The Penguin's Song

by Hassan Daoud

  When I doze off unexpectedly I’m awake again almost immediately, and it’s not a question of real sleep, for these sudden naps leave me feeling more alert than ever. They arrive like a temporary inner disturbance that throws the body off balance for a minute or two. That is not sleep. It is not even the beginnings of sleep, since my wakefulness—even if it takes its time—returns stronger and more aggressive than ever. I have to start fighting it, going back to the very beginning, waiting patiently for another wave of drowsiness that might possibly be real this time and might set me on the path to sleep. But when this one comes it is just as shallow and quick to pass as the others. I know it is, because I can tell that the soft-edged images floating and bobbing through my head have ceased. I do my best to get them back before they can fade out completely, and then I wait, hoping the colors I’ve regained will bring forth another and longer round of fluid, evanescent images.

  Retrieving those images, fixing them in my mind, means I can at least claim a little territory gained in my battle for victory over my sleeplessness. I did not tire my body out today. I didn’t tire out even a single body part. Not my trunk, not my limbs. I did nothing that would encourage sleep to inhabit a worn-out toe or finger, foot or hand, and then to gradually occupy the rest of my body. Nightfall makes no difference: when evening comes this body is exactly as it was in the morning. A single unchanging level of energy runs through it no matter what the time of day or night, as evenly distributed across all its parts as it is across the moments I live. A body wrapped in its singular unvarying energy, lying here in the middle of the bed, beneath the light coming from the fixture overhead. The light turns me into something almost like an invalid laid out full length beneath it, still and passive as if I’m waiting for something to be done to me—this strong light from the overhead lamp that I must turn off. I must get up and go over to the switch and flick it off. It is no longer shielding me from this wakefulness that I myself induced and stoked from the moment I began to overcome it. I have to get up and go over to the switch, even though by doing so I know I am being foolish, for I’m taking a chance that this wakefulness will seize me again, and I’m also stupidly risking the possibility that in the heavy darkness my struggle will only intensify. But I have to turn out the light. Then I collapse hurriedly into bed so that I won’t be up and about for long.

  Colliding waves follow close upon one another through my body. The wave swells and crests, and I know that inside it the pair of fighting beasts has managed to get across the bit of space that was keeping them apart. Here they are now, bodies interlocked in a ceaseless bellowing rage. They have fallen upon each other and entangled themselves; I can see them very clearly. Their thick furry hides are in plain sight, still clean in this moment before the claws bloody them. They are here in front of me even if there is no space for them to stand. Simply two beasts: alone, nothing with them, nothing surrounding them. And as the wave begins to recede, while it is still cresting, I know that I have fallen into some sort of sleep, or I have gone missing, but I know just as well that the wakefulness has vanquished me anyway.

  IV

  THE OLD MIRROR THEY LUGGED here for me from our old home: why didn’t they hang it some other way, not like this, so very high up? In that room housing my bed and wardrobe, I had to step back from the mirror—back and farther back, just to see my face. Not for very long, since all I needed to do while standing at that distance was to trace the part in my hair with my comb and go over it more firmly, pulling the hair away from the comb’s path and smoothing it above and below. I still comb it this way, parting it from the roots as I first learned to do, or perhaps as I grew accustomed to doing, since I don’t remember my hair looking any other way than this, with a part. In my room here in our new home, where I both read and sleep, I can peer into the mirror from a normal distance, but only if I stand on the bed and hoist myself up to match its height. My part is still there, just as it has always been, marching the same route, but the closer I bring my head to the mirror, the more desiccated it looks: the skin is so dry that it’s flaking. The hairs around that part have grown coarse, their ends crinkling and frizzing so that from another angle of my head they give the appearance of a thick raised pad.

  Nothing about my appearance has changed. Growing a moustache has not helped me to look my age, since very little moustache hair actually appeared, and the color, which was already light, has bleached with exposure. So my moustache does not stand out from my face and adds nothing to it. No, nothing in my face has changed—not only in the time since its reflection in this same mirror when it last hung in our old home, but also from an earlier time, when I was thirteen years old, which was when I began to stare into it as if I had to accustom myself to my own image. I perceived somehow that this was my final image and I would never have another one. Or perhaps the crucial moment is when I began at that same age of thirteen to imagine how my face appeared to the eyes of whoever looked at me, and to feel, when they did look at me, that I was seeing myself exactly as they were seeing me.

