by Dima Wannous
Every appointment, I climbed the stairs all the way to the third floor. My exhaustion and anxiety quickly made it hard for me to breathe, and I always stopped in front of the wooden door to catch my breath. Then I would enter the waiting room and sit in my usual chair, if it was free. Leila always welcomed me with a warm smile. Leila-cat, I called her, just like her father did before he passed. Often I arrived early so I could sit with her a little while. We smoked and chatted about life, speaking in French if the waiting room was filled with patients. For me, time with Leila-cat was like an extension of my appointment. Or perhaps she tended to my conscious side, while Kamil dealt with the unconscious. I talked to her about life, and she shared her experiences too. If I left my appointment crying or falling apart, Leila-cat let me into the little kitchen, whose door was otherwise closed, and made me coffee while I calmed down. Once, she brought red wine that a relative had fermented. We tried it in the kitchen, unbeknownst to everyone in the waiting room. I usually felt exhausted at the end of my fifty-minute session, my head jostling with questions and confusion. As if Kamil had led me to the only way out, and then abandoned me there. I could see the path clearly and knew it was my only route, but I felt paralysed, unable to take a step forward. I hesitated. As if waiting would fix things. But things are still in limbo. And while desperately trying to resolve my indecision, I have discovered a kind of happiness. How can I live without dreams? I wish I were more decisive. Is there anything worse than realising your dreams? After that, what is left? Isn’t it demoralising to finally catch hold of a dream, just to realise you have to go chasing another one?
I had dreamed of living in Beirut for so long, but when it finally happened, quickly and unexpectedly, I do not ever remember feeling so lonely, not since I was a child. There, at the heart of that loneliness, was a nagging question about where I belonged. Had I not got past my desire to belong? Hadn’t I gone decades believing that I did not belong among the people with whom I lived, or in the houses in which I lived? When did this dark loneliness materialise? Was it when I came to Beirut?
August, four and a half years ago, meant sticky heat, and annoyance at the prospect of moving somewhere new. The sense of isolation I experienced at home in Damascus was accompanied by a deep, desperate desire for any kind of reassurance, and I had begun to conjure such comfort in the smallest of places. I felt a sense of belonging in my bed; there I could take refuge. I identified with my black notebook, with photographs I looked through when I felt I couldn’t breathe. With the kitchen window that looked out on our neighbour’s garden, and all the trees and activity there. Even my cup of coffee gave me the sense that I belonged. So did favourite chairs in homes I stayed in or visited, chairs which became the only place I could relax. Waking up at six was how I rooted myself in time; if I ever slept in, the day disintegrated around me. For years I only felt I belonged when among certain friends. How could I bring all this with me to Beirut?
When I travelled back to Damascus to see Kamil, he told me I was intentionally sinking into a depression. He noted that I had refused to find myself a real house, and instead chose to live in an apartment that looked more like a bland hotel room. Not only was I avoiding adjusting to Beirut or cultivating a sense of belonging, but I was insisting on keeping my new home temporary. That temporariness has lasted four and a half years. They have passed in a blink, but are still painful and fraught. What kept me from seeking stability? asked Kamil. He reminded me that renting a house did not mean I wouldn’t return to Damascus. That was a delusion, a pessimistic one. I was capable of choosing stability, even if just for a week, Kamil said. But I rejected any semblance of belonging or stability.
Everything I did was temporary. Work was temporary, friendships too. So were my apartment and its furnishings. The tiny kitchen occupied part of the tiny living room, and for the first year and a half the only things I kept in the cupboard were three plates, three spoons, three forks and three knives. Plus a coffee mug, and a cup for tea. Only ever enough food for a day, as if I might return to Damascus at any moment. Just a few clothes, as if I had packed for a two-day trip. I had not put my suitcase back in the closet after returning from my latest trip to Damascus. It stayed in the bedroom, open, to make me feel I could return whenever I wanted. I often went to bed early, just to be done with the day. Was there more? I told myself that my new friends, who eased my weary loneliness as best they could, were no more than passing acquaintances. Subconsciously, I maintained our initial reserve. We might spend hours together, but they could sense the sharp contours of the distance between us. This distance became another thing to which I could belong. Beirut became familiar, but my longing for Damascus still burned. Damascus, where I would not return for a long time.
Kamil told me not to keep a journal, but he never told me not to borrow from other people. I ran away from my journal and into others’ lives. I did not tell them I wanted to escape from my own memories by stealing theirs. For years I lived in a fugue state, and I yearned to flee from everywhere to anywhere. Running away was the only way I knew how to leave, and I did not know where I was going! I walked and ran and sweated and my beating heart nearly tore through my chest, but I could not see my footsteps or the asphalt of the road where my feet fell. I could only see my thoughts and memories, urging me to run.
