by Igiaba Scego
Then one day she got pregnant. She hadn’t bled in three months when she told her husband. She only said, “I’m expecting.” He didn’t react. Famey was upset. Wasn’t that what they had been waiting for all that time? Wasn’t it the end of their nightmares? Majid had become catatonic. He hardly spoke to anyone. He said only essential words. Good morning, good evening. What should I cook today? Did you buy meat? See you tomorrow. How are you? Goodnight. Only functional words came out of his mouth. Nothing superfluous, nothing wasted.
In the evenings at home, when he wasn’t too tired after cooking for the others, he sat on the wicker mat after prayer and unburdened himself of the rosary hanging from his futah. The auntie who hosted them was scandalized seeing him at the burjiko like a woman. She was scandalized seeing him slice zucchinis, peel potatoes, weigh the rice. She was scandalized seeing him scrape, clean, and clean again. She was scandalized seeing him boil, put things in the fridge, sauté. She was scandalized when she saw him prepare, decorate, garnish. She was scandalized when she put the food in her mouth and found it marvelous. Despite the rosary, the five prayers, the silence born of modesty, the auntie considered her nephew the devil incarnate. Iblis in the flesh. He was too much of a woman to be pure.
Famey knew it was that auntie who instigated the disparaging rumors about her husband’s worth. No one would’ve noticed his effeminate step had she not planted suspicion in the fools. The child she was carrying was necessary. For him, especially for him. Why wasn’t he excited? Why didn’t his behavior suggest even minimal interest? She was doing it for him, dammit! Only for him. It didn’t matter to her whether she had kids or not. She felt empty. All she wanted was to expend the little energy she had left. From that day forward, Famey had a feeling she’d be dead soon. Perhaps she already was, but she refused to admit it. Idiot, don’t you see I’m doing this for you? she reproved him with her eyes. He didn’t look at her, as though the matter didn’t concern him at all.
When she went into the throes of labor, Famey knew she wouldn’t survive the pain. She was submersed in her blood, drowning in it. The midwife was exhausted and the aunties around her despaired. That was one moment. In the next, Famey was gone.
No one attended to the child. No one looked in the direction of the bundle that was Elias. They thought he was dead, rotting meat. Majid unobtrusively walked into the room of his wife’s ordeal. It is said that he merely glanced in the mother’s direction and knew. Then he looked at it, the bundle carelessly tossed aside. He approached it, placed a hand on its forehead. They say a person remembers nothing of their own birth, but I know Elias remembers his father’s hand on his tiny forehead. A small hand, with tapered fingers that would’ve been ready to seize life if his dignity hadn’t been shattered without warning.
The hand was warm. The same temperature as Elias’s heart, the only living thing in that child. The hand warmed the rest of the body. Elias suddenly shivered. His body ignited with a strange light, what they call life. He let out a long, deep cry. The aunties were shaken from their pain and realized that Elias was a lifeless bundle no more.
Majid looked at him and said, “We will call him Elias Hayat.”
Hayat, his middle name, a woman’s name.
Hayat, Life.
THREE
THE NUS-NUS
“Why is your mom white?”
It was the question everyone asked Mar sooner or later, always, everywhere. It was the through line of every conversation. They asked others about their names, and Mar about her color. White. A color she despised. A color she depended on. A color she sought out like a maniac. Mama was white. Patricia was beyond white.
Antonio Lorenzetti was the first to ask her. She’ll never forget the first time. It was in third grade. She’d gone to London with her mom right before. Her mother was obsessed with Virginia Woolf and they’d traced her footsteps around Bloomsbury for a little while. Her mother transformed into Mrs. Dalloway and forgot she had a child. When they returned to Italy, she was in the third grade with Antonio Lorenzetti.
“Why are you black if your mom’s white?”
“Exactly, why am I black?”
“No, you have to tell me. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your mom didn’t pass on any of her color to you?”
“Nope, none.”
“Your hair is hideous, you know that?”
“What?”
“Disgusting, Mar. Ugly as shit.”
“Are you saying I’m a turd?”
