“Have you decided when you’re going to do it?” he asked.
“She decided,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, or this morning.”
I took another sip of cognac, which warmed me, releasing tension stuck in my neck muscles. A second sip melted the tangle of emotions caught in my throat, or in my heart.
“Do you have everything you need?” he said. “Do you have to get anything?”
“No, everything is already there.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s all about the heating pad.”
I gulped down the last of my cognac, returned to the indentation on my side of the bed, and was out soon after. I slept like the dead.
How to Say Goodbye in Syrian
The sun was having trouble peeking from behind the clouds. It seemed weakened, as if the effort had exhausted it, a paltry circle up above. I was surprised and grateful to find Emma waiting for Mazen and me at the gate of the Kara Tepe camp. I’d assumed she would skip the procedure, showing up after to deal with the bureaucracy and burial arrangement as she’d promised. She looked glorious, more so than usual, beautifully applied makeup, a notable feature of which was blue pencil outlining the eye shadow. More dazzling than the sun that morning. She looked as if she had never been afflicted with original sin, citizen of her own garden, the Fall having nothing to do with her.
“I’m here if you need me,” she said. “Never mind what I said yesterday. I can help.”
I thanked her. She would be a great help. I assured her I had everything we needed and had confirmed the details the afternoon before with Sumaiya, who was going in and out of both consciousness and coherence at the time.
Kara Tepe was supposed to be a more humane refugee camp than Moria, but the main difference I could see was that the barbed wire above the Moria fences was concertina, whereas at Kara Tepe it was the more common three strands in a row. Someone had thrown a pair of baby shoes tied together with their laces onto one of the razor wires, the middle one. I couldn’t remember whether that was a sign of a baby having been born or simply a good-luck charm. Mazen reminded me that when we were kids in Beirut, we used to see baby shoes tied to the back of taxis, so it was probably a ward against the evil eye. Below the shoes, laundry was clothespinned to the chain-link fence. So were plastic bags stuffed into plastic bags, forming clouds that looked ready to join their relatives up high. A gust of wind made the baby shoes swing like a pendulum. Or like a scythe.
A noisy group of preteen boys ran by, halting right before the fence, seven of them, all dressed in rags the color of ashes. A couple of them tried to engage a younger girl in conversation, but she wanted nothing to do with them. Among such a group, she looked regal, a child of Aphrodite herself. She moved away from the boys, the tops of her oversize rubber boots knocking against each other with a gentle slap. Within a few seconds, the boys began to collect stones and pebbles from the ground and launch them at the baby shoes. The noise level rose even though not a single projectile struck its target. The little girl, in her own world, on her own little island, examined the wet earth in front of her. She was covered in layer upon layer of clothes that once belonged to other children. Her face lit up, as if she’d had the greatest idea ever. Smiling, she sank her foot into the water-gorged clay, then pulled it back and gleefully admired her artwork. One rubber boot muddy, one not. A yellow plastic bag flew solo over the fence and landed at her feet. She lifted her muddy boot to stomp on it, but a gust winged the bag off before she got her chance.
I took out my smartphone to check the time, not yet nine. A drop of water landed on it, a rainstorm of one, and down the screen it streaked itself away. The air would soon feel fresher; less blight, but no smell of rain here, no petrichor, not in the camp.
In the medical tent, Sammy was the only one with his wife. He sat next to the bed, leaning in and holding her hand. He was whispering in her ear. I did not need to hear what he was saying to understand that it was endearments. As soon as Sumaiya saw us, she blurted, “I’m in pain and I’m cold.” She said it loudly and hurriedly—in other words, as unnaturally as possible, which was not how I’d asked her to do it.
