Habib Selmi

The Whore of Belleville

 

 

Habib Selmi                                                photo by Samuel Shimon

 

 

They call her "the whore of Bellville", but I love her, Souad Gharsallah. I love her smile, I love her audacity, her voice, the movement of her hands as she sits in front of me. I love her stories and the way she tells them. And I especially love her body. The first time I saw her shaven armpits I felt a shiver run through my frame, and since then I have begun to feel that there is nothing in a woman's body more arousing than her armpits when they're shaven. I remember that the first thing I did when we were alone and naked together for the first time was to bury my face in her armpit, sniffing it and raking it with the tip of my tongue oblivious of the prickly stubble.

 

A long time has passed since we split up and I lost all trace of her. At first she disappeared and I would no longer see her from afar, as I had in the past, at the restaurant or the café, the park or the tube station, in the company of one of the women with whom she used to work in the Tunisian Women Emigrants Association, but I still used to hear news of her. Her relationship with the Association which she had helped to found began to change, and her enthusiasm for such activities as awareness-raising and mobilisation, especially in what she called sensitive periods such as election time, began to cool off. And even her life philosophy, based on "seizing life with both hands" as she herself used to repeat, apparently began to alter. A short while later, even that news of her broke off to be replaced by rumours I didn't want to believe. Some say that she married a Tunisian immigrant, a devoutly religious man who worked in the halal meat business, and that she completely changed her ways and her lifestyle, giving up her job, breaking off relations with most of her female friends, and closing herself up at home, only venturing out, veiled, on urgent errands. Others say that in the end she returned to Tunisia where - with the money she'd managed to save while abroad and with the profits from the fridges, washing machines and irons, the videos, cassette recorders and cameras, the plates, pans, spoons and knives, the bras, panties and boxes of Hollywood chewing gum she brought with her - she opened a large hairdressing salon fitted with the most modern equipment in her home village of Medjez el Bab. Others, with a mix of malicious joy, irony and spite, say that she was struck down by a rare and serious illness to her private parts forcing the doctors to confine her to bed in a hospital on the city outskirts so as to avoid infecting others. This, they explained, was because of Souad's uninhibited lasciviousness and her uncontrollable desire to have sex with any man who took her fancy, oblivious of the rumours, accusations, criticisms and insults that people (especially women) launched against her. Still others maintain that for a certain period Souad was the lover of a rich young Portuguese who owned two restaurants in Belleville, and that she would accompany him from time to time to spend a few days in one of the luxury hotels on the Costa Brava. And they ask themselves with a certain degree of surprise and censure how a beautiful and intelligent woman like Souad could concede her body to an uncircumcised unbeliever.

 

I have to admit that I didn't love her at first, she frightened me and her audacity made me feel a little embarrassed. Yet as soon as I saw her face I desired her. Yes, from the very first moment, Souad aroused my desires unlike any other woman I had known before. A few days after our first meeting that desire reached a peak, and it became a burning fever the first time I saw her shaven armpits. When I lost trace of her I discovered, listening to the strange stories that began be told about her, that most of the men in the consulates and organisations she used to frequent through her activities in the Tunisian Women Emigrants Association also lusted after her, and that they would try, using various means, to get her into bed. This didn't surprise me because Souad was an extraordinary woman, perhaps even more outstanding because most of the women in the circles in which she moved were of limited beauty, intelligence and culture. On the tall side with a slim figure and straight black hair almost brushing her shoulders, her large dark grey eyes and her broad mouth with its full lips formed the centre of gravity of a round and powerfully magnetic face. Yet this beauty, which she said she inherited from an ancestor of Andalusian origin who probably came to Tunisia to escape the Spanish Reconquista, would not have been so marked were it not for the keen intelligence flashing in her eyes, her taste in choosing clothes and matching colours, and her elegant movements.

