Beyond Love (Middle East Literature in Translation)

by Hadiyya Hussein

  "I need to get rid of a few things from the past."

  "I'm afraid they'll say it's time for me to go. It's because of that that we don't have much time left."

  "Give me one week."

  "I'll wait for your answer."

  He looked at me as though searching for something he had lost.

  HE WAS RIGHT, but I was worried and scared. There was something standing between him and me that was preventing my feelings toward him from growing and keeping me from thinking seriously about my chances as a woman. I considered the idea of living in a strange country that I hadn't chosen for myself, and my happiness disappeared. When I put my head on the pillow, I could see the naked women, effeminate men, and Mafiosi that we had seen in their movies. I could see the apartment where I would live a lonely life between walls that would be clean yet empty of life. I would also have to master these people's language, accept their traditions, and get used to the taste of strange food. To live in a foreign country is to tear out your roots, change your lifestyle and your habits, to become familiar with skyscrapers and the mystery of forests. You have to reconsider your affections and undo the threads of your deepest commitments. It means you have to change your skin. When you finally realize all that, your country will seem like a dream that you had on a stormy night and left only a foggy vision. Would Iraq become a mere dream that had flitted through my mind? Or would my memory of it be reshaped in the new country? Would my grandmother's and Youssef's faces vanish, and would the Tigris look like a mere blue line on a world map, crossing a homeland drawn on faded paper? And would my memory slowly fade so that houses, shops, cafes, shrines, and mosques would end up as infinitely small, almost untouchable dots-or would they all remain large, clear, and sharp inside my soul? This was why I should be with a man from my own country-it would bring me back to balance; otherwise, an obscure future awaited me. My eyes were still shut as the last of these images crossed my mind. When I got up, I found that I was still trying to reach a decision.

  THE RAIN that had been pouring down since early morning forced me to stay in my room. I spent the hours of the day reading from a collection of Fawzi Kareem's poems and browsing day-old newspapers. At four that afternoon, my daily duties began.

  Attached to Samih's room was a smaller room where we would sit when the weather was too cold for the balcony. Everything in this room had an Arabian stylehandmade carpets on the floor and paintings of desert landscapes with waving dunes, caravans of camels and running horses decorating the walls. In the middle of the room, there was a fireplace in which the glowing coals and ashes were actually made out of metal, illuminated from the inside by an electric lamp. On another wall were shelves filled with pitchers, silver bibelots, and small statues of bronze and ivory. Samiha and I exchanged the usual greetings. Samih was already in the room when I went in. We drank the coffee that Fianca had prepared. Samiha came in and handed me some wrapped-up newspapers, excused herself, and left.

  I was tired and depressed. After a few minutes, Samih said, "You are not with me. You have a problem."

  I wanted to cry but held on to what remained of my will to contain myself. It was amazing how Samih had such a sharp feeling for things. I envied him.

  "How do you know?"

  "It is clear from the tone of your voice. If you don t mind, tell me about your worries."

  "Being far away from my family is painful, and this exile is killing me."

  "The worst is when we feel estranged among our own people."

  "Have you known exile?"

  "Well, a blind person is an alien, a stranger to his environment. But in truth I'm in harmony with myself, and that's what makes me look at things from a different angle. If I could have seen and looked at the emotional reactions of sadness, joy, and fear, maybe I would have suffered much more. But feelings reliably showed me the human condition in a different way, and I know the tones of voices even if I haven t seen their owners for a long time. This is how I can recall my mother's voice even though she passed away ten years ago, and I feel a longing for the people I know whenever I haven't seen them for a while: longing but not loneliness."

  "Don't you think longing and loneliness are inseparable?"

  "Not always. You might feel lonely when you're around strangers, but you wont be swept toward longing as a compensation for your loneliness; alternatively, you might encounter longing for your people and your country but still be happy and contented in the place where you live."

  "They are inseparable for me."

  "That's because you are unhappy and discontented in your current situation."

  "Can you imagine? I was burning for relocation, and now I feel as though I'm going to be uprooted; that's why I feel depressed."

  "In that case, I'll give you a pass on reading poetry in particular today."

  "No, reading poetry is another issue."

  "On the contrary. If you are not at peace with yourself, you won't be able to express the meaning of what you read."

  "I don't think about being at peace or not when I read, and, honestly, poetry itself helps me to overcome my moods, even if only temporarily."

  "Okay, let's get started with poetry; then I'll play a new melody."

  DESPITE THE NAGGING CONTRADICTORY IMAGES floating through my mind, I fell into a deep sleep that night from which I awoke horrified. In my dream, I had seen Nadia searching through my things; she'd pulled out her notebook, then stood in front of me and ripped it up, just like the last time, but this time she had been without her two wings. And before exiting, she had thrown an angry look at me, leaving behind tiny shreds of paper that flew and floated in the room's emptiness. These shreds had transformed into a chain of steel that had fallen to the ground, making a loud sound like a woman's scream.

