Women Who Blow on Knots Read online

  “I don’t know. I should be gone in three or four days.”

  “Good, let’s head out to Dido’s together before you go. I need to go to Carthage. You know the tablets I was talking about…”

  “Sure, let’s do it. In any case maybe…”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe I’ll come back. Maybe I’ll write a book. I mean it would be good if I did. Something about women. I mean…”

  “Ah,” said Amira on a new wave of enthusiasm, “so will we be in it?”

  Relaxing a little, Maryam said, “If that’s the case then you better change my name.”

  I teased them.

  “Oh, so you’re already so sure you deserve to be heroines in a book? I don’t know, I’ll have to keep a close eye on you.”

  They laughed and for a moment I lost myself in the scene. They were two women, two men, two cowboys, husband and wife, mother and child… Everything contrary to initial appearances. The refugee made the asylum real. The one who seems most in need of protection is more powerful than the protector. They weren’t entirely Thelma and Louise but they might make for a good film if someone actually watched it.

  “For example I could call it The Country of Fugitives. Let’s say… Rokolan! Rokolan Fugitive Country! And of course Madam Lilla would be the protagonist. Something totally outrageous.”

  And this is how things unfolded as we laughed and doused ourselves in bowls of water and scrubbed off slews of dead skin:

  Amira: “Madam Lilla’s mother should be a real weirdo. Full of life; a powerful woman.”

  Maryam: “They should live on an island. An island with no men.”

  Amira: “That’s not possible… Maybe an island where all the men have women’s names.”

  Maryam: “Because they don’t want to send the men to war.”

  Me: “What war are you talking about?”

  Amira: “There’s a war on the mainland. They’ve fled the city. All the cowards are gathered on the island. So everyone is out of touch. Wait, now that’s good. The Cowardly Fugitive Island of Rokolan!”

  Maryam: “That’s where Madam Lilla gets her love of film. Her grandad ownded a cinema.”

  Amira: “Everyone on the island is crazy about film. They’re fugitives, right? So they are always trying to get their minds off things.”

  Maryam: “That’s why… Look, now this is it: the names of everything on the island come from names of old films. For example… The Butcher Tarzan.”

  Our laughter filled the hamam like full purple grapes and big fleshy chunks of watermelon.

  Amira: “Wait! Wait! I got it! The Haberdasher’s Little Shop of Fears.”

  Maryam: “Kill Bill’s Beauty Salon.”

  Me: “The Male Barber of Siberia.”

  Before my very eyes they conjured up the image of an island garlanded with laughter. There was nothing more I needed to do. Like two discoverers drawing up a topographical map, they charted the novel. They came up with such bizarre ideas that it got to the point where Madam Lilla was endowed with super powers.

  Maryam: “Ah, yes that’s it! You’re right! She should be a superhero! With tights and all the gear!”

  Amira: “Super Madam!”

  For a good while we shook with laughter, rising and falling. And when Amira hopped up onto the centre stone with a second towel wrapped around her neck like a cape to perform the superhero dance, her hips quivering in all directions, we really cracked up.

  “I’m getting the feeling that you people have turned feisty since the Jasmine Revolution. Superheroes or whatever you want to call them!” I said, laughing. Suddenly serious, Amira said, “Now don’t you dare go and use that term again, like you’re some kind of tourist. The name is Thawrat el-Karama. The Dignity Revolution. The Jasmine bit was made up by an American.”

  “Now look, when you say this is a matter of dignity… Have you seen My Fair Lady? Not the Audrey Hepburn version, the older one?”

  “I swear I’m the spitting image of Gilda!” claimed Amira.

  “For the love of God, would you just stop for a second, I’m talking about something else. Have you seen it? Bernard Shaw wrote the scenario. In the Hepburn version they cut a section. There’s this English professor in it. He picks up a flower peddler and teaches her how to speak properly and the girl’s father goes to the professor’s house and asks for money. Five pounds! And so the professor shames the man and says, what kind of father are you, trying to sell me your daughter and all that. But the vagabond father gives this crazy speech. On dignity. He says something like this: “I’m a man with no money. Which means I am opposed to all middle-class values! Always!”

  Maryam looked at me “And? So what are you trying to say?”