“You’re black. A nigger like the Africans.”
“What are Africans?”
“Poor people. They don’t even have shoes on their feet.”
“But I have shoes. And I have socks, too.”
“When your mom found you, you didn’t have them. You were naked. Your mom is white, she has money, she bought you those shoes. And she bought you socks, too.”
“What?”
“Africans die of hunger, their bones are outside their bodies they’re so skinny. They’re kind of gross. Yeah, really gross. They stink, they stink a lot. They never clean themselves.”
“Why?”
“Because soap costs a lot. Africans don’t even have money for bread. Luckily sometimes they can climb up trees to eat some bananas. Africans are like monkeys, they eat a lot of bananas.”
“Bananas are good. I like them.”
“Because you’re a monkey. Don’t you see that you’re the same as a monkey?”
“What?”
“Yeah, you are. If I was your mom I would put you in the washing machine. I’d use the bleach from that old lady in the commercials who’s always saying, ‘Without Straappp.’ That way even your irises would be white.”
“But white eyes aren’t pretty. I don’t want white eyes. I’d scare people.”
“You still scare people. I know you’re a girl, but everyone else doesn’t. When people see you they’ll scream. No one likes black. It’s like the dark. I’m afraid of the dark.”
“I like it.”
“I know, you’re like the dark. Isn’t your mom upset you came out black? Didn’t she ask the stork to take you back? Or at least to bleach you?”
“No…why?”
Mar always wondered where that reprobate Antonio Lorenzetti ended up. Maybe he sided with New Force.
Mar looked around. The Arabic professor was a fat woman with an endearing face. Each time she wrote a letter on the board, her maternal bottom rocked from right to left. She had one of those berets that was cool in ’68 and a chic revolutionary’s hair. Mar liked the way she rotated her hand when she wrote a letter. Real art. She didn’t write, she painted. She’d written many letters. The alif, the ba, the ta. She liked how she painted the saad. The saad was a beautiful letter. Mar felt like Michelangelo. She looked at her peers. They were Rembrandt, Raphael, Picasso, Dalí—each of them artists. Everyone was enthralled.
Mar turned away from the board for a moment. She took a survey of the room. Entire continents. In this one room there was Asia, America, Europe, Oceania and, yes, Africa. No one there would’ve asked her, “Why is your mom white?”
She returned to her piece of paper. She mimicked the professor’s gestures and felt like Leonardo da Vinci come to life again. She looked at the saad she’d traced in her notebook. Yes, it was beautiful. An honest-to-God Mona Lisa. Mar smiled. For now, Patricia had given her a break.
THE NEGROPOLITAN
Othman Al Bahri. It sounds like the name of someone who lived long ago, someone from the distant past. We only met him six hours ago. Just six hours, clocked, lived. Othman Al Bahri is permanently relegated to my past now. The present began the moment this green cup full of slop—I can’t bring myself to call it coffee, it’s more like diarrhea—splintered and set a hairy cockroach loose.
Othman Al Bahri. A pretentious name, pompous and grating. It was the name of an important person, no doubt. He’s a pain in the ass, now almost more than last night. Who are you, Othman Al Bahri?
Who is Othman Al Bahri? More importantly, who the hell is Malick?
Meanwhile, I find myself face-to-face with the fattest cockroach I’ve ever seen in my life. Remarkably, I’m not screaming. I’m not flipping out. I’m not doing anything you’d expect me to do. I’m less of a sissy than I thought. I watch it. It disgusts me. I sip the peculiar drink I’ve got in the cup, which I won’t call coffee. Then I lift my heels, gracefully. My thoughts are still completely absorbed by Othman Al Bahri and last night.
Who are you, Othman? A bloody warlord, a crazy malefactor, a religious pain-in-the-ass, a charming pirate, or a coincidence? Are you tall? Fat? Pock-marked? What are your eyes like, Othman Al Bahri? And your nose? The rest of you? Do you exist? Why did they name this filthy street after you? No one knows where it is, did you know that? We tried finding it for hours. It felt like an eternity, a petty, cheap eternity. Maybe you were never worth much, Othman Al Bahri.
