Beyond Babylon Read online

  But her mother wouldn’t let her suffer in peace. One had to keep doing, doing, doing, always doing things for her. No one’s hands could stay still. Everything had to move quickly. Hands, legs, the hairs on your pussy. Everything had to move, in perpetual and inconclusive motion. Suffering, stagnation, death—none were permitted in Miranda’s kingdom. She had to move in order to be. Move to exist. Consequently, she was dragging her daughter into her latest act of insanity: studying classical Arabic.

  “You’ll see, hija, Arabic will calm your troubled heart.”

  No sooner said than done. Miranda, efficient woman that she was, hastened to confirm enrollment for two people at one of the most exclusive Arabic schools in the world. Then a quick stop to the travel agency to guarantee a flight for August 3 to the city of jasmine and, finally, a quick trip to Nima, her favorite bookstore, to purchase postcards and maps of Tunisia.

  “Yes, my love, I’ve been studying Arabic for two years. But you’ll see, you’ll manage fine. Learning a new alphabet opens up other worlds.”

  Sheer efficiency. That was Mar’s mother. It was no accident that she’d sold thousands of copies of her five poetry books. In one country, Italy, where readers of any kind were in short supply, selling a bunch of poetry was a fool’s errand. She was proud of this success, she’d say, “Hard work always pays off in the end.”

  She was convinced this was also possible for that funny daughter of hers who didn’t resemble her at all, physically or spiritually. Or maybe she was her spitting image. She’d failed with her. Now she was doing everything she could to make up for it. It was an act of commiseration over the abortion, that bizarre story.

  “Are you gay, my love?”

  “No, Mama. I love this woman, but I don’t know what I am. I’m trying to be myself.”

  “But you sleep with her, for God’s sake!” she blurted.

  Miranda loathed Patricia, a woman she didn’t understand. If her daughter was a lesbian, why couldn’t she have chosen a better woman? Patricia was too white, too sad, too strange. Then there was that nauseating poppy smell she brought everywhere. A whiff of death that never left her.

  Patricia was part Spanish and part Italian, a journalist from Madrid whom they’d sent back to Rome, perhaps because no one could tolerate her in the newsroom. Miranda was convinced her daughter was searching for a mother in the strange Spanish woman. Then that child had come along and complicated their lives.

  Mar didn’t know why she’d allowed Patricia to sway her. She clearly remembered the day, the month, the hour, the moment that their lives changed. Pati made her Valencian paella that evening. The smell filled the emptiness of Prati, which had been their love nest for five months.

  “Esta noche a friend of mine is coming to dinner. You’ll love him…mucho, muchísimo.”

  The friend worked for an Italian firm on oil rigs around the world. He’d seen a good number of countries, from Kazakhstan to Turkmenistan. He’d been to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China. He was off to Venezuela next. He spoke many languages very poorly. In fact, he only guessed at them. Mar didn’t find the boy very pleasant. She didn’t like the way he chopped zucchini on his plate. She couldn’t stand him, he made her claustrophobic. She didn’t know how to handle the paella. She scarfed it down joylessly.

  After eating, Pati rolled a joint and took out one of her treats, a French chocolate liqueur. Mar sipped the liqueur and thought that once the night was over she’d give her woman a good massage to thank her.

  Pati surprised her instead.

  “It’s time you and I had a kid, Mar. Vincenzo came here to help us.”

  Mar didn’t understand. She looked at her girlfriend flustered and confused.

  “Tonight I’m going to my friend Marcela’s place. She and her husband went on a trip to Maremma. She left me the keys to her house. I’ll be there for el fin de semana. You all be good and get to it.”

  Mar felt the world collapse around her. Her sacred center evaporated.

  She made love with Vincenzo all weekend. She was touched, kissed, licked. She was revolted and humiliated. For three days, this unknown man who cut his zucchini terribly had his way with her body. It wasn’t the first time she made love with a man, but never with someone so foul. Maybe Patricia had chosen him deliberately because she was afraid Mar would want to go straight again.

  She didn’t become pregnant in those three days.

  “Mar, querida, we have to try again.”

  They called Vincenzo another time. The same Valencian paella, the same joint, the same chocolate liqueur. Patricia left with the same Marcela’s keys in her pocket. The same scene. The same kisses, fondlings, licks. The same drilling. The same rehearsed pleasure. The man was savage. It went that way for two months. Then, finally, pregnancy.

  Mar was satisfied. She wouldn’t have to let herself be touched anymore by that repugnant man. If it were a boy, she would call him Elias, like the father she’d never met. Mama Miranda had only mentioned her father’s name, not a comma more.

  Instead, Pati made her abort.

