A Moveable Feast (22 page)

And in that tiny second, not only did my sinuses get clear,
everything
got clear and the answer to the whole problem came to me: the whole problem of the Jews and the Arabs and why it is so hard for us to understand each other. It’s because we are like hummus – on the outside we are the same and on the inside we are the same (same dad, after all). But somewhere in between the outside and the inside, there is a thin layer where our spices got all mixed up into slightly different, distinct combinations – nothing really noticeable until you took a bite.

In this case, garlic, cumin and not a small dash of cayenne.

‘So, you like it?’ he laughed.

‘I think I’m in love,’ I answered as soon as I had recovered. I reached over and ripped off another bite of pita and scooped it through the hummus, gathering pine nuts as I went. ‘Do you think this is fattening?’ I asked through a mouthful, then, ‘Who cares?’

‘Later I will take you to my home and you will taste my mother’s hummus. It is the best in Cairo. Maybe in all of Egypt.’

Take me home to Mother? Yeah, right.

‘My wife has tried to learn, but it is never as good.’

Ah, there’s a wife. Naturally.

‘You’re married?’ I asked, trying to sound more interested than disappointed.

‘Of course,’ he answered.

Of course.

‘Do you have any children?’

‘Certainly.’

Certainly.

‘I have five daughters.’

Five daughters. Yikes.

He said it with such pride that I thought the buttons on his shirt would burst. Then he put his hands in the air and added, ‘I’m just like that man in the story.’

‘What story?’

‘The story about the man with five daughters. He is a Jew in Russia. He is always talking to God about his problems.’

Fiddler on the Roof?!
I was so startled, I inhaled my pita and started to cough. Alarmed, Nasr stood up and signalled frantically to the men inside the café. Good. Maybe they’d bring water. They all came running out on each other’s heels to see what kind of emergency was taking place. They had brought their cigarettes but had otherwise come empty-handed. Like magic, people in neighbouring shops, shopkeepers and customers and passers-by, began to appear. Everyone was speaking at once. Arguments broke out. There was a lot of shouting and arm flinging. Fingers were being wagged. One man’s suggestion was shouted down by another, whose own suggestion was then dismissed by somebody else. The crowd grew as more and more concerned citizens joined in the excitement. They stood face to face and shook their heads at each other, and when one pointed emphatically down the street, another pointed just as emphatically
up
the street. When a man pointed to the right, a woman pointed to the left. Whatever they were arguing about, they seemed to be having a good time.

I suppose I should have been flattered to have been the centre of so much attention and I’m sure I would have been if anyone had bothered to notice me. For such a slow-moving country, they sure had forgotten about me quickly enough.

Their voices got louder and began to drown out the ear-numbing noise of nearby Ramses Street. They became a
surprisingly pleasant alternative to the incessant blaring of horns and screeching of gears as the buses and taxis that sped down that wide, wild boulevard swerved and changed lanes and just barely avoided pedestrians who took their lives into their hands trying to cross to the other side.

There is no such thing as minding your own business in these passionate parts of the world. There are no words for ‘elevator silence’ in the Semitic languages. If you ask three people for advice, you will get four different opinions. Board a bus, ask the driver for directions, and by the time you reach your destination, every single passenger on the bus, from young schoolchildren to old grandmothers, will have piped up and given you different, ‘better’ directions to get you where you want to go. The warmth of the people is tangible; I have sat next to total strangers on a Friday-morning bus and found myself seated at their tables that same Friday evening sharing their home-cooked Sabbath dinners (and every single time, imagine that, there has been the host’s unmarried son or grandson or cousin or brother or uncle also in attendance. Such a coincidence …).

If you are a shrinking violet, you will be trampled on. So, speak up, even if you have no idea what’s going on.

Before too long the excitement started to wear off. The crowd began to wander back, talking and laughing, to their interrupted affairs. Nasr extracted his face from the face of an old man. The old man took hold of Nasr’s hand and pulled him close. Then he wrapped his other arm around Nasr and hugged him tightly.

I had finished coughing and was fully recovered by the time Nasr returned to ‘our’ table. I asked him if he would mind bringing me a bottle of water. He went inside the café and returned a moment later with a full
finjan
instead. He was followed by the bossy old man who was carrying a large ceramic bowl overflowing with fruit and a small dish of oily green and black olives. He graciously put them on our table and began
clearing some of the other dishes. I was no longer surprised by food appearing, unbidden, at my table, but I was surprised by the feeling of my never wanting this meal to end.