  I see the image of my face alone in that mirror placed so high, floating there without my body beneath it. If I want to see that, it won’t be in the mirror but rather with a gaze downward. I have liked sensing my face and my body being looked at separately, as detached parts of me, because that means my face is seen as it is, by and for itself. Indeed, at that age of thirteen I could almost believe that people saw me as I wished to be seen; I could convince myself that they—like me—overlooked whatever they did not like to see in me. But in outsize mirrors, the kind we sit across from in barber shops or find ourselves suddenly, unexpectedly facing in the window glass of clothing stores and cinemas, I can’t help but see how my body, puffed out in front, all but assaults my face simply by reaching all the way up to it. In the bus’s rectangular mirror, into which I kept stealing continuous but furtive glances all day long throughout that school trip, I had to notice how the puffiness began at my lower belly and rose to swell across my chest, forcing my head to sit awkwardly above it. Trying to minimize this puffed-up appearance of mine, I worked to raise my body upward, sitting as if I were standing, but only from the midsection up. It tired me out. Sitting there, on the front seat in the bus near the mirror, I knew I was exposing myself to their stares—or to her stare, among the rest of them. But, I thought, the noisy commotion they made would stay in the back and would keep them there, on the bus’s long back seat and in the empty space in front of it. Staying close to the mirror, I could maintain my watch over what was going on behind me. I could keep it all under my gaze, remaining attentive and careful not to be caught unaware by letting go or dozing off, which would expose me even more.

  I also thought that by sitting there—and staying near the mirror—I could keep her under my gaze. It was not long, though, before the partygoers singing in the back of the bus attracted her. When she left her seat and wandered back toward them, they began beating the tabla more loudly, the drumbeat celebrating her capture. That’s what they did whenever anyone left their seat to join them. I could see her in the mirror in front of me, standing still with some space separating her from them, as though it were enough to watch them from a distance and enjoy the din they were creating. When she leaned against one of the seats, her back to the mirror, I suddenly thought they would beat the drum louder especially for her, inviting her now to sit on the broad seat they occupied or to stand among their fans in the open space in front of it. But she didn’t; rather, from time to time she twisted around to look behind her, at the first three rows of seats where no one remained seated but me. No, there was no one there but me, looking into the mirror, stealing furtive glances at her. It was as though, when she looked toward where I sat, she was trying to make certain that I was still there, sitting and waiting, staying exactly where I had been a moment before.

  Or as if, when she turns to look in my direction, she is trying to make me understand that she apologizes for keeping her distance, or that she is just marking some time, wai
ting so that when she comes over to me it will look natural, like a mere coincidence as everyone redistributes themselves in the bus once the band in back has grown quiet as they take a break. Or she will make it appear as if coming here is just a matter of falling into the seat next to me as the bus shudders or swerves. Or she will seem to be coming deliberately, making it seem as though she has come especially to say a few words that have just come into her mind and that she wants very much to say to someone whose presence, also, has just come into her mind. Or she will come and sit with me, keeping me company, on the pretext—which she will not actually have to explain to anyone—that I am sitting by myself and someone really ought to talk to me.

  But the place I had left empty beside me since climbing onto the bus remained empty. They did reoccupy other seats, redistributing themselves several times as they rested after singing a set or returning to the bus after little excursions outside. But the seat next to me remained empty. Alone, I stayed in my seat, leaving the proper amount of space clear so that someone could come and sit down if they wanted to do so. Their games would bring them to particular seats that they would soon vacate, only to land on other seats also for a very short time. But I went on sitting in my seat in that place that had become mine. Even though I left the bus twice (just as they did) to take a short walk, I watched myself return to the very same seat, plastering myself to the wall of the bus and the window and leaving the place next to me empty.

  It was up to me to get up and go over to them, where they sat at the back of the bus, and to make myself part of their noisy fun. Probably it would have been better for me that way, because I could have made them forget my body, not by keeping it distant and hunched over itself but rather by losing it—by making it disappear among the movements and gestures I would extort from it. If I were to clap, that is what they would notice, not my pair of tiny hands and the way one flops against the other. If I were to attempt dancing with them they would see my flexing body simply as a series of moves, as if the maneuvers I made were a cloud of dust I would raise to distract their gaze away from me and to occupy her with something other than what she ought not see. I should have been there among them at the back of the bus. But while it was happening, while I was on that school trip, I did not see this until it was already too late. The time in which I could have changed something had already passed. She had stopped looking in that particular direction, that section of the bus where I sat. In fact, I couldn’t help but notice—in the mirror—how her attention was now turning entirely to them; how, the more she laughed at what they were doing, the more fully she appeared to have forgotten that only a few moments earlier she had been turning to gaze at me. She forgot, or else she was distracted from looking at me by something else that was going on.

  Every time they climbed down from the bus for a little excursion, leaving their tabla behind on the back seat that stretched the width of the bus, I felt as I stared at them—through the windowpane this time, not in the front mirror—that their only reason for mounting all of that noisy fun was to demonstrate how adept they were at suddenly stopping the clamor and quieting down. Their close huddle would break apart as they moved away from the bus. Four of them grouped together, five, and then three; and there was the last quartet who waited at the door of the bus until their number was complete. Coming back to the bus they would be more scattered and chaotic, looking as though they were rushing to reach it, afraid it might leave without them.

