I sought the advice of pale Friar Cirio—or maybe it was just my pillow—about the drastic move of leaving monastic life, escaping cloister, rejoining the world. Though that’s not really the whole story. The decision wasn’t entirely mine. The Father Superior suspected that he wouldn’t be able to make a good monk out of me: I struck him as too prone to daydreams and delirium. Or, according to the harsher terms he put in writing to formally justify my expulsion, he thought I was a good kid, but that I suffered from a paranoid psychotic disorder.
A mistaken diagnosis. The Father Superior was wrong: My insanity was of a different kind, rarer, less known. It only affects one out of every ten million people, and it’s known as the kiss syndrome, or the queen’s kiss. But who can explain something so unique andcomplicated to the Father Superior? It was no use. So I’d go; there was nothing else I could do.
The prospect of returning to the outside world thrilled me, yet didn’t at the same time. I was scared to leave the monastery; I’d been there for years, protected in its sphere, by its high walls, its gardens and orchard, floating as if in amniotic fluid, sheltered from what stalked and buzzed on the other side: poverty, hunger, plagues, war, the ravages of love... in short, the real reality.
“Go look for your Queen of Sheba,” Friar Cirio urged me. “Go look for her out there, in the open world. Pursue her by land and sea, mountain and desert; remember, she’s a nomadic queen. She doesn’t stay still in one place, much less in one as cloistered as this.”
After leaving the monastery, I roamed aimlessly for a long time, backpack slung over my shoulder, with no idea where to go next, skinny as a cat, overwhelmed by a crisis of faith, tormented by doubts, and trying to put down roots wherever I was welcomed. Starting with a brothel.
Those poor prostitutes, queens of rivers, prayerful believers in miraculous redemption; they, with their votive candles, shabby little altars, and pious saint cards; they who, blessings upon them, are the Virgin of Carmen and of Guadalupe’s greatest devotees; they freed me from my virginity. In their sad cots, I approached my Grail. With their caresses and solace and bouts of heavy drinking, they were the Queens of Sheba of my red nights.
I enrolled at a university and met Diana, an anthropology student who saw me as an unusual and worthy object of study, I, the gigantic ex-seminarian wandering lost, who wore out-of-fashion clothing and didn’t speak to anyone, like some abominable snowman thrust into city life. Diana was a good-looking girl, blond, with suburban manners; she kept antivenom in her pocket, wore rubber boots, and risked malaria to travel to faraway corners of rainforests, where she drank chicha and guarapo with the Indigenous tribes she studied. Beautiful Diana and I almost dreamed of starting a familytogether and having kids one day. But it didn’t happen for us. In the end, she left me. Although maybe I’d grown apart from her by then, feeling that that noble project would kill my dreams; it wasn’t what I’d spent my whole life searching for.
After our breakup, I was saved from sadness by a generous grant from the School for Racial and Ethnic Studies, which, on the completion of my graduate degree, offered me more funding for fieldwork toward a dissertation on the subject of my great obsession. I took advantage of this unique opportunity and, following Friar Cirio’s advice from years before, dared to go searching for the Queen of Sheba in the lands of her ancient reign. And that was that. My travels began, to the East, searching for a chimera.
I was determined to connect flesh and blood to that specter that had pursued me since I was little, and I prepared thoroughly for the journey. Someone gave me the name of a contact who could orient me when I arrived. I had information on museums I should see, texts I should look for, scholars I’d interview, and ruins I’d visit. I’d combed through the whole bibliography, underlined Michelin guides, and devoured Malraux, Flaubert, and Nerval, known members of the Sheba cult.
Everything seemed well planned and under control, but early on I could see it wouldn’t be easy. The problems began from the moment I landed in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, when the customs officer asked the reason for my visit.
“I’m here to search for the Queen of Sheba,” I replied, and he stared at me with eyes that said, in Arabic, Nice try, asshole, keep joking and you’ll see how I detain you for contempt of authority.
I got out of that fix thanks to certificates and academic explanations, but the trouble didn’t end there; it was just beginning.
The airport was militarized and packed with people. Some slept on benches, others had settled into the bathrooms, whole families made do on mats and blankets, children ran back and forth, and women opened suitcases and scattered their belongings on the floor,as if the shabby buildings of that airport had turned into a refugee camp.
I had barely made it through customs when I was seized by a sudden, empty physical sensation. A violent pressure on my ribs robbed me of breath. The sense of suffocation was followed by a sharp but deafening sound, subsonic vibrations, and the strong smell of powder and ammonia.
A bomb.
An exploding bomb that shook the building, made it howl. The windows boomed, and dust rained from the ceiling. People threw themselves to the ground, and the air filled with a collective moan. When the echoes faded, a great silence spread, along with the understandable smell of shit. Through the holes in the skylights, I glimpsed smoke in the reddened sky.
After that first instant of shock came a wave of panic, and people started to run, though to where, who could say. Unrest everywhere, like an anthill that’s just been fumigated. I checked to make sure I wasn’t wounded; I had no pain, not even a bruise, I was just disoriented. Something serious was happening, and I didn’t know what it was. I’d come here disregarding warnings about the worsening of a war zone that now took me by surprise.
Through loudspeakers, voices called for calm in several languages. They informed us that there were no human casualties. It seemed a missile had landed nearby, without causing serious damage to the airport. Fear had turned my legs to jelly. I knew I’d received a kind of baptism, if not by blood, at least by dust. That explosion had been an omen for me: You’ve finally arrived. You’re here now.
Or could it be the opposite?
“Sorry, you can’t enter, you don’t have a visa.” Another officer, this time in camouflage, barred my way.
“I do have a visa! Look, sir, here it is, and look, I was given this seal—”
“It doesn’t work.”
“Doesn’t work? What doesn’t work, the visa or the seal?”
“The visa.”
“But I received it from the Yemeni Consulate, I waited seven months for it to arrive.”
“You can’t enter.”
“If you could be so kind as to explai—”
“Go home, sir. You cannot enter. That is an order.”
“There must be some mistake. I’d like to speak to your superior.”
“I am the superior. For security reasons, you will not enter. Go back home,” he said, without even looking at me.