  I was in a panic when I awoke. I thought that I had had this nightmare because I was reading her diary, which was an assault on her personal life and perhaps would do harm to her soul. But what should I do with the diary? Should I avoid it? Tear it up? Or take it to the cemetery and bury it near her head? My throat was dry, and my bones were trembling. What was torturing Nadia's soul? How could I reach it? And how could I prevent these dreams and nightmares? I shouldn't have read her secrets. I had enough to deal with myself.

  I told Samih about my nightmare. He said that there was no way to relate dreams to reality and that, in general, dreams were future oriented rather than a storehouse of the past. I asked him to explain further, so he said, "I don't know exactly, but I once heard on the radio about Russian research that found that, astonishingly, more than 7o percent of our dreams forecast future events in our lives."

  By now, I didn't feel awkward asking him how he saw dreams. He told me that he found it hard to explain the things he saw, that he sensed things more than he could describe them in terms of specific structures and figures, and that the colors that people talked about had no place in his dreams. He did not give the matter much importance, and the moment he woke, his dreams disappeared. He advised me to train myself to forget the things that were disturbing me because time would erase them.

  SIX DAYS PASSED. I spent that time trying to run away from Moosa's face, which was following me like a question mark. Tomorrow we would meet as we had agreed, but this time I would have to have made a decision.

  What was I going to do if I was still undecided? I was both drawing him close to me and pushing him away. I feared losing him and was running from him. The last time I had seen him, he had made me face myself, and tomorrow it would be up to me to say my final word. I searched for a clear reason for my confusion. Why was I so headstrong regarding my heart? What was making me afraid of giving things a try? I had originally justified my indecision by saying that my rejection or acceptance of Moosa would be determined by the rejection or acceptance of my refugee status. It had been a test for my feelings; I hadn't wanted to say yes just because I had been rejected. I had told Moosa, "Let me think; give me time to make a decision. What you don't know is that I'm stubborn when th
e situation calls for me to say yes. Unfortunately, I did not say it when I was in Baghdad." He had told me that what happens in politics does not apply to the heart and suggested that perhaps I was running away from him or didn't want to hurt his feelings. What would I tell him tomorrow?

  I was confused and split into two women: one attached to the past's bitterness and the other taking me into an unknown tomorrow. The first one was bound by faded threads to her grandmother; the second carried a sharp knife and was cutting those threads. But my grandmother would come to me in the crevices of night, her face pale and clear, her body like the trunk of a palm tree; she would begin by whispering and then would scream with her natural instinct that was never mistaken, "You are lying! You are leaving for a faraway place, far from al-Najaf!" She would then die down like a flickering candle, patting me on the shoulder and saying in a soft voice, "Youssef no longer has a place in your heart. Have mercy on yourself and have mercy on your memory of me."

  The other woman cried out, "I'm tired of the smells of a bed where one body has succeeded another and too many desires have been shared." Then she took me to a future wrapped in thick fog, in which I desperately searched for the beats of my paralyzed heart. The question of what would be next in my life was hurting me. It became even more painful: what had become of me? A woman in her thirties trying to be in control of her life, fighting for a place in this world, but feeling a fear that inhibited her steps; every time she got close to hope, despair plagued her, and every time she decided something, the decision would be extinguished by hesitation.

  "Why do I look only at the dark aspects of life?" I asked myself. "Things are not so bad. I shouldn't close the doors of hope, only to peer out, like a spectator, through windows that let in smoke that blinds me."

  During that long, cold night, I held fast to my feelings. I stripped them of hazy illusions and discovered that Moosa's grip on my affections had become lighter. My feelings for him were like a slow-moving stream when I was longing for a strong, overflowing river. A voice echoed from far away, "Was Youssef an overflowing river?" But I didn't halt to remember those feelings that had been broken just by crossing the homeland's border. I was still chasing Moosa, trying to find a way to reshape my feelings toward him. My God, what was so mysterious about this man? I was unable to steer my own ship, so why shouldn't I let another captain steer it? What was it that I really wanted?

  Outside the room, the wailing wind played with the trees, making fearful sounds. The impetuous rain first pounded on the door with violence, then knocked quietly. My toes stiffened, and the cold spread to my bones. The smells of the bed, which I had gotten used to, pierced my senses once again. The other woman was forcing her way into my mind, firing my memory so that the past was rising like hair on my skin. The past was attacking like a thief, striking me fiercely.

  My heart burned as little things glimmered in my memory: my home's furniture, my grandmother's stories, and my mother's spirit, which would roam through the house despite her eternal absence. Oh, God, what was this spiral in which I was trapped? I was constantly returning to the point from which I had begun. The night's hours were shapeless, agonizing, lonely, anxiously bringing forth both dark and luminous images. I was like a blind person fumbling through eternal darkness. I could see a playing child nibbling barefoot on red mulberries. I reached my hand toward her, but she slipped away, and her features faded behind thick black smoke that enveloped me as I ran from it. I plunged once more into memories that mercilessly stripped off my skin. The Factory of Hope crossed my mind. I remembered Shafiqa scourging us with her commanding voice. I longed for the arguments between Mother Khadija and Salwa. Aziza appeared before me with her lofty looks and refined temperament. I wondered if she still dreamed of marrying a man in order to escape poverty, siege, and the land of wars, as she had called it.

