As you can see, her bed is like Noah’s Ark, carrying Matuqa’s whole existence: there are rags and scraps laid out lengthwise which take up half the bed — so many that she’s lying twisted to make space for them — and scraps of dry bread hidden in readiness for the famines that are to come, you can see bits of them here and there, and there’s a plastic bag holding her eyebrow pencil and her silver engraved kohl container and applicator, incubating bacteria from Noah’s times; at her feet are the leftover clothes of a dead husband, reeking of lamb fat, and under her stiff, neck-breaking pillow there’s a copper plate that was one of her wedding gifts, a camel-leather shoe with broken straps, and a string of sandalwood prayer beads that Yabis brought back from Medina; at her left is a packet of stiff, moldy strawberry bubble gum to bribe passing children, and underneath that a half-eaten tube of cheese’n’chili flavor Pringles. Goodness knows what else is in there, but the main thing is she’s ready to set sail as soon as Israfel blows his horn.
Mu’az, Imam Dawoud’s son, managed to snap this picture of her spontaneously. He wanted to capture the flowers on her Shalky label dress, with the enormous fuchsia-colored flower across her chest and an orange and red one splashed across her pelvis.
I wonder: what does this ninety-something woman dream about? What are dreams like when we’re about to step over the threshold at the end of life? Do they care about us? Do they show us any bonus footage? Does life change position so that it always moves forward, not backward or toward the present? Do we think our beauty will still be there, waiting for us, on the other side of that threshold? At what age do our bodies retreat and stop dreaming, and our eyes begin to look ahead to what’s beyond the threshold?
Matuqa’s part gets wider and wider but not a single white hair invades it. A woman’s will to live resides in her hair, and a woman who shines her hair with coconut oil every morning and braids it around her head like a crown will surely never die.
Aisha
P.S. When I woke up after the accident, my whole life seemed like just a moment, like it had passed me by, because my limbs weren’t responding and no mirror would face me.
For days I avoided looking them in the eye, certain I was somewhere else and that another life, which wouldn’t die, was waiting for me.
When the nurse exposed whatever part of me to wash it with a warm flannel and antiseptic soap, I didn’t care enough to cover it up, because the body that feels ashamed was somewhere up there, hovering in some spot above everyone’s heads, and focusing on some other point that was even further away. No matter how much I craned my neck I couldn’t quite see that point which comes after death. Who said I didn’t die? Even now, whenever I close my eyes, they look toward that point beyond pain, beyond humanity.
Who said they all died?
They made me undergo psychiatric treatment with the doctor with the Egyptian accent who was going to help me come to terms with my orphanhood.
He assured me that the anti-depressants were enough to bring my soul out of that emptiness and make it swallow their death, one in the morning and one at bedtime, like a glass of sugarcane juice.
My eyes bothered him. In between us were the lenses of his glasses and their heavy green frames, which framed and contained his every look.
I gave up nothing from the inside of my head but the bubble of fake everything’s-okay. He soaked it and starched it and ironed it and folded it to see if it was still crumpled, to repolish it with his tranquilizers.
All the while, my head’s central safe was still hovering in the air, where not even dynamite could get it, staying out of reach of all the questions aimed at figuring out the secret combination to its lock.
“Do you feel a sense of loss? Do you want to express your pain?” Are your dead relatives contributing to the problem of global warming?
His questions were like the endless pages of Chinese horoscopes or personal ads in women’s magazines.
I made it through all those questions without giving up a single digit of the secret combination.
When I got back from Bonn, I stuffed the safe under my bed. I avoided the room on the top floor where they still sleep …
In the middle of the night I can hear their dreams,
Once one of them woke me from a nightmare,
And once my dad came to the door and stared at me while I was sleeping, and said “Don’t forget to wear your nightguard!” The plastic mold that I have to put over my top teeth to stop me grinding and squeaking them all night.
P.P.S. Azza sleeps with her legs wide open …
I find that so disturbing.
Do you dream of having a woman like that in your bed?
P.P.P.S. I remember the first nights after Ahmad left me:
One night, while I was fast asleep, I sensed my father standing at the door of my cubbyhole watching me sleep — he came once at midnight, and then again around dawn,
He found me in exactly the same position: lying on my back with my hands one on top of the other in prayer position and my two long braids lying undisturbed on my chest,
He shook me violently, thinking in panic that I might be dead.
Do you think Azza sucked all my energy so that she could be extra open, extra free?
Can you hear the sound of the Muhammad Abdu song coming from the cafe? “Push me to my limit …” I tremble at the limitlessness you’ve opened up within me …
An Apology for Azza
April 6, 2006
How long has it been since the Yamaha slept?
Tonight the Yamaha veered expertly to avoid the bus that had suddenly left its lane. It was the motorcycle’s sudden responsiveness that foiled the bus’s attack; it only managed to nick the back bumper of the bike, but that was still enough to send it skidding down Shamiya Hill. All the lights shining on me kept me from feeling the asphalt tearing up my legs. All I was aware of was the crushed metal and spilled gasoline. When the many lights became a single light shining into my face, I woke up to find myself in an operating room and then suddenly in an operating theater as long as a bus.
“As a trainee on his probation period, he is not party to the medical insurance benefits we make available to our permanent employees.” With that the advertising agency washed their hands of me, and I was forced to rely on the free medical services at the Nour Hospital.
Azza, don’t cry.
My mother brought me the cloth on which you’d drawn in chalk and charcoal. You’d written out an order on its tatters: “Stay alive!”
She also brought me your words: “No hope.”
And, “Get well soon.”
Are you actually angry?
Do you remember that day we were trying to save those black puppies on the roof of that abandoned building? When the walls collapsed on us, I broke my leg but you landed on your feet like a cat, if a bit dinged up. You started hitting me wildly when they brought me back later that day with my leg in a cast.
You didn’t speak to me for days.
I understood that you were a glance; as soon as you fall you fly off again. You amputate the damaged limb.
You strip off anything that slows you down.
They swapped my crushed knee for a metal knee. Mushabbab had to pay twenty thousand for them to perform a surgery that was meant to be free. I have no idea why he was so keen on investing in my misfortune or why he uttered prayers over my knee that it would be repaired.