Vino, Verdad, y Vergüenza - Wine, Truth, and Shame

The trouble began with the second bottle of Rioja. The four were seated at a wrought-iron table on the rooftop terrace. The air smelled of orange blossoms and jasmine. Below them, the old city of Córdoba spread out in a warm, amber sprawl, and the floodlit walls of the Mezquita rose above the rooflines like a lantern someone had left burning for a thousand years.

Dr. Elias Larson was forty-one, a tenured professor at Sofia University where he taught Medieval Islamic History. He was the only man at the table, the only American, the only one who had been to Córdoba before under circumstances he could not discuss, and the only one who was married to a six-foot-six Russian man named Dmitri whose continued existence in Elias’s life constituted the greatest love story of the twenty-first century. Either that, or it was just a bogus improbability.

Alejandro, their waiter, appeared at Elias’ elbow with the second bottle of Rioja. He was perhaps twenty-five, with a kind of effortless Mediterranean beauty that made Elias feel like a wrinkled potato. He opened the wine with a single fluid motion that involved his entire forearm, and poured for Fatima first, before winking at Elias and vanishing.

“Right,” Fatima said, settling into her chair. “We have survived another symposium. My paper was brilliant, Petra’s was meticulous, Cynthia’s was provocative, and Elias’ was…”

“Interrupted by a man who wanted to argue about aqueducts for fifteen minutes,” Elias said.

“Yes. That.” Fatima raised her glass. “To surviving Dr. Heinrich and his aqueducts.”

They drank, and the wine was very good. This was going to be a problem.

*****

The conversation drifted as it tends to do at gatherings like this, flitting recklessly from the professional to the personal. The transition point, Elias noted, was always when the first person at the table mentioned their spouse. After that, nothing was off limits.

“My husband,” Cynthia Okonkwo, a Historiographics professor from Lagos, announced, setting down her glass with the precision of a woman delivering a verdict, “just texted me to ask where we keep the children’s toothpaste.”

A silence fell over the table. Fatima closed her eyes with an exasperated sigh. Petra’s lips thinned.

“We have lived in that house for six years,” Cynthia continued. “The toothpaste has been kept in the same drawer since 2020. I labeled the drawer. I labeled the toothpaste. And yet…”

“What was he thinking?” Elias asked.

“I can’t speak for him, Elias. But, I was thinking that I have a PhD in historiography, I am away from home presenting at an international conference in Spain, and my husband cannot find a tube of Colgate that has a cartoon dinosaur on it.”

Fatima Al-Rashidi, the Director of Islamic Art History in Beirut, refilled everyone’s glasses as she shook her head. “My husband,” she said, in the tone of a woman opening a dossier, “called me this morning to tell me he reorganized the kitchen while I was away. He sounded proud.”

“Oh no,” Petra Novák, a literature professor from Prague, said.

“Oh yes. He has moved the spices into alphabetical order – by the Arabic and English alphabets. Two separate systems. On alternating shelves.”

“Whyyyy?” Elias asked, genuinely horrified.

“Because he is an engineer, and engineers believe that all problems are organizational problems, and that all organizational problems can be solved with systems.” She drank deeply.

Elias laughed hard enough that Alejandro glanced over from across the terrace.

Petra, who had been quiet, cleared her throat. “I will share one thing,” she said, in the manner of a diplomat offering a single concession. “My husband, Karel, is a lovely man. A good father. A competent professional.”

“But?” Cynthia said.

“…but, he makes a sleeping noise.”

The table went still.

“It is not snoring,” Petra continued, with the precision of a woman who had clearly heard that argument.

“Snoring, I could address. There are medical solutions for snoring. This is… a whistle. A quiet, high-pitched whistle. He makes it on every third exhale, and it sounds exactly like a teakettle.”

“How long has it been going on?” Fatima asked.

“Seventeen years.”

“Petra.”

