Guapa

  In the distance people are chanting. There’s a faint whiff of burning tires in the air. I reach for my phone and call Maj. He picks up on the fifth ring.

  “Rasa?” His voice is nearly drowned out by the familiar cacophony of cheers and thumping music. He’s at Guapa.

  “Yes, yes, it’s me. Can you hear me?” I yell.

  “Where are you?”

  “Never mind where I am. Come to my house immediately. We have work to do.”

  A heavy wave of nausea grabs me and I tell the driver to stop the car. I open the door and do a sad little vomit on the pavement. When I am finished I wipe my mouth with my hand and settle back into the seat. There is a loud buzz in my ears. My eyes feel red and inflamed but the sickness has sobered me up. I feel better, less like death. The driver watches me through the rearview mirror with a worried look in his eyes. I wave at him to carry on and we are off again.

  We speed through a tunnel. On the right-hand side someone has spray-painted “Courage les Enfants” on the brand-new concrete. All these new roads and tunnels would seem to suggest the city is somehow entering a new century with big ambitions. And yet these promises seem so cold and far away. I do not own any of this. I cannot touch it. I don’t belong here. All I know is that I cannot step out of the car. The car is controllable. It is a small space, and the backseat is mine.

  The voice of Oum Kalthoum meanders out of the crackling radio and permeates the air like a thick cloud of smoke. The song is al-Atlal, the same song that played in my room the first night I spent with Taymour.

  Oh my heart, don’t ask me where the love has gone

  One night many years ago, at a time when life felt much simpler than it does today, Baba taught me how to listen to music. He was sitting in his favorite chair, its brown leather faded where he would rest his arms every night. With a glass of whiskey in one hand and a hookah in the other, he would sit for hours listening to Oum Kalthoum. His eyes were closed and his head turned upward, gently swaying to her voice.

  When he opened his eyes and saw that I was watching him, he motioned for me to come closer. I sat down beside him and he said, “Baba, you must wake up to Fairouz and fall asleep to Oum Kalthoum. Fairouz in the morning, Oum Kalthoum in the evening. Try it now. Come on, close your eyes.”

  I haven’t forgotten you

  He was right. In the morning, Fairouz’s hopeful voice, like the trilling of a songbird, is fresh and cheery. Her melancholy lifts your spirits. In Fairouz’s company the world is bright, and though sadness is always present, behind every word, her voice takes you to a lush hilltop under skies the sweetest blue. But the nights, especially nights like this, are for Oum Kalthoum. You only need one song, which lasts long enough to allow you to go deep, to descend into your memories. Best to do such nostalgic traveling at the end of the day, when you have the luxury to let your thoughts run away from you.

  We drive through the darkness. To the right I can see the lights of the government buildings, the large interrogation room with its small windows that run across it. In the distance the shadows of al-Sharqiyeh loom on the eastern hill. I close my eyes and ride on the depth of Oum Kalthoum’s voice like a cloud of cigarette smoke that takes me high. I imagine I am among the stars, looking down at myself crouching in the backseat of the old taxi.

  The song on the radio is interrupted by a news bulletin.

  “Breaking news,” the presenter announces breathlessly. “We can confirm that the government will begin a raid in al-Sharqiyeh to clear the area of terrorists. Oh you terrorists, we will crush you!” the presenter exclaims.

  Silence falls in the car. The voice of Oum Kalthoum returns.

  I’ve had it with this prison now that the world is mine

  My phone lights up. Basma’s name appears on the screen. I ignore it until it stops flashing and the phone goes dark again. The taxi brakes suddenly as a stray cat scampers across the road. I close my eyes and sink deeper into the seat. I’ve spent my life hunting for the silver lining in dark gutters, yearning for the unobtainable. My mother, Taymour, the revolution. What is this revolution I am looking for? This revolution exists only in my mind. The disfigured carcasses of so many beautiful causes are scattered throughout history, battered by war and betrayal, their once hopeful spirit darkened and soured. Why should this cause be any different? For a single moment we seemed undefeatable. And now we’ve forgotten that we shared cigarettes as we marched, we no longer trust each other to throw Pepsi in each other’s eyes to lessen the pain of the tear gas.

