“Black and White Moments”, by Boghos Kupelian

The socially unjust reality of a country full of rich diamond mines was that from an early age, the black girls—sometimes even with breasts not fully developed—would take their womanhood to the streets.

In order to secure a living for their families, they were forced to give up their young and innocent bodies to those willing to pay the price. For the most part these were wealthy black men and white foreigners. The heroine of this story belongs to this group of girls.

Among the women of the upper class in Africa, it was quite possible to come across true pozes. The rest were poor girls, young in age. In the region—having spent their entire childhood half naked and starving, illiterate and unlearned—the only way left to earn a living for these girls was to sell their bodies. No opposition from their parents. On the contrary, they would encourage their young daughters in this direction. And the money they collected bit-by-bit, instead of spending on costume jewelry or clothes of the latest fashion—they would empty into the palms of Lebanese merchants. Perhaps this was the case because the Lebanese themselves—also naked and barefoot as children preferred to “dress well,” despite the oppressive heat and sweat of their country. 

Eomi was different from her friends. She liked to be one man’s “girl.” She tried to remain as faithful as she could to him. Eomi had a heart, one of those hearts capable of loving. Her fate had cast her to the streets, in filth. In her youth—just like the daughters of her rich neighbors—she also dreamed of becoming a wife, having children, being a mother. She had ripped out the entire magazine for its fashion pictures, of newlywed couples, those with pictures of bridal gowns on mannequins, and she had decorated the walls of her tiny room with these advertisements.

A Lebanese merchant had taken her virginity. He had been a good friend of her father . . . And as soon as Eomi had returned from Bondo—the secret female circumcision society—the Lebanese, married and with children, had paid a large sum of money to Eomi’s father and had taken her by car to a secret place, where he had housed her. Despite her young age, Eomi was to find all this quite natural. In a way, she was much happier in the house of the Lebanese man. She would dress well, eat well, and sleep on a soft bed. But those days did not last long. The honeymoon was very short . . .

The Lebanese man became distant after a while, and lost interest. Sometimes there were days where he wouldn’t even show up, almost forgetting Eomi even existed. One day, he showed up with a friend, drunk. Eomi was not pleased by his lustful gaze. They continued to drink. The newcomer started feeling up different parts of the girl’s body. And rather than her Lebanese “husband” objecting to the matter, it seemed as though he was actually getting pleasure from it. A little later, claiming he had to go work, he left Eomi to the gaze of this lustful man.

From that day forward, Lebanese men would come and go. Sure, they would bring gifts or leave money when they left. But this was not what Eomi understood by “marriage.” One day, an unmannerly Lebanese man over-poured his cup. And after acting like a savage towards the girl, he proposed unspeakable things, beating Eomi in a horrifying manner. She collected her things and ran away to a friend’s house in the city. If she had gone back to her father, he would have returned her right back to the Lebanese after beating her. Her father would have honored his word . . .

Eomi was mature, well beyond her age—her eyes had been opened. She had no other way out but to turn to the streets with her friend’s guidance. But if a girl has individuality, if she has a natural intelligence, has a heart, certainly one day what is deserving will come. And it happened, just that way. 

A Lebanese man who had just arrived in Africa fell madly in love with Eomi. She had already grown taller, her figure fuller; she had been bestowed with a certain feminine beauty. And she had taken charge of the girls like her, the ones on the streets.

The Lebanese man returned home for vacation. He came back with a pretty wife from Zahlé. Without even saying a word, Eomi silently disappeared from the man’s life. She loved the man, but she also had the spiritual greatness to accept the realities of life. In the meantime, the Lebanese bridegroom was impotent for months. He could not get an erection from the white-skinned nakedness of his bride. And, as he confessed, he could only find the strength and ability after dreaming of Eomi. He would make love to Eomi in his mind.

After separating from the Lebanese, she moved on to a series of Europeans. A year or two; and then they would return to where they came from, certainly taking a piece of Eomi’s soft and sentimental heart with them. What remained with the girl was a handful of photographs, as a memory; they would be placed on the wall to enlarge the already existing series of prior heroes.

Then, after some time she was in a terrible accident. The others—those who were in the car with her—died; she stayed alive. It is as though the huge scar on her face had come to take something away from her feminine charm. Regardless of the fissure on her face, she was able to queue up European suitors, back to back . . . They would say that Eomi had such an enrapturing female energy, such a warm charm, that she would enslave the men. However, she preferred to reverse the roles in their favor.

It was a hot, suffocating day. After finishing up my work in the city, I decided to go to the City Hotel for a cold beer. This antique hotel had become a common meeting place for the country's intelligentsia and pozes. It was the only site in town that still preserved something of the past. It was one of my past loves, and perhaps also because one my favorite novelists, Graham Greene, had lived there thirty years prior and written his astonishing novel on the upper terrace. After him, everything had remained the same. The furniture, the bar, the atmosphere, even the people . . .

Sitting in the corner, I was examining those present. The unapproachable faces of the unfamiliar women. An acquaintance—an editor, in fact—directed himself towards the jukebox with a young girl. After putting in a handful of money, he walked away cursing. The girl remained there alone. A well-known surgeon, who at the same time was also a well-known drunkard, yelled from his corner, “Now he will go and publish a raging review of the jukebox in his newspaper . . .” And he laughed out loud, full of breath. The girl called me by name. Beautiful as a deer, she had large eyes. She smiled. She was pretty, and she knew it. She was expecting me to call her over to my table. She was a new, unfamiliar face. She was in white shoes with long stiletto heels, beautiful white trousers. Her skin had a lighter color. Clearly, she belonged to the Susu tribe. It may be that she did not know I was married. Anyway, that was not important for them. Apart from that, I loathe love that can be bought.