‘Shuchran,’
I told him. Thank you.

The old man turned and smiled and put his hands together like he was praying and bowed slightly.
‘Afwan.’

‘You speak Arabic?’ Nasr sounded impressed.

‘No. Just the basics. Please, thank you, excuse me.’

Nasr looked at me with something like newfound respect, like perhaps I was not just a ‘typical’ American after all. Then he turned his attention to our dessert. The bowl was a dark cobalt blue, with a rough, unfinished surface. Figs, dates and grapes spilled over its rim. ‘These fruits,’ Nasr said, ‘are among the sacred species of the desert. My people have eaten these same fruits since ancient times.’ He put an olive into his mouth and spat the pit out onto his plate. The green olives were plump, the size of a thumbnail; the black ones were small and tightly wrinkled.

I took a fig from the bowl. It was purple-skinned and splitting apart at the seams. I could see its red and seedy insides. There was a drop of milk at the stem; it had been freshly twisted from the branch, probably from a tree in the café proprietor’s own backyard. I brought it close to my face and inhaled. I filled my head with the smell of it. I tried to memorise the perfume of this fig. Nasr took it from my hand and when he split it easily in two, I shivered despite the heat. He handed me one half and put the other half into his mouth, eating the skin and the seeds, watching me. I bit into my half – the juice poured out and I laughed, suddenly shy, and wiped my chin. The seeds were tiny and they crunched softly as I chewed. Then he handed me a sticky brown date with an oblong pit that came out clean when I ate the fruit around it. The grapes were purple, so dark they looked almost black, and filled with seeds so big you could choke on them if you weren’t careful.

I ate and ate.

‘So, tell me,’ he said in between an olive and a grape, ‘do you have any children?’

I split open another fig and poked at the seeds with my fingers. ‘I’m not married.’

He stopped suddenly, a grape halfway to his mouth. He looked so incredulous that I was afraid I had made a linguistic faux pas, which I often do.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, fully prepared to apologise profusely for any offence I might have caused.

He stood up without a word, took out his wallet and placed some bills on the table. ‘Come,’ he said and looked at me expectantly.

I looked around furtively to see if I had missed something. The feeling of being in the middle of an inside joke was one that I often experienced out in the world (and, I hate to admit, at home as well). ‘Where?’ I asked.

‘I want to show you Cairo,’ he said, completely matter-of-factly, like it was the next logical step in our blossoming relationship. Would his wife come with us?

‘Will your wife come with us?’

He ignored me. ‘Perhaps you want to visit our souq – it is the best place to buy Egyptian souvenirs. It is not safe for a woman to go there alone. I will take you. Have you seen the Great Pyramid?’ I shook my head. ‘The Sphinx?’ I shook my head again. ‘I will show you. They are not far. I have a friend, he will take us on his boat on the Nile. Then tonight I will take you to my cousin’s house. He is very nice. Don’t worry, he is also very handsome. He will like you. He is not married. Like you.’

Ah ha.
Matchmaker, matchmaker …

He was eyeing me carefully, doing the math; a few generations ago I might have fetched a good number of camels.

I fought the urge to say, ‘Wha …?’ Instead, it occurred to me that he was serious and that I was actually considering his offer.
What could happen if I went with him? How bad could the cousin be? Who was I kidding – I’ve met people’s cousins before; I know firsthand how bad they can be. I may not be shy, but I’m not stupid, either.

‘Thank you for the offer. Really. And thank you for the wonderful breakfast. But I should go.’ I gathered up my bag and started to stand up.

‘Go?’ he said, still standing. ‘Go where?’

‘Uh, I’m not sure, back to the hotel.’ He wasn’t going to get weird on me, was he?

‘What is waiting for you back at the hotel? It’s early. Come, before it gets hot.’

Before it gets hot? See – there were those crazy mixed-up spices again.

‘Really, I need to get back.’

‘As you want,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Enjoy your visit to Egypt.’

He turned to leave. ‘If I go with you …’ I caught myself just as I was about to reach out and grab his arm. He turned around. ‘If I go with you, will you leave me all alone in the desert to die of thirst?’ Alone in the desert to die of thirst?! Where did that come from? That was not even close to what I was thinking could happen.

