Finally, I said to myself, the truth has revealed itself to Yana! But when I asked her to enlighten me about this truth, she refused. Her refusal was unequivocal. She said that she couldn’t tell me an important thing like this over the phone and we agreed to meet that very afternoon, right after I finished my classes at the university, so that she could tell me in person. Our meeting time coincided with her appointment at the beauty salon, so I would meet her at her place and go with her to her appointment.
After we agreed on this, I hung up and stood in front of the mirror, as I do every morning. The picture from the Coca-Cola advertisement was reflected in it as always. But today the picture didn’t look how I was used to seeing it: Yana’s always naked body was now hidden beneath a thick coat of black paint—no part of her body was showing except her face and her shoulders.
No doubt this transformation had happened at night and the person who covered Yana with paint did his deed while everyone was sleeping. The result of this action was that today Yana looked like she was wearing a black abaya, like the ones Bedouin women wrap around themselves in films! As for her black hair, it covered her head as though it were a hijab, and seemed to extend all the way down to the abaya. This new look was so strange on her it really made me laugh. The hijab and Yana would never meet—even if the heavens crashed down onto earth or the opposite, if the earth rose up to touch the heavens! I told Yasmine this when she came to see me that same day, but she didn’t find it funny, quite the opposite in fact, because what had happened to the ad saddened her. She said, “It looks like she’s wearing mourning clothes!” and then after a few seconds had passed she added, “Well, that’s fitting for the occasion!”
I asked her, “What occasion?” noticing that she herself was also wearing black. “Who died?” I asked. She answered, “My neighbor, Waleed.”
She said it very simply, as though to her it was self-evident, indeed as though she had been expecting it to happen for a while. When I asked her how he died, she said that she didn’t know but his family claimed that he had died the evening before of a sudden attack of angina, though she didn’t believe them, because Waleed had been absent from his usual spot at the building’s entrance for almost a week now.
“Strange,” Yasmine said finally, and sighed.
But I didn’t see anything strange in this, the man (that is if he was in fact a man) had died, he simply died, everyone dies—full stop, case closed. But Yasmine didn’t consider the case closed, and instead asked me to accompany her to the funeral so that together we could find out what happened. I declined with the excuse that I had to go to the university right away.
When I arrived at the university, I found my friends in their usual gathering place, all listening intently to Ashraf and not noticing me as I approached. Ashraf was telling a joke that he never tired of repeating because he thought it was so funny. He always performed it in a really dramatic way, without leaving anything out or adding a single word. Despite the stability of the joke’s text, he added a lot of interpretation to its performance: he changed the tone of his voice to suit the characters and increased his pace when he wanted to achieve more dramatic impact. This performance of his would practically have been like the full staging of a play had the joke he was telling not been so trite.
Here’s the joke:
A lady goes into a greengrocer’s shop, rushes right to the box of cucumbers and starts examining its contents, one cucumber after another, touching each one of them carefully. After she finishes, she asks the grocer how much a kilo costs, and he answers her laughing, “1000LL for a kilo... Madame!” Completely shocked, the woman changes color and freezes in her spot, unable to speak! After she recovers from her shock, her color returns to normal and once she can speak again, she says, “But how... how do you know that I am Madame and not Mademoiselle?” The greengrocer laughs again and adds, “Seriously, Madame? From the way you handle the cucumbers!”
Here, Ashraf stops his narration suddenly and the crowd gathered around him bursts out laughing. There is no doubt that Ashraf takes this laughter as the closest possible thing to warm applause because it always seems to me as if he’s about to bow, exactly as actors do after a successful performance.
Today as well, the group burst out laughing and after they had calmed down I said to Ashraf, “We’re in the twenty-first century and you’re still telling jokes about who’s a ‘Madame’?! Do you think that you’re living in a tent in the desert?”
