She leaves the room, her pace deliberate, not hurried. My eyes are on the screen, on his finger, on the sensors on his chest, on his eyes fixed to the door. Aisha returns, accompanied by a nurse. The latter doesn’t stay long. On seeing the screen and hearing the continuous tone, she runs out immediately. She comes back, a doctor striding ahead of her. She gives Fahd a shot. She plants the needle deep in his vein. She hands the doctor a pair of defibrillators. The doctor removes the sensors from Fahd’s chest. He fastens the defibrillators. Fahd’s smile is as it was. His eyes remain on the door, despite the electric shocks. “He’s with God now,” the doctor says.
Fahd’s mother disappears into her thoughts before she shakes her head. “You don’t understand!” It seems all too familiar to the doctor. He doesn’t say a word. Fahd’s mother gnashes her teeth. She stares at him. “You’re a doctor? I wouldn’t trust you with sheep!” She gestures to the door. “Get out!”
He turns to me. “Stay strong,” he says, before he turns and follows the nurse out.
Fahd’s mother goes to the door to shut it. She removes her abaya and balls it up. She throws it carelessly onto the chair and rolls up her sleeves, determined. She carries the pot of food from atop the fridge and rests it on Fahd’s chest, carefully removing the foil. She hands me the pot cover. “Hold this.” I hold it and the smell of Tina’s old kitchen fills the room. Aisha brings her lips close to her son’s ear, whispering, “Fahd . . . darling . . . get up . . . The mutabbaq samak is ready.” She dips her hand into the rice in the pot. She tears off a carefully chosen piece of fish. She laughs. She repeats his refrain, “Meeeeow!” She brings her hand next to his lips. “Yallah, come on now . . . bismillah.” He doesn’t move.
My words slip out, contrary to what I know to be true. “Khala . . . Fahd’s sleeping.”
She nods her head. “I know . . . but he just has to wake up . . . The food’s gotten cold, and he likes it hot.” She shakes her head, and her eyes are bloodshot. “Hot . . . like my heart,” she adds, her voice hoarse. I distance myself from them both. I lean my back on the door to the room. Fahd’s eyes are fixed on the door. On me. His mother slips her fingers into his mouth. She raises her voice. “Cat!” She yells at an even higher pitch, “You said that you were craving mutabbaq samak!” She shrieks banshee-like, her fingers between his lips. “Eat! Eat! Eat!” She raises her hand, in it the remnant of the rice and oil. She brings it down on his face, slapping him. “You think you can die whenever you feel like it? I’ll kill you, I swear to God, I’ll kill you if you die and leave me!” She shoves both hands in the pot of rice. She stuffs his mouth. She slaps him. She passes her fingers between the tufts of his hair and pulls at them. His eyes remain fixed on the door. She pushes the pot from his body, and it clangs on the floor. Grabbing him by the neck, she shakes him. She beats his chest with her fists. Resting her head on him, she releases a never-ending groan. A long groan that sends me off to the end of the hall. “My heart is burning!”
I go down the stairs quickly. I fall, faltering with my limp. I curse my leg. I reach the ground floor. Hissa holds my hand. She drags me to her father. I yield to her without realizing it. He extends his hand, introducing himself. “My name is Ibrahim Mansour. Are you Fuada’s Kids?” he asks me, his face beaming. I ignore him, proceeding to . . . I don’t know what.
“We’re sons of bitches,” I say audibly. His name reminds me of how my uncle couldn’t protect himself from his fate all those years ago.
The twins scamper over to me, clinging to my dishdasha. One of them asks a question. The second repeats the first’s question. “Uncle, Uncle! Where did Dad go? Where did Dad go?” Ayub yells out to me, calling me to the entrance of the emergency room. He sits beside Fawzia. I don’t look at him. He gets up and follows me.
“How’s Fahd?”
“He’s eating mutabbaq samak,” I answer as we pass the hospital gate. I point my finger upward and say, “Above . . .”
He tilts his head up. “Really?” he asks me, skeptical.