All I remember about the living-room shutters is the chirping sound they made. This was the first comfort I found, the first time I was tempted to escape. Each day between four and five in the afternoon, as the sky turned a gauzy red, the slender space between two buildings—what I could see from the kitchen balcony door—became my refuge. I dreamed that another world awaited me behind these Soviet-style buildings: side-by-side cement blocks, dismal and grey. Their small windows and narrow balcony doors let in little light and always made them seem extra cramped.
I watched the neighbours, still strangers to me, spend all day at home, moving from the living room to the balcony to the kitchen. No social lives to speak of, no visitors or commotion to signal a boisterous life. That was what troubled me, as I observed them from behind a thin pane of glass. Their lives unfolded behind the thick drapes, and at night when their lights were on I spied through the cracks between curtains, where their movements were clear. I loved spying on the neighbours, learning their habits and moods and inventing stories. Windows enthralled me.
As a child, whenever I rode in a taxi with my mother or father, I passed time by staring into buildings, catching a glimpse of the colour of their walls, or the shapes of people’s lamps—from dull, depressing neon to sparkling chandeliers. In the worlds of these houses viewed from afar, fantasy, reality, mood, taste and dreams all merged. I often daydreamed about moving into a normal house with a view of a beautiful house, not the other way around. Walls had always incited my desire to flee, windows too, especially those of the school I attended from ages four to eighteen. The classrooms on the second and third floors had large windows set with a gridwork of bars out of fear of the students escaping! School always felt like a prison, and if we had not been released at half-past one in the afternoon every day, it truly would have been one. I remember spending ages sitting by the window with its thick bars, watching the lively narrow street below. I envied the people passing by, imagining them on their way to work or a nearby café.
After I graduated, I felt a flash of joy whenever I passed my old school. I walked by like a woman liberated, unconcerned with what took place behind those rusty iron bars. I enjoyed standing beneath the window of the classroom where I had spent all of secondary school, watching students cross behind the window and wave to passersby as if in a psychiatric ward, blowing kisses here and there and giggling nervously at boys walking past. Then I would hear the teacher shout, angry as all teachers always were. She would yell at the students to return to their seats and keep quiet, and I would be struck by a mad desire to shout joyfully that I was standing in the street, freed from the yoke of authority I had lived u
nder for fifteen years.
Liberating ourselves from the climate of hatred, terror and uncertainty of our long school years was no easy feat. The headmistress hated the teachers, the teachers hated each other and the students, and the students hated each other in turn. Each classroom had a student monitor, distinguished by a green band she wore on her right upper arm. She hated us and we hated her back. It was the monitor’s duty to ensure that the class ran smoothly, and to take revenge on certain classmates for old disputes by inventing arbitrary accusations. She was responsible for keeping a notebook of allegations, observations and complaints, and recorded evaluations of her fellow students’ behaviour, like whether or not they were quiet for all of their six classes every five-and-a-half-hour school day. Every time the class monitor filled a notebook, her title and position were further secured.
Being class monitor was not just an exercise in the activities of an informant—writing careful “reports” on one’s peers, sowing doubt about the identity of one’s sources and selling their secrets to the highest bidder—the monitor also enjoyed incredible privileges. She gained the admiration of teachers, headmasters, instructors, custodians and other staff, and she never needed to ask her mother to make her a sandwich because she could be confident that other girls would always offer her theirs. The monitor could sit at the front of the class for as long as she wanted, and everyone was careful not to do anything that might anger her. Most students were eager to play the role of monitor, though a few never seemed interested. As for me, I would have loved to be monitor! Though I don’t know from where my desire to lord over others arose. How did a girl who grew up in a house free of authority become eager for power?
Aside from the class monitor, there was also a gang of girls who terrorised other students, especially the younger ones. In particular, the Speaker of the People’s Council had a daughter who was always surrounded by a ring of ruthless girls. She swaggered through the schoolyard with arms poised and ready, and undid her blonde ponytail, even though loose hair was forbidden at school. She also kept her school uniform jacket tied around her waist, another sin according to our military-education instructor. She and her little mafia roamed the schoolyard engaging in their favourite game: selecting a student at random and slapping her, pulling her hair or kicking her. She never stopped until the girl screamed louder and louder and pleaded for mercy, while the rest of her little clique laughed.
One time I was her chosen prey. I was skipping rope with a friend when she came up behind me, yanked my long ponytail and slapped me across the face. It was the first slap I had received in my life, and the last. I remember the deep red marks her fingers gouged in my cheek, and how they lasted for hours. I felt insulted, and cried feverishly.
