“Tea, silly, do you want tea?” she repeated, reaching for a teapot from the shelf. I was excited to glimpse her armpit, as naked and dangerous as a carnivorous flower.
“What happened to your political prisoner?” I asked, putting sugar in my cup and a few drops of milk in hers.
“He was in prison until he died. A little before that, he’d sent me a postcard that said: There will always be a sea where you can wash your soul.”
“There will always be a sea? Are you sure?”
“Yes, always.”
I took her hand.
“And what else will there be?” I asked.
“You tell me.”
You tell me: Those were the code words that opened the way to what followed, the flood of desire exploding like Christmas fireworks in festive neighborhoods. You tell me. Yes, Zahra Bayda, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell, and I’ll do, and you’ll tell and do, and then we were shut into my room together without knowing how we got there, and finally it started, what had been so hoped for and so long awaited, so long repressed, and that, I now learned, had been mutually felt since almost the beginning. Our great longing, compressed into athree-by-four-meter space, made for eager movements and stumbling advances; that, plus the certain clumsiness of very tall people, who when making love tend to end up in obtuse geometries and somewhat comical dances. How to describe that night;Clash of the Titans? That, perhaps, in a narrow cot that barely bore the press of us and creaked as we celebrated every victory with tribal shouts the pillow couldn’t drown. In all this, there, deep in the back of my mind, a fleeting thought tried to open space: Pau is going to kill us, a night of love shouldn’t be noisy when you share housing with four other people.
Pau was going to kill us, if not out of jealousy, then because of the commotion in that little house where the other residents were trying to sleep, and where plasterboard partitions were intimacy’s only paltry shelter. At some point, Zahra Bayda and I tiptoed down the hall from my bed to hers, which was across the house but a double bed and more suited to a final, less impulsive, more intentional round. But on our way we went to the bathroom, and then the kitchen for some water, and between one thing and another the night got away from us and dawn found us asleep in each other’s arms.
Pau woke us soon thereafter, knocking on the door. He opened it slightly and saw Zahra Bayda in my arms, her dark skin even darker against the white sheets, with goose bumps from the fan’s breeze. Pau was carrying two cups of coffee, which he placed on a little table without saying a word. Then he soundlessly placed a sheet of paper at the foot of the bed and left, closing the door.
Pink dawn light entered through the window: the hermetic hour, according to the Greeks, as Hermes is born in that first instant of the day, when the sun emerges and tints the sky with a sweet radiance.
Zahra Bayda read the note aloud. It was from the Taliban. It announced death for the woman who walked the beach at night with a man who wasn’t her husband.
We got dressed to go talk to Pau, but he’d already left. The people of the house, discreet as always, didn’t complain about the noise we’d made the night before, didn’t even mention it. Or maybe they did, perhaps there was some protest, but we didn’t notice; to Zahra Bayda and me, everything seemed surreal, except for our own joy. We were so happy that everything made us laugh, even the Taliban’s threat. Pau, in contrast, didn’t find it funny, as we learned around midday when we sat down with him to talk; we agreed to avoid any attempts against Zahra Bayda’s life by having her leave a few days early for her trip to Barcelona, where she’d be participating in an MSF meeting and attending her daughter Iftiin’s graduation. Before that, she and I would spend five days in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; I’d accompany her on that leg of the journey. For now, we’d have to head to Sanaa by road; it was critical for us to leave our current location as soon as possible.
So as not to draw attention, Zahra Bayda covered herself entirely in black clothes, like a Yemeni woman. She looked strange and moved differently, as if she were someone else. I couldn’t wait for her to take it all off and be herself again, in one of those colorful African tunics that freed her arms, kept her steps limber, and allowed for that sway of her hips with which I was so enamored. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered, nothing could overshadow that moment in which the world seemed to us a joyful place. Though she was dressed like a widow or nun, Zahra Bayda looked at me and let out a laugh, the exact same laugh that rang out when she wore African clothes.
