Pistachio Pavlova

Mariam walked out to the garbage bin, flipped the lid, was about to drop the rubbish in, when she saw her cake, the pavlova, the very one she’d baked and given her neighbour, only yesterday, in honor of the birth of her first grandchild. There it was sitting primly, in all its sticky, wobbly entirety atop a mound of festering rubbish. Mariam reached in to retrieve the cake, lifted it up to eye level and inspected it closely. Not a single forkful, not even a curious fingertip worth was missing. The fruit was still there too, the kiwis, the strawberries, the blueberries, snaking round the edge of the craggy meringue cliff. Only a hint of disintegration was visible as the strawberries had started to sweat and bleed into the meringue.

Not so long ago…

…the Azoulay family had arrived to Sydney from Tangier. There was Mariam, her husband Masood and their daughter Nadia. Their house was at the end of a small street near Botany Bay. It was so close to the airport that every time an aeroplane flew overhead Mariam would duck her head down. Her husband would laugh at her and say, “If you’re feeling homesick, you can just jump up and grab a flight home.” Mariam was feeling homesick, so she didn’t find that especially funny.

In Tangier, it was customary for people to introduce themselves to their neighbours. Masood saw no need for it. Nadia was totally embarrassed by the idea. Mariam insisted. Shortly after they moved in, dressed in a brand new stiff denim pinafore and her favorite red snood, Mariam took a deep breath and set out on her mission. The Azoulay’s house, which was in fact only half a house, shared a common wall with their neighbors. The Azoulay’s half was sagging, warped, chipped and rusted. Their neighbour’s half was crisply renovated, complete with a polished brass mailbox and a manicured pink frangipani tree. The overall effect was one of lopsidedness, of estranged twins who have been dealt radically divergent destinies.

Mariam rubbed her hamsa for luck and slowly pushed open the shiny, oiled gate. Just then, her neighbour was arriving home from her morning power walk. Lost in consultation with her calorie counter watch she slammed into Mariam. “I’m sorry, I’m your new neighbour, Mariam, Mariam Azoulay, from Tangier, from Morocco, the pleasure is mine to meet you,” she said, extending a small red hand. The woman smiled a tight toothless smile and bolted for her front door, accidentally zeroing the calorie count on her watch.

The next morning Mariam watched her neighbour leaving for her power walk from the front room window. Stirring a fourth spoon of sugar into the narrow gold rimmed coffee glass she sighed. At circa sixty, her neighbor was wiry and sprightly with freckled, leathery skin. She’s very pretty, she thought, but what she really meant was skinny, because skinny seemed to equal pretty in Sydney. No Moroccan proportions here, no dark, spacious place to hide all the halva and baklava. Of course, she told herself, her neighbor hadn’t meant not to introduce herself, she’d only forgotten, she was just busy, like everyone else in Sydney. Not being busy kept Mariam worrying all day long and every night. She’d worked as a nurse and midwife for over twenty years in Tangier and suddenly found herself unemployable, in spite of speaking English, and even in spite of staffing shortages in hospitals across the city. Eventually Mariam discovered her neighbour’s name by rifling through their mail in the afternoon when Mrs. Saidley, Shirley, was playing golf, and her husband, Alderman Norman Saidley, was at work at Botany Bay Council. It was undignified, beneath her, she burned with shame and fear of discovery for days afterwards.

Soon after they moved in it was Ramadan, so they ate harira every day, like good Moroccans. Only they did it at noon and not after dusk. In passionate defense of not fasting Masood maintained that: “Fasting shrinks the brain, I’m certain of it. Dr. Benjelloun, your hospital director no less, never fasts, I’m sure of it. I once saw a Mars wrapper sticking out of his pocket when I came to visit you at work during Ramadan. Besides, I don’t like rules and I hate being hungry. Still, I think it’s a little hypocritical to eat harira for lunch during Ramadan. Couldn’t you make salad instead?”

“You asked me to make you harira for lunch!” said Mariam, who felt guilty about eating, but was too nervous this year to fast. “And I think it’s terrible the way you repeat that story about Dr Benjelloun. He could have just found that wrapper lying on the ground, or it might have been in his pocket from before Ramadan.” 

