O stranger! Dido did more than just found a city for them. She went beyond possessing all the vineyards and wells and ships. It was not enough for her to show them treasures they never knew existed. My anger burned even after they kneeled before me, stranger. Dido made them say, “We are merciless traitors and oppressors.” She made them say, “In the end Dido was victorious.”
And later these words were written in stone so that gods and mortals could read about it. So that people could see how the widow Dido took her revenge on the denizens who withheld their mercy. She did not stop at building a city but went on to make the naysayers face their shame. O honorable warrior, ask them about Dido. For they will explain it all to you:
“Dido forgave us. Because she is the most good-hearted of all mortals.”
Mortals will never attain goodness if they cannot face their shame. They will not find peace until a ruler forgives them. They taught me oppression, and I became the oppressor. I was disgusted by their clever tricks and I deceived them all. O eagle-heart, they did not receive me as their equal and so I became their ruler.
I do not despise them. Nor am I revolted by them. I do not love them. Carthage is now a sea without waves, a poem without blood, a rusty sword. There is no enemy I fear and no danger to rouse me. It is a long windless day. I need more air to breathe than there is air in all of Africa. This continent I have conquered is the hide of a defeated lion draped over my shoulders.
O mysterious stranger! I do not cower in the face of your terror. For my warriors could finish you in an instant. They will massacre every one of your men. Now there is but one shadow in my heart: that the ship will bring me nothing. But surely there is something greater than this victory bequeathed to me by the Gods. Something greater than Carthage. My life must bring me something greater than the sum of what I have done. That must be you, stranger. Tell me, great warrior! Let it all begin! Let my heart sail in strong winds again.
O sad and lonely stranger, I am preparing Dido and Carthage for you. Make your heart ready for me! Open your sails for me! Bring me the wind, oh beautiful one. So that a fresh breath fills me.
*
We were supposed to leave an extended hushed silence. Or at least so it would have been like that in a film. But I spoke before Maryam could even get the last word out.
“Madam Lilla … I mean it’s strange. She told me that … she said that, ‘Women are the sum of their breath.’ Then she read me something from the Felak verse in the Koran. Nefassati Fi’l-u’ gad. I wonder if Dido was out of breath. I mean in the end she says to the man… ‘Bring me the wind,’ in other words, breath.”
Furrowing her brow and twirling her fingers, Amira asked: “Did you write that or was that really written by Dido?”
“I did,” said Maryam, “or let’s say Dido made me write it.”
Amira insisted. “So there’s no such thing as these tablets, right? This is just your own story?”
With her hands behind her head, Maryam looked up at the ceiling.
“Let’s just say it’s the story of any woman who can carry her own weight … but yes … It’s my story. Let’s say Dido’s secret is my secret.”
We were silent.
“Your turn,” Maryam said, turning to Amira, who was rubbing her face. Then she paused, smiling hopelessly.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
Maryam gave her one.
Settling down a little, Amira continued.
“These are the letters Muhammed left behind for me when he left. I won’t say anything else. You’ll understand once you hear it all.”
And with that Amira began reading…
*
Muhammed’s First Letter
Bismillahirrahmanihrahim
With the everlasting compassion of love and mercy…
Hey! Don’t go and say it’s strange for me to recite the basmala. Accept it. You’re a Muslim but you think you don’t believe. But Islam is such that some among us become a part of it without even knowing of their fortune. Or else do you really think I would go so far as to fall in love with a heathen! But thinking about it, you probably have already fallen away from me…
For someone like you blessed with immense goodness in your heart at birth, you will have a place in the Muslim theatre box all your life. And in this mortal play we all have our heads raised, looking up at you. And you, sometimes, if we are so fortunate, will cast a glance down through your little golden viewing glasses to see our public rows. In our ignorance we are paralyzed with shame. Me most of all… Fine then, let me speak of the terrible crime I committed against you. But there are a few things that I need to tell you first.
