by Alia Mamdouh
On the edge of collapse, I clutch at the wooden barrier that keeps me from moving forward. I have come to know ultimately that my blood will stay with me, loyal to the end as I push it away, trying to cover it up and hide it as if it’s a sin or a physical handicap. Arab blood. I stand to the rear while everyone here stares at me, giving me cryptic looks. I’m no longer in love with my own good intentions toward the other.
The policeman stares me in the eye, uncovering my anxiety.
Your eyes, Nader—they carry responsibilities, exclaims my mother. And they’re due some responsibility, too. Put your eyeglasses aside and let me see you as you are, whether your flaw is nearsightedness or the squint of being farsighted. This is your gift to me. Do not retaliate by hiding your eyes from me. I want to make sure of something: are they dry or are they tearing over as you say goodbye to me?
That’s the way Suhaila is, demanding a concession from me, demanding even that I look at her as she wants me to, and even in the moments when we part—and we’re addicted to the game of these separations, for hundreds of weeks, I think. I can even explode in pure anger and yet hide it so well that she completely fails to notice. For me, utter misery was not a matter of being expelled from paradise, that heaven of queenly motherhood to which I clung in the belief that it was the very center of the universe, the pole of existence but which she—in her severe, even ruthless, way—disregarded as we grew further apart. For I figured that in my case, this paradise of the mother was not even there. My own mother. An absence.
It all seemed a laughable exercise in futility as I tried to place the policeman’s gaze. His stare was arrogant—that was the word. We were alone facing a battle that had to be joined even if it were to be fought solely with “white weapons.” Words, just words. Is there anything out of the ordinary here, Officer? My name is Nader Adam. I changed it. That was also for the sake of the other. My French isn’t too bad. But his gazes were equipped with magnifying glasses that put me on a giant screen, making me thousands of times bigger so that I looked as if I should be in a cage or a cell, as if I required a guard, chains, locks, and keys. Gripping the wooden rampart between us, I answered his questions. When I turned around to look behind me I found that I was alone. That’s what made me feel embarrassed, ashamed. Now, how strange was this! We had exactly the same skin color. His questions weren’t able to pierce to the depths of my secret Arab self. And after all, my answers were cooperative.
“These are my residence papers for Canada. That’s where I live and work. Here’s the file documenting that I’m about to get my British citizenship because of my marriage.”
He examines me, his gaze steady and firm. A young Iraqi guy, he is thinking. All that this young Iraqi guy wants is a foothold, or maybe two, in order to see himself worthy of this lucky break, the two blessed citizenships that he’ll very soon possess. Two lucky young fellows, the parts of body and mind all back together once again after having been driven apart by torture, by a miserable and deprived existence, and by the international organizations that hem in this young man in the long journey of discovery. Standing still or walking, he tells himself the lie that he exists, that he is here. He believes in his own presence. But without having to hear it from anyone else he feels that he isn’t coherent or solid. He is clever, though. He senses that he is incomplete, but he is trying. He is not a hero and his body can’t handle such superhuman efforts as these. He is not capable of being a fighter, a possibility that did strike his father one day and remained with him all through these years past as he tried to blow courage into his son’s limbs, repeating in his hearing day and night, You are my recompense; you are the payment that I can claim for the days to come. I did not attain the goal he had for me. Nor would he attend my wedding, that occasion which meant that I was soon to grasp, with my own two hands, the sacred wreath of those two divine nationalities. So here I am now in front of you, sir. My smile is not a swindle and my quickness is hateful to you as I stand on the stage. This is not the theater of my poor grandfather and mother. Confused, all I’ve wanted is to obtain some role in the next season’s program.
“Where are you from, Mister—you’re Iraqi, aren’t you? That’s where you’re really from, oui?”
With the tips of his long fingers—the nails are clean—he grasps the file that holds my papers. No absolution from Iraqiness for me, then. Even poison won’t absolve me of it.
I smiled. If luck were to be on my side, if I were to see Suhaila once again, I knew what she would tell me when I related all of this to her. Don’t you see, my darling? That he’s sicker than we are? And more tired—as well as more tiring—than we are. All of those who wear official uniforms are sick—yes, w-Allahi, you just have to ask me.
II
One day you will go back there. That is what she said. Not to the same places, once seductive, that put me where I am now. You’ll go back, she said, and she went on saying it. But I did not believe it, for which road would I choose in the end? To leave, to journey, to live in fright and leave all the instruments and acts of reprisal and revenge behind my back? Or would I take the path of forever answering stupid questions as I moved from one airport to another? Or, even if I were to obtain the nationalities of the civilized world—every single one of them—what then? What then, after everything had been stolen from me, even the scraps, the refuse?
What happened in the course of it all? The reason I am here has nothing to do with my occupation as an electrical engineer who works in a Canadian-American firm that produces, equips and sells spare parts for all the world’s electronic gadgets. And she—is she this woman, the very mother who stopped all contact, who stopped writing and visiting, for no reason? Who had neither an excuse that was convincing nor one so trivial that I could quickly dismiss it?
