Soil
Nermin Kamal
The first time I wanted to go to Yoga class, the Indian tenant advised me not to go.
“It is not real yoga”.
Rajesh was new to our yard, he didn’t know Natasha and I very well, we didn’t need a real yoga anyway.
The yoga studio was in our Baku neighborhood. Its neon light was glowing all day long: “YOGA. Happiness for soul and body. The first day free.”
Many different women started to visit our dvor for it, I saw them while hanging out with Natasha on the roofs. They climbed up the old wooden stairs and closed the door behind, blond and brunette, seven or perhaps ten young girls per day. Even a woman in a black burqa, - she was rumored to have a yoga studio of her own on the other side of the city. “D’yuh know why she doesn’t go to her own halal yoga place to do yoga? cause she says I never do yoga in front of my staff” – aunties sitting on their doorsteps gossiped in their afternoon chats.
“If it was a bad place, so many people wouldn’t come here” - Natasha said so and I agreed with her. If all these people from faraway places come to our yard for Yoga, why shouldn’t we? Even if the promised happiness wasn’t real, still it was better to kill time at the Yoga studio than outside in hot August days. I didn’t listen to Rajesh and went there on Sunday with Natasha.
Who could have expected to see them there? Not me, neither Natasha.
We couldn’t have expected to see the Armenian and Azerbaijani refugee women there. Our eyes met with instant recognition: yes, we had met before. After the glance, I remembered last August, but did they remember too?
The yoga teacher, Irina, whose name I learnt later, arranged a place for us behind others and only then I noticed the shovels next to each mat on the floor.
“And now...” – it seemed Irina was talking before we arrived and now she continued. - “The travel will be in a frequency that cannot be seen but can be felt. Let’s take our shovels and close our eyes” – she said like Caucasian toastmasters, armed with her shovel she closed her eyes:
“Imagine you divide your life in half. Your left-hand side is your past and the right-hand side is your future. Look at the left… You wish you could erase those dark times from your life. Their places are deep and wide holes, their places are dark pits in the ground… Before their thick darkness covers you, you do cover them one by one, fill the pit with soil, then push down firmly on the soil you have filled in and level the ground off. Plant a beautiful green tree on it.” – said Irina, and she inserted her shovel into the air in front of her feet as if she lifted soil and as if she emptied her shovel.
I wasn’t sure if the refugees closed their eyes, I was behind them. I didn’t want to close my eyes, I was alert, and even the soothing meditation music couldn’t relax me. It was impossible to close my eyes among them. All my young heart wanted was to watch the refugee women doing yoga in floral robes. I looked at Natasha standing only three steps away from me. Her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was going to the left. How on Earth did she do it so quickly? Natasha has always been so different than me in everything as if we were from two different worlds. But in the Orphanage, they said two sisters left us there when we were infants. If our mothers were sisters, it means we are cousins.
One more effort. I closed my eyes. The only thing I could see was inside of my closed eyelids, twinkling, swirling pattern of stars, a fuzzy light show. I opened my eyes, the hall was the same. Long white curtains were fluttering in the air. One was impregnated by wind, its belly grew bigger and bigger, then, suddenly, gave birth to her wind child and relaxed. The women and Natasha were pushing their shovels into the air in front of their feet, taking soil and filling their pits. They were working and breathing faster and faster, lifting soil, throwing soil.
Everybody is doing it, except me.
Why I cannot do it?
Do I feel like I have no pits?
I have pits and even deeper pits.
I have ravines.
Natasha, where are you? What pit are you filling now? Are you in the far or near past? You must be in Japan if you went far away.
Do you remember, you once told me you were afraid while making love that someone might stab you in your back? “I know where that feeling comes from. I was a Japanese teacher in my previous life and I was killed by stabbing” – you said, “I calculated it by using a graph on the back page of a magazine”. Oh dear, my Japanese Natasha. Did you go that far now? Or perhaps you went to the near past, to our Orphanage? Perhaps you are burying our teachers and our canteen workers there. Do throw more soil on them, for me too.
I see the refugees are working too, they are lifting their shovels, inserting into the air, taking soil and filling their pits. Are they throwing soil on us too? Do they still remember the beauty pageant? Did they recognize us? Last August one afternoon, two guys appeared in the refugees’ neighborhood and said this kind of words to them:
“Our organization... together with the ministry... supported by the foundation... taking into consideration... charity... moral spirit of women... suicide prevention... a new project... the beauty pageant... cash and gifts to the participants and winner in the end...”
