Morning Sea Read online

  Praise for Twice Born

  ‘This stunning novel about the nature of grief, love and motherhood blew me away with the quality and depth of her haunting story.’ The Bookseller

  ‘Mazzantini’s haunting novel, beautifully written and skillfully crafted, proves that despite the hatred exposed by war, love persists, and even flourishes.’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘Awash with vivid memories and powerful emotion . . . A stunning book.’ Irish News

  ‘Beautiful but heartbreaking.’ BookPage

  ‘Epic and captivating . . . Truly unforgettable.’ Easy Living

  ‘Twice Born by Margaret Mazzantini is a timeless yet compelling modern tale of love and war . . . as gritty, difficult, compelling, and real as the evening news.’ DolceDolce

  ‘Mazzantini’s depictions of love, maternal and romantic, are powerfully raw.’ Kirkus Reviews

  ‘Beautifully rendered, Twice Born is a testament to love’s power over hate and the promise of new beginnings.’ The Daily Beast

  ‘Artfully told . . . enraptures its audience with larger-than-life characters travelling along life’s twisted journey.’ Meg Talks Books

  ‘Beautiful, lyrical, painful . . . It also illuminates, for at its heart is the power of love, which does not conquer all, but is the only means for the soul to survive and heal. Highly recommended.’ The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog

  ‘A stunning story of love and war, of violence and of the secrets within a family.’ Le Monde des Livres

  ‘Margaret Mazzantini expertly weaves together jealousy, horror, money, cynicism, compassion, madness, and hope.’ Le Journal du Dimanche

  ‘Splendid and engaging . . . page after page of images, rhythm, suspense, suffering, and synchrony. Pure energy.’ La Nazione

  ‘Nothing short of astonishing . . . Margaret Mazzantini sows, with a steady hand, the seed of hope deep within the darkest and most desperate acts of humankind.’ La Stampa

  Praise for Don’t Move

  ‘Beautiful . . . The splintered, humanizing observations that constantly animate [Don’t Move] are exhilarating.’ New York Times Book Review

  ‘Gripping . . . unfolds with the whispered, urgent secrecy of a confessional. The writing is terse, taut, and very graphic – like a succession of crystal-clear stills from a dramatic film.’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘Enthralling, compelling, and gripping.’ Mail on Sunday

  ‘Grips you to the end.’ Daily Mail

  ‘A psychological study of passion, degradation, and guilt . . . a powerful depiction of the struggle in human nature between the ephemeral quest for love and the quest for self-knowledge.’ Financial Times

  ‘A powerful, visceral, and unforgettable story.’ Panorama

  ‘Margaret Mazzantini has taken Italy by storm with [Don’t Move] . . . Startling stuff.’ Independent

  ‘Irresistible. Reading Don’t Move is like opening the ­hospital-room door to find a tiger pacing in the corridor: there’s no looking away, no turning back; nothing is more important than what happens next.’ Valerie Martin, author of Property

  About the Author

  Margaret Mazzantini was born in Dublin and lives in Rome with her husband and four children. She made her literary début in 1994 with Il catino di zinco (The Zinc Basin), followed by Manola (1999), and in 2001 she published Non ti muovere (Don’t Move), which won multiple awards, including the Premio Strega, Premio Grinzane Cavour, Premio Città di Bari, and European Zepter Prize, and in 2004 was made into an acclaimed film directed by Sergio Castellitto and starring Penélope Cruz. After the theatrical monologue Zorro (2002), Mazzantini published the novel Venuto al mondo (Twice Born, 2008, published by Oneworld Publications in 2011), which won the prestigious Premio Campiello in 2009, and was made into a film directed by Sergio Castellitto, starring Penélope Cruz and Emile Hirsch (2012). This was followed by Nessuno si salva da solo (No One Survives Alone, 2011) and Mare al mattino (Morning Sea, 2011), the latter winning the Premio Cesare Pavese and Premio Matteotti awards. Her most recent novel is Splendore (Splendour, 2013). Margaret Mazzantini’s books are international bestsellers, and have been translated into more than thirty languages.

  Also available in English

  from Margaret Mazzantini

  Don’t Move

  Twice Born

  A Oneworld book

  First published in North America, Great Britain, and Australia by

  Oneworld Publications, 2015

  Originally published in Italian as Mare al mattino by Einaudi, 2011

  This ebook edition published by Oneworld Publications, 2015

  Copyright © Margaret Mazzantini, 2011, 2015

  Translation copyright © Ann Gagliardi, 2015

  The moral right of Margaret Mazzantini to be identified as the

  Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78074-633-3

  eBook ISBN 978-1-78074-634-0

  This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s

  “PEN Translates!” programme, supported by Arts Council England. English

  PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’

  freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and

  imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly

  co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org

  Oneworld Publications

  10 Bloomsbury Street

  London WC1B 3SR

  England

  For you with Dhaki on the coche pequeño

  Contents

  Farid and the Gazelle

  The Colour of Silence

  Morning Sea

  Farid and the Gazelle

  Farid has never seen the sea, never gone in.