He smiled slowly, the sun practically reflecting off his teeth, the way it does in corny cartoons. ‘It is possible,’ he said eventually. ‘It is up to you.’

We stood looking at each other for a moment while I considered this, then I hefted my bag onto my shoulder and shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. But thank you.’

I watched him walk away into the dust and the heat, towards the river. He turned the corner and disappeared.

But, wait – I’d changed my mind. What were the chances that he really would leave me to die of thirst? Slim to none, and besides, I’d simply insist that we stay close to populated urban
areas. I wouldn’t wander far with him: a quick spin around the city, maybe a glimpse of the pyramids across the road in Giza, a leisurely cruise up the Nile just to see why Cleopatra would have ever wanted to be the queen of it. And then I remembered that time I’d met somebody’s cousin and he hadn’t been
that
horrible.

The old man came out to clear the table. I tossed a quick little bow and a smile his way and started to walk-run after Nasr. I turned the corner and at first I didn’t see him. Then I spied him across the street. He was sitting at an outdoor table with two young women, blonde and fair as any Disney princesses, stirring sugar into their brass
finjan.

I crossed over to get a better look. Nasr glanced up and gave me a wink. As I passed by their table, I heard him say to the women, ‘Life is slow in the desert …’

Johanna Gohmann is an American writer whose essays and articles have appeared on
Salon.com
, the
Chicago Sun-Times, Elle, Red
magazine,
Babble.com
,
YourTango.com
and the
Dubliner
. She is a frequent contributor to
Bust
magazine and the
Irish Independent
, and two of her essays were recently anthologised in
The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010
and
The Best Sex Writing 2010
. She lives with her husband in Dublin.

Venice wasn’t beautiful. Quite the opposite, in fact. Venice was cold and slate grey, and the rain stung our faces like birdshot. The cloud-clogged skies turned the majestic palazzos into the gloomy, twisted castles of fairy-tale villains. Dark water swirled in the canals, the gondoliers’ scarves snapped in the wind, and it was like the entire city had been carved from a giant block of dirty ice. My classmates and I, well, we were disappointed, to say the least.

We were also exhausted. It was 1995, my sophomore year of college, and I was doing the now standard ‘study-abroad’
semester that is so popular with American students. After five months of stomping around Europe in hiking boots, snapping photos of pigeons and pubs, my friends and I were worn out. Venice was the final trip of the semester, meant to be the highlight of our travels before we boarded planes to carry us back to our Midwestern university. However, it was the middle of December and Italy didn’t really care if it was our last hurrah or not. It was winter, and that meant rain and sleet and fingers so cold they could barely grasp a soggy panini.

We were also broke, having blown all our cash on our previous jaunts around the continent. We’d already scooped up cheap souvenirs for our parents and ourselves. I’d bought my mom a sweater from Edinburgh, and for my dad, golf club covers shaped like cans of Guinness. For myself, I’d collected dozens of fabric patches bearing the names of the cities I’d visited. I imagined one day sewing these badges onto a coat, which I could then wear like I was some walking, stamped steamer trunk. Now, at age thirty-four, I come across these brightly coloured patches stuffed into a drawer, and I cringe slightly at my cheesiness. But I also smile. I was only nineteen, after all, and my study abroad semester was the furthest I’d ever been from my tiny Indiana town. Those swatches of material remind me of how exhilarated I was by my travels.

But by the time we hit Venice, my exhilaration had waned. The hostel where we were staying was damp and draughty, and I was sharing a room with two other girls. All three of us slept in a giant, lumpy bed that was covered by a pilled, threadbare bedspread. I remember feeling that no matter where we went in Venice, I simply couldn’t get warm or fully dry. We’d get up in the morning, take a shower in the cold communal bathroom that trickled lukewarm water, then trudge downstairs to meet our professor, who would lead us through the damp to a museum or cathedral. I had seen so many cathedrals and religious paintings over the past five months
that the Crucifixion had ceased to have any effect, and, like a grumpy child who needed a nap, I’d feel myself inwardly rolling my eyes at a Caravaggio.
All right already. He was nailed to a tree. It was gruesome. We GET IT.