“Seventeen years of sleeping next to a man who sounds like a defective kitchen appliance. I have tried earplugs. I have tried white noise. I once, may God forgive me, I once recorded it on my phone and played it back to him in the morning. He said…” she paused, her composure cracking just slightly, “he said, ‘That’s not me, that’s the radiator!’”

Cynthia put her head on the table. Fatima was wiping her eyes. Elias was gripping the edge of his chair and looking at Alejandro.

“I have checked the radiator,” Petra said. “A radiator does not whistle on every third exhale. The radiator does not whistle only between two and four in the morning. The radiator is innocent.”

*****

Alejandro brought the third bottle. None of them remembered ordering it. This was either excellent service or a deliberate act of sabotage. No one cared which.

“Elias,” Cynthia said, turning to him with the focused intensity of a woman who had shared too much and now required reciprocity. “You’ve been quiet.”

“I’ve been enjoying the show.”

“No. Absolutely not. You don’t get to sit there with your wine and your little smile and contribute nothing. What does Dmitri do?”

Elias considered his options. “Dmitri,” he said carefully, “is a morning person.”

Three women stared at him.

“He is aggressively, relentlessly a morning person. He wakes up at five-thirty in the morning, and he does it without an alarm. And, he is cheerful. It’s disgusting. There is no warmup period. There is no groggy transition. His eyes open and he is ready to discuss the day’s plans. I am still trying to make my eyes focus.”

“Eww,” Fatima said.

“He makes the bed,” Elias continued, “while I am still in it. I will be lying there, trying to negotiate with my eyes, and he will begin straightening the sheets around me, as if I am an obstacle in an otherwise tidy room. And then he says…” Elias began to choke. “…he says, ‘Dobroye utro, solntse moyo.’”

“Which means?” Petra asked.

“‘Good morning, my sun.’”

Cynthia placed her hand over her heart. Fatima made a noise. Petra’s expression remained stoic.

“That is sooo…” Cynthia began.

“It does sound romantic, doesn’t it?” Elias agreed. “But it isn’t. When it’s five-thirty in the morning and a very large Russian man is standing over you holding a cup of coffee and smiling like the sun has risen specifically for his benefit. But the world is still a blur and he is cheerful.”

“I would kill for a husband who brought me coffee,” Cynthia said.

“You say that. But the coffee comes with plans. His plans. He has plans for the day at five-thirty. He has a list. He wants to discuss the list. I am not…” Elias gestured vaguely at himself, “operational before eight. I am not a human yet. And I have my own plans!”

“What does he do when you protest?” Fatima asked.

“He brings a second cup of coffee and sits on the edge of the bed. Then he waits. Like a puppy dog. He just… he sits there. Being cheerful and present until I let him outside to do his business.”

“This…,” Petra observed, “this is a love letter.”

*****

Alejandro brought an unreasonable number of tapas to the group, and spread them across the table in a parade of small plates designed to ensure that no one would ever sober up. Alejandro placed each dish with the precision of a man who had done this a thousand times and still took pride in it. He lingered near Elias’s shoulder a beat longer than necessary, refilling his glass with an attentiveness that made Fatima raise one eyebrow.

“Gracias,” Elias said, looking up and making eye contact for just a moment too long.

“De nada,” Alejandro replied, placing a hand on Elias’ shoulder.

“He likes you,” Fatima said, as she selected a croqueta.

“He’s just doing his job.”

“He is doing his job with great intention.”

“Fatima.”

“I’m just saying. If I were a young man in Córdoba and a blue-eyed American professor sat at my table, I too might refill his water glass with feeling.”

Elias covered his face with both hands. “This is what vergüenza feels like.”

“Good,” Cynthia said. “Now you know how the rest of us have been feeling for the last hour.”

Petra was eating an olive as if it were a delicacy. “Elias. The morning coffee is charming but insufficient. We have given you toothpaste. We have given you the whistle. We have given you the organization of a spice rack. You have not given us a real story. We want to hear something with vergüenza pura.” Pure shame.

