The Loved Ones

by Alia Mamdouh

  “Come, let’s go to the café which is very close by; let’s go have some cold beer and refresh our eyes with the pretty girls. Don’t tell me that you don’t like such things. Looking at young women on the sly attracts you, doesn’t it, even if you’re standing right next to your wife and even if she’s a beauty queen . . . hmm?”

  We headed out, Narjis’s voice in our wake.

  “Hatim—just a second, please.”

  We stopped and turned as if of one accord to wait for her. It was the first time I had seen her walking straight toward me. For the first time I truly saw her. Her beauty would take your breath away and make you overlook so many things, so many of the bothers and concerns that surround us all and would normally lead anyone to despair. Suhaila had not said much about this pair. There had been one sentence in one of her letters: If World War Three breaks out, these two friends will be the safe haven and shelter.

  They surrounded me on either side. The compassion and warmth that they radiated enveloped me in a sense of peacefulness.

  “Hatim, if the two of you have to go to a café then why don’t we simply take him home? We can have dinner, and talk, and later on I can take him to his flat. And if he wants to he can stay with us tonight.”

  She was speaking cautiously but in a voice full of emotion, her Lebanese dialect flavored with beloved Iraqi tones. As I heard Narjis speak, Layal appeared in front of my eyes. Gazing at her face, I was more bashful at her beauty now than I had been at first. She looked contented, or something more than that. Joyous at something—her husband, herself, her friendship for Suhaila. Her happiness dispelled the anger that I had not yet been able to fully shake off. They were awaiting a response from me.

  “It isn’t possible today. Perhaps tomorrow, or another day. I’d like to remain alone today. Thank you.”

  They smiled at me. I admired very much the picture they made as lovers, as they moved and conversed in that very quiet manner. I even felt their happiness seep into me. They aren’t like us, like Sonia and me. But is joy prohibited inside hospitals? No sooner do we enter the dark corridors than orders are issued—from what source I don’t know—commanding us to bitterness and grief.

  Ten

  I

  At that moment, Blanche, Wajd, and Asma came into view. Caroline was the last to appear, walking slowly far behind. They gathered around us, a closed circle. I pictured them in my mind as female soldiers at the ready, fully equipped and perfectly capable of vanquishing the enemy: Suhaila’s illness and my helplessness in front of it. My morale rose as I looked at them. I was beginning to feel that they were capable of defending me as well, and indeed of defending life itself. Each one of them looked as if, unbeknownst to the others, she had made a private vow to defend life. How is it that those women are so able to draw on their imaginations to invent whatever it is they are able to do in order to guarantee that Suhaila will emerge once again, from whatever place she is in, on any day and at any moment, and in the company of any one of them? Life appeared at my side: strong, vigorous. Each of us wants to accept and embrace it in our own way. I listen to the hidden-away laughter that issues from them so gracefully and sweetly to grant me a measure of peace.

  With all of them as his audience, Hatim made an announcement. “Dinner is chez nous tomorrow.” He stretched his head a little outside the circle and his warm voice added a few words in Iraqi-accented English.

  “Miss Caroline, tomorrow we will eat Iraqi food and I will be cooking. Even if we are speaking Arabic—everyone in the group speaks French and English as well. Don’t worry, and please, do come, for the sake of Suhaila and Nader.”

  She was standing there nodding her head. She came up to me, put out her hand and we shook. She seemed to be hesitating between going and staying.

  “I put some vegetables and fruits in the refrigerator, and milk, eggs, and bread. The flat is clean but it is quite chaotic. I could not do anything about the papers and books and newspapers. It is exactly as it was when Suhaila left it. This might be a bit painful for you, but it was not. . . . If you feel in need of anything, do ring me at home, even if it is very late.”

  Even before extending her hand, Blanche jumped into the conversation. “So then, day after tomorrow, lunch or dinner will be at my place. What do you prefer, Nader?”