  He’s imagined it many times. Dotted with stars like a pasha’s cloak, blue like the blue wall of the dead city.

  He’s looked for fossilized seashells buried millions of years ago when the sea extended into the desert. He’s chased after fish lizards that swim beneath the sand. He’s seen the salty lake and the bitter lake and silvery camels advancing like shabby pirate ships. He lives in an oasis on the edge of the Sahara.

  His ancestors belonged to a tribe of Bedouin nomads. They set up their tents in wadis, riverbeds covered with vegetation. The goats grazed; the wives cooked on fiery stones. They never left the desert. They didn’t entirely trust the coastal people, merchants, and pirates. The desert was their home – their open, limitless sea of sand, mottled by the dunes like a jaguar’s coat. They possessed nothing, only footprints, which the sand covered over. The sun moved the shadows. They were accustomed to withstanding thirst, drying out like dates without dying. A camel opened the way for them with its long, crooked shadow. They disappeared in the dunes.

  We are invisible to the world, but not to God.

  They moved from place to place with this thought in their hearts.

  In winter, the northern wind that crossed the ocean of rocks stiffened the woollen shawls on their bodies. Their skin, bloodless like the goatskins stretched taut across their drums, clung to their bones. Ancient curses fell from the sky. The fault lines in the sand were blades. Touching the desert brought wounds.

  Their elders were buried where they died, left to the silence of the sand. Afterwards, the Bedouins set out again, fringes of white and indigo cloth.

  In spring, new dunes emerged, rosy and pale. Sand virgins.

  The searing ghibli wind dr
ew near, accompanied by the jackal’s hoarse cry. Here and there, little tendrils of wind nipped at the sand like wandering spirits. Rough squalls followed, as sharp as scimitars. An army brought back to life. In a flash, the desert rose to devour the sky and there was no longer any border with the hereafter. The Bedouins bent beneath the weight of the grey tempest, protecting themselves against the bodies of animals that had fallen to their knees as if beneath the shroud of some ancient judgement.

  Then they stopped, built a wall of clay, an enclosed pasture. Wheels left furrows in the sand.

  Now and then, a caravan passed through. The settlement lay on the route used by merchants who cut across the desert from black Africa to the sea. They carried ivory, resin, precious stones and captives to sell as slaves in the ports of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania.

  The merchants rested in the oasis, ate, drank. A city was born, with roofs of palm and walls of dried clay reminiscent of braided rope. The women lived above the men, separate. They walked barefoot across the roofs and went to the well with terracotta jars on their heads. They mixed couscous with lamb innards. They prayed on the tombs of marabouts, of holy men. At sunset, they danced on the roofs to the sound of the nay, their bellies moving like drowsy snakes. On the ground, the men made bricks, bartered, played tawla and smoked the narghile.

  That city is no longer there. Nothing remains but a sketch, a sanctuary eaten by the wind of sand. Next to it, a new city arose, built for Colonel Gaddafi by foreign architects from the East. Cement buildings, aerials.

  Along the roads, there are huge images of the colonel, here pictured in desert camouflage, there as a devout Muslim or a military official. In some, he’s imperious and grave; in others, he smiles with open arms.

  People sit on empty petrol cans, bony children, old men sucking roots to freshen their mouths. Electrical wires travel limply from one building to the next. The searing ghibli bears plastic bags and litter left behind by desert tourists.

  There’s no work, just sugary drinks and goats and dates to can for export.

  Many of the young leave to find work in the oil reserves, the black blocks on the map, the eternal flames of the desert.

  It’s not a real city. It’s an aggregation of lives.

  Farid lives in the old city, in one of those low houses with doors all round the same central court, a wild garden, a gate that’s always open. He walks to school, runs on his thin legs with their skin that peels like the bark on reeds. His mother, Jamila, wraps sesame sticks in paper for his snack.

  After school, he and his friends play with a little old cart that drags tin cans, or else football. He rolls like a grub in the red dust. He steals little bananas and bunches of black dates. With the help of a rope, he climbs high into the heart of those trees full of shadows.

  Round his neck, he wears an amulet, a little leather pouch stuffed with beads and a few tufts of animal fur. All children wear them.

  Evil eyes will look at the amulet. You will be safe, his mother explained.

  Omar, Farid’s father, is a technician. He installs TV aerials. He waits for the signal, smiling at the women who don’t want to miss the next episode of the Egyptian soap opera and treat him like a saviour of dreams. Jamila is jealous of those stupid women. She studied singing, but her husband won’t let her perform during weddings or at festivals, let alone for tourists. So Jamila sings for Farid, her only spectator in the rooms full of drapes and rugs and smelling of sagebrush and herbs beneath the domed plaster roof of their house.

  Farid is in love with his mother and her arms, which make a breeze like palm leaves, and the smell of her breath when she sings one of her maloufs full of love and tears, and her heart swells so much that she has to hold it tight so it won’t fall into the rusty iron rainwater basin that’s always dry.

  His mother is young, like a sister. Sometimes they play bride and groom. Farid combs her hair, adjusts her veil.

