I was vehemently angry when I said this because I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t being more understanding about my situation. And the more I talked, the angrier I grew until I almost exploded with rage, like a cholesterol-clogged artery... but Yasmine suddenly cut me off, saying very simply, “Calm down, Abeer! This isn’t a matter of life and death!”
I didn’t say anything back, but I thought, “Fine, let her say what she wants!” I thought, “So I’ve got no choice then, except to wait until my period’s due and the blood flows out of me like Coca-Cola bursts from a can that’s been shaken before it’s opened! And I’ll just have to wait for this flood and hope and pray!”
This was the first time in my life that I had longed for my period to come. After a few hours of waiting, I was filled with anxiety and doubt. I was looking at all the angles, or at least most of the angles, of the situation and I began appreciating its seriousness, i.e., the seriousness of the possibility I could be pregnant! For the past two days, I’d been feeling that everything was an irritating dream—impossible that this could be happening for real, and to me of all people!
After those few hours, the wait began to feel very long. I felt that the two weeks standing between me and my period were an eternity. I attempted to shorten this eternity just a little by passing my time in front of the television. I thought that this would allow me to kill two birds with one stone (if that were possible of course, from a purely practical point of view), because firstly, television makes time pass faster and secondly, it would distract me from thinking about my period, pregnancy, and Yana. It would help me forget my troubles because my mind would be on pause until it was time to confront them.
This attempt failed, however; in fact it totally fell apart. The television didn’t make me forget my troubles, but actually did the opposite—it constantly reminded me of them because Yana was always appearing on it. Every time I saw Yana on screen I changed the channel, as though I were trying to escape being infected by a deadly microbe.
Yana had started appearing on television lately as one of the dancers in a video clip that had been shot a few months before and had come out recently. The song the video was made for had been hugely successful and the clip was being broadcast nonstop on every TV station.
The song was so successful because it was basically an old and very famous song, “Didi” by the Algerian Rai singer Cheb Khaled. It was re-released by a German pop group called Milk and Honey. This group was made up of two women: one of them was nicknamed Milk, and was blonde, her skin white like milk; the other was nicknamed Honey, her darker skin almost honey-colored.
I remembered sadly that Milk and Honey was the very name that Yana had called Yasmine and me and for the very same reason. Yasmine is as white as labneh and I am dark, closer to kibbeh-colored, fried kibbeh, of course! Or maybe a little less dark...
I also remembered that Yana had told me once that she decided to call us this after she had heard a song by the group Milk and Honey for the first time; she fell in love with the song from its very first note. She saw in its opening lines the most beautiful description of her first meeting with her boyfriend, as though these words were written for none other than the two of them:
On a dark desert night, in a land far away
You took my heart—that’s the price I pay.
These opening lines inspired her to think about eternal, tormented love in a dune-filled desert where date palms flourish!
I remember that at the time I had asked her, “But how is tormented love related to sand dunes and date palms? And what do sand dunes and date palms have to do with Lebanon—where you first met?”
I added that I was born in Lebanon and have lived here my entire life and I’ve never seen any sand dunes, except those shown on television or depicted on boxes of dates imported from Saudi Arabia and Iran. Moreover, how could she talk like this—after all the time that she’s spent here, after all she’s seen? At the end of the day, she lives above a Starbucks, of all places!
She tried to come back with, “I am free! I want to dream!” in Arabic. But she turned her “h” into a “kh,” so instead said something like, “I am shit! I want to dweam!”
When I remembered all this I realized that I really missed Yana and that I hadn’t seen her or spoken to her for a few days, something I wasn’t used to at all. This nostalgic longing is what finally prompted me to watch the entire Milk and Honey video, despite the amount of pain it would cause.
I watched it and found it really beautiful. This was the first time that I had seen it.
The video begins with a wide shot of a sweeping desert that at first glance basically looks like a plate of hummus. The expansive, never-ending sand dunes are golden like crushed chickpeas and a small orchard of date palms in the middle of one sand dune is green like parsley leaves placed in the center of the plate of hummus as a decoration. As for the ancient stone castle in the center of the orchard, from far away it resembles the chickpeas that are in turn placed on top of the parsley as another decoration. After remaining on this shot for a few moments, the camera begins gradually to zoom in on the stone castle, in order finally to go inside of it, where the two singers are standing between marble columns in a spacious entry hall, singing.
The director must have added this desert/hummus scene using digital effects, because they filmed this video clip in one of the old Beiruti houses in an alley off Gemmayzeh Street, not in the heart of the desert as this video makes it seem! I know this because I went with Yana on location to the filming.
This location wasn’t exactly what the director wanted, so afterward he added some things to the video digitally. For example, he wanted to film the small fountain in the center of the entry hall overflowing with fresh water. But the family who owned the house told him that they hadn’t used the fountain in many years because the water pipes were so worn out. He kept insisting, so they deferred to his wishes and opened up the pipes to let water flow into the fountain. A sticky, brown-colored liquid emerged from the fountain and they immediately went and turned it off. He also had wanted to film a scene that would show this house’s windows, but he discovered it would be impossible because the glass was broken in a number of places and the gaps were covered by plastic bags, stuck onto the glass with Scotch tape.