  The clock's ticktock knocked at my head. I washed away all the pictures and cleared a path for the other woman, who had returned from the depths of my soul, crying, "Moosa, open a clear way for me with your stick and wipe away your secret mystery. You, creature whose riddles I'm unable to decipher, why do I wander with you in a vicious circle? What do you hide behind your deep eyes? Show me how to determine my way and pass into yours without being wounded. I wish you had revealed to me the secrets of your life so that I could know what kind of man I might be journeying with, but you say little when it comes to specifics, as though you are fleeing from something you want to forget and clinging to whatever will grant you forgetfulness."

  The wind was still swirling outside, but the rain had stopped. I didn't think I would sleep before dawn, but then I woke up and remembered that I had dreamed of Nadia. She had been walking a spiral, her arms folded over her notebook, which she had hugged to her chest. I had been following her without her knowing, and when she noticed my footsteps, she became frightened and began to run until she disappeared behind a door surrounded by barbed wire. As I caught up to her and stepped to the entrance, a thick fog had rushed upon me and then cleared, revealing endless emptiness.

  It was seven in the morning. I looked at Nadia's notebook on top of the books and began to reflect on the dream. She had been angry. She was still angry with me. I had fallen into confusion; she surely was attacking me, as if I had committed a great offense against her. Oh, God! What might it be?

  WE WERE SITTING on a green wooden bench near hundred-year-old stone pillars. I was staring at the columns that mocked our lives, which were nothing in the scale of time.

  Moosa put a leather satchel on his lap. I could hear him saying, "I missed you. I didn't sleep last night."

  "Me either," I said, still looking at the stone pillars.

  A light, chilly wind was playing with the cypress branches, and children were shouting and playing ball near us. Noisy families busy with their own concerns sat on other benches. It was Friday, and everyone was free of duties. People were walking slowly as they entered and exited the Roman amphitheater, eating sandwiches, drinking juice. The tea vendor was carrying his teapot, hawking his merchandise. I didn't need anyone to point out the Iraqi faces; they were easy to find in Amman, sharing feelings of homesickness. Plus, Iraqis use a singular dialect that doesn't resemble other Arabic dialects. I heard Moosa saying, "I feel as if I haven't seen you for ages."

  I didnt know what to reply. It was the first time that he had talked about his longing for me. I kept quiet. I was looking for something lost inside me, wondering how love springs from our skins to become a hurricane that upsets the soul's balance and plays with the heart's rhythm. How far I was from that! Why wouldn't love flourish in exile? Why were its embers dying and failing to warm the limbs? Was love mistaking the time and place? Where was the warmth of things around us? Was I heeding my grandmother's warning to hold the stick from its middle? How could I explain my longing for Moosa every time I retreated to my room? Did I just need him? Did I need a man's company, separate from passion and desire? Moosa lifted me from my chaotic feelings as he broke the lengthy silence.

  "Maybe I failed in the way I expressed my feelings; perhaps I should have asked, 'Are you engaged?"'

  Although his question didn't surprise me, I defensively replied, "No!"

  His eyes didn't believe me, so I went on, "I was engaged."

  He lit a cigarette and began smoking slowly. "And now?"

  "I'm free."

  "Can I know more?"

  "It's finished and doesnt worry me. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say."

  "Are you sure about that?"

  "Many things abide in us without our acceptance. For example, do we accept being here? More than three million have left Iraq since the Gulf War, scattered all over the world; hundreds of them died while they were dreaming of another country. Do you think they accepted it? Our feelings, too, rust with time's passing, and we need to make the effort to polish them."

  "Feelings don t rust if they are made of solid materials. What we lose and what we miss leave their traces in the heart."

&n
bsp; "What about you?"

  "I was in a relationship. But years of flight, absence, life in the camps, poverty, and the passing of years, all that has made me another man. My views about life have changed. And since I have forever lost the woman I loved, I've reconsidered things in light of the circumstances in which I've found myself."

  "We desire, but only fate draws and plans."

  "But we shouldn't leave things to fate."

  "Tell me about that woman, if you don't mind."

  He threw away his cigarette butt. "She was extraordinary in every way. You remind me of her, but I'm not sure how-perhaps your calm or the way you talk or something else."

  "Is that why you chose me?"

  "No. When I saw you, I felt I needed you, and that need grew with time. When I saw you in difficulty, I made that offer."

  I shrank into myself. He hadn't said he loved me. He'd said he needed me, but love is not a need; it is a feeling that overturns our thoughts and changes our lives' trajectories. Love is like a fever inhabiting our bones, a delicious fever, whereas need is dictated by circumstances, and in our case it was dictated by exile. I couldn't blame him for it when I had the same feeling. I needed him; I needed anybody who could tie down the loose thread of time.

  Staring at one of the big stone blocks, I said, "I want to be honest with you. The mere word offer makes me feel base, exactly like a surplus item at a public sale."

  He was shaken, and his eyes widened. "No ... Perhaps I didn't express myself well. It is true that at first I only wanted to help you and save you from your predicament here. I had thought that the wedding contract would be a mere formality until you arrived in the new country and decided. But over time my feelings toward you have taken a different direction."