Rawi Hage - Carnival

I left and walked down the hallway singing the “Scarlet Begonias” song, which went like this. .

SHIP

DURING THE NEXT few days, business improved. Organizers, tourists, and vendors were arriving in town for the Carnival and many of them needed rides to their hotels or around the city. And to participate in the general spirit of entertainment and wonder, I bragged to my customers that my car was protected by stones and good omens, that nothing unfortunate would ever happen to my car, that the stone on my dashboard was spirited, gleaming, and no matter how I sped, sailed, or flew, this ship of mine would never sink, because my car was encircled by a kind of chakra that bounced all the evil eyes away.

I had one woman who thought I was mad. At a red light, she threw a bill at me and left without waiting for her change. I had a man who wanted to hear it all: he giggled and kept on saying, How interesting, and giggled some more.

And then I had a well-travelled man who worked for an NGO, a man who went to poor countries to sprinkle some financial aid and, in the process, I suspect, paid himself handsomely, and he told me about his own private driver, who wore a necklace and slept with prostitutes without using any protection. And when my client warned his driver about the diseases he could collect, the driver would show him the necklace that he wore around his neck and say, This protects me.

Just like your car here, my client said to me. I send money and medicine to him now, he added. I think the necklace must have lost its effect. Once, that is all it takes.

When we arrived, my client tapped me on the shoulder and said, Be safe, don’t believe in the stone, and he left.

ZAINAB CAME DOWN the stairs and I told her that I had been waiting for her smile to light my morning. Then I asked if she had her lunch in a box, if she had sharpened her pencils, and if she needed a friend to walk her to school.

Are you being flirtatious and cheeky? she asked me, and smiled.

I could carry your books to the train station!

No need, she said, I will walk alone to the train station.

It is good to be late for the train. It gives us the chance to run after it and wave our scarves like in those old Indian movies. And I suggested we go up to my place so I could show her some books.

I’ll borrow your books but I won’t enter your home.

Oh, the believer’s fears!

Oh, the non-believer’s dreams, she said, and she glanced at me in defiance.

Cruel for a believer not to have mercy, I said.

Bumptious for a non-believer to hope for a miracle, she said, and smiled.

Sinful for the pious not to give. .

Futile for a heathen to hope! Any stories? she added, as we both smiled at each other.

Yes indeed, I said. Talking about lost souls and things, last night I passed by Café Bolero, where all the drivers feed themselves between their shifts and spin boastful tales and stories. Number 55, a pious man who fears God and his many laws, got a call from the dispatcher to pick up a client in front of the supermarket. The old lady asked him to carry her groceries to the car. He lifted the bags but, when it came to the case of beer, he refused to touch it. He said that he didn’t touch alcohol, be it open or closed. The lady was upset. She asked him to remove her groceries from the trunk and call her another taxi, but he also refused to do that, just in case one of the bags contained a piece of a swine or something else forbidden. So the old lady tried to pick them up herself and now claims to have hurt her back. Both the taxi owner and the driver are being sued. The old lady is well off and now she is bringing some big-shot lawyer to handle the case. Watch it explode in the news! Watch those journalists salivating over Islam and its values. Terrorism, morning shows, secularism versus religion, stand-up comedians, clowns with paper bags blown out of proportion and popped to laughter and applause!

So, Zainab, I concluded, do tell. What do you think?

I have no problem with booze. I am a Muslim and I drink.

Yes, I gathered that. But what do you think?

Obviously, the man’s comprehension of the text is very limited and literal.

And yours is multi-layered, you are saying.

Yes, the text can be read on many levels.

Gnosis for the few, I said.

Not for the few, Zainab said, but for the willing and able.

Exclusivity! Mystery! Interpretation that is changeable and adaptable, I said. Even the most detrimental of verses should be accepted as an allegory for something wiser and bigger?

Indeed.

But Zainab, my dear neighbour, how about some editing, you know, with a long pen that reaches between the continents and other places. I say! A long pen could be a magnificent invention for lawyers and writers alike.

No, she said. Nothing needs to be changed; the verses should simply be read in their proper context.

So we shift from the literal to the poetic, then to the allegorical, when and if necessary? I asked. Change when it is convenient, stasis when it is not. .

Look at it as an intellectual challenge, an exercise in reason and imagination, she replied.

Intellectual masturbation, I mumbled.

What was that?

I said, Then let’s treat all these holy texts as stories, fictions, and imperfections that could excite us into tears or erections.

Erections, you said, I heard you well this time?

Of thoughts, that is. Intellectual erections.

I have to go, she said. Your sexual insinuations are becoming childish. I’ll leave you with your “intellectual” thoughts. . She actually made quotation marks with her fingers. Let me ask you, Fly, have you ever taken responsibility for anything? Have you ever thought about settling down, stopping your drifting existence, maybe having someone in your life. . getting a dog. . having a child?

No, no. Why have children and leave them in the hands of this laughable world? But, Zainab, now that you are late and the train has surely left, I can see the Bollywood actor waving his scarf in farewell, let me walk with you and tell you about the dancing Shakers who once offered to adopt me, after my mother’s death. That order of religious men took a vow never to have children, never to bring another soul into this inferior world. And so their whole community consisted of orphaned children who grew up to become dancers and holy men. Christians they were, but they must have gotten a trace of eastern influence from somewhere. . Dionysians, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Sufis, who knows. Deep, deep inside, I suspect they believed that a lesser god rules this earth and that our bodies are unworthy of our spirits, and the light inside us needs to be released somewhere else, not in this pigsty we live in. Anyhow, some of these Shakers were called the dancing Shakers, because they danced and danced.

The circus used to organize parades whenever we arrived in a small town and the Shakers were invited. The circus was often accused by the Church of being sinful, decadent, and even satanic, and the ringmaster thought the Shakers could give us some legitimacy.

Anyway, the gypsies played and we all danced around the fire. A Shaker with a long coat came to me, and held my small hand, and they tossed me from one to the other. And when the music stopped, the man whispered in my ear, Come with me, child, and you shall be saved. I got scared and ran and took refuge between the monkeys and the dogs until the bearded lady came and said, No one will take you from us, and we both cried as we caressed the dogs and held the baby monkey in our arms.

And what has happened to those Shakers now? Zainab asked.

I am glad that I’ve got your attention; I didn’t know that you were so fond of dancing people, Zainab. Well, to answer your question: annihilation, disappearance! The government regulations changed and the dancing Shakers couldn’t adopt anymore. Their community slowly regressed in numbers until their wish came true. This lesser world is all about reproduction, as you might well know. Those who cease to duplicate simply die.