The Perfumed Garden by Raafat Majzoub

The Perfumed Garden Raafat Majzoub

FOREWORD by Ibrahim Nehme

When Raafat pitched the idea of writing this novel—on a dance floor on the edge of Beirut, six days before we sent The Outpost’s first issue to print—I knew that it would be another idea of his that, if realized, has the potential of becoming an essential cultural artifact of its time. Reading the novel five days later in his studio in Tripoli, I was right. What Raafat did—by inviting us on this phantasmagoric roller coaster across his new Arabia, which takes our cover city as its origin and uses scraps from our first issue to form its basic pedigree—is a feat of magnificent proportions. Raafat’s continuous attempts at pushing the boundaries of Arabic literature and questioning the role of language, while being unafraid to employ flagrant narratives to underline key contemporary issues make him one of the most promising young authors living and working in the Middle East today. I could not have been any more proud of this collaboration between The Outpost and +236m3, Raafat’s creative space that conceptualizes and produces narratives across different media from architecture to novels.

Most of my memories are in post-rationalized black and white. Static verses of a war I must have died for, digitized rolls of film that iconified choreographies of courtship, daily newspaper facades, apartheid walls protecting my father from my mother, and photo-aided narratives of a baroque grandmother I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen since I was sixteen. She was deemed a bad influence, and I, a gullible minor. I spent most of my adolescence transcribing her stories in black Chinese ink on white Baghdadi paper, black and white as all her visual aids dictated, dramatically cited as all her stories articulated. I spent most of my waking hours processing the manhood she legitimized and the city she prized over everything else. On her balcony, overlooking the oval fair and parts of the MĂŠdina, I learned the difference between honesty and reality. At rare events when family members were invited to her cocktail parties, she turned into the wildest raconteuse. She lived moments of her distant past reenacting her expired heartbeats and theirs. She performed a circus of their lives. She audaciously reincarnated the family tree, in its abandoned branches, denied twigs and forgotten leaves. She looked at me. I looked at them. The looks on their faces were not looks you would see on them elsewhere. It was obvious that none of them understood what was going on, each camouflaging their delirium with a cookie-cutter expression of disbelief. Their doubts were directly proportional to how incomprehensible she was to them. To my grandmother, every man is a universe within a universe where every other man and thing lives. He is free to communicate his knowledge, in whole or in part, aligning and contradicting himself for the betterness of his being. Every man is a better universe within a universe where every other man and thing will live better.

In her universe, everything required a bold leap of faith. Reality was not factually shared or communicated. A grasp of the latter was not a prerequisite to life or happiness. “My gray hairs,” she says, “are because of your mother’s perception of time, not mine.” My grandmother disliked my mother. “May birds be sent upon her, in flocks, throwing stones of Sijeel on her and her Reality!” She mediated life in filters of belief and increments of sincerity. She was honest, and was liable to that only. I wasn’t supposed to believe my grandmother, but I did. They weren’t supposed to believe their references, but they did. And that made all the difference. Her stories were active weaves of characters and events. She never started or ended her stories, they all seemed to be excavated out of an ongoing stream of consciousness, just like Tarab. Just like Oum Kolthoum. I was never able to put my finger on where her ballads end, and where their siblings begin. Her repertoire becomes a set of Maqāmat sculpting a multi-dimensional being that can be approached with or without her voice. She becomes a catalyst of seeded sentiment. After my grandmother was done with her recitals, I would inhabit them. Inside, I understood that audiences made stories, that stories made cities, that cities strived to be gardens, that gardens are liable to Eden. Inside, I understood that Eden was a subjective proper noun for the ultimate spatial beauty. I learned that the prophet, with Damascene gardens in his horizon, refused to enter the city. I learned that ultimates would adjust to my whims in nuances of ephemeral perfume, and that the prophet refused to enter the gardens of Eden twice. She never told me her stories without pictures at hand, be it recently visited singles off her coffee table, framed portraits off her wall or in series from chaotically rearranged photo albums indexing a saturated past. She didn’t particularly need visual aids, she just enjoyed her stories grounded in tactile imprints. My favorite memories were stories of Taheyya. I remember the first time she mentioned Taheyya staring at a picture of her, half nostalgic, half present, “Her name was Taheyya. Of course that wasn’t her real name, but that was.. her name, Taheyya. I met her on the beach in Alexandria. She, habibi, was the revolution. She was comfortable. She was comforting. At the time, women were allergic to their own flesh. I had friends who wouldn’t scream being fucked. I had friends who never got fucked. They married lieutenants that liked getting fucked. Those, habibi, I loved. The war, habibi, is a wonderful thing.

I was having camouflaged Bourbon in a floral tea mug with Ahmad and Zarif when I first met Taheyya. She bent over, her behind facing Ahmad, her fiancée at the time, and her bosom facing Zarif, as she extended her arm for me to kiss her hand hello. ‘I heard they serve great tea in this café.’ ‘Indeed.’ Zarif had told me that Taheyya had a show that evening in Trablus. She wanted to go walking, but they had arranged a car for her. She asked me if I wanted to join her. I never said no to offers from beautiful women. Offers from beautiful women, habibi, are nothing to say no to. She finished my Bourbon, and as we excused ourselves to pack, walking further away from the gentlemen, she counted to twelve and told me to look back. Zarif had his arm around Ahmad’s waist, both walking into the city. ‘I gave them my room keys, you don’t mind – do you?’ she said, looking at me with a naked shade of stealth. ‘No’, I answered, naturally. We walked to our car parked on the boardwalk across the Bibliotheca, and Hekmat drove us to Trablus.” Zarif was my grandfather. She lit herself another cigarette, lit me another cigarette, put it off in her Bourbon, stuffed it between my lips, took a sip of her ash-drenched drink – manicured fingers effortfully pointing west. My grandmother liked me more than she liked my parents. My parents liked me more than they liked my grandmother. I developed a god complex. It was early on in my life that I actually became god. My grandmother thought I was ready when I was six. It was around one o’clock in the afternoon and my parents had left fifteen minutes ago. We were wet, she had just baptized me. She insisted that my parents were my reoccurring Original Sin, so every weekend she washed me, a la priestess, of every bit of it. Every weekend she renamed me Gamal, “...after your late grandfather, habibi”, she would tell me. “Zarif was my grandfather,” I remind her a few times as she lit herself another cigarette, lit me another cigarette, put it off in her Bourbon, stuffed it between my lips, took a sip of her ash-drenched drink, “Don’t take me for a fool, habibi, I know Zarif was your grandfather,” mani-