  I wanted to prove that love conquers all, that love is stronger and more powerful than any other force in this world. But I could not even prove that with Taymour. We’ve captured our love and kept it hostage. I know now that I cannot love Taymour, or anyone else, except in complete frankness. What is the purpose of love if we cannot preserve its authenticity? Better we end it here and now, let us cut our losses and go our separate ways. But where would I go? My love for Taymour, for the revolution … that was my compass, steering me in the direction of what I felt was true. And my mother? Where is she now? For so long I missed my mother and father so much I wanted to die. I missed them and yet hated them for leaving me to pick up the pieces all alone. I am an explorer with a broken compass, with everyone pointing me in opposing directions. If I feel lost now I will feel worse tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

  If Taymour wants to live this way, to act out the role society wants of him, then who am I to tell him otherwise? Shall I wring his neck to force him to go one way when he wants to go another? If I did, I would be no better than the regime, no better than Teta or Hamza. There is no such thing as forcing someone to be free. My obligation is not to my love for him but rather to what this love represents. My obligation is only to myself. Like two parallel lines running alongside each other, Taymour and I could only ever come together if one of us were to break.

  A few weeks after my father died, I was walking home from Maj’s house late one evening. The roads were deserted, the midweek evening silent save for the chirping crickets. It was a ten-minute walk to my house, down the street and across an empty plot of land. I walked with my head down, looking at my white tennis shoes, trying to distract myself by focusing on avoiding the yellow stones on the sidewalk and only stepping on the pink ones. I hopped from one pink stone to the other, imagining the yellow stones were square pits of fire that would consume me if I fell in.

  Headlights flooded the street behind me. I turned around. The lights were coming from a car parked in a dark driveway. The headlights switched off and then on again. The car was winking at me, acknowledging my presence. I turned around and walked, quicker now, the yellow stones coming at me faster.

  The engine revved. The car drove toward me. I began to run. Chancing another look back at the car, I could just about make out the image of the driver through the glare of the headlights. If what I saw was simply a hallucination, it appeared so vividly in my mind that to this day I swear that it was my father in that car. His eyes stared back at me from behind the wheel. I froze.

  The car stalled in the middle of the road. The door opened, my father slowly stepped out. He walked to the front of the car and just stood there. With his figure silhouetted in the headlights, his entire body appeared like it was on fire. He was looking at me and he was taller than I remembered, taller than any human could be. His legs stretched out so long that he was almost four times my height. His hands were by his side, and when he lifted them there was a ball of fire in each of his palms. The flames licked his fingers and spread up his arms. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. His black mouth just stretched wider and wider, consuming his face like a photograph in flames.

  I burst into a run. I ran to the end of the road and took a left, sprinting across the empty plot of land. At the end of the plot stood our house, a pale flickering light emanating from our living room. Teta watching television. As I ran, dry thistle and weeds scratched my ankles. The field was littered with Pepsi
cans that sparkled in the moonlight like jagged blue glass. Behind me, my father’s body was now ablaze. He chased after me, setting the weeds on fire until the entire plot was in flames. The heat from the fire burned the back of my neck.

  My feet landed on the concrete sidewalk in front of our house. I stopped and turned around. The empty plot of land was cold and dark. Other than the sound of the wind rustling through the trees, the night was as dead as my father. I bent over and put my hands on my knees to catch my breath. Under the bright streetlights, I felt foolish for being scared of my own imagination. I began to laugh, like a maniac on the side of the road, watching the light from the television flicker in our window.

  The house is dark and dancing with secrets. I walk to my bedroom, open the door that stood between us and Teta. Between us and the world. A flimsy wooden door. It was naïve to have believed that a plank of wood might be enough to protect Taymour and me. Then again nothing would have been strong enough to keep our secret.

