What was Friar Cirio trying to do with that low blow? Did he want to demoralize me, send me off the deep end? What was in it for him, in making me believe Thomas had recanted his own work, disillusioned with it to the point of calling it useless?
“Why are you telling me this, brother?” I managed to ask, annoyed, verging on angry.
“I’m telling you so you’ll think about it. You should also know your famous Queen of Sheba had something to do with it,” he said with the satisfaction of a man delivering a death blow.
Friar Cirio knew about my weakness for the Queen of Sheba because he’d often seen me in that very spot, seated on that very bench, in front of that very table, combing books for information about her.
“Out, vermin!” I said to him. Well, I didn’tsay“Out, vermin,” but I thought it, playing down his words and washing my hands of the whole affair. But not entirely. That is, not all the way. The truth is, his words had marked me, they hummed in my ears, a little worm of curiosity now ate at me from the inside. The Queen of Sheba had forced Thomas to abandon his writing? An absurd tale. Although, improbable as it was, it wasn’t impossible; I already knew that in certain circumstances her influence could be disastrous, her kiss poisoned.
Thomas wouldn’t have been the first or last sage to cast doubt on his own truths. Yes. After turning it over and over in my mind, I started to see it as not only possible, but probable. When Aquinas refused to keep writing, Church leaders must have chided him. “Drop the nonsense, Thomas, finish your never-endingSummaonce and for all!” And he, smiling, modest, would have replied, like Bartleby: “I’d prefer not to.” Or like Socrates with his “All I know is that I know nothing”; César Vallejo with his “I want towrite, but only foam comes out.” The great mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, who forbade the reprinting of his books because, he claimed, they were little more than scribbles. Gérard de Nerval, who suggested for his epitaph: “He wanted to know everything, but learned nothing.”
Friar Cirio showed me several manuscripts where he assured me that, at the same time Thomas went mute, there took place a certain revelation, illumination, poltergeist encounter, or expansion of vision that dazzled the saint and left him without words. And that supernatural apparition had been a woman. Not just any woman, but a young one, brown-skinned, secular, intelligent, in love with knowledge and with freedom of the spirit, leader of multitudes, proverbially beautiful, blessed with immense power and sovereignty over an incredibly rich empire, and, as if that weren’t enough, she was the most pagan of all biblical figures: the Queen of Sheba.
If I—a nobody, a piece of goat shit, a speck of dust—could lose my head over a vision of the queen, what impact would she have on the great Thomas, and what rarified knowledge or erotic shivers must have shaken the saint on seeing her, utterly gorgeous and dressed like Aurora Consurgens, wrapped in ripples and spirals and emitting brilliant blue or neon green rays of light, her incredibly long hair floating in gusts of solar wind all the way to the horizon. That’s how Thomas must have seen her, or so I imagined, and the impact of that vision was so great he never wrote again.
“You again, Goat Foot?” I said to her. “You’ve come all the way to this monastery lost in the mountains, to find me? Are you trying to drive me mad, like you did with Thomas?”
Widows, Whores, Beggars
Seeking to ease her loneliness, the Princess of Sheba emerges into the world and, despite her damaged foot, begins to walk. She limps and moves forward, forward, forward without rest until she reaches the cities.
“You’re making a mistake, Goat Foot!” the alaleishos shout at her. “Be careful! Correct your course before it’s too late!”
She doesn’t heed them. She enters the city walls and approaches the crowded slums, where impoverished women survive and earn their keep as beggars, thieves, or sex workers.
Goat Foot wanders unmoored for days, and on the fifteenth day, weighed down by thirst and exhaustion, feet bleeding, she arrives in the immense district of Al-Basateen, near the port of Aden. Al-Basateen, a cursed name. Home and not-home of the poorest of the poor, whether Somali or mixed-heritage Yemeni people with Somali blood. The alleys buzz with insults, knife blades, and clouds scented with cardamom and cinnamon, with garbage, with incense and urine. Dog poop lingers in doorways. Somebody follows Goat Foot, pulls at her sleeve. She’s anmutasawil, or panhandler, and she carries a baby in her arms.
