“Now that’s for real,” I whisper, leaning over to Maryam. Now she has understood why Amira was crying on the terrace earlier that evening.
Madam Lilla lets out a deep sigh. “Ladies,” she says. From then on that’s how she would address us. “My dear ladies… In life you only get one chance to see your whole life in a scene, if you happen to be so lucky. And the rest of your life you spend either trying to recapture that scene or running away from it. You seem like women who have been through some profound scenes. You must understand what I’m talking about?”
With her lips pinched in a smile she turns to me. Clearly she is about to ask me for my story. Thinking quickly on my feet, I counter with a question. It comes with the trade.
“And you Madam Lilla. Which one are you? Are you running away or trying to reconnect?”
Instead of answering, she looks at Amira so intently she has no choice but to look back. For some reason she has her in the crosshairs.
“My dear Amira, it seems that we are going to get along just swimmingly. And of course with you two as well…”
She hasn’t answered my question and now senses it might be dangerous to completely cut me out, so she offers an explanation: “But as her matter pertains to dance, things are different!”
Amira tries to look away but this only brings her back to the table.
She is so young. How many times would life call her back into the ring? First the centrifuge throws her out and then sucks her back in and, now flashing a smile, she says, why not? But Maryam isn’t all that pleased – or so it seems – with this extra interest Madam Lilla is taking in Amira. She’s jealous, and, like a man, she’s tense and ashamed of the emotion. She feels she’s slipping out of the game. Amira sends Madam Lilla a sparkling gaze while Maryam has her eyes fixed on Amira, who still isn’t aware of the dynamic, but I can see everything from where I am sitting. And Madam Lilla is in her element.
“Given our situation, there are a few things I should explain,” she says, handing us three separate envelopes. A new menu:
Pastry with violet thorns – cabbage cake with peanuts
Dessert
Pear cooked with chocolate and red pepper
Violet thorns?!
“Of course we won’t be able to discuss everything tonight. But I do hope you will enjoy the thorns?”
More than an extraordinary and elegant character out of a novel, Madam Lilla was in her own way drawing us into a play in which it was clear not entirely good things would come to pass. The meal didn’t last long. And she practically hurried us out of the house, successfully leaving the most elegant part of the night in our hearts.
Eyüp Bey showed us to the door. There was something about the look in his eye that I didn’t like one bit – I couldn’t quite place him. He was like an oarsman who had willingly signed up to row on Madam Lilla’s vessel but then exhausted himself because he was the only one. Eyüp Bey was the backstage of the Scala Opera, its warehouse and the vast open maze beneath the stage: echoes, dust, silent ropes and pulleys. You always are a little suspicious of those people who downplay themselves to such a degree. Before he closes the door, he says, “So we will be seeing you the day after tomorrow.” He has the patient elegance typical of the butler, who, with a self-confidence honed over time, knows everything but is never part of anything, until, eventually, he reveals that he is the killer after all.
Stepping through the front door of the hotel, Amira stops as if she has something important to say. “The jasmine. It’s not like Madam Lilla says. It doesn’t grow on its own.” We stand and wait. As if this was the only odd moment out in an otherwise very odd evening; and, with the severity of a critic who has found a crucial error of continuity in a cinematic masterpiece, she says, “If you take a jasmine branch and plant it in the earth without breaking it, pulling the end out of the other side…”
Bending her arm at the elbow, she demonstrates the angle.
“Later when the branch gives root, you cut it off from the main branch. In other words jasmine doesn’t grow on its own. Like a mother and child.”
She whispers the last sentence under her breath.
It becomes clear Amira will need a little more time before she is herself again. Returning to our rooms, we feel utterly helpless, not knowing what will happen next, wondering what we would be eating the day after tomorrow. Like three armadillos flat on their backs we had no idea who was going to come round and kick us back over onto our feet.
4
Crash! Bang! Clang! Boom!
A Renault had crashed into a Mercedes, which had climbed up on a blue Peugeot 406 when the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. Then a motorcycle swerved in from behind, clipped the Renault’s bumper, wobbled and toppled over. All the drivers jumped out onto the street. Leading the group was a young hipster in a pair of loud sunglasses, then a well-heeled woman, a middle-aged man in a trim suit and skullcap, and finally a loose-robed Salafi1 who had tumbled off his bike. The sudden three-car pile-up had happened right in front of us and in the blink of an eye had caused three busted fenders, the emotional breakdown of a motorcyclist, seven crying children, seventeen adults screaming at the top of their lungs and a street festival that would last the entire day. The police took their time in getting to the scene but soon the military took an interest. And as it all happened near the Ministry of Justice and courthouses on Bab Binet Street, lawyers, men and women in crumpled white ties who looked like children after an impromptu game of football, were already at the scene. And like anywhere else in the Middle East, coffeehouse proprietors, working in the best interest of their customers, had instantly set up an Inspection and Evaluation Board to keep tabs on the affair. With our eyebrows raised, we squeezed along the edge of the crowd, clutching paper cups full of coffee, pretending not to show the slightest interest in what was going on. The fact is the three of us were the real cause of the accident. But, you see, earlier that morning everything was completely under control.