We arrived in Sanaa in time to catch our plane. We left behind that city sunk in a war with invisible enemies, like in an episode ofThe Twilight Zonewhere, at breakfast, someone in a remote country presses a button, and a child here dies. In Sanaa, the air burned, and bombings left behind gaping black mouths in the ground. A young man said to his dead bride: “You’re going to your destiny, my love.”In the flash of an instant, towers crushed their residents in ruins. The dead are so many, there was no ceremony for them. Smoke rose in spirals, dust settled over cushions. That same routine repeated daily, simple, without remorse, like when a listless child gets bored of his toys and starts to kick them.
The Axe League
An eternal autumn light dyes the desert in excremental shades: terminal ochers, blood red, earth black, the iridescent green of decomposition, the purple of viscera, the sand’s ashy blond, ether’s translucent blue, the gold of glowing amber or a scorpion’s lethal bite. Incense shipments are worth their weight in gold and, to avoid attackers and ambushes, Goat Foot directs her caravans along secret routes through hidden regions where air and sand have sculpted Gothic architectures with their spiral dances. From the outside, the mounds and tall peaks look like rows of knights from ancient times. Inside, caverns and troglodytic caves serve as refuges and natural trenches. Some of the peaks are shaped like towers or bishops, others twist gracefully, flatten out, or curve like bells. There are baroque and subtle ones, hive-shaped and stork’s-nest-shaped ones, peaks as geometric as geodesic domes, organic ones like giant mushrooms or prehistoric ferns. White stone moons light up the sky and, below, the landscape is mere artifice: the elegant face of nothing.
While Goat Foot—Lady of Olibanum and Great Agha of Caravans—focuses on perfumes, incense, journeys, and trade, in the kingdom of Sheba a plot has been brewing behind her back.What was foreseen has come to pass: The Butcher and the Maiden have formed a secret pact against her, a non-sancta alliance that is known in clandestine circles as the Axe League. A simple exchange of brief words, and they sealed the deal. Just a few brief words, laden with implications:
“Goat Foot is the goat,” the Butcher declares.
“Yes, Goat Foot is the goat,” agrees the Maiden.
The rivalry between the queen mother and the disowned princess has devolved into a stalemate, but now a third party’s arrival on the scene shifts the scales.
The Butcher, who started out quartering sheep and rose from there to officiate bloody rites, has now continued his meteoric rise, and oversees the army. He’s as sharp as hunger, and has discovered the need for religious matters to be enmeshed with military ones. Faith by force. Force by faith. Even so, his plan isn’t quite successful yet; something is in the way, and something is missing. What’s in the way is extremely clear. It’s Goat Foot, who controls all the region’s riches while she herself is controlled by no one. If he liquefies Goat Foot, the former butcher can complete the triad of his triumph: faith, force, and riches. And what is missing? He’s missing tradition and legitimacy. Like all upstarts, the Butcher lacks those two essential qualities, which he now tries to gain by winning the Maiden’s support, as she’s the head of the old regime and wears a thousand-year-old crown.
As for his personal attributes, the ex-butcher perfectly fulfills the profile of a tyrant. He’s a tall, thick-bodied, violent lout who spits through his teeth and smells of rancid sweat. A manly gorilla.
“But he’s also got a pretty face,” the alaleishos point out. “How can we not appreciate his little black cherry eyes, his fanning eyelashes, his pert nose, and his sarcastic smile with those fine lips and almost all his teeth intact?”
Hypersexual and hormonal, the Butcher is also addicted to games, food, and blood. Fleshy and big by nature, he exudes virilityfrom every pore: That’s what a good-looking fat man tells himself.Boccato di cardinale.A real stud, phenomenal, insatiable, over-the-top. The brute manners of a toxic male. A harsh warrior holding the reins of power, who’s recruited the most professional army as yet known to history, so disciplined and vicious that the desert trembles at their approach. The Butcher commands his troops by brandishing his butcher’s knife in his left hand. As a young man he learned almost nothing except how to use that tool, a crude one, but that’s allowed him to get to where he is now. They say he didn’t shed a single tear on losing his right hand to a bad swing of a machete; a man who doesn’t know how to cry is prone to making others do it. He’s rid himself of all those grandiose titles, he has no interest anymore in being the Son of Antares, or King of Light, or whatever the fuck else. Now he gets right down to business: He’s had himself named the Supreme Pontiff and Army Commander in Chief as part of the scheme. He no longer wears the superfluous trappings that seduced him in his upstart amateur phase, enough with the tall purple headdress, chasuble, liturgical belt, alb, and stole! What has no use shouldn’t get in the way. He doesn’t want to deal with costumes anymore, he’s here to conquer, not to play with toy soldiers. He’s got what he needs with his well-sharpened axe, horrendous shriek, rebel’s cap, and old black apron stinking of weakness and caked in blood. When he officiates as a pontiff, he’s no longer uncomfortable in his chasuble, priest’s girdle, stole, or very tall headgear. He’s understood that all that is not necessary to inspire love, admiration, or respect: It’s enough to seed guilt and fear. Guilt and fear, that’s his winning formula. In later eras, Roman emperors would opt for bread and circuses. But that would be later; the Butcher, a primitive commander, sticks to guilt and fear. He counts on the complicity of the gods, who wield their moody lightning bolts to foment fear of heights, remorse, pangs of conscience, and belief in sacrifice as a source of forgiveness and redemption. Let people confess, kneel, whip themselves, and neverstop confessing, let them fall into a cycle of neurotic guilt that can never be paid off or washed clean.
