Tunarouz

12

Tunarouz

A dozen seagulls were fluttering and gliding low in the sky above the vast and blue Mediterranean outside café de Ponte where we sat chatting about the old times together. The heavens were a clear blue except for a few light clouds that kept filtering through them in a seemingly infinite parade. A cool, gentle breeze that constantly blew from the still and reposing sea, carrying within its folds a thousand glorious scents from the myriad flower pots that stretched in a long line outside the caf helped rejuvenate our wearied spirits with its refreshing caresses.
"What time is it now?'' asked Meriem.
"Four o'clock,'' answered Mena after a quick glance at her gold watch.
"She should be here any moment now," I said.
I had barely finished the last sentence when Tunarouz made her appearance at the empty terrace outside the caf the woman was very poorly dressed and so many signs of a hard and painful existence overspread all her features; her face had already begun to manifest many traces of old age, as miniscule crinkles were already beginning to bud beneath her smoky eyes and scatter across her forehead. Her hands, all of dark tanned colour, retained a harsh coarseness as those of an overworked stone-mason; and the little locks of black hair that had somehow escaped the concealment of her worn-out green scarf had amidst them so many white hairs of a spent up life. Her shoulders were rather too broad, as in fact was the case with her entire body. Given all these features, Tunarouz seemed, somehow, much removed from her proper gender with its softness and delicacy.
Tunarouz made towards us in very assured steps, and having greeted us in her proper manner, which included a tight squeeze of the hand, and a long awkward, but passionate hug, she sat down very gingerly on a chair, and then we all launched into a long conversation about our private lives, families, careers, and a host of other such similar subjects. The conversation, however, seemed dull and monotonous as we had already fully satisfied the curiosity about these subjects in two former meetings. Nonetheless, the meeting was not all together unbearable as it constituted our last reunion before we all went our separate ways, with the chance of another coming together being in god only knows when!
We talked and laughed while we sipped hot coffee and nimbled at the cream cakes. Tunarouz, being more energetic then the rest of us, allowed our mouths no chance of repose with her endless inquiries and questions; her ears would hardly catch the answer to a question she had just asked when she followed it with another. At times she would urge us with great zest to pay close attention; she would tell us of some utterly trifling incident and then laugh with a great avidity that her entire face would transform into one big wrinkle with the contraction of its muscles. Her laughter was more like a roar that resounded throughout the cafand beyond. We, on the other hand, would drop an indifferent courtesy laugh that she always took with great appreciation as though it were a standing ovation.
"O, what time is it, please,'' Tunarouz suddenly asked. 'It's about five o'clock,'' Merriam answered. ''O, It's time for me to go,'' said Tunarouz with an awkward smile; she rose up and gave each of us a tight and passionate hug, and then started to leave, waving at us as she slowly disappeared down the terrace.
''How does she do that?'' said Mena.
"What!'' I exclaimed.
"I mean her smile! It seems as though it had been engraved on her face somehow. I don't understand it! What the hell does she have to be happy about?!''
Tunarouz was, in fact, a woman of simple features; both in appearance as well as in intellectual abilities. She was not ugly but neither was she beautiful. However, her coarse hair that she always wore in a short pony tail, her muscular arms and flabby hands, her black bushy eyebrows and snub nose had ever kept potential lovers and admirers away from her as effectively as a talisman hung about the neck of a little infant to ward off evil spirits. She always appeared a little childish although she was, like any of us, past her mid-thirties. From time immemorial, she had always worked as a cleaning lady and lived almost next to poverty. Yet despite all these disheartening facts, Tunarouz basked in an unequalled air of gaiety and happiness as though she had never had the least care in the world.
We only kept sporadic contacts with this wretch now because a deep intimate childhood friendship never allowed itself to dissolve and fade away from our hearts and minds too easily. Long before I was dubbed a civil engineer, or Merriam a doctor nor Mena a university teacher, we all had a very deep and long friendship in our childhood with this ever-grinning woman. We were inseparable then; we played and studied together with our little eyes radiating with grand hopes about the future. We had a lot of sweet recollections from those times; and, there was one special memory that we always brought to mention every time fate brought us back together again; we lived in the same neighbourhood then where lived a very handsome young man, a perfect Romeo whom we loved spying on. We would gather at Tunarouz's home every evening to steal precious glimpses, from a vantage room window, of our Romeo's ideal body as he changed clothes for some extravagant party. The man was way older than us, of course, but love or rather lust is blind. We had always been inseparable until an ignominious fire accident came to deprive our dear Tunarouz of both parents and home. After this devastating event, Tunarouz dropped out of school and then went from one filthy work to another to support herself. She became considerably melancholy after that; we had always lived in constant fear that she might hang herself. But, she soon, almost by some miracle, stripped off this gloomy mood, and adopted an air of mirth and joy that had never left her ever since.
''To be honest, there is something about her that sparks my envy whenever I lay my eyes on the woman,'' Said Merriam.
"Did you see how gaily and carelessly she talked and laughed? ''I added.
''Surely, she must have some extraordinary talents for deceiving us all! She must be faking it all! She must be."
