The Magic of Turquoise: A Modern Arabic Novel

Mai Khaled

Translated by

Marwa Elnaggar

The American University in Cairo Press

Cairo New York

First published in 2011 by

The American University in Cairo Press

113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt

420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

www.aucpress.com

Copyright © 2006 by Mai Khaled

First published in Arabic in 2006 by Dar Sharqiyat as Sihr al-tirkwaz

Protected under the Berne Convention

English translation copyright © 2011 by Marwa Elnaggar

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Dar el Kutub No. 1778/11

ISBN 978 161 797 208 9

Dar el Kutub Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Khaled, Mai

The Magic of Turquoise/ Mai Khaled.—Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2011

p.                    cm.

978 977 416 504 7

1. Arabic fiction    I. Title    I. Title

892.73

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8    14  13  12  11

Designed by Andrea El-Akshar

Printed in Egypt

LEILA:

HOW WILL I BE PUNISHED WHEN THEY FIND OUT that I was behind Nirvana’s stroke? She has been floating in a coma after swallowing huge amounts of seawater—water that blocked her lungs and prevented oxygen from reaching her brain. And then there was that unexpected accident: as she was struggling to stay afloat, a renegade jet ski nearby tried to save her and fractured her skull instead, then came back to pick her up after having given her a concussion.

I am certain that the family will punish me explicitly this time. It won’t only be those looks, empty of love and full of phony concern.

And I? How will I forgive myself after having let you down, Nirvana? After making you dive into the turquoise depths when you knew that you were in an area that had dangerous whirlpools, and that, after September 6, the lifeguard left and beach-goers held full responsibility for themselves?

I can only present you with one solution. Perhaps it will give hope to your limbs and joints and make you get up for the sake of survival. I’ll leave the hospital right away and go to Cairo, to the Center for Creativity, and insist on being given a last chance.

Did you check your email?

That was the last sentence you said, Nunu. And when I said I hadn’t, your eyes reproached me because you had sent me more than seven messages on my cell phone telling me: Check your email.

You struck the water so hard with your arms and legs that you eventually became a faraway point in the sea. And I knew that you couldn’t swim very well.

You once told me that ten days of pain can teach a person so much more than ten years of happiness. Happiness is good for the body, but pain energizes the mind. I don’t know whether you are feeling pain in your coma right now. I just know that I am a tired lump of sorrow, kneaded with guilt and fear. This should make me perform that scene for the final audition brilliantly.

I won’t let you down again this time. It’s enough what I did the last time when I gave up on my/your dream for me, and left the stage with the excuse that I was empty inside. The reality was that I was afraid to confront myself and Hazem, who could have seen through me and discovered my weakness—and maybe my lack of talent. Despite everything, you continued to encourage me for weeks. You even sent me an email with a brown rectangle shaped like a stage—the color of the earth and fertility, just as you always taught me, the color of serenity and stability. And on that brown rectangle, you had drawn some white lines, and written beneath it: Chalk lines that a director uses to indicate the movement of the actors. And then you added that sly winking emoticon. It was just a fun abstract picture that you sent me. But the real picture is the one of my life on which you’ve painted transparent lines. If I wanted, I could follow them. Or I could claim I never saw them. Because it’s like you said no one finds salvation in teachings. A person should follow an inner voice. All you did was follow my inner voice and start concentrating on directing my inner energy to make me sign up for that acting workshop, and I held on to my hidden sources of spirituality.

You carved out my favorite dishes, rice with turmeric and chicken curry, Indian style, and with that, you took me to the Far East. You danced with me to ‘Sway,’ and with that, we traveled to northwestern America in the 50s. I sipped ten cups of that delicious drink that I can never taste anywhere else except in your kitchen—tea with milk—and with it, you nursed me with love and warmed me with a maternal tenderness before you made my mind explode with philosophical comparisons between Ouija, the movie we had just watched, and your personal experience playing the game itself. I don’t think you did that to compensate for my mother, who lived in a distant province, nor simply because you were my father’s sister. I think you did it because of your conviction that I was capable of fulfilling my inner callings despite those looks of blame the family gives me for a sin I did not commit. A sin my mother committed by answering the voice of her heart opening the door wide and leaving.

Every cell in your body and brain hung on that critical moment: to accomplish what you failed to achieve, to follow my dream and take the placement test. You called me on my mobile phone for hours, encouraging me with positive messages, while I was in a hysterical state, unable to say anything but, I feel like I’m empty inside. I’m going to fail.

I heard you sob over the phone, but you swallowed your tears and ignored my negativity and kept repeating: Keep your eyes on the light that’s covered in turquoise cellophane. Turn your neck toward it. The neck is the center of speech and expression and creativity, and if you shine an aquamarine light on it, you’ll activate your creativity glands.

I hung up on you because they were calling my name: Leila Khaled al-Masri, and instead of getting up on stage (your symbol) and bathing my throat with turquoise lighting, I found myself withdrawing. I escaped to the main street, afraid that my image in front of Hazem would suffer, and I buried my dream alive. When I called you after midnight, you thought I would tell you that I had crossed the first threshold on the road to our dream, but I defeated you with my retreat, and kept apologizing profusely.

Once again, you swallowed your tears and came up with an alternative plan for me. Maybe a nice message to Hazem on his mobile phone will convince him to grant me a second chance. It was as if the words you arranged for me to send to him were some magical chant that made Hazem get off his high horse, put aside his pride, and give me another appointment—a last chance—today, at seven in the evening. And instead of taking advantage of this chance and dashing off to the Center for Creativity, I reserved the first ticket on the Super Jet bus, and you found me in front of you on the beach, having escaped a second time. The curse of open doors and escape had taken hold of me. Your eyes filled with tears and you asked about my email which I hadn’t bothered to check. Then you dove into your turquoise depths that ruthlessly swallowed you.

I will be in Cairo before 7 p.m., even if that proves their assumptions that I carry the genes of abandonment, even if they repeat their maxims about my mother’s history and curse the day my father married a girl who wasn’t related to them by either blood or marriage, as was the tradition of the family. But they never blame him directly, because they pity his fragility that cannot bear any more shocks. They will just secretly curse the day I was born and every day I live, torn between the different fronts.

What emotional burden is greater than that, miserable and guilty, I will leave you like this to go perform that scene brilliantly, surpassing all the other contestants, and fill my ears with applause and words of praise from Hazem—all while you lie here in your coma, at the point between life and death?

NIRVANA:

MY MIND IS AWARE OF ALMOST EVERYTHING going on around me. But my body lies there, completely out of my control. I feel I am in a sterilized room, the scents of ether alcohol and disinfectant mix together. The sharp smells I love are those of acetone, nail polish, and the color turquoise, number 16 in Pébéo’s ceramic colors.

The jostle of the hospital bed beneath my body says that I’ve moved from the operating theater to a room that’s more peaceful. Nothing interrupts its silence except for the broken hum of medical equipment. It’s a beautiful silence that I’ve been seeking for over twenty years, and have only found in rare and fleeting moments on the Cairo-Alexandria train. And I pray to God to make my life a never-ending journey on a train.

I remember that I was struggling in the waves, and then there was a great noise right next to my head, and then I completely lost consciousness. I must be in a coma now. It’s a delicious feeling, to realize that you are in a coma while you are in a coma. Just like knowing you are in a dream while you are dreaming.

I wonder what brought about this coma . . . was it the beginning phases of drowning, when the one drowning is saved, but then experiences complications that cause death? Or