Sammy jumped up, brow furrowed, bushy eyebrows coming together as if commiserating. Did she need another blanket? Was the heating pad not enough? Should he fill the hot water bottle? I hadn’t seen one of those in ages, since I left Lebanon all those years ago. Sammy explained that a few minutes after I left the afternoon before, Sumaiya asked for one. She felt that even though the heating pad might be better and more modern, it wasn’t warming her up like a hot water bottle would. They couldn’t find one anywhere in camp, so one of the young American volunteers had driven to a pharmacy in downtown Mytilene and bought one for her.
“Such a well-behaved boy,” Sumaiya said weakly. She wasn’t using the oxygen mask, relying on the nasal cannula. “Nice and kind.” She looked better this morning, more vibrant, but her catlike eyes were butter yellow, the rings under them the color of a peach pit, and her skin was ashen, as if she had emerged from a vat of talcum powder. “He paid for the bottle himself and refused reimbursement.”
“We tried to give him some money,” Sammy said, “but he wouldn’t have it, as if he were Syrian, one of us.”
“He couldn’t be one of us,” Sumaiya said, “not with that pleated hair.”
On the table next to Sumaiya’s bed, someone had placed a small pot of African violets, a bundle of tiny yellow faces in purple bodies. Where had such living luxury come from?
I asked her where she was feeling pain, which was the signal for Mazen to suggest that Sammy and he step outside so I could examine Sumaiya in private. I asked them not to wander too far. As soon as they exited the tent, Sumaiya blurted out that she was ready. I asked if she was certain this was what she wanted. Emma whispered that we had to be sure.
“I want you to do it with the hot water bottle,” Sumaiya said, “not the heating pad. That would work just as well, right?”
“Have you said goodbye to your daughters?” I asked.
She had, both yesterday and this morning. She did not wish them to see her corpse.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell Sammy? Don’t you want to him to be here?”
He would feel too guilty. He’d worry about her not getting into Paradise for wishing to end her life. And she did not want him to witness her dying. She asked if everything was ready for her family to move on, all the documents signed, everything in order, her burial and funeral already set up. Did we have someone who could wash her corpse? I explained that if everything went according to plan, her family would be leaving the island tomorrow or the day after at the latest and would be in Malmö, Emma’s hometown, within a week at most.
“Tell her to watch over them,” Sumaiya said, reaching for Emma’s hand. “Tell her to watch over my loved ones and I will watch over hers.”
Emma broke down, began to bawl. I grew nervous that someone outside might hear her. She bent down and hugged Sumaiya, squeezing so fiercely that Sumaiya had to say, “Stop, I don’t want to suffocate to death.” It took me a second to catch the joke and laugh. I was grateful. I had been frightened of finding Sumaiya not quite lucid.
The sound of thunder and heavy rain grew louder. I hoped Sammy and Mazen had found shelter.
Emma clicked on the electric kettle to heat water. I took out four fentanyl patches, one hundred micrograms each, but peeled only three. That should be enough for respiratory suppression.
“This should ease your pain,” I told her. “You will feel comfortable quickly. I’m going to put them on your back.”
Would it be okay to place the patches on her front? She wanted to cuddle the hot water bottle and face upward, toward her God and His Heaven.
I pulled down the blankets. Emma and I lifted her shoulders to undo her gown. Her liver protruded from under her ribs and felt awfully firm. She looked pregnant.
I placed the three patches along her abdomen and covered her with the gown. Emma handed her the old-fashioned rubber water bottle. Sumaiya clutched it to her above the fentanyl patches, smiling. Emma and I brought the blankets back up.
“You have nothing to worry about,” I told Sumaiya. “Like I explained yesterday. It will feel a little like floating, like the lull of an easy tide of our Mediterranean. You’ll feel less and less pain, and your breathing will slow. It’s simple. I will be by your side the whole time.”
I was about to sit down when I noticed panic visiting her eyes.
“What about Sammy?” she said. “I need him here. I can’t leave without him here.”
I asked Emma to find him, and as soon as he came back into the room, his wife chortled. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but ended up only grinning, as if she had seen an angel. Her whole body exhaled a sigh of relief. Sammy took the seat I thought I’d be using.
