Flying in the cloud

Translator Darya Khudavets

Editor Bruno Krasnoscokovs

© Agrippina Bitar, 2017

© Darya Khudavets, translation, 2017

ISBN 978-5-4490-0621-9

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Preamble

As Teresa of Calcutta once said: “People lack love much more than bread, and this hunger is the strongest hunger”.

But at the same time we are afraid to love, because love makes us vulnerable and defenceless.

We are afraid to be rejected, to feel the pain, to have our hearts broken.

In the era of lives on display in social networks, we want to be successful at any cost.

Our greatest fear is to fail, so we disguise ourselves in the clothes of success and upload photos of artificial celebrations of life on our pages with nothing but emptiness behind them.

It’s so easy to pretend to be strong and have a meaningful life online while hiding behind a beautiful mask.

Love, however, is always about your soul being open and even naked. Love brings pain and pleasure all at the same time.

It’s like flying in the clouds, when you can’t see where you’re going and don’t know where the wind will take you.

You can either go to heaven, or fall back down to earth. Even the clouds themselves come in different kinds. There are thunderclouds, cirrus clouds and heap clouds.

Some of them are softer than feathers, other are heavy and leaden.

And they can, like a tornado, sweep away everything that’s in their path. Everyone has his own love and his cloud.

In our times, the whole world is entangled in the global web of the Internet, which, like a huge cloud of chaos, gives birth to many things.

Some of them unite and divide people at the same time. However, in the same chaos, in the same cloud, like Aphrodite from the foam, love is born.

This online love can connect people from the most remote parts of the world. It connects people of different races, religions, cultures and ages.

A few decades ago these people would have never been able to communicate and wouldn’t even know about each other, and now they chat, cheer, suffer, wait and love together.

Moreover, that love is absolutely real. It’s the same as before, it’s as old as the world, and at the same time, it’s brand new! And most importantly, it’s true love!

After all, it doesn’t matter where it’s born, online or in real life, it will always remain the jewel of human life.

When I say: “I love you”,

I’ll be the book you’ve never read,

The song you’ve never sung,

The kiss you’ve never tasted…1

The beginning

It was the voice of the stewardess that pulled her away from her thoughts: “Can I help you?”. Nina turned her head and saw a man sitting beside her, trying to fasten the belt, which didn’t want to wrap around his plump stomach.

The flight attendant helped the man, flicking the extending strap with a professional gesture. Nina thought about the inconveniences that this neighbour may cause, when she, for example, would need to go to the WC and would ask the man to let her pass by.

She quickly glanced over his oversized belly and thought that she’d never been with a large man before, but didn’t let this thought develop, turned away and stared in the window again.

The plane entered dense clouds, and nothing else was visible apart from a thick milky fog outside the window. What a troubling state of uncertainty!

Her land with its towns, forests and rivers was left far below the plane, while above it there was a bright blue sky with a shining sun!

Yet now there was only fog and uncertainty outside and so in her life.

“Will he show up this time?” thought Nina and remembered the previous two times when he didn’t…

In fact, the idea to meet in real life came up in one of their conversations after a year of chatting online.

After a year, which Nina had lived like in fever from the constant with him through pictures, messages and calls.

Love hit her like a tsunami, and it was even more powerful than her old real first love.

It was about sleepless nights of chatting, and then, offline, music, music, music… and trembling from thoughts and fantasies.

It was so real that it seemed that the air around became thicker and more, so to speak, velvety and it was all love!

And it was suffocating her so that she almost couldn’t breathe anymore. It seemed to her that she suddenly had wings and that even if she jumped from the top of some high tower, she wouldn’t fall, but fly…

Moreover, while at work, Nina was constantly thinking about him.

He also sent her short messages during the day saying: “How are you? Where are you? What are you doing? I love you’”

These simple primitive messages in English which was native neither to him nor her drove her crazy. They pierced her like a lightning, down to the toe, she was trembling when she saw the cherished avatar with a green light of activity in the chat, and she felt butterflies in her stomach.

His name “Ismael” sounded like sweet music to her. And his full name was Ismael Aziz.

She once asked what his childhood short name was. He said: “Soma”.

“May I call you Soma?” asked Nina. She wanted to caress him somehow despite of the distance between them! As she couldn’t touch him with her hands, she could at least caress him with words, intonation, with the name his mother called him.

It was a maternal feeling in Nina, because he was a very young boy of eighteen years, and she was more than mature…it was even scary to say it out loud, she was fifty-four.

In addition, this void that divided them, this abyss of time seemed to her to be an irreparable misfortune, a black hole into which she was slowly and steadily falling.