 

From time to Souad used to tell me she loved me, of course I didn't believe a word of it, rather I was and still am certain that she said as much because I was generous towards her. However I'm inclined to believe that she did become a little attached to me during a difficult period when she needed a man, and perhaps what made it easier was the fact that I was always polite and kind to her. I never used to interfere in her business or her relationships, and I never ventured opinions or observations on her behaviour, despite the fact I loved her. In any case, none of that used to bother me because I was convinced that our relationship wouldn't last, despite the importance it had for me. All I wanted from Souad was for her to sit near me and talk to me, and, from time to time, to come to my flat so I could strip her naked and rake the tip of my tongue across her shaven armpit.

 

After a few weeks, her morning visits little by little began to dwindle until finally they broke off altogether and we began to meet at midday or late in the evening, and not only in my flat but also in cafés, restaurants and public gardens. However this change, which worried me at first, had no effect on our relationship, indeed I could describe it as a turning point that prepared the way for a new stage in which my proximity to Souad and admiration for her increased. And along with this uncontrollable desire came feelings the nature and meaning of which I understood immediately … yes, from that moment I became "a lover".

 

I didn't, as is often said of lovers, lose my senses but I did become very generous towards her. I wanted to give her everything she desired, but Souad didn't want anything because she didn't want to take advantage of my love for her, and she wouldn't accept anything from me except small presents and only on specific occasions such as her birthday, which she rarely celebrated. All she really wished and all that excited her was for me to invite her to dinner at a restaurant to eat shellfish. Yes, Souad - a daughter of Medjez el Bab (as she sometimes described herself) who only saw the sea for the first time when she went on a school trip to Binzert at the age of thirteen - loves those horned and clawed creatures known in restaurants as seafood.

 

When the waiter brings the plate containing pieces of crab, half a dozen oysters and the same number of scallops, small black sea snails, lobster and prawns, and places it on the table between us, she orders white wine then covers her mouth with her hand and laughs, gazing at me with her great eyes. And I turn slowly and bow my head so as to avoid the eyes of the other diners sitting around us, especially the more elderly among them, then in my turn launch into a laugh that doesn't stop until the waiter returns with the bottle of wine.

 

She always begins with the pink prawns, which she prefers to all other kinds of seafood, even to crab or crayfish. After pouring a little wine into our glasses, she takes a prawn and begins to peel it, doing so quickly and in a way that indicates she knows those creatures well. Usually the last thing she does is break off the tail, then toss what remains of the prawn into her mouth before dipping her fingers in the mixture of water and lemon juice to remove the stickiness and smell.

 

She gazes at me while emptying her glass in one draught. I laugh again and tell her what happened to my only sister the time she ventured to eat sardines. Before she got married her fiancé gave her a tin of sardines as a present, after discovering by chance that my sister had never seen or eaten a fish in her life. She took the fish and gobbled it down, but a little while later started to complain of a pain in her guts and began to throw up.

 

Souad smiles without saying a word then turns once more to dealing with the sea creatures humbly and submissively awaiting their turn on the pile of lettuce. She works her way through everything on her plate, sucking down the oysters after drizzling them with just enough lemon juice to get them twitching.

 

She wolfs down everything she finds in the black sea snails, and breaks the crab claws with a pair of small tongs carefully drawing out everything inside. I always follow the scene attentive and amazed. As soon as I finish eating I sit back and begin to watch the movement of her lips and fingers, from time to time remembering what she had told me of her life in Medjez el Bab.

 

***

 

When Souad gets drunk she refuses to go back home and accompanies me to my flat where, as soon as I close the door, she begins to take off most of her clothes and throws herself on the bed. I prepare her a coffee and sit a way off not talking to her because I know that at times like this she needs silence. After the second cup she sits up and launches into a long account of her adolescence in Medjez el Bab. I never interrupt her but listen carefully because I know for sure that talking about those years relaxes her and even gives her a certain degree of pleasure:

 

The short potbellied maths teacher who used to bet with the habitués of the café that with what he earned every month he'd make her accept him as her husband, and that it would be he who took that virginity and who sank his face into that fantastic backside which had no equal in Medjez el Bab.