The girl approached. It is as though she has intended not to leave her prey astray. Hopefully from the way I looked over at her, she came to a different conclusion. It was not for false modesty; I just wanted to be alone. If only she knew how much she reminded me of my heroine, Eomi. She is not present. She could not be present. But when I enter the bar of this hotel, she becomes more alive than the people there. As if she were a celestial being. The reality, the grotesqueness of this world; she could not be a part of it.

She approaches, sits next to me with pleasure, coquettishly. Such a familiar seat to her, where the heat of her body would delay. The pictures, one after another, would come to life again.

***

It was upon my return from Lebanon, after a long absence. A drink. She approached me with a glass of beer in her hand. I don’t know how to define our friendship. No physical contact, we had no such relationship in all those years. Was it pity? Fascination? Or just pure curiosity.

She came and sat next to me. 

“How was Europe?” I asked.

“I didn’t go to Europe. I haven’t left the city in over a year.”

“Then where have you been hiding?”

“I wasn’t in hiding. Didn’t you hear what happened?”

I hadn’t heard. My absence from the city had been long lasting. The other problems in my life, I had other headaches to deal with. She didn’t give me a chance to respond.

“I was in a serious engagement with a Dutch civil engineer.”

She paused for a moment. Her face inviting me to tell her more. One night, just like this—by chance, we met one another.

And what was intended to be a single meeting for one evening, later turned into a strong bond of love. She was the engineer’s first African. He had not believed his eyes… He had asked, begged, to spend the next evening with her. And just like this, months had flown by.

“...your lover was most definitely a bachelor,” I said, interrupting the impetus of her speech.

“No, that was precisely the misfortune.”

The man was married to a fair Dutch beauty. Their constant arguments had broken the foundations of their marriage. She had packed her bags and returned to Holland for winter sports with a former lover. In his loneliness, the man had jumped into Eomi’s lap to find solace. And shortly after, not used to the climate of Africa, he had caught malaria. Eomi could not leave him alone. She had taken care of him, night and day. She had cooked for him, cleaned for him, and had attended to the needs of this abandoned Dutch man; she has managed to save him from the fangs of death. The president of the man’s company had written to his wife. She had left her winter sport almost half-way, returning to attend to her sick husband . . .

His wife’s behavior had strengthened his ties further to the African “street girl.” They had begun to expose their once curtained relationship—to go public. In his eyes, this was the least he could do to reward the girl’s sacrifice. And for an African poz, there could be nothing more touching, no gift more valuable that could ever be imagined. To have a white lover, and to be “saved” by him was in and of itself a grace. And so like this? Hand-in-hand, to walk around freely . . . Atlantic Club, Tropicana, an Armenian restaurant. To dine, to drink, to dance. The powerful influence it left on the other women of the streets was stupefying . . .

The wife from Holland suddenly changed her mind. Tired of all the different varieties of winter sports, she decided to return to her husband. With an old, cheap bag in her hand, Eomi was forced to depart. Eomi made a particular effort, but she could not hold her tears back. Lost in heavenly reckoning, they were just flowing. Eomi felt herself deeply connected to this European engineer. And she was terrified of giving a proper name to that feeling. Nature always somehow mixes a sense of fatalism with love. Perhaps one would be incomplete without the other…

But they continued to see one another in secret. These precipitous meetings didn’t carry the sweetness of their former life. Eomi complies. She wants to return to the City Hotel, but surprisingly that life is not appealing to her anymore. Eomi is startled by the thought of sitting on another man’s lap.

“So you left the life of the streets,” I interrupted, without being able to resist my satisfaction. “It was time for you to be attached to someone in a serious way.” I didn’t use the word marriage. In black Africa, when a couple cohabitates, they are considered married, in a natural way. She moved her shoulder. 

“Although my boyfriend does not tend to my needs as he should, I try not to give into temptation . . . the poor man has a demanding wife, you know?” It is as though she read my mind; she hesitated for a second, and then she explained, “I simply came to the hotel today to meet my friends. I told myself, let me go have a drink, change my mood.” And emphatically—as though she was communicating good news—she continued, “let me not forget to mention that as husband and wife they are perpetually arguing. The madam feels she’s been reproached. Rather than a black woman, if her husband had cohabitated with a white woman, she might not have been so upset. The Dutch wife might have just been a little jealous.”

This meeting of ours was to be the last.

His Dutch wife did not have an opportunity to complain for long. The engineer took Eomi in and sent his wife to Holland to engage in winter sports . . .

The Europeans were left with their mouths open; they scoffed at the man for his insult to the white color. Everything was excusable for the European, as long a black speck was not cast on their godly whiteness . . .

He fell because of his friends. They turned their backs on him. He was let go at his job. The president of the bank began to create problems for him.

These consecutive problems somehow made him even more tenacious. He suffered. He found a job in an African company. They continued to live together; he loved Eomi. He wanted to have a child with her. Eomi stopped taking the pill. With different forms of medication and care, she tried to make herself fertile. She was not successful; she was disappointed. Impotent, she turned herself over to the care of a village “doctor.” She had made it her life’s work to give the man she loved a child. The other—the Dutch woman—was infertile. Perhaps, with her limited understanding she believed that with the birth of a child, she would cleanse her female organs, and rid them of the stains of being a poz . . . She was attempting the impossible.

After the enormous loss of blood, Eomi never found herself again. In the lap of her white lover, she surrendered her last breath to his teary gaze . . .