cured fingers effortfully pointing west. “That poised lady in white was me only a few hours before your stupid father was planted in me by no other than Zarif,” manicured fingers slightly shifting west. “And that poor lady in white is your mother only a few hours before your stupid father planted you in her.” She took a sip of her ash-drenched drink, “Don’t take me for a fool, habibi, I know Zarif was your grandfather, but in a few hours we, women, ejaculate lives out of our doomed corpses, while our men hunt lieutenants to top, figurines of authority to conquer. I left Zarif in Alexandria to Ahmad and the likes of Ahmad,” manicured fingers now pointing in the direction of her television, “and there, Gamal became your grandfather.” My grandmother thought I was ready for this talk when I was six, and my bedtime stories changed ever since. She spoke of time and how it passes. She spoke of my late grandfather and of her lovers. She spoke of Djinns, in her bedroom, of past martyrs. She spoke of limbos, indeterminacies, midpoints and tangents. She wore silk robes acting out Broadway renditions of Zenobia, gliding inwards from the balcony, to light herself a cigarette, smoke with one hand, and with the other point away from the city towards an empty spot on her bed. Ritualistically, she would light me a cigarette, put it off in her glass of Bourbon then slip it between my lips. Men smoke, she said. I have been smoking ever since. We’re sitting in Omaya’s rooftop flat in Hamra street, right over the Piccadilly theater. We had just finished a grilled meat and fattoush dinner on her terrace on a blue blanket. Omaya remembered picnics on her parents’ balcony when she was younger. I remembered picnics on Persian carpets on my grandmother’s balcony in Trablus. I haven’t seen my grandmother in years. It started raining. We moved the blanket inside. Now me and Omaya are sitting on the floor. Ziad and Ibrahim are on the couch. Earlier tonight, Ziad mentioned that he’s conditioned to feel afraid when surrounded by a huge amount of men, except when they were all dancing. For some reason it became safer then. He hasn’t been painting for a while. If he would be painting now, he would have painted nothing, he says. He is not happy about my question, if he would be painting now, he would have painted portraits of himself in a burning Paris. He would have painted portraits of flesh and diamonds dressed in men; men dressed in queens, queens underdressed for the backstage and overdressed for the scene. Omaya’s sleeping. Napping , she might object, but Omaya is definitely sleeping. Ibrahim is flipping through a magazine and learning names of

cities in Portugal. I am watching them breathe. I walk towards the water dripping on the outer face of Omaya’s window to see the city. I haven’t seen my grandmother in years. It was a damp November afternoon when she was deemed a bad influence, and I, a gullible minor. It was a Monday, and I was freshly imported from my grandmother’s. I spent weekends at her place for as far as I can remember. That was our last weekend together, and I remember it quite vividly. She had told me about the first time she had made love to a woman. Taheyya, of course. I was sixteen. “Taheyya had a show at Khan el Thawra next to the Medressa el Mouradia. Zarif had never taken me to any of the shows in the city. I was either too immature, too much of a lady, too less of a revolutionary. I was never enough for his social circles. Taheyya thought otherwise. I was never enough for him. Taheyya never thought anything was enough anyways. I loved Zarif. I took her up to change her clothes before her show. Taheyya felt at home everywhere, she walked past the hall into our bedroom. She told Hekmat to unpack her bags as she undressed and settled on this bed. She lay there, habibi, right where you’re sitting – strategically, as you’re sitting – instinctively, the light from the window highlighting her cheeks, looked at me – pointing towards an empty spot next to her. It was almost two o’clock, and I had known Taheyya since noon. She was one of those people that made time too precious to spend in social foreplay. We became friends immediately. In our ride to Trablus she told me more about her fiancée, the lieutenant, your grandfather’s lover. In our ride from Alexandria I told her about my husband, the aristocrat, her fiancée’s lover. Habibi, the war makes things simpler. Undressed, Taheyya asked Hekmat to turn on the television. ‘Gamal!’ she said. It was the first time I saw your grandfather Gamal. To the sweet mumbles of his voice, I laid bare next to Taheyya. She looked at me, ‘How well do you know your city?’ ‘Trablus?’

She slapped me and giggled. It was almost two o’clock, and I had known Taheyya since noon. It took her only two hours to take me on as her hobby. Annoyingly, I enjoyed it. ‘Your city doesn’t start and end where you think it does.’ Taheyya kissed away the red gleam off my cheek, but didn’t apologize for slapping me. I would have left her alone to Hekmat if she did. Taheyya wanted to play a game. She adjusted her waist close to mine and slowly drew an outline around my breasts with her fingers. She repeated the outline in different velocities and intensities for her pleasure and mine, communing my breasts within the traced borders of our hometown. She repeated the outline until I knew it by heart. She would ask me questions about trajectories in our city, roads of passage I did not know. For every wrong answer, Taheyya would scratch its corresponding landmark, neighborhood or idea on my breast for future reference. Hekmat’s eyes twinkled to every moan and every drop of blood. With every mark, Taheyya’s heart skipped a beat. To the air of my absolute ignorance of this new place, I twitched, I stretched. To the sweet mumbles of Gamal and the cheers of his disciples, I learned of a new version of Arabia, habibi, one that I’ve been waiting for so long to tell you about. That damp November Monday, at school, geography class was a massacre. There were way much more lines inside the outline my grandmother had delineated. It was intolerable. I did not tolerate it. I gave myself permission to approach the map of the world and gave my teacher the permission to take a break. I used mine, she spared hers. I approached the map, while she stood still. On the periphery of the Mediterranean, within chunks of upper Africa and western Asia were much more borders than there was supposed to be. I outlined the real borders as my grandmother taught me and colored the inside until it looked like one country on the map. The teacher was agitated. I understood her concern. I, a sixteen year old dandy, knew more about the world than the accredited professional she was. I went back to my seat and asked her to explain what I had done to the class. Furious at my arrogance, she tore the map into pieces. Furious at her ignorance, I burnt everyone’s books to ashes. “Your son thinks he’s Abdel Nasser!” and I was expelled. I never really thought I was Abdel Nasser. My grandmother crowned him as my grandfather, her television lover. Him and I, we just bore the same name.