  Baba’s old leather chair sits in the corner of my room. You see, our world stopped when Baba died. We still have the same rotting shelves, the same television, the same plates and chairs and knives and tables. We’ve been stuck in those times for too long now.

  I sit in my father’s chair and place my arms on the faded brown leather, as he might have done. I take a deep drag, and the red tip of my freshly lit cigarette blazes in the dark. There is the roar of a jet plane shooting across the sky, followed by the wail of an ambulance two streets away. The chair I am sitting in faces the open window, but there’s not a whiff of breeze coming in. The room is stifling. Beads of sweat form on my forehead. Tonight is the hottest it’s been all year.

  The city is in the grips of a heat wave, and we are all trapped inside the furnace. Some choose to ignore the flames, hiding within a mirage of air-conditioned shopping malls, internationally certified hotels, expensive restaurants, and large plots of land awaiting construction, where if you’re not careful the overgrown thistle conceals burning ghosts that chase you through your past. These lucky few build wedding cakes and towers of glass, concrete, and steel to shelter them from the flames. Meanwhile, inside imperial embassies protected by barbed wire and armed guards, fair-skinned men and women in flak jackets talk about fluctuating oil prices and counterinsurgency operations and stabilization projects and women’s empowerment campaigns. And everyone is so self-important and self-deceiving and self-assured.

  For the young men who are driven out of the slums of al-Sharqiyeh in search of a piece of bread and some work — even if the work involves slitting someone’s throat on a hunch that it might please God — denial is a luxury they cannot afford. The city, ever so deceitful, lures these men deep into the desert in search of salvation and then traps them in prisons to roast in the fire. The flames grip these young men by the throat, and as the last drop of moisture evaporates from their parched lips, there is only silence.

  But in the midst of this decaying, burning city, there are pockets of hope. It can be found in the tiny dark rooms in underground bars, where women with short hair cheer on men in dresses. It can be felt in the abandoned cinemas where anonymous strangers fall in love if only for a few moments, and in the living rooms where families crowd around, drinking sweet black tea and Skyping their homesick relatives so that together they can watch the long, rambling talk shows that go on all night. Despite the interrogation rooms where men in uniform crack clubs and electric wires on the naked body of someone’s son or daughter, despite the prisons where men transform into sadistic killers for a dream and a paycheck, there are still pockets of hope in the streets of this city.

  And it is in these decaying streets where the power lies. Street power: starry-eyed, raw, and foolish, like a hopeless romantic, used and torn this way and that by the politics of those living in palaces. For a moment we had the entire country in our hands. But then we flinched. And now street power has been torn down, its heart broken. We kicked the revolution’s body to the curb and tried to walk away, not realizing that we buried ourselves in the process. And once one person is killed, then another and another, the deaths become so great that one life does not matter to anyone anymore. You could be the queen of Guapa yet no one but your mother will weep over your corpse. But still, there are pockets of hope. And denial is no longer an option.

  I look at the vines of jasmine that creep in through the window, embracing me with their fragrant flowers. Beyond them there’s the kindergarten and behind it the minaret pokes out, its tip sparkling a bright green. In my tiredness the light appears to me as an exploding star in the sky. Up in that minaret the muezzin will soon clear his throat before calling this tormented city to prayer. Even with the windows shut and the shutters drawn tight, his calls are loud enough that it is as if he is right here in the room with me.

  For many years it was me, Taymour, and the muezzin in this room. The muezzin’s call to prayer was our alarm, warning us that Taymour needed to go home. I think of last night. Taymour had promised it wouldn’t be our last. He swore we would find a way to stay together. Over the course of one day, one turn of the sun, all that has turned to dust.

  Last night was also hot. The muezzin’s microphone crackled. The sheets began to rustle as Taymour untangled himself from me. The rustling triggered that familiar sadness, the realization that we would not wake up beside each other this morning.

