Always Coca-Cola Read online

  “It’s really easy to use!” Yasmine assured me again and then added, “But the results are not always accurate.”

  I asked myself how she knew all this.

  But I didn’t dare ask her and she didn’t volunteer an explanation, so the two of us stayed sitting silently in front of the television. Suddenly, a commercial for a condom came on and it caught my attention because I had never seen such a thing in all my life. I turned up the volume a little bit to hear it better, but a truck was passing at that same moment and honked its horn, drowning out the television so I didn’t hear any of the commercial.

  A few minutes later, I left Yasmine alone in the living room and headed toward the bathroom to check on Yana. I found her sitting on the toilet, head bowed, so that her black hair covered her face, like a hijab. I found the resemblance between hair and hijab quite amusing because it was so incompatible with the sight of her naked legs. I would have laughed had I not been aware that this was no time for laughter.

  It was hard for me to believe that things like this could happen in the lives of ordinary people, since I had only seen such things in films... or dreams! Bad dreams, of course.

  And I felt like I really was dreaming when the (+) symbol appeared on the paper rectangle, meaning that Yana was indeed pregnant! I felt suddenly nauseated by how strange this all was to me.

  Or rather I felt like someone had slapped me hard across the face and roused me from a deluded deep slumber!

  Yasmine entered the bathroom and asked about the result of the test. Yana answered that she was pregnant, just as she’d expected, and without anyone asking her, she added, “I’ve decided to keep the baby!”

  Yasmine said bluntly, “Have you lost your mind?! What about your job? Have you ever seen a fat, pregnant fashion model? Ever in your whole life?”

  Yana told her that she actually had seen a lot of pregnant fashion models before, they modeled fashions for women who were pregnant, like themselves, and she added that she’d heard of fat models wearing plus-sized fashions. Yasmine, however, ignored Yana’s answer completely and said, “If you don’t have enough money for an abortion, I can easily get it for you!”

  Yana sighed, resting her hand on her smooth, level belly, and answered, “It’s not a question of money! It’s every woman’s dream to have the baby of the man she loves and I love him so much!”

  With that, I was certain that the father of the child was not Yana’s ex-husband as I had led myself to believe and hope for, but was her boyfriend—the manager of the Coca-Cola factory—exactly as Yasmine had predicted, and I had feared, it would be.

  I said nothing and Yasmine herself was silent, but Yana added, “Furthermore, I believe in qadar. I am convinced that getting pregnant by him is qadari ou nasibi!”

  Yana said qadari ou nasibi, my fate and fortune, in Arabic even though English is the language we use to communicate. In the past few weeks, her use of this expression had reached obsessive levels: if anyone said anything to her, no matter how trivial, she would immediately respond, without hesitating, “This is qadari ou nasibi.”

  I believe that she heard this expression in some song and memorized it, because she frequently repeats things in a lot of Lebanese songs, like:

  “Only you habibi, you’re qadari ou nasibi!” or

  “You know you’re maktubi, you’re qadari ou nasibi!”

  Yana listens to these songs with rapt attention and concentration and through them is trying to learn spoken Lebanese Arabic, which she aspires to master as quickly as possible because this will facilitate communication between her and her boyfriend; she always says that good communication is one of the characteristics of a successful relationship and one of the guarantees that the relationship will end in marriage!

  Yana’s greatest dream is exactly this; she thinks that it’s merely a question of time, nothing else, before her boyfriend will ask for her hand in marriage. She is perpetually getting ready for the big moment and she mentions this to us every time she goes to see him, saying, “He’s going to ask me to marry him today; everything in me feels it!”

  But not once have these feelings of hers been warranted—her boyfriend never mentions the subject of marriage. This doesn’t cause her to lose hope, however. On the contrary, her expectation of marriage remains firm and strong and she’s convinced that with time she’ll zero in on her objective!

  And she now thinks that she will finally triumph because her pregnancy will settle the question at last. Once he knows that she’s going to be the mother of his child, her boyfriend won’t put off marriage any longer, but will ask for her hand on the spot without hesitation, change of heart or delay! This pregnancy, sent down to her from the heavens, was like a fast-forward button; she pushed it to speed up the tape and shorten her waiting time.

  “Just a minute!” Yasmine said, pushing the pause button to stop the tape.

  “Just a minute! Have you forgotten that you can’t get married again before you’ve finalized your divorce and completely closed the door on your first marriage? And are you totally sure that he will even acknowledge his paternity of this child?”

  Yana’s face instantly started trembling and it seemed clear that Yasmine’s remark had really shaken her, rocking her very foundations—indeed, it did away with these foundations all together. Yasmine had demolished the castle that Yana had built in the clouds, shattering it and scattering it in little bits all around her. But despite the blow that she had already delivered, Yasmine did not stop her violent attack and finished it off by saying, “In any case, you have to be sure that you are pregnant first, these tests are not totally accurate and might give a totally wrong result!”

  “And what do you propose as a solution...?” asked Yana in a barely audible voice.

