by Alia Mamdouh
I don’t know anything, Nader. There is another person inside of me, who walks and breathes, goes into the bathroom and washes and goes to bed but doesn’t sleep. I am chasing after my self and I want to meet her again but I can’t do it. I can’t bear the idea that I have lost that self forever. I will go on waiting for it, Nader, do you understand me? I beg you not to get angry with me if I am unable to make you happy or to put myself and those around me at ease. Do you know, I feel that I am not right but I’m not wrong, either, I am not afraid and it isn’t that I don’t care. I feel like the strengths I had in the beginning, in Iraq, have left me and will never come back. Even if I was passive there, as you and your uncle say. When I eat I don’t have any sensation; is it wood I’m eating or garbage? Everything is something else, every person who meets me is less, smaller, huger than I imagine the person to be. Nothing has a single perfect form and there is no question that has an answer and there is no good answer, one that’s ordinary, mundane. I don’t know if I’ve been expressing what was inside of myself, really, fully the way I feel. It’s easy to make me out as a liar in all of this and more, but I know one thing which remains the strongest to this moment and you must believe it: when you are with me I don’t feel miserable. That’s right. Yes, Nader, this is the one truth in my life. But I don’t know if it is helpful in any way. Even if I’ve been wrong, don’t confuse me or embarrass me, and don’t accuse me by saying that that lawyer was flirting with me. Did you notice that? He is just a nice man, but what is the point in this whole subject anyway?
But she is my mother. And she is more involved with me than I can bear, and I don’t even show any pleasure at her Iraqi songs, which cause me unbearable distress. We’re sitting at the little table and she seizes my hand and raises it to her mouth and kisses it, surprise kisses on the palm, and I yank my hand away immediately, disgusted. Her voice falls in droplets onto me and so do her sudden tears; for she doesn’t know when she will stop talking about him, my father, and she doesn’t listen to me, either. I let her talk on while I follow the figure of Elizabeth, my English friend, in her new dress. I am not able to distinguish very clearly between the young fellow infatuated with the love of that very devout girl and the love of my mother toward the last person in her life, because it does come into my mind that she still sees me as a person in the middle of the road, someone who is between son and husband, between the real person I am in front of her and that absent one who throws himself into captivity and escape. And she was so very confident of her issue that she would stay up all night, in front of her innumerable files on the prisoners in every site on earth, while the driver, Ken, would bring her some novels and promise that one day he would fill her in about him and his mother, in Laos and Cambodia, and about the gypsies and the native Indians. She was afraid to get too close to the Arab prisoners and specifically the Iraqis. She knew that if once she were to enter there, she would be captured, spellbound; her throat, she knew, would become congested with blood and curses. Coming back to the apartment, she would rearrange the area that was mine as I followed her like a tethered bull going round in circles as one year cycled into the next. This tethered bull never came to a stop, neither in the cold nor in the heat.
The door opens quietly. Dr. Wajd comes in and finds me standing here in this state of mind. She comes up to me.
“Are you calm enough now so that we can talk a little?”
I turned. My calmness was only a result of some sort of aversion I had to all of these people.
“She—is she dying?”
“Where do you get these dark thoughts from? Not everyone who goes into a coma is at the end.”
“And—”
“Should we talk here?” She put out her hand to me. “Please, if I may.” She took my hand as she opened the door. It was a motherly gesture and my immediate reaction was to sense a danger signal in the air. I slipped my hand out of hers. We walked along together. I was thinking of all the surprises waiting for me. Was the end near? And would she parcel out the cataclysm in installments to me? Our friends sit silently, each one submerged in private thoughts. A new face, unknown to me an hour ago, surprised me. The owner of the face rose and came to me, taking me in her arms with a gesture that truly flustered me. She was sobbing. Dr. Wajd introduced her.
“This is Asma, friend of your mother’s. She is the one who told us everything that happened. Haven’t you noticed that the number of friends is growing?”
Asma’s voice had that fervent Iraqi ring to it.