 

Her father, who worked as a waiter in the best restaurant in town, used to cosset her and boast of her intelligence, even more so of her beauty. Her hair is straight like a Frenchwoman's he would tell his friends, and he'd do her nails, cut her hair, give his opinion on what she wore, sometimes even choose her clothes for her. But when her femininity began to bloom he changed completely and began to avoid her, at the restaurant, in the street and even at home. Little by little he began to distance himself from her and became incapable even of looking at her. He no longer talked to her and all communication began to pass through her mother who no longer knew how to behave when they were in the house together. Every day her husband would tell her: Look out a man for that little bomb before she explodes killing me, killing you and destroying everything.

 

The delicate little French teacher about whom they used to tell strange stories that had no basis in truth. He had founded and ran a cinema club in town and all the films she loved and that had influenced her, she saw them there. There too her real knowledge of cinema began and she discovered a passion for the silver screen that still hasn't diminished, even after seeing so many Egyptian films in recent years. Sacco and Vanzetti, Zed, State of Siege, La Colère des dieux, Modern Times, Death in Venice, The Birds, Soleil des hyènes, The Mummy, Apocalypse Now.

 

The hairdresser who claimed to love her like a daughter and who would do Souad's hair for free and give her combs, perfumes and beauty products imported from Germany where her sister's husband lived. Yet from time to time she would fondle her in sensitive places or caress her in strange ways which Souad understood when she grew up were not entirely innocent.

 

Her three brothers, all younger than her, and especially the youngest who every month still writes her a letter giving a detailed account of everything happening in Medjez el Bab.

 

The male nurse whom - before she in her turn became a nurse in the local hospital after finishing school - she loved as she'd never loved anyone, living a mad dangerous adventure with him in which she almost lost the virginity that had so obsessed the potbellied little man.

 

Sons of bitches, she says without changing tone, they're so smug about emancipation and everywhere they go they set up clubs, unions and associations for women; but when they slip in their dicks and hit the end-stop without encountering any resistance they suffer a nervous breakdown and even commit the most abominable crimes. Why do they give so much importance to the hymen? Why do their lose their minds and see the world grow black when they find the way open and unobstructed? Why are they against conquest and opening-up?

 

Didn't our own glorious history begin with a great conquest? And isn't it better for this dark damp cave - the honey cave as a colleague in the Tunisian Women Emigrants Association called it - to be opened immediately to air and sunlight? If I had been mature at the time I wouldn't have hesitated a moment in breaking that barrier and I'd have let that nurse I loved break me in, as they say, or I'd have done it myself tearing the hymen with a razor, or a nail, or a pair of tweezers, or simply with my fingernails just to spite those turkey cocks obsessed with virginity. In any case, I took my revenge on them. I didn't go out looking, it just happened automatically and in circumstances I wasn't expecting at all. One night, by the light of the summer moon in a second class carriage on the Catalonia express bound for Barcelona, and to be precise at the end of the corridor, I was broken in by a dark skinned boy from Andalusia, an uncircumcised unbeliever.

 

The strange thing about it is that I didn't realise until a few minutes later. There's no doubt that I was drunk, in fact I used to drink a lot of beer in those years during which I travelled by train to the most famous cities in Europe. When the boy, whose name I can't even remember, had finished with me I rolled onto my side in front of the window to look at the moon that was filling the carriage with light. Then my eye fell on a delicate streak of blood trickling down towards my knees. I felt no pain and no joy. I didn't remember anyone and I didn't think about anything. The truth is I felt nothing. I was like a tree trunk that someone had cut down and discarded somewhere. All I did was to wipe away the blood with a Kleenex, slowly and calmly, then rest my head, as empty as the desert, on my bag and begin gazing at the Catalonian moon.

 