When our professor would release us from the scheduled itinerary to go explore Venice on our own, we’d stand in the rain, staring at our soaked maps, with not even enough money in our pockets to drown ourselves in a cheap carafe of merlot. We’d usually end up slinking off to some café to huddle together and share Americanos. Or else we’d wander into the countless tourist shops, staring at the famed stained-glass creations that seemed to glimmer from every window. I remember that stained glass being the only bit of colour we saw as we trudged those crooked streets. The reds and greens and blues winked at us, a teasing promise of the colour and beauty that the city secretly held … just not for us.

It felt horribly wrong to wish away time in Italy, and yet, that was what people began to do. ‘Only three more days …’ someone would mutter as we slipped plastic bags inside our boots to keep our socks dry. We were in what was supposedly one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and it felt like purgatory – a middle earth that hovered between the excitement we had just experienced on our other travels and what we knew lay ahead, the flatness and monotony of home. Of course, many of us were also dealing with a traveller’s depression that had nothing to do with the awful weather. We were mourning the end of our European adventure, and the return to the reality of our everyday college life: house parties, chain restaurants, final exams … We were coming down from a five-month high of nonstop stimulation, and heading back to vast stretches of strip malls and lecture halls.

This feeling was compounded for me. For mixed in with my feelings of sadness was also a quiet nervousness that tremored
just below the surface, like a dull thrum of anxiety. The year before I’d embarked on my semester abroad, my boyfriend – my first love – had died quite suddenly. Following his death, it was like someone had pulled a leaden blanket over me. Everything in my world dimmed as I tried to cope with the trauma. For months afterwards I’d felt like a zombie, wandering to my very first college classes, then driving home on the weekends to cry in my childhood bedroom. The safe bubble of my world had been punctured by tragedy, and I spent that first year struggling to make sense of it.

For me, the chance to study abroad wasn’t just about the opportunity to see Notre Dame. It was also an escape hatch. If I got on that plane, I thought, I could get away from the images that reminded and rankled and sent my mind into shadowed corners. I was desperate to get away …

And while psychologists might have tsk-tsked my escapist strategy, being away from everything had indeed worked wonders. Once I arrived in Europe, the leaden blanket had been kicked to the floor. My young body began to prick to life with feeling again, as I laughed so hard with my new friends that my muscles ached. Being engulfed by this completely new landscape made anything possible. I had even dared to dip a toe back into the world of romance, and had engaged in an incredibly fun fling with a charming Englishman. He was twenty-six, which of course seemed both worldly and ancient at the time. He was also in the Royal Air Force, which sounded so exotic and sexy that my girlfriends practically drooled with jealousy.

I finally began to feel like myself again. Even scarier, I was allowing myself to feel hopeful. But I worried that this feeling was simply a spell cast by being under foreign skies. As the days ticked down to our return flight, I tried to quell the nervousness rising within me. Yes, I felt alive and renewed, but would I be able to hold onto these feelings once my feet hit Indiana soil?
Was I really different and strong now, or would the lights around me start to dim once more?

Our last morning in Venice happened to fall on my twentieth birthday. I awoke feeling such a strange mixture of sorrow and joy that I stared out at the grey skies, willing someone – God, Caravaggio, the Pope, anyone – to explain my emotions. At that age, there were still so many feelings that felt new to me, that were unexplainable, and frightening in their confusion.

It was 15 December 1995. My teenage years were now officially behind me. I was an adult now. Having already seen a bit of what the adult world could have in store, the thought was almost paralysing. It made me want to pull the pilled bedspread over my head and stay in that lumpy bed forever.

But the two friends I was sharing the bed with began to sit up and roll awake, and they croakily sang out birthday wishes. Despite the early hour, we rose and showered, and packed our things. My friends’ faces shone with the excitement of heading home. I nervously smiled back at them as I tucked postcards of the Uffizi and Louvre into pockets of my suitcase, trying to quell the odd feeling that was roiling through my stomach.

None of the professors or other students were up and about yet, and the hostel was quiet. Hungry, the three of us headed downstairs to forage for some food. We made our way into the tiny, cramped quarters of the lobby, which allowed only for the clerk’s desk. The clerk himself lazed behind it on a stool, like he was on a gondola, coasting through the city on a spring breeze. He had a rolled-up paperback in one hand, and he gave us a nod. He was maybe in his mid-twenties, and like so many of the Italian men I had seen, he was attractive in a way that seemed to say, ‘Why would I be anything else, foolish girl?’ His head was
covered with shiny black curls, and his lips were almost embarrassing in their suggestive thickness. He looked like he had stepped from a Raphael canvas, like he didn’t belong in the garish and bawdy world of the 1990s.