He replied, “Listen to me, Abeer! I love you like a sister, so I’m going to tell you this: Don’t let the winds lead you astray! Don’t let them lead you to hell!” When I asked him what he meant, and exactly which winds he was referring to, as there are many kinds of winds that blow in Lebanon—they come and go depending on the season and the weather—he lifted an angry finger in the air and told me, “The winds that make you stray from the straight path.”
After a silence of a few seconds, he added, “A girl is like a flower, she can only be plucked once! Once she’s been plucked, she wilts and her fragrance disappears.” He also added, “Actually, she’s like a bottle of Coke, it can only be opened once! Who would buy a bottle of Coke that’s already been opened?” He thought a bit and added further, “Actually, a girl is like a tall glass of lemonade!”
But I didn’t even get what he was driving at with this example and asked him to clarify, so he told me that a glass of lemonade is made up of three ingredients: lemons, water, and sugar. You can’t do away with any one of them because the absence of one prevents you from making the lemonade. Similarly, a young woman isn’t complete unless three attributes are found in her, and you can’t do away with any one of these either! She must be a virgin, a wife, and a mother—in that order, of course! If a young woman doesn’t possess the combination of these three attributes or if her upbringing is somehow faulty, she’ll immediately—with no indecision, doubt, or delay—become the “Madame” about whom hundreds of jokes are told.
“Am I clear?” Ashraf sealed off his speech, his tone that of a good Muslim who’s trying to guide one of the lost Ahl al-dhimma back to God’s straight path. His tone really frightened me—it was as if he had doubts about my virginity! I was afraid that these doubts might have also run through the minds of all the people there because they heard our conversation and I wanted to say to them: Don’t misunderstand me! I’m not at all what you think! In fact, I am 100% virgin, 100% pure, 100% chaste... with no additives! And with a lot, really a lot, of preservatives!
But I didn’t say anything. I was aware that mere words could convert their suspicions into the truth. So I decided to laugh in response to Ashraf because laughter indicates confidence and might conceal my embarrassment.
Then I looked at my watch and noticed that it was already time for my class, so I quickly said goodbye to everyone and left. After I attended all of my classes, I left the university and headed for Yana’s apartment. The second she opened the door she said, “We have to rush so that we’re not late.”
We hurried off to the Hawwa’ Beauty Salon, which Yana called “Khawwa’,” and which was frequented by a lot of her fashion model friends. This salon was on the main street in Verdun, not far from Yana’s house—only about a quarter of an hour walking distance at the very most. Despite this, today we set off a full hour before the appointment because Yana couldn’t walk at a normal pace in her high heels, which were practically a part of her feet since she only took them off when sleeping. Even at this incredibly slow place, walking was still the quickest way to reach the salon because the many checkpoints in the area cause traffic jams. The security situation requires the police to examine the registration of passing cars periodically and also to check all the passengers’ identity cards. This creates clogged-up bottlenecks on most Beirut streets; traffic can be stopped for long hours and walking is the only way to escape this fate.
Nevertheless, I hate walking on Beirut’s streets because its lack of proper sidewalks makes me feel that using them for transpo
rtation is a truly life-threatening adventure; motorbikes and even cars for that matter whiz past me as though they were trying to assassinate me but changed their mind at the very last minute. I especially hate walking when I’m with Yana because she attracts everyone’s attention—everybody stares at her as if they were Bedouins faced with a lush oasis and they look away from me completely as if I were nothing, merely a mirage.
Today as usual, I felt like nothing, just a mirage, and as usual I was annoyed. Yana asked me what was wrong. Trying to change the subject, I said, “So why don’t you tell me what decision you’ve arrived at after all your pious seclusion?”
She responded that she had made two decisions: The first is that she had settled on the child’s name, after really having been uncertain about it. So I asked her, “What’s the name?” And she replied, “Saree!”