“God’s mercy is wide, Nader, and you are a believing man, my dear. Come on, come sit here, come over here next to me.”
I was dragging my feet leadenly. I sat down beside her. My emotions were a jumble. And every new face pushed my emotional reactions as far inside of me as could be and then I had to recompose myself. My embarrassment and tension were at their height as Wajd concentrated her look on me. Blanche sat down next to Caroline. Lifting my head, I saw Narjis and Hatim. They were silent. All of these emotions told me nothing. Wajd must report right now, she must talk to me. What was she waiting for? She approached me and I made a space for her next to me. I swung my head to look at her. In real fear.
“Now, really, please, I’m listening, tell me what you know.”
Wajd smiled and the conversation began in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
“Suhaila told me you tried to put together a band when you were at university, and that you write a diary, or memoirs. And do you still love photography? I’ve seen some of the photos she has. She’ll say to me, Nader’s better than anyone else at getting candid shots. And, all right, before this or beyond that, you’re an electronic engineer; but clearly it isn’t just numbers that appealed to you, and that’s a brave move on your part.
Life is not the nightmares
that come to us unbidden
in the middle of the night as we sleep
The nightmares are what you
yourself will tell me right now.
How often Suhaila repeated these lines of poetry in my presence!”
I was getting more uncomfortable, swallowing my saliva with difficulty.
“No, this isn’t me but someone else
I’m not capable of standing this much pain
For the sake of someone the moist breeze blows
For the sake of someone the dawn light is rosy
We know nothing, and it is all the same”
I didn’t listen to the rest of the lines. She had memorized them only because my mother had repeated them so often in front of her. They were my lines, ones I had written down when I first started university. But Suhaila had come to repeat them instead of me.
I sensed the seriousness in Wajd’s voice. She spoke as though she were tutoring a little boy. I sensed equally that all of these women here were poised to play exactly this role. I wasn’t used to this. But I wasn’t capable of steering clear of it. They would judge me based on the ten years—or was it twelve—that I had spent walking atop a tightrope, next to my father, unable to figure out the enigmas that made him up. Meanwhile, Suhaila grew more distant from me year after year, so that I retraced my steps to the beginning, fearful all the while that I would never truly encounter the person she is, as long as I appeared—in her eyes and likely in the eyes of all of these people—unworthy of confidence. I dried my tears and suppressed some things I might have said that had nothing to do with any of them but only with her. I really wanted to be alone with her, and far away from them, in case she were to suddenly awaken and launch into words of blame as Wajd was doing now. I did not seem to even have any perspiration left inside my body. Not only was I covered in dried-up sweat but I discovered that the shirt I had on was showing signs of serious wear: I noticed how worn the fabric of the sleeve was when I opened the cuff and pushed it up. Suhaila does not like such doings in the least.
Nader, you aren’t a teenager now! You just can’t—
It was as if she carried around her reprimands in the pockets of her ni
ghtgown or her coat, and whenever she needed to, she just dipped in there and ladled one out to me. Where’s your necktie—that would make your Adam’s apple a little less visible. It is so very prominent on that neck of yours.
But right now it is Wajd who is going on and on. “Worry and depression—all very common among people, all people, especially women who are on their own. Such women are contributing in a major way to the generally high statistics on depression in the population. Being alone, feeling one’s needs frustrated, having no steady income, and so not enough money to be comfortable, and then add to that the plunge in self-esteem. All of it doubles the pressure on one’s nerves. Moreover, your mother is without a permanent partner—and then what about your father possibly being a prisoner or missing or . . . and what about your country being ostracized, maybe. The violence Suhaila faced from your father, I don’t know if she told you the details or not—all of that caused her to suffer nervous and behavioral problems. She wasn’t working with me on her problems for very long, because very soon we became friends, close friends. This was my mistake, of course, more than it was hers. It’s very common in psychiatric medicine. I was the one who failed, failed with her, because I shrank the distance between therapist and patient. The funny thing is that I began seeking her advice on some of the issues I have.”