  “Having a child was a horrendous idea.” She gave no other explanation.

  That’s how it was with Pati: take it or leave it. Being with that woman was some kind of oxymoron.

  Mar felt vile. The nausea and everything else was turning her inside out. She woke up frustrated every morning and haphazardly took a bite out of any sweet thing in their pantry. Usually there wasn’t much. A few stale crackers and expired plum cake. Mar made do. Only sugar could mollify her. She spent entire days roaming disheveled around the house. She raged wherever she could. There wasn’t that much space to walk around, but those few meters inside the house provided the only carefree moments of the day. The rest was people spitting one judgment after another at her. Everyone wanted the last word about her body, about her child. Mar waited to see who would win the contest. Who would it be? She awaited her future with tired impatience. Mama Miranda was enraged. “Are you really throwing this all to the wind? Didn’t I teach you anything? Tell me hija, anything?” And then, as punctual as a Swiss watch: “Leave that woman. She’s hurting you.”

  Was it true? Was Pati hurting her? Could it be possible? Her, with such white skin? She enjoyed massaging that alabaster skin, which seemed like a cadaver’s, but not one that was decaying, no, no. It was the whiteness of eternal death. That’s why it was alluring and perilous. Mar had asked herself repeatedly whether blood actually coursed through Patricia’s veins. Does she ever menstruate? In those months when they couldn’t let each other go, she had never seen a Tampax, and she didn’t remember seeing a pad in Pati’s handbag. Maybe she was a man without a cock. Then that means I’m not a lesbian. See, Mama, I’m not a lesbian.

  But afterward, when the suicide had already happened, Pati’s mother said to her, “My daughter lies in a lake of blood.” She’d told her like a newscaster. Pati’s mother, with her hair in curled layers, her false smile, her extravagant pain. Patricia’s red lake. She wanted to see it for herself. She would’ve taken some of that blood and touched her forehead, like a Hindu with water from the sacred Benares River.

  When the day came, Mar went by herself to the abortion clinic. Pati had an interview with a blogger who’d set the internet on fire. Blogs were her strange friend’s final hobby. She wanted to start one of her own. Mar went by herself. It was as she imagined, like she’d seen millions of times in the soap operas that occupied some of her depressing afternoons. Everything was white like Patricia’s skin. The walls were white, as were the nurses’ clothes and the gurney. She was the exception, black as she was. The machinery was the exception, gray as it was. It made no impression on her. It wasn’t as large as she’d thought. Discreet, even. Stainless steel, brute force. Yes, she trusted whatever that thing was. It lifted the weight from her stomach. Everything was over in a heartbeat.

  Legs in the air, tears, and then that weird noise. She was like a small girl eating spelt soup. Blowing on the hot spoon, filled to the brim. Blowing h
ard to cool it. Before she knew it, it was in her mouth, slurped up.

  She’d never liked spelt soup.

  THE NEGROPOLITAN

  “They’re heretics a bunch of fucking heretics these Christians.”

  Abdel Aziz says it without a full stop, in one breathless go. The beardless doll’s voice hardens with each vowel. Abdel Aziz’s voice is a concentration of terse wrath. It almost scares me. I forget that I’m standing in front of a half-pint and, what’s more, I forget the half-pint in question is my cousin.

  I’m distressed. His baritone seeps into my neural circuit. It’s about to disintegrate.

  I beg you, tell me it isn’t true. Tell me they haven’t returned. Tell me I’m on acid and Abdel Aziz isn’t saying what I fear he is, that my ears are boycotting him and I’m not sure I heard him right. Tell me something, anything. I’ll even take insults. I’m not an addict, I swear, but today I’d rather be in a drug-fueled delirium. At least then I’d have a rational explanation for what my cousin is babbling on about.

  Silence. No one responds. I dialed various numbers. Zeus, Buddha, Shiva, Ra, Zoroaster, Mitra, Saint Paul, Saint Francis, Saint Januarius, Milingo. No one can give me an explanation. No miracle. The sky doesn’t open and the waters of the Red Sea don’t part.

  They have returned. The evidence petrifies me. The Jehovah’s Witnesses came back. When Abdel Aziz is in this over-excited state, only they can be the cause. What in the world have they said to make him like this? I’d like to tell them, “Cousins, the First Council of Nicaea happened already. And anyway we’re Muslims. If Jesus Christ is spirit, man, God, or insanity, it’s none of our business. For us, he’s a second-tier prophet, a benchwarmer.” But I don’t have the strength to say anything. I want my busted sofa. I want to lean my head back for a little while and maybe, yeah, close my eyes for a minute. I don’t even have time to sit down. Lucy will be here in less than two hours. I need to get moving. We reserved seats. A chunk of steel on rails heading to “Paleermooo” city.