Counting only the sensual acts we shared together, there are so many marvels we have made and set aside. Though I donated a great portion of it to the poor house the place is still filled to the brim with those good deeds.
So then you have a permanent place in heaven and you should never forget that. You were sent to be among us ignorant savages for a while to give us one more chance to believe. And as for you… Alright, I know, the world is not the greatest place. But you know God and how he bends his mind to those beloved mortals. God is deeply concerned with you. Hey! Come on. Cheer up.
You know the greatest sin is disbelief. Like me you weren’t raised with the Koran. Fine then, so the only pious person you know is a fool like me, but surely you know this: That you have to believe. If not your breath that makes this world will run out. It is important to know this: piety means surrendering to shame in the face of the Prophet’s good deeds. Piety is putting your soul in order in return for the Prophet’s faith in humanity and his commitment to remain gracious in a crude and stale world. My breath is full because God believes in me. And your lungs must be that much larger than all of ours because he believes in you more than he believes in all of us. The only thing you have to do is show the courage to surrender to your everlasting breath. I hope my prayers will take care of the rest.
You know I’m praying for you. If everything goes according to plan you will find a pocketful of prayers when you get to the other side.
There are so many reasons you shouldn’t pay attention to those hopeless and feeble attacks that fools who dare to call themselves human beings and even Muslims launch against you, and that includes your mother and father. This might hurt the angels always toiling for you. The one thing you must do is dance. When you dance you give poor people like us a three-dimensional picture of just what heaven might be like. In fact every once in a while I think that a loose-talking angel, who couldn’t resist such beautiful dancing, told you everything. And I suppose you don’t tell us anything about the world beyond because you don’t want to inspire all those people who are trying to get there to kill themselves. Your patience and your mercy is dazzling to the eye.
Don’t lend an ear to those fools who think they know anything about you. A real Muslim does not hold back his love. The rest of the religion is merely the tangled contemplations of experts. Fine then, but you already know all that. Considering you can love more than any of us… And that you couldn’t even willingly hurt a soul, you must be the most joyous student in the class. You graduated on day one. And top of the class. What do you say to that?
Hmmm… I suppose there are a few things I should explain about my departure. I’ll try to make this brief. Things happened here that they decided to call revolutionary and they are still going on. You know how badly I wanted to leave and for so long. So it seems to me it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for me to take advantage of this turbulent time. I feel like it would be crazy to cross the Mediterranean right now, but in fact it would be just the right thing to do. Fine then, just don’t worry about me. Ever since that dictator Ben Ali threw me in jail with those idiots, the so-called Islamic revolutionaries who tried to drive me out of my mind, nothing has been as exciting. I don’t want you to worry and think I’m under threat. It’s just that after five years in jail I came out to see that the bridges had been painted blue. Seems Ben
Ali’s favorite colour purple is on the way out and people are doing everything they can to paint over all the purple. I suppose our conservative team got involved in the blue trend and now there’s a raging market for it in Tunisia. But I never cared for that kind of blue. So I decided I had to leave. Fine then, I suppose that wasn’t convincing enough. OK, yes, there is also the reality that one day my brothers with whom we set out in the name of God together will be transformed into petty statesmen in a day. For so many years they must have been secretly exercising because all of sudden they came out looking like the men who imprisoned us. Seeing them I questioned my belief in human beings, not God, but that’s still a little dangerous, don’t you think? If you don’t find this sufficiently convincing either then imagine me reading the Koran from the beginning to end and over again and losing my mind.
I get the feeling you’ll come back from wherever you are. With so many merciful angels fluttering around your head, I doubt you could ever ignore the suffering in this world for very long. So I am leaving you these humble letters for you to read when you get back.
You said one day: “You give me such a look that I want to go and get up and come back right away. Like a little girl twirling her skirt, not knowing what disappointment means.” Now twirl around for me once. Then step in front of the mirror and tell yourself how wonderful you are. Be all ears…
As the English put it:
Ever yours,
Muhammed
*
This time I didn’t dispel the magic in the air because the moment Amira finished, Maryam said, “So just where is this guy?”
