But I immediately regretted having said this, because I was her friend and I should have been a source of strength for her and not the opposite, especially since the model who was chosen was much more beautiful than her, at least in my opinion. Yana’s competitor’s striking beauty was really bewitching in this ad, across the bottom of which was written: “Beirut, Umm al-Dunya.” Yasmine came to visit me a few days later, noticed the advertisement and really liked it. She especially liked the words written below the picture, “Beirut, Mother of the World.” In response I asked her, “If Beirut really were a mother, indeed if she were even a woman, would she been worried about cellulite?”
But I noticed by saying this I had annoyed Yasmine, so I changed the subject and asked her how Yana was doing. She told me that Yana had started her new job in the hotel a few days ago, but she was forced to miss work today because she had to go to the Central Security Office to renew her expired work visa. I said, “She’ll spend the whole day there for sure!”
And then I said to myself, this is my chance to go to Hamra Street without the risk of running into Yana! The day I’d learned that my cousin Hala was getting married, I had decided to go to the tailor who made all of Yana’s clothes to have him make me a dress to wear to the wedding. But since then I hadn’t had the courage to do it because the shop was too close to Yana’s house. So, no sooner did I find out that she’d be out of the neighborhood then I headed straight for the tailor shop, with the sign above its entrance announcing, “Nezar the Tailor: A Poet in Clothing Design.”
Under this sign, in small print like the Ministry of Health’s warning label on a box of cigarettes: “in his hands, you will become... a poem!”
So I asked the tailor, “Will you make me into a poem, then?”
He smiled and asked me my name; I answered, Abeer Ward, Fragrant Rose! He responded, “Your beautiful name shows that you’re already a poem just as you are!”
His praise made me happy, but I just as quickly remembered that I didn’t like my name.
Nezar asked me what I wanted, and after I told him, he inclined his head to lead me to the middle of the room, where he started taking my measurements. He started with my hips and I noticed that his way of taking measurements was completely different from the norm. Rather than standing behind me and wrapping the measuring tape around me, then gathering up the two ends of the tape on my back, he stood in front of me and encircled me with his arms, leaning forward so that his long nose touched my chest very slightly. Then he gathered the ends of the measuring tape from behind and his fingers touched my rear end.
It seems that he didn’t like my hip measurements the first time, because he asked me to suck in my belly and not to breathe before he measured them again in the exact same way as before. When he had finished taking all the measurements, he asked me to come back a week later. I thanked him and left.
A week later, on the day of my appointment with Nezar, my period came, and I started to believe in miracles! When the blood flowed out of me, I felt that it was life-giving rain pouring down from the heavens! The sharp pains were an enormous relief, enough to assure me that I wasn’t pregnant and that everything would go back to normal, exactly as it should be, on the straight path with no potholes or pitfalls. I loved this pain, but despite this newfound love, I took painkillers just as I usually do.
When I went to the tailor, I discovered that the first day of my period is not the right day to be fitted for a dress. When I went to try on my dress, Nezar looked at my swollen abdomen and said, “What’s this?”
If I wasn’t so shy, I would have explained that my abdomen bloats during my period and it’s impossible for me to suck in my belly as I usually do. But instead I just took the dress and silently went to try it on. The dress was tight because of my huge belly and after I zipped it up I felt that the blood from my period would be pressed out of my uterus like lotion being squeezed out of a tube.
I could feel blood violently bursting out onto my pad! This great burst was accompanied by an even greater amount of pain.
I ignored the pain, left the changing room and stood in front of the tailor, who leaned over and started folding the edges of the cloth at my feet and putting pins in to get the length of the dress right. While he was doing this, his head was directly facing my pubic region and his long nose had almost slipped between my thighs! At that moment I remembered what Yana had once told me about the smell of sanitary pads saturated with blood, which she could smell from a few meters away! I feared that the tailor’s long nose would be as efficient as Yana’s, especially since Nezar spent a long time down on his knees in front of me with his nose directly facing the origin of the odor!
