Following in the footsteps of the poet Jules Deelder, remembering the novels of Mohamed Choukri, Siham Amghar finds flagrant pink post-its all over Rotterdam. Each one is like an exquisite love note, left for a lover to discover on the fridge. Coating the walls of hot basement bars and all across the Erasmus Bridge with its arch thrust lustily into the horizon.
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POST-IT No:
21
I stuck the twenty-first one somewhere in Deliplein.
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With my back to cute old birds selling drinks and snacks, pretty kettles, cups and bowls of hot food, I can see scaffolding so tall that I have to stick my head way up in the air to get a view of all of it. Could I reach the top by climbing up the steel tubing, or are you too heavy for me to carry? Or what if I round my back a bit and plant my feet firmly on the tiles – can I lift you then?
The steel rods will hold us.
We climb up to the fourth floor and I kiss your left-hand rib, the bottom one of the twelve. You put your hand on my head. I’ve had my hair cut just for you. You stroke my hair with long, thin fingers – chafing my head, arousing my belly. I can feel something creeping into the top of my stomach, and I get hard, now I’m thinking of being in you.
The steel rod, right?
It’s twenty-two degrees today. It’s raining heavily. Everything on the ground, everywhere, is getting wet. Everywhere is getting wet, and that covers us. It drags a blanket off the roof, over her and my legs. Up to our chests. I stand with my hands against the wall, which is far from finished and won’t be for a long time, and push off against her soft skin. Her back is tattooed all over, and this makes me zoom in on her skin colour and fuzzy hair. She’s standing firmly. So I can do something with all the tingling. I can smell saoto soup. Want to taste her. Turn my head and look out over Deliplein. Can feel the tips of her short hair poking into my cheek and along my ear. The cute old birds look at us and one of them sticks out her tongue with a wink. I lick her mouth. She strokes my thigh.
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POST-IT No:
64
You’ll find the sixty-fourth one on the bright-pink wall of Wunderbar. I wrote something naughty on it.
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Hanging over my breasts is a satin fabric with a gold tiger print which strokes over my hips to just above my knees. The dress is matched with black glitter socks and camel-coloured Airforce 1s. Tonight it’s Elisa’s birthday and we’re celebrating it with cocktails, at Supermercado. The nachos are good here, and so’s the Pornstar Martini. Wow. I drink four and want another one. Superdisco is opening, and more people are gathering outside. We discuss, and decide to go down into the steamy basement club. A shot to drink to the birthday girl’s health and a dance to celebrate life.
We move fleetingly past each other and wave our hands in each other’s faces. Because it’s so warm and intimate, it can only be in a Witte de Withstraat basement club. I go upstairs and outside, and have a smoke together with Manar and two short, good-looking men. Just now I was sitting on the toilet and could smell my panties. My pussy had made them wet, and it made me laugh. The door was blurry. Now I’m standing here I can smell the same smell – sweet. I leave with the red-haired short, good-looking man. The rest follow us.
Upstairs from his grandad’s bar he’s built his bed in-between a bookcase and a big painting of himself. The sofa is a metre away from the bed, and Manar and the other short good-looking man flop down onto it. It feels like it’s almost morning, and my stud has done a line. Now we’re lying in his home-made bed. Manar says ‘damn, Noor, cool it’ and groans deeply. She’s kneeling a metre away from us, and he’s standing in front of her with her curly head of hair clutched in his rough hand. My stud makes me feel like the soft satin fabric of my dress, but more like the tiger print.
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POST-IT No:
17 .1
Along Sint-Jobskade, I stuck post-it seventeen on the small yellow bridge for the water taxis.
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OK then. People leave their unwanted books in a small wooden cupboard near Müllerpier primary school. The shelves are in all the primary colours, but a bit lighter, faded. The cupboard is on a busy road where everyone breaks the speed limit. If you stand near it, you can see two bridges which are often raised. Road users who have just spent a long day at the office have to cross one of the bridges. If one of them is raised to let a large boat through, some people switch lanes. The bridges are now down and the sun is very low, but it isn’t dark yet. There’s an orange blur across the sky, almost like an announcement. We have a new supply of words ready to be placed on the back of your tongue. Do not swallow, but leave them there until you get slightly short of breath. Then swallow. The cupboard opens, and leaning against a thick historical novel is a thin sheet of ecru paper protected by Mohamed Choukri’s For Bread Alone (1972) next to a collection of poetry by Jules Deelder. These are the words of an orange early evening, and as the left-hand bridge is slowly raised they are
read aloud.
