Beyond Babylon

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 words, 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 pussy, 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.

They told me that menses is the color of blood, that it was blood. It isn’t really. It looks like it, but it isn’t. I remember this from a lecture Professor Gentili gave on human anatomy. She taught us a lot so that we’d know our bodies well, how they work and what they’re for. Don’t ignore your bodies! she’d say. I happened to see her again on a bus when I was in my third year of college. She was smiling into the void. She was always very smiley, perhaps because she didn’t neglect herself. In hindsight, menses does look a little like blood. It’s red.

I only know this through hearsay. When I look at what’s on my underwear I only see a speck of gray. I’ve asked around, Is it actually red? They look at me sympathetically. They all thought I was color-blind. I made them believe I was. It would take too long to explain that I lost colors. I’d like to see that trickle of red flowing down my legs. Something flows, I know, since I get cramps. But I still can’t see red. I’ve only seen it on that pilgrim’s head. Ah, what I’d give to watch it run down my legs from my pussy. I would feel almighty. Doctor Ross is enthusiastic about the writing. She says it’ll make menstruating less painful. It’s stress, dear. She says I accumulate too much.

Viscous moisture. A heat spray. I’m burning up, sweating. The temperature isn’t extreme, but it casts a devious wind, the kind that makes you catch an off-season cold. A violent gust blows, wallahi billahi, a vicious gust. And if I say wallahi billahi you must believe me. I’m hot, I’m sweltering. The humidity increases, I’m drenched…drenched in myself. It’s too early for me to be menstruating. My period is knocking at the door well in advance. I hectically rummage through my bag. No pad, no panty liner, not even some nasty tissues. Just my luck! In a little while I’ll ruin these wonderful slacks I bought from Momento. They cost me an arm and a leg. That’s how I am with pants, I prefer buying them large, comfortable, sort of trendy. If you want comfort, they make you pay for it. Otherwise, they cling to you and you try your best to fit into an anorexic’s pants.

I’m not anorexic. But I was bulimic. I eat normally now. I don’t eat Montebovi donuts early in the morning anymore. When I was a teenager I adored those donuts. One morning I made myself a big, fat grilled steak. At the time there was no mad cow disease, no nada de vaca loca, nada de vida loca, so grilled steaks were plentiful. I’d found a nice juicy one in the fridge. It was enormous. I had to go to school. I looked at the clock. I had a good two hours to figure this mess out. The morning was just starting off and I could still finish it. I grabbed a frying pan and cooked a fabulous steak, placing a nice egg beside it. I ate every single bit. Five minutes later, I went to the toilet and vomited every single bit. I brushed my teeth and went to school. During the physics lesson on vectors I realized vomiting such an expensive steak wasn’t a very nice thing to do. Actually, it was a dick move. I stopped being bulimic that day. Then I started eating sloppily, or I forgot to eat. For the duration of college, and even now since I work part-time, I can get by on breakfast alone.

Doctor Ross says it’s all owing to the lack of colors. But now I’m damp; I feel bloody, coagulated scabs along my inner thighs. I’ll ruin my pants. And it’ll bother me because I don’t like anorexic pants. I’m slim, but I have an African behind. I want to be comfortable. I like the pants I’m wearing now. I don’t want them to get ruined.

I want a pad. I search frantically. I look insane. I dig through my purse as though a miracle is waiting for me there. I look and look again. Then I realize mine is just any old bag, somewhat banal, black with tit-shaped pockets, medium size—I like carrying my world at my side like the nomads. But it’s mid-size, nothing like Mary Poppins’s bag. All I know is that I’d like a pad, and I don’t have one. I’m getting damper, stickier, sweatier.

A girl next to me smiles. Her hair is curly, black, and wild like mine. She’s similar to me in other respects—nose, mouth, and butt. Her face is more relaxed, her back straighter. Her eyes are illuminated by a glimmering frame of Swarovski jewelry. There’s an exaggerated coolness about her. She looks me in the eye. She’s not afraid of confrontation. Her gaze is glue. It follows me everywhere and won’t let me breathe. She’s a vigilant, curious girl. We even have the same skin tone.

