don’t get is this: how do you do rice in tangerine juice?”

  Amira smiled. “That was actually the only one I liked the sound of.”

  Suddenly smiling, her long face disappeared and so I asked:

  “Or did you go home then?”

  Her face fell again, almost into the palm of her open hand. She clearly had something very important to say but she couldn’t come out and say it.

  “Shall we order beer?” I asked. Amira’s face now in her hands, she shook her head, her hair fluttering. “Yes,” she said. By the time the beer arrived the sun was even lower. A touch of neon in the sky. With the sun low on the horizon the terrace seemed like an eye no longer squinting under the glare. Soon the young, spirited waiter, Kamal, who looked after almost everything in the hotel, wobbled up with our beers, a broad grin on his face. Sensing our sadness almost immediately, he quickly left the stage. As I poured beer into glasses, Amira came out with it as if leaping directly out of an interior monologue: