The Frightened Ones

by Dima Wannous

  “It’s delayed grief.” That’s what the doctor had said after a lengthy examination of my brain and nervous system. I was grieving now, after years of denial. Suddenly, I had understood that Baba had passed away, and that evading that truth was not working any more. I grieved when I chose to: at first I had not accepted that he was gone. He had passed away too young, not at the time we agreed upon. And I did not believe it. Three years later I was exhausted, and finally began to mourn. I had fainting spells, and that persistent, terrible headache. My extremities trembled, my tongue went numb and I tried to kill myself, not with the goal of dying, but to prove to myself that I could go when I wanted to, that I controlled my own fate. I wanted to prove that remaining alive was a choice too, and not a bad one, until I decided the opposite.

  I had started to believe that death would ease my anxiety and bring me peace. When I thought about losing someone close to me and panicked, I told myself there was no need to be afraid. If they passed away, all I had to do was end my life and I would find peace. As I was sitting on the green balustrade, dangling my feet in the air, Mama Vic walked into the room and saw me. I had called Aunt Victoria “Mama Vic” since I first learned to speak. She came in and did not seem surprised to see me sitting on the balustrade on the eleventh floor, my feet hanging over the edge. She smiled calmly. I do not know where she found such serenity; she was known for being blunt, quick-tempered and vociferous. She walked up to me. Didn’t touch me. She just asked me, gently, to come with her to the living room. Lunch was ready. We went down together and didn’t speak of it, as if I hadn’t been about to jump from the eleventh floor a few seconds earlier. Later I learned that a neighbour had called Mama Vic, her joints trembling with fear, and told her how at that very moment a girl was trying to leap from her balcony.

  Death was salvation, one way or another. Not just death, but the idea of it too. The sense of control over my own fate at a terrible moment in life felt liberating; it made me lighter. What good was life without death? What good was death without a soul, thrumming and glowing in the body?

  What would happen if she ended her life? I began to hope that she would. But soon I realised that if she did end her life, we likely wouldn’t know. I sat reading the manuscript late into the evening and began to wonder, if the young woman committed suicide, whether that would prevent Naseem from doing the same, whether her death could cure his own fixation. Naseem’s eyes were trained on death: he gazed into it; it walked alongside him everywhere. A few years before it actually happened, he told me how his mother and sister would die. I was shocked by his detailed description, and I believed him. There wasn’t anyone in his family he didn’t kill with words, describe their funeral and come to terms with losing, again and again and again.

  Why did the girl in his novel choose to delay her grief at her father’s passing? How did she become someone who could stand on the other bank of life? While she delayed her mourning, Naseem was running laps around her. I remember one time when we spent the night at his house and he told me all these stories about death. How his mother had been on her way back from visiting a friend who had lost her only son and was starting to go senile. His mother couldn’t comprehend that her best friend was losing her memory—even though the friend asked her how Naseem’s grandmother was doing, when she had died many years earlier. Then the friend got confused and didn’t recognise her any more. She thought Naseem’s mother was her own sister, who had also passed away years earlier. “How are you, Sis? How’re the kids?” She spoke like this for a whole hour. Naseem’s mother left her oldest friend’s house feeling flustered and upset. She was so agitated that she didn’t notice a massive lorry hurtling down the road as she crossed. She didn’t even hear its horn blare. The lorry driver couldn’t slow down fast enough and he hit her.

  I asked Naseem how he knew all these details. How did he know she’d been at her friend’s house, and what she had been feeling when she left? How did he know that his mother’s friend had thought she was her sister? He said his mother’s friend had told him. But when I pressed him further, asking how a woman who had lost her memory remembered what they had spoken about, Naseem gave in and admitted that the part about his mother leaving her friend’s house flustered was made up. Later I discovered the whole story was a fiction: his mother was still alive. He also killed his sister and mourned her death. He killed his father and grieved, and then came to terms with his own death. That’s where things ended.

  He died too.

  NASEEM’S MANUSCRIPT

  I missed a whole year of school when I was sick. It was the final year before our graduation exams. My mother gave the school a medical report from the neurologist, who had determined that I could not attend class due to a nervous breakdown: I was experiencing sudden losses of consciousness and trembling in my extremities. (A few years later, the same kind of report would be given as proof of my eldest cousin’s insanity, in order to secure her release from the secret police. She had marched into the polling station and voted “No” on the referendum, rejecting Bashar al-Assad’s succession to power.) I began studying at my father’s cousin’s house, always in the same room as before. I only went to school to sit the necessary exams.

  Since the school bus did not go all the way to our relatives’ house, they had their driver take me to school in their Mercedes. Each time we approached the main entrance in Nejmeh Square, I begged him to drop me off far from the gate, afraid that someone might see me getting out of a Mercedes with tinted windows. My knees trembled and I blushed; I felt that a Mercedes was embarrassing. My father had taught me, though without ever saying so directly, that our little family was right when it came to cars. All the families of my friends at school owned a car, sometimes more than one. We did not. Secretly, I felt that they were the exception and we were the rule. So what if this car was a Mercedes? I got out far from the main gate, crossed the street and quickly walked the rest of the way to school.

  At the front office, the receptionist greeted me cordially, though not without a certain condescension, as if welcoming a new patient to the mental ward. She told me to sit behind her desk and gave me the exam, which had been printed for me in advance. I answered all the questions and left. I was careful not to run into any friends in the long corridor between the office and the classrooms, or on the stairs leading to the main gate.

  I looked for Ali, the driver, and saw that he had parked far from the gate, as I had asked him to do. Ali took care of every task you could imagine. He cleaned the house, which was at least five hundred square metres, top to bottom. He cooked for them, even on his days off. He did the shopping daily, sometimes several times a day. But the daughters of the family were cruel to him. They were constantly shouting at him or boasting in front of him. Their other driver, Ammar, was from Aleppo, not Tartus, and thus “more distinguished” in their eyes. They were always careful not to annoy him or overburden him with too many tasks and errands. They spoke gently to him. Ammar was more refined than Ali—“svelte” was their description. His cologne filled the car when he drove. A “gentleman,” they said in English; he opened the door for them, unlike Ali, who stayed in his seat behind the wheel. His voice was calm and composed, not like Ali’s. Personally, I think they were afraid of him! But I never understood why they feared people from Aleppo and dismissed those from Tartus.

  The eldest daughter was alluringly beautiful, with big, bright eyes. She married a young Sunni man from Damascus, and whenever he visited, the whole family dressed up as if going out. When they welcomed their son-in-law into their home, they wore their fanciest shoes, never house slippers. He may only have seen them in pyjamas once in his life! Even when he spent the night at their house with their daughter and wore shorts and an undershirt himself, they always dressed to the nines. They would not put on pyjamas until their bedroom doors were shut for the night, and they did not emerge the next morning until they were fully dressed! When they invited him to lunch, they sat at t
he formal dining table. They used gold-rimmed plates that only saw the light a few times a year, during feasts to which they invited “eminent” official figures. They laid out a full table setting, with two sets of forks and knives and embroidered cloth napkins, and they piled food on fancy platters which they presented fresh and hot. When the meal was done, they sat in the living room reserved for guests and served tea in delicate glass cups, not forgetting the sweets and fruit that rounded off proper hosting etiquette. They asked him about the engineering projects he supervised, and spoke about current affairs, prices, the economy, American and Russian foreign policy, the Cold War, Afghanistan, Europe, and the politics of countries near and far—any country except Syria. There was nothing about Syria to discuss. No one ever brought up politics, though it lurked in everyone’s mind.

  Their other son-in-law was the son of an important officer from the Ghab Plain, and they were not afraid to host him in their pyjamas and slippers. With him they always ate in the kitchen, serving food straight from the pot onto plates with the occasional chipped edge. They might not even formally serve him, but let him do it himself. He was “practically family,” they said, not a stranger or guest. They spoke informally with him, and did not serve tea. They discussed family matters in front of him, and never skipped their daily nap on account of his presence. When he left, they did not wish him goodbye; his absence was hardly noticed. They did not intentionally treat him so differently. It was not as if they had all agreed in advance that when their Damascene in-law arrived, they would wear formal clothes and sit at the dining table reserved for guests. Their actions were unconscious. When they decided to visit their daughter who was married to the man from the Ghab Plain, they never told her they were coming. If it occurred to them to visit, they got in the car and drove to her villa. If she was not at home, they let themselves in and waited for her; since the development where she lived had plenty of guards, the doors were always open. Meanwhile, a visit to their other daughter required prior arrangement, consent and significant notice. They dressed in their finest to visit her, and brought sweets, fruit, chocolate and citrus juice, as if they did not want her to go hungry, or as if she were living in a prison, not the neighbourhood of Mezzeh. And every time they visited her, they asked before leaving whether she wanted anything, as if she was in constant need.

  My father’s relative’s family was loving and kind. They accommodated my sorrows and always accepted my depression and fear. They tried hard, all of them, to make up for his passing, without understanding, perhaps, that no one can fill that emptiness, not even by a drop; that it only expands as days, and then years, go by. I learned that in the face of loss, the soul defends itself by cramming the void with whatever it can. It chases after details, even the smallest (and often most superficial) ones, holds tight to whatever it can find. Eventually, the soul realises the void is vast and bottomless, that the hole ripped in one’s memory cannot be mended. And that it is drowning.

  I hated them as a family. I loved everyone individually but preferred not to be with them all together. Maybe family gatherings clouded my memories of spending time just Baba and me; soon enough, any big gathering was enough to stoke my fears. I would only be with people one-on-one. If there was a large get-together and I was obliged to attend, I would single someone out and strike up a conversation to one side. I didn’t hate “family” as an idea; it was more that the word meant very little to me now. Aside from my grandmother Khadija, I had no close relatives left on my father’s side: no aunts dear to my heart, no uncles, no grandfather. The one uncle I was fond of had passed away. My grandmother was all I had left.

