by Donia Kamal
I put some wood-cleaning powder on the yellow cloth and sat on the floor. I rubbed the wood vigorously. There were so many stains. I wet the towel and squeezed the water out. I scrubbed and scrubbed until my hands hurt.
After another period of disappearance, Ali returned as he usually did. He spent an anxious night, then got out of bed early. Was it six? It was still dark outside. His movements woke me. He said that he was leaving and probably not coming back. His voice was loud, and I hate loud voices. He didn’t want to be questioned. He didn’t want to see the ceiling of this room ever again. Everything here suffocated him and increased his misery. I turned my back on him and went back to sleep, only waking when the door slammed shut. Hours later I woke up properly to realize it wasn’t a bad dream. He had left and wasn’t coming back. I felt angry and decided that I would tell him it really was over, that I no longer cared about him, and that I blamed him for all the floods in the universe, all the earthquakes, volcanoes, and unfinished revolutions, for all the sins of the world and all the troubles of all lovers. I sat unmoving for hours, barely breathing. This was yet another separation. It was just me and the ceiling now.
*
The cleaning was unending. The apartment was steeped in filth. The toilet couldn’t be cleaned using normal methods, so I put large quantities of disinfectant on a cleaning towel and added some kerosene—I thought of using acid but was worried it would burn my hand—and pushed my arm up to my elbow into the toilet bowl. I scrubbed at the dirt that lurked in hidden places. The corners were dark yellow, as if they hadn’t seen soap or water in months. I cleaned and cleaned—I had never seen the place so filthy. My fingers hurt but I continued to scrub. The smell turned my stomach but I pinched my nose with my other hand and persisted.
Days passed after Ali left. Long, suffocating days. I found it difficult to breathe. I couldn’t do much beyond staring at the ceiling. My body was dug into the sofa, my limbs rigid from lying there. Ali’s things were still in their usual places: his clothes neatly folded on the shelf allocated for him, his toothbrush in its place on the bathroom shelf, his small red hat on the bookshelf, the notes I used to leave for him still up on the fridge. Everything was in its usual place. I woke up every day to check that it was.
Then one day, I got a message: “I’ve missed you.” He asked to see me. He was coming back to life, breathing again. I went to him. The toilet bowl had started to regain its clear whiteness, the yellow stains slowly disappearing. I hesitated a bit, but I went. Ali received me eagerly. I barely saw his face. He immediately pulled me into a long embrace. The world stopped around us. I didn’t see the room or him. I just let myself be in his embrace, the sweetest since we’d first met. I closed my arms around him, encircled his ribs, moved my hands along his back—I really was in his arms. It took me a few seconds to understand that this was the moment I had always sought, through other lives and in this one, in parallel universes, on faraway planets—this was the moment, and nothing else mattered.
Once again I found the spider in the bathroom. It ran away at an insane speed. The bathroom was full of insects. I sat on the floor, my legs extended before me, and started scrubbing with the brush. I poured disinfectant on the floor. A few drops weren’t enough. I needed large amounts of disinfectant. Everything was filthy. Half the bottle was finished, the brush had gone black, and the wire scrubber was ruined. I brought out a new brush. I knew the drill when the place got so dirty, and I was well prepared. I lit my fifth cigarette and started cleaning the bathroom floor with the new brush. My clothes were dirty and wet. It was cold and I was shivering a little. The ashtray was next to me. I didn’t want to dirty the floor further with my cigarette ash.
The last time I saw Ali he didn’t sleep. I talked and talked and talked, fearing the return of the silence between us. He hadn’t said a word in days. Then, early one morning, he called and said calmly that our story was over. It wasn’t ever a story. A miserable one? Maybe. He insisted that it wasn’t love, and that whatever it was, it really was over. There was no going back. I listened without comment. Then I asked a few brief questions, and he repeated that this time he was leaving and not coming back. He said that I should leave too. He spoke persistently and I persisted in listening. I wanted details. I wanted him to tell me that he had never loved me, that he was never happy with me. And he said it all. Then he was done talking.
I got up quietly and went to the mirror. I looked into my reddened eyes. I was at boiling point. I felt the floor rising vertically to meet me. I sat down and rubbed my head. Then I stood up and went over to the shelves. I took his clothes, found the bag he had left behind, and stuffed his clothes into it. I went to the fridge, took off all the notes, folded them, and stuck them in the bag’s outer pocket. I went to the bathroom for his toothbrush. Then I got his beautiful hat. I was going to miss that hat. When everything was in the bag, I put the bag by the front door and lay down beside it. The floor was cold—cold and dirty. I saw that I still had a long day of cleaning ahead. I don’t know how many hours I lay like that—facing Ali’s bag, my cheek stuck to the floor. I felt myself sink into the wooden floor. My arms extended motionless beside me. Only then did I recognize it as the moment of the ending. I fell asleep.
34
The sun doesn’t enter the small apartment in the morning. There’s a large window that takes up the entire width of a wall, but its thick glass never sees direct sunlight. On the other side of the glass there are buildings, some built in the eighties and some much older. And there’s the garden of an embassy that has been there for years. I never paid attention to the colors of the flag raised in its yard.