  But, returning to the bus, they will leave behind a couple of walkers dawdling along or trailing their caravan. Through the window I can see one of them walking as slowly as possible next to the girl who accompanies him. And then there’s the one who will come into view as he turns onto the street—for I can see all the way to the head of this street: she will be beside him, walking slowly and lowering her head to study a bit of fauna or a flower she’ll twirl between her palms. I knew it would be her, coming into sight next to him, because she was not among the first group to arrive back at the bus. She is just visible now at the corner, walking at a leisurely pace until she reaches the two steps into the bus. She climbs them slowly, still in no hurry. When we are all on the bus and it moves off, she is not where she was before, inside their little circle, for she has chosen a seat somewhere in the middle, to be alone with him and away from them, and also to keep herself apart from where I sit, another girl altogether now, as if, when she first climbed onto the bus, she did not even hint to me that she had been eagerly awaiting this outing of ours, this trip we would make together.

  V

  FROM THE WINDOW IN THE room overlooking the sand track (the room my father calls mine, the room he entreats me to sleep in, night after night) I can see the girl who lives just below me as she steps out of the building’s front entrance. I will already be in wait, there behind the window where I have been busying myself with a towel, drying my face, neck, and hands. It won’t be more than a few moments before she appears, hoisting her bulky book bag and walking heavily. She drags herself along as if she hasn’t yet rid herself of the sleep from which she was suddenly and unwillingly yanked. As her feet take their first steps, her body swerves toward the edge of the track: final traces of sleep still hold her in their sway. I know very well that I really should not be standing at the window so expectantly. If I stand here like this every day, I am behaving exactly like those people who are too obviously expecting something, or (even worse) I am one of those who lie in wait, anticipating a response to the look they send out. No, I must not stand like this, waiting behind the window. Girls her age activate something in those who watch them, but it’s wrong. It’s errant desire, misplaced desire. It’s something defective in the men who watch.

  I watch her slowing down, maybe stumbling, and I figure that she must be taking in the fact that between her and the end of the sand track there is still a long and arduous way to go. Her feet sink into the sand, and I worry about sharp grains of it finding their way into her soft white shoes and soiling her socks, which are also white. But every day at this time, I know, she will stamp her feet on the cement surface where the sand track ends abruptly. She wants to knock away the sandy soil that clings and at the same time announce to herself that she has finished with the track that so annoys her. She stamps her feet twice, then a third time to finally rid the white shoes of the sand and its dirty, clinging residue. But the sand that has worked its way inside will stay there, sticking to her socks, suspended between her soft and pliable toes, which are not yet roughened or cracked by age or by too much walking.

  When she reaches the closest edge of the building where she will wait for the bus, I can no longer see her from my window. Once she is there, I turn away from the window and hurriedly finish rubbing my face and neck dry, as if to proclaim to myself that it is time for things to move on to the next stage. Come to the table! says my father as he stands gazing at the plates, which aren’t very many and anyway, aren’t full. He lets me have the few minutes I need to go into my room and get into my daytime clothes. Come to the table! he says to my mother, this time going to her in the kitchen. Or he might just stand at the door waiting for her, just inside the central hallway where he can also see me leaving the room that holds all the books. He waits to see which one of us will come out first, me or my mother. Come on, let’s eat, he says to me as he takes a couple of steps toward me as if to meet me so that we can proceed together, as companions, to our places in the dining room.

  There are not many dishes on the table. And they’re the same ones we saw at breakfast, the same ones that are set down on the table every day. They are dishes whose contents never vary. We try to make up for it, though, by sitting down together and then, when we finish eating, by carrying the plates together into the kitchen. Back in our old home, my mother cooked something new every day even though we could have eaten perfectly well from leftovers of the day before. Trying to tell her not to tire herself out, when my father returned home from his shop he would declare that she was cooking food on to
p of food! At breakfast we would slice thin slivers of cheese from the large rounds that my father so carefully and elaborately selected—naming each kind—from the grocers near his shop.

  Come to the table! my father calls with a vigor that suggests he is summoning us to an overflowing banquet, or at least to a seating that will last longer than the five or ten minutes we will actually sit there, rising quickly afterward to carry the few plates into the kitchen. My mother intones her proverb to remind us how anxious she is: We eat our own flesh if no pennies come afresh! But she no longer has it in her heart to demand that my father must search for a new shop, nor that we must economize more. For she has left to my father the business of figuring out the balance between available funds and time remaining, which of course no one can predict. She’s scolding us again, says my father, exasperated but unable to let it go. How?! he asks. How can a woman who does not know how to add two numbers together have in her head the sum of money we spend daily against the amount of money we have left?