Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs

by Abdulaziz Al Farsi

  The voice came closer. The steps came closer. I thought: I know you’re appearing out of my crazy imagination. You can’t possibly be here. It isn’t your steps that turn the darkness into this loud, painful clamor. All these sounds are just in my head. If I looked behind me now, all I would find would be empty darkness. Don’t try to frighten me. I’ll keep on going down this path, Abir. You’ve got no right to occupy my being this way.

  The sound of the footsteps accelerating behind me became more distinct. I stopped, and so did the footsteps. I turned with my whole body to look back. I looked carefully, but saw nothing. I kept on going, paying no attention, but I was sure I heard the sound of footsteps following me. Heavy footsteps on the ground. Abir’s voice faded away, but the footsteps were still there. I stopped again. I turned, but found no one. Was I really being pursued? Fear can do a lot. The terror that had taken me over from the experience of sneaking out right before dawn had allowed my imagination to create these footsteps in the dark. I resolved not to turn around again, since it was wasting time, and people might wake up while I was still roaming the streets.

  I walked faster, and the footsteps behind me sped up. Oh my God! I thought. The illusion is speeding up, too! But I was determined not to turn around. I was almost there. Once I was inside my house and had gone to my room, this whole delusion would come to an end. I’d nearly arrived—just a few more meters, and I’d be there. Why was I troubling myself with this craziness?

  Finally I arrived. I opened the back door and went in. I leaned up against the wall near the door to catch my breath. By the time I took my last few steps, I was almost running. My whole body was drenched in sweat. I went to get some water from the refrigerator. As I did so, I saw my grandfather coming in through the kitchen door, his piercing gaze fixed on me. I decided to ask him a question first, lest I be exposed: “Hi, Grandpa. I see you’re all dressed. The call to prayer hasn’t sounded yet, so why do you want to go out now?”

  He didn’t take his eyes off me.

  “What’s wrong, Grandpa?” I asked.

  He kept staring at me. I set the glass of water aside. Then I decided to leave the kitchen, ignoring my grandfather’s scathing looks. When I got to the door, he stopped me with his hands.

  “Come back in here,” he said. “Where have you been?”

  Pretending to laugh, I said, “Where would I be? In my room, of course.”

  “Where have you been? I’m not stupid. You’re dripping with sweat. And you’re dressed to go out.”

  “I’m sweating because I came down the stairs so fast. And I’m dressed to go out—just as you are—because I want to go to prayer.”

  “Don’t lie!” he shouted. “You don’t need to lie! When you do something, don’t deny it. Denying it means you feel ashamed of having done it. Why do you do something if it will bring you a feeling of shame later on? Don’t deny it. Understand?”

  “Calm down, Grandpa,” I said. “It’s dawn now. People will hear us. Why are you so angry?”

  Even more sharply, he shouted, “I loathe you when you play dumb this way and try to pull the wool over my eyes! Didn’t I warn you last time? Didn’t I tell you it was the first time, and the last? Why did you go and do it again? I saw you come out of there with my own two eyes. Then I followed you all the way home. Can you still deny it?”

  His voice, which must have reached my mother’s room, and might have carried outside the house as well, terrified me. I’d been virtually caught in the act, and I didn’t know what the best thing to do was. All right. I admit he was right. If I was convinced that it was wrong to visit Ayda, then why had I done it? If, on the other hand, it was right, then what reason did I have to be afraid? I said to him, “You’re right, Grandpa. I’m wrong. I shouldn’t have visited her at this time of day.”

  “Not only should you not visit her,” he added. “You should keep completely away from her. I don’t want you to have anything to do with that girl. Understand?”

  What was this? Why was my grandfather so prejudiced against this particular girl? Despite the way Abir pressed herself upon my being, despite her presence inside me, I was attracted to Ayda. She was a wonderful girl who had touched many dark places in me and flooded them with light. I said to my grandfather, “Why? Don’t I have the right to love?”

  “Yes, you do,” he replied. “But stay away from this girl. Even if the sky falls in, I’ll never allow you to have any dealings with her.”

  Agitated, I said, “But that isn’t fair. It’s narrow-minded. You have no claims over my heart, and I’m free to want whoever I choose. What if Ayda happened to be the best person I’d ever met, and I wanted her for myself?”