Souad doesn't move and doesn't alter her tone of voice. She goes back to the years she spent studying at the secondary school of Medjez el Bab and talks about her mother who used to work there. She holds her mother in high esteem because she taught her a great deal about what all girls should know during adolescence. Without shame or embarrassment she told Souad everything about the "thing" which, she said, was a blessing from God. She loved her mother, of course, but not as much as she loved her father, the father who stopped being a father when her body began to flower, and who so unjustly decided to forget her. Yes, unjustly, for it was no fault of hers that her body developed as it did, indeed she too was surprised by the change which found her psychologically unprepared. It's true that in the early days she used to be inundated with a feeling of pride and pleasure, especially when she was at home by herself and would strip naked in front of the large mirror on the wardrobe in her parent's bedroom caressing the hair that was beginning to sprout between her thighs and contemplating the rotundity of her smooth and tender buttocks, and the full lips of her mouth. It's also true that she felt she had become a real woman, whom men desired as she passed in front of any café in the town centre, turning their heads and craning out their necks in her direction. Of course, all that pleased her. And yet how many times, with or without reason, was she mistreated, insulted and attacked. At first she didn't understand what was happening to her and she suffered a great deal, yet as soon as everything became clear she began to accept her situation with great patience and tenacity. How many times was she described as a whore. Even here she hasn't freed herself from that, and today she is still paying the price for her superabundant femininity in the consulates and organisations she frequents through her activities in the Tunisian Women Emigrants Association.

 

My mother is a delicate and sensitive woman, says Souad. When I told her that I'd decided to give up my studies and enter nursing college so as to be able to live an independent life she nearly passed out. Like all poor and uneducated mothers, she had dreamt that I'd become a teacher or a doctor. And when many years later I told her that I was going away to escape from the shadow of that father who was becoming ever more distant, incomprehensible and self-absorbed, afraid that he may do something strange such as commit a crime or throw himself under the wheels of a train; to escape from the little man who used to bet that one day he'd sink his face into my backside, from the affronts and stares of the men in the cafés, from the accusations and rumours that followed me everywhere, from the mosquitoes insects and flies of Medjez el Bab, from the dust and dirt, and from the cow, sheep and donkey droppings on what passed for pavements; when I told her that, she really did pass out.

 

Souad stops talking and I look at her without moving. When she turns onto her side I know for certain that she won't say anything else. I open the window slightly to ventilate the room then get up and go and sit next to her on the bed. She turns towards me opening her mouth in a wily and seductive smile, her lower lip trembling. I smile back at her and she watches me contracting her lips and moving them inwards as if sucking on something. I close my eyes a little and when I open them again she throws off what remains of her clothes and drags her body towards me. From that moment a dense and painful silence descends upon us and becomes deeper with passing time, interspersed with deep breathing and broken gasping moans. The silence is necessary to enable what happens to happen, because words, any words, lose all meaning. Very slowly Souad begins to move her body and little by little her face alters, its colours change and her own features disappear to be replaced by others.

 

At first she lies on her back or her side, arching her spine slightly or opening her thighs, or stretching out her arms, or pushing her haunches backwards. The position her body takes throws into scandalous evidence the parts she knows I like the most. After a little while she closes her eyes, compliant and submissive, and the game begins. I mobilise fingers, tongue, nose - my chief organs of sense - awakening my dormant natural instincts and primitivism to plunge into distant prohibited areas and explore them. Often I'm tense. My hands tremble, my heart races and my fingers fumble and get entangled as they approach those secret places; and I do so because to some extent I'm compelled to, not because I'm motivated by any strong desire, though I recognise that I enjoy it. Souad draws me into this game with great skill employing her beauty and her sensitivity and using her vast capacity to seduce; she guides me, she leads me as she pleases and it is she who pulls all the strings and dominates the game from beginning to end.

 

***

 

This time, Souad shows no desire to go to the restaurant and eat seafood. Perhaps because going to a public place, sitting at a table among other people and devouring horned and clawed creatures which country folk from the interior consider scorpions, beetles and worms is something just too frivolous and light-hearted, and not at all in keeping with what happened that night.

 

Except this didn't prevent Souad from knocking back as much wine as she pleased. As usual she drank until she got drunk, and as usual she threw herself onto the bed and began to talk, but not about the man who used to dream of breaking her virginity, and not about the father who changed completely when her femininity began to bloom, and not about Medjez el Bab, but about events, images, impressions and sensations more deeply buried in time.

 

The first dress my father bought for me was made of linen, said Souad. It was light red, the collar and cuffs were made of lace and it had a low waistband that reached beyond my knees. I can still remember the shop where my father took me to buy it. The last time I was in Tunisia I discovered it had been turned into a stall selling refreshments and fried chicken, and the smell of burnt oil, the blaring music and the racket of the customers assaulted you fifty metres before reaching the place.