“Go home,” Goat Foot advises her. “Your child is suffering, he’s too young for this. When was he born?”
“I gave birth to him on the street four days ago. I sleep with him on this corner. Sometimes, the widows let me spend the night on their patio, but not always, because my son cries with hunger and it disrupts their sleep.”
“Take me to the house of the widows,” Goat Foot says.
“For god’s sake, not there!” protest the alaleishos. “The widows live a wretched existence!”
Twelve or thirteen widows share a small, partially roofed, earthen patio. A few of them look withered and sickly, and one no longer moves: She’s curled up in a corner, mouth open, eyes stunned, waiting for death. The healthiest one is called Syrad: She’s still got strength, quite a few teeth, and traces of ancient beauty. Syrad connects immediately with Sheba, the twisted-legged girl; she lets her in, offers her tea.
“Here, in Al-Basateen,” she tells her, “we widows can’t work nor be with men, on pain of stoning. We have to cover our heads and faces and wear dark clothes. Begging is the only profession allowed to us. If you ask a Yemeni man for spare change, he feels obligated to give it, as his religion commands it, but if he’s a real negotiator, he might say, Take these coins, woman, have them, you can have three times as much if you suck me off.”
Goat Foot thanks her for the tea and leaves. Drawn to a long row of yellow doors, she approaches the zone of Hayi Esahira, where thedhillos,or sex workers, swarm. Their doors are set apart by their yellow color. One of those yellow doors opens.
“Don’t go in,” the alaleishos warn her. “A sad fate awaits you among the dhillos. They’ll be nice at first, but it’s known that they easily lose their cool and then attack.”
The she-wolves’ den is a patio almost identical to the widows’, only its walls are adorned with erotic paintings. Mattresses stuffed with chicken feathers and tubular cushions of various sizes lie scattered about. Here the women are younger, they wrap their bodies in colorful fouta fabrics and bear henna tattoos on their arms. They wear ringson their fingers and toes, chains on their ankles, and bracelets on their wrists. In the back, on a beat-up green couch, two lethargic madams doze beneath their soft, white turbans, lost in dreams of khat. They’re the brothel owners.
For the decent women of Al-Basateen, sex takes place at night, in the dark, and with covered breasts; caresses must be given and received with the left hand only, without the right hand finding out. The punishment for failing to comply is death by water or flame. But these rules don’t apply to the dhillos, who can offer their services in broad daylight and with their anatomies bared, while sharing caresses with right hands, left hands, and tongues. Unlike a decent woman, a dhillo can mount a man if he’s tired and prefers her to do the heavy lifting.
In the house of the dhillos, Goat Foot accepts tea from a shaved young man in makeup who wears chains tied to his neck and waist. His name—her name—is Zanabaq, she wears flowers in her hair, and she sways like a girl. It’s clear she’s of inferior status because the dhillos treat her poorly, giving orders that she diligently fulfills. Zanabaq sings gently as she swings a censer to refresh the space with aromatic smoke. The dhillos are curious about Sheba, this foreigner with a goat’s foot; they surround her and spark a conversation.
“They don’t want anything good for you, they’re vulgar and they’re thieves, just waiting for the right moment to rob you,” the alaleishos warn from a distance, but their voices don’t reach Goat Foot.
“You’re young and beautiful, you could work with us,” the dhillos suggest. “That twisted foot you drag so pitifully does make you a little uglier, but you could hide it under an abaya long enough to graze the ground. Plus, there are plenty of men who find lame women or amputees more exciting. As for your thick-haired calves and armpits, no man will want to be with you if you don’t shave them, but we can take care of that without charging too much, and painlessly, with a nice sharpened mussel shell.”
Goat Foot wants to know more about the norms of their profession.
“Around here, it’s customary to get paid in food,” they warn her. “If you’re hoping for gold or silver coins, you may as well go. Our clients take us to dinner, and we leave with full bellies and empty hands. Others pile on the khat.”
The dhillos of Al-Basateen get enough khat to be happy and enough food to stay alive, but they rarely manage to pull together money to send to their families. Sometimes, clients ask only to spend the night by their side.