The bottles multiplied again and time was lost to the moon above. At some point, Alejandro had brought a plate of churros with chocolate that none of them had ordered, together with four small glasses of orujo. Fatima insisted on sampling it “for research.”

“Elias,” Cynthia said. “What is the worst thing you’ve accidental said to Dmitri’s family.”

Elias went very still. His alcohol-flushed cheeks now deepened by two shades.

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

“This one is…” He shook his head. “No. This one stays buried.”

“Vergüenza,” Fatima chanted, tapping the table. “Vergüenza, vergüenza, vergüenza!”

Cynthia joined in. Petra, after a dignified pause, tapped one finger in rhythm.

“Fine.” Elias drained his glass.

“Dmitri’s mother,” Elias began, “Valentina… the first time I met her was on a video call. My Russian is passable, but when I’m nervous, I make mistakes. Did you know that, there is a a very important difference between saying ‘I am taking care of your son’ and ‘I am taking your son?”

He looked around at the women. “One requires the accusative case, while the other requires dative – and I said it wrong. I looked this woman in the eye through a screen and told her, in her own language, that I was taking her son.”

“What did she do?” Petra asked.

“She said to me, “You are very small for a kidnapper.’”

The table erupted. Alejandro, who had been hovering near the railing pretending to adjust a candle, joined in the laughter.

“She has called me ‘the kidnapper’ ever since,” Elias said, defeatedly. “Every phone call. ‘How is the kidnapper? Is he feeding you?’ She genuinely believes that I, a five-foot-six academic who gets winded on stairs, abducted her six-foot-six former…” Elias ground to a stop. The women waiting with baited breath.

“Former what?” Cynthia asked.

“…soldier. He was in the military. Before. Yes. An infantryman.” Elias reached for his glass with a hand that was not entirely steady and poured himself a glass. “Russian military. It was a long time ago.”

Fatima studied him with the quiet attention of a woman who read between lines for a living. But the moment passed, and the drink carried them forward.

*****

Elias was leaning back in his chair with his tie loosened and his glasses slightly crooked on his nose, staring at the Mezquita. The floodlights turned the ancient walls to honey, its arches were barely visible through the high windows with their red and white trim repeating to infinity.

“It’s different at night,” he said, to no one in particular.

“What is?” Fatima asked.

“The Mezquita.” He gestured with his glass, his wine tilting dangerously. “The guides always talk about the way the light plays through the arches. But they always get it wrong. The building was designed to be experienced at night with hundreds of oil lamps hanging from the arches on brass chains. The light moved throughout the building, causing the arches to look like they were…” He moved his hand to his chest and inhaled, then exhaled, “…breathing; like they were alive.”

Petra tilted her head. “That is a very specific description for something you read in a book.”

“Ibn Bashkuwāl,” Elias quickly cited. “The twelfth-century historian. He was a very detailed observer.”

“You said the chains were brass,” Fatima noted. “Ibn Bashkuwāl describes the lamps, but he does not specify the material. I checked this for a footnote a couple of years ago.”

Elias blinked. “There’s a secondary source, but it’s minor.” He took a drink, nervously.

Cynthia, who had been watching this exchange with the drowsy attention of a woman running on churros and orujo, said, “Elias, how did you and Dmitri actually meet? You’ve never told us.”

The question settled onto the table like the dust from the desert outside.

“It’s a long story.”

“We have,” Fatima said, gesturing at the empty terrace and the sleeping city below, “nothing but time.”

Elias looked at his glass again. Then at the Mezquita. Then at the women sitting with him.

“We met here,” he said, casually.

“In Córdoba?” Cynthia asked.

“In Córdoba.” His voice was soft. “I was doing research. Doctoral work. And I was…” he looked at his glass as he rolled the stem between his fingers and thumb, “…I was alone here, and everything was…” he waved his hand to dismiss what he was about to say. “…the city was… the city was enormous. It felt enormous. There were a quarter of a million people here and I didn’t know any of them, and the distance between everything was…”

“Córdoba isn’t that big,” Cynthia said gently.