 

Do you know why my father bought me the dress? The marriage of my aunt, whom I've never mentioned to you. My aunt Hadda. I loved her as I loved my mother, and she also loved me and wanted a daughter who resembled me; a little girl exactly like me, that's what she used to tell everyone. But death didn't give her time to realise her hopes: three months after she got married she was struck by a serious illness and a few weeks later she died.

 

I was just beginning to grow up when my aunt got married. I was maybe five or six years old, I don't remember now. On the day of the wedding my aunt monopolised me from the moment she went to sit on the dais - the platform they had prepared for the bride so that everyone could see her - and she didn't allow anyone to separate us. She was proud of me in my dress which was drawing everyone's admiration, and she was happy that I was sitting next to her on the dais.

 

All the time my aunt remained on the dais, I was at her side, and when the time came for her to withdraw for her wedding night, I refused to be separated from her. I didn't understand why everyone suddenly wanted to move away from her. My mother was the first to try and persuade me: Your aunt's worn out, … come with me … we must leave her to rest a little. My mother's voice was like a whisper, but I wasn't to be persuaded, and after many futile attempts by my father, relatives and neighbours, my aunt Hadda herself intervened. She stared at me sharply, abruptly pushed me away to free herself, then got up and followed her husband who was waiting for her at the entrance to their room. As soon as they'd gone in the door closed and suddenly many things happened all at once: the drum and flute stopped playing, the few men who were allowed to mix with the women withdrew under the mulberry tree and, as for the women who had been moving like a swarm of bees around the bride's dais, they stopped dancing and ululating and gathered in a circle around my mother. All the clamour that had been making the place shake stopped and gave way to a strange silence, broken from time to time by whispers and low voices.

 

I forgot what happened to me on the dais, and the feeling of humiliation provoked by my aunt's surprising behaviour gave way to a sense of great confusion. What was it that made people separate and come together like that? Why did the wedding end with the departure of the bride and groom? And why all that silence?

 

I was still confused when suddenly a great heave near the room was followed by a clamour that brought the place back to what it had been before the disappearance of the bride and groom. The drum and the flute started up again, the air was shaken by shots ringing out one after the other and the cries of the women, My mother was the most enthusiastic participant in what was happening around us, she scooped me up me with her left arm and with her right seized the white shirt with a stain in the middle, a stain I later learned was blood.

 

Of course, no-one told me whose that shirt was or why it was stained with blood, but it stayed in my mind like a hidden secret that wasn't revealed until the beginning of my adolescence and my mother began to tell me what, as a woman, I had to know about such things which, she said, came from God.

 

There's another thing I remember well, as if it happened yesterday, and that is sleeping between my mother and father in their bed in the first days after my aunt died. Before that I used to sleep in the same room as them but by myself on a little mattress the corner. No doubt they were afraid I'd have nightmares and be assailed by fears and anxieties, and that's what made them take such a decision.

 

In my mind, I associate their bed with the smell of my father, and specifically the smell of his mouth. A strange smell, a little like the smell of the tar used to seal water pitchers or of camels with mange, but it wasn't disagreeable, in fact I can say it was actually quite pleasant. Memory is a strange thing. Now that I'm trying to describe that smell, I realise it was a little like the smell of the Andalusian boy I met on the Catalonia train. There are smells, colours and noises that are so strongly marked they're difficult to forget; we imagine they've finally been eradicated then they surprise us again when we find they're still there. This smell was like that. I woke up with it every day. It was the first thing to infiltrate my consciousness of the tepid and deliciously dark and sensual mix that accompanied my awakening. All this happened before I opened my eyes, and so as not to lose that pleasure I wouldn't move but remain motionless with my eyes closed. I'd lean my head a little towards my father and feel the regular rise and fall of his breath. Cautiously, I'd get closer to him and rest my face against his nose. I'd repeat these little movements every time, regularly and precisely, as if performing a ritual for the beginning of the new day. I'd be cautious not for fear of waking my father, because he was a heavy sleeper as he himself used to say, but for fear that my mother would realise, for I was certain she used to watch what I was doing. I was afraid she'd discover what I considered to be our secret: in other words all those things that used to happen to me and my father from the moment the smell of his mouth invaded my senses to the moment I surrendered to feelings of inebriation, joy and confusion after resting my face against his nose so as to receive as much as possible of his breath.

