The Heartbeat of Life #3
Bata Hotel, a three-star place in the center of Addis Ababa.
At least two of those stars had been won in a raffle, because it was run-down.
That’s where Zahra Bayda and I had agreed to meet a few days later, when she returned .
. . if she returned. I was given one of the few rooms with a bathroom, it was narrow but I was grateful to have it, with its pink tiles, golden faucets, and dark water stains on the ceiling, a real stroke of good luck.
Something bad must have happened in that room, weighed it down, something ominous, but what?
It took me a while to understand that it was the sickness I myself carried inside.
The next day, the fever had already risen so sharply I had hallucinations, objects shrank before my eyes until they became unbearably small and then grew to an exasperating size.
Here and there, my temperature eased, but then it would rise again.
Fever, from febris, from februare, to purify.
Purifying fever that lets you see God, like the epileptic aura?
I only saw small things, much-too-small things, and made them grow with my gaze.
I’d fix my stare on them until they swelled and exploded, and I exploded with them.
I felt exhausted, I had to sleep, but the city lost its electricity and everything went out, starting with the fan. My room became an oven, the walls reverberated, and I was sweating buckets, the fever turned merciless. Diarrhea took hold and I was rooted to the toilet like a potted plant.
Someone’s steps approached in the hall, but then passed, nobody knocked on my door, they must have known I was contagious.
It’s the law of the desert that the leper must not approach the watering hole.
I was a foreigner and I had the symptoms. I hadn’t eaten in days, the fever fed on my hunger.
I drank the water from that golden faucet.
I opened the window, but the heat was worse outside than in my room.
I watched a man collapse in the middle of the street.
In the sewers, the virus gorged on feces.
Fever and anemia. Exhaustion by day, boiling by night.
Zahra Bayda hadn’t returned and I lost count of the days.
A single bulb hung from a bare wire, buzzing like a wasp: tinnitus in my ear.
I got tangled in hallucinations: What if the contagion moved from room to room across those wires?
What if each toilet was a reeking little pit?
If someone had at least painted those walls white, if the rain pummeling the zinc roof weren’t sounding like some nocturnal xylophone . . .
I felt terribly alone. They’d left forever, the three wives of Mirza Hussain, my grandfather, vendor of carpets and narrator of lost loves, Zaida, the one who smiled; Fatima, the one who sang; Zeliz, the one who danced, to them my thoughts went, that night in Safar.
1 Fatima, the one who laughed; Zeliz, the one who danced; Zahra Bayda, the one who committed a betrayal.
In that airport, Pau had embedded himself in my unease.
Pau Cor d’Or, the meddler. Pau in Barcelona with Zahra Bayda.
We’ll see, Bos Mutas, I said to myself, you’re in a tough situation.
Maybe you’re blowing things out of proportion?
Be careful with jealousy, it’s a kind of virus too.
The ambulances howled and lashed out their laughter, like Rimbaud’s hyenas in Harar.
Patti Smith, who adored the adolescent poet, wanted to visit Harar to trace his footsteps, but didn’t do it for fear of the hyenas.
I don’t blame her, I feared them too, I could feel them climbing the walls, invading streets, sniffing, crouching their heads down, tracing our steps.
There had to be something good about that animal, some good in the hyena, that two-sexed diva, she too a thing of God, as Miguel Hernández said of clouds, donkeys, apples.
What are you doing here, things of God? Would Miguel have said it about hyenas too, if he’d seen the way they prowled Rimbaud’s ancient city?
From my window I saw that, below, squadrons marched, wrapped in plastic like astronauts in the unhealthy air.
Were they transporting the sick, or corpses?
It’s said that when death approaches, it brings a retelling of the life you’ve lived.
Like a silent movie, it shows you images, but blurs out dialogue.
In that hotel room I fell into confusion, vapors hounded me in a hungry pack.
I was drenched in a thick dampness that wouldn’t let me breathe: the sweat of a sick city.