  “I mean this dignity deal and all that sounds a little like a middle-class thing in your countries. I mean when people are starving…”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  The conversation got stuck. Lost in another mood, Amira said, “Ah, I’m going crazy. What was Gilda’s real name? In fact didn’t she have that line: ‘The boys sleep with Gilda at night … and wake up with – whatever her name was – and they leave in the morning.’ Ah, what was the woman’s name?”

  Maryam seemed lost as she tried to recall the name.

  “Wait, wait,” said Amira, “those ladies over there are from the generation that watched all those summer drive-in movies that were so popular in the colonial period. They would know something like this.” Amira was clowning around again as she called out to the women: “Hey, you over there! What was the woman’s name?” And she got up on the central stone, struck a pose, and started to sing.

  “Put the blame on the mame! Put the blame on the mame!”

  Her hamam towel slid off her waist and she was indeed the perfect Arab Gilda!

  The women were as delighted as village children who sell flowers in the mountains and joyously greet a car only to have the driver take their pictures. Clapping, they sang along with Amira, tossing in whatever bits they knew; toothless and laughing they were beautiful. Then finally one of them shouted, “Rita Hayworth! May she rest in peace!”

  “Aha!” said Amira and turning to us she added, “She’s the one I’m rooting for!”

  Amira’s cheeks were flushed bright red. I saw the way Maryam was looking at her. She looked as if she might murder anyone who didn’t hold Amira in high esteem, but most of all, she looked like she wanted to strangle all the men who slept with Gilda by night and left Rita in the morning…

  6

  “Dido? I’m rooting for Kahina!” said Amira, laughing as she walked away. “See you tonight at Madam Lilla’s.” Amira’s clear stance on everything was sealed with a smile, like that first joke we had all shared together. Amira had to do some shopping for her new job at the hamam – or at least that’s what she said – so she left me and Maryam to enjoy a morning cup of coffee at the Café Univers on Burgiba Boulevard in the city centre, an imitation Champs-Elysée panelled with enormous men.

  “So who’s al-Kahina?” I asked Maryam.

  “One of Dido’s girls,” she replied. With the gruff precision of a serious academic, she went on: “I don’t mean she was her daughter. I’ve just always thought of it that way. But first tell me what you know about Dido.”

  “Oh sister, no more than the average tourist.”

  “That’s all you need. Dido was the young queen of the Phoenician Kingdom in Sur in Southern Lebanon. But her husband’s brothers killed her husband. In fact they were going to kill her too, and they set a trap for her. But turns out she has a dream warning her. And she flees on a boat with a bull hide packed with gold. Truth is I think she took more than that but anyway… She sails to northern Tunisia. To Carthage. But they say to her, ‘you can’t have it, madam’.”

  “Can’t have what?”

  “The land. I mean they wouldn’t sell Dido anything in Carthage. They mocked her, made an enemy of her and all that. Dido says, ‘I don’t want very much. Only what can be cover
ed with the hide of an ox.’ That night she cuts the ox hide into thin strips and the next day she covers the entire hill in Carthage with strips all linked together at the ends. Shocked, the locals sell her the land.”

  “Huh? That’s ridiculous. How can that be? I’ve never heard of a community submitting to the smarts of a desperate woman and not putting up a fight. Have you?”

  “Sister, the story is part myth. No documents. Half of it’s just a fairy tale. Though later the question of covering the largest amount of land with the strips of an ox hide came to be known as the Dido Problem in ancient Greek mathematics. Are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “The land she got became Carthage. They build a port, and trade and sea transport booms and the city flourishes. But in no time there is this bastard who leaves his kingdom in Macedonia, crosses the Mediterranean, and arrives at the shores of Carthage and in a week he has the mighty Queen of Carthage’s head spinning…”

  “Of course. They wouldn’t just let her be! And?”

  Pausing, she smiled:

  “I can’t tell you the rest. You need to do the research. That’s enough of Dido for now. Let’s move on to Kahina.”

  “Don’t go and make stuff up for my sake! Don’t you dare!”

  Maryam was really getting into her swing as she lit a cigarette. Then she told the story like she was a sweet old man.

  “Madam al-Kahina… That was the name they gave her. But the Muslims didn’t like her one bit and spread the rumour that she was a wizard soothsayer!”