As for the Maiden, the other leg of the righteous league, what drives her to make a pact with the bastard, her of all people, fine and arrogant and blue-blooded as she is, she, the hoity-toitiest of them all, and the fussiest? If the King of Jerusalem had struck her as insignificant, in this ex-butcher she must have seen little more than an insect, a larva, a bit of slime. But the alaleishos claim something different. They say that, though a little late, the Maiden discovers, in the Butcher, shudders of desire and pleasures of the flesh, and that at the man’s call she gets all in a tizzy, dissolves into flirting, surrenders to a shameless sexuality. She can’t forgive herself for having wasted so much beauty and youth, all that time spent on modesty and virginity, all that softness of skin without a hand to stroke it. That’s the gossip the alaleishos spill, and they insist that the Axe League’s pact was sealed in bed more than on any battlefield.
Those who say that don’t know the Maiden. Her ice-and-glass heart allows no weakness, nor lends itself to sentimental stumbles. For her, the Butcher is no more than a murderer, an evil as repugnant as it is necessary, an instrument she wields for her own purpose: to finish off Goat Foot. Hatred for the princess is the only connection between the Maiden and the Butcher, they’re not united by love, but by fright, says Borges. How wrong they are, the alaleishos! They don’t understand that the enduring rage isn’t in him, but in her. In her haughty calm, the Maiden is the true dust storm, poised to destroy. The real power lies in her, as does the atavistic matriarchy. A recent arrival like the Butcher only fulfills a circumstantial role. In the eternal kingdom of Sheba, male interference is as fleeting as a lone cloud in a clear sky. The Maiden is the red female pope, the hottest hate, the heart that beats the strongest. The Butcher spills blood, eats raw meat, leads parades and ceremonies; he puts on the show. But backstage, it’s the Maiden who orchestrates the trance, the hysterical crowd, the divine or demonic possession. She stays inplace and lets the Butcher shake, grow, expose himself, and fall for the illusion of his own glory. She keeps him around to erase Goat Foot from history and wipe her off the map, and once that job is done, so long to the thug, I don’t know who you are, you can go back to your dirty alley and the stinking slaughterhouse from which you came. Boccato di cardinale, the Butcher? Yes, because the Maiden plans to scarf him down in a single bite.
All this will happen, probably. Down the line, the quickening pulse of death will come between the Butcher and the Maiden. But that’ll be later, in another legend. For now, the Axe League is in motion and well-oiled, gathering strength, preparing little by little, unrushed, one step at a time, sowing the desert with sacred stones that will become altars, which will become shrines, then chapels, synagogues, mosques, churches that will turn into temples, meccas, and cathedrals, and, later still, basilicas and Vaticans. And alongside them, up will rise the barricades and trenches, barracks that will later be brigades and fortresses, jails that will turn into panopticons, concentration camps, high walls, barbed wire. The confessionals and flagellations will give way to interrogation rooms and inquisitions, supreme courts and summary trials, condemnations and stonings, gallows and stakes for burning, torture dungeons and central intelligence, secret services, special operations, Mossads, KGBs, CIAs, DEAs.
All that will come. It’ll come with patience and a bit of charm. It’ll come with time and a small stick.
