“You went off with Pau.”
“Pau is my daughter’s father,” she tries to explain. “I called you many times, and you didn’t answer.”
“My cell phone ran out of charge, the electricity went out...”
“Pau went to Barcelona with me for my daughter’s graduation, our daughter’s graduation, that’s all.”
“Pau, your daughter’s father?”
“Pau, my daughter’s father.”
“That’s not what you told me. You told me some things about your pregnancy, the story of a rape...”
“That’s also true. Pau adopted her when she was nine years old. Iftiin lives in Barcelona now with her grandparents, Pau’s parents.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did tell you. I told you my daughter’s name was Iftiin Ferrer.”
“So?”
“Ferrer is Pau’s last name.”
“Pau Ferrer, Iftiin Ferrer. What a riddle.”
Zahra Bayda took me to the hospital and cared for me for several days, I don’t know how many. Things weren’t so bad there, they connected me to a machine that breathed on my behalf and I floated through a half consciousness that might have been pleasant if that serenity hadn’t felt like the waiting room for death.
It turned out not to be death, though, but rather an intermittent return to life, which came back into my veins drop by drop. ZahraBayda makes me get up, dress, comb my hair. The world starts spinning on its axis again. I put on my boots, convalescing, a little less dazed. I head toward the exit, leaning on her, but on my way something hits me.
“Do you have my backpack?” I ask her.
No, she doesn’t have it. Neither do I. My backpack didn’t make it to the hospital? Zahra Bayda didn’t recall taking it from the Bata Hotel. We realize that, when we rushed out to the hospital, the backpack was forgotten.
My backpack, my old backpack, we’d left it by accident. Zahra Bayda had found my passport on the nightstand and put it in her pocket, so at least that isn’t lost. Which is something, but it’s not enough, it’s not close to enough, it’s a disaster, the loss of my backpack is absolutely unbearable, it holds my notebooks full of writings... all my notes, paragraphs, travel logs, journaling, the draft of my master’s thesis, the fragmented annotations just starting to take shape... all lost. The histories of the Queen of Sheba and her migrant women: all, all of it lost.
Zahra Bayda calls the Bata Hotel, knowing already that it’s useless. I cling to a wisp of hope.
The people at the Bata tell us that, in accordance with pandemic regulations, before giving the room to another guest they clean and disinfect it, burning anything that was left inside.
We hang up.
They’ve burned my notebooks.
It’s no use making a complaint, nothing can be done. I’m overcome. Everything I’ve written: torched, fed to the flames, lost.
To the devil went my apocryphal biography of the Queen of Sheba, was she annoyed by so much invention I pulled out of my sleeve? Did the queen bristle at my telling so many lies? Will people say that myths have value in and of themselves, float in the ether without anyone pestering them, that they have no need of some outsider stepping in to pull them down to earth? Did I betray GoatFoot? I wanted to tell of her great deeds and ended up spinning gossip. I wanted to touch her and she was untouchable, I wanted to write about her and ended up spitting foam. I looked her in the face, and she was a Gorgon. I tried to name her and she was unnameable, I flew to reach her and she burned my wings. I pushed her toward the fire, the gallows, the cross, the scrapyard, toward defeat. The Queen of Sheba lost her patience and left. She doesn’t exist anymore, or only exists in psychotic, deluded minds. My passion was a form of idolatry. Wanting to praise her, I ended up blaspheming. When I tried to tame her, she disappeared. I wanted to decipher her secrets and was crushed by her mystery. I shouldn’t have named her, I should have been more careful.
Lady of Sheba, Virgin of the Almond, Regina Makeda, Queen of the Morning, you see, Zahra Bayda, the myth became flesh and showed her face, which was all too human. It was proven: All myths made flesh end up being sacrificed.
“You’re delirious again, Bos,” says Zahra Bayda, for whom any deterioration is a sign of fever. “You lost your notebooks, sure, you lost them and that’s it. Get over it, Bosi.”
“Oh,mamita linda!” I call to my mother, the loss of my writings making me an orphan again. “I’m the one who writes, what do you want me to do, I am what I write, and now I’m nobody.”
“Enough, Bos. They burned your notebooks to prevent infections. That’s just what happened. More was lost when Rome was burned.” Zahra Bayda has lost her patience.
She’s a woman who knows how to make her way out of black holes, and it drives her crazy to watch me sink. Hypochondria isn’t her thing, her philosophy is condensed into that phrase that now strikes me as heartless: That’s just what happened. They burned your writings? That’s just what happened, start writing them again immediately, along the way you’ll gather new stories, new people will tell them to you.
That’s how she is. Zahra Bayda is the reality that prevails. Womenshowed up mutilated and sewn? Fine, she’ll undo their stitches and mend them. A boy lost his eyes? Then we’ve got to teach him how to see through touch. Those men are sick? Time to heal them. “You do whatever you can,” says Zahra Bayda, “and if it can’t be done, you do it anyway.” A thousand sea stars are dying as they burn to a crisp on the beach? All but one, because that’s the one she’ll save. That’s just what happens. But no, Zahra Bayda, after this loss, I might not be a star that you can save.