“Yes, Monsieur, I came for her sake. She is in a coma. None of her friends has told me the date it happened, not exactly. Here—this is the address of the hospital. Here are letters from Caroline, her friend, sent by email, inviting me before—”
This conversation was hurtful, and because of it I was all set to let out a string of toxic language in his face. If Suhaila pulls through this, here is how she will describe me: Here is my son who was incarcerated by the blunders of his parents, people who lost the gamble and went astray, each going bust in his own peculiar way; my son who always shows up when it’s too late. The days go by and as they do, he does recollect that he must keep his despair about these parents within the boundaries of a reasonable notion of “despair,” and that he must not let his sadness become too strong for him to bear. Nader, she said, you will go back; and I did not believe her. Did she believe, or not; forget, or not? Whatever the case, she went on repeating the same things.
I won’t forget, Nader. If I stop remembering, my self will get the better of me and take me to a place where I do not want to be. This self of mine contains more fright and more ferocity than other selves do. Yet I’m not capable of hanging myself—this self of mine. Maybe such was the fate of your father, but I cannot do it—it’s that simple. Not at this age—I am not up to killing myself. I’m not defenseless, Nader, not unarmed.
But then she would say, almost in the same breath, Nader, I’m in worse shape than you think.
She was no longer capable of putting together a single coherent sentence. That’s what Caroline had let me know a short while before. It did not worry me, however. I fancied she was playing with me since she has always been very fond of taking my breath away as a strategy to weaken me. For I am not, nor have I ever been, the noble and generous son; and no, I am not entitled to the role of the gutsy young hero capable of withstanding and handling her rapidly changing moods.
I heard the policeman’s voice and the sound of his moving hand as he bore down on the file with his stamp. He raised his head.
“Do you know anyone here besides your mother, M’sieur?”
“Of course—her friends. Here, just a minute, please.”
I opened my case of papers, pul
led out the address book, and turned the alphabetized pages. “Asma, Blanche, Tessa, Caroline, Sarah, Narjis, Wajd, and—”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough. I just want two. Choose two names, please.”
“Blanche and Caroline.”
Three
I
My son Leon was at my side, poking at me in fun with his soft fingers, pushing up the hem of my shorts and playing with the hair on my thigh as I read Caroline’s email on the screen in front of me.
At this point—Caroline had written—Suhaila is captive to her own dismissal: she has admitted defeat. We don’t know how long she’ll remain in this state of complete isolation. She’s in an indefinable place between depression and final despair. Not because of your wife. I worry about this: I worry that ever since her last visit to you, this is what you will assume. And it certainly isn’t because of you. Don’t take what I say as a sign that I’m against you. Look, the two of you, yes, you are one of the reasons, and likely we are another, and then, her—first and foremost, there is her. She is the immediate cause, the obvious one, but not the only one. What I’m saying might need some finessing, it probably should be more precise from all angles, but I’m passing it on to you exactly as I’m thinking it since we all need to summon our courage if we are going to uncover the causes of things when it’s a question of illness or death. One day as we were drinking the wine she adores, in my apartment, and were looking out over the Seine, your mother said to me, Sickness is the least hurtful of pains. Haven’t you thought, my dear, about the other kinds of pain, and the miseries and troubles that one can’t see, like waiting for a hug from a man, that man, him, him or another, why not?
Nader, I am just repeating your mother’s own blunt language. Don’t judge her—and I do know your traditions. I’m talking about a dear friend whose life I entered through the coincidence of Théâtre du Soleil, whose productions are written by the French writer Tessa Hayden. That’s where I got to know her. There is no doubt that her friendship for me is priceless. Daily she menaces me, saying, It’s the fierce sun of Iraqi friendship that will melt your Swedish skin slowly, and you will join our lovely gang.
She goes on, your mother. Even if I were to die after that embrace, she says, it wouldn’t matter. She waves her hand at one of the scientific journals that I have subscribed to, repeating what she read there one time. Sciences drew her, and news of space and the astounding galaxies of the universe. She has always teased me. What a splendid thing it would be, she’ll say to me, if we could be alive at a time when we can see other human beings coming to us from there. Let’s hope they will re-educate us, give us a new education, that of the rational and the insane, the strong and the weak. This might be the ideal solution for the people of the world. She’ll laugh, and I can see her continuing to chuckle as she nibbles on French cheese. Do you know, Caroline, she says, that the body of that man—most likely she means your father, because she never ever mentions him by name, she always says “he” or “that man”—or maybe he is some other man, any man, I don’t know, but she goes on—I wonder where he is now? Is he in prison or did he die in crossfire at the barracks? It seems probable that he is somewhere beyond the country’s borders. Perhaps he got married and had children. Who knows?