  “That will never be, even over my dead body!” he screamed. “I won’t let you! You’re drowning! The man who’s drowning will latch on to anything to survive. Even if a drowning man sees a shark’s jaw, he’ll put his hand in it, not knowing it’s going to tear him to shreds.”

  I said, “I think I’m a free entity. I have the right to choose the person I want. I’m not drowning, and Ayda isn’t a shark.”

  “Then this is between you and me!” he yelled. “If you go near her, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

  As he stormed out, he found my mother in front of him. He didn’t say a word to her. He went up the stairs fretfully and left me gazing into her face, uncertain as to what she had heard, and what she hadn’t.

  From which direction do you begin when you’re confronted by your mother, who senses everything and knows exactly what you’re thinking? In her silence, which lasted minutes that felt like an eternity, as she gazed into my eyes, and as my grandfather’s footsteps gradually faded away, I wept. I knew quite well what it was that had brought on the tears. It was that feeling of lostness, the feeling you get when the wind is coming at you from all directions. You run away from a gaping wound in your spirit that you’re incapable of treating. You try to forget, and you know the way, but the thorns strewn along the path bloody your feet. You can’t stop, even though walking exhausts you. In the distance you see a dream-like homeland that will protect you from the stormy gales. You see the water, you smell the scent of rest. You say, “I’ll run in the direction of that homeland.” As the wound pursues you relentlessly, you speed up. Suddenly, a high wall looms in the road that leads to the dream homeland. You dig your fingernails into the wall, but you can’t do a thing. You can’t be certain that this dream homeland is any better than the wound you’re running away from. For all you know, the homeland may just be another wound. But the hope of something better keeps you putting one foot in front of the other. The wall that’s suddenly appeared between you and the dream homeland stirs up your emotions, strengthening your faith in the homeland, as well as your longing to reach it. When the wind whinnies disdainfully, stinging your face, your fingers now sunk into the wall, tears gush from your eyes.

  “Calm down, son.”

  She stroked my head, drawing it close to her bosom. I wept bitterly, as though I were releasing all the fits of weeping I had suppressed in years past. I wasn’t crying only on account of the wall and that feeling of lostness. Rather, I was crying over every loss I’d ever suffered, over every moment of sadness that had gripped me without my being able to cry because my spirit had been too parched at the time. I was crying over every wish I’d ever had but hadn’t been able to fulfill. I cried for all those I had known on the face of the earth, and those who were now beneath it. I cried for every part of myself that I had abandoned along my long road, since the time I had left my mother’s arms and headed into life’s vast unknown. I could feel every hot tear telling my mother’s bosom: “Why did you leave him alone? Was this long trek really necessary for him to learn what he’s learned? When he was little you used to tell him the village’s legends, stories about ghosts and wizards, and fairy tales about beautiful girls. He was fond of life, and believed everything that came out of your mouth. He loved life, and left your arms with his heart naked and unprotected. Now l
ook at all the scars on it. Look. . . .”

  The fit of weeping passed, and the two muezzins finished sounding the call to prayer. “Get up and pray,” she said. “After the prayer I’ll be waiting for you in my room.”

  On Our Shoulders We Carried Our Fates, the Fates No Forehead Could Bear

  The first signs of morning had begun to appear when I went into my mother’s room and sat down across from her. The time it took me to perform ablutions, walk to the mosque, pray, then walk home again helped to alleviate my sense of lostness. My mother had prepared tea with milk and sat down to wait for me. She gestured to me to drink, so we drank together in silence until we were finished.

  I looked questioningly into her eyes in an attempt to get her to start talking. She asked me, “What are you saying to yourself?”

  I said, “I’d been wondering what you wanted to say.”

  She replied, “I wanted to tell you not to be unfair to your grandfather.”

  “I’m not being unfair to him,” I said, upset. “He’s the one who’s being unfair to me! He interferes in my private life and imposes whatever he wants without even giving me the right to discuss things with him.”

  “That’s because he’s right,” she replied.

  “Even you, Mama? What is this ‘right’ my grandfather possesses, and that I don’t know anything about?”

  “You only know Ayda. And maybe you don’t know her very well. You’re rushing headlong into this because you want to escape from the hell of the village, and you cling to anything that glitters in front of you even if it might do you harm.”