She had come across it on the internet on a website devoted to the meanings and cultural and geographical origins of thousands of names. The name “Saree,” according to this site, is an Arabic name meaning “night traveler.” Yana immediately fell in love with it because for her it conjured up infinitely expansive valleys, moonlit sand dunes, a horseman atop his mount under a clear, star-filled sky. When she asked my opinion, I told her waveringly that it was a very pretty name. In reality, however, I didn’t like it, because to me the expression “night traveler” evokes only late-night flights, which I truly hate. I find night travel very annoying and oppressive, especially because it messes up my sleep patterns.
And as for Yana’s second decision, it was to remain in Lebanon permanently. This will force her to look for another job because the modeling agency refused to employ her while she’s pregnant. She thought that she might have found another job yesterday at a hotel near her house. They urgently needed a young lady to greet clients and she felt after the interview that the manager had really liked her and so would choose her specifically out of all of the women who had applied for the position—he had assured her that he would call her soon.
“Did he call you?” I asked her immediately.
But he hadn’t called her yet, though she expected him to call at any moment, because her intuition assured her that this would happen without a doubt. Her intuition also assured her that fate would return to her something essential that had been taken from her in the previous week... this something was her boyfriend. Because this intuition of hers had the ability to foresee coming events but not the precise time that they would happen, Yana didn’t know the exact moment when her boyfriend would come back to her. Therefore, she decided to be prepared for this moment at all times and arranged with the beauticians at the Hawwa’ salon to implement a rigorous beauty program so that her body would always be well-maintained and ready for anything.
When we finally arrived at the salon, I asked her which part of the program was scheduled for today and she replied, “Today I will get plucked like a chicken.”
By this, she meant that she would remove all of the hair on her body with wax, to make her arms, legs, upper lip, eyebrows, underarms, and even her “private parts” smooth and silky, ready to be touched and caressed. In addition to this plucking party she was going to have her hair cut “with brushing” and also get a full spa manicure and pedicure with nail polish. From what she said, I understood that we wouldn’t be leaving the salon before its scheduled closing time and before the women working there were due to finish their shift for the day. I was trying to think of a way that I could waste time while Yana was completing her beauty regimen. When one of the beauticians suggested that I also beautify myself, I realized that this was actually the most appropriate way to pass the time. I declined, however, because I didn’t have enough money on me to do it. But I didn’t tell Yana this, so she couldn’t understand why I had refused and, surprised, asked me, “Why?”
She began inspecting my entire body as though I were a car on display for sale and then said, “You at least need to have your upper lip plucked—you’ve got a man’s mustache! The hair on your upper lip is so thick that it’s practically turned your face into an over-grown garden!”
I knew that she was saying this to make me laugh. But I didn’t laugh and instead explained to her that the reason I wasn’t getting my upper lip plucked was because of a big cold sore that had appeared there two days ago, which would make removing the hair from it an extremely painful affair, indeed even torture!
But Yana was not convinced and replied, “Il faut souffrir pour être belle!” This expression reminded me of another expression in the same language that my cousin Hala used to repeat to me constantly, though she didn’t speak French at all: “à la perfection.” Hala never leaves the house before everything about her appearance is arranged totally à la perfection, because she’s obsessed with her own beauty. She dreams of people comparing her to a foreign movie star, because those actresses are, in her opinion, the very pinnacle of beauty, a peak that Hala always dreams of ascending!
But Hala will never reach this pinnacle no matter how hard she tries because she can’t ever transform into the pale, blonde girl, with “colored” eyes that she’s always dreamed of being. In order to achieve this dream she imposes relentless restrictions on her body, but it fights them just as it would a malignant disease.
Her brown hair, for example, is always thriving, pushing itself through the surface of her scalp as though it’s resisting the suppression of its real color by the blonde dye with which she suffocates it. You can clearly see the brown color of her eyes behind the green-tinted contact lenses that don’t completely succeed in covering her round, wide pupils. As for her skin, it returns to its original brown after only a few hours of sun exposure, even if its owner submerges it in whitening cream.