Until then Nina was proud of her age, the fact that she was already a mother and even a grandmother, that she had succeeded in life and had a lot of victories in her artistic and professional lives, and, most importantly, the way she looked (forty years, no one could have given more).

However, now her age seemed to be a curse. She actually deleted her age from all her social media pages leaving only the day and the month.

How did that happen to her? Was it due to loneliness that she fell in love like a girl? No! There was someone beside her.

It was a man with whom she lived together for nine years. He was also younger than her, but the gap wasn’t that huge.

Their common friend have never even noticed the difference. Lately, Nina even started looking younger. She noticed it while looking through their photos. It was just that he became bald with years, and had a beer belly, though he was still full of energy and, like all southern men, was a great lover.

So how did this boy appear in her life?

"…So much time has passed. Aladdin has turned fifteen. And once, when he was playing with other boys, as usual, a dervish, a wandering monk, approached them. He looked at Aladdin and said to himself: “He’s the one I’m looking for. I’ve been through a lot of misery, before finally finding him.”

This dervish was maghribian of the Maghreb. He called one of the boys with the gesture of his hand and asked him who Aladdin was and who was his father. He then approached Aladdin and said to him: “Aren’t you the son of Hassan?”

“I am,” replied Aladdin…”

“The magic lamp of Aladdin”. It was Nina’s favourite fairy tale. The name of this tale always made her heart beat faster and awakened her imagination, and she started feeling somewhat hot in her chest… Nina even wrote a poem about the feeling.

It’s worth mentioning that she wrote poems from time to time about the most powerful and important feelings, since she was used to writing for a newspaper, when she studied in an art college.

And this “happiness” suddenly fell on her head, and Aladdin appeared in her life, though under a different name, but very close to this fabulous character in age. An eastern boy from a distant Arab country… As if on a magic carpet, he flew into her calm and measured world.

Nina had never enjoyed hanging out in social networks, although she did have several accounts there. She visited them from time to time to chat with family and friends and strictly for business matters.

However, the time had come and the issue of the increase of sales was raised in her company, so it was decided that all employees had to create personal business groups in popular social networks for product promotion.

Nina decided to go for Facebook. To do this, she started a personal page there and created a business group. In her profile she posted several photos of her and interesting posts. Then it began!

As if from the Horn of plenty, a lot of friend requests started coming to her page, mostly from men Arab and Turk.

At the beginning, Nina welcomed all, remembering her goal: to fill the group with subscribers.

She soon noticed, however, that among those men who had sent her requests, were a lot of anxious youngsters with hormones “blowing the roof” and explicit maniacs with improper proposals and photos, as well as Internet scammers trying to involve mature women into emotional relationships and then stealing their money.

Nina quickly figured out “Who is who” and ignored such proposals, blocking the most shameless and pushy of them.

The boy had also sent her a friend request and Nina pressed the “confirm” button without even looking. After some time, she received a saucy message from him. Nina did not respond. When he sent improper messages several more times, she automatically removed him from the friends list.

But the boy didn’t give up and continued sending her provocative photos and messages. Before finally blocking him, Nina decided to look through his profile.

She attentively examined the young face on his avatar photo. His big sad eyes were as if looking into her soul. Nina was somewhat hurt by his look. In his eyes there was purity and pain.

Yes, indeed, there was purity, in spite of his indecent messages. But the pain-why? How can there be pain at such a young age?

Nina read his personal info: eighteen years old, studies in college, lives in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Nina somehow didn’t expect him to be from Egypt.

It immediately reminded her of the Golden mask of Tutankhamun, which she saw in reality, many years ago in St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad), where an exhibition of art objects from the tomb of this pharaoh was hosted, brought from Cairo Museum.

Nina, then being a schoolgirl, stood in front of the mask and was amazed by the beauty and detachment of the boy-pharaoh’s face. She suddenly felt as if his face became alive and started changing its expression in the blinding glare of gold.

His almond eyes were staring at her…

Then she read about him all that she could find.

It struck her that he had died at the age of nineteen, a wreath of field-flowers was found in his tomb, and then almost all the scientists involved in the opening of the tomb died shortly afterwards…

What amused Nina the most were the details of the wreath: it was a small wreath laid on the forehead of the golden funerary mask of the pharaoh.

It consisted of leaves and flowers of cornflower, fruits of poppy, and fruit of the mandragora, all of which contributed to the pharaoh’s libido during his lifetime.

They were the flowers of love, laid on the coffin by his young widow, Ankhesenamun, who, by the way, was the daughter of Nefertiti.

Ankhesenamun believed that she will meet her husband again in the afterlife and therefore she wanted him to want her alone even there…

While Nina was thinking about Tutankhamun, she continued looking through the photos on the boy’s page. His name Ismael was of Muslim origin, he had a beautiful white face, dark curly hair and expressive brown eyes.