  “Allah, of course the Muslims!”

  We laughed a little as she playfully parodied an overly sensitive pious woman adjusting her headscarf. Then she went on:

  “Well madam, al-Kahina, came onto the scene sometime after Christ. Do you know about the Islamic Empire’s transition to the Umayyad? Ali, Omer, Kerbela and all that?”

  “Sister, you mean how the control of Islam passed from the poor to the rich, from oppressed to oppressor. We know that chapter in history.”

  “And the switch to male dominance! Don’t forget that. The Umayyad worked to spread Islam through Africa. They made up all sorts of rumours about al-Kahina: she was Jewish, a sorceress, a Christian and so on. But if you ask me, she was a loner. And a significant part of modern Libya belonged to her.”

  “Why don’t I know these things? These are first-rate stories.”

  “Then listen and learn. So these Umayyad do a full press. They are defeated in the first battle. You see al-Kahina was quite a powerful warrior. But then, and I’ll make this short, they finally get her cornered. And…”

  “Now you better tell me the end to this one.”

  I said those words with the sheer severity of a child and I almost laughed at the way they sounded. She went on:

  “al-Kahina retreats to the south. She relies on the tactic of destroying all available resources. Nothing is planted, watered or harvested. Al-Kahina knew it was the end. In the desert she dies along with her enemies. In the books it’s written, ‘the drought we’re still suffering today stretches back to that time.’ Get a load of the misogyny. The whole thing happened in a desert and it was a woman’s fault. And over a thousand years ago.”

  Maryam was now really riled up. I asked, “So you’re also for al-Kahina?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she blurted. Being with Maryam could make you feel alone in company of another. There was only one thing she was determined not to talk about and, provided that we didn’t go there, she was strong as a rock.

  Fifteen minutes later we were in a taxi and Maryam was shouting in Tunisian Arabic:

  “Uncle, do you see any other left? That’s it! I told you we were going to Carthage!”

  Maryam was having a lighthearted squabble with the taxi driver. He wore coke bottle glasses and his face was pushed close up against the windshield. The radio was blasting techno and the windows were wide open. He was wearing a coat. Zooming along at a hundred kilometres an hour with a driver who was out of his mind, we made a glorious entrance into Carthage. He drove sharply away, leaving us at the bottom of the museum complex. We started up the hill to the palace perched on top of a windy hill. On the hillside overlooking the sea sat the awkward concrete museum buildings. From the other side you looked out over an expanse of hills. There was no trace of the glories of history in either the museum or in the dry weathered ruins of the old city. The place didn’t attract many visitors; apart from the museum there was nothing more than a cluster of tents with old souvenirs lined up in front of them. The museum officials sported a large amount of that complete, ongoing holiday languor that was everywhere in the country. “Sister, this country seems lost in a daze. Is this revolution fatigue or what?” Before I could offer any more analysis I was interrupted by the official at the ticket office:

  “Welcome, Madam Maryam!”

  “How’s that?” I turned to Maryam.

  “They know me by now. After all it is my fifteenth visit,” she says. “Think of it like a pilgrimage.” Collecting the tickets she puts them in her pocket and takes me by the arm. Murmuring to herself her step grows heavy and her face slips into a reverence, and she partly closes her eyes like a woman in fervent prayer.

  “A woman never abandons her goddess. Don’t forget that. They only weave them new clothes to help them hide!”

  I thought of the Hand of Fatima around Madam Lilla’s neck. “Wasn’t that charm around Madam Lilla’s neck pretty weird?”

  “That wasn’t exactly a Hand of Fatima talisman, or was it?”

  “You’re right! Because it had a ring or a necklace or something like that, no?”

  “Fatima, Dido, al-Kahina, Sibel, Meryem… Use whatever name you like. Female gods in different clothes. As you might imagine, in a man’s world you have to be quick on your feet to stay alive. Onward. Let’s go see the tablets.”

  We stepped inside the museum building. Maryam knew exactly where she was going, occasionally reaching out and touching images of Dido in the mosaics on the walls and the floor. She was inside a kind of solitary prayer. With one finger raised, Dido seemed to be explaining something. We stopped in front of a tablet. Standing there still for so long, I grew restless and asked, “What’s Dido saying?”