“Gamal, I told you this hurts!” so I let go of any chance of achieving an orgasm and leave. Nour follows me as I follow the trail of my clothes towards the door. I don’t really know Nour. I have been spending my nights in beds of strangers for the past year because I couldn’t afford rent. I walk down the corner of the newly renovated Shehabi building on Zahra street towards Hamra. I miss my grandmother. I miss the wet hair between her thighs, grey as they dried up to the withering breeze on the balcony after she baptized me, every weekend. At the time I didn’t have any hair down there, so her groin was rather one of my centers of idolatry. At the time I had many idols, their number slowly withering as I grew my own pubic hair. I take the stairs up to Omaya’s. No one else would be awake at this hour except my seven loves and their mistress. Omaya opens the door and gives me a hug, promising home-made Knéfé for breakfast only if we can have an existential debate. I am an existential debate. She lets me use her toilet as she heats the Knéfé. Hamed is sitting in Leila’s lap with four of his sketchbooks. Leila gives me the look. I give her the finger. Haig slaps me with a book he’s reading, Cleopatra’s Wedding Present, then commands me to read it. Haig doesn’t ask, he commands. Charmingly, he commands Omaya to heat him a piece of Knéfé too. I take off my clothes, smell my underwear, and then throw it out the bathroom window. I rub leftovers of Nour off of me with some soap and water with her towel, and then throw that out the window too. I put my clothes back on, outside the bathroom Hamed is still on Leila practicing his Polari and burning a Kerouac book, Omaya’s waiting for me by the door, Haig is already downstairs and the rest of the boys are sleeping. There was only one logical place to go, not that logic mattered, but there was just one place left in this Beirut where we could go to talk, where we could go to cry. We were tutored not to. Each and every one of us, ever since we wouldn’t need tears to summon our mothers’ bosoms to feed, crying was a sign of weakness. Everyone knew that. Everyone’s father would cry that morning though, to the death of Feiruz. Feiruz would die as I lick remains of Omaya’s Knéfé off my lips, off Haig’s fingers and hers. Grown men with luscious beards that would free Palestine, cried that morning. Little did we know of what melancholy could do to testosterone, and little did our fathers know that beards and tears would never free Palestine. We walked intuitively in streets of past glory, streets of current deterioration, streets we would later own. We walked

in silence, predominantly smiling as we thought that in a couple of hours, things would be different. We smiled as we thought of tomorrows more chaotic than yesterdays. The horizontal split of blues gets closer as we moved further away from the city, closer to porcelain benches, gigantic floor-chess prints, street lamps yearning to look ancient and memories of blue-painted steel railings that no one else noticed are no longer there. In our background, people start waking up, each in their living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens to turn on their televisions. People own way too many televisions. Each in their morning breath and their mildly damp underwear stiffen to the unanimous broadcast of ‘Ana L’Ommu L’Hazina’, Feiruz’s ‘I am the Sad Mother’. It was not Good Friday, and to their knowledge, no one had died. I never respected their spectrums of knowledge. Later today, they will understand, as a group, that their Queen of Past Pastures had become part of that past, and that their newly emptied lives will continue. Omaya was too entertained by the fact that Feiruz was singing funeral songs at her own funeral that she forgot my existential obligations for this Knéfé breakfast. What goes around comes around and vice versa. We left civilization to its future grief, and I walked them to Al Ma’mal, towards the New Gate of the old city. They went right, towards The Jerusalem Show. I went left. I went left to nowhere. The old city is an entertaining place. Parts of it are now polished, slightly less entertaining, but entertaining nevertheless. I walked across the lanes surrounding the peripheries of the old city, lanes that were designed as rally race tracks for a reason still ambiguous to most of us. I walked following an imaginary hint of the perfume of my grandmother. It was either that I was missing her more by the minute, or that I was walking towards the source of her scent. This couldn’t have been another one of her stunts. I secretly wished it was, and for all I cared, I would pretend it was. The smell drove me from the port to the highway through the Charles Helou station that still flaunts blue-painted steel railings that no one noticed are no longer on the corniche. I get to Mar Mkhael, and I could swear my grandmother was on some balcony giggling, with amusement, at my delirium. Two perfectly groomed men approach me, “Mr. Abdel Nasser, would you follow us please.” One of them hands me a ticket, the other, gracefully, walks me to Coach 16, “Now it’s nine o’ clock,” said the young man. “At nine-forty five, you will be in Trablus.”

The train starts to move, “Hekmat will be waiting for you at the station.” The train caught momentum before I could find a place to sit. Looking around, there was no place to sit, anyway. Coach 16 was a playground with a bar. A lady with a red bandana had one hand towards the window and the other on a man’s throat. He was singing something that sounded like the Poem of Atoms. It sounded beautiful. She got off the floor and walked barefoot towards the bar. The bar was an unmanned territory shelving drinks from over-the-counter booze to rare liver-slaying treasures. She picked a gallon of Arak that looked homemade, and mixed it like I would have if I were to do it myself, half Arak, half water in a Whisky glass full of ice. She made two drinks, one for her and one for me – I would later understand. “My name is Frida,” she said, almost nonchalant of whether I heard her or not, “and the Arak will help you survive this trip.” I was still trying to grasp where I was, and how I got there along an intricate game of thrones my grandmother was playing against my parents through me. “Never settle for the obvious,” continued Frida, “You know they would seem crazy, but go left to 17 or right to 15, every atom, happy or sad… is delighted by the sun. There is nothing more to say.” I leave the Coach through the exit to the right. Apparently, Coach 15 was the train café, reassuring to say the least. A hostess with a small, firm pair of breasts, and a matching small, firm pair of hams, catered in cheap uniform, approaches me. I ask her if their coffee has cardamom. “Of course,” she says, making me feel like an incompetent idiot. “Then get me a pot for two.” I wasn’t expecting anyone. If anyone is lured by my extra portion of coffee, they would be more than welcome to join. If not, I am more than ready to have a second cup of coffee. Coach 15 is completely empty. The fact that I am not wearing any underwear is starting to turn me on as the tip of my cock is ferociously rubbing on the inside of my jeans. Being completely alone in a train coach was not helping. The hostess disappears into Coach 14. A few minutes later, a short man with brown hair that’s long, but not too long, enters with a tray and my coffee on it. He looks me in the eyes as he walks towards me, only smiling when he reaches my seat. He puts the tray on my table and sits on the sofa