 

I was strangely aware that my father knew this and that he was colluding with me in some way, and I wanted these little rituals with which I consecrated my day to remain a secret between me and him - the man who cut my hair and did my nails, who boasted to his colleagues of my beauty and would feel so proud when they told him, with much exaggeration, that in a few years his daughter would undoubtedly become Miss Tunisia. After long moments I'd turn to my mother's side and open my eyes, and she'd dart towards me suddenly and hug me to herself hard. When I'd escaped her embrace and abandoned the world of the bed I'd be invaded by other feelings inspired in me by the morning of Medjez el Bab. I love everything about the morning in that town: the smell of bread, the smell of wood smoke, the smell of the earth wet with dew, the smell of milk, the smell of coffee, the smell of fried eggs, the smell of vegetables and fruit, the smell of pastries, the smell of eucalyptus in the streets and squares and of roses and jasmine in people's gardens.

 

I focus my gaze on Souad's mouth, afraid that she may think I'm beginning to get bored with her tale, and I tell myself that there's no difference between mornings in Medjez el Bab and in my own village. The smells are the same, except the mornings in my village begin with a search for scorpions to kill them. Every night throughout the summer these venomous creatures, either black or yellow, crawl into bedrooms, which they prefer to all other rooms, hiding under beds, tables and wardrobes to spend the night. Sometimes they hide under pillows and covers or crawl into shoes, trouser pockets and curtains, or into any chests and boxes they come across.

 

The scorpions' seasonal attack sows terror in people's hearts. They abandon their rooms and sleep under the stars having first placed the legs of their beds in bowls of water because they know scorpions are poor swimmers, and having climbed the side of the bowl they fall into the water where they remain until morning when they die an evil death.

 

Now, sometimes all these precautions serve no purpose and in the most secret and intimate moments the scorpions can crawl into places you'd never think of. One scorching night a relative of mine went out to answer a call of nature, in the open air as country dwellers do. He chose a quiet spot and squatted down, though it seems he let himself go a bit too much. It was very dark and he wasn't expecting any danger to befall him, it didn't cross his mind as he was on the job that his male member, which had never suffered any injury in his life, could find itself exposed to real danger.

 

At first he didn't really understand what had happened. All he felt was something prick him on a testicle. Later he realised that it wasn't the prick of a thorn or anything like that because it persisted as he began to release a stream of urine onto the sand, and it seemed to him that urinating was what caused it. Then he felt a pain that began to get unbearably worse. He struck a match and by the light saw a yellow scorpion between his feet. Luckily for him it was only small.

 

I cannot suppress the desire to smile as I remember that incident, which was recounted around the village to great amusement. Souad asks me in a tired voice what makes me smile and so I tell the story to her. She moves her lips into something resembling a smile and says nothing. I sit up and fix my gaze on her face preparing to turn my attention back to her, but Souad suddenly shows great interest in the story and asks me to tell it to her again. I grant her request at once and as soon as I've finished she explodes into laughter which little by little gets louder until in my turn I join in and laugh too. A moment later her laugh turns into guffaws, natural at first then convulsive. Guffaws that prepare the way - just as silence did in the past - for what we will shortly abandon ourselves to: the primitive call of flesh to flesh.

 

Her voice dies down and becomes inaudible but she doesn't stop laughing. Suddenly she turns over, stretches herself on the ground and, in front of me, slowly raises her naked backside as her laughter continues, but by now it's no longer a laugh but a strange sound like a fading moan coming from far away. I look at her for a long time without making a move, then I get up, wipe the sweat that has begun pouring from my forehead and head for the kitchen. There I gulp down as much water as I can and lean out of the open window to fill my lungs with the night air before going back to Souad.

 

 

Translated by Piers Amodia

 

 

 

 

First published in Banipal magazine

www.banipal.co.uk