Under the Tripoli Sky Read online

  MEIKE ZIERVOGEL

  PEIRENE PRESS

  This is a fascinating portrait of a closed society. On the surface this quiet vignette of a story could be read as gently nostalgic, but underneath the author reveals the seething tensions of a traditional city coming to terms with our modern world. The book gives us privileged access to a place where men and women live apart and have never learnt to respect each other.

  I dedicate this book to the wives and mothers who, for years, have demonstrated once a week outside the state department buildings in Benghazi, Libya, asking for the bodies of their husbands and children who lost their lives on the night of 25 June 1969; women whose searing loss has gradually, imperceptibly, reignited the flames of dignity.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Under the Tripoli Sky

  Also from Peirene Press

  About the Author and Translator

  Copyright

  True natives of this region were savage, hairy, toothless barbarians whose rutting season never came to an end, so they mated constantly, like their neighbours the monkeys. They gave birth to many mutant monsters and left them to die, gorged on by the local fly population.

  Homo sapiens from other continents called this country the Sea of Monsters, a place inhabited by cannibals, Cyclops, pygmies and hermaphrodites.

  The land was surrounded by steep cliffs and impenetrable mountains. Animals, imprisoned in their solitude, roamed here alone or in herds. The ground seethed with giant black snakes which fed on ostriches and antelope. These snakes left nothing for our ancestors, who never bothered to follow the reptile’s track, for it devoured everything.

  In those days the barbarians hunted fierce wild beasts and gentle gazelles. Their tribes lived in caves and they buried their dead – or what was left of them after an onslaught by our nation of flies – under a tumulus of stones or a dolmen.

  They admired birds, feared the sun and venerated snakes, which were constantly reborn before their very eyes. They depicted snakes with the sun disc above their heads and flanked by two feathers to represent sacred wings. They wore lion tails and monkey tails, and at night they decorated themselves with rams’ horns to assert their virility.

  Their women were warriors and hunters by day, vaginas and wombs by night.

  The priestess Maboula warned them that the sea was bad-tempered and unpredictable; she forbade them to go near it. She prophesied that a people who worshipped gold and gems would come to subjugate them if they ignored her instructions.

  The men took care of the children and were heartily bored, so they ventured closer and closer to the coast.

  And one day her vision became reality.

  Sails appeared on the water’s curved horizon. The boats drew on to the beach and men from the north sprang ashore with gleaming weapons. They appropriated the land and set up camp, watched from afar by the clutch of savages with deep dark eyes. Every time the invaders set sail they left behind all sorts of delicacies and drinks, particularly wine and beer; and the savages tasted these liquors, suspiciously at first, but soon they were enslaved. They were prepared to do anything to experience such pleasures again, forgetting Maboula’s prophecy. And they made contact with the Phoenician sailors, who eventually set up drinks stalls all along the shore.

  The barbarians accepted the most lowly tasks and became bearers and serfs in exchange for wine and silphium, the aromatic medicinal plant with magical powers to nourish the body, drive out disease, wash away weariness and soothe the soul. They no longer listened to any of Maboula’s warnings, and the invaders called upon their princess, Dido, to scratch out the priestess’s eyes to rob her of her prophetic visions once and for all. But before slicing off her head with her own nails, the defeated priestess put one final, terrifying curse on the laughing savages: ‘You will be damned until the end of time. Other men will come to humiliate and enslave you. You will only ever be slaves and the sons of criminals.’ Then she turned to Princess Dido and added, ‘You will end up like me: abandoned, a pitiful object of contempt.’

  Dido had not considered the consequences of her act. The reckless drunken men took all the power for themselves, deaf to the pleas of their women, who by now were merely bellies into which they emptied their desires. When subjected to these same laws, Dido burned herself on a pyre to escape forced marriage.

  Ever since, there has been an endless procession of death, destruction and invasion in the land, much to the delight of the Free Nation of the Flies.