I suppose she was stuck on the idea that such a graceful man could actually exist but then later disappear.
Amira laughed bitterly to herself. “Not here,” she said. Then she added mischievously. “When you tell us your secret I will tell you where he is, mademoiselle!”
“Just what did this guy do to you then?” I asked. Amira only grunted. She wasn’t going to say. Not yet. She only said, “You’ll see when I read the other letters.”
I persisted. “So this is the Muhammed you got revenge on? Why did you need to get revenge?”
Amira’s answer hardly shed any light on the matter.
“Because this country doesn’t take men like him seriously. Not Muslims, not the secular elite. They didn’t let him live here.”
Stories of this kind of injustice dealt to gracious souls were rife in all three of our countries, and more or less all the same, so there was no need for us to say anymore. I broke the silence.
“You said something about twirling skirts… It’s like he loves you like a father, with such admiration. Today Madam Lilla said, ‘if only men could just admire…’ It feels like he has that kind of admiration for you.”
Drumming her fingers, Amira replied, “No, no… He loved me like a lover should. But also like my granddad. You understand?”
Who wouldn’t?
“That’s harrowing, don’t you think? I mean everything that Madam Lilla said about breathing in Dido’s tablets and Muhammed’s letters…” But before I could finish Maryam cut me off.
“Forget about Madam Lilla!” But the colour hadn’t drained from Maryam’s face because of Madam Lilla. It seemed more like Maryam was upset to see that sour expression on Amira’s face after finishing the letter. Brusquely Maryam fired up a cigarette and raised her hand.
“Let’s see your dance then, azizi!”
Amira bounced out of bed flashing one of those looks that was perfect for the Museum of Unappreciated Moments and cried, “Yalla!”
She took her place in front of the full-length mirror, and like a Casanova, Maryam stood there beside us ready to take it all in. I got up, too. There was no escape.
That was when Amira struck a pose the way a belly dancer lays eyes on women. “Well then let’s start with the Khavagi from Egypt. The word means ‘foreigner’ and compared to other Egyptian dances, it’s the lustiest one of all. With the same playful flirtatiousness, she invited Maryam to the dance floor, a space no larger than three queen-sized beds. Maryam joined the madness and we were off. Dancing to a mirror in the home of the female leader of the Amazigh militia in Libya. Humming quickly under her breath, Amira made the music. And with quick thrusts of our hips and bellies, we danced. Eyeing one another. Making fun of our own bodies. With no men around we could do a free parody of womanhood, with all kinds of moves. At one point I stopped. “Madam Lilla said…” I began and they both dropped their arms, tired of hearing about her. “Just a minute,” I said, “this is important.” As we carried on with our dance, I continued, “On our way here she told me… ‘Breathing is key to the making of the world and in the making of men.’ She said the three of us came on this trip because we were shunned from our worlds. That woman…”
“That woman, azizi, is out of her mind. We ended up going on this trip with her by sheer chance. In other words there’s nothing else to it,” said Maryam, laughing. With her tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth and vigorously thrusting her hips like a woman from Finland trying the dance for the first time. “No, azizi, it doesn’t stop there. I think there’s something far stranger about that woman. She left behind those fancy airs when we crossed the border and now she’s serious. I think she’s far more interesting than those airs she put on when we first met,” I said. Maryam pouted to show she couldn’t care less. Twisting her hands like they were snakes and marvelling at them in the mirror, Amira said, “Me too. She seems like a solid woman this Madam Lilla.” Maryam still seem unfazed. I went on.
“Tonight, I mean a little before we got here … I don’t know … I felt like she really got me, got me at a deep level. What she said really moved me. Maybe I’m just tired.”