*
When I went down to the courtyard in the morning Amira and Maryam were having breakfast. Amira seemed in a rush while Maryam was taking her time, lingering over her food. I didn’t ask them what they had done the day before because I didn’t want to admit I had spent the entire day snoozing, hoping a phone call wouldn’t nudge me out of my daze. In her necklace, lipstick and a slightly low-necked shirt, Amira seemed ready for a big day.
“What are you up to today?” Maryam asked her.
As I stared into my cup of coffee, Amira explained, the words bubbling off her tongue.
She was going to Nawaat. She had friends who worked there for a news site that had contributed a lot to the revolution. Maybe she’d find work as a journalist, and she’d be much better off if she did or else … and in any case there was something she needed to pick up from someone. Later she planned to stop by the hamam. Not for a soak or a scrub, but for work. Maybe she could dance for tourists, that sort of thing. When she asked us what we had planned for the day, Maryam and I sat there like the last scrawny, tongue-tied old farts to be picked in the workers’ market. “Then come along with me,” she said, and we were off. As we passed the Government Palace in Kasbah Square, Amira suggested we get coffee on the road to Nawaat and we went into a coffeehouse. Amira had made a point of choosing the one along the road that only served men and once we stepped inside tension filled the room as men shifted in their chairs. Deploying her breasts as a kind of shield in the face of an abundance of male anxiety, Amira called out to the proprietor:
“Three express!”
So there we are: three women standing in the middle of the coffeehouse, our entrance causing a perfect horror-film style silence. Her hands stuffed in her pockets, Maryam is the picture of a strapping lad. Amira is more and more the quintessential woman. Like a statue of Venus, she coolly takes in the scene. I am searching for a safe place to rest my eyes: clocks on the wall that show all the different times around the world. What in the world are those clocks doing here in
an old coffeehouse like this? Why would men who could fritter away all the time in the world in a coffeehouse need to know all the different times of the world? But they aren’t ticking. I run my eyes over this vestige of French colonialism. London, Paris, New York… Men with the history of Western exploitation at their backs leered at us with Eastern indifference. The sons of a nation that once had its gaze fixed on the West were now glaring at women because they no longer have the slightest interest in the West. Then a middle-aged Salafi in a thick-clothed gown marches over to us. He stands there for a few seconds. Glaring. He’s going to say something but which one of us will he choose? Amira is too much of a woman for him so he picks me.
“Lady, this is a men’s only coffeehouse.”
Before I could open my mouth Amira, who was of course expecting the attack, fires back:
“What do you mean ‘men’s only coffeehouse’? Who are you to tell us that? There’s no such thing in Tunisia! You’re talking nonsense! This is a secular country.”
As the crowd rises to its feet, static tension shifts to kinetic energy and the proprietor quickly places the express coffees down on the counter. I collect the three paper cups while Maryam gets in between Amira and the man, and, partly because she’s the man on our team and a little bit because her head is covered, she appeals to the man’s piety. Gesturing for calm, she speaks in those classic hushed tones. But with the vengeance of an entire army Amira yanks away the flag of surrender.
“We drove out a dictator! And now you are making trouble for us? Who are you to talk, brother? Who do you think you are?”
The man was ready to apologize but now Amira simply isn’t going to shut up.
“Are we in Iran? What do you mean, a ‘men’s only coffeehouse’? And in Kasbah! People like me shed blood for you in this square. We made a revolution for you. Do you hear what I’m saying? And now you’re here challenging me…”
Maryam finally manages to calm Amira and we make for the door. Bringing up the rear Maryam then gives something to the man as if in a gesture of apology. I am a little annoyed. Alright, Amira went overboard but now Maryam is suddenly collaborating with the man’s world…
“What did you give the guy?” I ask. With a smile on her face, she says, “You’ll see!”
As we are stepping outside, the man pushes past us, looking down at a chocolate candy in his hand. Mumbling, he tears open the chocolate, pops it in his mouth and then spits it out.
“Whores! There’s alcohol in that chocolate!” he screams as the chocolate hits the windshield of the Peugeot 406, which suddenly brakes, and … well you know the rest.
With coffees in hand we duck through the blue door of the Nawaat office in an old Tunisian building and double over laughing in the front hall.
“You’re quite the swashbuckler, sister Maryam,” I say. With a curtsy, she says, “At your service, my lady.”
As we scramble up the narrow stairwell, laughing and joking, something happens, something none of us can articulate even as we go over all the details of the day. It’s an evolution impossible to pinpoint: joyous, fast-weaving crystal spiders have bonded us in a web; something was crystalized while we were leaving the hotel side by side, walking single file, slipping into our settled roles in the open space of Kasbah Square, going into that coffeehouse, looking out for one another as we reached out for our coffees and pulled ourselves together, holding our ground in our own ways in the centre of that unseen, savage male arena in silence, looking out and then slinking away and stepping through that door and into the stairwell. A web cocooned us from the world, sheltered us from harm. In other words by the time we stepped into the Nawaat office to meet Amira’s ‘revolutionary friends’ sitting on a landing in the middle of the room we were already old friends.
