Issue 42 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

. ...
half like Selma and half like an abandoned doctor. Selma waved her
hand in front of her face, an attempt at scattering the pieces of this vision
about the air. As she was leaving and zipping up the door, Selma considered
scribbling out a note to Nabil, but what would she tell hun?
When Selma returned, the woman was already in her car, the
engine revving, tailpipe spitting a plume of exhaust.
On the way out of the forest, the women talked. Helga had emigrated
from Germany 30 years before and had been moving around ever
since. Egypt, Selma had offered in return. I
She glanced at
the speedometer:
45, 50, 55. She
had afold of bills in
her pocket, burning
against her thigh,
enough to buy a
plane ticket.
came from Egypt two months ago. "I was
there in the '60s," Helga continued now.
"And I fell in love with it. Just fell in love."
A road atlas with a broken spine lay on
the floor by Selma's feet. Selma gently
nudged two overlapping pages apart to
reveal a map of Toronto. Something
pinched her from inside, a sensation she
had been having frequently since she'd
arrived in Canada. The car smelled stale,
the air it contained, years, centuries old. It
reminded her of grade-school trips to the
Pyramids, crawling into airless tombs
where she'd held her breath, afraid that if
she inhaled she would die. The tombs had
been pillaged centuries before, the mummies long gone, still they had
smelled of death, Selma thought. Wind spilled in through the window.
The cool, constant slap of clean air against her skin made it numb.
''Will you go back there?" Helga asked. Her hair was long, blonde
and gray at once. She let go the steering wheel in order to gather her
hair into a quick bun on the top of her head. She had a small but
strong body. A muscle in her bare right thigh twisted against her skin
each time she switched froln the accelerator to the brake.
Lola sat on her lap. Selma knew this was dangerous, but wasn't life
itself dangerous? Precautions felt arbitrary. "I shall go back there now,"
she said with sudden, alien authority. The idea had only come to her
minutes before. When Selma had gotten into Helga's car, she'd had no
designs on a destination. Ofcourse! she thought now. I'm going home.
Warmth crept frOln the top of her head down through her stomach. She
glanced at the speedOlneter: 45,50, 55. She had a fold of bills in her
pocket, burning against her thigh, enough to buy a plane ticket. It was
the money Nabil never traveled without: emergency mone)!, he called it.
She had taken it from the inside pocket of his jacket on her way out of the
tent without remorse. If anything did, this pain that she felt constituted
an emergency.
"It becomes harder and harder to go back the longer you stay away/'
Helga said as they sped through unfamiliar landscapes.
Selma noticed a blurred fruit stand that looked like someplace she
had seen before. Then she realized that it was just like all of its counterparts
back home; many of the same fruits available in Egypt, the same
bright colors. The only difference was that here the price was by pound
and was written in English.
"Are you married?" Helga paused.
"Her father is my husband; he is back in Egypt, where we are going
now to be with him," Selma answered. The words filed out of her mouth
one-by-one; each one that came out surprised her more than the last. "My
sister lives in Toronto. She was having a surgery. I came to be with her."
"What kind of operation?"
Selma paused, conjuring images of her two healthy sisters back in
Cairo. She evicted them from her mind and invented a new one, a
woman with a malady of... "She was losing one eye. She made a surgery
to fix it."
"And did it work?"
''Yes. Now she see again." Selma turned to look at her new companion.
''Why you came here?" she asked.
"After the war," Helga said. She slowed her driving and glanced at
Selma. "That's when I left."
A few seconds passed. "It was terrible?" Selma finally offered.
''Well, I lived through it." Helga swerved sharply around an idling car.
"Of course. It is a blessing."
''Do you believe in God?" Helga asked abruptly after a pause, a long
curve in the road.
Last year, even last month, this would have been a question easily
answered: Yes. But now Selma wondered what she believed in. How
could your own life become something you couldn't recognize? Selma
caught a view of herself in the small, tilted mirror off the side of the car.
Her hair was long and loose and tangled. She hadn't washed it for
days. There were deep, dark shadows underneath her coal-colored eyes.
Her husband called her beautiful, but she could not see why.
The car filled with silence, like a balloon expanding to the point of
almost bursting. Helga unrolled her window and rested an elbow on
the open frame.
Finally Selma said, ''Why you were in Egypt?"
JlMy husband was a journalist, and Egypt was his specialty."