I tried to encourage him to hurry up and finish his job but I wasn’t successful. When he finally got up and stood in front of me, it seemed as though he had an evil smirk on his face.
The look on his face angered me so much that I decided then and there to exchange my foul-smelling sanitary pad for a tampon, and I thought of going immediately to Starbucks (not the pharmacy) to buy one from the machine on the bathroom wall.
The moment I left the tailor, Yasmine called me and told me that she had just been to my house and didn’t find me there, so I told her to come and meet me at Starbucks. Then I went into the café, where a young employee was carrying a tray filled with plastic cups the size of Arabic coffee cups, the kind Starbucks always uses to distribute free samples of a new drink before it’s released onto the market. The young man said, “Take one, Madame!”
But I didn’t take one, because I didn’t realize that I was the “Madame” that he meant; I didn’t even consider that these words might be directed at me of all people. I wasn’t used to anyone calling me “Madame,” indeed I was used to “Mademoiselle,” which is how one addresses single, well-bred, virtuous girls! I considered myself one of these girls, so I immediately assumed the waiter’s remark must be directed at someone else, a lady who would fit the title “Madame,” and for whom it would be more appropriate. However, this other lady wasn’t there, I was standing alone in front of this young man. When he repeated his words more clearly, in a louder voice, it became obvious that the intended “Madame” was none other than me... and I was shocked!
I came undone just like a puzzle when it is broken apart and in just one second transforms into a pile of tiny, individual pieces!
I asked myself, “How did he know?”
How did this young man know that I was no longer a “mademoiselle”? What made him declare this so openly and confidently? I drew the following conclusion: Since this young man addressed me as “Madame” so easily from just one look at me, this must mean that there’s some sign that I’ve lost my virginity stamped on my forehead, like an expiration date stamped on the bottom of a package of food, which anyone could read. The man who sells mana’eesh on the corner near my house will read it, for example; my grandmother, who doesn’t even know how to read, will read it. My father will read it!
My father, who always says to me, “We are the Ward family, the Roses, and you, Abeer, are our Fragrance!”
At that moment, all of my father’s sayings and proverbs showered down on me like rain—acid rain, of course!
All this took place within seconds while the young man was still waiting for me to take a cup from the tray. I didn’t take anything, and instead turned my back on him and ran to the bathroom. In the bathroom, I started crying, until I remembered that crying would smear the kohl around my eyes, and I stopped. But I didn’t leave, for fear that someone might see my face flushed red from tears and I preferred to wait until it cooled off a little and the redness went away.
A few seconds later, one of the young women from the café entered the bathroom and I went right into one of the stalls, closing the door so that she couldn’t see me. Then I lowered the toilet cover and sat on it. This left me facing the bathroom door, which I was used to seeing always covered in writing and drawings, and today I was surprised because it was completely blank! The
door had been stripped of all these writings and then covered with white paint until it was snowy white and gleaming like a sheet in an advertisement for laundry detergent. I couldn’t stand that whiteness and I took my stick of kohl out of my purse to write something on the door—but I changed my mind.
Then I decided not to leave this toilet stall before I found a way to reorder my life, which had scattered all around me like so many puzzle pieces. I found the solution to my problem instantly, as though it had descended from the heavens by email—this solution was to restore my hymen. This seemed to me a completely appropriate and proper way to rebuild what had been destroyed in my life, and I opened the stall door to go out into the main part of the bathroom. At that very instant, Yasmine entered the bathroom, and I told her about my decision. She responded, “Have you lost your mind?” When I didn’t answer, she added, “The restoration operation is pointless because everything that you’re going to restore you’ll just go and break again!”
I felt insulted and I told her so. She didn’t answer and thought a little bit before saying, “Why the hurry? You don’t have any immediate plans to get married in any case!”
She was right about that.
I nodded my head, and at that moment remembered that I had wanted to put in a tampon instead of a foul-smelling sanitary pad, but I changed my mind and left the bathroom.