Malick smiled at us last night. Or, he smiled at Lucy and said, “I’ll think about it,” and then told her what no human being, endowed with even the most minuscule trace of life, should ever say: “You don’t need to worry about anything.”
I should’ve started worrying when Malick began eyeing Lucy. We were on a boat. What a lousy idea to travel to Tunis on a boat. Lucy told me we’d have fun. Instead I learned that I can’t handle the sea. It’s horrible. It makes me want to throw up, but I held back whatever was roiling inside me. An ex-bulimic would stick nails in her stomach to stop herself from vomiting. I’d rather be sick as a dog, but the toilet will never again have the satisfaction of seeing my partially digested food. I don’t want to feel that burning sensation tearing me in half. No, never again.
The waves dance a restless tip-tap on my guts. I’m shaking in a cold sweat. Wouldn’t it have been better, my dear Lucy, to take a plane? Instead, you wanted to dally in Palermo. “It’s a beautiful city.” End of conversation. Take it or leave it. I took it, my friend. Oh, Lucy, she thinks she’s an expert. A little like Maryam. Only Maryam always digressed, steering clear of love. Away from me, my father, Howa Rosario. At some point, who knows when, she started believing that love was a shifty thing that couldn’t even be seen in the light of day. So she strayed. She moved in the opposite direction of the emotion she felt, the opposite direction of me. Maryam was always a snake, elusive, or she pretended to be a snake because her nature is unlike the rest of ours. I sense it from her half-smiles, her smooth skin, her sweet eyes, her aroma of mature papaya.
Lucy didn’t avoid love, she delighted in it. She avoided time. She wanted it to stop. She lollygagged, trying not to think about it, trying not to look in the mirror and see wrinkles digging grooves into the corners of her mouth. If she had to visit an auntie in one place, Lucy would surely jump from grid to grid like in a game of Battleship. With Lucy you disregard grids, schedules, people, meetings. You disregard the predetermined, the indeterminable, the certain, the uncertain.
But you never get bored with her. I mean never, abadan. Her way of spinning things is marvelous. She leaves with her head held high and new shoes on her feet, kind of like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City: “I’m never without my Manolo Blahniks.” Think of how many Sex and the City box sets we could sell at Libla! Women go crazy for those four jaded Americans who fuck from sunrise to sundown. Whatever happened to the lovely TV movies from before, with morals, family, married life, a pet, and the American constitution? Give us back Bewitched. In any case, Samantha, who fucks like a man, is my favorite.
Upon arriving in Tunis, I had the shock of a wearying wait. Two hours in line at passport control. I hate lines. Libla’s customers, who become furious if someone doesn’t serve them immediately, turned me off of them. In the Tunisian port everything was slow. We were in Africa, after all, and life went at a different pace. Why run, why accelerate death? They told me: “No wild scenes, you get used to it with time.” I tried, but in the second hour I fervently yearned for Switzerland. Some idea to study classical Arabic! Unhealthy. Thrusting oneself among idling Arabs. I ached for chocolate, clocks, banks, efficiency. Of course, immigrants aren’t treated well in Switzerland—they consider you a parasite—but no one deprives you of a pleasant Guten Morgen. In Tunis, though—and this is clear as soon as you step foot on the pier—men give you a full-body X-ray. I can’t stand their stares. They undress you with their eyes and some try making love to you with their pupils. I don’t like this staring game. I’m afraid of the obscene.
Now I’m here in front of a cup and a cockroach. In a little while I’ll take the school’s placement exam. I don’t want to end up with the novices; I have to defend my honor. Yesterday I tried reviewing irregular weak verbs on the boat. Terrible idea. In the end I didn’t know whether it was the sea that made me sick as a dog or those absurdly conjugated Arabic verbs. Then I closed the book and shouted, “Sadists!” I got up and went to some unidentified point on that old heap, blaspheming the sick grammarians of the classical period.