  From there, a steamboat will take us to Tunis. To Africa. I’m not familiar with Africa. And to think that black blood courses through my veins, that I was born there. It’s not like knowing it, fundamentally. It really isn’t the same thing. Birth can be completely incidental. One is born for the strangest reasons. One lemon vodka too many, a languorous glance, by mistake, for revenge, out of sacrifice and yes, even for love. I was born in Africa and that’s all. I emerged from Maryam Laamane’s hot uterus, I whined some, they washed me, and then I sucked that sour milk of which I have no memory.

  I don’t understand why I’m going there now, to Africa. Lucy insisted, I think. And I didn’t know how to tell her no, I suppose. I can’t say no to (almost) anyone.

  “Zuzu, you’ll see, it’ll be like staying in Miami Beach.” For Lucy, Miami Beach is the peak of possible delight. Miami for her means the three S’s: sunbathe, squander, screw. There you stretch out like an iguana, you tan, you shop recklessly and then, last but not least, you roll around with some local, brawny stud. Lucy knows all of this because she’s seen it on TV. It’s no coincidence that her favorite show is Miami Vice. That old stuff from the eighties, with those two politically correct cops, a pale-faced adulterer and a deluxe, curly-haired black, who really poured their hearts into the three S’s, the last more than the others. Between one piece of ass and the next, the two of them solve a few detective cases, with car chases, shoot-outs, and fake struggles in their strictly 100 percent cotton Armani suits.

  Lucy has never been to Miami. I don’t think Tunis is like Miami Beach. I don’t even know if Miami Beach is like Miami Beach, but Tunis certainly isn’t. Everyone I spoke to before this trip told me it’s like going to Latina. So let me get this straight, I paid €230 for round-trip train and boat tickets to end up in Latina? A city of fascists? Excuse me, I want my money back.

  “And Zuzu, the school is fabulous.” Ah, yes, the school. I’d forgotten about it. Lucy and I enrolled in the Arabic school, Bourguiba, renowned and cherished by Arabists the world over. You walk in and after a short stint you’re a grammarian versed in the first one hundred years of the Hijrah. And, insha’allah, with just a few days of the Bourguiban treatment you’ll go to great pains to recognize the voice you had when you’d arrived. Enrollment also includes a complete transplant, at the root, of the larynx. A few lessons and you’re finally able to pronounce the infamous ‘ayn, the most hated of Arabic letters.

  Damn, it’s been ages since I’ve had thirty straight days of vacation (thirty-two, technically, since I ate into a Saturday and Sunday as well), and where do I go to waste them? A school. No comment. And not just any school—one for Arabic! I’m just saying, why couldn’t I have sewing or ceramics as a hobby like a sane person? Did I have to get myself tangled up in classical Arabic? Awful idea, Zuhra, awful. Typical.

  I’d regret it as soon as I arrived, my spine was telling me as it began showing callous signs of imbalance. My poor spine throbbed like damnation. Maybe I should’ve listened to you. You’re warning me, aren’t you, spine? You’re one step ahead. It’ll be a catastrophe, I feel it, I’m really, truly afraid.

  “I mean, Christians believe in the Trinity…they believe God is in three Persons, an absurdity. God is one. Jesus is the prophesied son of God because he is the primordial spirit, not because the Father gives him a good scolding.”

  What do I do, stop him? But of course I do. Abdel Aziz is too good to end up in Lucifer’s hands, that filthy swine. I fill my lungs with as much air as possible, I hold only what I need, and then let it explode in a shout. What do I shout? Haram, obviously. Haram, or unclean, not kosher, not halal—the stench of sin, so to speak. Abdel Aziz jerks back. Maybe jerks isn’t right, he takes a few steps in reverse, baby steps. My cousin took the hit. He’s turning pale. Me, on the other hand, I’m enjoying this and say it again, haram, this time putting more emphasis on the H. If Bin Laden saw me, he’d recruit me for his cave videos. I can already see myself with my AK-47 from Transnistria—a hole in the earth where, if you’ve got the dough, you can give the finger to both Bush and Ahmadinejad—and families from the Gulf to the Maghreb whimpering in front of Al Jazeera. My voice would become more famous than Fairuz’s, the nightingale of Lebanon.