The director changed all of this in the video, which showed the glass of these very same windows as colored and covered in inscriptions and drawings. As for the fountain: pure, sparkling, clean water gushes out of it. The moment I saw this I said to myself, “Computers can bring the dead back to life!”
At the very same time, I felt a kind of pride, because the house where they filmed it is a Lebanese house, located in none other than Beirut itself! Today this house appears on German, French, English, and American television screens where people, sitting in the living rooms of their houses on the other side of the globe, daydream about a world that looks like paradise... a far, far-away world.
I also felt proud because my friend (or should I say my former friend?) participated in creating this work. She appeared in front of the camera constantly, but only in the background, behind the two German singers, who themselves were almost hidden beneath the gold bracelets, anklets, earrings, and necklaces that they were wearing—they could have collapsed at any moment under the weight of all that gold! But they held on, as though the weight of all this gold were no burden at all, and performed their belly dancing with great elegance. They seemed to defy the laws of gravity, especially the blonde one who moved her body and hands so quickly that at times her arms almost seemed like the blades of an electric fan.
I noticed that just about in the middle of the video the blonde woman sang one sentence in broken Egyptian Arabic, a sentence that was almost incomprehensible because her pronunciation was so bad. Immediately after, the two women said together, in French, “Habibi, je t’aime, Tu est mon roi et je suis ta reine!”
They both said the word “habibi” exactly how Yana used to say it to her boyfrien
d.
The moment that I heard the way they pronounced this word, I remembered that I might be pregnant and, after all of this drawn-out reflection on Yana, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back—I couldn’t control myself any longer and I just burst into tears.
A short time after I had calmed down, Yasmine walked right into my room without any prior warning, as usual. When she saw traces of tears on my face she told me that I needed to turn off the television that minute and get out into the world to forget my troubles! According to her, the best way to forget these troubles was to go with her to the gym where she boxes.
I declined her offer, so then she insisted, saying that I should learn to box as soon as possible, so that I could possess at least the minimum knowledge of fighting techniques, which is very important because then I would be able to defend myself when I needed to.
She told me that this sport was the reason why she could push the guy off of his motorbike when he tried to get into our car that time, when we were taking Yana to her gynecologist’s appointment. She, as a matter of fact, could punch any man and squash him... like an insect! Yasmine said this in all seriousness, very excitedly, and then stomped the heel of her foot on the ground, emphasizing her strength and in particular her ability to squash things. At that moment I wanted to tell her that squashing insects is no longer tantamount to physical strength, especially after the invention of insecticides like Piff-Paff, for example, which kills them very easily with only the press of a button. Therefore her comparison of a man to a squashed bug is a thing of the past. But I restrained myself because Yasmine was extremely excited and emotional.
“If you had known how to defend yourself, what happened to you wouldn’t have happened!”
I don’t know if this argument is what finally convinced me to go with her to boxing practice. But as soon as I conveyed to her that I was convinced, I immediately regretted saying it, since I realized after only a few seconds that my agreement to box in itself was an indirect agreement to receive painful, damaging punches, all over my chest and indeed all over my face—most boxing punches, as Yasmine once told me, were specifically aimed at the face, and this scared me! When I expressed my fear to her, she told me that there was no reason at all to be afraid and that today she would train me herself before it was time for her to train with her team, that way I wouldn’t be forced to face an opponent or receive any punches. So I was reassured and we went together to the gym.
We went on foot because the gym was located off one of the little side streets in Mar Elias near my house. We set off in the evening when the electricity had been cut, as it usually was at this time, so the neighborhood streets were enveloped in darkness. This was the first time that I had dared to walk there at night; normally, I would avoid this, out of fear of the young men who always gather at building entrances. But today I didn’t feel any fear because I was with Yasmine.
When we finally arrived at the gym, we went into the training room and I turned to look at a guy who was wearing bright pink boxing gloves—a color that Yasmine really hates, she says it disgusts her, that in her opinion it’s a symbol of exaggerated femininity. This boxer’s legs were shining like a brilliant, polished Pyrex dish, something that invited commentary from one of his teammates, who teased him, “Legs so long and lanky... Whoa, that bitch is skanky!” He then added, “Did you wax recently?”
I couldn’t hear his answer—at that moment Yasmine pulled me into the room next door so that we could change into our boxing gear. When we entered this room, I felt an urgent need to use the bathroom and asked Yasmine where it was. She laughed and said that there’s no women’s bathroom in the club because it’s a men’s club! She added that I could go in the men’s bathroom when none of them were in it, but I turned down this suggestion, preferring to hold it until I went back home. Yasmine supported this decision, saying that waiting was much better than rushing into something, and me going into the men’s bathroom would really be rushing into something because this bathroom was a germ’s paradise, a paradise with sewage streams flowing below it!