And one more detail: a small mole above his upper lip. It made his face look more tender and Nina had never seen a young man with such moles.

There were a lot of photos where he was depicted both alone and with his friends, dark-skinned Egyptian teens, in his profile. Nevertheless, he was so different from them! His whole appearance was full of some nobility and depth.

All the innocence and purity was mixed with maturity and pain in his appearance.

Apart from his personal ones, there were many photos of famous football players and football teams in his profile. Remembering his horny messages, Nina decided that this boy was only interested in football and sex.

She was ready to press the “block” button, but changed her mind and wrote him a message.

She asked about his family, wondering, if he had brothers or sisters, where he was studying and what kinds of interests he had. A reply message came shortly afterwards.

He replied in a serious and simple manner, without any vulgarity. So that’s how their communication began.

Nina told him about her work and the fact that she had a civil husband. In his response, he told her that he was the youngest child in the family and that after finishing school, which he already had finished; he planned to help his father with his business.

In paradise of love

They began to chat every day. They have talked about everything: about their countries, customs and traditions, about sports, about presidents, about religions, Islam and Christianity, about the expedition to Mars… and of course, about the relations between men and women.

Nina felt and understood that it was the topic of his greatest interest. Well, that was logical, since at his age, when puberty hits the most, boys tend to think about sex all the time.

He asked her questions in a delicate way, he wanted to get information from an experienced adult woman. He was still innocent. Girls wouldn’t hang out with boys before marriage in his country.

Nina provided him with answers and insensibly fell for him. She was looking forward to their dialogs. She was glad when he appeared in the chat and greeted her with a short “Hey!”.

“Let’s talk?” he asked, and Nina felt like her heart had skipped a beat and happiness was growing inside it.

“Yes!” she used to answer and the conversation would begin. Though their chats were very simple, they meant a lot to Nina.

It was interesting to her to study an international internet language of the youth, which the boy used, as well as all these English acronyms and abbreviations.

For her, a mature woman who grew up in the pre-Internet era, all of this would never have been possible to learn if he wouldn’t appear in her life.

She received this knowledge from him and was proud of that. Despite of her mature age she managed to keep up with modern trends. That made her feel younger.

The boy also received the information which he wanted.

What was more important, of course, wasn’t that information, but what was growing between them, the bond connecting their hearts across thousands of kilometres.

What was that bond? Was it love? When was that word said aloud in their conversations for the first time? And how did it happen?

One day, while chatting with the boy long past the midnight, Nina suddenly remembered that the next day she had to wake up early to a busy day, so she needed to go to sleep urgently!

Her civil husband would already be sleeping peacefully behind a cupboard in their rented one-room flat. He didn’t pay attention to Nina’s stays by the laptop.

He didn’t even know about raging passions that took place there. She tried not to disturb him and lit the room with the dim light of the table lamp. When they had audio-calls in the messenger, she would go to the kitchen and firmly close the door.

Nina tried to say goodbye to Ismael, explaining why she needed to go to sleep. After a long argument, he had finally agreed with her “Good night”.

She wrote: “Bye, kiss you on the cheek”.

“But I kiss you on the lips,” he answered with a kiss emoji. Nina sat motionless and sent him a question mark.

“I love you,” said Ismael.

Nina couldn’t type anything. She felt confused, happy, delighted and terrified at the same time. She felt him by her side so realistically, as if he was touching her with his fingers. Her throat immediately dried up.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

Nina began to type something with her shaking hands. Her fingers became sweaty and wouldn’t respond. She was typing and deleting her message, again and again… He was waiting patiently. Later on, he sent her a question mark, demanding immediate answer.

“Give it to me straight. Do you love me?”

For whatever reason, Nina sent him a line from a song by the Russian singer Maxim: “My gentle boy, forgive my trembling…", translated into English by Google.

“Do you love me????” he asked impatiently.

“Yes,” wrote Nina, as if whispering that word.

“Tell me that you love me!”

“I love you,” she wrote. It seemed to her that those letters were on fire. They were burning her, flaming on the laptop screen.

“I love you very much!” Ismael wrote in response, “and I will love you until the last day of my life!”

In reality, after this kind of confession, people would hug and kiss. However, there were only words written on the screen…

Nina felt dizzy, everything was floating before her eyes and it was impossible to breathe. She was shaking. It was even more intense and brighter than the real confession of her first true love.

She didn’t sleep that night. She had been chatting with the boy the whole night through. Then he called her and she took the laptop to the kitchen and spoke to him, until her alarm clock went off, marking the time to get up.

