Life is Elsewhere...'The Poet is Born'

After delivery, Maman's body entered upon still another phase. when she first let her son's groping mouth attach itself to her breasr, a wave of sweet vibration thrilled deep inside and radiated to all parts of her body; it was similar to love, but it went beyond a lover's caress, it brought a great calm happiness, a great happy calm; when her lover had kissed her breast, it had been a brief moment that was supposed to have made up for hours of doubt and mistrust; but now she knew that a mouth was attached to her breast with unending devotion, a devotion of which she could be perfectly certain.

Something else was different now, too. In the past, whenever her lover touched her naked body, she had felt ashamed. Mutual drawing together was always an overcoming of strangeness, and the moment of closeness was intoxicating precisely because it was only a moment. Shame never slept, it made love-making more exciting but it also watched over the body to prevent its plunging into full surrender. But now shame had disappeared; it was gone. The two bodies opened to each other with full abandon, and there was nothing to hide.

She had never given herself to another body in this way, and nobody had ever so given itself to her. Her lover had used her belly but he had never lived there, he had touched her breast but never drunk from it. Ah, the joy of suckling! She lovingly watched the fishlike motions of the toothless mouth and she imagined that with her milk there flowed into her little son her depest thoughts, concepts and dreams.

It was a paradisiac state: the body was allowed to be a body, and had no need to cover itself with a fig leaf; mother and son were submerged in infinite tranquility; they lived together like Adam and Eve before they had tasted of the fruit of knowledge; they lived in their bodies beyond good and evil. And more, in paradise there is no distinction between beauty and ugliness, so that the body's components were neither ugly nor beautiful but pleasurable. the toothless gums were delightful, and so were the belly button and the tiny rear end. Delightful was the intestine, the workings of which were carefully followed, delightful were the tiny hairs budding on the comical skull. She zealously watched over her son's burping, peeing, and kakamaking, and this was not just a matter of conscientious concern for the infant's health- no, she occupied herself in all the processes of his body with passion.

This was an entirely new attitude, because ever since her childhood Maman had felt an intense aversion towards all physicality, including her own; she abhorred herself whenever she sat down on the toilet ( she tried to make sure that nobody saw her going to the bathroom) and at one time she had been ashamed to eat in public because the process of chewing and swallowing seemed disgusting to her. Now, the elevation of her son's physicality beyond any taints of ugliness had a peculiarly cleansing effect on her, and served to legitimize her own body as well. The dribble of milk which occasionally appeared on the wrinkled skin of the nipple seemed as poetic as a droplet of dew. Se would often reach out for her breast and squeeze it slightly in order to produce the magic droplet. She wet the tip of her little finger with the white liquid and tasted it: she told herself that she was doing so in order to learn more about the fluid that nourishes her son, but actually she was curious about the taste of her own body, and the sweet taste of milk reconciled her to all the body's other juices and excretions. She began to think of herself as tasty; her body had become as agreeable and legitimate as any other object of nature-a tree, a bush, a lake.

Her husband's body, robed in a suit or in pajamas, discreetly self-enclosed, was moving away from her, day by day losing more of its intimacy, while her son's body continued to depend on her; she was no longer suckling but she was teaching her son to use the toilet, she dressed and undressed him, fixed his hair and chose his clothes, and was in daily touch with teh insides through the food which she lovingly prepared for him. At four years of age, when he began to show signs of a lack of appetite, she became strict with him, forced him to eat, and for the first time felt that she was not only his body's friend but its ruler as well. The body resisted, did not wish to swallow, but it had to yield; with a peculiar pleasure she watched this vain rebellion, this submission, this fragile neck through which she could trace the passage of the unwanted morsel.

Ah- her son's body, her paradise and home, her kingdom...

Life is Elsewhere, 'the poet is born'- Milan Kundera

What do I call this?

The pub was filled with smoke and a gauzy curtain of the smell of liquor and musk fell like a pall. Beyond it could be seen Chinese lights dwindling like a pendulum- red and green and blue- and faces appearing from and disappearing to oblivion. May be it was just my imagination- had I drunk too much? Or maybe the lovely sylphs who once guarded Bellinda before her lock was raped and now fallen, were playing hide and seek around me. I remember having seated my butt at the far most seat in front of the bar counter, at around 9.30 pm in (the only) pub in the middle of a deserted Fujareh city. My back occasionally turned to sneak a peek of the sylph like creatures around me. But that was long ago. Having figured out that they were false and frivolous, I let my interest disown them and recluse to myself. The saxophone played on a high strain. I think, both of us, the saxophone and I, were loners that evening- looking for company but too unsure of ourselves, to get up and fetch one. I could empathize with its predicament an raised a toast to it- which to some appeared as an act of getting high on the Jack Daniels and losing sobriety. Some even approached to help me from falling off my seat. But my friend, the saxophone, knew. I sometimes wish, if the saxophone were to be a woman, I would have relished making love to her! But my story was different. It let out a relentless sweet strain again and the last thing I remember, my head dropped dead on the bar counter.

A few minutes must have passed between my falling somewhat asleep on the counter and waking up to the smell of musk dabbed on a feminine wrist. As I batted my heavy eyelids a few times to the face of a sylph began to appear between the cross dissolves of my vision( the experience was exactly like the protagonist undergoing an eye surgery and regaining his eyesight and reacting to faint faces around him- the ones that made us laugh, remember!) but it was happening to me nevertheless!

“Umm…mmm…a female sex…ummm…sax..o…phone…!” I mumbled

The sylph bent her head a little towards me and whispered into my ears. But before I could figure out her parts of speech, I was already reacting to the soft caressing that her gentle fingers were engaged in with my ear lobes.