Despite this, Hala remains determined to tame her body, continually re-imposing these restrictions on it.
This is exactly what she was doing today when we met her in the beauty salon, that is to say when Yana had already begun her arduous and event-filled day with the least tedious and painful part—getting her hair blown dry and brushed out straight. To tell the truth, I was not sure why she insisted on this blowing and brushing, because her hair was naturally smooth and straight... the opposite of Hala’s kinky, frizzy hair. Hala herself was also amazed when she saw what Yana was doing and said, “I’m so jealous of you! If I had hair like yours, I’d be able to brush it out straight by myself! If I only had hair like yours, I could just relax!”
But Hala couldn’t just relax; her hair wouldn’t let her. Hala was also surprised at the color of Yana’s hair, midnight black—she walked up close to her and started inspecting it to be sure that it wasn’t dyed, for Hala thought that “foreigners,” as she had always imagined them, could only be blonde, the very same blonde that she used to dye her own hair.
After Hala had finished getting her hair done, she made a plan with Yana to go the following day to the tailor who was going to make Hala’s wedding gown.
“What wedding?” I asked her, surprised, since I thought that she had changed her mind about getting married! But Hala looked at me like someone who really didn’t want to discuss this, then turned her back to us and left!
Yana also left, not to go outside, but to the salon’s other wing in order to get her nails done and afterward remove her body hair. She left me alone to wait for her. When she returned, her white skin had turned bright red, because when hair is pulled out by its roots it temporarily leaves a mark on the skin. Yana asked me to come with her to the place where they would wax off her pubic hair and took me by the hand, saying, “Don’t leave me, I’ll suffer all alone!”
So I went with her to a small room in the depths of the salon, covered with thick drapes on all four sides, which reminded me of the prison torture rooms that I had seen in some film.
Inside, Yana took off her clothes and then lay down on the long bed and opened her legs exactly as she did at the gynecologist’s office. I stood in front of her and held her hand. At that moment, one of the beauticians entered
the room; she covered the area between Yana’s legs with warm wax, then covered the wax with a special paper and started rubbing it so that the hair would stick to the wax. Then she took the edges of the paper and ripped it off of Yana’s pubic area in one quick, violent motion, so that Yana screamed out in pain. She screamed and clenched her stomach and quickly closed her legs, lifting her thighs up to her chest all the while squeezing my hand hard. When the pain had subsided somewhat, she opened her legs back up and the beautician repeated the process several more times until her pubic area was completely free of hair. Yana then loosened her grip on my hand and I noticed at that moment that both of our hands were damp with sweat.
Smiling, the beautician said to her in English, “You are smoother than silk!” Yana answered her, “And as red as a tulip in bloom!”
After all the hair had been ripped off of it, Yana’s pubic area had become bright red, so that it resembled a chicken roasted on a grill more than a tulip in bloom. When I told her this, she responded that she felt as though the whole area had actually been roasted on a grill—exactly like a chicken. It was really hot and red because of the plucking, as though it had actually been lain down upon live coals. She said this then grabbed my hand, pulling it toward her, between her legs, to prove to me the truth of what she was saying. But I extracted my hand from her grasp with an unintended violence that pushed me backward so powerfully I almost fell.
Yana laughed and then said that we had to wait a few more minutes before leaving the salon, until the heat of her pubic area was less intense, because that heat was an indication that her pubic area was still very sensitive. This makes putting her trousers back on extremely painful and makes walking in them a torture. She had once made the mistake of putting her trousers back on quickly and felt them chafing against her pubic area while she was walking as though they were grating it.
So that Yana’s pubic area wouldn’t be grated again, we didn’t leave the salon until she was confident that it had cooled off sufficiently. When we finally did leave, my friend stood on the edge of the traffic-filled street and said, “I’m really tired and I can’t take any more! I want to go home. I hope a taxi will come right away!”
Always Coca-Cola Page 6