  My mother’s extended family was rather small, not really a family in the true sense of the word. Sometimes I felt her relatives were mythical: not because they did not exist, but because I knew them more through stories than through experience. I would listen to my mother and aunt recount family tales and imagined the people in them. My grandmother Helena was a Turkish Christian. She fell in love with a Christian man in Turkey and gave birth to my aunt Victoria (Mama Vic). Then her husband passed away and she met a Syrian who told her that his name was Joseph. She assumed he was Christian. He asked her to marry him, so she left Turkey and came with him to Damascus. There she found out he was Muslim: his name was actually Youssef. But this changed nothing for her, and they were married. Together they had my mother and uncle, and the children grew up Muslim. Mama Vic, who was Christian, also married a Muslim and had two children.

  I remember my maternal grandfather’s house in the neighbourhood of Afeef. It was a typical Damascene house with three storeys, and each floor had a space open to the sky. When my grandmother passed away, my grandfather began sleeping on the ground floor, so he would not have to go up and down the stairs. On the ground floor was the kitchen, dining room, living room, sitting room (which became my grandfather’s bedroom when he fell ill) and a little toilet. On the second floor was a large toilet and the “sunroom,” which was filled with plants and flowers. On the third floor were three bedrooms: one for my aunt, one for her older brother, my uncle, and one for her youngest daughter.

  My aunt’s husband died young…but I’m losing track now. (Do I actually remember him, or have I re-created him in my imagination from the pictures my aunt and cousins saved?) When my aunt’s husband passed away, she and their younger daughter moved in with my grandfather. The older daughter was studying in the Soviet Union and only visited on holidays. When my grandfather passed away, my uncle married and his wife moved in. The happiest memories of my childhood took place in that house. It is where I first learned to walk, where I said my first words. It is where I often scaled the tall staircase that connected the courtyard to the green space dividing the two floors. I would walk up, sit on the top step and come back down, slowly at first, and then insanely fast. Then I would do it again.

  When my grandfather passed away, my aunt bought a house in New Sham, a new development just west of Damascus. My uncle stayed in the family home with his wife, and then a few years later he decided to sell it. Someone from outside the neighbourhood bought the house, and he split the proceeds with my aunt.

  I remember the last occasion that Mama and I visited the house. She stood in the courtyard, looked up at the third floor, where the bedrooms were, and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Mammaaaa…Mother!” It frightened me. I thought she had lost her mind. But I said nothing. She told me that she was calling for her mother in her childhood home one final time. She was saying goodbye to the house in her own way. The house felt like a mother to her, and she addressed her from the ground floor: “Mammaaaa.” She wanted to hear her voice there before leaving. The house had been witness to so many family stories, and when it was no longer in our lives, it was as if we had turned a well-loved page. As well as my grandfather’s house, the houses on either side of his also disappeared from our lives. I had spent my childhood between three: Aunt Um Hanan’s, Aunt Um Kamal’s and Teeti’s. Teeti was a friend of my grandmother’s, and she lived with her husband and their two daughters, Bidrea and Messika, both of whom I called “aunt.” My mother and her siblings had called Bidrea and Messika’s mother “Teeti” since they were little, and when I asked my mother what Teeti’s real name was, she couldn’t tell me! We left that house and all the houses in that neighbourhood, each filled with stories and a flood of memories…up to the brim.

  Seven years ago, my mother heard that her childhood home was for sale again. She told me she wanted to buy it. She would sell her current house and reclaim her family home, the one that held both of our childhoods. My soul simmered with excitement. Minute by minute I counted the hours, as if waiting to meet my father, surprising me with his return. (This was my sole recurring dream at night: that suddenly my father was back and I was overwhelmed with an indescribable joy. It was a kind of joy I had never experienced in my waking life, a joy reserved especially for this dream, one I felt only at night, only when I saw him. We alway
s decided to meet in a coffee shop, though it was one I had never actually been to, an imaginary coffee shop. My father would order a beer, even though he had actually preferred arak or whisky. Why this detail, I do not know! I would be drinking wine, trying to keep him in view, wanting him to stay, as if I knew it was all a dream. Then suddenly I would pause. Where should I start? So much had happened, too much to explain, and I didn’t know how to tell him things, in what order, so as not to shock him by how much had changed.)

  And so I went home with my mother, to the house that held our childhoods.

  Naseem wrote about houses the way others might write about the soul. There was a paradoxical dissociation in his relationship to place. He told me that he never felt he belonged in any of the houses in which he had lived. He said this was a conscious choice, but also one that terrified him. He told me he always chose what terrified him. Being afraid of fear was a constant, awful state for him: it made him invent all kinds of ways to be frightened. He wanted to decide when the fear would strike him, rather than let it do so when he least expected.