  Taymour began to get dressed. I lay naked on my back watching him, aroused by the sight of his delicate muscles flexing as he pulled his underwear on. I looked at the chest of drawers, at the wooden frame that held the photo of Baba, which I had instinctively turned over when Taymour and I had come inside the room.

  “Just a bit longer?” I asked.

  Taymour smiled. He walked back to the bed and kissed my forehead. “I have to be up early. We’re signing the marriage papers first thing in the morning.”

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” I asked. From now on he would be sleeping next to somebody else. I would have given up all the revolutions just so I could turn over every morning and find him there. I would press myself into his warm body and kiss his lips to taste his morning breath. It is strange that something so minuscule could mean so much, the act of waking up curled against the person you love.

  He sat down on Baba’s chair as he slid his feet into his socks. “This is the right decision, Rasa.”

  “It sounds like you’re looking forward to it, then,” I said. “That’s great.”

  He looked up at me with concern. “I thought we discussed this. You know this doesn’t change what we have.”

  I sighed and turned around. Taymour walked to the mirror and examined his reflection. He played with his hair, moving the part from the right to the left, then messing it all up again. In his eyes I could almost see him asking himself: How would society want my hair to appear?

  Outside, the muezzin urged the city to get out of bed.

  A scream shattered the air. It was more of a wail, the long hopeless wail of someone who had lost everything. Time stood still and Oum Kalthoum kept singing that note. Had it only been a moment, or did Oum Kalthoum really stretch out that note for hours? I had never noticed before.

  Then came the banging.

  “Open the door, Rasa! Open the door now!” Teta’s voice boomed from behind the door.

  The room began to shake. An earthquake, the walls caved in. I jumped out of bed, naked, and grabbed hold of Taymour to stop myself from falling. Neither of us said anything or even dared to breathe. I held on to Taymour and stared into his blazing eyes as they flitted back and forth between the door and me, naked and quivering.

  The banging persisted. Words shot at us from behind the door, angry words that meant little when taken out of context or even when put together. The words were not important, but Teta flung them at us like flames shooting from her mouth. Her rage set fire to the bed, the door, the mirror, the flames engulfed us.

  “Teta, what are you talking about?” I scrambled to p
ick up the clothes I had so carelessly thrown on the floor. I hurriedly dressed myself. First underwear, then jeans and T-shirt.

  “Don’t play this game with me, boy,” Teta screamed. The banging got louder, angrier. I never knew an old woman could have such power in her fists, such fury. I felt that at any moment the ceiling might collapse or the mirror would crash to the floor.

  Taymour grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “You have to let me out, Rasa,” he pleaded with desperate eyes, all white and bulging. “I need to get out of here.”

  I closed my eyes and put my hands to my head. I felt that if I were to let go my head might explode. The banging on the door was louder now, like she was banging her fists on my head, breaking open the secret cage and letting the birds fly away.

  “All right!” I yelled, opening my eyes. The banging stopped. “All right I’ll open the damn door. But you go to your room, Teta. You hear me? Yalla!”

  Silence. Then Teta’s footsteps echoed down the hall and there was a slamming of a door.

  “Let me out,” Taymour begged.

  “Yes, yes,” I muttered. I unlocked the door and peered into the empty hall. The doors to both Teta’s and Doris’s rooms were shut and the house was once again still. Teta had gone to her room as promised. Or had I imagined it all? I looked at Taymour. I had never seen a face so white. So filled with fear. He nodded, as if reading my mind. It had happened.

  “Call me when this is done,” he said as I walked him to the front door.

  I held on to his hands. I didn’t think I would ever be able to let go. For a moment I thought that perhaps we should just go back to my bedroom and lock ourselves in there. If we never set foot outside we could avoid the wedding and Teta and all of that nonsense. I could see Taymour and me curled up in my bed forever, feeding off scraps of food Doris might push through the keyhole.