The dancing went on and so did I, “This fatigue comes from pushing a pebble up a hill, forget the rock, you get what I mean? You get to the top and it just tumbles down. Get it up and it tumbles down.”
“How could I not know that?” said Amira. “I want to believe in people. Always. If I ever lose hope… Over time I would get like that … you know those kinds of women…”
With grave expressions on our faces, we watch ourselves wiggling in the glass.
“Bitter women,” said Maryam smiling through her dark thoughts and throwing her hips out like she was fighting on both sides. Through an increasingly dreamy dance, Amira asked, “I wonder if that’s what I will become? Or what we’ll become in the end?” She paused and one of those spirited looks flickered in her eyes as she craned her neck.
“Maybe that’s why Dido killed herself. So that she wouldn’t turn into one of those bitter women.”
“No,” said Maryam as she sidled up to Amira.
“The more I read the more you’ll understand.”
And we danced. “I swear,” I said. “I don’t have the energy to push this pebble up the hill one more time. I just want to sit at the base, smoke a cigarette and think deep thoughts. Friends, just why am I still pushing the damn thing up the hill! I just want to have a long think about this.”
As Maryam struggled in vain to liven up her dance, she laughed.
“Here’s the rub, ladies. Do we have the strength to carry destinies that resemble no others?”
I added, “Or to use Madam Lilla’s words: will our breath be strong enough?”
Maryam answered without missing a beat.
“Or what if we weren’t to push that pebble back up to the top of the hill?”
In that moment it all seemed so hilarious that we started to laugh. That’s when Amira’s shoulder strap fell and placing one hand on her hip and waving the other hand in the air she said:
“Oh Lord, sweetie, Just forget it. What was it that saintly Albert Camus said?”
“What did he say, madam?” I said, leaning back and swirling around Amira.
“He said, ‘We need to design a contented Sisyphus.’”
“Really?” I said. “Was there something like that in his essay on Sisyphus?”
; That was when Maryam said the words in French as she struggled to make her entire body quiver. They both looked fabulous.
“This breathing business is serious stuff,” I said. Bent on making light of it, Maryam laughed. “Then quit smoking!”
“Oh, azizi, what if life is really nothing but the sum of our breath. What if there’s no other trick at play. If the magic doesn’t just come on its own… If men are the sum of our breath…”
“OK then, but so what?” said Amira, with the gravest of expressions on her face. “Well who the hell cares, we’ll just have to become one those spiritual healers that blow prayers in your face!”
Maryam burst out laughing. Me too. Then Amira joined in. Together we laughed and laughed. We couldn’t stop ourselves. And laughter purges you of pain far more than flowing tears. We laughed and laughed. Now and then it seemed like someone might say something but couldn’t. That’s when Amira said: “And for the Dance School …. ha ha ha… we’ll name it… wait for it. The Women Who Blow on Knots Dance School!”
The laughter only got worse the more we tried to hold it back. That’s when we heard the scream at the door. And like most Middle Easterners who fervently believe that a punishment comes on the heels of every happy moment, we weren’t surprised and the guilt hit us straightaway.
13
The poet leader hit the ground and the women who had been holding her stood there with empty arms. She grasped a handful of dirt. In the palm of her hand dry yellow stones that would never become desert sand. You wouldn’t call this crying; her checks were riven with tears. Her face was a dripping cave… She held the earth in her hand, tight, she opened her hand and stared… Then she ate. She ate the earth. The women tried to take the stones out of her mouth, but her lips were already sealed. Stones crunching between her teeth. “Libyaaaaa!” she cried, stones spurting out instead of spittle. The poet leader was mashing, biting, grinding Libya in her mouth. She let out a sigh, blowing desert sand into the sky. And so she joined the other women. Her lips grew thin and then locked. Now she was only breathing in and out. Beyond her there was only a dirty blanket. A night that began with a scream and ended with a scream. Daylight was breaking but it wasn’t quite morning yet.
Women Who Blow on Knots Page 15