  “Thank you, Blanche. I must stay here, even if she is not aware that I am here. We’ll see quite a bit of each other from now on. I’ll be here all of the time now instead of all of you.”

  My eyes filled again but I kept myself together. Hatim patted me on the shoulder.

  “I’m not able to say thank you, but that’s what I’ve been feeling inside at every single moment. In Canada, and on the airplane, and here among you. I don’t know . . . naam, believe me, I don’t know.”

  I turned to Dr. Wajd as if I had newly become a completely different person.

  “I’m sorry—please excuse me. Apparently I wasn’t very firmly in control of my emotions. Five hours of flying, seven hours’ time difference, the night before I didn’t sleep at all, and her—when I saw her it was as if she had come to an agreement with herself to be against me. You as well, all of you, I felt you were all against me. I was expecting something to happen, not a miracle, not a stroke of luck; I don’t know what to call it, perhaps it is something completely futile. Maybe I felt as if she would lift her hand and slap me the moment I touched her. Now, Doctor, I am back to repeat my question and what I’m worried about: Is she going to improve? Is there any hope?”

  Wajd stepped closer. She took on the tone and lingo of the medical profession.

  “Right, Nader. There are two sides to it, this condition. I am very sorry to tell you this four days into it: she is in a medium-intensity coma. This in itself is not such a bad sign, but how long will it continue? To be honest, we do not know. Most likely she will come out of it and will begin to show some signs of activity. It is possible that she will regain consciousness but with substantial losses. We are not able to pinpoint the extent of loss at the present time. Not until she has completely regained consciousness. And that takes considerable time.”

  My lips were trembling.

  “But what are the possible losses, Doctor?”

  “Paralysis in the limbs, which is a possibility but not at all certain. In any case, her life will not go back to being what it was. She’ll need intensive care—constant, continuous—and long treatment, and she’ll get physical therapy—that’s amply available everywhere. This aspect of it does not worry me at all.”

  “And . . .”

  “She’ll require therapy to train her how to regain the normal functions that she will have lost. In most cases that takes months or perhaps even longer.”

  “Will she know me?” I could not keep the pleading out of my voice.

  Everyone started to murmur gently, exuding everything from encouragement to disgust at the way I was insisting. Wajd responded. “Yes and no.”

  As always: no and yes. Does that make sense?

  “How is that, Doctor? Please, I have to insist on hearing more details.”

  “Most likely she will regain her consciousness but that in itself might take some time. She will be able to recognize you, and everyone, but she might make mistakes at first. This will be the hardest thing for you. For all of us. And for her most of all. What I fear, Nader, and I say this in good faith, is that she might have no desire to get better.”

  I was stunned. I caught my breath at her answer and had to pause but then I went on. “And what is the second possibility?”

  “The greater likelihood is that she will know you and others, perhaps without any difficulty, as if she is steadily and completely regaining her consciousness, but then it might recede, become blurred, and she would leave us once again.”

  “But how could you have come to the conclusion that she might have no desire to get well? Is an invalid in her condition able to take a decision such as that?”

  Everyone smiled but their smiles looked pained.
I didn’t understand the secret behind these grimaces.

  “Love, Nader. I am not going to say any more because I don’t want you to get angry all over again.”

  I heard Caroline’s voice again. I had not been aware until this moment that she was still standing apart from us as if she already understood everything that had taken place and was still taking place between us. Now she came close enough to face me directly.

  “I wrote to you and I said that she is plagued by a sense of abandonment. Rejection. But you did not write back, Nader. It is not that we want you to take on more than you can stand. And it may well be that not too much time has gone by. It may not be too late, you know.”

  Like a thunderbolt, Asma intervened, looking as though she intended to fling her arms around me.