Yes, the schoolyard was where students experimented with ways of life they might later lead in Assad’s Syria. A place to train, to learn to cast silent insults and be drilled on obeying the powerful and respecting the authoritative. Students learned to ridicule each other, and find weakness in girls from families of moderate means. They learned to make fun of girls whose fathers did not buy them new coats or trendy, expensive shoes. Our uniforms, which were invented “to create equality between students and erase class differences,” were a joke. These differences were on clear display in the wool sweaters worn under our uniforms during bitter Levantine winters. Black leather shoes, too, marked the difference between the rich, middle class and poor. Some girls bought new school bags every autumn, while others carried the same one for years until the colour faded, the fabric grew thin and the design had worn away. Pens, notebooks, erasers and pencil sharpeners: any of these school supplies could arouse jealousy or defeat in the hearts of penniless students. The daily allowance given to children by their families every morning was another indication of poverty or wealth. Some students arrived at school with just two lira, others with five, and others with one hundred or one hundred and fifty.
When Naseem hung up on our call, receding into himself, all I could hear was silence. It was comforting somehow, as if I’d suddenly closed my eyes. Closure, here, wasn’t just a physical act; I felt as if I’d closed my eyes, heart and soul. All my fears and anxieties were instantly extinguished and replaced by a sense of levity. As if everything that came before, and everything that was still to come, could be taken lightly. As if I could take my memories lightly. I’ve dreamed so often of letting my mind be dispersed by the wind, allowing my memories to drift away, of finally being able to relax. I’ve wished so hard to forget who I am, what I want, where I was born, whom I’ve lived with, who my friends were, where I’ve walked, which streets I, or my loved ones, have lived on. I want to forget, to lose my memory completely, all at once. Because I know that memory is either there or it’s not. You either come to terms with memories—their heavy-handedness or fragility, their terror or joy—or you rid yourself of them for good, so completely that you forget your own name. I wanted to forget my own name. Forget my name? Really? Or did I want others to forget it? Was I the source of my suffering, or was this just what others expected of me? (For years I’d been convinced that I hated myself. Then one day I woke up and discovered that I loved myself, that I am deserving. Other people were what troubled me; the people I put up with, those I put on my shoulders and carried for years until a certain distaste dragged me down. I thought it was an aversion to myself. Eventually I realised that I missed myself, missed the person I am. I longed to be light and alone, to live on my own terms.) Why do we exhaust ourselves doing what others want, fulfilling their wishes and reassuring them? What is the point in reassuring others while we live in anxiety and fear?
* * *
—
That morning, I got out of bed feeling terribly hungry, as if I hadn’t eaten a bite since the day before. (To be honest, I don’t usually eat much. I’ve developed an aversion to food. Food is my adversary. I pick up a piece of bread as if it’s a rock I have to swallow, which might lodge itself in my throat, make its way down to my stomach and fill me with lethargy. I don’t dare to eat much any more. As soon as food touches my stomach I feel weary and fatigued, as if I’ve eaten a whole sheep. Hunger makes me feel safe: an empty stomach signals an empty mind, memory and soul. I love that empty feeling. I frolic in it, like a single small cloud in a vast, savage sky. Hunger makes me feel light, it frees me from all my tiresome obligations, even the duty of digestion. The digestive process requires more effort than I can handle now. My heart has to beat faster than usual, my intestines contract and release, and my stomach emits gurgling sounds.)
As I got up, I found myself enjoying the sensation of hunger, knowing that despite how famished I was, I would eat very little. I left my bedroom and went into the living room. My mother was sitting on the red sofa, holding a book she’d started weeks ago. I swear she’d been staring at the same page, page 24, for days. (My mother has become a lean little thing, heaped on the sofa under a thin blanket, constantly reading a sentence, repeating it out loud to herself and then reading it again. As soon as she moves on to the next sentence, she discovers that she needs to reread the previous one, the sentence she’s read again and again. She stares at the sentence, reads it and then reads it again. I don’t know if she’s really reading all the time, or if she’s just chosen to stare at a book instead of at empty space. Space makes her feel crazier. She hasn’t lost her mind, but she thinks she has.) Recently, my mother told me she was going to develop Alzheimer’s soon. I teased her and told her to hurry up. She shot me a look, and then gave a strange smile. I didn’t completely understand, but I caught a certain bitterness beneath her secretive, fleeting grin. My mother had always had a charming smile. She, who was so good at laughing and being happy, was now reduced to a poor little creature under a thin blanket. I told her that Alzheimer’s eases the burden of dying.
“It lets us look forward to death instead of fearing it,” I told her. “It gives us reason for celebration instead of grief.”
“Us
? Who’s ‘us’?” she asked me.