in front of me. He talks. He pours himself half of my coffee and drinks it quite slowly. I was looking out the window most of the time. He asks me to flip over my coffee cup so he can read it. He senses my lack of interest in possibilities of my future based on random residues of impotable coffee on miniature porcelain cups. He looks at me. “The revolution will feed in my attic,” he said before I couldn’t take it anymore. I paid whatever I thought was reasonable for the coffee. I left my Coach into number 14. Coach 14 is a normal third class train cart with all its mess, noise and vernacular glamour. I couldn’t find any place to sit, so continued to Coach 13 and 12. All the remaining coaches seem to look similar. I pretended my knees were injured during the war, started limping and reciting my tales, so an old lady offered me her place, then a young man offered her his place. Everything has to happen in mediation. Clarity is no one’s fancy. Courtesy is a hunting tool. People on this train had a look in their eyes like there was something they needed to say, both communally and individually. I have gone on quite a number trips from Tripoli to Beirut and back, some endless, some seamless, but this transitory blandness never fails to disturb and amuse me. The train itself seemed like it had something it needed to say, both to me personally and somehow culturally. Its glamour was impeccable, like it was something that doesn’t relate to these times where glamour is a luxurious extra, an unrequited paradigm camouflaged in multiple sized meals, extra pickles, cheese, and gallons of sugar for the rush. I could not decipher the message beyond my obsession with the witchery of my grandmother. The train had lured me into itself for a reason. I was going to Tripoli to see my grandmother for a reason. I miss my grandmother, but this is grand. It sounds and acts like a scheme in an apparatus that wishes it was a steam engine, in a present tense that I still cannot comprehend either in content or form. My phone says it’s nine-thirty, I wake up the man next to me to ask him about the time. “Nine-thirty five,” he says. Beautiful eyes, where his eyelids become my antagonist in a stretched climax, he ignores me and goes back to sleep. The train clock matter-of-factly strikes nine-forty, and the train begins to slow down. Another hostess, almost identical to the other, with a small, firm pair of breasts, and a matching small, firm pair of hams, catered in the same uniform, enters from the 11th Coach. She smiles and snatches the microphone off the wall in trained slow motion, turns it on.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will arrive to Trablus in around five minutes, please make sure your belongings are with you. We are not responsible for anything left behind, and do not operate within a Lostand-Found policy; whatever we find, we sell. Now, for our trip ritual, we would like to ask each one of you to give something to the passenger sitting next to them. Thank you for using the Taurus Express.” Give something to the passenger sitting next to you? This just keeps getting better. The man next to me places a cassette on my crotch, and looks at me smiling waiting for his present. All I have on me is Cleopatra’s. I open the first page of the book Haig had given me, and write my number. I pass Cleopatra’s Wedding Present to my side. He flips through it, and then packs it in a brown leather bag. The train stops. I wait for the rush to settle. I descend. “Gamal!” It must be Hekmat. I follow the voice to an old Mercedes parked next to a very long segmented concrete wall. “Gamal, habibi!” It’s Hekmat. I didn’t recognize him. It was either because he looked different, that he was another Hekmat, or that I have never seen him before except in stories of my grandmother. He was a handsome older man. He came close, held both of my ears and gave me a hopefully Platonic kiss on my lips. The fact that I wasn’t wearing any underwear is still not helping, “Your grandmother talks about you every day,” he said opening the door to his car, “Hop in.” His car smells of lily, leather and my grandmother. There’s something different about the city, I shove my gift in the cassette player. Static, the type of static that makes you feel nostalgic about the death of archaic technology, then a man’s voice. Poetry. It seems like it’s Nizar Qabbani. “Ah!” Hekmat goes along reciting along, “Fa ziraaki barru l’aman.” Pause. “Lissa faker albi yiddeelak aman, walla faker kelma, hat’eed elli kan,” answers Oum Kolthoum. I thought this cassette was an urban legend, some kind of utopic myth of Golden Age glory, but it’s here, in Hekmat’s car, in Trablus, off the Taurus Express! The cassette is a mash-up of poetry recitals by the infamous Syrian poet, Nizar Qabbani and songs of her majesty, Oum Kolthoum. It’s a duel, a showdown. I stopped the cassette, and rewinded to replay. Nizar starts off by telling Oum Kolthoum, in a poem, that her arms are the lands of safety. Oum Kolthoum, in a song, then asks him if he still thinks her heart will offer him safety, or that a few words would bring back what they had.

When one thinks of prospective prophets, if that would make sense, Oum Kolthoum is more or less the essential mother of that character. As others might fancy costumes and aesthetic modules of play, most of my fantasies started with matching Oum Kolthoum with the father or mother of my potentially acceptable prophet. Nizar and Oum Kolthoum could have had a baby, and the world we live in would have been a better place. I say better with full conviction and awareness of the subjectivity of the matter, as it would not be better for current organized religions, current loci of power, and current traces of authority, none of which would lasted with such intensity to our present day, if Nizar and Oum Kolthoum had a baby. I kept rewinding and playing the first four stanzas on the cassette until Hekmat interrupted, “the Lilies in the backseat are from you to your grandmother, she would love the gesture, and if it’s physically possible for her to love you more than she already does, the Lilies would do that too.” I almost blushed, Hekmat kept driving, “Don’t tell your grandmother I took the long way home, I just thought you would like a welcome-back tour.” I smiled. Hekmat kept driving. The train station stops right outside the premises of Oscar’s Fair. Like every governmental attempt to make things governmental, the fair is often referred to as the Rachid Karami Fair, or the Tripoli International Fair. There’s nothing Rachid or International about it, I can tell you that. It’s not even complete. No one inaugurated it. No one really used it the way Oscar intended it to be used. It was even built wrong. As far as I’m concerned, it’s still his until he hands it over. He hasn’t yet. Hekmat drives towards the Southern part of the Fair, one of my favorite parts of it, the Médina. I know all of this through stories or pictures, but I feel like I have been here before. It’s magic what the fermentation of narratives does to a man. Everything changes. Milestones shift, benchmarks are birthed; timelines slice and splice forming tangible yesterdays that had never happened. The Fair is inaccessible by car, nor is the Médina. The latter is a set of tight organically laid out alleys embedded in a concrete splendor of a Monolith, a relic of an attempted fantasy dissemination of Brasilia. The car stops under a set of orange trees, the only orange trees that seem to have survived the city, “Your grandmother refuses to believe that Trablus doesn’t smell like orange bloom anymore, so I planted a miniature orange grove under her balcony,” Hekmat stretches his arm and grabs the bouquet from the backseat and hands it to me, “She now thinks that it had been a phase, that the wind blew West instead of East for a decade.