Nadia was entirely unopposed to the Azoulay’s version of Ramadan. “You won’t hear me complain about harira for lunch. So long as I don’t have to cook,” she said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling with noisy satisfaction.

“Tell me about the meeting with your professor, cherie,” said Mariam, leaning over the table to her daughter.

Nadia struggled to retrieve basic information such as: What meeting? When? Who was this professor? Kylie from across the road had sold her a bag of some very nasty weed last night which she’d greedily smoked in one-mega-hooting-joint and then proceeded to munch out with such ferocity that by the end of it all she could hardly breathe.

“It was very positive,” Nadia said, downing a cup of black coffee.

“Oh that’s wonderful, tell me more cherie,” said Mariam, all enthusiasm.

“Can’t talk now Mum…”

“Where are you going?”

But she was gone already, slam out the front door, over to Kylie’s.

It had been Masood’s idea to move to Sydney. Inspired by its distance from his creditors in Tangier, by the liberal gambling laws and the bikini-lined beaches, he’d convinced his daughter it would be a wonderful place for her to go to university. He’d convinced his wife that she would find work in the hospitals there, that they’d snap her up with all her years of experience. He’d orchestrated their move to Sydney with his usual combination of luck, fearlessness and a flexible interpretation of the law. But Mariam was not allowed to work as a nurse, she wasn’t even sure they’d recognize her qualifications. While she waited to find out, she decided she’d volunteer at the Prince of Wales Hospital. She was hoping vaguely that if they saw how knowledgeable, efficient and really very nice she was that they’d give her a job. That theory had gotten her as far as serving lunch in the hospital canteen twice a week. Slopping shepherd’s pie onto plates one afternoon, she had to wonder where it was all heading.

That night, watching a “Bangkok Hilton” re-run with Masood, she vented.

“Listen to me,” Masood said, splitting and spitting sunflower seeds, “the bureaucracy here is just as bad as in Morocco. Trust me. All you need is a uniform and an ID to get back into the delivery room.” He rubbed his hands together and chuckled, warming to his theme. “I just met someone at the R.S.P. club…”

“R.S.L., Returned Soldier League…”

 “Yes, yes, that one, he makes IDs, he does beautiful work, and he’s fast too, if you could borrow one...”

“Hah! Steal one you mean…”

“Steal, borrow, what difference does it make? You could return it before they’d even know it’s missing. You wouldn’t be harming anyone.”

Mariam pursed her lips and shook her head.

“Do you want to get back into the delivery room or not? It’s not like you’re making money now anyway. This way at least you’d feel useful again.” 

“I can’t just turn up and roll up my sleeves and be accepted. There are rules and protocols and security checks…”

“Oh, rules! Rules are made by people in power and enforced by the powerless through fear of authority. They’re just arbitrary, temporary, all of them just written in pencil.”

“You make everything sound so easy,” she said sadly. 

Mariam looked at him and saw that he was still a handsome man. He had a lean, chiseled face, full feminine lips, a long Roman nose, a full head of licorice black hair and eyes the color of midnight coal. Deep set creases gathered round his laughing, cynical eyes like old friends clinking glasses at a bar. Masood kissed the top of her head and went to dress. He had a tough backgammon game ahead of him at the R.S.& L. club and he had a lot of money riding on it. Mariam had learned never to voice her opposition to his gambling before a game for fear of jinxing him. He’d begged her not to even think anything negative. So she’d taken to praying instead. On his way out he saw her jet eyes, wet and blazing with sincerity, her small red hands clasping one another like shipwrecked lovers. He looked the other way as he pulled on his Panama and hotfooted it out the door.

The next day on her way home from the hospital canteen, dreaming of newborns and chocolate-coated halva, Mariam bumped into Mrs. Saidley. She was astonished to find her neighbour grinning widely at her. It was a deliciously mild spring day and Shirley was just back from an afternoon swim. She’d slipped her wet cossie off from under her sundress and was carrying it slung over her shoulder, pink gusset hanging out like an overheated labrador’s tongue. She liked to do a mini power walk back from the beach, end the afternoon on a calorie busting endorphin high. That day, Shirley was in an untouchably good mood and so brimming with largesse, she stopped to chat to Mariam.

