That Juliet is beginning an adventure is established in the opening moments of the story. That her husband will be absent from the foreign city where Juliet was to meet him is also established. Tariq, his much younger colleague, will entertain her in his absence.
Well, then, what is expected begins unfolding with the sudden arrival of Juliet’s older legs wearing dresses when before they’d been covered with stiff beige slacks.
Luckily, her face at fifty-six is without jowls and her neck remains intact. Unlike us she will keep. Unlike us music will play around her everywhere she goes. This music tells us that even though husbands may be best she is now mostly with Tariq – on foot, in a car, on a train or a boat.
Beneath glaring sunlight, then, and in city streets, Juliet wanders with Tariq. Her dresses are yellow, black, or turquoise culminating in a flowered dress, which is worn when Tariq clasps a silver necklace around her neck at a street stall. She has now, we know, been anointed goddess and is no longer small like us.
Later, there will be white wine and quiet sweating on her hotel balcony and we will sweat, too. But still there will be no touching, though many warm looks will be exchanged and Tariq will continue to softly grab her name whenever he can.
Her name means Seems young though she is old. His name means Desert flecks in bright sunlight.
His name flutters our breaths, certainly, but the absent-husband days will soon come to an end, we fear.
But not yet! Not before Juliet and Tariq visit the pyramids wearing worthy black slacks. Together they will look longingly at the desert and at the empty sky with birds flying overhead. Then they will take more languid walks through the story. This walking and looking, we know, is the prelude to finding the door to removing Juliet’s clothes.
These facts have pale skin and clear blue eyes and dark skin and wetly brown eyes and once giant breasts in the form of small pyramids, which strike us as an authentic representation of beauty.
Into the distance, then, we yearn for Juliet and Tariq to walk naked and in time to the sitar music that was playing at the mosque earlier in the day when Juliet delicately removed her shoes.
Too soon, though, her husband returns. His name is Mark, which means Short, rugged, lovable, and not unhandsome.
The music that is now playing sounds wistful and does not even begin to console us over Juliet’s loss of Tariq. 