La Marsa, Tunisia

At precisely two o’clock every Friday afternoon, the promenade in the beach town of La Marsa came alive with the usual cast of characters: kids cutting up on their way home from school, teen lovers cooing on a bench, an old woman shuffling along the sidewalk with her market bags, a juggler-in-training, his chechia hat tipped optimistically skyward holding nothing more than the hope of passing change. Early model cars inched along the road, their drivers in search of a lucky parking spot in front of their favorite café. Noisy boys and girls crowded the weatherbeaten ice cream shop and darted between the cars with their cups and cones to join their pals on the promenade.

Amaal stood at the balustrade overlooking the beach. Her eyes followed the horizon that separated the sparkling turquoise sea from the cloudless Tunisian blue sky all the way up the coast to the Cliffs of Gammarth that jutted out from the mainland. She spotted a white camel wandering freely along the shore. The camel’s owner worked in a nearby restaurant, and, for reasons nobody could remember, he set her loose on the beach every morning and rounded her up at the end of the day to lead her home. No one objected. To the contrary, they shared the common sentiment that she belonged to everyone and referred to her amiably as “Public Camel.”

Amaal’s attention turned to the carousel that stood in the otherwise empty lot below the promenade. Its syncopated ragtime music drifted upward and faded away again as the shifting wind turned the melody out to sea. Dilapidated though it was, the old merry-go-round was the pride of the town. Amaal had ridden it countless times. She knew every note of its off-kilter melody, and even now, at the age of twelve, while other girls had turned to fashion and flirting, she still found a child’s delight in every ride. She adjusted the strap of the flute case that hung over her shoulder and watched the carousel slow to a stop. She counted the duros in the palm of her hand, closed her fist around the coins, and walked toward the stairway down to the beach.

On either side of the steps, a gauntlet of kids leaned against the handrails, smoking cigarettes and listening to pop tunes blasting from a portable speaker. The girls wore stylish jeans, bright eyeshadow, and long lashes that rose and fell in slow motion every time they blinked. The boys in home team soccer jerseys hid their hands in their pockets or drew them through their meticulously barbered hair. The stairway banter fell silent as Amaal approached. She felt their eyes upon her.

“Hey, Amaal,” one boy said.

“Hey,” she muttered, avoiding his gaze as she started down the stairs.

A few steps later, she heard him say to the others, “I’m going to marry that girl someday.” His buddies roared with laughter. She pretended not to hear them as she rushed to the bottom of the steps toward the carousel, paid her fare to the operator, and stepped aboard.

Past the black stallion, where a curly-haired boy sat proudly in the saddle, past the zebra where a mom in a pink hijab held her daughter firmly in place, past the toddler shaking the reins of his llama steed, Amaal made her way around until she came to the only open seat: the royal throne. The carved wood of the scallop shell that formed the back of the chair was dark and sticky from exposure to the salt-sea air. More to the point, the throne didn’t move up and down like the animals did. Amaal stood back and contemplated her ride.

            “Why don’t you wait for the next go-round?” the carousel operator said. He was checking the safety belt on one of his little passengers. “You can get one of the animals on the next turn. In ten years, honestly, I’ve never seen a single kid go for that seat.”

            But Amaal had already retreated into her mind’s eye where the flat, faded cushion was plush velvet, and the seahorse arms were gallant emissaries sent to escort her to an underwater palace where she would be greeted by members of the royal family. Amaal, embarking on a diplomatic mission to a secret kingdom under the sea.

            “It’s okay, I’ll take the royal throne.”

            “O-kaaay,” the operator said, returning to the controls at the center of the carousel.

            Amaal settled into the middle of the seat and laid a gentle hand on the flute case in her lap. Poor Mrs. Mejri. She struggled to help Amaal make sense of all those musical dots and lines on the page, but it was no use. Amaal felt bewildered by the inscrutable language that, as far as she could tell, had nothing, really, to do with music. In her struggle to decipher the notation, she lost track of her fingering on the flute. In her attempt to reposition her fingers, her embouchure slipped out of place. No beautiful sound came out, just gasps and squeaks. Mrs. Mejri said it sounded like an exhausted owl. Amaal smiled politely at her teacher’s little joke, but in her heart, she felt a deep sadness. She looked away so Mrs. Mejri wouldn’t see the tears welling up in her eyes. This was not what she expected when she had begged her parents for lessons. All she wanted was to send a lovely, dancing melody into the air.