Just then, my mobile phone rang; it was Yana and I didn’t dare answer it. I realized that I needed to talk to her face to face and decided to meet her the next day to tell her about everything. I told myself, “Definitely, I’ll talk to her tomorrow!”
But I didn’t talk to her the following day, because I couldn’t find her. I tried to call her many times but her mobile phone was switched off. When Yasmine called I asked her if she knew anything about Yana and she replied in the negative. The next day, I went to her place and didn’t find her there, but instead found the building’s workers busily refitting the tiles. I asked them about her and they replied that they didn’t know anything but they also added that she must have moved because this house was being converted into an office.
A few days later, I received a long email from Yana, informing me that she had returned to Romania, and telling me the reasons for this sudden departure.
To start with, she said that she had lost everything the moment she got pregnant: she lost the job that supported both her and her family, she lost her boyfriend and she lost all hope that he would come back to her and marry her—all of this made her think about returning to her own country. But she didn’t decide to leave Lebanon for sure until the day she went to the General Security Office to renew her expired work visa and she was shocked at how one of the employees there treated her. When he learned that she was residing in Lebanon as an “artist” (this is what was stamped in her passport), he burst out laughing.
This was the last straw! At that very moment, Yana headed straight for her ex-husband’s place and asked him for a document giving her permission to leave the country before their divorce was completely finalized; he gave her what she asked for with no objection. Then she bought her ticket, packed her suitcases and left Lebanon that very same night!
She left with no regret or sorrow, yielding to what she considered to be her qadar and nasib—fate and fortune!
Then in the last lines of her message she mentioned that she still loves Lebanon and that she will return one day because she wants her child to get to know his father’s country. She emphasized that we must stay in touch and meet again—but without specifying when this meeting might be!
At the end of the message, below her name, she added,
“PS: Give Hala my regrets since I won’t be able to attend her wedding and tell her that, if she wants, now she can serve tabbouleh!”
Translator’s Afterword
The translator’s confession: when the author of Da’iman Coca-Cola read the first version of its translation into Always Coca-Cola, she hated it. After a late-night Skype phone call, in which we both were politely frustrated with the other’s opinion, Alexandra Chreiteh sent me an email, “Please don’t hate me but...” that crossed in cyberspace with mine, “I think that we can work out our differences but...”
And so our conversations about the translation of this short novel began, leading to a long process of discussion about not only the specifics of this text but also translation theory, politics, and practice from our different and overlapping positions—as author and translator, teachers, students, readers, writers—between Lebanon, the United States, and Canada. I will not detail all of the intricacies of our conversations about the translation process that created Always Coca-Cola, this English-language version of Alexandra’s Arabic-language novel. I would instead like to use this afterword to outline several of the major issues that were a part of these conversations.
The purpose of this translator’s afterword is not to offer the reader an explanation or analysis of the novel. Rather, I hope in these few pages to reveal some of the processes that affected its move from Arabic into English. My work here is informed by a keen awareness that all translations are mere readings and interpretations, offered by someone who has worked carefully and extensively with the text, of course, but nonetheless always subjective and never definitive. My goal in creating Always Coca-Cola has been to try to convey to the reader the sense of the narrative and story of this novel, while also giving a flavor of how it works in the Arabic and the kinds of linguistic play Chreiteh uses. I want to allow Always Coca-Cola to live and grow in its English-language incarnation and to have the kind of English-language “afterlife” that translation theorists like to talk about.
One of the elements that makes Always Coca-Cola so difficult to translate is its deceptive simplicity and familiarity. At first glance, it might seem easy to translate a work with a straightforward plot, a great deal of description of familiar things, and that draws upon so many referents and concepts that are well-known globally. From the title itself—a marketing slogan for Coca-Cola, perhaps the ultimate expression of globalization—to the characters’ preferred café, Starbucks, to their conversations about boys and sex, dating and marriage, tampons and gender roles, this novel resonates with the current issues and concerns of young women and men all around the world. Its edgy and cynical humor of twenty-something college students is recognizable across languages, cultures, and geography.
