We all know how you sometimes spend too much time mulling over past misfortunes. That’s no good. Set that stuff aside. Here’s what I think you need to focus on: through dance you bestow the world with meaning. Now look back at the main square. Every day those madmen are pounding copper, selling beads, trading leather. Is any one of them even interested in where copper comes from? What it smells like and why? What were the wishes of the people who touched this copper before me? What kind of meaning can I bestow on the person who will buy this copper from me? Every damn day he is preoccupied with copper but he has no idea what copper really is. I won’t even start with the guys who sell beads. If they had spent a little time trying to figure out why ladies like beads they might become great lovers. As for leather peddlers, I don’t think they spend more than a moment thinking about the animal’s soul. They are in pursuit of gain and you are in pursuit of giving. And this shouldn’t change one bit. Please don’t let your past misfortunes say you did something wrong.
You often tell me that they are trying to drive you crazy. You are too graceful to play the woman who gets angry and suddenly cries,“these people are trying to make me crazy,” on a brief visit to an insane asylum.If they aren’t capable of uttering a single wise word to you it isn’t because they are out to get you. It’s simply as much as they can do. Fine then, you had no choice but to leave this place because a large group of people mistreated you for so long. You did your time and then you came back. Now you need to trust people. The rest will come after. That’s what I told you, we are coming after you with angels. I know I should have been there to protect you with my sword but now I’ll have to make do with these lightning bolts I am sending to you to help you in these trying times.
Fine then, you know the Yasin verse from the Koran has always been my favourite. But I suppose I should tell you about the Rahman verse. The gulf between accepting and belief is like the gulf between you and those people. It is important you get this just right so that when you peer into that gulf between you and others you don’t go tumbling down. But enough of that. The meaningful message that comes out of the Rahman verse is this: in theory you have faith but you don’t really understand a thing.
Turn to the market and take a good look. They are accepting. You are faithful because you understand. Already in your heart there is a mountain plateau that has been touched by the hand of God. The moment you shed tears while listening to the songs of Asmahan you know that God is speaking to you. If we let you go then you will lose yourself in that conversation with God and forget about everything else, right? You are pious because you know that this Godly fingerprint in your heart offers enough healing for all of us. You don’t decide to believe, it isn’t in your hands, you’re faithful because you know without learning how to know. Go to them with mercy, and not with anger, sweetie. They can defeat you with their anger but you have the golden belt of mercy. So take them to the mat where you can beat them! I think you get the picture.
If for just once you can dance long enough I have the feeling you would make the most fortunate leap year in centuries. Kiss your wrists for me. Oh God! Have I gone too far?
Your servant,
Muhammed
“Mercy huh,” said Maryam, nearly laughing as she lit another cigarette and stuffed her lighter back in her pocket. “So Muhammed is saying just the opposite of Madam Lilla.” Then goggling her eyes and waving her hands about in the air in a parody of a prophetess, she went on, “Madam Lilla said, ‘You will learn to kill.’” But your Muhammed is still going on about ‘showing mercy.’ Which one’s true? Muhammed’s God or Madam Lilla’s goddesses?”
Amira only shrugged her shoulders. I spoke in her place:
“But really, what did Madam Lilla want to say? I guess she was talking about really killing someone.”
“I swear you can never tell,” said Maryam. “If our Madam has made up her mind on the matter she might very well go through with it. That’s to say she would show no mercy!”
“I didn’t show any mercy either. Not to Muhammed or to myself,” said Amira. She was shrinking down to her core, to her smallest matryoshka doll. I put my hand in my pocket. My fingers touched something made of metal. I pulled out the three Hand of Fatima talismans I was planning to take back to Istanbul, thinking I would give them to friends. Amira didn’t seem fazed to see them. “See, these were meant for us,” I said. “Look, they were missing and now they are found.”
Amira was like a child expecting to be pressured into making up with another child – she was half indifferent, half interested.
“Hey Amira,” I said. “Do you know what they do in my country when they find something that was lost?”
“What?” she said, uninterested.