Now the wind is back to normal, and she had always been right, the city and the perfume of orange bloom are inseparable.” I slip the cassette in my pocket, and get out of the car, “Thank you Hekmat.” I walk towards the first metal door, buzz, and the second, buzz, into my grandmother’s building. She lives in one of the few remaining old buildings in her area. I take the stairs up to her first floor flat. The door is half open, I don’t knock. I want to see her before she sees me. There are a few moments when my grandmother would just entertain herself, not me, not anyone else. I like those. I push myself silently in, my grandmother is standing on a little stool, her back towards me, her face towards the huge windows towards the city. A man is at her feet adjusting the length of her dress in progress. He sees me, I gesture silence. He smiles and continues folding the cascading fabric, stabilizing it with pins he keeps softly between his lips. “Habibi, I see your reflection in the glass. I am your grandmother, I see everything. It seems your mother succeeded at making me look senile over the past ten years.” She turned around to an embarrassed version of me she always appreciated, and opened her arms wide like she always does when she sees me. I walk towards her for a hug, hand the bouquet to her tailor, and lift her off the stool turning in circles around myself and hers. “This is Ali, he’s a teacher at the Medressa.” She turns to him, “This is my Gamal.” We shake hands. “Ali’s good with hands. He’s going to wash you of your parents today, ten years worth of parents.” She gave me a smirk of arranged foresight, a sort of icebreaking theatric that would also function quite well on icebergs, “I hope you don’t mind being naked for a man, habibi.” Ali leads to my grandmother’s bedroom. I follow. He starts filling the tub in her bathroom then comes closer to me. He starts unbuttoning by blouse, intricately, button by button, “You have your grandmother’s eyes.” I don’t, her eyes are blue, mine are a light shade of brown. Hers are sharp, mine are quite lost. He probably got lost because of my Kuhl. She wears it to channel Cleopatra. I wear my eyeliner as the Prophet’s binoculars. I haven’t seen anything holy yet, but if he saw life as I see it, he would have been quite entertained. “Thanks,” I tell Ali as he unbuttons my pair of jeans and pulls them down to the floor. Naked, I walk out of my pants, and, semi-erect, wait for my newly appointed priest to proceed.

He’s flattered; I tell him I’m hard because of the friction with my pants, not his holy character. He doesn’t believe me, and remains flattered. He probably thinks I’m straight and is enjoying slowly baiting me into the dark side. I think he probably would not be the perfect audience for my philosophical debates on binary sexuality, especially when he’s dripping thin threads of water on my shaft and murmuring, “Amen!” I feel new, my grandmother joins the show. She enters the bathroom, plays with Ali’s hair a bit then rests on the side of the toilet seat. She lit herself a cigarette, lit me another cigarette, put it off in her Bourbon, stuffed it between my lips, took a sip of her ash-drenched drink and stared at me, smiling. She asks Ali to fetch me one of her robes then gestures him to leave. “Do you know why you’re here, habibi?” I get out of the tub, dripping to the towel. My sense of humor faded away with my stress. “No,” I answered. “Of course, you don’t.” She walks out of the bathroom. I walk out after her, now wearing her robe. She walks towards her mini-bar, grabs her bottle of the day then asks me to pick a glass from the cupboards. Her cupboards probably cost a family of craftsmen one of their generations to make. Its elaborate existence never fails to amuse me. I opened all its doors and stepped a few meters back. I eliminated the shiny, the gold plated, the crystal, the metal, the pink blown glass and the florals, then plunged towards a set of simple medium sized white porcelain mugs with a thin navy lining on top, and a burgundy print on its bottom, ‘Made in Yugoslavia’. I grabbed one mug and its plate. I love the sound of porcelain mugs on porcelain plates. I close the cupboard doors and head back to my seat. She smiles, pours me some Bourbon and sprinkles some roasted coffee beans to humor my choice. They actually tasted good. “So, do you like the mug you picked?” she asked as she lit herself another cigarette, lit me another cigarette, put it off in her Bourbon, came closer to where I was sitting and stuffed it between my lips, took a sip of her ash-drenched drink, “If you do, I’ll write it as yours in my will.” Manicured fingers effortfully pointing west, “Remember this drawing?”, manicured fingers slightly shifting west, “And these?” The wall was filled with different renditions of Taheyya’s city, Taheyya’s Arabia, “I’ll write these down as yours too, habibi, do you like them?” This is ridiculous, “See, habibi, I have no family that cares for me except for you. I have a couple friends I care about. Your grandfather, god bless

his soul, died in 1970. I don’t think he had written his will. Look around you, if he had written his will this would have been a better time for this city. I want to be ready.” “This is ridiculous!” It really is, I haven’t seen my grandmother in ten years, and we’re writing her post-mortem symphonies. “It’s not ridiculous. It’s ridiculous to think one must die unprepared. What did they do to you?” She grabs me by the hand and pulls me up the stairs to the second floor. She opens a big door with a small key on her necklace. She turns on neon lights and crystal chandeliers with a switchboard that looks more suitable for a laboratory. “This is my laboratory,” she says, “If manuscripts get to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, it means that I don’t desire them.” My grandmother has never been this mad at me, and I’m still not sure I deserve being ridiculed for not wanting to discuss life after her. “How do you want me to discard this?” I am speechless. Irrespective of the fact that I never knew all of this existed, I was speechless. “Every picture of me with everyone I know, and I know people, every recording of every political speech that orgasmed a nation, and I know orgasms, every theatrical script, every manifesto, and every song written by all of them that thought Voltaire was worth imitating, gifts from Mohamad, letters from Nizar, handkerchiefs from the mistress of Arabia, all on this floor and more.” She takes a sip of her Bourbon, “More. My legacy is spread all over this city. Pieces of me are in abandoned palaces in Cairo, fields in Trablus, theaters in Beirut and streets of Amman. Ideas of mine are in manmade oases in Abu Dhabi, Medressas in Tunis, and shelters in Dubai. I have been written about in hotels in Aleppo, performed as plays in theaters of Jerusalem and archived in Alexandria.” She paused for a quick deep breath, “And you, habibi, think it’s ridiculous if I want you to have a porcelain mug from Yugoslavia and my flesh in paintings on the wall?” She stormed out of the apartment, and locked the door leaving me inside with her bottle of Bourbon, her pack of cigarettes and my navy-lined mug. Hours later, I am drunk, sitting on a carved elephant tusk watching silent black and white films of my grandfathers. The door opens; it’s Hekmat with a Lily bouquet, “Use it this time.” He leaves and keeps the door open. My grandmother is sitting on her balcony, the breeze and her silk robe as entertaining as ever, to the sound of Feiruz on the radio. She hated Feiruz. “I didn’t know she grew on to you.”