  “Are we back to the subject of running away, Mama? You don’t know Ayda since she went to the university. She isn’t the naïve girl she used to be. Her thinking has changed a lot. She’s matured, and I feel comfortable with her. What harm could there be in it?”

  “The harm comes from what you don’t know, from the story that began before either of you was born.”

  “What have we got to do with what went before us? Whatever that past was, it doesn’t matter to me, and I don’t want to know about it. It has nothing to do with our lives now. Why should your judgments on the past be imposed on the future?”

  “But it does matter to you.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  As I got up from where I sat, the anger inside me was growing. What was happening? My mother, who had disagreed with my grandfather’s policies her entire life, agreed with him on this point as though I weren’t her son. She didn’t know anything about my heart, which, if it loves someone, takes no thought for the road ahead. I was looking at the curtain on the window, whose intense blackness had been softened by the morning light.

  She said, “Your biggest problem is that you don’t listen to anybody but yourself. But your judgments aren’t always right, Khalid.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m happy with my judgments, no matter how wrong they are. What matters is that I’m convinced of them. By what right do you all sit in judgment on two people who haven’t done anything wrong, and deprive them of what they want on account of trivial old problems that are dead and buried? What have we got to do with your problems?”

  In a muffled voice, she replied, “Because the two of you are together with us in the same predicament.”

  I looked into her eyes. She was crying. I drew up close to her. “Umm Khalid, what’s making you cry now? Never in my entire life have I seen any sort of obvious disagreement between you all and Ayda’s family. I know you don’t communicate with them as much as you do with other neighbors, but that’s quite normal. As long as the dispute is a thing of the past, not to mention minor, why should it be passed down to us? Why can’t we just move beyond it?”

  Her tears flowed copiously. Hoping to console her and bring her out of this undue melancholy, I said, “It looks as though we’re taking turns crying today!”

  But she didn’t stop. She just went on crying. I spoke to her again, my fingers catching the tears. “Calm down, please. Why are you crying this way? It’s nothing but a difference of opinion. You’re still my mother, and I’m still your son who loves you.”

  She wasn’t speaking. However, her tears, which continued to flow nonstop, spoke volumes. I gazed at her, unable to do anything but wipe away her tears with my fingers. Little by little she regained her composure, and I handed her a glass of water to drink.

  After she had finished drinking, I said, “And now . . . how do you feel?”

  She said, “I’m tired of all the silence, Khalid. I feel as though I’m going to explode, that I’m going to go crazy, that I’m going to die.”

  “Speak,” I said. “I’ll listen to you, Mama.”

  She sighed, looking over at me with sorrowful eyes. “I think you’re right. If I were in your place and your grandfather treated me as harshly as he has treated you, I’d be offended, too, and I’d reject what he had to say. But your grandfather has no choice but to act the way he’s acting. He’ll never tell you anything. As usual, he wants to do everything in silence, and in his own way. But you’re my son, and you won’t accept it even if the person giving the orders is your grandfather. I know what your heart does when it senses that something is unfair. I’m tired of this story. I’ve kept it bottled up inside for years and years, and I want to get it off my chest. Don’t look so surprised. What I’m going to tell you will turn you upside down. Once you’ve heard it you’ll be another man. You’ll hate all of us. Your grandfather doesn’t want that to happen. However, he’s forgetting that you’ll hate him anyway if he forces you to leave someone you love. It’s better for you to hate us knowing the whole story, just the way it is, than to hate us without knowing the reason we do all the things we do. That’s why I’m going to tell you everything. Then my conscience will be at rest, no matter what happens.