“They do seven belly dance thrusts at the sun. Of course while you’re looking for the thing you need to say a tongue twister.”
Not because she was very curious but to bring Amira around by getting the story going, Maryam asked, “And how does it go?”
“It goes like this: ‘Father Ethem, Father Ethem with the linen shirt, Father Ethem if I find what I am looking for I’ll do seven thrusts at the sun.’ Then when you find what you’re looking for … yes…”
I took Amira by the arm and lifted her up. “We all have to do seven thrusts at the sun.”
Amira smiled as if rain drops were sliding down the back of her neck. She was fooled again. And with that we all stood up. In the face of the setting sun the three of us belly danced, sending powerfully wild thrusts at the sun seven times, with the hamsa talismans around our necks. After the third thrust we started to laugh and like all the others whoever went through the ritual we laughed and we laughed.
We got home to find three girls eating pizza and watching Sex and the City, their eyes red from crying. It was the episode when the Arab women help Carrie Bradshaw and her friends. The Libyan women stared at the Arab women created by Hollywood. It was a strange sight. When we went into our room Madam Lilla was already asleep. “Just a minute,” Maryam said. “You never told us why you shuddered in the cave.”
“We can live now that we have died,” I whispered into her ear with cheerful relief.
I suppose that was how we chose to live.
15
Saida’s chador whirled in the air as if she were the matador and the bull. Before we had even stepped out of the car she had whipped out her rifle with astonishing speed, pumped the chamber, clicked open the safety catch, raised the barrel and levelled her eyes on the men sitting in the coffeehouse. It was one of those moments when the whole world stopped, everything suspended. The men were frozen, grins plastered on their faces. Saida took the three heaviest steps in the world towards the coffeehouse. She stopped, narrowed her eyes, and ran them over everyone in the crowd. “Now,” she said. “Tell me who’s going to park my car.”
The back of her jeep stuck out in the middle of the road and the front was up on the sidewalk – it was far from parallel to the street. But Saida was out to avenge all the women in the world who had been mocked for not being able to park a car. The proprietor came out from the back of the coffeehouse with a coffee tray dangling from one hand and walked right into the frozen scene of men with frozen grins. Although he was short, plump and bald and had as much charisma as Zagor’s Chico, he slipped into the role of negotiator.
“Oh please Madam Saida! Please!”
The coffee tray swaying under his hand the proprietor then turned round to face the men and said, “But now you gents…” Then spinning back to Saida, “Sister, my dear. For the love of God!” Then hopping back to the men, “as if you don’t know Saida’s jeep…” and with another bounce back to Saida, “the ignoramuses haven’t grasped the situation, but please go easy on them, Saida Hanım!” When Chico finished his little game of hopscotch, Saida showed mercy and relented. Slowly she lowered her gun, her desert eagle eyes still fixed on him. Right away Chico shooed away a group of young men sitting in a corner of the terrace and made a fuss of setting chairs ar
ound a table, preparing a place for us. Saida was making a mental note of the faces of the men who had laughed the most when she had attempted the parallel park. Some of them now flashed faltering, apologetic smiles. But like a matador again she twirled her chador to say that she was not going to apologize. The men had accepted defeat and now they wavered between getting the hell out of the coffeehouse or staying and pretending like nothing had happened. The proprietor was still pushing and pulling chairs.
We got out of the jeep. We had no other option but to march over to our table like we were part of Saida’s militia. With eyebrows cocked, Madam Lilla looked about as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, as if casually taking in the good weather. When she sat down she quickly leaned over to Saida and through pursed lips she said with sarcasm tingling in her words, “Perhaps you need a holiday, my dear Saida!”
Oblivious to Madam Lilla, Saida was still staring at the men. Her face was still as stone, two lines etched in forehead. If you could read those lines the meaning would be all too clear… They told the story of what had happened two nights before…
*
After the funeral march for the young man arrived at the village, the sweets production line came to a halt. Throughout the day the women worked as if lifeless. They had spent the whole day longing for night to fall. No one spoke. Not even us. Death had spoken. Everyone and everything in the village had slipped into lukewarm silence. Only when night had fallen and the sweet-makers had finally settled down did we understand when it was time for Saida to break her silence.