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POST-IT No:
17.2
Her eyebrows are lines
so thin
my narrow fingers follow
the small hairs
then comb them the
wrong way
as I want to lick her
from her neck to her nipples which
like dusty pink buds
feel as if they are melting between
index and thumb
then I stroke lower
following the moles dotted
in patterns down to her knees
she stares ahead
not lost or not to be saved
but deliberately as if at the same time
she can see everything
so she just looks and stares and lets me
go ahead and I
falter more and my voice stutters more and for a moment
she is in charge and that’s
just where I want to be
below her knees where her moles
have ceased to exist
that’s how I want to continue
when she bites my ring
and me
pinches my side
because she so readily understands the wrong way
the uninhibited
speaks it fluently
to me and that is
that is
that is what happens there.
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Shit. He knows I want this to happen.
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POST-IT No:
59
MONO, in Vijverhofstraat,
has a noticeboard. Fifty-nine is there.
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There’s a big canvas on the scuffed floor at MONO. The canvas hasn’t been white for a while, but is daubed with colour. You can see someone filling up the outstretched cloth with her leg, turning from her back onto her side, her belly onto her left breast. She smears brown paint over all the moles dotted from her belly into her navel to the mound, from where she is licked and kissed by her girlfriend till she convulses – ‘I want more’ – and then… Then there is art, for all to see, to smell, to long for. We can hear loud groans. In the background the DJ is playing Tinariwen’s ‘Nànnuflày.’
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POST-IT No:
17.3
Post-it seventeen’s eyes are bulging.
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Now I’m sure of it. The notes I find in Choukri’s books are for me and are desires directed at us, and I just want to know who you are. I want to know what you smell like. How long the hair is that blows over your shoulders when you brave the windy Erasmus Bridge on your bicycle, to get to where I stick my words into Mohamed Choukri’s books. I just wanted the world to be somewhat enriched with raw sensuality. Painful intimacy that comes from a sharp tongue and fills the pages of his books. That’s what I wanted for Rotterdam, but Rotterdam wanted even more for me. Now I’ve been writing poems and you pen them back. For weeks. Three times a week I stop at Müllerpier, making a detour to get there. I check if Mohamed is in the wooden cupboard. Two out of three times he isn’t. But once…
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POST-IT No:
17.4
He lays his head in her lap
It feels warm
His breathing synchronised
With her tapping on his arm
So the two of them lie there
Till one of them falls asleep
I want to fall again
and if then I have to pick
up pieces
then pick them up
I want to fall so fucking hard and break my arm
heart intact
Fall like in a dream
that you can’t awake from,
because it feels like you’re falling forever
in fear, but through bottomless
clouds
onto everything you are.
Onto that.
Bottomless
All-embracing
Rough.
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Oh, how Rotterdam she is.
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POST-IT No:
8
I peep into a window from Kleiweg, for the curtains across the road are always wide open. That’s real culture.
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Lying there in the presence of each other, feeling so incredibly good after sex, and then the contrast – like going from scorching hot to freezing cold – when you want to get his half-limp prick out of you so you can go to the toilet and let yourself leak. I’m telling it like it is.
Leaving your mark. Staining each other, leaving your ink behind in the crevices of someone’s unique fingerprints and feeling slightly proud of it. Marking out damp territory. Playing with her clit, though you don’t quite know what she likes, but clues in her groans bring you to climax.
This is thirst. I want another big glass. Hand it to me, I’ll drink some and then lie there on my belly for a quarter of an hour to feel just how round your crazy calm has made it. You kiss her cheekbone with your soft lips and her skin feels like a sponge with some soap suds still hidden inside it.