            It was so much easier here on the carousel, away from school, away from home. Amaal had accidentally-on-purpose left her book bag in the classroom. Better to wait until Monday to tell her mother and father about the history test scrunched in the bottom of the bag, not today and ruin the whole weekend. Why her lessons didn’t stick with her, she honestly couldn’t say. When the teacher read to the class during history hour, Amaal imagined herself in those faraway lands, witnessing wars and revolution, but when test day rolled around, the questions seemed designed to discover only what she didn’t know rather than what she did. It was better here, on the merry-go-round, where she could forget about the look of disappointment on her father’s face when she showed him yet another failure. Anyway, who cared about what happened thousands of years ago?

The carousel lurched gently forward and the world started to turn gradually faster. La Marsa disappeared in a blur, like a gigantic bowl of creamy droo pudding. Amaal let the warm breeze blow through her long, black hair and imagined her worries spinning far, far away. Just as she was thinking that the carousel was going a bit faster than usual, the seat beneath her started to vibrate. She pulled her flute case across her shoulder and sat back firmly in her seat. Surely the operator would take notice and slow down. She turned to catch a glimpse of him, but he was nowhere to be seen. The ride spun faster and faster still. Amaal gripped the arms of the royal throne against the centrifugal force pulling her away, but she was no match for its powerful draw. She felt her fingers being pried loose. The melody of the calliope collapsed into chaos like a piano tumbling down the stairs. A final convulsion thrust her off the throne and delivered her high, high into the air. She squeezed her eyes shut and braced for a hard landing. It seemed like a long time, long enough for her to consider that this must be what people meant when they said time stood still. A deafening boom exploded behind her, and in a blinding flash, everything stopped.

            Amaal cried out but felt no pain. The only sound she heard was her own rapid breathing. She slowly opened her eyes. She was no longer sitting on the royal throne. She was standing, staring down at the fine layer of dust that covered her feet and her leather sandals. Strange, she thought, they look as though they’ve been walking for a long time. She instinctively touched the flute case still hanging over her shoulder. She checked her hands, one side and then the other, and concluded that she was unhurt. She brought her gaze to the horizon. Gone was the afternoon in La Marsa—the carousel, the Cliffs of Gammarth, Public Camel—all replaced by an unfamiliar landscape. Even the sun hung oddly in the sky. And yet there were date palm trees and, in the distance, a sparkling sea. She had the feeling she had taken a wrong turn, that she needed to retrace her steps and get back to where she’d been. She turned and looked behind her, but the place from which she had come had vanished. Stranger still, her memory of it was fading fast, as if a curtain were being drawn across the past. She closed her eyes and shook her head, confused by what seemed to be the grip of a powerful dream. When she opened them again, the place remained vividly real—as though it were the only world she’d ever known.

From the edge of her awareness came the sound of music. In the distance, a long caravan of travelers was approaching the beach, growing louder as they came. Their pounding drums, their fluttering tambourines, tin-ching, tin-ching, tin-ching, their clanging cymbals and squawking gourd pipes shook the ground and sent a flock of startled pigeons into the sky. It was then that Amaal noticed the narrow land bridge connecting the mainland where she stood to a city on an island just offshore. The city was surrounded by a high stone wall. Two enormous wooden doors guarded the entrance, and they were, at that very moment, slowly swinging open. The afternoon sunlight burst through from beyond, illuminating the caravan’s swarm of color—beet red tunics, marigold head scarves, indigo harem pants. The travelers held up their hands to shade their eyes from the sudden brilliance of the sun as they came dancing, laughing, and ululating their way toward the city while their dusty-faced children ran beside them gleefully shouting, “We’re here! We’re here!”

Amaal looked on in wonder. Whatever she’d been doing and thinking just moments before, the raucous noise and bright colors splashed it all away. A boy slightly older than she peeled away from the caravan, approached, and circled her as he played on his twin reed pipes. She took a cautious step backward, but the boy’s smiling dark eyes and playful expression invited her to follow him. Amaal searched for a reason to resist but none came to mind, so she returned his smile with a nod, adjusted her flute case across her back, and followed his merry tune into the flowing, blowing, billowing parade across the land bridge. As she passed through the city gates, Amaal stepped completely and utterly into the distant past where, then, as now, everything happened in the present. Nothing about her would ever be the same.

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