I couldn’t sleep. There was a light at the window. Drawing the curtain, I looked out. There were three floodlights in front of the house. Around them men sat in three rings. Now and then they huffed and puffed, snorted and coughed. Cigarette smoke swirled in the light. Smoke like an accursed prayer. Weaving in and out of the rings, Saida was like a goddess directing the smoke with her skirt. They spoke in whispers. Even the sound of clinking metal seemed muted. In place of the ring of women at the school who made sweets and dough, Saida had formed a metal ring of bearded men. They were unloading the Kalashnikovs Saida had got from the English, wrapping them in pieces of blanket and stacking them.
In one ring men were writing in little notebooks. Other men were inspecting the guns and calling out numbers. They must have been taking down the serial numbers. Saida was probably preparing for blackmail in the event they didn’t get what they wanted from the white men when the war was over. In a way she was compiling a written record of the sins on both sides. The words Madam Lilla uttered when we first arrived – you will pay for this collaboration – slithered among the men like an accursed snake…
In another group the guns were being placed in wooden boxes, then loaded into the boot of another truck. Saida was working with such animated precision it gave you the impression the bullets of these guns would never actually take a human life. This was more like a feast of metal. In the white light her skirt spun tiny motes of dust through the air. Dust rises wherever she goes. As she walks she kneads the desert sand, not flour, sugar and salt. That night Saida wasn’t making bread, she was preparing for death. As she turned the wheels with her skirt, war was a kind of poetic act.
Saida’s daughter wakes and comes to the door. Her mother doesn’t notice because she is lost in the operation of inspecting the guns. Here and there the rifles slice the darkness like smoke-grey light sabres and once out of the light they slip into the ire of the night as shades of black metal. Saida watches every movement of the guns, like she’s watching fire. Her daughter takes a step or two to catch her mother’s attention. It doesn’t take her long to understand it won’t be easy to capture – she is busy capturing guns. With a finger hanging on her lips she tries to decide if she should go to her mother or go back to bed. Filled with the courage of a frightened child she chooses her mother’s anger over the monsters hunting her down in her bedroom. She races towards the floodlights. For the first time I see Saida’s face in the light. When she sees her little girl the overwhelming emotion of commanding this ring of death, whirling the wheels of death with her skirt, overseeing this production line of men, falls from her face piece by piece. Her motherhood unravels in the taut lines on her brow. The little one runs over to her mother and stands in front of her. From the shuffling of her feet I can she’s on the brink of crying. Reaching out her hand Saida pulls her in, pressing her daughter’s face to her belly. Shrinking in fear, the little girl wedges in between her mother’s legs, disappears into her dress. Now you can only make out her eyes. A little girl peering at the wheel of death from her mother’s belly. Her head quivers only when her mother gives an order.
“Check the serial numbers twice.”
She masks that line of frailty that formed in her brow with the arrival of her child by making her voice sound even more like a saw. In that moment Saida looks so much like Madam Lilla.
I am watching Saida. Imagining her as a student in London. Worn out, she’s climbing up the steps in Oxford Circus. She’s walking by the BBC building, no one noticing her. Holding plastic bags she suddenly wants to sit down in the middle of the road. I can see her giving up on everything. Coming home and scrunching up all those plastic bags into another plastic bag. And then lining a trash bin with one of those bags… I imagine her thinking about how concepts like ‘civilization’, and ‘security’ and ‘peace of mind’ are all filled with those plastic bags.
And then World History suddenly presents Saida with such turbulence, her seat belt is fastened and tray table shut and her seat in the upright position, and her flight is rerouted. And plastic bag civilization is left behind.
She prefers being killed by a single bullet to drowning in plastic bags. Maybe there is a Foucault’s Pendulum inside every human heart, which is made of burning steel. When you are standing at a certain place in the world and standing at a certain angle, it begins to swing, knocking into your ribs, breaking open your chest. At midnight in the middle of the dusty desert with her child between her legs and within this ring of guns, Saida knows that the pendulum in her chest is swinging slowly, tapping her ribs but not burning the flesh.