“Make sure the little one gets into her pajamas when you tell her to,” Sumaiya told her husband.
The thunder stopped, the rain stopped.
I stepped back. Emma stood at the tent’s entrance, a weeping sentinel. From seemingly out of nowhere, Mazen’s fingers intertwined with mine. Together we watched Sammy recommence the whispering. With his forefinger, he tucked his wife’s head scarf out of the way so his lips could have unobstructed access to her ear.
How to Say Goodnight in Lebanese
Night was night on Lesbos; it erased all color. Away from the center of Mytilene, little was lit. Looking out the window, I saw nothing of the Mediterranean. I could imagine there was nothing there, a vast oblivion. The glass pane merely reflected the well-lit hotel room and me, the window turning into a mirror unmisted by what was behind it. The world outside was me—well, me and Mazen, since he walked out of the bathroom already in his pajamas.
“What are you looking at?” he said.
“Me.”
“That requires serious contemplation.” The window reflected us as a portrait, Lesbos Gothic, a brother and sister, he without the pitchfork. “Are you doing all right?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m okay,” I said. “Nothing has changed since you asked five minutes ago.”
He was worried because I’d told him that I hadn’t done anything like this before, that I’d never helped a terminal patient end their life. I’d asked him if he thought that having experience would settle a physician’s post-euthanasia turmoil, if there were any. I wasn’t sure. Could it ever become habitual?
“Everything went exactly the way you said it would,” Mazen said, his arm resting on my shoulder. “I have to say I’m impressed.”
“It’s what I do,” I said. “I’m supposed to know how a body behaves.”
“I’m supposed to know how the stock market behaves,” he said, “but it never does what I ask it to. I can’t believe people are more predictable than stocks.”
“Bodies are,” I said. “Not people.”
I was doing all right. This was not post-euthanasia turmoil, maybe a bit of unrest. Sumaiya died peacefully, painlessly, and rather quickly, which was what she wanted. I wasn’t sure I’d followed the oaths literally, wasn’t sure I did or didn’t do any harm, but I knew I’d followed them in spirit. Hippocrates shouldn’t be able to berate me from his Greek grave.
“Let’s go to bed,” Mazen said. “It’s been a long day.”
“I shouldn’t,” I said. “I’d like to talk to my wife, the real one. Not you.”
He wanted me to keep him company in bed until it was time to call Francine or he fell asleep. We would watch a movie on his tablet.
“Do you think the newlyweds are still enjoying their room?” I asked.
“Definitely, though not as much as we are.”
I lay on my side facing the dark window, blanket all the way up to my neck. The pillow was too soft, and I had to use two of them. Mazen, playing big spoon, was behind me, his tablet before me. I had to hold it up. He put his head next to mine in order to see the small screen. I tumbled back into early childhood. My central nervous system released tiny, comforting angels coursing through the axon fibers of my being.
“This feels familiar,” he said.
The euphoria did not last. Just as we did when we were children, we began to argue. Which movie were we going to watch? No shoot-em-up films for me, nothing that required thinking for him. I was too girly, he was too stupid. We didn’t get to decide because Francine called. We answered on the tablet, and she got to see us in flagrante delicto.
On the screen, her face appeared, luminous and in full bloom. She had just woken up, five in the morning in Chicago, too early even for her. The halogen on her side of our bed was the only light in the room.
“That looks cozy,” she said.
“I wish you were here,” Mazen said. “A three-way cuddle is my ultimate fantasy.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was worried.”
“You didn’t have to be,” I said. “I’m doing okay.”
“More than okay it seems,” she said. “You look happy.”
“I do? I’m not sure about that.”
“You’re glowing,” Francine said.
“We were arguing about which movie to watch.”
“Shut up and listen!” she said. “I haven’t seen that look on your face in years. I can’t remember the last time you were this happy, which makes me even happier. I miss you, and I miss that big lug on top of you. Come home.”