  “‘We built this road and if you damage it we’ll do such and such to you. It’s a threat. I mean you have no idea what will go down as history…

  “Take these slabs for example. Say there’s nothing left of the palace but then someone chisels out a poem and it’s great but there’s nothing left of that, and then you see it’s just a cheap bowl that survives?”

  “Huh?”

  Maryam wasn’t listening.

  “I think it’s silly. We’re living for no reason. Just take this big deal about Dido… Maybe she was nothing but a damn loser. How can you know? I mean maybe Amira’s right. Maybe there was an Asmahan in her time and your Dido was Oum Kalthoum, like a man, a woman as hard as concrete. Seeing that she ended up a victorious queen…”

  “Where do you get the victorious part?”

  “Well, that’s you what you said…?”

  “It’s not like that. Give me a couple minutes to check something. You have a look around.”

  Maryam was starting to treat me like I was an idiotic contractor wandering about a construction site for no apparent reason. So I had a look around. There was nothing worth seeing. And what was there was labelled in French and I couldn’t understand a word. I went outside and walked until I could see the sea. Beautiful. A little way ahead was the Carthage pier. I wondered if the sun was stronger when the cicadas were humming? It seemed that way. If only I could take an afternoon nap. Jump in the sea, splash about, stretch out on the sand and wake up to find myself inside a cloud that smelled like flowers. And if only all the problems in Turkey could just go away. How sweet. What in the world was I doing in this godforsaken country anyway? I should just leave…

  “Come on, we’re going to Sidi Bou Said. We can have a coffee there.”
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br />   My hands stuffed in my pockets, I followed Maryam. She was like a mother keen to get the shopping done and I was the kid dragging her feet. “Just what is it you’re looking for in these tablets?” I ask. “Something!” she says over her shoulder. “Great,” I say. Going through the same left-versus-right disputes with the taxi driver we finally made it to Sidi Bou Said.

  “So this is postcard Tunisia,” I say.

  Blue and white houses on a hilltop overlooking the sea. Blue window-eyes staring over the sea. You could almost make out hands shielding those eyes from the sun.

  Wandering through narrow, cobblestoned streets, passing empty gift shops and despondent shopkeepers, we arrived at an outdoor coffeehouse on one of the terraces overlooking the sea. The only other people there were an old man and his wife. We choose a shady spot sectioned off by a low wall. I don’t feel like talking to Maryam so I watch the couple. They’ve ordered a crepe – it’s on the way. They’re like a scratched section of a record, moving in fits and starts. Their faces are scrunched up as if they are trying to pluck something out of the distant past as they look out over the sea. In a way they don’t look like a couple; now the man forgets his wife and now she loses track of him. On the other hand they seem so much an inseparable part of each other: linked by a cable, they seem to communicate without words. Clearly the woman has dressed him – he looks sharp as a tack. As for the man he surely doesn’t do anything for his wife, apart from acting like a child to make her feel younger and more adept. They exchange a few words about the crepe. Words that have been said a thousand times, words understood in a mumble. They sit there like two ancient countries wondering why they ever settled on a ceasefire way back when. Compared to the old couple the waiter seems to be sprinting when he comes over to them with their orange juices, his arrival almost an act of terror. But then their faces light up. When he leaves, their eyes go dry and they slip into a dark mood. Now a bee is going for their juice. First the man listlessly tries to wave it away, grumbling all the while. Seizing the opportunity before the bee even launches its first attack, the woman says, “I told you that if we ordered orange juice…” Belligerent, the man says, “You’re the one who got it annoyed. Now it’s all in a fuss.” Maliciously, the woman snaps, “Oh, don’t you just know everything!” The man seems ready to pick up the table and smash it over his wife’s head. “You never let me eat in peace.” Fifty years of sacrifice firmly under the woman’s belt, she says stridently and with full confidence, “Did I say we should come here? I told you it was too hot!” The bitter taste of a rotten lifetime on his tongue, he says, “In any case this crepe smells like egg. We should’ve eaten at home…” They’re just about to have another go at each other when the woman slams her hand down on the bee. And with a menace in her voice showing the extent of her rage, she says: “Just eat already. Eat!” Once upon a time these two, cheek to cheek, posed for a black and white picture.