  —EXTRACT FROM The Book of Flies,

  ANONYMOUS

  The day before.

  Everyone already knew about it, except for me.

  When I saw Aunt Fatima at the door I instinctively understood that a plan was being hatched.

  That night she came to my bed to tell me her usual goodnight story:

  Seven girls inside a flute. The ghoul twirls and twirls and eats one of the girls.

  Six girls inside a flute. The ghoul twirls and twirls and eats one of the girls.

  Five girls inside a flute. The ghoul twirls and twirls and eats one of the girls.

  Four girls inside a flute. The ghoul twirls and twirls and eats one of the girls.

  Three girls inside a flute. The ghoul twirls and twirls and…

  I always ended up falling into her arms, soothed and bewitched.

  *

  Aunt Fatima was the only person who told me the story of the twirling ghoul that keeps coming back to the house where the seven girls live. She was a widow and spent most of her time with her only child, Houda, whose every whim she tolerated. ‘Big fat Houda!’ the local children taunted. I too would tease the girl as I ran away from her through the long, narrow alleyways of the Medina while she tried to keep up with me under the scorching midday sun. I would hear her behind me, breathing heavily, dragging her feet, and sometimes she groaned and sometimes she wailed. Then I would stop and wait for her and want to make up by stealing a kiss. But she always ducked aside in horror, afraid she’d fall pregnant!

  Aunt Fatima and Houda would visit for all sorts of family ceremonies. And every year they arrived with the first new moon, heralding the beginning of the fateful period of fasting.

  ‘Tomorrow there will be a celebration, your celebration!’ Aunt Fatima promised me as she chewed noisily on her acacia gum softened with wax. ‘Seven girls inside a flute. The ghoul twirls and twirls and eats one of the girls. Six girls inside a flute. The ghoul twirls and twirls…’

  ‘But, Aunt Fatima… are there really only seven of them?’

  ‘Hadachinou!’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Go to sleep, little one, go to sleep!’

  *

  Daybreak.

  The last vestiges of sleep were still weighing heavily on my eyelids when the naked light of dawn slowly appeared, spreading across the carpet. I stretched and closed my eyes again to preserve the image for a moment, but the first rays of sunlight danced over my face as if to thwart me and snatch me from my voluptuous indolence.

  Deep inside the house, no one.

  I walked through the rooms filled with silence and a thousand motes of dust rising in sunbeams, spiralling steadily in apparent chaos towards a secret, absent centre. I went over to a mirror and prodded my body, running my fingers over my forehead and the outline of my face.

  Out of defiance I opened the shutters to look at the sun, eye to eye. Through the cool blue of daybreak and the multicoloured phosphenes skittering around me, I took a deep breath of crisp morning air and stretched again, an alley cat beneath a freshly lit sky.

  Light spilt over the house and the walls and the corridor and the kitchen… which is where I went in the hope of finding something t
o bury the sense of exile that was beginning to overwhelm me. I gobbled a piece of fruitcake, then hurtled down the stairs like a punctured balloon. The magic of waking had given way to a feeling of powerlessness.

  Nothing.

  I sat on the doorstep and checked everything was real out in the street. I saw distant figures appearing in a hazy morning torpor – my mother’s friends, who gazed at me tenderly and smiled.

  ‘Time, there’s nothing but time!’ exclaimed a passer-by.

  Before my eyes – now robbed of their fickle dreams – the tarmac and the ever-present sunlight.

  On our terrace, Ibrahim the local butcher stood facing a bleating orphan lamb. My father always trusted him to select the victim when he came on his annual round for Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice.

  But it wasn’t Eid today!

  Each year, the same gestures performed with perfect skill. The same fascination on children’s faces… all the way to grilling the head and the feet.

  The sheep’s squalling, on and on, right up to the last moment, right up until its head is under the knife, when it sees the gleaming blade… It stops, accepts, gives up and watches its own decapitation with already glassy eyes. Blood spilling.