“And now, doctor?” I said it impatiently, and then came to an abrupt stop somewhat nervously once she could hear the rising tone of my voice, which caused everyone to turn in my direction. But it was as if Wajd had anticipated this, for she wasn’t in the least surprised, it seemed. She simply went on in a low voice, and I felt ashamed of myself.
“Suhaila didn’t see it as anything serious. But her sensitive nature was causing discomfort for her and also making those around her uncomfortable and uneasy. When she got to know the French writer Tessa Hayden who was involved in writing for the theater, she wondered whether, since she is the daughter of a major Iraqi theater impresario, performing a role or two on a French stage might conceivably allow her to become a different person. She did some folk performances for small audiences and worked with a few Arab and Iraqi directors based in Europe. She seemed possessed by the spirit of ancient Iraqi dance, from the rituals of the Sumerians to the dances performed to this day. She considers dance a means of liberation and a way that she can exorcise the rejection and ostracism directed at her, first and foremost, and also at her country. Tessa became a source of support and fair treatment to her as her life was changing direction in this way. But she continued to lack the language, although she was not too concerned about it. She went on repeating in our hearing and in Tessa’s that dance was her language and it encapsulated her sense of modesty and humility. It was her humble gesture toward her fellow human beings. It was dance that made art the point of universal convergence. She ended some of those evening performances with a gleeful and spur-of-the-moment touch. She believed that dance strengthened her resistance or her immunity to the harshness she had been suffering and that it gave a person more of the strength one needs to make the choice between life and self-destruction. That’s why she has been so addicted to it.”
I all but pounded my head against the wall in front of me as I seized Wajd’s hand and shook it insistently. My voice reflected my constricted throat as I burst out.
“Doctor, I know what was confronting her and it is what continues to confront all of us. I hope that you can see that now I do want to know. Only now, in fact. Do you believe she can get beyond the danger stage, the condition Blanche called the zero point? What does all this mean? Please, please tell me.”
“Along with the dance, she was searching and asking and taking things down and sending letters to humanitarian organizations. She knew there was no point in any of it but she went on doing it. She didn’t know who was responsible for what happened then and what is happening now. The terror came very close to her and she acted according to its dictates most of the time. She would get lost in her own thoughts and wouldn’t listen to me or to the advice of her doctors and friends. She would not follow anyone’s guidance.”
I could not make out exactly what Dr. Wajd was trying to get at. This conversation had gone beyond my capacities. But she went on with a patience that vied with my despair. Outmatched it, in fact.
“Of course she was treated successfully for the high blood pressure, and on a regular basis. But her condition has to do first with age, and also with how very strong her reactions to things are. And even though we—her close friends—we know how much care she takes with the basic demands of health by walking and exercise and reasonable nutrition, yet she has not been able to stop that awful smoking, and—”
Suddenly she stopped. She seized my wrist. I felt as though I stood accused, as she followed my reactions with her eyes. Now here she was opening the police report file; now here I was, appearing before her bench and before all of them: an outlaw son. Had I played my role as I ought? Or had it been purely a matter of obligation and duty? Had I reached adulthood—the age of right guidance, as Arabs say—in the gaze of these women who were Suhaila’s loved ones? Had I become an equal citizen such that I could obtain their approval of me, at the outset at least? For I had lost the distinction of being the one whom she would recognize and take to her breast. Now the issue before me was straightforward and complex, simple and difficult at the same time: had I come here solely to strengthen the confidence held in me, confidence in myself?
IV
She had deceived me, malingering. And she would deceive me more if she were to lose consciousness before she could hear the rumor of my arrival. I had not come solely for her sake but for mine as well. I had not been capable of ruling out this journey for myself, forbidding myself to take it for the sake of Leon and for the new child we were awaiting and for all of the questions we would encounter concerning this and that and whatever else we might have to face. Wajd still had hold of my wrist and the darkness was spreading inside my eyeballs. I felt as though I would drop in a faint if I were to remain here even another minute in front of these rows of watching eyes.
