by Igiaba Scego
The myth of Procne and Philomela was revisited by Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus, one of his bloodiest plays. In that version, in order to tell her story, Philomela, renamed Lavinia, unable to speak out loud, holds a stick in her mouth and writes the names of her assailants in the ground. Scego, too, has gotten it out, written it down. She gives voice to multiple lives, experiences, and emotions either silenced or ignored by history. In taking this work beyond Italian and rendering it into English, Aaron Robertson has reproduced, with remarkable sensitivity, precision, and elegance, a novel—smart, strident, subversive—that resembles no other Italian novel to have migrated thus far into English.
BEYOND BABYLON
Sólo quiero que comprendan
el valor que representa
el coraje de querer.
“Cuesta abajo”
—Carlos Gardel & Alfredo Le Pera
Caloosheyda waxaa marahaya jidka…jidka heshiika.
Sulla mia pancia passa la linea…la linea della pace.
The line runs over my belly…the line of peace.
“Jidka”
—Saba Anglana
PROLOGUE
I’ve always pitied Spain. It’s a beautiful country, but it makes me so sad, wallahi billahi, I swear. And if I say wallahi billahi you must believe me. Alice says that I’ve gone mad and that she’s never heard such a thing. “Spain is life,” she says. Then she makes a list of all Spain’s marvels. A compelling list, full of splendid things, but the pity remains. It’s an odd feeling. At first I thought it was because of the civil war they’d had over there. An awful war that saw every man for himself, in the thirties. But the war in Spain has been over for quite a while (not like ours in Somalia, which has lasted for centuries). Now they have Zapatero and gay marriage. Real cool, apparently. Then, all of a sudden, I remembered this pity stuff was Ranieri’s fault, my batty art history professor. How could anyone forget those Thursday afternoons when she dragged her classes, me included, through the streets of Rome? What a woman. Her chestnut hair was wrapped in a beguine’s bun. It gave the impression of ugliness, but she was gorgeous. She had the eyes of a sly cat and full, soft lips. Whenever she wore her strange puffy miniskirts, it made the boys hard.
Ranieri made us walk for hours around Rome. Far and wide around Rome. Sideways across Rome. She said that by walking we would stumble upon color. “Rome is full of colors,” she said, “and everyone has their own, always remember that.” It was Ranieri who made me feel this absurd pity for Spain. We were at the Villa Borghese gardens on one of her Thursdays, three classes of seniors. The sun was hot and high for March. Wallahi billahi, it was searing, and if I say wallahi billahi you must believe me. The clouds formed rabbits and larks out of the psychedelic air. Children eyed fat American tourists in their tight bermuda shorts. Everyone’s hormones were in turmoil. Except mine. Back then they were frozen. In that absentminded bedlam, Ranieri jolted souls from their inertia. No words. Only a gesture. A finger, to be exact. The index, more specifically. Ranieri indicated a point equidistant from her and from us, the entire senior class. A timeworn bench that had seen better days. “See that blue ocean there?” I didn’t see anything, wallahi billahi, nothing at all. Only a poorly built bench. “That’s where he wrote,” she said solemnly. “That’s where he cried. In exile, alone. Rafael Alberti, the great Spanish poet.”
Poet or not, there was no way of seeing the blue the professor was going on about. Instead, I saw everything as washed out. Pity had taken hold of me by then. That Rafael who was exiled to Rome, and all of Spain, reminded me too much of my exile from myself—something unfinished. I dammed my tears so they would overflow later, when I would be alone at home in the intimacy of my bathroom. Then I wept, stifling my shouts and realizing only then that I no longer had colors, I had lost them all around the city. But how could that happen? And how did I not realize it until that moment?
Later, I forgot this business about colors. I went on with my life this way, almost without realizing it. Pale worlds, glassy eyes, treacherous transparency. It continued like this for a decade, maybe slightly longer.
Alice says it was because of my virginity. And in fact I’m still a virgin, sadly, wallahi billahi, I swear to Christ and Shiva, to Buddha and all the souls of purgatory and nirvana—I would never lie about a thing like that. Virgin like the Madonna who cries tomato blood, virgin like a baby girl in her mother’s stomach, wallahi, virgin, wallahi billahi, and if I say wallahi billahi you must believe me. I have to be careful with strong emotions. I could snap, and then who would put me back together? I am colorless. Defenseless. Virgin. Alone. Alice says I should hurry and find a man to fuck me. It’s already been nine years since I finished school and there can’t be virgins at my age, they don’t exist anymore. “You’re not in the nineteenth century, sweetheart,” Alice says.