I should ask for help. She’s offering it freely. Yes, I should tell her something, anything, some bullshit, a thought. I’m not sure. I’m reluctant. Why should I tell her something so intimate? I mean, do I even know her? Does the fact that we have the same skin color automatically make us sisters? She does look a lot like me, to be fair. She’s always touching her wild hair and smiling. She has an open book on her lap. I try reading the title but can barely see. The cover is blue, I can see that. It’s only red I don’t see anymore. The blue book has many pages, and it seems engaging, judging by the girl’s posture. She has earbuds in. I can’t hear a damn thing or tell what the music is. She stops staring at me like she was before. She’s gone back to her book. I’m becoming more moist. The pants are screwed. Can you imagine if the pilgrim came now? He’d see me immersed in my own menstrual blood. Immersed in liquids, damp, sticky, sweaty. I only see gray, though. My menstrual blood flows, but I don’t see brilliant red like everyone else. Only a speck of gray, goddamn it.

The girl is rocking. The music must be great. Maybe she’s in heaven. I shouldn’t disturb her. Now that she’s not looking at me, I wish she would. I wish she’d bother me with her womanliness. Perhaps when Doctor Ross speaks of the feminine, she means the vitality that girl exudes. I wouldn’t know. She’s not looking at me anymore and it’s tearing me apart. Look at me, damn it, I’m here, I’m here, don’t you see me? I’m here, look at me, please. I need your eyes. I need you and your gaze. Take your eyes off the book. I don’t know if it’s telepathy or coincidence. She looks up and plants her eyes on me. It’s a beautiful feeling. It makes me feel alive.

Do you have a pad? I ask her.

I have a tampon, is that okay?

I say yes, that would be fine, it’s all the same. But I’ve never put in a tampon in my life.

She gives me two. I go in the restroom in Ara Pacis. It’s clean, not too bad. Public restrooms are hell on earth. Dirt, visceral liquids, festering feces, assorted filth. This one had only a vague odor of use. You could smell the cleaning personnel’s air freshener. I’m shaking. I don’t even know where to begin. Why didn’t I look for a drugstore? Then I’d have a nice pack of convenient pads that I’d know how to use. But I’d have soiled myself before reaching that phantom pharmacy, I know it. And now? I have this thing in my hand. I kept the other one in my purse, in case this attempt fails. It’s in my hand. I observe what seems like a surgeon’s tool to me. There’s something vaguely threatening about it. The girl gave me the instruction sheet. I grabbed it, muttering a hushed thank you. She shouted from a distance, I’m here, if you need me. Yeah, she knows I’ve never used a tampon in my life. How embarrassing. Does she know about the colors too? Did she understand that I can’t see red?

The instruction sheet frightens me. There’s a drawing of a chick nonchalantly stretching her vagina with two fingers. The drawing makes the vagina out like a monster. I don’t like it. There’s writing in every language saying I need to remain calm. Antes de empezar, relájate. Não fiques nervosa. Prenez votre temps et détendez-vous. Rilassati. Rilassati. Relax. It’s written everywhere. A mantra. They say that if you’re tense, your muscles stiffen and the tampon doesn’t enter, the body won’t allow it. But if you shut your eyes and stop acting like a baby, if you begin to see yourself as a woman and act naturally, then the tampon dances inside you and you can hardly feel it. It’s important to keep the string outside. I was almost starting to believe it would be okay when I read about toxic shock syndrome. I was about to reach nirvana, shit, and now there’s TSS? They say it’s an allergic syndrome or something like that, that some people, only a handful, may be allergic to the tampon. If you are, you can go into a coma. If you feel unusual discomfort, it’s best to remove the tampon. This news about TSS wasn’t what I needed. Now I’m tense again. Then I reread the instructions in the more harmless section and it’s the same thing as before. It tells me that I need to relax and I can’t be tense. It’s a bit like making love. The man enters you tenderly and tells you, My love, I won’t hurt you—in the movies they always tell virgins that. My pilgrim will say it to me. My love, I won’t hurt you. And I’ll believe him. They aren’t all like that flaky-skinned uncle. He wanted to see me suffer, to see me hurt. He drowned me in his white scum and laughed like a sadist. My pilgrim, though, will love me, wallahi I feel it, he will cherish and respect me. He will drown me in respect, wallahi, respect.