“She didn’t.” “Do you want me to turn off the radio?” “No, no. She died today. How will I ever return such a favor? I can live with a couple of songs today, just today, and it should be enough.” I give her the lilies. I tell her they’re from Hekmat. She knows. She apologizes for her monologue earlier today, and for stuffing me in her storage. I thank her for it. “People now go about their daily lives as if they live each on their own island. They believe it so much that they think it’s real. At this pace, it will become real. I cannot depart knowing that no one will ever sit on their balcony and see what I see.” She looks at a horizon probably different from the one I am looking at, “I want you to see what I see.” She had packed everything she wanted to let go of to other people and arranged their distribution. Hekmat would do it in his Mercedes when she stopped breathing. She had written everything else for me in her will, “Except this building,” she said, “I want to demolish this building myself. I want to see its end. Contractors, habibi, haven’t read De Sade.” I looked at the horizon trying to see what she sees. She never described the horizon in her stories of the city. “The train leaves to Aleppo at nine forty-five tomorrow morning.” She stood up, told me she loved me, that she trusts me, and that I looked too worried. She wiped the sweat off my forehead with her robe, and left me alone on her balcony. I never saw her again. That afternoon, I asked Hekmat to join me for coffee. He took me to Ali’s atelier adjacent to the Medressa Mouradia in Oscar’s fair. Ali made us some coffee then excused himself. A Lebanese designer based in London was waiting for him at the Medressa. I asked Hekmat if he knew everyone living in the city. He knew everyone. I knew he would. I told him I am not big enough to fit my grandmother. My grandmother was the size of the city. My grandmother was the city. I told him that I want everyone in this city to inherit something tangible from my grandmother. People have been so accustomed to believe in the invisible, the intangible, the surreal, that they seem to have burnt bridges with their sense of touch. They fuck to breed, they eat to sleep, they pray for mercy, but nothing happens for the sake of happening. I want my grandmother’s pendants on the necks of men with hairy chests and her pictures in purses of mas-

ochistic women. I want her recipes in cafés, her literature in cabarets and her paintings stenciled everywhere. My grandmother wanted me to see what she saw when she looked over from her balcony. She saw herself in the city, and this is where I was going to start. Hekmat smiled and told me this would take months. I said nothing. I knew he would get it done in a day, tainted love. I excused myself before I finished my cup of coffee, saying goodbye to a Hekmat I will only see only once more, later on at my grandmother’s funeral. The alleys in the Médina dictate how you walk. You don’t get to decide. I get lost in labyrinths of white clay and occasional black and white checkered arcades, in abstractions of Eden in porcelain, in subjective glory following irregular outburst of my grandmother’s perfume. I reach the northern tip of the Médina where it converges with the concreteness of the fair. The fair is filled with people, yet looks comfortably empty. Temporary displays of women blowing glass, men cutting templates for leather shoes, experimental artisans and food stalls line my way to the dome. I enter the dome through one of its doors, following a Mouazzen’s voice chanting a Moqaddema. He does it all night. “Habibi…” he sings in the most elastically eloquent manner. He perfects it, then kills the perfection, then does it again. It’s calmer inside with the echo; I sleep. “ … minutes, please make sure your belongings are with you. We are not responsible for anything left behind,” I wake up, “and do not operate within a Lost-and-Found policy; whatever we find, we sell. Now, for our trip ritual, we would like to ask each one of you to give something to the passenger sitting next to them. Thank you for using the Taurus Express.” In five minutes, the train stops. I still don’t know how I got here. A man throws my grandmother’s ring on my crotch, and anxiously waits for his present in return. There is nothing I can give up at this point. My consciousness is giving up on me. I untie my shoelace and wrap it around his wrist. He is not happy. I descend. The rush can settle at its own pace. He can find ways to enjoy my shoelace. I follow a Lieutenant in the crowd, “Today is Sunday. We leave Aleppo at four o’clock. Tomorrow, Monday evening, you will be in Stamboul.” Aleppo. I am drawn to a building that looks like my grandmother’s in Trablus. It refuses the street, flaunting a green neon sign, ‘Hotel Baron’. I walk towards the first metal door, buzz, and the second, buzz, into the building that looks like my grandmother’s. I enter, looking for the recep-