“I swear,” I respond as I keep walking. My phone beeps, alerting me to a text: “By God who raised the heavens, if you don’t leave Kuwait . . . you’re not my son and I don’t know you!” I mean to throw the phone far away, but don’t when I remember a voice that I miss, a voice whose owner I left behind me, upstairs in the hospital room. My fingers work of their own accord on the phone’s buttons. I bring the phone close to my ear. I’m not available at the moment. Please leave a message. I hear Abdulkareem’s voice as I make my way to my car. Go with forgetfulness . . . and I’ll go with Canopus.
I fling the phone on the ground. Ayub picks it up. He follows me. He closes my car door for me. He pokes his head through the window, asking, “Where to?” I turn on the engine, my lips taut. He turns around, jogging to open the passenger side door. He sits next to me. I step on the gas as I imagine the heads of people I hate. I drive at top speed, my headlights off.
Ayub knows. Ayub understands. “The bridge?” he asks as if he’s answering himself.
There isn’t anyone at the green-flagged barrier at the start of the bridge in Jabriya. I continue, driving slower. Hundreds of corpse-catchers circle around in our Stygian sky. Their collective cawing eggs me on to violently extinguish their desire. To satiate their hunger. I open the compartment under my elbow. I hand Ayub an Um Bint cologne bottle. He dabs some on his finger. He passes it between his nose and lips, taking in a deep breath. I hold out my palm to him. He pours some of the golden liquid in it. I rub it on my face. Weapons lie strewn on the ground, like the remains of a battlefield. Screams get louder and closer. I continue driving at a snail’s pace. I make out, before the middle of the bridge, what the fires of the burning barrels reveal. I flick on the headlights. A conflict between “them” and “them.” With swords, Molotov cocktails, and stones. I continue driving, accelerating.
Ayub spurs me on. “Faster! Faster!” he yells. I crash into the monsters. I put an end to their fighting. Bodies scatter on both sides of the bridge. Others raise their swords and stones, running after us. Ayub turns and glances behind. “Quickly! Quickly!” he yells. At the end of the bridge, at the black-flagged roadblocks in Surra, the roar of the engine fades to a sputter, then dies out. It gives up. The engine is running on fumes. Ayub opens the door. He turns to the beings on the bridge, sheer terror written on his face. “Get out! Run!” I get out, hobbling on my wounded leg to the head of Tariq Bin Ziyad Road. I get rid of my sandals. I don’t turn to look at them. I run. Ayub is in front of me. They’re chasing us, the black birds watching them, their caws melodious. Ayub slows down. He grabs my hand. We run together. Each of us yells to the other, “Run! Run! Run!”
He runs, I run, under a sky I wish for once would fall. Drops on my face compel me to look up. I see, among the scattered clouds, Shail’s star breaking forth in the distance, and Shuhab’s cutting across the horizon . . .
It starts to rain.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Saud Alsanousi is a Kuwaiti novelist and journalist born in 1981. He won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for The Bamboo Stalk in 2013, and Mama Hissa’s Mice was nominated for the 2016/17 Sheikh Zayed Book Award. His first novel, The Prisoner of Mirrors, was published in 2010 and won the fourth Laila al-Othman Prize, a prestigious award for novels and short stories by young writers. He also won first prize for his story “The Bonsai and the Old Man” in the July 2011 Stories on the Air competition organized by Al-Arabi magazine with BBC Arabic. In October 2016, the Gulf Cooperation Council presented Alsanousi with the Contribution to Literature Award in Riyadh. His work has appeared in a number of Kuwaiti publications, including Al-Watan newspaper and Al-Arabi, Al-Kuwait, and Al-Abwab magazines. He currently writes for Al-Qabas newspaper.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Sawad Hussain is an Arabic translator and litterateur who is passionate about all things related to Arab culture, history, and literature. She has regularly critiqued Arabic literature in translation for ArabLit and Asymptote, am
ong others; reviewed Arabic literature and language textbooks for Al-’Arabiyya Journal (Georgetown University Press); and assessed Arabic works for English PEN Translation grants. She was coeditor of the Arabic-English portion of the seminal, award-winning Oxford Arabic Dictionary (2014). Her translations include a Palestinian resistance classic by Sahar Khalifeh for Seagull Books and a Lebanese young adult novel for University of Texas Press. She holds an MA in Modern Arabic Literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies.
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