“Naam . . .”
Wajd did not take her eyes from me as I repeated, in a voice that was growing louder, “Naam, now Wajd, tell me, what is going on?”
There was silence for a few moments. I murmured, “Yes, Doctor, I am the ugly son, the harsh, self-loving, disobedient son. What we are obliged to do now is exchange roles, in front of you and of all of them. Hmm?”
I went on, my voice now capable of a stronger, louder presence. “Yes, me, a word not like any other, not like her or him or them or even all of you, all of the women here. Rather, me, I, ahh, yes, this is perfectly evident a thing for all of you. You are her friends, women and men, all of you are her friends.”
She tried to stop me with her own stillness. She was trying to protect me from something but I didn’t know what the essence of it might be.
“Nader! It’s neither you nor her nor us. Why do you talk this way about yourself and others? Why?”
“It’s owing to her. To my wife. And it’s probably thanks to me, too—I’m her son. And thanks to the country, the father and captivity, and the war. It’s thanks to insanity and stupidity.”
I stopped suddenly. I would have liked it better had there been a megaphone in my hand so that my voice would pierce every corridor there.
“I want out of here. I don’t want to see you. This is hideous and it is more than I can stand.”
Wajd stood up and all the rest did likewise. Quietly Hatim came up to me, grasped my arm and stepped closer. He touched my cheek and laid his hand on the crown of my head. I sensed that wafting from him was a special fragrance of fatherhood. He was a father and for a moment, I had the sensation that he must be a new sort among fathers. He must be a good, sound father, truly there, not a mere image in one’s head. There, in his care, his hands on me, I trembled, my body expressing the state of utter haplessness I had reached. I was in a stupor; he spoke again.
“I know, Nad
er. I know.”
I buried my head in his chest. I was not embarrassed by the rising sound of sobs that went on and on. Why had Suhaila made me love the two extremes of yes and no? Like a peasant, planting seeds only to uproot the green shoots later. Why? Why?
Hatim pulled me away from the group. He was holding my palm in his warm grip. Our hands conversed amiably and acknowledged a mutual understanding as complete as could be. I would be a better listener if I stayed silent; I would know then what he wanted from the touch of his hand. This was after I had reckoned that if he were to utter a word I would hear it more accurately than would the women over there. As I sensed that I grew comfortable with him. His steps were strong and firm.
“Do you want to sit down apart from them or would you prefer that we go to a café somewhere nearby?”
“I can’t take any more reproaches, Ustadh Hatim.”
“Please, call me Hatim. Just Hatim.”
I lifted my head to look at him. He was quite a lot taller than me. I saw his face in the patch of light coming from the large window at the far end of the corridor. He had an attractive look to him, and his features were telling me that he would understand me. I don’t know why I had already intuited that he would make no accusations against me nor would he issue an unjust ruling. He would not cast the responsibility for Suhaila’s illness onto my shoulders alone. His gaze was steady and concentrated, emerging from his light-colored eyes: were they brown or gray? I could not tell. Because of this and many other sensations he did not remind me of any of the acquaintances or friends of my father. Yes, he was Iraqi, and he was similar-looking enough to many other Iraqis, but he did not resemble my father. I imagined him as the shaykh of a tribe from the south of Iraq, wearing a zabun covered by a woolen abaya encasing his athletic form. As I tilted my head higher his elegant hand was poised to signal for quiet from the entire group. Everyone was paying as much attention to him as I was. I saw him as a man of nature, of the desert, born among the sands, with the ease desert men have in their walk, their gestures, and the flow of their movements from one stance, one action, to the next. To me he looked like a man of courage, more courageous than I was, to be sure, and more courageous than my mother, than all of the women here. His courage would reach over to me, lending me the strength to pull myself together in his presence without it causing any feeling of grievance or resentment on my part. He is a person who smiles through his eyes; he understands what I mean without my having to say it directly. For the first time here, I smile, as I hear what he is saying.