  The sheep left to empty itself of its blood. Taboo food. Sacrilege.

  Witches, jinns, the godless and the mad drink animal blood to revive their strength. But my mother gave it back to the earth with a shudder of fear and disgust.

  I witnessed the ceremony with a mixture of amazement, curiosity and quasi-morbid delight. The sheep’s silence, its eyes changing colour, its furious bleating as it faced the deafening void, the children standing round in a circle holding their breath, and the springing fountain of blood.

  Ibrahim’s sharp knife cutting smoothly through the skin as he whistled a well-known pop song.

  Rivulets of slow-flowing blood, smaller streams coagulating.

  The carcass left to the women: removing the offal, the intestines, cutting up the meat, salting it and hanging it out in the sun on the terrace.

  The slow, impatient morning quivering.

  Images of what was happening, what happened each year in this millennial ancestral ritual, spooled through my mind like an age-old dream brooded over again and again.

  Noon.

  Head lowered, I walked in and out through the front door, waiting for something to happen.

  Hunks of the lamb hanging over the sink. Bones piled up like a still life.

  My mother already at her pots and pans, preparing celebratory dishes, baking assida: wheat flour, olive oil, date syrup.

  I went over to her with half-closed eyes.

  ‘We’re going to get you dressed and shave your head,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye. ‘Today’s the big day.’

  *

  Dressed in only a simple length of white cotton cloth dotted with patches of saffron and wound round and round me to cover my body, I myself wander round aimlessly.

  The deserted street; my yellow ball bouncing, bouncing, and the sun sitting in the sky, static and jealous.

  I stand still and my gaze follows those two orbs abandoned in space.

  The horizon squints, disinterested.

  Tired, I let go.

  In front of the mirror I stared at my new hairdo: the ‘barber’ had used his well-sharpened knife to shave my scalp from my left ear to my right with the help of a round metal plate, leaving one small lock of hair at the front.

  My big head looked like a yellowing melon with a tuft of maize fibre. A sad scarecrow or – in the words of one of the women who had started appearing, all beaming smiles and brightly coloured tistmal headgear and the snap of acacia gum between their dazzling white teeth – like someone who’d just woken up.

  Intrigued by the amused expression on all these women’s faces and delighted with the sudden attention, I showed them my ball.

  And the sun still incandescent in an impassive sky.

  A group of men arrived at the corner of the street, friends of my father’s. Eyes to the ground, one behind the other, they walked towards me as I sat on the doorstep. They stepped over me without a word or a smile and climbed up the steps.

  I followed them, mesmerized, desperate to know what was going on.

  In the hallway my father greeted them with handshakes and directed them ceremoniously towards the living room.

  They sat in a circle on mindars, large comfortable cushions stuffed with wool. Every now and then a sharp cough betrayed a longing to smoke, or a voice would mutter a ‘Bismillah!’

  A hand rapped on the kitchen door; this was the signal.

  My father stood up, left the room and returned with dishes laden with food.

  The men ate, some of them avidly, others with more restraint, tackling the stuffed sheep’s stomach, the grilled liver, the testicles, which were a delicacy, and other less noble cuts.

  My father served red China tea and grilled peanuts.

  The sun continued blasting the room with light, and all at once I became the centre of attention.

  I proudly threw the ball against the wall and caught it again, showing off to this group of silent, cross-legged men.

  They peered at each other for a while… then joined collectively to say, ‘In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Creator, Owner, Sustainer of the Worlds. You alone do we worship and You alone do we seek for help. Guide us to the Straight Path. The path of those whom Your blessings are upon…’

  The barber who had shaved my head finished intoning the Sura Al-Fatiha, the first Sura of the Qur’an, holding his hands up with his palms open to the ceiling.

  A heavy silence followed.

  He asked me to step forward.

  Trusting as I am, I don’t even think of taking refuge in my usual place, the terrace outside. I already know I can no longer escape the coming ordeal.