During their conversation, Nina heard noises in his house and outside his window in Egypt, such as a baby crying, birds singing, dogs barking.

It was so weird, as if there weren’t thousands of miles separating them. It was spring, mid-May. It seemed to her as if they were sitting side by side, embracing each other and greeting the dawn…

After that the intoxication of love began. They spoke every night and sent each other romantic pictures and music: Arabic, Russian and Western love songs. They taught each other their native languages, he taught her Arab and she Russian to him.

They learned to pronounce the words of love in each other’s native languages.

He wrote her every day, over and over again, that he loved and missed her, that they love each other and should be together. He promised to come to Moscow to meet her…

He then began to ask her about her husband. When they were finishing their chats at nights, he would say to her how jealous he was when she went to bed with him. Nina told him that when she was sleeping with her husband, she imagined her beloved boy in his place…

One day, Nina complained that her husband was drunk and tortured her with his demands.

“I will come and kill him!” he wrote quickly, and Nina felt frantic energy of jealousy and anger that came through the laptop screen and thought: “This Arab boy, like a little beast, will show his teeth!” Yet at the same time, she liked his fervour.

Nina often wondered why that boy loved her, an adult woman who is old enough to be his mother? She read a lot of psychological articles on the subject, which stated that that kind of attraction to adult women existed mostly in two cases: either the boy had a difficult relationship with his mother, or a very low self-esteem. That was odd… However, he never said anything about his parents, about his mother. Nina asked him to send a photo of his parents once, but he simply ignored that request.

Why did she, Nina, fall in love with that boy? After all, she had a husband and sex and male attention.

Was it a maternal feeling? No, Nina knew that she didn’t perceive him as a son. She looks at him as at a very romantic young man… That was it! She was lacking that romance in her life! She wanted all the beautiful words, poems, colours, the sensation of the flight! What she doesn’t have with her husband. And had never had…

And yet, even if everything can be explained from a psychological point of view, one thing still remained a mystery: why him?

Nina had over a thousand friends on Facebook, both young and of a more mature age. Moreover, almost all of them started chats with her. However, as a rule, after the initial several phrases Nina didn’t support further communication with anyone.

She was just not interested. Nina believed that the boy was sent to her from Heaven. However, the reason was yet unknown.

At the moment, they have been simply enjoying each other and couldn’t break away from each other. It was the best period of their relationship, it was absolute happiness!

However, his constant presence in Nina’s life soon became a great inconvenience for her.

Firstly, she wanted to be alone sometimes, just listen to music, read the news online, chat with friends, and secondly, her husband was completely abandoned, she almost didn’t talk to him at all. If they did talk, it was only something about everyday things, and Nina was thinking about the boy at the same time.

The boy caught her online as soon as she came on. Nina soon realized that this couldn’t go on anymore. She told him that they needed to cut down on their communication, due to how her constant presence on the Internet aggravated her relationship with her husband.

All in all, they can’t be together because of a significant age gap, so it’s better not to get used to each other.

He was surprised and offended. It was the first stumbling stone between them, which triggered an avalanche of rapid deterioration of their relationship.

Cloudless happiness, openness and sincerity ended forever. Their paradise of love collapsed. What started was a period of alienation, pain, insults and then forgiveness, rapprochement and a short happiness of love, yet now with a touch of resentment and tears. It went on and on in a new round of tormenting each other.

They both were in constant tension. However, without this voltage, all of that would have probably stopped long ago, being boring and monotonous. The tension arose from the detachment and subsequent rapprochement. It was a long cycle of alienation and a short one of happiness of being together again.

Then the cycle repeated itself. It was only that the detachment was growing longer with each cycle, and happiness would shorten…

What was that detachment, and why did it occur?

Boris

Nina had a long-time friend Boris, her former colleague. They’d met fifteen years ago at the school where he worked as a teacher of the Russian language, and Nina then organized children’s holidays. Their paths have been different since those times.

Nina started working in a different field, and Boris stayed. However, despite this, they kept in touch in social networks and their communication has recently become more active because of the theme of detachment, which worried them both.

Boris had been long married and had a teenage daughter. Nina was familiar with his wife and believed their alliance to be very strong. Yet recently, she was surprised to find out that he had divorced.

Nina wanted to express sympathy, but Boris told her that he was happy and had found new love. He gave Nina a hint that she’ll be among one of the first to be invited to his wedding. So little by little, they started talking and their chats became more frequent and trustful.

Boris was a very interesting and enthusiastic person. He enjoyed “living history” and was a member of a historical reconstruction club, which focused on the Medieval Russia of X – XIII centuries. The members of this club reconstructed the lifestyle, art, and craft of Medieval Russia.