‘The cafes will not yet be open,’ he explained to us with a frown, ‘but you may wait if you like.’ He gestured to the stairs behind us like he was offering us a leather banquette to perch upon. We thanked him and, giggling nervously, shy under his handsome gaze, sat like ducks in a row, one behind the other on the steps. He put his book down and observed us, his brow furrowed.

‘So. You are Americans, yes?’ His accent no doubt made every female tourist he checked in have an inward, mini-swoon onto an imaginary fainting couch.

‘Yes,’ we echoed back in a chorus, as if our backpacks and JanSport raincoats didn’t already answer the question for us.

‘We actually return to America today,’ my friend explained.

‘Oh, that is too bad. The weather …’ he gestured out to the swirling grey, ‘it has not been good.’

We laughed in agreement, and for a moment we all stared out at the cold dawn light. There was a long pause, and to break the silence my friend, who was sitting behind me, clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘Today is her birthday!’

‘Ah! It is?’ And at this, his face finally melted into a smile. ‘That is very nice, yes? How old are you?’

‘I’m twenty,’ I smiled back.

‘Ahhh … twenty. That is a very good age.’ His delicious mouth seemed to curl into a knowing smirk at this. ‘Well, a happy birthday to you!’

‘Thank you.’ I could barely stand to stare into his black eyes, fearful they would make my cheeks blaze into a blush.

‘Wait. I will return …’ He smiled again, and disappeared behind a door. The second it clicked shut, my friend leaned
forward to whisper hotly into my ear: ‘Oh my God, he is freaking gorgeous!’

‘I know …’ I mouthed back. Our shoulders shuddered as we tried to suppress our laughter.

Suddenly the door opened, and there he stood again. He strode towards us, proudly holding something aloft.

‘This is for you. For your birthday.’ He grinned at me.

There in his hand wasn’t a single rose plucked from a vase, or a tiny chocolate wrapped in gold foil, or even a shiny marble of Venetian glass. Rather, what he held out to me like a prize was a slender tumbler filled to the brim with orange juice.

‘I’m afraid it is all I have.’ He raised an eyebrow in apology.

I reached out and took the glass from him, our fingers brushing slightly. Both he and my friends watched as I raised the drink to my mouth. The first sip hit my lips, and I drank through a smile. I knew it to be, without a doubt, the best glass of orange juice I had ever had, or ever would have.

I stared at this stranger’s old-world good looks, at his encouraging eyes. The cold sweetness tickled my throat, and I felt as though I had been handed some sort of magic potion. I would never tell my friends any of this, of course. To them, it was simply a glass of juice, probably from concentrate, at that. But to my mind, this clerk had become some sort of fairy-tale prince. I somehow felt he knew the dark thoughts clouding my eyes, and had slipped out of the Venetian shadows to specially hand me this potion – a potion that would buoy me, and see me out of my troubled teens and into my twenties. With his random act of kindness, some new knowledge wove its way into my brain. I gripped the pulp-smeared, empty glass, knowing that happiness and love would follow me back to America. To wherever I went. It might leave me again someday, but it would always return.

My friends, no doubt eyeing my glass of juice hungrily, left in search of an open café, but I stayed behind and went outside
to smoke with the clerk. He shared his filter-less cigarettes with me, and in halting English told me about his struggles as a poet, trying to get published, trying to make enough money. I had no idea what he was talking about really, the authors he was referring to, his financial struggles, but I let his accent dance in my ears, the burn of the cigarette filling my chest with a pleasant ache.

Soon the hostel was buzzing to life as my professors and other classmates began to drag their suitcases downstairs. But the clerk did not leave me. We continued to smoke and talk, until finally my whole class was scurrying past me, hurrying to catch the bus that would carry us to the airport.

As the last student hurried past, she turned to yell to me, ‘Jo, come on! It’s time to go!’

And so it was. As I finally began to shrug on my backpack, the clerk grabbed one of my hands, as though we had been lovers for years and now were being ripped asunder by the fates. I almost had to bite my lip to keep from giggling at his urgency. ‘Well, goodbye to you …’ He clasped my fingers. ‘Please …’ he learned towards me. ‘May I have just one kiss?’