I’m a bit embarrassed. Virgins seem a little faded, and pretty uptight, too. I’d like to find myself a boyfriend. I’d really like to see colors again, but it’s not as simple as going to the supermarket and picking up a color or a boy. It’s somewhat more complicated. I’m certain that, of the girls from my fifth grade class, I’m the only one who still has her heart’s hymen intact. Of the eight of us, I’m the only one still in this ridiculous state. Only I have a membrane sewn inside my heart. The first to give herself to someone was Erica. She always said she’d go for it. They told me she did it in a restroom with Enzo, the janitor, but perhaps that was only a rumor. Then, after Erica, the others followed: Deborah, Enrica, Valeria, Cristina, Bilqis. Even Anna, the little yapper, got lucky. She called me a few nights ago to tell me. She said something like, “It happened” or “I did it.” And I asked, “Did you like it?” She didn’t answer.
Actually, I was acquainted with sex well before them. It’s love I’ve never known. This is my problem. I’ve never been in tune with the times. I was in elementary school, a boarding school, and we had a janitor that we called Uncle. He had flaky, repugnant skin. Uncle gave me unsolicited lessons about sex. Uncle isn’t the right word. For Somalis, all people are uncles and aunts, even the white janitors who look after the children they send away to boarding school. It was like being in a fucking Walt Disney cartoon, and in the end you no longer understood anything, you didn’t know if someone was your actual uncle, a distant relative, or someone it was better not to have near you. Well, one afternoon, while I’m going over our lesson on the Etruscans, this uncle who wasn’t really one pulls out his thing from the flap of his pants and begins rubbing himself on my shoulders.
So began five difficult years. I washed my thighs with soap every day, meticulously. And that acrid taste? I couldn’t get it out of my mouth with a thousand rinsings. I was eight years old the first time. Then I was nine. Then ten. Eleven. When I was twelve, somebody decided that nightmares were only real if they lasted briefly and put an end to my hell. I stopped brushing my teeth so much, only the top row. Mom told me they thrashed him. I’m not sure. I only know that I left through the door of that school never to return. I don’t recall his face anymore. I know he did everything to me, and left me a virgin. Away, gone, disappeared. The thing is…that uncle took all my colors, every single one. He took them for himself, and it’s not fair. He’d already taken one part of me. Couldn’t he at least have left the colors?
That’s why I’m searching for them now like a madwoman in Rome. Ranieri said you can find colors here. I found yellow idly dozing in Veio Park. Wallahi billahi, it was sleeping like a dopey sloth. And green? It had quite the adventure! It had gotten lost in the Piazza Vittorio bazaar, between the spinach and the Argentinian mate, but I snatched it back. Where did it think it was going? I also salvaged every hue of black. Calmly, I filled my sack with colors. When I have them all back, I’ll be ready to make love to a man. A man I adore. You can’t make love without colors. It would come out all twisted. And I’m fed up with crooked things, wallahi billahi, sick and tired, and if I say wallahi billahi you must believe me. I want pleasant odors, sweet word
s, complicit looks, wonders. And, yes, maybe someone with a beard.
Only red is missing from the sack now. I brushed past it once. Right here, in fact, where I find myself now on Via Tomacelli. I’m sure that sooner or later it’ll come through again. I lie in wait until then. I take three shifts a day, one in the morning, the second in the late afternoon, and the third at night between ten and eleven. I know everything about this anonymous road by now. Every corner, every shop window, every human being in transit. Via Tomacelli is unusual, it doesn’t seem like the historic center. It doesn’t seem like anything, to be frank. Wallahi, it seems like nothing. The Ferrari store window stands out like an elephant, then a handful of bars, an antique bookstore, a Benetton megastore. Capitalism, money, luxury. But then, at the core, you find a working-class spirit made of old, tried-and-true communist comrades, their newspaper, their potential utopias. Though apparently, the comrades are relocating…they’re leaving. I think a part of them will always be here, attached to this road. A profusion of red: the Ferrari, the tried-and-true comrades of the “manifesto,” the jackets with pom-poms displayed for sale. My red was different, though. It covered the hair of a man in dirty chestnut boots. It had come out of a door, one of thousands on that umbilical cord mistaken for a street. A short-lived moment. A cigarette rolled during a break in a lifetime. A thick, full beard, a tired gaze, curved shoulders, lively eyes, a shoulder bag like students have. Maybe he studies. He doesn’t seem like a bank clerk. He could be a singer. Or a DJ. A poet. A roving nomad. Or who knows, a bum. A lutist. A perfect idiot. Someone in trouble. Myself mirrored in a man. My joy, maybe. My love, my habibi. Or nothing. Maybe he’s just a pilgrim. Rome is, after all, their city. My pilgrim lifts his eyes. He looks at me. Smiles. Goes back to his cigarette. Smokes it. Time’s up. He goes away. He is fading. He turns, sees me. Smiles again. He is charmant. He disappears for good, leaving an aura of red. And if love in Rome is that way? An undertone of red?