Was it art or work for the refugees? In the morning moms of five, fat and slim, tall and short women swept the yard and in the evening walked there like beauties on the podium. Each refugee family put stools outside for the spectators, wrote their initials T, S, Z under the stools not to lose them. Their children, survivors of war sat on the stools and applauded them. The people from nearby yards began flooding into the refugee camp to watch. With the fancy dresses, they prepared in the blink of an eye the beauties were singing and dancing, one day for The Best Dance, the other day for The Best Song, The Best Hairstyle... Everything was just like in real pageants except for the songs and the beauties.
I rode herd on the pastures
But my cattle had lost, and I stayed alone
O-la-la!
My cattle had lost, I stayed alone
My cattle had lost, I stayed alone
Boo!
I'm asked to get up and dance
Please, my bonny, get up and dance
But I cannot, I cannot, and I cannot dance
D'oh!
It's no matter, I will learn it
You don't believe, but I will learn it
Let’s play the drums, the pipes, the strings!
I'm getting up to dance
I cannot, I cannot, and I can... dance!
We, two long-nosed girls planned the beauty pageant on the roofs whispering and laughing, but after it started, we watched the women in amazement, like a mother watches her child’s body and hair grow without her doing anything. Why did they believe in our words?
If it was a job for them, when did they figure out nobody was going to pay them? How did they figure out who were their art curators, if it was art for them? I had no idea. Summer vanished and we stopped wandering around the refugee neighborhood.
Do they bury us now? Are there sand particles hitting my skin I don’t feel? If only I could bury my pits like them, first, I would have buried last August. Not only. August has always been a bad month for me. I would have buried all the Augusts of my life. Perhaps I have to do what Rajesh advised me, to write nice words in between A and U, U and G…
A-happiness-U-joy-G-merry-U-bliss-S-love-T
It seems Irina too has something to bury, as she buries so enthusiastically. Rajesh says she is not a real yoga teacher. Real yoga teachers never eat meat, never drink alcohol, and they never wear beautiful clothes. A real yoga teacher lives simply, more simply than everyone else. Irina, on the contrary, always wears gorgeous dresses to work.
Three vaccination scars on her arm caught my eye. As if those three shots were supposed to protect not only Irina, not only against tuberculosis or chickenpox but also to protect us, against all possible calamities, all possible misfortune. I closed my eyes...
And I saw I was in the Orphanage. It is evening time, one of those sad evenings. I am counting down the days until leave, when will I turn 16? All of a sudden everyone screams in panic: “A flying saucer, a flying saucer!” I am running toward the noise. Yes, it is. There is a flying saucer in the air in front of the window. The children start crying, but not all of them, some are happy to see it and they stretch their arms to the flying saucer: “Please, take me with you, please”. I also stretch my arms and beg to the flying saucer: “Please, take me with you!”
Suddenly Mother Kira appears and switches the light off, the flying saucer disappears. She switches it on, and the saucer reappears.
“You the bastards!” Mother Kira shouts, “That is not a flying saucer, that is the reflection of the chandelier in the window”.
I take soil and generously sprinkle over the flying saucer. I take more soil and throw onto Mother Kira. She, standing around, looking at me. One more throw. So easily I cover Mother Kira, the fear of my childhood. I throw soil on whoever comes across, over the children, over the teachers. I see Natasha out of the blue. She also throws soil onto the Orphanage. She wipes her forehead sweating and looks at me. We look at each other speechless. After the glance we do it even better, we throw soil over everything and everyone we come across in this house. We level it off, we plant a lilac tree on it. One is not enough, we plant an acacia, an oak, an elm on it. We start a garden. We walk in the shade of our trees. We see the trees of others from our garden and the refugee women’s trees...
I can hear Irina’s voice, is she here under the trees, I look around. My eyes open to the sound of curtain rods, I see the women, they also just opened their eyes looking around. We put our shovels back onto the floor, we wipe our foreheads.
Irina opens the curtains:
- Now look to the sky, big white balloons are floating over there. The balloons come down towards you, closer and closer to you, until a balloon involves each of you. You are in a balloon. The balloon stays on you here and after you leave. Stay in your balloon, live in your balloon. The balloon will protect you.
We get out of the hall, each of us in a big balloon. Our balloons collide in the corridor, on the stairs, in the yard. Natasha and I look at each other with dull eyes through our balloons and smile.
We all scatter around the city in our balloons, hopping and skipping my balloon touches the city walls with me inside, floats toward the seashore.
*
Nermin Kamal is a writer and philosophy teacher from Baku.
She is author of three books: On Umberto Eco and Postmodern Philosophy, a novel “Aç, mənəm” (Open, It’s Me) and the collection of essays following the novel. Her writing appeared in BBC World Service, The Calvert Journal, Qantara among others.
N.Kamal is currently working on her next novel and writes essays for international media, you may find her writing at nerminkamal.com