  I don’t close my eyes. I gaze up at the ceiling and picture the glassy look in the sheep’s eyes on the day of sacrifice, a look full of renunciation.

  The barber takes a razor blade in one hand and my foreskin in the other, and prepares to cut it. Only now, at last, do I gauge the extent of the threat and try to get away; two men leap up and hold me firmly.

  Blood springs out.

  I lower my eyelids to protect myself and, for the first time, delve deep inside myself to find the place where I can safely watch episodes of my life, like someone sitting at a window and watching the never-ending entertainment of the street through the slats of a shutter.

  *

  Lost in this indefinable chasm, I suddenly became aware of an explosion of women’s laughter from the kitchen, a burst of cheerful voices lilting with the sheer joy of life and jostling together like a mass of balloons released to mark a feast day. What the men were up to was clearly of no concern to them. Meanwhile, the men filed past and put banknotes under my cushion, then slipped out, leaving a silence punctuated by my sobs and those of my two brothers, who had suffered the same fate as me.

  In the still of late afternoon the women continued to busy themselves. They prepared couscous with onions and chickpeas, flavoured with cinnamon and orange blossom water.

  In the back bedroom, my brothers stopped snivelling, gazing powerless at the low ceiling. I wailed to the point of exhaustion until, caught out by the smell of cinnamon, the dancing shadows and lights, and a brief silence, I fell asleep, succumbing to the improvisations of time.

  Indistinct figures hover on the far side of the door.

  ‘Good morning!’

  I don’t answer.

  My mother, Aunt Fatima and Houda in their nightdresses, standing one behind the other.

  ‘So,’ they persist, ‘our little man’s growing up! How are things with your little bird?’

  A moment’s hesitation. Then they just can’t help themselves and burst out laughing. The three of them leaning against each other, my mother and my aunt holding their breasts that jiggle as they laugh, while Houda has crossed her arms over her great shaking tum
my.

  I didn’t say a word.

  ‘Never happy. Did you see his face! Looks like an grumpy old owl!’ my mother concluded as she closed the door again.

  Nothing.

  I slipped out of bed and found my ‘little bird’ wasn’t hurting, so I went downstairs, melted into the walls and very gently… flew away!

  Scatterings of laughter continued to pierce the dawn silence.

  I escaped. And for three days I loitered outside in the streets, wandered across wasteland, skulked in the alleyways of the Medina and walked along the seafront to the old port. Here I watched the fishermen gathering in the morning to drink their red tea brewed in terracotta pots over coal fires in kanoun burners. And here I watched them meeting again in the evening to empty whole crates of beer, while they ate broad beans and chickpeas and grilled sardines.

  Tired of grumbling my way round my secret hideaways, I eventually decided to return home. Aunt Fatima and Houda had gone back to the country. There was no one left to tell me stories before I fell asleep.

  Seven girls inside a flute. The ghoul twirls and twirls and eats one of the girls…

  ‘I can see you on the terrace, sitting there like a zombie on the marabout’s tomb. Just look at you! Here, come and help me make the tomato purée.’

  My mother was bustling about in every direction; she had lots to do before her guests arrived for the tea ceremony after the siesta. She often received visitors, but today there was a strange glint in her eye. What mystery meeting did she have planned?

  ‘Hadachinou, you crush the tomatoes with your feet while I take care of the meal.’

  Standing there in my basin of tomatoes, I was already smacking my lips in anticipation. Richeta! Hmm-mm! Delicious noodles cooked in spicy tomato sauce, swimming with broad beans, haricot beans, chickpeas, fennel and sun-dried mutton, all heightened with the sharp edge of a drizzle of lemon. My mother made the noodles herself. She did it all, all by herself: preparing ilghidid, the sun-dried meat, doing the laundry by hand, kneading the bread dough, which I then took to the public ovens, and tending the chickens and vegetables. She never stopped, except for her siesta and when she had guests.