17
Contrary to the way Dareen saw it, I do owe some kind of justification, if not to all who pass through my life, then at least to myself. A justification by virtue of which I could distance the guilt, place it beyond me, make it smaller; by which my hell would feel less oppressive. Passing through my life: this was exactly what the world and all who lived on it were doing, as far as I was concerned. I was determined—and I could not do otherwise—to preserve all of my ties, but keep them weak, intent on weaving the relationships I had into cobweb-like structures. Actually, spider web strands have a stickiness to them, and their ends carry poisonous stings, and these are qualities that I do not have or wish to have. Stickiness means attachment and poisonous stings mean binding another being to me. I am certainly not in need of any of that.
Lightness. That is what Dareen called it. That is what I want. At the age of twenty-two, I have not yet come to think with the lightness of Mal’uun Milan—the accursed Kundera. The lightness that is unbearable, the lightness that is a countervailing presence to heaviness and is equal to heaviness in what it does. That is what the physics of nature teaches us. The effect caused by a hundred degrees centigrade is the same caused by its negative equivalent. The lightness of zero is what I mean to have. Zero, the only reality that is absolute; and to each side, objects are merely the reflected images of the same reality.
I can barely fathom now what I am really heading for in my life, this being who is me. I was the absence of the others, and the black hole in their memory. I was another step beyond, outside of who they were, a dirty stain in their datebooks. I caused fear precisely because, before I left them (and that I did often), no one ever assumed that I could cause fear or worry. Having their trust and affection, I would shock them with my sudden departures. Indeed, no one left me! Even Hassan himself did not leave me. Yet at the same time, I had left more people almost than I had fingers on my hands. Likely they are all now somewhere wallowing in forgetfulness, and probably, they are like me. They probably have fallen into the darkness of the fear that never ends.
Dareen has an explanation for my fear. It is the same explanation she has for everything: that my fear is one of the aftereffects of the year 1400. Not just my fear—my urgent need for fear. I think she is making too much of a generalization when she attributes my fear to reasons as inclusive as this. I told her, This is Qatif, it isn’t Beirut in the civil war. She answered, Fear is fear, even if the locale has changed! She said nothing for a moment and then she added, And anyway, it is an infectious condition. Isn’t infection transmitted through the umbilical cord?
Do you remember the chemical masks? she asked me.
Who could forget them?
After two years of the war, no more than two years, not a single house retained any of the masks they had bought. Isn’t that a little strange? There was no motive to hang onto them. The war pretty much did not reach us. Anyway, it ended.
You are so naïve! We felt secure. And then, in a single night, our covers were yanked off and we were naked. Everyone was in an utter state of denial and searching for forgetfulness by any route. They were too eager to get rid of the war, to amputate it from their lives. We’d had one long period of insomnia that seemed to never end, and suddenly it was a thing of the past, something useless to ever look at again. Don’t you think we all feel some discomfort when Kuwaiti TV shows the pleas of the prisoners’ families, and doesn’t let us stop thinking of them day after day after day? Why do we react this way, if we really have nothing to do with what happened? Isn’t it because they are reminding us of what we work very hard to bury in the well of forgetting? Now, you are not going to also tell me that what happened was not another cause for fear!
On this at least I agree with you.
Do you know what our new fear is?
What?
A sense of belonging. Intimaa.
Intimaa. What do you mean by that?
Before, when we faced anything unexpected, anything different or new, we knew we were sure to have one. One person, one response, one voice—we were united, in unison, like military uniforms. Now it is different. There are currents, perhaps even movements; resonant names; turns of phrase that you or me can barely pronounce correctly. Everything is mixed up now, and we are no longer capable of defining what we want or mean. What are we searching for? What are our choices? What direction ought we to turn? There are a lot of questions and not enough answers, or not enough good answers, to suit everyone.
You like theorizing, Dareen!
No, I just want to understand and there’s no one to explain all of this to me free of charge.
Something else about Dareen frightens me. What she says is so like me that I could almost swear she makes a copy of my mind every day and then she brings it out again later, when the edginess of my questions and the sharpness of my apprehensions begin to fade, and she can stoke their fire again. It is not just what she says. We used to fall in love with the same things: foreign films without subtitles, makaruna with red sauce, blueberry beer, Fairuz, plain bed covers. We despised the same things, too: okra stew, Jim Carey, yellow lighting, the screech of the printer, and finding someone waking us up. Even the way this could spoil our mood for the rest of the day was similar. All alike. Dareen was like me in a way that made me appear a less mature image of her. She was similar to the point of being exactly alike in some aspects, to the point of being my mirror image. It scares me to be as tremendous as that, it astonishes me to be astonishing, just as it frightens me that my mirror rouses me to live, that it coaxes me toward life in this way.
Unlike our most recent phone conversations, this time she did not mention Nadia’s name, and she did not surround her words with apologies and modify them with double thanks for everything. She said, I want to see you.
Me, too. I have something small for you.
What is it? she asked.
A secret.
When can we meet?
Whenever you like, I said. I’m at your command.
You’ll be my guest, though, she said.