Inserting a tampon is a little like making love. I must relax, but I’m so scared. I put it in. Easy. I placed the applicator in my vagina until my fingers touched my body. Then I pushed the plunger, pushed it slowly, with extreme delicacy. Calmly, you might say. I was restless, but love is a restlessness that grants peace. In that moment I made love to myself. I treasured me. I was gentle like the pilgrim will be when he arrives. I pushed. The tampon entered and now it dances inside me.

The girl is sitting in the same place as before, with the book open. She’s made progress in her reading. It looks like the book is open to a different page. It must be engrossing, she’s completely rapt.

It’s in? she asked, suddenly looking up.

Yes, I said. What should I have said?

It was hard for me, too, the first time. I can tell you were braver.

Should I have said something?

I remained silent.

Do you know Tinariwen?

Should I have replied?

I shook my head.

They’re a band from the desert.

She put the earbuds in my ears. Her iPod is a striking shade of blue, matching the book. The girl presses play and a song begins. I understand the first few words. The man who’s singing says something like oualahila. It sounds like my wallahi. Maybe the words are related. People are clapping. The man has a chorus behind him. Guitars underscore the words. Oualahila, he keeps saying. Oualahila, his people say. They’re telling a story. It’s a story I’d like to hear. I also clap in the emptiness. The rhythm transports me into a cosmic chaos that appears to be my own. I clap my hands, move my shoulders. I see the girl watching me and smiling. My hint of movement becomes frenzy. I look like a lunatic in touch with herself.

The song ends.

They’re good, I say.

"Oualahila ar tesninam…," the girl sings.

What does it mean?

What does it mean to you? she asks.

I heard the word ‘God.’ I don’t know what else to add.

Yes, ‘God.’ He’s saying, ‘Oh God, you’re unhappy.’

But the music is happy, I say clumsily.

Sadness has many rhythms. Like bliss.

And will he come out of his sadness? I ask.

Yes, by describing it. Through stories, he emerges from sadness.

And what story are they telling?

Yours, I think.

Mine? I say, dumbfounded.

Yes, the one you’re writing, the one you’ve had inside for a while. Why don’t you continue?

It’s too tiring…

Keep on going.

But I don’t have time, I’m waiting for…

It will wait for you, if it’s worth anything. You, on the other hand, must carry on. And stop making excuses.

And that is how I, Zuhra Laamane, opened the first page of red notebook number eight. The pen rolls smoothly over the tiny squares. The tampon, in the meantime, dances happily in my menstrual sea.

ONE

THE NUS-NUS

C’è qualcosa nella morte che assomiglia all’amore.

Spoon River Anthology, page 103, the version sold in kiosks, stuck inside a newspaper. Which one? Mar didn’t remember anymore. Parallel text. Mar only bought poems with the originals beside them. She reread the verse in English: There is something about death like love itself.

The rhythm was as deep as the pistol barrel inside Patricia’s mouth.

She frightened her. Mar was sitting in the middle of nowhere in Villa Borghese. Children played around her, young couples kissed, and drug addicts hoping to score their next fix pickpocketed on the 490 bus.

Life flowed freely around Mar. The sky was limpid as in some German TV series. Aimless clouds. Faltering birds. Nothing pierced that great blue facade. Rome seemed like a movie set, like an MGM lot during the Golden Years. Maybe it was only Cinecittà. At every corner, unexpectedly, Visconti, Magnani, or Alberto Sordi could appear. Or why not, the remarkable Federico Fellini with an Ekberg and a fountain, with a Mastroianni and a showgirl. Federico Fellini shooting his new picture with Mar Ribero Martino. A black girl. Too black. With an Italo-Argentinian-Portuguese white mother. Hers was a family of errors. A family of lunatics.