  “Nader, my son, everything is written, and this is Suhaila’s destiny. I’ll take you to the mosque, my dear. Pray there and offer your hopes and pleas for her. I’m sure that you don’t even have a mosque over there in Canada, do you? And by God, every day I turn to the Creator of the Heavens to take away this distress from her and from our country. She’ll get better, and just about now you’ll see it, my dear. Wa hassa tishuf ayni. Shnu hiya ghayr raghba?! What do you mean, Doctor, that she doesn’t want to get well? Your mother’s a strong one, she’ll come out of it and she’ll be standing tall. She’ll come back, Nader, believe it, by God’s mercy. His mercy is vast.”

  Blanche’s voice was calm. “Do you know, every day before coming here I go to chapel in the Latin Quarter. I light candles of all colors in her name. I kneel and say prayers for her and for our people there. And when I come here afterward I hear that things are better than they were yesterday. I can’t imagine Suhaila ending in this way. I know her, we all know her. She has a will that has never budged. No, Dr. Wajd, what is this hypothesis of yours? How did you come by it? She’s never come to despair, she’s never lost hope in God’s mercy. She would say, Despair is always there, but this is not the time for it. Isn’t that so, Hatim?”

  Blanche turned to Narjis then and addressed her before anyone else could speak. “Tell Nader about her, perhaps this is more necessary now than it seemed earlier.”

  Narjis turned to me. In her I sensed an ability both simple and powerful to ease the deep pain Wajd had left in me. Her words brought back the reasonable self that I had nearly lost.

  “Tomorrow, Nader, we’ll talk in more detail. It’s a mistake to discuss everything at once. Don’t burden yourself with a heavier load than you can bear and don’t let your spirits get hopelessly entangled in all of this. Suhaila has an ability to endure more than you or we can imagine. It’s in her power to make treatment possible and successful, and to get to that point quickly. The first stage, of course, will not be easy, but she is capable of making a safe escape from this. I won’t talk any more about it now, because you need to get some sound sleep, but I know Suhaila. To put it simply, she will not permit herself to remain immobilized.”

  Hatim’s voice was firm and convincing as he put the finishing touches on what Narjis had said. “She’s a fighter, Nader. All right, now, get your bags and let us drop you off on our way. It’s late now to have a beer and spy on the pretty girls. And anyway, she is sleeping.”

  “Thank you, Hatim. But I want to stay with her, alone.”

  Eleven

  I

  I hoist my two pieces of luggage and head toward her room. I have never before had to endure pain as heavy as this. Yet it is an old pain, drawn from earliest childhood and from the few feet of ground on which I stand. It is a pain that I drag behind me; and so it never leaves me. And after they have all gone away I stand before her. Alone with her. The nurses have been very kind and pleasant, very generous with their welcoming gestures and smiles. They brought me a light supper, most likely her supper, but I didn’t give it a glance. My insides were empty but I was not hungry. After they gave up hope of me, they entered into conversations among themselves. Danielle’s ill dog and Charlotte’s insolent cat which had made her lover Thierry flee from the sight of massed cat hair on plates and sheets. As for the third one’s man—I don’t recall that nurse’s name now—he had abandoned her to sally off with her closest friend. Every so often, suddenly becoming aware of my presence, they would turn away from me. They came in to her from time to time, performing their duties with expertise, turning to me now and again with sympathy etched on their faces, for me, who still does not know why he cried so much in front of them all. All of those women.

  If your father had cried one time, just once, Suhaila always said, then he would have been spared. He would have been spared to enjoy the rest of his days in better shape, happier. But he was a stone.

  She cried in his place. I don’t know if he deserved this, she would add. Did he deserve to have me replace him in this, or in that? Who can stand in for someone else?

  She glanced right and left; we were in the kitchen, making food together.

  I have this tale in my head: that we got married in order to act out a play and put it on record in front of my father’s theater. His shows were dwindling with every day that passed. That was because of the censorship. We are such different people, Nader, which can be beneficial as long as one doesn’t destroy the other. We differed on small issues as well as the big and complicated ones—and then he would get it into his head that whatever the issue was, it had no merit in the first place. He had arrogance enough to allow him to picture himself as the most worthy of human beings. Pride of that sort is a defect that eats up the one who has it: suddenly such a one no longer sees the other, no longer sees us—and yet he is there all the time, watching us. His first act is to punish himself cruelly. Poor wretch. That’s your father, Nader.