Your mother goes on talking; she doesn’t seem particularly concerned or upset about any of this. His body carried secret love letters exactly as animals’ bodies do, she says, but when she reaches that point she stops for a moment and then corrects herself. No—it was my body that carried those letters, in gummy, acidic secretions from warm places inside of me, to swirl out and enfold him in grace and the charm of a coquette. I was like an animal in heat—a radiation that drenched me completely, that came over me only at moments of anticipation or confusion, that might seep into me at those times when I was on the edge of breakdown. What could I do but galvanize that substance and keep it always vigorous to keep me in a state of passion—for such were my only letters to him. She would tell me, then, that she had sent tens of letters to the Red Cross, and to the Yellow and the Orange! Smiling weakly, she would add, her voice wry, These outfits hatch themselves everywhere, running the length and breadth of this globe as if the folks who spawn them are specialists in the running shoe industry. Every day she would sit down and write out those opinions of hers as if it were a sacrosanct duty. By the way, the name of that substance is hormone discharge. She would write each letter of it in a different style and a new color; she records things like a professional. I think it renewed her mental powers to do that. To me she would say, That substance, Caroline—it’s the only matter in reserve I’ve got left. It is my last opportunity to stay alive. She wanted—she really wanted—him to hear that, to read it, even if he objected, or you did, to all of this loose talk. She no longer cared about that, at least.
She gets up slowly as if she’s about to perform the prayers. She puts on her chosen recording of the repulsive gypsy singer. She detaches herself from me and from everything around her and now she is a being beyond anyone’s ability to subdue or control. Later, on the point of bursting into tears, she whispers, The body dancing is striving to keep secrets secret, but all people think about is letting the secrets loose.
II
The airport corridors loop and coil endlessly. Dragging my suitcase behind me I shuffle down them like an elderly man. I don’t peer into the glass or through the steel—this place, after all, is yet another one of those residences to which we moved at some time or another. I have kept my fund of fine names for its architecture, every possible way of naming beauty and expensive elegance, but when I am actually here I feel as though I’m in a prison cell that closes in on my chest.
I had the strong sensation that everyone who walked by me could hear the sound echoing inside my ribcage: yes, surely they could hear my loud heartbeat. I waited my turn in the taxi queue. I gave the driver the address written in my pocket diary. I was completely incapable of speech, so much as a single word. I sat scrunched up in the left hand corner of the back seat. My head, slumping back against the seat, was heavier than the barbells on which I used to train every day in hopes of strengthening my muscles. I kept my scream inside of me. I felt sharp pangs in my belly. Everything in existence seemed to parade by in front of me—my parents, me, and the entire world—to settle in one enormous barrel below which the flames were beginning to shoot upward. Whenever they calmed down those tongues of flame always blazed again; and the recipe is always tucked away inside the cook’s pocket. There are no old recipes that are right for us, ones that will satisfy our hunger. But there aren’t any new recipes either, recipes for which we’re waiting, knowing they’ll show up and so we can keep ourselves happy just by imagining them. We are afraid of sepsis if the ingredients are measured any differently than usual, and of vomiting if we eat the whole meal. I have lost my appetite and my ability to swallow has gone as far as it can. I’m no longer capable of swallowing new truths or new catastrophes either. In the mirror the driver’s cold eyes keep tabs on me, his gaze as hard as rock. And I long for my mother’s food. Bewildered, ineffectual, I feel as if I have come to search for a vacant position and now here I am, suddenly employed but not sure how, on my way to record my name and address at the syndicate.
Whom will I come upon first? Blanche, Caroline, Asma, Narjis? Or Tessa of whom Suhaila wrote on the day she met her: Tessa—a species of being unsuited to descriptions or qualifiers. In our beautiful Arabic literature, storytellers used to launch their stories by saying, There was once a certain place, toward which we will set our face. That’s the sort Tessa is—she’s worthy of all of us setting our faces toward—she’s a destination in herself. Nader, I expect you will encounter her one day since she lectures in literature, theater, criticism, the novel, and poetry in the universities of the United States and Canada as well. I will tell you about her sometime.
III
I put my hand up to my face and ran it over my rough skin. I hadn’t shaved for three days. I always found it an
noying to perform this stupid repetitive task simply so that I could appear to be in the prime of my youth. For Suhaila it was a matter of overwhelming importance. I would be a bit stubborn about it but before long I would give in to her desires. Whereas with Layal, the Lebanese girl, I’d find all my plans changing the moment I faced her, trying to confront a personality that I found very forceful. Layal would exploit my strained nerves, trying all means of irritating me. Once she stripped me of all my weapons I would yield to her. She was the first girl to put an end to that shy adolescent boy—here in this very city, years ago—so that he burst into young manhood, no longer listening to advice or putting up with complaints, lost among furtive embraces and hasty touches and stolen kisses in the side streets. Those kisses were taken from girls who didn’t stretch any helping hands in his direction. The girls in particular! This blossoming young man vied with an awkward youth who associated with silly girls but made no further effort at acquaintance or real friendship or sex for that matter. He groped and stumbled; he suffered; and he resorted in desperation to the secret act.
Being in Layal’s presence would transform me, even if only momentarily, into a raging wind. For a few paltry seconds the claims of male pride would be satisfied. But she would close me down, roughly, and so I would stand there completely impotent as she stood watching. She was freer than I. I was determined to appear to her in all my elegance, my face shaven and my clothes pressed, cologne drifting from me. But she was resolute about treating me as if she were my boss, and she would storm at me.
