Other Lives

by Iman Humaydan

  Olga and I never ever speak about our relationship— things happen between us spontaneously, without words. I’ve learned how a woman takes off her clothes in front of another person. I have always felt, in the depths of my heart, that my relationship with her was a temporary way station, as I waited for another experience that would be more real. When I told her this, she laughed and hugged me. I waited for her to tell me that what I was living with her would be the most real thing in my life. But she didn’t say anything. Her smile betrayed a certain compassion for a younger girl that always left me uncertain. Many years have passed and I can still taste Olga’s skin on my lips.

  That’s magic, right? Magic, by God! She tells me flamboyantly, describing the aromas of the dishes she loves that fill the house. With her left hand she lifts the cover of the pot on the fire and with her right hand she stirs what’s boiling in the pot. She sprinkles in the spices she likes, then lifts the spoon to her lips and tastes the food. “Oh mama, how delicious,” she says. She’ll cover the pot and start to sing. She’ll look at me and say, “Your eyes are still just like they were when you were small. Your eyes were always full of questions. It’s as if they devour the answers, every word, every motion, whether coming from a human or an animal. They’re never satisfied, like open lips thirsty for a sip of water.”

  I put Olga’s latest test results on the bottom of the suitcase. I put all the doctor’s papers at the bottom of the suitcase and zip it closed as though I don’t want to remember and don’t see any other solution. Olga sleeps on the way to Dhour al-Choueir. Her body seems small, like the body of a teenage girl. Her hair has thinned. She’s weak and debilitated.

  In the hotel room, she takes off her clothes, one article at a time, and appears to be shaking. I go to her to help her get in bed. The air is warm and the windows are all the way open. There’s absolutely no air circulation; the curtains are motionless. I draw back the bedcovers and clear a place for her to sleep. She keeps holding my hand for a few moments and pulls me gently toward her. With a kindly gesture, she motions to me to sit with her in bed. She closes her eyes. I take off some of my clothes and throw them on my bed by the window. I stand for a moment, then turn and see Olga looking at me. I take off my remaining clothes and walk naked toward her bed. I lift the covers on the other side and slip in beside her, with the intimacy of two people whose relationship has not dissipated because of distance.

  She turns to me, I notice a weak half-smile on her face, and I encircle her with my arms. Her naked body is very cold, despite the hot weather. Her skin is smooth but dry. As I draw nearer to her I feel heat creeping through her body. She buries her delicate face in my naked breasts. Time passes like this before our breathing together takes on an even, harmonious rhythm. I pass my hand over her back as though I’m getting to know her all over again. At that moment, I can’t recall the smoothness of her body or the moments of warmth that have never left my mind during my time away from her, those moments I’d make use of whenever Chris approached me in bed. I hold her in my arms once more and feel at that moment as if I’ve forgotten every memory that linked the two of us.

  I listen to the rhythm of her calm, regular breathing and I know that she’s surrendered to a short sleep, but before long it will be interrupted by nighttime pain. When we awake in the morning, I’m still embracing her, her body like an unborn child’s.

  Tomorrow we start chemotherapy, I tell her, and kiss her a morning kiss.

  I wait for Nour but he doesn’t come. I know that he’s not in his office; I know that he’s out somewhere. I’ve been waiting here for hours and his bedroom, which I’ve never liked, is lonely and cold. But I’ll wait and I’ll wait even longer because I know that if I walk out this door before seeing him I won’t be able to return.