Several challenges are posed by this “familiarity,” by the novel’s global resonance and recognition. Firstly, the surface similarity on display in Always Coca-Cola in fact masks larger differences. One of the elements that I find so brilliant within this novel is that it is not a story that simply could be taking place anywhere—the very specific and particular bourgeois West Beirut milieu of young women at the Lebanese American University (LAU) is constantly being invoked and satirized. Rather than drawing upon the signs and symbols of global capital in a superficial way, or to make the text “accessible” to a supposed Western audience, Always Coca-Cola draws on them in order to make larger comments about the specificities of the local scene, surroundings and world view of her characters, who are very much part of a Lebanese reality. One of Alexandra Chreiteh’s concerns when we started discussing the translation was that the novel was too specific and limited to a very particular milieu. Would an English-language readership understand her invocations and gentle mocking of these places and symbols?
The second major challenge that I faced is one that confronts every translator of Arabic. How do you represent the different registers and levels of the Arabic language in English? One of the contributions of this short novel to the contemporary Arabic literary scene in Lebanon is its innovative use of language: the author employs Modern Standard Arabic to express things most often not recorded in this formal language. This is the literary language used in most writing practices throughout the Arab world; it differs from the “everyday” language that people speak. The language that girls speak together when gossiping or that mothers speak to their
children or that lovers whisper to each other is usually not the language that is written down in newspapers or books. Like many other contemporary Arab authors, such as Rachid al-Daif, Iman Humaydan and Hanan al-Shaykh, Chreiteh experiments with a simplified version of this language—with a few instances of the colloquial language being mixed in—and uses it to narrate events rarely recounted in such language.
This is a contribution that the Arabic version of Always Coca-Cola makes that cannot be adequately replicated in English. The example that always occurs to me is when Yana goes to the beauty salon and Abeer describes every step of her Brazilian wax in excruciatingly lurid detail. In the translation of this scene, I did not use the expression “Brazilian wax,” even though this is the immediately obvious, “fluent” translation of what she was having done at the salon. I made this choice consciously partly in order to try to address the question of the original work’s experimentation with language. In the Lebanese colloquial Arabic spoken in the milieu being described, women would simply refer to this as a “Brazilian” much as in English. In the novel, Chreiteh uses a formal Arabic word “aana” which more precisely means “pubic area” to describe the part of the body being waxed. This is a rather neutral, formal word that is neither used in everyday speech in Lebanon nor has crass or vulgar connotations. She repeats this particular word over and over again. My translation choice here was to remain slightly detached and formal, as the language of the original text does—though for different reasons in the Arabic version—in order to recreate its formal linguistic structure.
A parallel but opposite process is at play in one of the other very difficult translation choices that I made. What is the best way to capture the interruptions of local Lebanese expressions and jokes in this more formal, standard language? These lines are ironic, often rhyme and are impossible to translate in a way that feels satisfactory. The process of working with these moments was the most fun part of translating—I asked everyone I know for suggestions and had many people at work coming up with improbable rhymes. Jokes were exchanged, I learned new English-language slang from my students, much of it inappropriate to record here, and learned more about Lebanese Arabic. The most obvious example of this comes right near the end of the text when Yasmine and Abeer go to the gym to train for a boxing match. Some young men are making fun of another one who has his legs oiled up for the match and say to him, in Lebanese slang, “Shu hal-sahbeh ya ahbeh?” (or written in the common “texting Arabic” used among young people today, in which letters missing in English are replaced with numbers: “Shu hal-sa7beh ya 2a7beh?“). This expression rhymes and is meant to be funny. It comments on the “sexy legs” of the young man, while calling him a derogatory term for a woman, something the equivalent of prostitute, whore, bitch, or slut.
Always Coca-Cola Page 9
