Maqam

By Julian Gallo

Set amongst the beginning of the 'Arab Spring' in Tunis, Mariam, a young musician, secludes herself away in order to compose the music she long desires to create.

Having recently returned home after a failed relationship with a fellow musician at a conservatory in Paris, Mariam seeks the advice from her longtime friend and mentor Heshem, who is delighted and highly impressed with Mariam's new work. A veteran of experimental music, Heshem tries to shield Mariam from the tumult taking place on the streets around her, ignited by the suicide of a young fruit seller, and keep her out of politics and to have her focus solely on her music, despite his own involvement with a democracy movement which has drawn the attention of the authorities. Meanwhile, Mariam struggles with her relationship with her sister Sarah, a free spirited, strong willed journalist who Mariam feels never supported her as much as she should have.

In this third novel of an informal quartet, begun with The Other Side of The Orange Grove and If The Full Moon Loves You, Why Worry About The Stars?, the author explores how creativity can only flourish in a free society, and Mariam's quest for creative freedom echoes the political freedom her fellow citizens now desperately seek for themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Empty Canvas
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386332305

Julian Gallo

Julian Gallo lives and works in New York City. His poetry has appeared in over 40 journals throughout the Unites States, Canada and Europe. He is the author of 9 poetry books, "Standing on Lorimer Street Awaiting Crucifixion" (Alpha Beat Press 1996), "The Terror of Your Cunt is the Beauty of Your Face" (Black Spring Press 1999), "Street Gospel Mystical Intellectual Survival Codes" (Budget Press 2000), "Scrape That Violin More Darkly Then Hover Like Smoke in the Air" (Black Spring Press 2001), "Existential Labyrinths" (Black Spring Press 2003), "My Arrival is Marked by Illuminating Stains" (Beat Corrida, 2007), "Window Shopping For a New Crown of Thorns" (Beat Corrida, 2007), "A Symphony of Olives" (Propaganda Press 2009) and "Divertimiento" (Propaganda Press 2009). He is also the author of 6 novels, "November Rust (Beat Corrida, 2007), "Naderia" (Beat Corrida, 2011), "Be Still and Know That I Am" (Beat Corrida, 2011), "Mediterraneo" (Beat Corrida, 2012), "Europa" (Beat Corrida, 2013), the short story collection "Rapid Eye Movements" (Beat Corrida 2014) and "Rhombus Denied" (Beat Corrida, 2015)

Book preview

Tunis

Early 2011

Maqām‎, — مقام‎ — is the system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music, which is mainly melodic. The word maqām in Arabic means ‘place, location or position’. The Arabic maqām is a melody type. It is a technique of improvisation that defines the pitches, patterns, and development of a piece of music and which is unique to Arabian art music.

1

Mariam arrives at the Café de Paris a little early. She purposely chooses the table by the window so she can look out over the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. The big tree lined avenue reminds her of the Champs Elyseés in Paris and of the year she had spent there at the conservatory. She was in her mid-twenties then and already an accomplished musician, playing many prestigious venues and halls throughout Europe. Paris is where she had her first serious relationship — with Etienne, a violinist and composer — who she met at the conservatory. She looks back on that year as the happiest of her life. Young, free, away from the prying eyes and local gossip, she saw an opportunity to reinvent herself.

Although raised in a moderately conservative family she, like her sister Sarah, never paid much attention to her faith. Like many other young women their age, they opted for more ‘Western’ styled dress, music, and social attitudes. Mariam is more quiet and reserved than her outgoing and rambunctious older sister. Whereas Sarah wanted to get out and see the world, Mariam was most happy cloistered around her piano, eschewing the more ‘wild’ lifestyle her sister preferred. Etienne was more or less like Mariam — quiet, reserved, polite, kind, and most comfortable away from the crowd. She couldn’t have met a more perfect match.

While in Paris, they spent all their time together — going to the cinema, concerts, the theater, literary readings, and the wealth of museums that Paris had to offer them, but they were most happy when spending time shut away from the big city, huddled together in Etienne’s small studio in the fourteenth arrondissement making music together. They had written many pieces for violin and piano and occasionally performed them although these performances did not always go over well with their audiences. The experimental nature of these compositions — influenced by Mariam’s old music teacher Heshēm — turned off a lot of purists who turned their noses up at this renegade violinist and his Arab co-composer. The more they pushed a thorn into their audience’s eye, the happier they were. It never mattered to them what their audiences thought of their music.

You’re living a fairy tale life, Sarah used to say to her during one of their weekly telephone conversations. Please be careful. Sarah knew that her little sister had a tendency to be a bit of a romantic, naïve, sheltered, and she didn’t trust how ‘perfect’ Mariam’s relationship to this Frenchman appeared to be. A few months after Mariam left Tunis for Paris, Sarah paid a visit. She wanted to meet this so-called ‘wonderful man’ her little sister had fallen madly in love with. As soon as she laid eyes on him she didn’t trust him and she told Mariam as much. It fell on deaf ears and Sarah knew when to leave well enough alone and not insert herself into her sister’s love life. She backed off and after spending four excruciating days with them, returned to Tunis.

The first sign something was amiss revealed itself during a performance at the conservatory. In the audience was an odd but beautiful young woman who couldn’t keep her eyes off Etienne. At first Mariam didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t uncommon to sometimes become enraptured with one’s playing. She had done it herself many times over the course of her life, watching musicians she admired playing with such passion, fire and skill, one couldn’t help but be enraptured at times. This woman was different, though at the time she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. There was something else in that gaze, something other than her admiration for Etienne’s virtuosity.