  “Why don’t you go and walk around the city for a bit?” suggested Charlotte gently. “Is this your first visit, Monsieur?”

  My mood had improved slightly. She was, after all, still alive. But I shook my head. Charlotte pressed. “She’s sleeping. Go, and don’t worry. Her condition is stable. This is the fourth day, and as long as she is putting up resistance, she’ll come out of it, perhaps for your sake.”

  She laughed in a way that reminded me of children’s laughter. I gave her a big smile. This set off a chain reaction of smiles between us. What I yearned for, though, was to rest my head against that body, to give her a kiss, to talk to her on my own with nobody else there, as it had been in the past, and to stretch out next to her without demanding her love. I used to tell lies for her sake so that the image she had of me would not be shaken and I would retain my status as an amiable, kind son who remained first in importance in her eyes. She would find me out, though. No one was better at expressing qualms about me, and I hated the way I would feel so stupid and trivial in her presence. I would try, and I had always tried, to hide my sneaky side from her. But she was always impeccably sweet and sympathetic. She would take me in her arms as if I were still a child, and that would make me all the more uncomfortable. Then I would get angry and imagine that she no longer had any need for me, and that all of my scheming had led to nothing more than a beaming smile on her face as she looked at me. And now, here she is in front of me. I see her and I am grateful to her. At this moment, she is here, present to me more than she has ever been at any time in the past and ensconced in a new space of quiet, calmer than she ever was. There are no guarantees, when it comes to her, except when she is thus, suspended between my tears and my fear. I was this sure of her: as if the two of us were not at all good for each other except in those very things that were the means of separating us one from the other.

  II

  Her hands are limp as the liquid pumps its way in. It embarrassed me too much to ask Blanche or Wajd about how she urinated. I observed, I searched, but still I did not fully take in anything. It was all very practical and coherent and unassailable, but for me it was unknown territory. It was as if the illness alone had allowed her to trump me, by means of the promise she had made in my presence one day.

&nbs
p; I am fortunate to have you, Nader—but you, no. You don’t see things in the same way. I put you before me, before everyone, and yet you are always in such haste, never pausing. You have turned flinty, as stone-cold as he has always been. You are al-Thuraya, the Pleiades, and I send signs to you hoping you will understand and respond. It’s no use, though.

  I do respond but she—no, she doesn’t. Every evening I write to her. Here is what I tell her: You have become an enigma, Mother. And I don’t like riddles. You have given me no help, Mother, neither in the past nor now.

  Her love for me is a lone sentence embedded within an incomprehensible theory. It’s a single line of text in an ancient book. It’s a local dialect which she is determined that I will strive to acquire, scampering after it as if I am a clown, and it doesn’t matter if he breaks his neck as long as he reaches the end of the rope in concert with her intentions. But I didn’t send her those letters. I would write them, slip them into file folders, and tell myself, One day she will stumble upon them. She will discover them herself. So I brought them with me to Paris. Her motherhood consisted of the minimum requirements of motherliness as mothers perform them. But what am I to do with this regret? It is far bigger than I am. I should have told you about the snow and wind that we get in Canada, how we store all the various sorts of bone-chilling cold—what we call in Iraq jamharir—in our bodies so that the Iraqi sun does not flicker and go out. That sun which devoured one’s flesh and heart. I did not love Baghdad’s heat—nor do I like Canada’s iciness—but God was there, near me, and I love God. I see Him in the eyes of the neighbors and your friends, Ferial, Bushra, Azhar and Tamadir, and in your eyes, too, and in the eyes of the peasant. As for here, the gods are frozen and I do not believe that someday they will melt. You are not listening to me. You listen to Iraqi songs of weeping and mourning, and you begin your bouts of weeping in an inaudible voice. But I hear it.