Do I really have the entrance exam already? It seems like just yesterday that I left Rome. This is coming from someone who felt like she’d spent an eternity in bed. I was only curled up for six hours. Lucy is still sleeping. I’ll wake her up in the next twenty minutes or so. Or no, thirty. My star sleeps so well, like a child.
Malick has a moustache. He looks like Omar Sharif from Funny Girl, perhaps less elegant and skinnier. He has a penetrating stare. Lucy caught it without any effort. She glued her right eye to his and did the same with her left. After that, she didn’t unstick again. She stayed like that, having a grand time. Lucy and Malick, the world champion of gazes, reveled together. She knows how to do it. She’s taken men on before. The Tunisian squirt could do nothing but offer us his services as an escort. He was under her spell.
“We don’t know him, Lucy, what if he gets some idea in his head?”
“Don’t worry about it. He’s a human being, what can you do? We’ll tear him apart if he tries anything.”
Malick turned out to be a real lifesaver. We got lost with him, but thankfully he knew the language. Not that he did a lot, but at least he was a somewhat friendly face. The boy was very distracted, though. We waited in line for two hours at passport control. It’s not like we were entering Israel with a terrorist’s suitcase. In those two hours, I prayed to anything I could for a bed. I was a mess. Vomit stirred inside me. The sea hadn’t left me on solid ground.
Malick also looked exhausted. How old was he? Lucy was right: he was a human being. At most, he was twenty-two years old. Lucy was studying him. Hardly a maternal gaze. Very lewd. But…but…Lucy, you can’t! You can’t really marry him. Yes, I get it, he’s nice…and yes, I know, he’s really something…look at that ass! How thoughtful of God…yes, but…it’s not ethical, Lucy, you can’t do it! This is a poor country, we come from the wealthy West (even I—a black woman—am a wealthy westerner here) and they are African. No, but what are you saying? Of course I’m not a racist. Excuse me, I’m colored too, but I’ll acknowledge that there’s an economic disparity. I buy Manolo Blahniks for myself. And what about him? Have you seen how he’s dressed? His T-shirt is from two World Cups ago, it’s ridiculous. He’s not doing well, dear. Look, Lucy, how old are you now? Thirty-five? So, let me get this straight, will you always be thirty-five? Won’t you chan
ge? Aren’t you approaching the big four-oh? No? Am I wrong? Of course, you also have the right to your share of happiness. You say he isn’t poor? But, he might…
In the meantime, the little squirt had stopped a taxi. He negotiated the price. I thought I might have heard khasma, five, or maybe khamseen, fifty. Malick was getting pissed during the exchange and his skin was changing color. He turned violet. His veins bulged and the hairs of his moustache stood on end. It frightened me. Then we got in, dead tired. The seats were riddled with holes. They told me even the taxis in Mogadishu were once this shabby. Now there are no more taxis. There isn’t even any Mogadishu.
Malick looked at the driver and repeated the name of the street, our destination, the finish line, the coveted bed. Othman Al Bahri. Yes, the one and only. The taxi started going in circles. Once, twice, three times. Even though we didn’t understand a word of the conversation between our squirt and the cabby, it was immediately clear to me and Lucy that the street wouldn’t be found. It wasn’t the usual trick to run the meter, especially since we’d negotiated the price and there wasn’t a meter in the car. Only the banal tragedy of a street that couldn’t be found. I wanted to cry. My bed, my rest, was moving further away from me.
Malick was losing his patience. He turned from violet to yellow. He said something forcefully to the cabby—it was full of ‘ayn, the nefarious Arabic letter that all students hated. I also picked out some al, a few bi, a handful of ‘ala. “I’m screwed,” I thought. “It takes me forever to recognize one preposition. They’re going to put me in the first level with the kids, idiots, and horses.” Despite my exhaustion, the thought of the entrance exam concerned me more than the street that couldn’t be found. Maybe it was better to study Arabic at Centocelle; it’s also full of Tunisians because there’s a mosque. I would’ve been spared the seasickness, the money for the tickets, and the panic. The next month off they give me at Libla, I’m putting myself in a huge resort at Centocelle.