‘uh-huh?’ ok, I tried to come to my senses.

“Do you want a massage?” the Sylph repeated as she moved away and spared my ears. Damn! I thought. Not a second since the proximity lost and I felt a gentle sting between my legs. Was there still a chance? DAMN!

“ how much?” I heard myself saying.

“ 200” and she smiled at me

“ What! That’s a fortune. I can do it for 50!” ( Damn! Did I say that?)

and the next thing that happened only left me gaping at my own misapplied chauvinism. Well, the very thought of the repercussion of what I’d so naively blabbered right then gave goose bumps to my ego. The more I ignored pondering over it, the more it bothered me, or so it appeared. But DAMN, did I actually say that? THAT!

The Sylph took out 50 dirham and placed it on the counter, or should I confess, right under my nose. I looked at the money and then at her. I could see the air of victory on her face- boy, did she deal a fatal blow to my ego! And to add to my embarrassment, a smile furrowed at the corner of her lips. It had a tequila tinge of victory and mischief and malice all mixed up and the thought of taking the shot was only too alluring. And I had no idea what the fuck was happening to me at that moment. The fact that a species of the most sought- after race had just placed an offer in front of me irked me no ends, but I wasn’t to let go. Equally chauvinistically, I picked up the moolah and tucked it inside my pocket. Damn! I must have appeared as a pseudo-masochist to her, the sylph was testing if the fall to evil existed with the Adams of this age, and she was victorious in proving me wrong- at least I thought the Adams of my age were sensible and chose to have Eve and cared little for the apple, but here I was! No, the sin had not been committed till now, I was only towards it.

And then began the tease game. I thought I was in the midst of a harem, not as the master of course, but as the slave. Actually, the shoes of Shakespeare’s ‘The Fool’ seemed like a more convenient socket I had placed my feet in and they fitted me perfectly. The sylph swayed in front of me, smiling, teasing me with her gestures, her gaze fixed at me wherever she went. She went inside one room and appeared from another. Then sauntered along in my direction, her red lips sipping the wine in the glass, the stem of which her long fingers ( not to forget the drop dead red painted nails) held so delicately. As she moved towards me, she appeared as the most charmingly fatal thing that was coming to destroy me. And I, like a numb lotos-eater, was partaking of every little seductive glimpse that she offered me with. Her hair was dark- dark as the heavenly parasol. Her body, a sculptor’s inspiration. Had she not been a sylph, she would definitely be Zeus’s bride. Her airs put the graces to shame. Her voice, the muses’ lyre. Her feet were like the delicate cape of Xanadu, where the poet aspired the formation of another earth. Her eyes sparkled like Vincent’s starry nights; her lips, as luscious as a freshly slit plum. Her temple seemed to me the holy mount Olympus. The sylph was an absolute paradigm of beauty. And as she sauntered along in my direction I so do wanted to throw my hands up like a frenzied poet and recite “She Walks in Beauty like the Night! ” to raise a toast to this magnificent piece of poetry who had me held in a trance by bestowing such attention on me.

As she stopped next to me, I thought she would whisper something in my ears again- Ah, The effect that her voice and her fragrance had on me! But she only held my hand and led me inside a room. Like a slave I followed. Even if it was a slave’s part, I wanted to play it well- the concerns of the ego that a self-respecting male is given to, by this time had by the way almost disappeared into the sparkling gossamer of the night. I remember having blinked twice to ensure I wasn’t dreaming. No I wasn’t because the next moment I found myself inside a tiny room lit with a fragrant candle, shut out from the vulgar Chinese lights that lit the pub- yes, I now found those lights artificial and vulgar. This room had an aura of its own, which I think was accentuated by the Sylph’s presence in it.
She let go of my hand and planted herself at the edge of a tiny cot over laden with virgin linen. She then raised an eyebrow and looked at me; the smile not leaving her face even for a fraction of a second. I blew the solitary candle out.

What I did next was unbelievable. The softness of her body was like a child’s. her back, as smooth as the sand dunes of Fujareh, her collar bones stretching perfectly like an archer’s bow, her arms like Mother Earth’s- gentle but not fragile and her palms like lotus flower. The first drop of oil that I poured on her back glistened as a drop of dew on a lily leaf. The movement, the dimness of the ambience, her small moans, the fragrance- al had a tranquilizing effect on me. There was no shame, no regret and no guilt. The Sylph’s body was like a lyre that I was playing and she herself was my Muse!

It must have been a little more than an hour after which we came out of the room. The saxophone was now on a low note and sounded lulled and content. We sat at a table and I bought ourselves whiskey. Neither of us spoke. I was wondering to myself about the whole event. Was I in my senses when I did what I did. In retrospect, everything seems a little displaced and you start wondering the propriety of things, their aesthetic appeal and the repercussions on your own image. Frankly, what was done couldn’t be undone. I wasn’t a pauper at having accepted the 50 dirham but frankly, couldn’t muster the courage to speak to her.

We finished our drinks and she got up. My gaze followed her. She smiled at me- the most graceful smile- stooped down and whispered into my ears:

“ shukran!”

before I could realize what she said, she made an exit leaving a trail of her musky fragrance to dwell in my senses for hours after that.

While heading back to my apartment, I looked at the vast expanse of the desert. It looked beautiful- bathed in the moonlight. I looked up at the stars and was reminded of the Sylph’s beautiful eyes that had sparkled for me earlier that evening. A cool breeze was blowing. I felt fresh and happy. Fresh because the musky trail I had carried with me gave purged me of all my worries and rejuvenated me. Happy because I had not ravished Zeus’ bride.. She was the most beautiful gift the desert could have ever given me. The desert rose, my Sylph!

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