Why I am here? I ask myself. Why hasn’t he come yet? Why isn’t my phone ringing? I put the ringer on very low so that only I can hear it. No doubt people know that I’ve been waiting three hours for him, that I asked for juice and then tea and then coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich. I also asked for a pack of cigarettes, Gitanes Lights.
The waiter tells me that they only have Marlboro and Marlboro Lights, so I take the Lights. I smoke thirteen cigarettes and stop. I keep the last seven cigarettes for when I go back to my apartment on Makhoul Street, for fear of running out once I’m home.
What will I do when I go back? I’ll get in the bathtub and fill it with hot water. I’ll take off the clothes that I spent hours choosing and changing. I left all the clothes that I’d taken out of the closet lying on my bed when I went out. It’ll take some time to hang them all up again. But I feel incredibly sleepy and I won’t do anything tonight. I can’t do anything now except wait. The writing of waiting. The worry of waiting. The silence of waiting.
When will this nightmare of mine end? When will I be done dealing with the bureaucracy around our building and be free to go back? They told me by fax that it wouldn’t take more than a month to finish everything. I’ve been here nine months and I’m still waiting.
I wake up because of a sound that I forget the moment I awake. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure that a sound woke me, though I always put little pieces of wax in my ears to block out the sounds of the world. They wake me up anyway. I sit up in bed, I try to put my feet down and get out of bed. I can’t. I lie down, turn over onto my side, and look at the clock on my phone, which sits on my bedside table. It’s seven AM and there are two missed calls. I look up the numbers. One is from Chris, at one o’clock in the morning, and the other is from Nour, at four o’clock in the morning. Bad timing! Yesterday, I didn’t get even one call from Nour apologizing for standing me up and now I see that he tried to call me at four AM. Did he think I would wait for him all night?
I try to get out of bed but I’m too weak; I try again and I can’t. Perhaps now I’m paralyzed.
“I have nothing to give you except my love,” I told him the last time we met. He told me that this was too much for him to handle and that perhaps I was unlucky to have met him.
I think that I’m a little bit lucky, but I don’t answer.
He comes back to me three weeks later… We have lunch together, then he says goodbye because he wants to go to his office and read his email. I wait for him for two weeks. He says that he’ll be away for only one week, but his trip lasts a whole eternity. When he comes back, I don’t want to say anything; I don’t want to lay any blame. I want only one thing: to be naked and let our bodies talk to each other. This doesn’t happen. He is tired and sleepy; I’ve already started to calm down and my love is calm and well-mannered. When I leave him, I’m not angry, only sad, a slight pain gnawing at my soul.
I go back to my flat to shower, to wash the traces of defeat and distress from my body. A mere half-hour later there’s a knock on my apartment door. I know it’s him; I’m still in the shower. I get out, soap on my face and my hair and body wet. I open the door to him and walk back to the bathroom. He takes off his clothes and follows me. He gets in the shower with me and embraces me… This wet union tastes like heaven.
There’s something dramatic in his eyes when he enters my body. I look at him and he closes his eyes, embarrassed. I ask him to open his eyes and look at me, to look at my face and my full body underneath him; my body undulates under his body and eyes and desire. A slow movement from me and he slows his pleasure. His body receives mine, slowing its rhythmic motions. He waits for my body’s rhythms to intensify and focus for one concentrated moment. Then he’ll know I’ve reached my climax. He’ll know this by watching the muscles on my face relax, the rhythm of my movements will slow and stop, my voice will lower, my breathing will slow. He says that he knows from the light in my eyes and the color of my skin. He says my skin takes on a shade he can’t describe. He can only feel it.
We sit in the café that has become part of our relationship. He says that he’ll go back to America the following week. The people we love stay with us, inside us until we’re able to accept that we’ve lost them. But he can’t stay with me until then, until he can deal with such loss. Every time his body enters mine, I live out my worry about saying goodbye. “I want you to stay.” I say it and am afraid. I’m expecting fear, the fear of losing him. Then I add, “I know that life will go on if you return to America. I want you to stay here, it’s true. But don’t expect me to fight for you to stay.” I protect myself with these words, but I’m lying. He leaves me and walks away. I stay on the chair in the café, alone. The coffee is cold and I start to cry.
I came looking for a man I didn’t find. I’ve left another behind me, like someone who’s gone on a long journey and only remembers this when she returns. I remember the journey but I’m not the same woman I was. I can’t be the woman I was because this journey isn’t simply a memory and that’s it — it is another life.
Nour comes to take me to the South to spend our last weekend together in the Orange House, a small family hotel run by two women. It took me a long time to leave my flat; I had to pack my suitcase. I forgot to do it when I woke up. He’s waiting for me in his car in front of the building. From a distance, his eyes seem like those of someone who’s about to lose hope. When I approach him I feel something new and different. As though I’ve finally accepted his trip to America. I tell myself that this time he’s waiting for me. As though the act of waiting renews itself every day no matter which of us is waiting.
Love is amazing, but it doesn’t change a person. This strikes me as we walk on the sandy seashore in front of the Orange House, the high waves crashing against the cement walls, their mist reaching my face and neck.
“Love is amazing,” he reiterates, smiling, unconvinced of what he just said. Love is amazing but it doesn’t change a person, I reply silently. You took a risk on love and lost, I tell myself.
I’m on the verge of saying just one thing to him: Save what we lived together. I say it in a low, barely audible, voice. I say it and my eyes expect nothing. Perhaps I say it only in order to keep a thin thread suspended between us. I know that he’s not listening to me and won’t be able to do anything for us. And I know that he’s not searching for his roots but for a mere stitch of salvation. I don’t say anything. I think about Nahil and what she said to Olga in the final days before she died, “There are things that are unspoken, simple and whole, like eyes.”
Powerful waves crash high on the shore where we walk and spray their moisture on my hair and face. My lips are filled with the taste of salt. I open my body to the wave and its salt.
When we leave we die a little death. We die in peace. And we leave in peace. Parting is not simply a little death, it’s returning to the selves that we’d forgotten in the exuberance of passion.