  “The ideal solution,” Yasmine said, “is that Yana go to the gynecologist because he alone can settle the question of whether or not she is pregnant.” None of us knew a doctor, so we went to look up the address of a clinic in the phone book. We found one in Achrafiyé, which is exactly what we wanted because Achrafiyé is far from my family’s house and the places that they work and always go to. We called the clinic and made an appointment for Yana for the morning of the following day.

  Yana then had nothing to do but to wait for the following day to know if the test result was right or wrong. I could sense that my friend was really stressed out, because she said that the coming hours would be longer than all eternity! So I had to find a way to distract her from thinking about being pregnant until her doctor’s appointment. I suggested that we all go to Starbucks. Yana liked this idea and said yes happily. Yasmine, however, wavered at first, then agreed to join us after Yana pressured her—but not for more than half an hour because it was almost time for her to go to the gym.

  Yasmine agreed to go with us on the condition that we first go to her house to get her gym clothes; and we agreed because she was driving us to Starbucks in her car. Yasmine lives by herself in an apartment that she rented in the Snoubra area, close to our university, LAU, like many students who come to Beirut from faraway areas. Yasmine came to Beirut from the mountains, where she lived with her parents before she started university. Now she lives in the city permanently and rarely sees her parents. She doesn’t even talk about them much, but I know that her mother is German—which is really obvious because of her foreign-looking features and especially her skin color, which is so white that Yana sometimes calls her milk in English!

  Yasmine absolutely can’t stand it when Yana calls her this—she hates any allusion to the whiteness of her skin. This name is totally perfect for her, however, because she is white like clean, new snow! Her whiteness is the most beautiful thing about her—the rest is actually somewhat ugly. This is because she doesn’t take care of her “natural assets”—she doesn’t put kohl around her eyes and she doesn’t comb and style her hair, instead she just cuts it very short and likes to keep it like that. She isn’t convinced that paying a little attention to herself could only hel
p and not harm, so whenever I’ve tried to persuade her that she needs to tend to her appearance and femininity, even just a little bit, she always answers tensely, “I have much more important things to do!”

  For her, the most important thing is her rigorous workout regimen. She has chosen the strangest and most violent of all sports—boxing. Personally, I don’t understand what made her choose boxing: it’s the kind of sport that strips a young woman of her most important attribute, her femininity. I’ve tried to convince her that she should do any other sport, because women aren’t born for violence and physical fighting, it goes completely against their nature, they should be soft and tender like the jasmine flower of my friend’s name! This is especially true of Yasmine’s body, which is so white that any bump, no matter how minor, leaves a mark on it. Boxing exposes you to powerful punches, which cover your body in blue bruises—extremely ugly, even on a boy’s body: so just imagine them all over the body of a young woman like Yasmine!

  Then again, Yasmine’s body is not in the least a woman’s body: her shoulders are broad, her chest is as flat as a board, her hips are thin and taut and prominent muscles are visible on her arms. Her body doesn’t contain even one ounce of femininity—any young man in his right mind would dream of having a body like hers!

  For these reasons, I always try to convince her to quit boxing as quickly as possible and before it’s too late, that is to say before her body is no different than a man’s (except in a few small details) and it’s too late for her to regain her original femininity. At that time she will have reached the point of no return, all her bridges will be burned and she will remain deformed until the end of her days. I use all kinds of logic and reason to convince her, but she is never convinced. She even told me that there wasn’t an iota of logic in my words. So I had to resort to other means to make her see my point of view. I tried to scare her by reporting rumors I had heard about her at the university—for example, many people say that she’s a lesbian and others call her butch! But Yasmine doesn’t care about any of this, she isn’t upset or afraid, indeed she listens to me tell her this gossip as though she were listening to the daily weather report and not to rumors that might mar her good reputation. And she keeps on pursuing her sport as though it’s nothing and she was born for it: as though boxing were a religious ritual that she performs to ensure her place in heaven.

  Personally, I’m embarrassed to be seen with her too much and this doesn’t mean that I don’t really love her—in fact the opposite is true—because she’s my very best friend after Yana. But I don’t want anyone to think that I am eccentric like her simply because she’s my friend. So I try to meet her in obscure or remote places, far from the eyes of the crowd, like at my house or Yana’s house, for example. I particularly keep my distance from her at the university, in case one of those people who ridicule her sees me. I also avoid going to her house, for this very same reason, especially as the building that she lives in is as strange as she is or perhaps even a bit stranger. I only go there in cases of extreme necessity because I distrust its residents; because of them, I feel that the place isn’t “clean” and I am afraid of one of them in particular.

  I’m afraid of a man who’s always standing at the entrance of the building as though he’s waiting for someone, but that someone never comes. When I asked Yasmine about him once she told me that his name is Waleed and that he stands at the entrance every day, without exception, even during vacations and holidays. He blocks it with his giant frame, making it impossible for anyone to pass without him granting them space because he’s double the size of a normal man. It’s obvious that Waleed isn’t a normal man, or even a man at all—which is why even looking at him bothers me so much. Despite his enormous size, femininity just oozes out of him, the way Coca-Cola overflows out of a bottle that’s been shaken before it’s opened! Everything about him is always well groomed and neat, carefully and meticulously plucked; his face is covered by a thick layer of makeup and he wears a finely embroidered satin dressing gown with open-toed pumps that display the vivid shade of red painted on the toenails of his giant feet! The first time that I saw Waleed, he still had traces of stitches that seemed to be the result of unhealed wounds on his huge nose and broad jaws, no doubt resulting from an operation he had undergone not long before.