She said this then took off her bra, in front of one of the mirrors hanging on the room’s walls and started examining her breasts. After a few seconds, she took some lotion and started rubbing it onto them, saying, “Oh, they’re lost in a haze, the olden days...”
I asked her what she meant and she said that she missed her breasts, eradicated by time! Only a year or two ago they had bloomed with life, like a gorgeous garden! Now they have melted away and almost disappeared completely. The reason for this, she said, was her excessive boxing practice: she moved her arms so much in this sport that she’d burned off all the fat in her chest and her breasts kept shrinking. In trying to restore her breasts to what they had been previously, she’d bought this cream from an herbalist, hoping it would encourage life in them and get them to grow again.
But she had discovered after a period of using this cream that it was useless, and that her breasts did not respond to the breath of life as they should have. They were like a wilted flower that it was impossible to make blossom anew. She applied it assiduously, however, because she still held onto a small margin of hope.
Yasmine sounded profoundly distressed as she told me all this!
While she was talking, I looked at her naked breasts, which really were very small. In fact, they would be almost completely flat were it not for the two nipples that stuck up out of her chest like nails sticking out of a wall. When she finally put on her jersey, her nipples showed through the cloth clearly because she didn’t wear a bra.
When we left the changing room and went into the main training room, some of the boxers noticed Yasmine’s nipples and started staring at them. But she paid no attention to this, kept acting normally, as though it were nothing, and started to teach me some of the basics of boxing. Shortly after we started this training of ours, some of the other boxers gathered around and started to stare at us. This energized me and I concentrated, trying to apply everything she’d been teaching me: I hit the punching bag with all my might and was astonished by how much I enjoyed it.
But one thing disturbed this unbridled pleasure of mine—I remembered Yasmine’s naked breasts and I was scared that my breasts would become like hers, two nails sticking up out of a wall. I imagined that with every punch I landed, I was getting closer and closer to this destiny! For this reason I was relieved when we had to end our training and stop punching the bag, because Yasmine’s coach had entered the room to announce that it was time for boxing practice.
I was really surprised when the coach came in because the coach was a woman who was around four months pregnant!
This woman told the boxers, who were lined up in front of her like soldiers, that they would spar against each other today, then she sat on a chair near the wall, resting her hands on her swollen belly.
In the middle of the training session, the coach noticed the owner of the pink gloves hitting his opponent on the head with the inside of his hand. Clearly she thought that his blows were too weak because she screamed at him, “Ali, punch more powerfully! What do you think you are, a cabaret dancer?!”
Ali followed her advice, but it didn’t work out exactly as she meant—he broke the jaw of his opponent, who then had to be rushed to the hospital. But Ali, like all the other guys, reduced his power significantly when it was his turn to face Yasmine. She tried to take advantage of this situation and landed a powerful punch on his face, its sound echoing in the room like a sharp smack. This increased her zeal and she tried to repeat this glory by following up her punch with another one like it, but Ali stopped her attack with one punch to her face, which jolted her as though she had been stunned by an electric current!
Blood poured out of her nose and her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t cry. She wiped the blood from her face and asked her coach to let her stop the match, which the coach allowed.
Yasmine rushed toward the changing room, and when she passed me, I got up from where I was
sitting and followed her. When we entered the room and shut the door, she told me straight away—without me saying anything—that the only reason all that had happened was that her period was about to start, which overwhelmed her body and impeded her ability to tolerate pain! This meant that she wasn’t able to complete the match and had to stop competing. I didn’t respond, but nodded my head to signal my agreement. I wanted to wind up the conversation and leave the gym as quickly as possible—my bladder was about to explode!
Luckily, I was able to get home a few seconds before that explosion happened.
After I went to the bathroom, I went to my bedroom and fell asleep immediately, feeling totally shattered. I wondered, could this exhaustion be one of the signs of pregnancy?
I woke up the next morning and, when I went to look in the mirror as usual, I stopped to look at the image of Yana reflected behind my own image, also as usual. But I had forgotten that the Coca-Cola advertisement had been removed from the billboard the day before and so I was surprised this morning when in its place I saw another ad, for the company Exotica.
This advertisement reminded me that a few months ago Yana’s modeling agency had nominated her to be one of a group of models Exotica would consider for this ad. Exotica didn’t choose Yana, choosing instead the model whom Yana no doubt considered her main adversary, even though Yana would never openly acknowledge this. Yana clearly took Exotica’s rejection as a great loss, despite her pretense at the beginning that she was chosen to be in the ad but had turned it down. She maintained this pretense, until as a result of my own insistence I found out that her competitor was chosen instead of her and I asked her, “Why don’t you just admit you didn’t get the job? Do you think you have to appear in every single advertisement?”
Always Coca-Cola Page 8