Now I’m here, making the rounds, three a day—just two on Sundays and holidays. I’m waiting for the pilgrim to return. I tried looking for him at Benetton, in the spaces between the Ferraris, among the comrades, amid the packages scattered from their move. I searched for him at restaurants, on illicit balconies, between designer handbags. I searched in cafes, in all those cafes where the baristas are afraid of their dreams. I looked for him everywhere. But now I’m waiting on Via Tomacelli. I hope he comes. Then we’ll make love. And I’ll have put on pretty red lingerie.
Doctor Ross told me she isn’t convinced about this waiting thing. Doctor Ross is my therapist. I’ve always called her that—like George Clooney’s character on ER. It isn’t a coincidence. Even though she’s a woman, she’s kind of like George. She has his same maternal smile. Even the same dimple. People think Clooney is a sexy ladies’ man, but to me he’s motherly, hospitable. He has the face of someone you know will never hurt you. Sure, he might go for other women, but he doesn’t strike me as an abuser. No, George doesn’t assault women, he’s not like the flaky-skinned uncle. He’s not a believable bad boy. A little like Cary Grant, he has the trademark of Good, of someone who brings you warm milk in bed. Someone who tucks the blanket under your chin, who strokes your head and tends to you. In real life it doesn’t matter if one person is a ladies’ man and the other is gay.
I jibe well with gay men. They’re kind and they’re the only ones who tell you exactly how to fuck. If it weren’t for them, I might not have known a damn thing about the male body. My friend Lionello, for instance, he’s a godsend when it comes to sex. But Doctor Ross doesn’t like that I wait for my red pilgrim here on Via Tomacelli. She’s like a mother, Doctor Ross, she worries. She doesn’t give me orders though. She doesn’t tell me don’t do this and do that. She doesn’t tell me anything. She worries, but she doesn’t say a thing. Free will exists and I have to do what I feel, she says, though (and she knows this) I don’t feel much. I’m too rational and don’t listen to my gut. It’s because of the colors. If you don’t have colors, you don’t even have the stomach to feel emotions. It’s a dreadful thing to lose colors, it really is.
Doctor Ross told me to do something while I wait. Well, it’s not that she told me, exactly, she guided me to that decision. I was the one who convinced myself that I couldn’t stay there propped up like a rake. I could’ve drawn attention, and with my skin color, in these times, that won’t do. It doesn’t take much to be confused for a dangerous subversive. A single moment to become a terrorist. All you need is a beard, tattered clothing, an idea in your head. And if you’re black, you’re always the first suspect. You are suspected of everything, even of living. I didn’t feel like drawing attention. I took Doctor Ross’s advice and did something.
I moved and went to sit at Ara Pacis. At predetermined hours, I move again and return to Via Tomacelli to seek out my pilgrim. It’s barely a five-second walk. When I was small, Ara Pacis was different. Unadorned. Now it’s like a spaceship, missing only androids and Venusians. The skaters make up for it. They’re very fond of Ara Pacis, where they do their pretty spins. I’m not sure if I like it. It’s an odd place. It’s like it can never quite take off, feeling envious because the Piazza di Spagna is just around the corner, real life, the glamorous and coveted Rome. I wouldn’t want that Rome. Take Via Condotti, for example. What would anyone crave on such a contrived street? It makes me anxious. Too many shopping bags and bodyguards and tailor-made happiness. It’s an infectious fiction. This morning while I was walking, for instance, I saw a homeless woman. She was looking into the Cartier store window, crying. A ridiculous scene.