Ah, contrary to the usual. Are you intending some evil toward me?
I have already stolen you once before. I don’t know if I am capable of more than that.
When I got there, she blockaded me at her door. I want what is mine now. Now! I tried playing with her ready ebullience a little, putting her off. This is a truly dirty word, don’t say it, period! I was hoping she would let out a string of swear words at me as usual, but she only gave me a big kiss on the cheek, took me by the hand, and led me to her room, where we had never before been together.
Holding the disk I had just given her gently between her thumb and forefinger and staring at it, she asked me, What is it?
“Waiting.”Intizar. I always think of you when I hear it.
There was a time when I believed that with writing and music I could survive, could open up a free space in this world capable of holding me fully and warmly. Later on, I completely abandoned my faith in writing. Every new piece of writing became a noose that would wind its way around my neck and do its part to throttle me. I had had enough of my horrendous ability to misrepresent facts and make sorrows beautiful. I had had enough of being able to write out my fragmentation between two memory spaces—what happens, and what is written. And I had had enough of naïve attempts to steal my vision and toy with my heart. Writing was no longer giving me life, and now it was taxing me enough that it might be giving me death. Music was what was left for me.
There is a saying: Music is the food of the soul. I do not approve of expressions like this. Music itself is a soul, and how can we draw food from a soul? Anyway, how can we grasp that soul in the first place when we do not know its nature and have no description of its essence? The world is stern with us, though, demanding definitions according to the criteria it gives us, so as to verify the beings and objects that dwell upon it. Names are for one’s memory, and definitions are for the dictionaries; and music, even though it may fly, is not
a creature whose wings can be fixed with pins on a piece of cork, its body left to dehydrate.
On the Internet I have often typed random words into the search engine and studied page after page of results. Several tries might yield a disappointing nothing, and then one try bears fruit and causes me such sheer astonishment that it can swallow up the whole of my long night. Once I put in the word intizar, having already chosen to search images, and then I switched to audio files; surely such a word would yield decent results. I found the song and it staggered me so much that I did not wait for Umar to get onto the web at his usual time. I called him and we listened to it together, and I asked him, What do you think of it? He answered, Aah, I don’t know! That’s it exactly. Beautiful things always steal the language from us and force us into silence.
It’s a piece of music from Iraq.
She put it into the CD drive.
No, not right now, I said.
So, when?
Let’s listen to it together tonight.
3 a.m.—does that suit you?
It’s kind of late for love.
Love is the only thing that is never late.
She waved at the door. See—it’s closed.
I noticed. You’re a heroine!
I’m …
You’re what?
She came over to me, a trance-like look in her eyes that was like magic. I was already half lying on her bed. She went down toward my feet and kissed them. This time I did not tense up with worry. I did not feel assaulted by an anxious sense of being tickled. I did not start thinking, My feet are too lowly for her to kiss. It did not occur to me to worry that my foot might slip after a spasm, mistakenly strike her and give her a nosebleed. I understood her need to do it, to show her gratitude in the most lucid way possible, so I left her to it. Then I gave her a hug. I laughed a little as she said, Finally—it’s only today that my room is having its first experience. I laughed with her, she put her arms tightly around me, and I asked her, Does she treat you well?
Nadia? Oh, sure, of course.
She began to laugh slyly when I pushed her away, and then said, Don’t be annoyed, I am just teasing you a little. We were quiet for a moment as I trailed my thumb across her cheek. Her smile, with its inviting, ironic cleverness, gave me the impression that she was serious in what she said. Likely, she wanted to pass on this bit of information to me, and she chose to do it by arranging for a little light banter.
It’s true, what you are saying?
Yes.
Why?
I don’t want to build our relationship only through our bodies.
We went through a confused moment and then my inner self tried to entice me to say, Fine, you are right. Or, No I won’t leave you! But she spared me the sin of either wounding her or leading her astray when she put out her hand to me and said, I want to show you my secret hiding place.
The heavy scent of paint walloped me when she opened the door. She said, Go ahead, please.
It was a large room, with very bright lighting; the north and east walls were enormous windows of one-way reflecting glass. On the west wall hung three huge paintings and others were propped against the wall, showing only their backs, except for a row of seven canvases facing outward. Where I entered there sat a large table with several storage areas, its surface strewn with drawing tools and holding an easel.
I think this place holds everything my father gave me. It is everything he gave me.
I was taken unawares by the strength of my reaction, which nearly made me swear at her except that my tongue stumbled over the words.
Uh, you are—
It’s just exactly what you see.
Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?
Here—I’m sharing my secret with you now! I waited so that you could see it with your own eyes.
A secret—why a secret?
You know what the others expect. Windows, stories, trees, little songbirds. I am as far away as can be from anything like that! I am a crazy woman whose head spins at the color white. That means I do not treat white according to some presumed idealism or goodness. One time I read that art rests on destruction—of ideas, structures, and ready-made notions of beauty. By instinct, I am a really good destroyer.
Knowledge has corrupted you, Dareen.
Dazzled, I studied her secret dwelling place. With an admiration I could not hide, I said, God must definitely love colors, to so fill the world with them.