tion. There is none. The ground floor is a bookstore. The closest thing to a reception desk is the cashier. Shelved are books by the greats, the misfits, and the best-sellers alike. Stocked are the legal and the smuggled alike. The overdressed lady at the cashier alternates between vouchering and playing a grand piano behind her. She plays Bagdasarian’s ‘Come on-a My House’ alternating between a loyal rendition of the piece and other alterations to amuse herself. She only smiles when she plays her variations. I walk past her and take the stairs up. The door on my right leads to a long hallway. The hallway houses rooms 101 through 108, and leads to a terrace overlooking the hills. I take the stairs up. The door on my right leads to eight other rooms. On my left, a man is waving at me from the bar. It’s adequately dark at the bar. I don’t recognize him, “Lissa faker albi yiddeelak aman, walla faker kelma, hat’eed elli kan,” he shouts. A man that knows his Oum Kolthoum? He comes closer. It’s the cassette man from the Taurus Express! He gives me a big hug. He asks the bartender what Robert would have had, “Whisky-one ice.” Bartenders get paid to lie, but I’m a whisky kind of guy, “so make it a Bourbon please.” Apparently he was so taken by the book that he decided to act it out. He was following the footsteps of Robert Tewdwr Moss. The Baron Hotel was the narrator’s temporary refuge in the novel, “the last outpost of faded splendor in an otherwise rackety and filthy town,” he called it. “I’m Jimmy”, he points at the man sitting in next to him on the bar, “and this is Jihad.” Jihad was, as his name implied, a cult fighter of some sort, a retired Palestinian commando, and as I later understood, another character in the novel. I went out for a cigarette on the terrace, Jihad followed. “You want a woman?” Jihad was a conman. Poor Jimmy was too beautiful for this, but he was happy. Temporary happiness beats the truth anytime in any ring in my book. Jihad had figured out what Jimmy needed and crafted exactly that. “You want a woman or not?” It wasn’t a very elaborate conversation. Jihad, or whatever his name was, threw keys to room 303 at me. “Call her whatever you want,” His eyes fixated on my left eye, “I owe your grandmother my life, and I pay you in flesh. Call her whatever you want. Be a happy man.” Blue jeans, white shirt walks back to Jimmy at the bar, and I walk up to room 303.

Each of the floors has a completely different type of posters. This floor had the most interesting ones; different depictions of the gates of heaven, illustrated by priests pretending to be fallen angels and under each illustration, a type of flower. I open 303, she’s sitting on the bed reading Koolaids in nothing but a silver pendant. “What did he say my name was?” I called her Eleanor. I closed the door and unbuttoned my shirt, unbuttoned my pants, head to the toilet, filled the tub with water, threw my clothes in and I followed. Eleanor peaked in, her left ankle curled around her right, paused for a minute, then followed me in, sitting between my legs, her back towards me, her head cushioned between my chest and my chin, both of us soaked in a tub of lukewarm water, my dirty clothes and no soap. She asked me where I was from. I had forgotten. I asked her where she was from. She told me I could decide. She told me I was a romantic. I told her there was no such thing. She raised her head and kissed me. We sat there for about an hour, mostly silent. She stood up, her dripping back towards me, colonized by a tattoo of the gridded windows of the abandoned Holiday Inn hotel in Beirut. She walked out of the tub into the bedroom. I followed. I walked out to the balcony. She followed. Every time I look at this city, it changes. Eleanor stands in front of me, facing the city, her back towards me, holds the railing and fixates my hands on hers. She raises her back a bit, her ass pressing on my cock. Incidentally, I have been trying to go into Holiday Inn for five years now. I grab her by the hand, lay her on the bed, her hands on the headstand, facing down, Holiday Inn in the air. She refuses to moan to my subversive promenades in her not-so-abandoned hotel, Eleanor, my sweetheart, her sweaty hands cramping, my grandmother’s silver pendant pivoting from her neck banging on her heart and the headstand, on her heart and the headstand, agitated clockwork timing a sterile fuck. She cums. I’m done. She sleeps on the sofa. I sleep on the bed. She wakes me up at dusk. She opens her closet and hands me a fresh pair of briefs, shorts a t-shirt and a light pink linen vest. Eleanor smells like lilies. She gestures me to the balcony where she had set up a ladder to sneak down. We climbed down to the upper tip of Mango street and turned left upwards to Rainbow street. She had arranged to meet her friend Mo Zakaria, “He has the meanest, baddest skateboards.” I pick a chalkboarddesigned skateboard by Hadi Aladdein, she already has her board.

We skate down Jabal Amman to the flatlands of Alexandria. Omar Herrawi and his gang were waiting for us; Mo had just called him telling him we were coming. The Herrawis are the godfathers of skating in Alexandria. Each of the skaters had their day jobs, but they all integrated skating into their lives one way or another. Two of the skaters cross the street from the corniche to the premises of the Bibliotheca and slip into the dome of the knowledge center. They are both researchers at the Masdar Institute of Research and Technology, across the street, and have been researching ways to develop an architectural logic that would allow them to design the city based on their movements. The skaters would have a city where the urban fabric would cater efficiently to their daily choreography. I ask them for the map of the city. Eleanor insisted skaters always had the best maps of the city. They told me their maps are undocumented. They couldn’t afford getting caught with them, as most of their routes are illegal. They let us know that they will guide us wherever we need to go, and that it’s pretty easy to reach Champollion Palace from our final stop. Before we head to our destination, they take us to el Sandara in the outskirts of the city for a poetry reading. El Sandara is an apartment in a building in Alexandria void of the aesthetics of the cultural hangout. It was everyone. The door was open, the man that greets us looks familiar. He introduces himself as Zeyad, “Welcome to the feast of the revolution!” he says jokingly. I had met Zeyad earlier, he sipped half of my coffee on the Taurus Express. At the time, I thought he was delusional, but the attic is as real as it could get. The feast was yet to be proven. People were sitting in a circle, women in hijabs, women in little black dresses, men in beards and shaved moustaches, and men in drag. “Welcome to the attic,” says Isis, “Here, you are whoever you want to be, even if it’s not who you really are.” Everyone was looking at her in utmost admiration. “We will start with a part of ‘Seeniyah’ by Ahmad Shawqi, a poem he wrote in exile.” A young woman stands up and walks to the center of the circle, stares at the wall, speaks, “Day and Night make one forget, So tell me about my early days And describe that period of my youth, That was shaped by imagination Blew like the playful wind, Like a sweet drowse and a quick pleasure

And thou shalt ask Egypt has the heart forgotten her? Or has time cured its wounds? Is it forbidden for its birds to sing? While it is allowed for other species Every home is right for its people Except in bad and mean creed My breath is fuel, my heart is sail, With them you sail in tears and come to shore.” Eleanor’s eyes refuse to tear, she stands up and leaves. Her father had been thrown off the Holiday Inn and shot to death in mid-air, as his murderer won a contest with gravity during the Lebanese civil war. Her mother had died in exile ten years after my grandfather. Omar tells me there’s only one place in Alexandria that would make her feel better. They take us to The Panels. The Panels is an abandoned field of solar plates that was discarded after the knowledge center was built and a newer set of panels were installed on the other side of the complex. It’s a skater’s heaven. On one side, The Panels overlook a state-of-the-art knowledge hub. On the other, they overlook Manshiet Nasser, “Tonight, we skate and watch the stars. Tomorrow morning, you both go down this way.” Omar points towards Manshiet Nasser, “and hitch a ride with one of the Zabbaleen.” The next day, Omar leads to Manshiet Nasser and finds us a ride in a small pick-up truck on his way to Champollion Street. I give Omar my skateboard and we head on our way. The driver is wearing my grandmother’s earrings. They suit him. Hekmat seems to be doing a good job at distributing her legacy. There will be a day when everyone would be some form of my grandmother. My grandmother and her city, as there will come a day when everyone would recognize this city and her perfume. Ahmad is a member of the estate of the Garbage City. Its citizens live off collecting garbage from around Cairo at no fee, and sort it to either be recycled or sold to business that would need them. He is playing Yasmine Hamdan’s cover of Ziad al Rahbani’s ‘Khalas’, as he drives us silently to Champollion. He is comfortable, yet just does not feel like being interrupted while listening to his music.