  So I’ll wait and this is how I’ll pay back the debt of waiting that I owe him, because he waited for me so many times. It’s as if the air in the room has decreased. Perhaps this explains my feeling of suffocation: if waiting for him in his flat where we first came together causes such feelings of suffocation, then love is useless. Should I just leave? Go back to Mombasa to see the man I don’t want? Or wait for this other man who doesn’t come? I postpone the moment of leaving. And so I delay every decision and every movement. I delay my whole life. In this way, I extend the period of my waiting ever more. I write and dilute my desire for him through writing. I make it dissipate and I forget. I look at the clock on my phone, which is lying next to me on the bed. It would have been better if I hadn’t taken off my clothes. My nakedness is lonely; I can’t bear it. Naked in a room that seems naked, with the whole world outside. I’m alone, waiting for him. I don’t know why just then I remember what Georges said to me in his warm, seemingly hopeless voice when we spoke on the phone the night I left for Australia: “The most beautiful thing about you is that you have a strong presence, you’re not controlled and you’re soft, you’re present and tender, very present and very gentle, you’re strong and resilient. You give without weakness. This is what’s unique to you: you don’t allow a man to decode you too easily.” Did he say everything that he thought about me all at once because he sensed that we’d never see each other again? Only now do I write down what Georges said. But I’m thinking only of Nour, who seems more and more mysterious as I grow closer to him. Every time I know his body more profoundly, I grow lonelier. I miss the smell of his skin…

  Nour can’t bear to stay in one place for long. Maybe the idea of searching for his roots was born out of this constant movement, so that he could travel. But his continual searching worries me, as does his being away. He’s searching for his roots and believes that he’s holding onto something, but in reality he’s only holding onto shadows of the past, his illusions. “I don’t belong here,” he tells me, “I want to go back to my country.” But does anyone have a “home” country? Don’t we invent our own homelands? Perhaps Chris is right when he says that we don’t need that many reasons to love a place and call it our homeland.

  Nour returns to search for his roots. When he doesn’t find them, he decides to leave. As for me, I see myself lost deeper and deeper in a spiral of waiting. It’s OK, I tell myself. I’ll learn how to leave once again, how to depart peacefully. Peacefully? This is the right word now. Peace inside me, in the walls of my womb, which trembles like a leaf whenever I think of him. There’s an entire life that I have almost no power over and that’s nourished by love.

  The last time we met, I went into his apartment. I didn’t see him and I didn’t see his suitcase but I felt it. I knew that he must be in the bedroom. I pulled back the curtain and through the window I saw him sitting on the balcony, which isn’t even wide enough for two people. He put on his sunglasses and tried over and over again to light his pipe. He looked at me from behind his sunglasses. I smiled at his repeated, failed attempts to light his pipe. He wanted to read on my face the impact he makes on me. He wanted to read the impact his coldness and appearance have on my eyes and body. He walked toward me and lifted his glasses from his eyes. I have missed his eyes. I miss the worry with which they sear me whenever I look into them. I know that I still need him more than he needs me. I know he has built a relationship with me within certain boundaries around his life, his work, his relationship to this place, women, his return to his homeland, and his search for his roots. He has chosen a place for me and kept me in this limited, narrow space.

  Here I am, waiting once again. Another wait and another. The end of my last wait is still in my mind. For two weeks I wait for him in the café. I wait for some correspondence from him telling me that he’s returned to Beirut, that the room is waiting for me and that he too waits for me. He says that he’ll come back after two days and he doesn’t come back. I wait an hour for him in the café, two hours, three. I wait for him even longer than this.

  Wimpy fills up, Wimpy empties. Alone on my chair near the cold pane of glass, I look like a mannequin forgotten in a shop window. Our date was set for eight-thirty, time passes,
it’s ten o’clock and he still hasn’t called. The waiter hovers around me. At ten o’clock I’m the last customer. The cafés and restaurants in Solidère are just getting started at ten, but here on this street, Hamra Street, it’s closing time.

  Across from me, Modca has transformed into Veromoda, with a big sign for Jack & Jones. I think, what if I pick up the orange and white chair I’m sitting on in Wimpy’s sidewalk section, bring it over to the closed Veromoda, and sit there right in front of its door? It would seem unnatural to anyone who saw me there. People used to sit there but now people only walk in or look at the displays in the windows as they pass. Now it would be strange to put a chair on the sidewalk in front of it. No one sits in front of fancy boutiques except the man who takes bags from people as they enter, bags they’ve brought from other shops. He takes them to be sure no one puts anything from this shop in their bag when the owner’s not looking.

  Why I am here? I ask myself. Why hasn’t he come yet? Why isn’t my phone ringing? I put the ringer on very low so that only I can hear it. No doubt people know that I’ve been waiting three hours for him, that I asked for juice and then tea and then coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich. I also asked for a pack of cigarettes, Gitanes Lights.