“G’day, how you doin’?”

“Oh yes hello, I’m Mariam, Mariam Azoulay,” she said, pointing to her chest, “how are you?” 

“Yeah that’s right. G’day Mary-Ann. I’m awe-some! I’ve just become a grandmum!”

“Oh, congratulations ma’am, congratulations, such wonderful news, such a blessing.”

“Call me Shirley, or Shirl, if ya like.”

“Shirley, yes, thank you. And what is her name?”

“Isla.”

“Ah, beautiful! Aisha, an Arab name!”

“No luv, I-la, after Ali G’s wife.”

Mariam was confused, so she smiled some more and then gunned Shirley down with questions: How long was the birth? Epidural or natural? Vaginal or caesarian? If so, why? Which hospital? Who was the OB? Who attended? Nurse, midwife, doula or all three? Height? Weight? Head circumference? Apgar score?

“Gee Mary-Ann…”

“Mariam, it’s Mary in Arabic, Ma-ri-am.”

“Oh, right. I wouldn’t have a clue about the Ag-what and all the rest of it but you’re very well informed aren’t you…”

“I’m a nurse and midwife, I deliver babies for more than twenty years…”

“That’s something isn’t it,” she sighed, wistfully wringing her cossie out over Mariam’s Reeboks.

Then she grinned, pulled out her mobile phone and showed Mariam blurred shots of a little ball of sleeping pink, “She’s a real beauty!”

“Yes, she is. And may she grow big and strong.”

“Big and strong, that’s right. So where’d you say you’ve come over from?”

“From Tangier, in Morocco. My city is right opposite Spain. On a clear day we can see Europe from our shores.”

“That so. Morocco? Mmm,” said Shirley, as if tentatively tasting offal for the first time. She remembered hearing something unpleasant about the country recently on 60 Minutes but failed to connect the dots. Best not to bring that kind of thing up anyway, she thought resolutely, leave the politics to Norm.

“Don’t know much about Morocco, nice place is it?”

“Beautiful, yes. The tourists like my country very much. Especially Marrakesh. They say it is exotic.”

“Exotic’s nice. I’ve only ever been as far as Bali. I guess you could call Bali exotic. All those wooden masks and of course the food. Still, I think the satay’s better here in Sydney, cleaner, makes you feel better after you’ve eaten it knowing they hose the kitchen down with bleach every night, know what I mean? Anyway, I best be goin’, I’m all sweaty and I don’t wanna miss Isla’s afternoon feed. My daughter said I can burp the little bugger!” 

Mariam decided to bake a cake for Mrs Saidley in honor of the birth of her first grandchild. It would be an Australian cake, a pavlova. She made it that very afternoon. In the early evening she took it over to Shirley’s place. Shirley was so chuffed when she saw the pavlova she pecked Mariam on the cheek.

The next day Mariam found the cake in the bin. She reached in to retrieve it and hurried into the house. She slammed the front door behind her. The pavlova wobbled dangerously. After several glasses of coffee and a dozen or so pistachio pouches she was no closer to understanding, so she put the cake into the fridge and went out into the fresh air. It was only October but it was already hot and the girls and boys were stripped down to bare essentials. Mariam, suddenly feeling offended by so much exposed, taut flesh decided to jump on the first bus that crossed her furious path. She found a window seat and sat staring through the glass, seeing nothing. She changed buses at the end stop and then again after that. What did it matter how long she sat idle? She had nowhere to be, no one to talk to, no one who really needed her. When she was stiff with all the sitting she got off at a place with lots of big trees called Darling Point.

The tree-lined streets were broad and hushed. The houses august and pedigreed. The sweeping Moreton Bay figs shaded and cooled her. She breathed deeply and thought she could smell the silty earth below. There were frangipani trees, jasmine vines and honeysuckle, but she only smelt pavlova. She flamed with humiliation. She swore to herself that she would discover how her cake had ended up in the bin. As Mariam headed back down Darling Point Road it was already twilight. Suddenly the fruit-bats burst out of the trees where they’d been furled inside their sacks. The dusk sky over Sydney was suddenly transformed into a pre-historic drama, as the bats flapped their vast membranous wings and colored the world black.