He drops us off at the corner of Tak’eeba, a popular make-shift café in an alleyway near Champollion Palace. My grandmother told me about the tragic stories of this palace a million times. Taheyya had been in an affair with Prince Said and had inherited the palace gardens after his exile. The municipality ate off bits and pieces of the garden to build residential complexes, until one day Taheyya decided to take matters into her own hands. She hired the best tailors to make her dancing costume, and the best orchestra to compose the most dramatic belly-dance piece ever written as an ode to the garden. On the night of her show, they had sent someone to burn the rest of the garden. Taheyya refused to leave the dance floor. I order Eleanor an Erfa Bellaban, their specialty, warm milk with cinnamon and sugar. Dina, a young singer I had met a year ago is sitting two tables away. I walk towards her and request she sings ‘Huwwa el Haram’, the same song she performed for us at the café last year. She looks at me, pauses, “You’re the guy that recorded my performance without permission!” She laughs “Welcome back!” She tells me she’s recording her debut album in Champollion. Apparently artists squat there now that the wall was broken. Eleanor takes two looks at the palace and she’s sold. Her journey would stop here. She kisses me and passes through a buffering shelter between Champollion and its neighbors. The garden, now much smaller than it used to be, is planted again, and it smells of my grandmother. I walk away and buy myself a cold glass of sugar cane juice, then another, then another. At the juice stall, a young man is amused at my shameless gluttony. He introduces himself, Hani, an unemployed idealist that wants to take me out for a beer. He takes me to the rooftop of the Odeon, five minutes away from Tahrir square. The Odeon lobby is an arabesque horror wet-dream climaxing in the manned, mirror-crusted elevator. The liftman presses the button for the rooftop terrace. Hani, leads me to his favorite table in the house, and orders us a Stella each. Hani believes that the world will be alright. “We will make the world alright,” he says, “Look at this magic.” He stands up, holds my head and makes sure I see what he wants me to see. He points at the Shelter and the Palace, points at the knowledge center, points at Hotel Baron, points at the oval fair and the Médina. “We are everywhere.” Hani takes a sip of his beer, “Do you like this? It’s local.” I take a sip of mine, “Not bad.” I can get used to this. I stare at the horizon wondering if it looked close to my grandmother’s. “We will make everything alright, it just needs some time,” Hani continues. I like this guy. Everything will be alright.

The bartender is Hani’s husband and he makes a fuss when I try to pay the bill. Hani tells me Mashrou’ Leila is playing in the Yabous Cultural Center seven floors down. My phone rings. It’s Jimmy, post-epiphany. He had seen Jihad being called Lawrence by a British woman at the Hotel Baron bar. Jimmy wanted to remove Cleopatra’s eyeliner and throw her to the tigers as a present. Instead, I told him to meet me at the Odeon. I tell Hani I’ll see him around, and I take the stairs down. I take Jimmy the extra two floors down to Yabous; Ibrahim and Eleanor are waiting for us with tickets. I spank Eleanor and kiss Ibrahim. I see him wearing my grandmother’s sunglasses, “I have so much to tell you.” We are breaking everything to build our everything. We go into Yabous, find ourselves within a screaming crowd. Everyone is wearing pieces of my grandmother. The Leilas walk on stage with lilies in their hair, and salute the perfumed garden full of words that don’t exist in today’s dictionaries. They start their first gig in Jerusalem with ‘Dakhalt marra fi Geneina’, a cover of Asmahan’s ‘I once entered a garden’. We are breaking everything to build our everything. People building invisible monuments, visible only to those who play outside the realms of their mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts; visible only to those who play within the realms of themselves. We leave the theater from the Piccadilly exit to Hamra Street. Hamra is as ugly as ever. We walk intuitively in streets of past glory, streets of current deterioration, streets we would later own. We walked in silence, predominantly smiling as we thought that in a couple of hours, things would be different. Hamra is as pretty as ever. We smiled as we thought of tomorrows more chaotic than yesterdays. At the border, everyone talks of a termination. At my border, all is well. Everything beats. Everything sounds. At the border, thermometers of war, warmer with flying rockets, warmest with those that land. At my border, all is well. All can die tomorrow. All will not. At some border, everyone talks of the end. I tell them to take a break. Everyone shoots me. I do not end. My grandmother’s horizon keeps me safe. And now I see none of them. And now I see no border. Slowly, they will fade. Slowly, they would have faded. I don’t see the border everyone talks about. I don’t.

It seems like we have shut our engines off in wandering ships at sea, waiting for the perfect storm to drift us theatrically to communally agreeable oases of retreat. We inhabit the Arab depression with such flamboyant ease in between seasonal uprisings, when the weather feels just right, that the world must think we enjoy it. We import our misery and lay it in forcefully destitute souks, on colorful stalls for our families to binge. The storm will never come. If it comes, I will be the first to jump off our ship. A storm that comes is a storm that goes, as everything that does. I would not want to be here when plastic hope slips off our feet again. I do not want to be here now. Gamalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grandmother is a connoisseur of the revolution. She sits on the tip of her bathtub, our sea, and disturbs our peace into a possibility of a new Arab existence. This story is a work of fiction situated in real time and space. One of our ships refuses confinement within the whims of tide. It hears engines are still on in some ships in the fleet. As breathing is not good enough, and the present tense non-satisfactory, these ships, each off its outpost, spots uncharted territories in the horizon, to which we steer.