The Plunge
Three months after Lesbos, you were with us in Chicago—well, Evanston, to be precise. You had accepted a ten-week teaching gig at Northwestern. You’d end up spending eight of those ten weeks in our spare bedroom. You couldn’t bear the furnished apartment the university offered you, too generic, too beige, too dead. Not one shade of color that would jeopardize neutral. You missed your cats, you said, so you had to cuddle with ours. You missed your psychiatrist, so you needed to lie on our couch, your head on Francine’s lap, complaining about everything and the cold weather. The university recruiters tricked you, told you Chicago was warmer in spring. What you didn’t realize was that warmer did not mean warm. There was always snow in April, just a little less of it than in winter. Oh, the moaning. Oh, the suffering. You were your usual bundle of triggers.
You chucked the novel you were writing about Syrian refugees and began one about what happened to you while trying to help Syrian refugees, pages and pages that you would scrunch and throw into the pit of despair. What possessed you to try and write that? What did you think you’d accomplish? Were you seeking some form of absolution, you fool, you? You went to Lesbos and turned into a mess, or as today’s youngsters like to say, you kirked out. Did you believe that writing about the experience would help you understand what happened? You still cling to romantic notions about writing, that you’ll be able to figure things out, that you will understand life, as if life is understandable, as if art is understandable. When has writing explained anything to you? Writing does not force coherence onto a discordant narrative. You knew that, you told me that. But still, you thought this novel would be magically imbued with your dreams of respite. Even though none of the previous novels you wrote helped you in any way, this one, you thought, would heal your pain. Like a faithful analysand, you believed if you worked hard, wrote long enough, you’d come across the clue that would unravel the puzzle, the one key that would unlock your mystery. Keys, if they even exist, darling, are not found in literature.
Why did you keep at it for so long? Did you believe that if you wrote about Syrian refugees the world would look at them differently? Did you hope that readers would empathize? Inhabit a refugee’s skin for a few hours? As if that were some kind of panacea. You still hoped even though it had never happened. At best, you would have written a novel that was an emotional palliative for some couple in suburbia. For a few moments they’d think how
terrible it was for these refugees. They’d get outraged on social media for ten minutes. But then they’d pour another glass of chardonnay. Empathy is overrated.
You were grumbling about your novel. This wasn’t working, that was the worst. Francine stroked your hair. I thought at first that she wasn’t paying any attention since whining is your default state of being and she was reading a book, holding it in her other hand. In her usual quiet voice, she asked, “Have you considered writing about an American couple in suburbia to help the Syrian refugees? If you did a good job, Syrian refugees would be able to inhabit the skin of Americans, walk in their Cole Haans, empathize with their boredom and angst. I bet Asma would love a book like that.”
You bolted upright, shocking all three of us. You tried to get her to repeat what she said, but she didn’t.
You told me I should write my story. Maybe I could make sense of what was happening since you certainly couldn’t. You were retiring. This writing thing was not for you. I should give it a go. You were not going to write another sentence, not one word. You hated writing more than anything. You could go back to working in a hardware store. Or you would write a novel about a Lebanese Frankenstein who creates a monster out of body parts belonging to victims of suicide bombings, a Shiite left arm, a Sunni right arm, maybe a Catholic brain, a Druze heart. Oh, you could do that one. It could work. Talk about internal struggle. Or you could write a novel about a second-generation Arab American whose Arabic isn’t good but who is hired as an interpreter by the FBI regardless and proceeds to screw everything up royally. You could have fun with that one. A romp, yes, you could do something like that. You threw out one idea after another, each more outrageous, then discarded it. You would give up. Or you would write another novel. No, you could never write about Syrian refugees again. I should do it, you said. Maybe I could understand what happened, you said. I could unravel the mystery and find the key. Maybe I could come to terms with my past and heal my wounds. Ever delusional you.
The Wrong End of the Telescope Page 25