  “Farida is the name of Ayda’s mother. I think you must have heard this. Farida’s mother was from the village. Her husband was from another village, but had come to live with us. People saw how goodhearted he was, so after he had lived among them for thirteen years, they agreed to let him marry a woman from the village. In her younger days, Farida was much more beautiful than her daughter is now, and many of the young men in the village fell in love with her and tried to court her favor. Farida didn’t shy away from talking to them or spurn their advances. The other girls in the village avoided mixing with her for fear of ruining their reputations, and she didn’t mix with us either. She used to stop and talk to any young man who waylaid her. She would listen to him as he described his love and his longings. She would laugh, smile, and wink at him, then go her way. We heard lots of stories about her, though we didn’t know whether they were true. Many men fell in love with her and said she loved them, too. However, the best known of those who loved her, and the one she told everyone who asked that she loved in return, was your father, Bakhit Zahir Bakhit. Don’t be surprised. Your father was head-over-heels in love with her, and she was head-over-heels in love with him. He used to stand under her balcony all night, right up to the dawn call to prayer. After she got to know him, she changed and stopped talking to other young men. People knew that he loved her madly, and that he had started having trysts with her every night. When your grandfather found out about it, he was furious. He thoroughly disapproved of the relationship, and warned Bakhit against it.

  “I want to marry her!” your father shouted.

  And your grandfather replied, “Kill me, then marry that whore.”

  Refusing to let Farida be called a whore, Bakhit retorted, “Have you seen her committing immorality with your own two eyes? Have you done it with her?”

  “Do I even need to ask?” your grandfather said. “It’s so obvious to everyone, it requires no elaboration.”

  Your father made it clear that he wanted to marry her, and your grandfather made it clear that this could never be. However, that didn’t prevent Farida from meeting your father. Then Zahir—or so people say—persuaded a stranger from the city to marry Farida in return for
money. Her father agreed to it under pressure from Zahir himself. After this man had married Farida, your father was furious, and agreed to your grandfather’s proposal that he marry me. We were married a month after they were. As for Farida, it’s said that on her wedding night, she hid from her husband in the barn right off her house, but they took her by force to live with him. When he discovered that he had been duped, and that the girl he had married wasn’t a virgin, he sent her back to her family. Your grandfather intervened by persuading the husband to keep quiet and to keep her on as his wife if he would return half the dowry. The man agreed and brought her back to his house. He didn’t know at the time—nor do I think your grandfather knew—that Farida was four months pregnant. The poor husband had just thought she had a full figure! By the time two more months had passed, the man knew that the woman was pregnant with a child that never stopped moving. He also realized that the child in her womb couldn’t possibly be his, and that she had been pregnant before they married. This time he sent her back home, and divorced her, too. Farida acknowledged that the child she was carrying was Bakhit’s son. Your father didn’t deny it. They all agreed to conceal the matter. In the beginning they tried using herbs to abort the fetus. Farida took the herbs, and a few hours later the fetus began lurching violently. But, based on what your father told me, it didn’t die. Then they tried hitting Farida in the belly. They punched her belly repeatedly with their fists. Still the child didn’t die, and several hours later it began moving again. It wanted to live, and refused to die. Finally they were convinced of this. Your grandfather gave them orders not to let Farida leave the house until she had given birth, and on the day she was to deliver, he arranged a midwife for her from the city. I was three months pregnant with you when that beautiful baby boy was born in the wee hours of the morning. For the first day, your grandfather kept him with Farida. The following night, your grandfather, your father, and Farida’s father came to our house to carry out what they had set their minds to do out of his mother’s sight and hearing. Believe me, to this day I don’t know what I was thinking, or how I could have allowed them to commit that crime right here in our house. I was some distance away, but I could hear and see everything clearly. I’m not sure whether your grandfather discovered my presence there before the crime had been committed and decided within himself to implicate me with them, or whether he only found out later that I was there. The baby was crying from hunger, and they brought him in a large basket that we used to put fresh ripe dates in. They took him out and set him down between them. Your grandfather said to your father, ‘You saddled us with him. You get rid of him.’ Your father vehemently refused. Turning to Farida’s father, your grandfather said, ‘Aren’t you going to get rid of your daughter’s shame?’ The man lowered his head, and your grandfather understood that he couldn’t do it. Your grandfather then took a green handkerchief—to this day I remember what it looked like—and clapped it over the baby’s nose and mouth. The baby didn’t give in easily. He resisted at first, but after a while he started to turn red. Then his face turned blue, and finally the life went out of him. Unconsciously, I screamed, and tears sprang to my eyes. They all turned in my direction. Both your father and Farida’s father were in tears. But not your grandfather. He said to me, ‘Shut your mouth. If this baby had lived, the child in your womb would have been born with his father in prison. Aren’t you afraid for your husband?’