Jakob Arjouni - Kismet

The bathroom door opened, and out came — what the hell was going on here? — a belly dancer. She wore a white blouse printed with glittery flowers, low-slung baggy golden-silk trousers, a kind of belt with gold coins hanging from it, and brightly embroidered slippers. The coin belt sat loosely around her bare hips, hanging down in front like a letter V. When Leila moved, it jingled, and the point of the V swung against the spot between her legs like a gentle tip-off.

What was the idea? A local history and folklore show? Carnival time? Seduction? She came into the room a little gingerly and looked expectantly at me.

‘Good heavens.’ I gave her a friendly smile. ‘Anything planned for this evening?’

‘Planned?’

‘I mean, are you going out dancing, or to the funfair or something?’

She stopped and looked at me in astonishment. The way you’d look in astonishment at the feeble-minded. Then she suddenly appeared to be gazing right through me, let her shoulders droop, shuffled over to the sofa, sighed, ‘Supper?’ and sank into the cushions, jingling.

‘Yes, that’s right, supper.’ Had she expected applause? Did she want to put on some sort of performance? Or did she perhaps think, on account of experiences she might have had with proselytising workers in the hostel, that you had only to wear some kind of folk costume in the land where people drove Mercedes for the natives to fall about in ecstasies at the idea of cultural exchange? It must be something like this, I imagined, when your own kids came home from school with the nutcrackers or candlesticks they’d made in handicraft lessons. Or was there something I didn’t quite get here?

‘Well, I for one haven’t eaten since this morning, and as far as I know you haven’t eaten since midday either. And after a day like this…’ I nodded at her, filled our plates, and ignoring her elaborate lack of interest told her to tuck in.

Perhaps she simply wasn’t hungry, or she didn’t like the casserole, or girls of her age nourished themselves on lettuce leaves — oh, not too many, for goodness’ sake — but anyway, eating supper turned out to be a one-sided and thus oppressive business.

‘No appetite?’ I asked after I’d shovelled the first few spoonfuls down myself.

Leila leaned back on the sofa, kicking off the embroidered slippers and bracing her bare feet against the table, and twirled a little green stalk of something in her fingers. Without looking up, she murmured, ‘No appetite?’

‘Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want to eat?’

‘Smell like home cooking.’

‘Then you have pretty good cooking at home,’ I heard myself saying, like one of those adults I sometimes saw on kids’ TV programmes on mornings when I had a hangover, and who always made me wonder whether there was a soul in the world over three years old who didn’t take an instant dislike to that stupidly affable tone.

Eyebrows raised pityingly, Leila gave me a brief sideways glance, then looked back at her little green stalk and audibly breathed out.

‘OK, then tell me what you’d rather smell. After all, you must eat something in the next few days.’

‘Why must?’

Why must…? My spoon stopped suspended in the air, halfway between plate and mouth. Defiant, cheeky, outrageous — yes, all very well, but certainly there wasn’t ever a minute in my life reserved for this.

‘Because people have to eat if they’re not going to die of starvation,’ I grunted, putting the spoon in my mouth.

‘I look nice?’

‘Look nice? Yes, you do look nice. You’re beautiful,’ I told her, hoping to make her forget my botched reaction to her big entrance as a belly dancer. ‘But if you carry on like this you’ll soon be nothing but a beautiful skeleton.’

‘You like better fat slut, hm?’

‘Fat slut… look, who gives you lot German lessons in that hostel?’

‘I self.’

‘You yourself? What from? Off the walls of public toilets?’

‘Porn.’

‘What?’

‘Boys in hostel have films and book. I have book too, The Sperm Huntresses.’

‘Oh…’ I tried to assume as down-to-earth an expression as possible. At the same time I registered that the spoon in my hand was stirring the casserole in a slightly manic way, as if of its own volition. ‘Um… all that’s kind of a specialised vocabulary. What about if you just want to go and buy rolls or something?’

Very slowly, she turned her head, looked at me from under drooping eyelids, and suddenly began to laugh. Loud, hearty, engaging laughter. No doubt about it, there was something here I didn’t get.

When she’d finished laughing, she asked, ‘We watch films?’

‘Er… what kind of films?’

‘Films with my mother, of course, moron.’

Moron. Was that out of the porn book too? Fuck me, moron?

Relieved by the change of subject, I pointed my spoon across the room. ‘The video recorder’s over there.’

At school I regularly got such bad marks in foreign languages that they were a joke — would I have paid more attention if the languages had been taught in porn? Maybe I’d be working with the United Nations now.

Laden up to her chin, Leila came back from the bedroom, made her way past me balancing about fifteen video cassettes and knelt down in front of the VCR.

‘Hey, I only want to know what she looks like. I’m not planning to write a doctoral thesis on her.’

‘Doctoral thesis?

Yes, well, The Sperm Huntresses… ‘If we’re going to watch all these videos we’ll be here till tomorrow evening.’

‘I play just few nice ones, OK?’

‘Play some where I can get a good look at your mother. What is all this stuff?’

‘Birthday, wedding, holiday, my first school day, all that: my grandma, my grandpa, my mother in garden, my father ride bike but only on one wheel. We often go out of city. And then is wedding. I begin with wedding, OK?’

‘Why the wedding?’

‘Because my mother much in it. And I like it.’

‘What’s your mother’s first name?’

‘Stasha.’

For the first ten minutes almost nothing appeared on the screen but cars, and tables laid for a meal. Every guest was filmed arriving, and every guest was sitting in a car on arrival, and there were a great many guests. And a great many tables laid for them. Extensive panoramic shots followed: stone-built cottages, olive trees, wild meadows, then the farm where the wedding was being held, along with its interior courtyard and a bonfire over which three men waving at the camera and drinking to each other from bottles were turning five sheep on spits. Leila sat on the floor, leaning forward and concentrating. She had firmly taken possession of the remote control and thus any chance of fast-forwarding, and she supplied me with names and background information. She laughed at the sight of many of the faces, others made her knit her brows, and as two puppies now and then scampered across the picture she made coaxing noises as if calling to them.

‘There, look!’ She pointed to a little cherry tree. ‘Is planted for my birthday, real birthday, now tree is tall as a house.’

‘Hm, yes.’ Of course it was touching to see Leila almost getting into the onscreen picture, what with the attitude she assumed and the way she looked at it. But the vodka was beginning to take effect, a cherry tree was a cherry tree, and the cameraman had either had a few drinks himself or felt called to higher things in the world of cinema. Anyway, his camera dwelt on even the cherry tree for the amazing length of the time it took to smoke half a cigarette.

‘Who’s the cameraman?’

‘Friend of my father. But is not so good. Usually my father take pictures. Was first at home to have camcorder. He take many films. And he take photos and he paint and he make lamps, funny lamps made from old pots, and he…’