“We recognized the laugh,” says a quiet, blondish, earnest man who looks more Irish than Arabic. Next to him a thin young covered woman and a man who seems to be drunk – a group of three. We are all introduced. I don’t even catch the names. My plan is to be someone who doesn’t draw attention and who doesn’t pay attention. After all I’m unemployed and doing my best to lower my expectations of the world to a minimum. Amira and Maryam, however, jump straight into a passionate discussion. Suddenly they are talking about friends in Egypt, demonstrations in Bahrain, Syrian internet activists imprisoned for challenging Assad, sceptics of the election results in Tunisia, new publications in Beirut, and the collaboration of international hackers… It’s like the world is playdough in their hands and they are shaping the Middle East. It is a serious business but they aren’t wearing grave expressions. Cigarettes are lit and snuffed out. I only can make out names among the flurry of words: Raşa, Alaa, Razan, Wael, Ranwa, Ali, and then the other Alaa, Ranwa and Raşa, bloggers, hackers, the names of hacked government websites, WikiLeaks, revolution, revolution, Al Jazeera TV, the Al Akhbar daily… They all address each other by their Twitter handles, bringing up faraway friends, acquaintances, activists and heroes. They speak of a digital-membrane-world that covers the globe, made up of data shooting back and forth via satellites in space. Each datum fixed in a specified point is an electronic equation. Everyone in the world is one; every code a political act; every political act born of Arabic tapped out on a keyboard or a telephone screen, a blinking entity. Every name, every little point, every electronic presence is connected to another via the words “Al Thawra”– revolution. They are speaking of a new world in which they are the heroes. Meanwhile I’m swept away not so much by the content of the conversation as by the energy in their voices:
“How does it look from Turkey?” asks the stern Irish-looking fellow, his hand on his temple.
Sitting up straight after having slowly slumped deeper and deeper into my chair, I say, “Well you know. There’s not much to be seen. When you talk about ‘revolution’ and all that you…”
My sarcastic smile hangs in the air: no one is backing me up. Pulling myself together, I say, “In Turkey they don’t believe Arabs are going to change anything. Most people believe the CIA has a hand in all this.” Reluctantly I go on. “Now I don’t know what to think when you talk like this, so full of hope. It’s not like this in Turkey. Strange things have happened in our country… It’s difficult to explain.”
They are all ears and seeing that I can’t dodge the issue I have to press on.
“Turkey isn’t what it seems from the outside. Journalists, labour union leaders, students are in prison… There are stacks of lawsuits against them. Maybe we don’t see the bigger world because we’re consumed by all this.”
I am uneasy now but the subject has taken on a serious tone. The Irish-looking Arab asks, “This is the issue of the Turkish model. After the Islamist Ennahda Party won the first election here… You know about that, right? The moderate Islamists… They are always talking about the Turkish model. What do you think about that?”
I look at him, unsure of what to say. Amira rescues me.
“Friends, I’m looking for a job.”
The wisp of the woman in a headscarf flashes a rueful smile. The Irish-looking fellow says, “Oh, God! We just took someone on and now we’re full.” The young girl opens her hands as if to apologize. “But let’s see,” says the Irishman, “these days these foreign NGOs are cropping up like mushrooms. They’re singing the praises of Tunisia as the only successful country in the wake of the Arab Spring.”
His teasing smile is directed at Maryam who responds, “We got the message. But Egypt is no Tunisia. And you call this a revolution?”
“That Egyptian pride, this idea that you’re the Mother of Civilization will do you in,” says the Irishman.
Maryam raises the stakes. “Oh no, it’s not pride. How could such pride make a revolution? Ben Ali left in just two weeks. ‘Seems you don’t want me anymore,’ he says and clears out. Is Hosni Mübarak anything like that?”
Leaning even further back in his chair, he reaches out to touch a nerve.
“It’s not a question of Mubarak. While yo
u were handing the revolution over to the Egyptian military you should have thought about your collaboration with the soldiers.”
Now the jokes were over.
“We sent Mübarak running! And we’ll do the same with the soldiers!”
“You can’t. They have US support. Have fun with that! Once the elections start, international TV channels will get right out of Tahrir. And you’ll be left alone.”
Maryam isn’t going to give up her position that easily.
“They got the people to hate Tahrir. That was our challenge. The army nearly got people to turn on us. And Tahrir was already changing. There were stooges there we didn’t know. Getting inside and provoking people.”
Not backing down, the Irishman barrels on:
“You were naïve and you didn’t make clear demands. That’s why all this is happening!”
Raising her voice, Maryam affirms, “Our demands are clear. Freedom and dignity!”
Clearly the Irishman has picked up somewhere along the way the technique of lowering your voice to further infuriate women who are angry. Calmly, he replies, “And what is dignity? Who’s going to deliver that? Who do think will give it to you? After everything that’s happened do you think anyone would be willing to? You have lost yourselves in an Al Jazeera drama. ‘The Arab youth is taking to the streets on its own without any ideology,’ or so they say. The revolution has been coalescing for years. We started work ten years ago, but you broke away only to fit the Western recipe of who they think you are!”
Women Who Blow on Knots Page 5