  For now I’m a loser who will miss the train to Latin…oops, Paleermooo, if I don’t hurry. First I have to reprimand my little cousin. I need to remind him that we are Muslims and that there are certain things he cannot say, out of respect for the elders (that is, for me) who’ve gone through the infamous thirty-three days of fasting. It doesn’t matter to me if he doesn’t say the five prayers (I do, even if only recently. I feel very guilty for the lost time. They didn’t teach me very well in elementary school. I know the opening sura, though, that one I do) or do Ramadan, the zakat, or the pilgrimage. But he can’t talk to me every day about Christian stuff. The Vatican is not in my top five. And the Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t get off my ass. I’d say it’s open war between us. Before, I promise, I didn’t really give a shit. I saw them on the street, and when they stopped me I smiled, walked faster, passed them gracefully, liberated myself like a goddess. Then one wretched day they found my two cousins, alone at home. Mina was sleeping, and Abdel Aziz offered them tea and cookies. Mine! My beloved chocolate cookies.

  “It’s a good way to learn Italian, sister,” he said to me, “and it’s free.” My two little cousins had been staying with me for seven months. They came over in a dinghy, and now Italian is a necessity, seeing that their (clandestine) lives will be spent here for a bit. What was I to do? I told him: “OK, if it’s for Italian…”

  From that moment on, the rat hole I insisted on calling home, contrary to evidence, was bursting at the seams. With what? With magazines from those people obsessed with conversion. I have nothing against the Witnesses, to be clear. I don’t hate them, nothing but respect, but they invade my personal space. When I found The Bible: Word of God or Man? among my dirty bras, I flipped a shit. The house is covered floor to cei
ling with stuff like Why Read the Bible? Why? Abdel Aziz hides them everywhere. In the kitchen, between the Caetano Veloso CDs, in the fake gardenias and, lastly, on the bookshelf with texts about Islam. If he puts one of those horrid magazines between the Qurans, I swear I’ll kick him out of the house. Stop, stop, stop, it’s not what you think, I’m not a damn fundamentalist! But man, give a girl her space. I love Abdel Aziz to death, but his brain is turning into gruyère with this stuff. Or maybe it’s the pain of no longer having a homeland that turns our brains to mush?

  I take out my burgundy passport. I examine it. Zuhra Laamane. Me, with my mother’s last name, though she doesn’t use it. I, me myself, in the flesh, meat and bone, tits, pussy, and all. Me, Italian. Me, Italian? The usual doubt assails me. Will the passport be enough to prove it? What if I bring my license, too? And my film society card? Yes, I’ll bring that too. And my grocery rewards card? My Arci Solidarietà card? Library card? Yes, all of them, I’ll take them all. The gas card as well. It adds up. On each one of these damn cards my name is printed, isn’t it? Even my address in the Eternal City. Unfortunately, nowhere is it written that I am Italian, but at least they show that I live here. They reinforce the Italianness of my passport.

  I don’t want a repeat of what happened to me in Spain. Zapatero wasn’t there yet when I went. The right-wingers still seemed to be in power. Not that there’s a substantial difference. At least in Italy there’s not. They say there’s some variation in Spain. Could be, but I live here. In Spain they wanted to arrest me. Not at the airport, where in any case a black Muslim knows these things can happen to her. No, not at the airport. They wanted to arrest me in police headquarters. Members of the guardia civil are demented. They thought I went there for them to arrest me. I wanted a non-residence certificate to open a bank account. I was a naïve girl preparing to take her first steps as an exchange student in Valencia, the land of paella and horchata de chufa. Just a fucking bank account, nothing out of the ordinary. The one in charge watched me with dumb droopy eyes that hung like the surgically altered breasts of a sixty-year-old woman. He watched me, opening his eyes wide. Then he started fondling my identity card as though it were a porn star’s ass. He turned the poor card around as if there weren’t at least seventy people behind me in line. Then he shot off with cat-like speed and after two minutes, four brutes who looked like they’d walked out of a marine training camp came to take me away. They were huge, muscular, and carried themselves like men who were about to pulverize your bones. They watched me. One of them made me look at his badge. His friend beside him said, “Por favor, seguidme.” I didn’t really understand what was happening. I was a nobody, an exchange student. A few vague recollections of movies came to mind. The things that happen in Hitchcock films, when the hero is unjustly accused of a crime. The kind of things that happen to Cary Grant in North by Northwest, not beautiful Zuzu. The men brought me to a room, blinded me with a B-movie-style lamp, and interrogated me. God, “interrogate” is a stretch. They obsessively repeated a few main ideas: Eres clandestina. No eres italiana. Puta. Marica. Falsificadora de papeles. I was enraged. They let me go after forty-five minutes and a phone call to the embassy in Madrid. Excuses all throughout the precinct. I don’t give a fuck about their excuses, entiendes, amigo? Those were the most disgusting forty-five minutes of my entire existence, olé.