I looked to see that Maryam had woken up. She came over and peered around the curtain with me. “What’s happening now?” she grumbled through her sleep. “They’re counting our Kalashnikovs,” I said, pointing to Saida.
“Do you see her daughter? Under her skirt.”
Maryam looked at her. Not at the guns. For some time she gazed at Saida’s little girl. They had finished packing and I felt tired. Maryam stayed at the window, staring at the little girl. From my bed I watched her. She had a lump in her throat. She swallowed and there was another. As I drifted off to sleep she was still at the window.
When we left two days later, Saida’s little girl was crying. Even though we never really got the chance to talk to her, and hardly ever saw her. In the end she was a little girl trying to be a part of her mother’s war; so maybe she was tired. Saida tried to calm her. First she deployed the standard rounds of compassion, sounds, gestures, caresses listed in the code of motherhood around the world. But when her little girl wouldn’t stop whimpering she went for an exaggerated display of anger. Though her daughter hadn’t said a word about Madam Lilla, Saida suddenly shouted.
“She’s not with us anymore. She doesn’t live here. Thirina is only a guest. And she’ll always be a guest!”
The girl didn’t stop. Saida grabbed her and shook her
“Don’t cry. There is nothing to cry about.”
Saida was shaking her own fragile childhood. To toughen her up she couldn’t decide if she should show more compassion or more anger. Her daughter rattling in her hands, she finally came to her senses and smothered the little girl with exaggerated affection.
*
Now staring down these men in the coffee shop, you could see the whole story from the other night and the morning after take shape in her deepening brow. But the men didn’t know the backstory in those two lines. M
ost likely they kept quiet because that crinkled brow reminded them of the way their mothers looked at them, and the Kalashnikov Saida was holding probably had something to do with it as well.
Then a jeep pulled up in front of the coffeehouse. Madam Lilla must have known who it was and she seemed to be suddenly sprucing herself up, slipping into a Welcome Summer Party mode. First a young man dressed in jeans, a white shirt and sunglasses jumped out of the jeep. He looked like he could have been entering a café in Milan shooting a commercial for Lavazza. Amira scratched about like a turtledove. Maryam spread her legs and nervously tapped the ash off the end of her cigarette with her middle finger. Saida gathered up her chador and went inside. She seemed to be running away from a confrontation. The man opened the side door of the jeep. First came the foot, in a white sock and sheathed in a shiny white, studded moccasin, something out of the 80s, but still in perfect condition. We had to wait some time for the second shoe to arrive. Then a cane struck the ground beside them. Black, shiny and ornamented, then a hand, olive-skinned, blue-veined. The hand seemed to say, ‘now just a little push’, and with that an old man emerged from the car. Coming out he was an old man but as he straightened his back he looked like a lord and when he refused the young man’s arm he was suddenly a knight. Could a man really walk with such ceremonial solemnity? “Here we go. Now the film’s rolling,” said Maryam. She was looking at Madam Lilla, who seemed to be idly passing the time. It was as if she wasn’t in the middle of the desert but in Paris about to bump into an old acquaintance; she wasn’t paying any particular attention to her surroundings; her role play was just right – she was captivating. Covering only half her head, her scarf managed to expertly catch the wind and undo itself. Somehow her hair was still perfectly in place, loosely tied up in a sweet little bun. Then slowly she turned to look at the approaching man and she fixed her eyes on him, Madam Lilla the female desert eagle. Her neck seemed to grow longer and now standing before her the man was pinned to the spot. His two hands gripping his cane. In the sun he looked like the figurine of a god carved out of a mahogany. They looked at one another. When the old man slowly raised his chin the young man sprang to action, leaping over to the glove compartment in the jeep where he pulled out a box. Like a character moving quickly in a film shot in slow motion, he came back over to us and looked. What eyes. They shimmered like two black marbles.
Women Who Blow on Knots Page 18