  Jamila’s forehead is a round stone; her eyes are rimmed like a bird’s; her lips are two sweet, ripe dates.

  It’s a sunset with no wind. The sky is peach-coloured.

  Farid leans against the wall in his garden. He studies his feet, the filthy toes sticking out of his sandals.

  A flurry of new moss is growing in one of the cracks in the wall. Farid bends to smell the fresh scent. Only then does he realize that an animal is breathing beside him, so close that he can’t move. His heart leaps into his eyes.

  He’s afraid it might be a uaddan, a legendary creature, part sheep, part donkey, with big horns. His grandfather told him it sometimes appears on the horizon between two dunes, an evil mirage. It’s been a long time since anyone has seen a uaddan, but Grandfather Mussa swears the creature still hides in the black sandstone wadi, where living things are unable to survive. Grandfather Mussa says the uaddan’s very angry about all the jeeps ruining the desert, damaging it with their wheels.

  But the animal doesn’t have white tufts and lunar horns, and she’s not grinding her teeth. She has a sand-coloured coat and horns so thin they look like twigs. The animal gazes at Farid. She may be hungry.

  Farid realizes it’s a gazelle, a young gazelle. She doesn’t run away. Her eyes, wide and so near, are lustrous and calm. Her coat shivers with a sudden tremor. Maybe the animal is trembling, just like Farid. But the gazelle is also too curious to move away. Farid slowly moves a branch towards her. The gazelle opens a mouth full of flat white teeth and tears off a few fresh pistachios, then backs away in her tracks without taking her eyes off Farid. All of a sudden, she turns, jumps over the earthen wall, and runs over the horizon of the dunes, kicking up sand.

  At school the next day, Farid fills pages with gazelles. He draws them crookedly in pencil, then jabs his finger in tempera paint to colour them in.

  The television is broadcasting a continuous loop of the film the colonel produced with Anthony Quinn starring as the legendary Omar Mukhtar, the Bedouin leader who fought like a lion against the Italian invaders. Farid is proud. He can feel his heart beating in his bones. His father’s name is Omar, like the desert hero.

  Farid and his friends play war with blowguns made from reeds that spit out pistachios and red rocks left behind by storms.

  You’re dead! You’re dead!

  They fight on, because no one wants to throw himself to the ground and end the game.

  Farid knows that war has broken out somewhere.

  His parents whisper until late at night, and his friends say weapons have arrived from the frontier. They saw them being unloaded from jeeps at night. They’d like to have an AK-47 or a rocket launcher, too.

  They fire off a few Bengal flares beside the old deaf beggar.

  Farid jumps around and has so much fun.

  Hisham, his youngest uncle, a university student in Benghazi, has joined the rebel forces.

  Grandfather Mussa, who works as a guide taking tourists to the Cursed Mountain, and knows how to recognize snake tracks and read rock drawings, says Hisham is stupid, that he’s read too many books.

  He says the colonel has paved Libya over with tarmac and cement, filled it with black Tuaregs from Mali, carved the words of that ridiculous green book of his on every wall, met with bankers and politicians the world over, his escort of beautiful women in tow as if he were an actor on holiday. But he’s a Bedouin just like them, a man of the desert. He defended their race, which was persecuted by history, pushed back to the edges of the oases. Better him than the Muslim Brotherhood.

  Hisham said, Freedom is better.

  Omar climbs onto the roof to adjust the satellite dish. They manage to get a channel that isn’t scrambled by the regime. The coastal cities are burning. Now they know that the prophet of a united Africa is firing upon his Jamahiriya, his peopledom. At this point, he’s alone in the halls of power. When Grandfather Mussa sees Misurata destroyed, he tears his print of the colonel off the wall and throws it under the bed.

  The telegram comes. Hisham has lost his sight – a shrapnel wound to the face. He won’t u
se his eyes to read books any more. Everyone cries; everyone prays. Hisham is in the hospital in Benghazi. At least he’s alive. He’s not in a green bag like Fatima’s son.

  On the streets, people scratch the colonel’s words from the walls, cover them with slogans of liberty and caricatures of the Big Rat and his fake medals. Rocks decapitate the statue at the entrance to the medina.

  It’s nighttime. There’s nothing but a little bare light that won’t stop trembling as if from a cough. Omar empties a bag onto the table. There’s money inside, all the dinars from Omar’s savings, plus the euros and dollars Grand­father Mussa has earned with the tourists in the desert. Omar counts the money, then pulls out a stone and hides it in the wall. He talks with Jamila, clutches her little hands in his own. Farid isn’t sleeping. He looks at that knot of hands wavering in the dark like a coconut in the rain.

  Omar says they have to go. That they should have gone a while ago. There’s no future in the desert. Now there’s war. He’s afraid for the child.

  Farid thinks his father is wrong to be afraid for him. He’s ready for war, just like Uncle Hishram. He’s ­covered his eyes with his hands to see what it’s like to be blind. You bang into things, but it doesn’t matter.

  Farid leans against the wall in his garden.