After the performance, and after most of the audience had left, the strange young woman remained behind, lingering near the stage as if waiting for the opportune moment to speak to Etienne, who was busy packing away his violin, pretending not to notice her. Mariam was leaning on the piano, watching this strange woman — Nys — staring at Etienne, pacing back and forth, nervously playing with her hair. It didn’t appear that Etienne even noticed her at first but after he closed up his violin case and saw her, the color instantly drained from his face.

The drive back to Etienne’s apartment was quiet, tense. He didn’t bother to explain himself just then. Upstairs, he took of his coat, draped it across the back of the chair and reached out for Mariam but she avoided his touch. The moment of truth had arrived. 

He met her a couple of months earlier at Le Flute de Pan. He’d been looking for sheet music and he saw her across the aisle. They exchanged glances, smiled. He thought she was a little strange at first. There was a look in her eyes that unnerved him somewhat, this sort of damaged quality which made him feel sorry for her. He went back to looking through the sheet music and saw that she was again watching him. Again, they made eye contact, exchanged smiles. She must have taken it as an invitation because she made her way around the aisle towards him.

They began talking. She loved Paganini. She was a sculptor, or had once been. She’d been away from Paris for a number of years and had only recently returned trying to restart her life. They talked for a long time, much longer than he had intended to. 

He found the sheet music he was looking for, told her it was nice meeting her but he had to leave.

After paying for the sheet music he took a detour to the store’s café and ordered a cappuccino, spent the next half hour looking over the music. When he looked up, there she was, buying a pan du chocolate and an espresso. She saw him sitting there and for a brief moment they again made eye contact. He immediately looked away and went back to reading the piece of music when he suddenly felt a presence looming over him. When he looked up, Nys stood by his table, the pan du chocolate and espresso in hand.

They talked for over an hour, or rather she talked and he listened. She had been living in the south for the past eight years, she said, with relatives. She had been institutionalized briefly and she begged him not to be alarmed because she had been more diligent about taking her medication. He didn’t bother to ask what was wrong with her. Once he heard the word ‘institutionalized’ he tried to formulate an excuse to just get up and run — but he didn’t leave and instead just sat there, listened to her story about an American writer she had met many years earlier and how she allowed him to move in with her. He eventually cheated on her. She wasn’t so innocent either, she admitted, having cheated on him with her ex-fiance the entire time. Eventually she had a breakdown and her uncle came up from Marseille and took her south to get her the help she needed.

Etienne wondered why she was telling him all this, was stunned that she had no compunction being so open with a complete stranger. The subject then switched to music and he found himself opening up to her as if he had no control over himself. It was in the eyes, those big dark damaged eyes that seemed to look straight into him and drag everything out of him about his life.

When he left he could hardly think about anything else and over the next few weeks he thought of nothing but this strange woman from the music store, this woman who mysteriously had such a hold over him, as if cursed, making it impossible for him to think of anything else. How difficult it was to slip away at times. He’d make excuses whenever Mariam was busy at the conservatory or at the apartment working on a composition, to make a quick run to the music store — once for more sheet music, another time for rosin for his bow, another time for new strings, whatever it took; and each time he kept an eye out for the strange woman.

Eventually he ran into her and they spent a long afternoon in the café. He walked her home to her apartment, which was nearby in the eighth arrondissement, and she invited him upstairs. They spent the rest of the afternoon in bed and he managed to slip away while she slept, leaving her a note and his cell phone number. His first mistake. Yes, all those unanswered calls were from Nys, and yes, all those times where Mariam couldn’t locate him, he was at her apartment. He expressly forbid Nys to turn up at the performances but he knew it was only a matter of time before she would.

Without another word, Mariam stood up and walked out of Etienne’s life. He never called, never tried to reconcile, he just disappeared.

She called Sarah and told her what happened. Sarah was empathetic and held herself back from telling her baby sister that she told her so. She suggested that Mariam just come home to be near her family and friends and away from anything that would remind her of that asshole. Two weeks later she left the conservatory and returned to Tunis.  

That was nearly two years ago but not quite water under the bridge and despite the enormous effort to forget him — including a few unsuccessful and/or aborted relationships — she still thinks of him constantly, something Sarah could never understand. She threw herself into her music, the idea of getting into another serious relationship not even a thought in her mind. Even now, after all this time, her eyes well up at the thought of Etienne and she is again about to cry when she sees Sarah approaching the café, fighting off the windswept rain from under her tiny black umbrella.

She plucks a napkin from the dispenser, wipes her eyes, blows her nose, fixes her hair.

Sorry I’m late, Sarah says, giving her sister a kiss.

Mariam smiles, takes her sister’s hand. I’m just glad you’re here, she says.

2

She rises from behind the piano to close the living room window. Parting the curtains, she gazes at the late afternoon sky, the dark ominous clouds moving in from the east. Another gust of cool air blows through the partially opened window and before closing it she takes a moment to look down at the six children kicking a beat up soccer ball up and down the courtyard.

She resumes her position behind the piano, reads over the last few lines she’d written on the staff paper, listens to the music in her head.

Tea. Why tea? Why now?

She begins preparing the mint tea she suddenly craves. Was it something about the music that made her think of it? A memory, perhaps? She knows it was, for it was on this kind of quiet cloudy day where she and Etienne were at their most productive. She curses herself for even thinking about him then tries to change the path of her memories by examining the old tea set she had inherited from her grandmother.

She and Sarah fought over that old tea set with its beautiful Moorish styled glasses. It’s the real thing, not some cheap knock off one usually finds in the tourist shops. It had been in the family for generations. Sarah put up a good fight for it but eventually Mariam won. Why should Sarah get it? She always got everything. Mariam knew it wasn’t Sarah simply giving in. When offered the choice between an age old locket — which Mariam didn’t particularly care for — or the