She raised her finger to me, shaking it as if to say, Give me a minute, and I will remember it exactly.
Don’t reproduce a translation that is wrong. The original sentence is God must be a painter. From the film A Beautiful Mind. She was standing in front of a painting and—
I interrupted her. I can second you on the film, I said, but if you are going to start talking about details on the canvas, you know better.
I pointed to the three works hanging on the wall. Why these especially, and not others?
When I lose my belief in what I am doing, when I don’t have enough reasons or motives to go on, whenever I doubt my ability, I look at them and I see what I was and then what I have become and I regain my confidence. My stages—the first was anger, as I call it, all red hues, large mouths screaming, fast steps, and swarming streets.
I don’t see any of that.
There is no reason to assume that you will see what would amount to a literal translation.
I don’t mean that, I mean … so, that was your embryonic stage, if it is okay to use such an expression. Writing exactly on the lines.
My embryonic stage, as you put it, consisted of some sketches in notebooks. I didn’t yet know the difference between watercolors and oil, nor between abstract art and surrealism.
Yes, I get that. So what was the next stage?
Nothingness. Nihilism. I would fill the spaces of the canvas with more emptiness. At that time, in most of my paintings I used colors tending toward black. I was consumed by the idea of contradiction between black and white. I was thinking that if I had been born in the middle of the twentieth century, like in the sixties, and had grown up watching films that weren’t in color, I would not have been very happy.
Do you like naming your pieces?
Her smile almost disappeared. This really is a tragedy, she said. At that time, I was sketching my dreams. Every swipe of the brush was a dream. With a certain amount of conceit, maybe, I really believed that at any given time I had enough images and thoughts crowding inside of me that I could draw and draw without stopping. I didn’t really notice that I was just going on and on suspended in the same place. I was not taking a single step forward.
And now?
Have you seen Shine? If I am not mistaken, it got an Oscar for Best Actor. It is all about a piano player named David. When I saw it, I heard a sentence I can’t ever forget. Play as if there is no tomorrow. When I heard him playing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, I could never forget it, even after I learned that this David could not actually play the passage. His fingers betrayed him. I am going to risk saying that every painting is a stage, or part of one. But now, I do paint every one as if it might be the last one, if my fingers should betray me.
Why are all the others turned to the wall?
How do you feel about your poems a while after you’ve composed them?
I hate them.
Yes, it’s like that.
Show me the one you hate most.
Shame on you!
She searched among them and lifted out one. You have to really prepare yourself for this one, though I should not prepare you in advance.
I put my hands out to her, saying, Come. She did, and stood facing me. I ordered her to close her eyes, and she did. I took her hand, and passed her forefinger from my middle finger to my palm. Every time she seemed impatient to go faster, I slowed her down. We were so close that I could smell the fragrance of the shampoo in her hair and I felt the heat of her breaths against my skin, and when I again moved her finger across
the bump on my palm, I said, This is me!
She had a curious look on her face. You are this wound?
No! I am what you feel when I am inside of you. When my being there doesn’t violate any other thing.
She smiled, seeing me fall into the thing trap, out of which I had so recently tried to pull her.
The sound of the late afternoon call to prayer rose and it was almost time for me to leave. Wait, she said. I also have something small for you.
It was her turn to order me to close my eyes. We were always carrying out these weird sequences of repeated behaviors. I interrupt her, she interrupts me; I kiss her hand, she does the same; if she starts swearing, I come back at her with something worse. I heard the sound of her making a little commotion as she hurried over, and then she permitted me to look. Facing me was a white canvas, as white as if it were a slab of ice, the very image of what I believe heaven to look like. Not colors but what is beyond colors.
It’s for you.
What?
You heard me.
But it is your painting.
I made it for your sake.
I can’t take it.
Why not?
Because it is your work.
You can certainly give me, dedicate to me, the finest poem that you will ever write, and then we’ll be even.
You don’t understand. The poem will remain with me even if I give it to you. But the painting, no.
Take it! Hang it over your bed.
Why specifically over my bed?
Because you are the only crazy woman who sleeps the wrong way around in her bed.
Meaning, it will be the first thing I see when I wake up.
And you will remember me.
You mean, I will think about you.
And you will remember me, she repeated firmly.
I really wanted to say to her, but didn’t, Hide me, Dareen, here, in this secret place of yours, hide me between your fingers. Draw on my body, draw directly onto my skin without any distances or obstacles, draw, with all of your colors, all of your fingers. Draw on my body as if I am the very last of your canvases. Your drawing will erase all of the futile, stupid actions of others. I will not be the best of your canvases, Dareen, yet this canvas, me, will be one of the best in its power to move the emotions, to express meaning. Aren’t you comfortable with the way my body speaks? So, then, hug me, hug me a little, no, hug me a little less than that, and then do not start searching inside my chest, do not ask me, Why is your soul not there? I have no soul, Dareen. The others have consumed it, the others who come and go, across me, these others who pass by, and those who thought I loved them and they loved me … you consumed it, you, Dareen, or perhaps it was Nadia.
The Others Page 19