Stay calm, I told myself, be calm. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I would have gone down to the street to look for medicine, something to relieve my symptoms, or at least my thirst. If Zahra Bayda were to come to help me .
. . if she could at least know I wasn’t well .
. . I was really ill, hopefully I could warn her, it would be better for her to know.
Steps in the hall, strong ones this time. Vigorous, fast. It was her.
“Come, Zahra Bayda, I’m not breathing well, everything hurts.”
She asks about my symptoms. Symptoms? Pyrogenic steam, a lot of heat, chills, a racing heartbeat, intense thirst, trembling, aching muscles, fatigue, a foggy mind, loss of smell and appetite, difficulty breathing. Get me out of this cage, Zahra Bayda.
She drives like a maniac—Is she trying to kill us?
She speeds like there’s no tomorrow. There is no tomorrow, Zahra Bayda, for me there will be no tomorrow.
It’s all right, it’s all right, we can stop the frenzy.
Mirza Hussain would say: What’s the point of all this coming and going, if not to find the same death a little sooner.
Goodbye, Mirza Hussain, beloved grandpa, you’re shrinking in the distance.
It’s so good that you’re here, Zahra Bayda, are you taking me home? Where is home?
“You caught the illness,” she tells me. “You let days pass without seeking help, the virus takes hold, the delirium intensifies.”
“You went off with Pau.”
“Pau is my daughter’s father,” she tries to explain. “I called you many times, and you didn’t answer.”
“My cell phone ran out of charge, the electricity went out . . .”
“Pau went to Barcelona with me for my daughter’s graduation, our daughter’s graduation, that’s all.”
“Pau, your daughter’s father?”
“Pau, my daughter’s father.”
“That’s not what you told me. You told me some things about your pregnancy, the story of a rape . . .”
“That’s also true. Pau adopted her when she was nine years old. Iftiin lives in Barcelona now with her grandparents, Pau’s parents.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did tell you. I told you my daughter’s name was Iftiin Ferrer.”
“So?”
“Ferrer is Pau’s last name.”
“Pau Ferrer, Iftiin Ferrer. What a riddle.”
Zahra Bayda took me to the hospital and cared for me for several days, I don’t know how many.
Things weren’t so bad there, they connected me to a machine that breathed on my behalf and I floated through a half consciousness that might have been pleasant if that serenity hadn’t felt like the waiting room for death.
It turned out not to be death, though, but rather an intermittent return to life, which came back into my veins drop by drop.
Zahra Bayda makes me get up, dress, comb my hair.
The world starts spinning on its axis again.
I put on my boots, convalescing, a little less dazed.
I head toward the exit, leaning on her, but on my way something hits me.
“Do you have my backpack?” I ask her.
No, she doesn’t have it. Neither do I. My backpack didn’t make it to the hospital? Zahra Bayda didn’t recall taking it from the Bata Hotel. We realize that, when we rushed out to the hospital, the backpack was forgotten.
My backpack, my old backpack, we’d left it by accident.
Zahra Bayda had found my passport on the nightstand and put it in her pocket, so at least that isn’t lost. Which is something, but it’s not enough, it’s not close to enough, it’s a disaster, the loss of my backpack is absolutely unbearable, it holds my notebooks full of writings .
. . all my notes, paragraphs, travel logs, journaling, the draft of my master’s thesis, the fragmented annotations just starting to take shape .
. . all lost. The histories of the Queen of Sheba and her migrant women: all, all of it lost.
Zahra Bayda calls the Bata Hotel, knowing already that it’s useless. I cling to a wisp of hope.
The people at the Bata tell us that, in accordance with pandemic regulations, before giving the room to another guest they clean and disinfect it, burning anything that was left inside.
We hang up.
They’ve burned my notebooks.
It’s no use making a complaint, nothing can be done. I’m overcome. Everything I’ve written: torched, fed to the flames, lost.