The sky is as pale as my father’s face on that day long ago, a disturbing grayish white and blue, by turns terrifying and reassuringly calm. I can still see the colors that passed over my father’s face in those few moments. Nine years have gone by since I stood staring at him as he lay in the hospital’s mortuary fridge, terrifying and familiar, resentful of death, finally free of the world’s unending troubles, and angry about the unfinished revolutions he would miss.
I haven’t reached thirty yet. My father left when I was barely twenty-one, a few months after Zayn. Baba, I have done so much in your name: countless marches in the streets of Cairo, demonstrations in which I raised my thin voice in chants, unadulterated joy at the fall of a corrupt regime, nights spent sleeping on the ground in the square. I even broke my heart once or twice in your name. You didn’t see me and you missed the incomplete miracles that were like messages of half-prophets. You had gone to a place of peace and comfort, nine years before.
I spent innumerable hours in my kitchen, knowing full well you weren’t coming. I still served your favorite dishes and sat before them talking to you about revolutions and sit-ins and successive defeats. I heard your voice every step of the way. Every time I was confused, I heard your loud, reassuring laughter. I kept seeing you. I saw you looking at me through the flimsy cloth of the burial shroud. I saw you pound your hands on the walls of the narrow tomb, brush aside the dead bones that surrounded you, and come out to console me after each new departure. You came back to sit with me at the metal table in our favorite restaurant, to be silent with me, and occasionally to chide me for my recklessness and stupid choices. You were always there, always and everywhere, holding my hand and pulling me into a hug that lasted beyond the end of the world.
Nine slow, cruel years have passed. And ten years since Zayn. When I lost Zayn, you were there to make sure that I was still breathing and my heart was still beating. But no one was there to watch over what I became when you left.
The color of the sky doesn’t change much in the evening; it only becomes darker and sadder. So many lights glow behind the big window. Faraway lights that appear and disappear. From behind the window they look enticing, but if you look closely, you see them for what they are: billboards for cooking oils, for tourist resorts promising a better life. Which is why it’s always best to look from a distance.
I get u
p from the sofa that has been my refuge for nine years. I’ve only ever wanted to leave it when the loud call of demonstrations summoned me. I went and imagined you with me, holding my hand. I clung to you as you tried, from your grave, to protect me, but failed. The window is behind the sofa so I don’t have to face the sky every day and think of your face. There’s the customary background noise of the TV. I wake up to find marks on my side or my stomach, and discover that the remote control was stuck to my skin as I slept. I wonder why I don’t turn off the TV before I sleep.
The same morning headache, the same morning moroseness. It takes me at least two hours to get up and brush my teeth. I count the vitamin pills that I’ve collected from every country I’ve ever visited: one for hair loss, one for memory and focus, and the magic one for energy. I swallow them all, together with two capsules for the headache, and put fresh coffee in the machine. Only when the aroma of the coffee mixing with water reaches me do I start to reluctantly wake up to the world.
I don’t work much any more. A few years ago I managed to save enough money and pull a few tricks to get an arrangement for the least possible working hours. It’s not laziness. It’s just that I’ve discovered my inability to stay committed to anything. When did I become like this? Was it when you died, Baba? I think I made up my mind as I said my last goodbye to you at the entrance of the narrow tomb: never again will I invest my feelings in living beings. That was the angry vow I made to you. I blamed you for deceiving me by letting me get attached to your presence when you must have known you weren’t staying. I unwrapped the shroud around your head and feet and told you calmly that I wasn’t angry at you. I was just bitter and frustrated, and was faking my calmness in order not to upset you further. I knew you didn’t like change. Moving to that small tomb was certain to make you anxious, at least until you got used to your new companions. I didn’t want to make things more difficult for you, so before I climbed the ladder that led out of the dusty grave I told you that I wasn’t angry, just too clever to make the same mistake again. No one and nothing will ever again become the center of my life. I won’t sign any contracts, and won’t make anything indispensable to me. That was my vow of self-protection.
Everything comes to an end, Father, even you.
I wake up the same as I do every day, bored and peaceful. I open my laptop and stare at the email that has been waiting for a month. It’s finally time. I print it out and place the paper on top of my large suitcase that’s standing by the door. On that last day, having diligently smoked my seventh cigarette, I put it out, pick up my keychain, and detach the key of my small apartment. I get dressed, lift the suitcase, and step outside. In the elevator, I am met by the neighbor who gives me the same suspicious smile he’s been treating me to since I started living here nine years ago. I look down and stare at my purple shoes. Seconds before the elevator reaches the ground floor, I say without looking at him, “I work as a translator. I translate books. I’m moving out today. Take care.” He looks at me in surprise, shakes his head vigorously, and says, “You will be missed, Miss Nadia.”
I get out of the elevator, hand the key to the building’s caretaker, and take a taxi to the airport. Umm Kulthum sings out of the car radio.
You are closer to me than myself
Whether you are here or far away
I check my passport and the printout of the ticket that will take me to Radwa, and then I sit back and glue my face to the window. I watch the world outside go by. Maybe one day I will return and start again.
Selected Hoopoe Titles
Whitefly
by Abdelilah Hamdouchi, translated by Jonathan Smolin
The Final Bet
by Abdelilah Hamdouchi, translated by Jonathan Smolin
A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me
by Youssef Fadel, translated by Alexander E. Elinson
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