“It was,” Elias said, as the past tense landed oddly, carrying with it an impregnated weight that wouldn’t forgive the slip up.

Fatima set down her glass.

“And Dmitri,” Elias’ voice thickened. “He was not free when I met him.”

“What do you mean, ‘not free’?” Petra asked carefully.

Elias seemed to hear himself, then seemed to hear what he had said and what it sounded like. His expression shifted – a recalibration perhaps.

“He was in a bad situation,” Elias said, the words flattening into the careful register of a man choosing vagueness over truth. “I helped him get out of it. And after that we stayed together.”

He smiled, but it was the wrong smile. It was forced. Contrived. It was too controlled, as if he was wearing the smile of someone who had almost walked off a cliff and was now pretending it hadn’t been there.

The Mezquita loomed above them, ancient and patient. A motorcycle started on the street below, and a cat yowled. The water of the Guadalquivir was barely audible, a low murmur beneath the city’s breathing.

Cynthia opened her mouth to ask a question – what, exactly, she wasn’t sure – but Elias was already turning toward the Mezquita, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped into a register they had never heard from him before – a low, half-swallowed whisper with the cadence of a man reciting words from memory rather than from an acquired knowledge.

He gave breath to six words in a form of Arabic that was older than the Modern Standard Arabic of academia.

Fatima’s wine glass stopped halfway to her lips.

“Elias,” she said, speaking very slowly. “Where did you learn that?”

Elias turned back to the table. He blinked like a man surfacing from the depths of the ocean.

“What?” he said, and his voice was his own again. “Oh. That. It’s, um, a reconstructed pronunciation. There’s a whole field. Historical phonology. Very niche.” He adjusted his glasses.” “It’s really boring though. You wouldn’t li…”

“What did you say?” Fatima asked. She hadn’t budged, and her whine glass was still suspended in the air.

Elias swallowed. “It’s a line from a famous poem by an anonymous author, written in the tenth century. It means, ‘the Moon ate the bread of the common hand.’”

Silence.

“That is not a famous poem,” Fatima said.

“No?”

“I have never encountered that line in any anthology, and I have read most of them.”

“The source is very obscure.”

“And you recite it from memory. In a reconstructed dialect. While looking at the Mezquita. After telling us you ‘freed’ your husband.”

Elias held Fatima’s gaze for one more heartbeat. Then he smiled with the bright, performative smile of a man who was very good at being charming when he needed a conversation to end.

“I’m very drunk,” he said, and raised his hand. “Alejandro? La cuenta, por favor.” The check. Please.

*****

As they were leaving, Alejandro was outside, stacking chairs against the wall. He looked up as they approached, and when he saw Elias, something changed in his posture. He straightened. He set down the chair he was holding, then he lowered his head with a slow, deliberate inclination. It was the kind of gesture that belonged to a royal court, not a terrace bar.

"Tusbih ala khayr, ya nasir," he said. May your prayers be accepted, Helper. His voice was quiet and steady. The Arabic that came from his mouth was the same Classical Arabic Elias had used – the same dialect that Elias had spoken on the rooftop.

Elias placed his hand on the young man's shoulder as he passed, the way a man might touch something familiar and cherished, and replied in the same tongue.

Alejandro watched him go, then returned to his chairs.

Fatima had frozen in her tracks. She stood there as Elias continued. She noticed the brief exchange and the ease between them. She realized, in that moment, that it had never been flirtation. It was instead something completely different… Something older. Much older.

Elias looked back at her. Whether it was the dim light, or her own drunken state, she could not read his face. "Allāh yibārik fīki wa yiḥfaẓik, yā Fāṭima,” he said. May God bless you and protect you.

Fatima quickly brought her hands up to conceal her shocked expression. “I should’ve known,” she gasped.

“And now you do,” Elias said.