On the bus on the way back to Botany, Mariam sat down next to someone who was entirely hidden behind a Sydney Morning Herald, the world’s widest broadsheet. The headline howled at her in bold red, red like blood, red like panic: “Bali Bombs Kill Over 80 Australians.”

The morning after the day Australia shook with anger and bewilderment, Mariam walked into the kitchen to find Masood and Nadia stuffing themselves contentedly with the pavlova.

“Yekh! How could you?” she screamed, swooping down to save what she could of the cake. Although she wasn’t sure why, she’d wanted to keep the pavlova intact.

“Sorry Mary,” said Nadia with her mouth full, “were you saving it for a special occasion? Lucky and I figured you’d made it for him to celebrate his win. Do you have any idea how much money he’s won?”

Mariam looked hard at her daughter. She knew by now not to celebrate the wins because every win preceded a loss.

“I made this cake for Mrs. Saidley, for Shirley. I found it in the bin yesterday.”

Masood nearly choked as he spat a kiwi out onto the floor.

“What was it doing in the bin?” he croaked.
“Why would anyone throw a cake out? Must be mad,” said Nadia, still eating away.

“I don’t know and would you please stop eating it now, that cake was in a garbage bin! It’s not hygienic!”

“Tastes fine to me, delicious actually” said Nadia.

“Give me one of those.” Masood leaned over and took a cigarette from her pack. Mariam went to open the kitchen window and made a big show of coughing and waving her hands around before taking one as well.

“So whodunit?” said Nadia.

“Mrs Neighbour probably just dropped it by mistake and didn’t want to eat it after that. Some people have very high cleanliness standards,” said Masood pointing meaningfully at Nadia.

“No. Not possible,” said Mariam, drawing deeply on the cigarette, “that cake was in perfect condition when I found it. Not a single piece of fruit was out of place.”

“I’ve got it,” said Nadia. “You know what diet freaks they are around here, you’ve seen how skinny she is. I bet she couldn’t stand to have ‘the temptation’ around the house.”

Masood nodded approvingly at Nadia and clapped her on the back. As far as he was concerned that was that, a good enough explanation, and now he was ready to take a stroll on the beach.

Nadia stood up, and turning her back to Mariam, began to do the dishes.

“You know that’s not true,” Mariam began as soon as Masood left, “and so does your father…”

“Mama, let it go. You don’t need her, and she doesn’t need you.”

“How can you say that? We’re neighbors. We share the same house. I can’t sleep at night if there is no peace in my home...”

“Oh, be realistic!” Nadia snapped, pulling her wrinkled hands out of the water.

“Is it realistic to ignore everything we don’t understand?”

“Expecting anything but a reserved little g’day in this country is about as realistic as thinking that living next door to someone implies any kind of relationship at all. The fact that we’re neighbors with Shirley Whoever-the-hell-she-is means nothing, nothing at all.”

“You have no self respect,” said Mariam picking up what was left of the pavlova and walking out into the hall.

“It’s not about self-respect,” Nadia called out, “it’s about understanding the message you’ve been sent.”

I don’t understand, I don’t accept, Mariam whispered to herself as she peered into the mirror. Her kohl-smudged cheeks looked like dirty windows streaked with rain. She cleaned up her face, pulled her hair back into her red snood and headed for the door.

“It’s not a good idea,” Nadia hollered, before shaking her impotent fist at no one in particular and then pulling out the plug.

“Only pooftahs run round in dresses Shirl,” said Norman Saidley easing into his recliner rocker armed with a Boags and the remote control.

On her way home from the grocer’s she had crossed paths with Masood Azoulay dressed in his full-length white linen kaftan, Jesus sandals, tortoise shell sunglasses and Panama hat. He looked like a cross between an ageing St. Tropez gigolo and a New Age prophet. He slowed when he saw his neighbour approaching and bowed to her. Shirley Saidley was so startled by his appearance, so flustered by his attentive eyes that she stopped in her tracks and mumbled a hello.

