A warm breeze blew, time seemed to stand still, and we took off our shoes to dip our feet in the sea. We kept going along the beach until we’d gone far, too far, much farther than was advisable for our safety. But we continued on, it was good to forget dangers for a while and converse like that, our feet in the water and our bodies very close, entwined in a conspiratorial, friendly embrace. The moment was pleasant, you could even say that, for me, it was happy.
Zahra Bayda was talking about work matters, as usual, and, suddenly, what a surprise, what’s going on here?, I felt her hand slide under my shirt and stay there, on my lower back. I hope she doesn’t notice, was my wish, I hope she doesn’t notice how my pulse is speeding up... What sort of gesture was this, her hand beneathmy shirt right there on my skin, what could it mean? Something casual, intentional, insignificant, significant? My boss was sending me mixed messages and I didn’t know what to think or do.
That hand stayed on my back, stroking, while Zahra Bayda talked on about the quantities of rice, powdered milk, and other foods we’d have to buy in the bazaar the next day for the hospital’s supplies. Her hand kept dancing along my back, just like that, and meanwhile I hid my reaction, pretending I didn’t notice and saying, “Yes, yes, rice, yes of course, and salt and sugar too, and garbanzos go without saying.” But her hand wasn’t leaving, it moved softly along my back as if grazing me innocently, unplanned, and there I was, not knowing what or how.
We also had to get iodine, alcohol, cotton, I don’t know what else, what a way Zahra Bayda has of constantly making lists of future tasks, what needs to be done, what we didn’t do yesterday, what we’ll have to do a month from now... but this time her words were telling me one thing and her hand another: Her hand tenderly scratched my back, a little pinch here, a little tickle over there, like a mocking crab that might have snuck under my shirt while its owner wouldn’t stop accounting for the indispensable quantities of rice, pasta, iodine, alcohol... and me saying, Yes and yes, me drinking the water of stars, unable to concentrate on anything other than that hand sneaking around my back as if playing hide-and-seek: Ready or not, here I come.
“Green horse,” I said out of the blue.
She didn’t react, and kept rattling off tasks; it seemed she didn’t know the story of the green horse, which goes more or less like this, Once upon a time there was a gentleman who madly desired a certain lady but couldn’t find a way to tell her, so he came up with a plan. He’d paint his horse green and stand in the place she walked by every morning on the way to church. On seeing that strange horse, the lady would ask: Noble gentleman, why have you painted your horse green? And he would respond: Beautiful lady, becausegreen is the color of hope. And she: Hope, you say? And what do you hope for, noble gentleman? And he: I hope for the glorious day on which I might enjoy your love. With his plan laid out, the gentleman painted his horse green and stood near the church. The lady passed and asked: Noble gentleman, why have you painted your horse green? And he immediately replied: To go to bed with you.
Zahra Bayda was undaunted, the green horse didn’t move her, clearly she didn’t know that story and passed right over the indirect hint about a bed. A failed attempt on my part. It was better that way, better to leave things as they were, forget about that playful hand, abandon the useless speculation and focus on the grocery list. The sea had begun to roar. We’d strayed too far from home and needed to head back.
On the return, Zahra Bayda moved away from my side and started walking a step ahead. Without turning to look at me, she started to tell me—I don’t know why—something that perplexed me in the moment and still does to this day. It had to do with that massacre at the Ethiopian camp. I’d already heard the first part of the story through another channel; I knew that she and Pau Cor d’Or had found three of the murderers in wounded condition and healed them. But that wasn’t all that had happened, now I found out more.
“The truth is, we didn’t heal all three of them,” Zahra Bayda clarified, picking up little shells and casting them into the sea. “Only two.”
“And the other one?”
“The other one was older. He was gravely wounded, with broken ribs and probably his skull too. The women had managed to give him a lethal beating. Pau and I did what we could, but the old man died after a while. The other two guys had already been transported elsewhere, and Pau and I didn’t know what to do with the dead man, that is, we couldn’t agree on where to bury him. Together with the women and children? Or far away from them... Finally, we buried them together.”
“You put him with the victims he himself had raped and murdered?!” I was horrified by the thought. “I don’t understand. Why—”
“For no reason, really. We debated for a long time, Pau and I, without resolving anything. What made us bury him there, by the women’s side? I don’t know. We did it intuitively, I suppose; something seemed to suggest it was the best way. To bury him far away from them would have been like leaving the hunt still underway, the threatening presence of that perpetrator who’d be lying in wait, forever at the edge of things... while if they were together, then maybe...”
“Maybe the old guy could beg their forgiveness? Maybe the women could get to know him, even forgive him? Something like that?”
Zahra Bayda said no more, and to this day I’m still meditating on this. Maybe in another life, another time, another world, that cruel old man could have become a father to those women and a grandfather to their children. Maybe.
How many times a minute does Zahra Bayda utter the phrasePau and I, which hurts my ears? Pau and I, Pau and I.
“Admit it, there’s something between you and Pau,” I blurted out.
“How can you think that?”
“I think it. And that awful oil painting where he portrayed you with the naked man?”
“What displeased you, the painting or the man?”
“Good man, bad painting.”
“It’s not so bad, that portrait.”
“It looks as much like you as my grandmother looks like a bicycle.”
“But you did recognize me, right? Where did you see it?”
“On some shelves, at the other house. I was looking for some pliers and found that roll of Pau’s canvases, what a great artist, quite the Picasso.”
“Don’t mock him.”
“I knew he liked to paint, but I didn’t know he’d painted you in suggestive poses. There was your portrait, hidden among the others, all of them ugly and melodramatic.”
“Ugly, maybe. Melodramatic, why?”
“Weathered Arab faces with a white dot in their pupils to signal a spark; solitary children; women lost in the distance. All that’s missing is crying clowns.”
I was surprised to find that Cor d’Or had kept his paintings so hidden, and I’d asked Mirza Hussain whether he’d allow someone to paint his portrait. Without hesitation he’d replied, No, never, because according to Muslim law, pictures were part of idolatry. He’d explained to me that in Yemen, idols had been worshipped until the day the Prophet appeared and, inspired by the Most High to bring light to shadows, he forbade the dissemination of images of men, women, animals, plants, or stars, and with scorching words he lit a fire that reduced all grotesque representations to ash.