Mar got her name from a poem by Rafael Alberti, a man who had to flee his own country, Spain. Rafael had come to Rome. Perhaps he’d also sat in Villa Borghese. Mar didn’t like the poem. She didn’t even like her name. But she respected Rafael. He had suffered more than others.

Mar had to go home. How long had she been sitting there? An hour, an hour and a half? The police eyed her. They think I’m a prostitute, assholes. Idiots. The girl’s legs decided not to move. They weren’t very rational. They were disconnected from her reality as a woman.

It had been a month since her life had come undone. Ever since Patricia’s funeral, she’d felt scattered, like a broken thing shoddily restored. Patricia’s funeral was miserable, and she had been miserable attending it. Everyone dressed soberly and respectfully.

Even the church Pati’s parents chose was sober and respectful. Mar had never been in that neighborhood. She and Patricia lived downtown, not in the suburbs. Pietralata was unknown territory, and that church was too, now more than ever.

Pati’s mother, a chubby Roman from the Abruzzo, insisted on having her daughter’s funeral in that neighborhood, in that church. It’s where Pati was baptized, and her mother had always hoped to see her right there as the leading lady of another important ceremony. She dreamed of a wedding, certainly not a suicide’s funeral. It was because of this unforeseen and inexplicable pain that her husband, a gangly man from Valencia, supported his wife’s decision. It was also the only way to calm her. He was willing to do anything for her, and he’d already done a lot in retrospect. That gangly man from Valencia had moved to Italy for her, he’d ripped up his communist party card for her, he’d sternly disciplined that peculiar girl of theirs for her (though, early on, she’d gone to work in Spain). And for her he’d accepted a funeral for their daughter far from Valencia, where his family had been buried for generations.

The church was built in a tacky modern style but the Gothiclike stained glass was stunning. One could see her own colorful reflection in it. Mar liked the idea of becoming red. She didn’t choose red for the funeral, however, but pink. Candy pink, to be precise, a disgusting color like the one used in chemical additives for sweets at the fair. She’d matched this with an equally ugly white purse, a red cloak, and high-heeled pumps. The crowning glory was a wide-brimmed hat, like those seen only at British weddings. Mar never wore hats. It was a funeral, though, Pati’s funeral, and that was worth making an exception.

She felt her aching feet. Even on that day her mother had arrived ahead of time. She was always fifteen minutes early. Never ten, never twenty, never five. Always fifteen. For that reason, Mar got in the habit of arriving fifteen minutes late. Never ten, never twenty, never five.

She was late to the funeral, too. She walked in, making noise, causing a scandal with her colors. The priest watched her, exasperated. She’d broken the spell of the seminal moment. Evidently he was reading something truly moving, perhaps one of the salvation stories of the New Testament in which Jesus was handsome, blond, and didn’t have a trace of sissy about him. Thirty-three years old and no women. Impossible. Jesus was a sissy, and a little hysterical, frankly: the episode in the temple speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Mar watched those in attendance. There were many people Patricia hated. Pati hated everyone, except Mar herself. She’d also hated their child, which is why Mar had to abort. And so they separated.

She hadn’t thought about the abortion in six months. Now however, in the emptiness of Villa Borghese, every scene between her and Patricia resurfaced. The most endearing, the most dreadful, the ones she would never have wanted to film. What a flop that’d be, a movie with her and Patricia as heroines, a forgettable movie. Mar wanted to reshoot most parts of those scenes. Even the beginning. Even that first kiss on La Rambla in Barcelona.

Mar stood up from the bench. The police had been watching her intolerantly, with an air of marked insolence. She got up, since the thought of being groped by a bunch of disgusting cops didn’t appeal to her. She headed for the 490 bus stop. She could’ve hopped on the 495. Either would take her to the Flaminio metro stop. Since Pati died, she couldn’t