Good for a novel, admittedly. Yes, a book with thick, heavy pages where the punctuation is there for a reason and the silences are imagined. I told myself that perhaps I could write a novel while waiting for my red pilgrim. I bought a graph-ruled notebook. I write better with the little squares. They’re less restrictive than lines, more rebellious. Naturally, I bought this notebook with a red cover. I don’t really know if it’s red, but I said to the sales rep, “Give me a graph-paper notebook with a red cover” and he gave me one with a weird elephant design. I made sure it actually had a red cover before paying. I asked a blonde girl in line behind me. She made a strange face, but she responded. Not with words, with her head. She swung it forward affirmatively. Good enough for me. I had to be sure. I still can’t see red, and I only want to write my novel in red notebooks. It wouldn’t make sense in another color. It would be crippled. And I’m sick of crippled things, wallahi billahi, sick and tired. And if I say wallahi billahi you must believe me. I paid and left. Then I bought other notebooks, each of them red, and I filled them with words. Seven in total. I’d like to get to ten. Ten is a round number, it makes you think of something constructed and whole. And ten is the number on Diego Armando Maradona’s jersey. I’m a big Diego Armando fan. He’s kind of a dorky rebel. Although he’s a man, Maradona looks a lot like me. He looks like an angel when it shits.
I wrote constantly in the red notebooks. A few stories. Doctor Ross told me writing was a great idea and it would help bring out the woman in me. I didn’t understand. I don’t think I grasped the concept. Usually when Doctor Ross talks, I get it. She speaks very simply. She repeats things countless times until I comprehend them, until they’re firmly in my brain. She has a lot of patience. But sometimes she says certain things only she knows, as an expert in her field. And when she does, I’m lost. Or maybe I understand too well. Usually I shiver and fold my arms, then she looks at me and goes, “Ohhh! See those arms?” I look and see that they’re folded. Like a convict in the electric chair I’m closed, stiff. I know it’s not a good thing, and that if I want to be well and make love with my pilgrim, I need to open up. Yes, like a rose.
But Doctor Ross—who is, all things considered, still a woman—loved the writing stuff, for the sake of that woman who needs to break free. I never understood it, though. Woman? Why, isn’t it obvious that I’m a woman? I have a mandolin-shaped ass, tits, even if they’re small, a pu
ssy, hair that a man could never have, a heart-shaped mouth. What else am I missing to prove it? And then, once every twenty-eight days, I menstruate. I love saying that, menstruation. It’s a medical term, normal, hygienic. People give you strange looks if you use the real, authentic term. I like it. To me saying that is a purely renegade act. I don’t like referring to my “cycle.” I don’t like saying “I’m indisposed,” or talking about “my business.” The Trastevere people in Rome would speak of a certain monthly visitor, a marquess dressed in red, and in Somalia, my home country, you got your godude. Americans, now, they bring aunts into it, going on about Aunt Flow, Aunt Rosie, Aunt Martha. In Mexico, they make it gothic and call it a flood of vampiritos, little vampires that suck you—but can’t they just say “sanitary pads?” The Finnish are the most creative. I wouldn’t be so imaginative in the middle of all that ice, but the Finnish are. They call them “cranberry days.”
People fear the word menstruation. Leads to total panic. They’re terrified when something is too real. It used to petrify me, too, before I started seeing Doctor Ross. I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t have a name for it. I deluded myself into thinking that by not naming it, it would disappear from my life forever. I dreamed of everlasting menopause. I don’t hate it, but not too long ago I kind of did. Meaning, quite a lot. Not because it hurts. Everyone hates it for that reason. Now that I think about it, maybe I should’ve hated it for that too. I get unbelievable cramps in my lower abdomen and migraines that move from my neck to the top of my skull. I can’t bear the pain. The migraines are intolerable and always come with horrendous nausea. And then you feel like someone’s eating your intestines, or worse, twirling them like fettuccine al ragù. It’s not great. But the pain isn’t why I didn’t give it a name, at least not the physical kind. It was another pain that did it. Whenever I menstruated, each time I saw my soiled underwear, I would despair. It was stronger than me, I’d despair. I stared at my underwear, the toilet paper, and I’d despair. I watched it for hours, standing there frozen, hoping something would happen. Usually absolutely nothing would.