“What a pleasure to finally meet, my wife’s told me so much about you.”

Then he introduced himself and took Shirley Saidley’s hand in his. His lips, his breath, hovered momentarily there before he kissed her hand, just slightly longer than was strictly speaking proper.

“Outta the way luv, the footie’s about to start.”

“But Norm, he’s not gay,” said Shirley, pulling off her running shoes and peeling off her socks. The word ‘gay’ was whispered, snuck out of her mouth and into the room, like contraband from a van at midnight. “In some cultures men just wear skirts,” she stumbled on, hopelessly trying to compete with the Sunday avo footie match, “and where they come from it keeps them cool in the hot weather. That’s what Derek told me.”

Derek was their son. She wiggled her toes, enjoying the sensation of the smooth floorboards against her bare feet, suddenly feeling youthful, beautiful and desirable all at once. Like a married woman with a secret. 

“Course he’d know, being a pooftah himself,” said Norm.

The way Norm saw it, Derek was a “bleeding-heart-leftie-chardonnay-little-‘l’-liberal”, and there was no arguing with Norm when he came out with his absolutist statements, as he so often did. He had a phenomenal memory for epithets. Once he’d coined a phrase like “pinko-poncey-pseudo-intellekchull-bull”, he never wavered and he never got an adjective out of place. That’s just the way Derek was, and all his crew too, and the neighbors, well, they were “in the wrong country Shirley, it’s as simple as that!” But it wasn’t as simple as that, was it, sighed Shirley, not for the last time that afternoon, as she peered at Mariam through the peep hole.

When she’d brought the cake in yesterday Norm was sitting so close to the television his hair was standing on end from the static. With each successive wave of tragic news from Bali Norm was getting more and more incensed. “Arab-fundamentalist-islamist-muslim-menace! Animals, the lot of ‘em Shirley. Mark my words, this is war!”

“But Norm,” she began hesitantly, “I read somewhere that there are a billion Muslims in the world and that they’re not all Arabs and that…”

“Don’t Shirley. Just watch the telly. You’ll learn more about the world from the six o’clock news than from those bloody-touchy-feely-house-wifey magazines you buy.”

Later on Shirley thought they needed cheering up so she took out the bottle of champagne she’d been chilling and brought in the pavlova.

“Darl, I know it’s a tragic day for Australia, but it’s a happy day for the Saidleys. I thought we could have a little champers, do a chin-chin for our Isla and have a little pavvy.”

“Pavlova eh, did you make that luv, just for our little Isla?”

Shirley considered her options quickly, as quickly as she could ever consider anything. She decided that denial was the way to go, and if that didn’t work she could always blame Norm. She exhaled noisily, smeared a smile across her face and opened the door.

Mariam held the cake up and said, “Why? Why did you throw my cake out?”

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking…” Shirley was shocked partly by the force of Mariam’s emotion and partly by the fact that the pavlova was almost entirely eaten. Could Norm have eaten all that cake? Alone on the street last night? Without a fork?

“It wasn’t me, it was Norm” she blurted out. Mariam looked relieved, she hadn’t wanted to believe it of her.

“I need to speak to him then.”

“Oh luv, now’s not a good time, the footie’s on, it’s the Rabbitos, his home team, you understand don’t you?”

“I won’t take long,” said Mariam, pushing open the front door and calling out, “Alderman Saidley, why did you throw my cake in the bin?”

“Oh, now you’ve gone and done it,” said Shirley sighing.

Norm came thundering down the hall. Shirley stepped between her husband and Mariam. Norm tried to push Shirley out of the way. Mariam tried to push Shirley out of the way. Mariam dropped the cake. The plate broke and a shard plunged into Shirley’s foot. Mariam looked down and gasped, “Hold still,” she said, pushing up her sleeves, “it’ll only hurt for a second.” She bent down over Shirley’s foot and just as she was pulling out the shard Norm shouted, “Don’t you touch her!” and grabbing Shirley under the arms started dragging her down the hall. And so a small gash became an open wound, a few drops of blood a puddle, and madness and misunderstanding swelled like blisters on English skin under the Australian sun. ◊