Jules & Jim

To S. & J., thank you

— I miss Meryem, said Jules.
Jim didn’t answer. He kept looking through the window, maybe trying to understand what the real figures were, and what reflexes were.
— I thought she would go back, Jules continued to talk.
“She will”, Jim thought, but he didn’t say that. Because he knew everything in life was flow, including all those feelings Meryem had awoke into both of them. One day, they – the feelings – would become a strong river that would bring her back to them. She was a kind of bird, he realized, she needed to fly far away. One day, she would back to her nest. A nest that she hasn’t had yet, but he would want to create one to her. He wanted to tell that to Jules. Could he understand that?
— We have our nest, it was the only thing that Jim told Jules.

Meryem celebrated the sunny days, the shiny and warm sunny days. Sun was her great partner in life, filling her up with energy and hope. Rain was also amazing – but it was always raining into her. So she preferred sun outside to avoid being wet all the time. Meryem enjoyed flying. When she was a little girl, she played with pencils and drawings, with fantasies and short stories, with characters and words. At that time, as she was still very little and couldn’t fly, she lived intensively her other life, that invisible one. When she grew up, she found a great pleasure of keeping playing with words, stories and colors, but she also found two little wings on her back. She found out she was able to fly. Flying and looking for new stories to put them in her own words. This would be her way of giving the world more colors.
Meryem also missed Jules. He also liked to feel life – experiences, other bodies, other lips, his fantasies, his words – concretely, it meant, feel life with his hands, his body, his pores, his touch, the whole himself – as she did. He loved to experience his own fantasies – the ideal woman who had appeared suddenly in front of him, the ideal guy who made him, Jules, to deal with his manhood and his femininity as a man, the ideal and fantastic tour around the world to make peace possible, the ideal this, the ideal that. Meryem was a bit of Jules – his sensual and sentimental way of dealing with life fascinated her. And Jules liked Meryem because he could feel himself with her. He could fly – and he always forgot this possibility when he was alone, lonely, lost in his too old pain.
Meryem also missed Jim, specially when she looked through the window trying to identify what was real and what was imagination. Jim lived in so-connected internal world that Meryem felt she could fly inside him freely when they were together. And Meryem enjoyed to be with men who let her explore them deeply (there are few men like that in the world unfortunately, Meryem moaned). Jim was that no-age being, he could be a kid or an old and wise man at the same time, a butterfly or a cat in another moment, a clown or a president, a business guy or a great lover. Actually he was a great lover in the largest meaning of the word. Because he loved to love. Addicted to life, as he said about himself, he didn’t have fear to love, although he was scared about detachment. To love and to let it be, let it free? He was still learning that, specially how to let himself free to love. But he as a man-boy who knew to identify birds and nests. That’s why Meryem liked him. That’s why he liked Meryem.

It happened at the end of October, beginning of November. Winter was nearby.
It was the second time they were together. The first impression, in the previous year, had been the best as possible. Something happened, then. Something else got a beautiful and “always-known” meaning suddenly. Their connections became clear. And strong. They intuited those connections would last forever.

They shared experiences, stories, meals, kisses, beds, bodies, feelings, believes, male and female sides. They had dinner at Deep Restaurant. They had tasted snow together. They danced, they kissed, and they drank wine. They hadn’t seen a sunset together yet, who knows next time. But, specially, they flied together. Meryem lent them her wings, she borrowed them their boat named “Excursionist Dreamers”.

Like in Truffaut’s movie, they ran together through a long avenue, held hands, closing their eyes from time to time. This only could have happened in that amazing city divided between Europe and Asia, feminine and masculine, traditions and modernity, future and past. “This city is like a vagina”, Jim said once. Pain and pleasure all together, go deep and find what you are looking for. Flow and flow, go and come, come and go. Leave, but back. After nine months, a baby, a disease or a nostalgia. Jules, Meryem and Jim had been part of this.

— Will we see her again?, Jules asked.
“Why so many questions, Jules?”, Jim thought, but he didn’t said that. But he also had his own questions, although he was scared about telling them in loud voice. If he listened to his own questions, maybe they would become real – and he had some fear about it.
— She is already inside us, Jim replied. She will be always inside us. Perhaps she doesn’t exist as a real woman. Perhaps she is only an image, an archetype.
By the way, Jim still felt her kisses, her tender hands on his face. But, again, he didn’t tell this to Jules. Maybe he was trying to protect his friend from an inevitable pain. He continued looking through the window as someone who wants to see through hearts, through the time and the space, through the reality towards the imagination. Suddenly he saw a bird. A different one, a cute bird, a colorful bird. This bird was flying around the tree on the corner. After some seconds, the bird came to land at the edge of their window. Jim almost listened to it singing to them. Then he realized it was time to move on.