  The waiter tells me that they only have Marlboro and Marlboro Lights, so I take the Lights. I smoke thirteen cigarettes and stop. I keep the last seven cigarettes for when I go back to my apartment on Makhoul Street, for fear of running out once I’m home.

  What will I do when I go back? I’ll get in the bathtub and fill it with hot water. I’ll take off the clothes that I spent hours choosing and changing. I left all the clothes that I’d taken out of the closet lying on my bed when I went out. It’ll take some time to hang them all up again. But I feel incredibly sleepy and I won’t do anything tonight. I can’t do anything now except wait. The writing of waiting. The worry of waiting. The silence of waiting.

  When will this nightmare of mine end? When will I be done dealing with the bureaucracy around our building and be free to go back? They told me by fax that it wouldn’t take more than a month to finish everything. I’ve been here nine months and I’m still waiting.

  I wake up because of a sound that I forget the moment I awake. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure that a sound woke me, though I always put little pieces of wax in my ears to block out the sounds of the world. They wake me up anyway. I sit up in bed, I try to put my feet down and get out of bed. I can’t. I lie down, turn over onto my side, and look at the clock on my phone, which sits on my bedside table. It’s seven AM and there are two missed calls. I look up the numbers. One is from Chris, at one o’clock in the morning, and the other is from Nour, at four o’clock in the morning. Bad timing! Yesterday, I didn’t get even one call from Nour apologizing for standing me up and now I see that he tried to call me at four AM. Did he think I would wait for him all night?

  I try to get out of bed but I’m too weak; I try again and I can’t. Perhaps now I’m paralyzed.

  “I have nothing to give you except my love,” I told him the last time we met. He told me that this was too much for him to handle and that perhaps I was unlucky to have met him.

  I think that I’m a little bit lucky, but I don’t answer.

  He comes back to me three weeks later… We have lunch together, then he says goodbye because he wants to go to his office and read his email. I wait for him for two weeks. He says that he’ll be away for only one week, but his trip lasts a whole eternity. When he comes back, I don’t want to say anything; I don’t want to lay any blame. I want only one thing: to be naked and let our bodies talk to each other. This doesn’t happen. He is tired and sleepy; I’ve already started to calm down and my love is calm and well-mannered. When I leave him, I’m not angry, only sad, a slight pain gnawing at my soul.

  I go back to my flat to shower, to wash the traces of defeat and distress from my body. A mere half-hour later there’s a knock on my apartment door. I know it’s him; I’m still in the shower. I get out, soap on my face and my hair and body wet. I open the door to him and walk back to the bathroom. He takes off his clothes and follows me. He gets in the shower with me and embraces me… This wet union tastes like heaven.

  There’s something dramatic in his eyes when he enters my body. I look at him and he closes his eyes, embarrassed. I ask him to open his eyes and look at me, to look at my face and my full body underneath him; my body undulates under his body and eyes and desire. A slow movement from me and he slows his pleasure. His body receives mine, slowing its rhythmic motions. He waits for my body’s rhythms to intensify and focus for one concentrated moment. Then he’ll know I’ve reached my climax. He’ll know this by watching the muscles on my face relax, the rhythm of my movements will slow and stop, my voice will lower, my breathing will slow. He says that he knows from the light in my eyes and the color of my skin. He says my skin takes on a shade he can’t describe. He can only feel it.

  We sit in the café that has become part of our relationship. He says that he’ll go back to America the following week. The people we love stay with us, inside us until we’re able to accept that we’ve lost them. But he can’t stay with me until then, until he can deal with such loss. Every time his body enters mine, I live out my worry about saying goodbye. “I want you to stay.” I say it and am afraid. I’m expecting fear, the fear of losing him. Then I add, “I know that life will go on if you return to America. I want you to stay here, it’s true. But don’t expect me to fight for you to stay.” I protect myself with these words, but I’m lying. He leaves me and walks away. I stay on the chair in the café, alone. The coffee is cold and I start to cry.

