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Pilar

 

 

Sofia started out as Pilar.  She was seventeen, wandering through Europe with her Caribbean boyfriend Manuel.  He was seven years older, a member of the family who owned all the grocery stores on Curacao, and had many friends running hostels throughout Europe.  He had introduced her to hash and the Louvre, and she wore her hair in plaits.

            They were traveling in a haze, bumping from one place to another, not stopping until they got a city that had a hostel or a village with a house of someone he knew.  Once with friends, they would be offered any of a number of substances. 

            At one point, Pilar was lying on a tiny bed in Croatia, her feet on the pillow and her head hanging off the bed.  Manuel was half naked, pacing back and forth, opening and closing the clasp on a gold chain watch his grandfather had once owned.

            “You don’t look well,” he said to her.  She frowned and groped around for her camera. 

            “I think you need enlightenment.”

            “I have enlightenment.”  She spotted her camera above her head on the floor.  Squinting one eye she reached out to it. 

            “No, not the drugs.  That’s groovy enlightenment, but I think we need to feed your soul with something else.”

            “Let’s go see a band.  Or a good DJ.”  Holding the camera to her eye she rolled slowly back and forth, blinking into the eye piece. 

            “No, not music.  Spiritual enlightenment.”

            “Spiritual enlightenment?  We’re going to church?”

            “No, not church.”  She found his legs in the camera and moved up past his multicolored rope belt to see him scratching his bare chest.

“Yeah, let’s go to Jerusalem.  Do you know anyone there?”

“No.  We’ll go to Istanbul.  There’s gotta be some cool Sufis hanging out there.”

They smoked the rest of their hash, then packed to catch the train to the Bosphorus.  Manuel wouldn’t let Pilar bring her camera.

“You have to learn to see with your inner eye,” he told as he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his suede jacket.  She frowned, but he smiled at her and stroked her plaits.  She relented finally, and he took it across town to leave with a friend.  An hour later he came back with a small bottle of absinthe.

“Where’d you get that?” she asked when he flashed it to her.

“I bought it.”

“Bought it? With what money?” 

They drank the bottle on the platform, ignoring the Croats who shook their heads and walked away from the two hippies, one of which kept asking a lot of questions. 

Pilar finally wore him down on the train, and with his eyes lost in a wormwoodian daydream he told her he sold her camera to get the money.  She slapped him, pulled his hair, spit in his face and told him how his mother must have not only been an awful cook but must have tried hard to raise such a devil.  Well, at least she remember doing all of those things and more.  But when they arrived at the Bosphorus, she was shocked to see him moodily staring off into space, his hair intact, his lips whole and his ego completely undamaged.  She glanced around, but no one on the train paid any attention to her.  She cursed the wormwood and got off the train with everyone else.

They saw the Pointe, but instead of seeing the sights, they spent their time wandering through the narrow back alleys and bazaars.  Manuel would occasionally stop and ask old ascetic looking men if they were Sufi mystics.  They would stare back with incredulous looks, their lips forming soundless curses.  Pilar wished she had her camera to capture Manuel looking like a fool, so her anger never really subsided.  She kept looking around for a pasha to sleep with and make him jealous.

Tired, hot, and with murderous thoughts lingering as far from spiritual enlightenment as possible, Pilar demanded that they stop and eat.

“Let’s just go in this mosque, baby,” Manuel was trying again.  She shrugged and then stepped across a square and entered into the grand mosque of Istanbul. 

It was cool and dark, and magnificently decorated.  Pilar forgot her fatigue, forgot her hunger, and forgot who she was with.  She stood, looking out among the columns lining around the mosque, holding her breath.  She ran her eyes like fingers over the exquisite qiblah, feeling the grooves and dips, curves and dots of the Arabic script.  The mullah’s pulpit, the name of Allah, all of it pulled her forward till she was leaning on the observation area’s railing. 

“Beautiful isn’t it?” She turned to see a student standing next to her.  She frowned, finding herself hoping it would have been a pasha.  She nodded.

“You know it used to be a church,” he continued, taking a step closer to his conversation partner.  “The Byzantines built it and called it the Hagia Sophia.”

“Hagia Sophia?”

“Yes.” He smiled at her. “Would you like to go somewhere else?”

“Why? So I can trade one know-it-all for another?” She remembered Manuel was standing at her other side, and looked at him.  He was muttering to a young dervish.  He glanced over at her and mouthed the words, “I found a Sufi.”

She mouthed back, “Let me see your watch.”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the gold watch.

“Is that your boyfriend?” the student asked.

“No,” Pilar said.  And taking the watch, she left the mosque. 

She was breathing fast as she turned the corner, slipping into the crowded bazaars.  She sold the watch at a stall a few blocks away, angrily yelling at the fat man behind the booth until he gave her a thick stack of Turkish lire.  As a gift, she left the rest of the hash she had in her pocket to merchant, which she replaced with a box of Turkish cigarettes.  An hour later she was on a train back into Europe.

At Sarajevo she got off the train, and marched straight to a beauty salon where she motioned and tugged at her plaits until the Bosnians understood what she wanted.  A half an hour later her plaits were gone, her hair falling above her shoulders.  Pilar was staring at herself in the mirror wiping tears off her cheeks when a young girl came into the salon.  Immediately everyone began to shout and gesture towards Pilar, and the girl walked over looking confused.

“Hello, do you speak English?” she asked.

“Yes, who are you?” Pilar asked.

“I am Lena.  The women think you are very beautiful.  They want to know what your name is.”

“Sofia,” she said.  “My name is Sofia.”

The women started to chatter, pulling at Lena, pointing at Sofia, speaking quickly.  Sofia brushed the hair off her shoulders onto her plaits on the floor.  She lit a cigarette and smiled at Lena.

“Who do I need to pay for the haircut?”

 

 

 

 

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