  Waleed was standing in the entrance as usual when we arrived at Yasmine’s building that afternoon. As soon as I saw him I told my friend that I wouldn’t go up to her place with her, but would wait for her in the car, and Yana said that she would wait with me. After Yasmine left us, Yana mentioned that she was supposed to meet my cousin Hala earlier in the day but she had gotten so taken up with this business of being pregnant that she wasn’t paying attention and actually forgot all about it!

  Yana and my cousin Hala do not have a close friendship, a strong friendship or really any kind of relationship at all: they have only met two or three times at most, at my house. But Hala’s wedding will take place in two months and she has invited Yana because she considers it a great honor to have a foreign fashion model who appeared in a Coca-Cola ad attend her wedding. Yana had volunteered to take Hala today to her favorite tailor so that she could have her wedding dress made by him and get a discount.

  At that moment Yana was about to call Hala to apologize and I feared that she would tell her the reason she was too busy for their date. This is a big risk for me because Hala has a long, wagging tongue and the news of Yana’s pregnancy would reach my parents faster than email, indeed it would soon reach every member of my family—even those who live abroad!

  In order to prevent this disaster, I asked Yana to let me call Hala myself and without giving her a chance to reply, I took out my mobile phone, called my cousin and told her in Arabic that the reason Yana didn’t show up at their appointment is that she had suddenly been taken ill and was forced to stay in bed. When I finished the call, Yana told me that she’s thrilled to attend the wedding because she’s really interested in Lebanese customs and traditions and one of her dreams is to attend an authentic, native Lebanese wedding—this is why Hala’s invitation had filled her with indescribable joy.

  Then she added that, despite her joy, she had not forgotten to ask Hala not to serve tabbouleh at the wedding... under any circumstances! This is because Yana suffers from a severe allergy to tabbouleh—something that she discovered when she was invited to dinner at our house to taste typical Lebanese food, when she first came to live in Lebanon. This is the only dish that she ate that evening—not only because it was the only one that allowed her to watch her weight—but also because I had insisted on the importance of tabbouleh among the wide variety of Lebanese dishes. But no sooner had she finished what was on her plate than she began to have extreme difficulty breathing and we rushed her to the hospital, where they told us that she was in grave danger and that if we had waited even a little bit longer to bring her in she would have died. They performed all of the necessary tests and the doctor’s opinion was that she should stop eating tabbouleh altogether.

  I for one found the affair of Yana’s allergy strange because she isn’t allergic to any of the ingredients of tabbouleh on their own, in fact she has no problem eating parsley, the same goes for bulgur wheat, tomatoes, lemon... but when all of these ingredients are mixed together in one dish, it becomes a lethal combination!

  When my cousin Hala—the bride—asked Yana the reason for her strict boycott of tabbouleh, she replied, “The best means of assassinating me is to feed me tabbouleh!” She had learned the Arabic word “assassinate” recently, because of widespread explosions in Beirut, and she used it whenever the opportunity arose. Then she added, “If I die in Lebanon, it will be because of tabbouleh! If you don’t want your wedding to turn into a wake, get rid of it right away. But tabbouleh and me, we won’t meet in the same place ever again!”

  Right away, Hala hurried to take tabbouleh off of her wedding menu, because Yana’s attendance was more important to her.

  I asked Yana, “H
ow can it be a Lebanese wedding without tabbouleh?”

  But Yana didn’t answer because Yasmine came back just then and we all set off for Starbucks, which we found jampacked with university students, talking and studying for their upcoming exams. Many of them were students from our university and I regretted having gone there with Yasmine. These students had occupied all but one of the tables and we rushed to take it before someone else got there. This table was in a dark corner of the café near a long sofa where a girl and boy were stretched out and lost in total abandon, making out without stopping to rest or even take a breath. The boy’s abundance of ardor made him seem as though he were searching for something that he had lost in the girl’s mouth. I was really embarrassed watching the two of them go at it and I turned my back to them. As for my two friends... they acted completely normally, as though nothing were happening.

  As soon as we settled down at our table, Yasmine seemed really anxious, and not only did she not calm down, but she also kept busy by looking at her watch, as a clear sign that she was counting the minutes until Yana would release her. Yana noticed this and said, “Stay with us! Do you work out even on the first day of your period?”

  Yasmine replied angrily, “I don’t let my period prevent me from boxing!”

  I thought: She really is crazy! How can she do that during her period? These are two things that don’t go together, since for most women period pains are really powerful and totally incapacitate the body. Yasmine therefore must truly have ice in her veins—going to boxing practice during her period is a sign that her body doesn’t feel anything. It’s completely anaesthetized, like a sick body lying in the operating room!