  I came looking for a man I didn’t find. I’ve left another behind me, like someone who’s gone on a long journey and only remembers this when she returns. I remember the journey but I’m not the same woman I was. I can’t be the woman I was because this journey isn’t simply a memory and that’s it—it is another life.

  Nour comes to take me to the South to spend our last weekend together in the Orange House, a small family hotel run by two women. It took me a long time to leave my flat; I had to pack my suitcase. I forgot to do it when I woke up. He’s waiting for me in his car in front of the building. From a distance, his eyes seem like those of someone who’s about to lose hope. When I approach him I feel something new and different. As though I’ve finally accepted his trip to America. I tell myself that this time he’s waiting for me. As though the act of waiting renews itself every day no matter which of us is waiting.

  Love is amazing, but it doesn’t change a person. This strikes me as we walk on the sandy seashore in front of the Orange House, the high waves crashing against the cement walls, their mist reaching my face and neck.

  “Love is amazing,” he reiterates, smiling, unconvinced of what he just said. Love is amazing but it doesn’t change a person, I reply silently. You took a risk on love and lost, I tell myself.

  I’m on the verge of saying just one thing to him: Save what we lived together. I say it in a low, barely audible, voice. I say it and my eyes expect nothing. Perhaps I say it only in order to keep a thin thread suspended between us. I know that he’s not listening to me and won’t be able to do anything for us. And I know that he’s not searching for his roots but for a mere stitch of salvation. I don’t say anything. I think about Nahil and what she said to Olga in the final days before she died, “There are things that are unspoken, simple and whole, like eyes.”

  Powerful waves crash high on the shore where we walk and spray their moisture on my hair and face. My lips are filled with the taste of salt. I open my body to the wave and its salt.

  When we leave we die a little death. We die in peace. And we leave in peace. Parting is not simply a little death, it’s returning to the selves that we’d forgotten in the exuberance of passion.

  I wake up early and go down to walk on the beach alone. I want to swim right out into the deep water, where perhaps I can forget the feeling of heaviness that I’ve ha
d since yesterday. I think about what Nour said to me the night before: he wants to travel, to go back to America, to settle his accounts with what’s left of his emotions. I ask myself if what he’s feeling are the leftovers of emotions from which he can’t find relief.

  Leftovers of emotions!

  Did he return to Lebanon only to let go of them?

  It’s hard to swim in the sea by the Orange House because there are so many rocks scattered in the water. But I want to swim. And I want to see the sea turtles that find shelter and sanctuary for their young on this beach. I walk into the water and find it difficult to keep my balance. I try to swim but a powerful wave pushes me toward the rocks. My body crashes into them and I injure my leg. A second and a third wave take me. I return once again to the deeper water but another powerful wave propels me into other rocks. I try to swim free but I can’t. I try very hard to relax and leave my body neutral, as I learned to do in my yoga classes. I emerge from the water with bruises on my legs and arms, all over my body. I sit on the sand and for a few moments feel like I can’t walk. I try to stand up and I manage to, despite my pain.

  I go back to the room and find Nour still sleeping. I go into the bathroom and wash the salt off my body, my bruises growing redder.

  My swollen legs and arms pain me. I look at my body in the giant mirror that covers an entire wall of the bathroom and in the image reflected back I see that I’ve started to look like someone who can fit in better in Beirut.

  I put on a loose, flowing, long-sleeved shirt. I leave a little note for Nour and go out to a nearby café to have breakfast, ignoring my injuries. No time passes before he comes and sits down across from me; he brings his body close, right to the edge of the table that brings us together. He seems to be putting all his weight on the table, as if he wants to get rid of it, to eliminate the small space that separates our two bodies. He says that in Lebanon his dreams have faltered, that he was more optimistic before he came. He says that he lives a strange life, that there’s a mere thread between himself and madness, a thread that he imagines might break at any moment, except that luck’s been on his side. He lifts his coffee cup, drinks a little and then adds, “Or perhaps it’s my bad luck that this thread hasn’t broken.” It’s as if he’s apologizing, though I don’t know for what. I contemplate the gray hair that frames his face; he seems like a young man whose head has been invaded by gray too soon.