Mena, who had till now kept her quiet and satisfied with listening only, finally decided to break her long uninterrupted silence; she carefully lighted a cigarette, took a deep inhale from it, and then released the smoke in long thick puff into the air above her head. She then proceeded to tell us the following story:
Yesterday evening, when we had parted company after our stroll at the beach, I was suddenly visited by a persistent desire to pay a visit to Tunarouz at the slums. I knew well enough that I would be taking great risks going there alone, but I felt a wild curiosity, which I didn't manage to delay for a single moment, to learn about the residence of the woman. I advanced through a maze of dirty and narrow streets; all covered with small ditches of grey stinking waters; and, a constant fear laid hold upon me as I hastily made my way through these ghastly surroundings. More than once I nearly halted to retrace my steps. Some houses were no more than a petty construction of bare bricks with fragile roofs of aluminium, while others were sophisticated enough to have little square windows, and even some cheap paint splashed on their outside walls. Long worn out carpets hung out from a number of windows like parched tongues. From the crevices of battered doors and mouldering little wooden windows, would occasionally flash the eyes of the suspicious and curious inhabitants of these petty dwellings, that caused me much unease and irritation. Foul and suffocating smells came out of many doors, and I had to cover my nose with a tissue to avoid these riotous smells. Every now and then, horrid noises of quarrelling couples, or fathers and sons would be heard inside these battered homes. At one time, my ears suddenly caught the vague roaring sounds of what seemed liked an infuriated army; afterwards, I stood to look with great astonishment as hideous battalions of small children, issuing from a narrow corner, ran past me in a lightening speed as they lousily chased a horrified black stray dog. You could well imagine what great joy settled upon me when I at last came to the sight of the house where Tunarouz lived. I hurried and made my entrance in, and then ascended the stairs hastily to her room. She was dressed in her sleeping pyjamas and had on the same usual smile when she opened the door for me.
As soon as I threw my feet past the door sill and into the room, a most shocking scene greeted my eyes. All the four walls were entirely covered with a tight and dense cluster of horrid pictures; each and every one of them showed some form or another of extreme human suffering and misery; There were depictions of people with horrible handicaps, unfortunate victims of brutal murders, victims of devastating accidents, people with horrible deformities, people with mortal diseases; Broken limbs, swollen eyes, smashed faces, cracked skulls, and burnt bodies glared at me from every side; and, the whole room seemed to fill with frozen screams, weeping, and wailings of desperate people in desperate situations crying for help. In short, all that could be termed absolute human suffering and misery was captured and frozen inside those pictures that served as the sole decorations of the four walls of the room. Some pictures were cut out from newspapers others from the illustrated pages of magazines, and thus had all the effect of being real life sufferings; there was not one single picture among these that had its source in the vigorous imagination of some skilful artist; they were all factual reflections of death and misery. The whole room seemed to be transformed by the effect of these ignominious images into the emergency room of some overcrowded hospital. It all seemed as though I had abruptly stepped into some wretched field of battle. All too suddenly, I found myself amidst a host of agonizing casualties with a thousand imploring hands stretched towards me for help. A sudden terror overwhelmed me; my hand started to shake and my sight began to grow dim with a sweeping dizziness. Tunarouz's bed, with its lily white coverings and the two pots of red roses beside it, were the only objects that still retained an air of order and requiescence amidst this tumulus scene of outrageous chaos and confusion.
I was exceedingly shocked when I first laid eyes on this scene of perfect horror. How could any human being sustain an existence inside these horrid walls! How could anyone bear to wake each and every morning to the sight of these battered men and women, to a world of never ending agony and dolour? I recalled that whenever I came across a picture that resembled one of these, that now surrounded me, on the pages of some magazine or newspaper, I always hurried to skip it before it set me agonizing for days on end; The mere sighting of one of these pictures was always more than enough to make my stomach heave with dread and horror. Yet, there now stood before me a being who even derived delight from these worldly horrors; a being who welcomed them right into her bedroom! What on earth could be more absurd!
Only out of a strong awareness that I would be doing my friend much injury if I were to retrace my steps as soon as I had come, did I sit beside her on bed for the very brief moments it took me to finish a small cup of tea that she offered me. More than once I had tried to inquire about the mystery of the pictures, but my mouth opened and closed without any success at giving shape and substance to my thoughts. By degrees, however, the meaning of all this began to dawn upon me the more I tried to relate the ghastly images to her ever cheerful mood, and I understood at last! All in all, I quickly brought our conversation to a close by pretending that I had very urgent matters to attend to, and took my leave accordingly. I hurried down the stairs, out to the dimly lit empty streets below; before long I was off those squalid surroundings and headed towards the luxurious hotels up in the north.
When Mena had finished, she extinguished her smoking cigarette into the ashtray and looked at us with a broad smile on her face; we all looked at each other in some mysterious understanding, and then got back to our drinks.

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