The Frightened Ones

by Dima Wannous

  Once, he called me, out of breath. He was panting hard, his breathing was uneven. He told me that he’d been on his way home, and was still quite far away, when he got stuck in traffic and left the taxi because it had been so crowded and hot and he was afraid. He got out, only to be struck by more fear. His terror peaked and then vanished, as sweat streamed from every pore in his body. Naseem ran from the taxi and down the street in search of oxygen, but found only the searing sun, thick air, midday heat and his own ragged breath. He barely made it home, and was calling to tell me he had arrived. He had reached the tipping point of crisis, there, in his house, when he closed the door and shut out the heat and commotion.

  Another time when we were chatting I told him that you feel you belong when you’re at home. But he rejected the idea, claiming that there were very few places where he belonged. He explained that a house, to him, meant nothing. His room, for instance, that was where he felt a sense of belonging. But not even his room, just his low wooden bed. Then he began narrowing the scope and tried to convince me that he didn’t feel he belonged in the whole bed, just on the right side, where he slept. I smiled and teased him, saying that the right side of his bed was a vast expanse, he had to narrow it down. My joke didn’t make him laugh, though; it just cinched the knot between his brows into a deeper scowl. I told him that what he’d experienced in the street was just a panic attack. He shook his head: no. He didn’t believe in panic attacks. Or anything to do with interior worlds.

  I found it surprising that he was seeing Kamil given that he didn’t acknowledge his interiority. Naseem told me that the soul doesn’t fail the body—au contraire. The way I understood panic attacks was that a weary soul burdens the body and its exhaustion is expressed in physical symptoms like shortness of breath and disorientation. But he didn’t believe things worked that way. In his view, when the body becomes weary, it heaves its weight on the soul. When the body tires, it tires the soul. If not, the soul could exist on its own. Why does the soul die when the body does? If the soul were cleaved from the body somehow, went mad and tried to kill itself, it wouldn’t succeed if the body wasn’t tired. A sound body is life. Is a sense of belonging. I told him that it was the soul that chose to commit suicide; the body just carried out the act. He told me that what I was saying proved him right. If the body wasn’t ready to die, then a suicide attempt would be just that—an attempt. The body was what decided to stay or go. If it had hope, it would resist; if it despaired, it would submit.

  I asked him if it was his body or his soul that loved me. The body is what falls in love, he said. Eyes love, as do the ears, hands and mouth. Isn’t it the mouth that tastes something and accepts or rejects it? Isn’t it the stomach that throws up rotten food? Isn’t it the ears that choose a certain kind of music? You’re talking about taste, I told him, and taste pertains to the soul. He teased me. No, Naseem didn’t acknowledge interiority. How would he deal with panic attacks if he didn’t understand them? How would he find a sense of home or belonging if, as he claimed, his soul wasn’t moved by smells, and his body was all that stayed or fled? Maybe Naseem held on to things that meant nothing to him. If I found strange things in his desk and dresser drawers, perhaps they were the only things that made him feel he belonged. His tipping points.

  What was he doing now in Germany, I wondered, so far from the things to which he belonged? Had he stopped slapping his precious cheeks?

  In his house I found piles of receipts he’d saved, from restaurants, coffee shops, clothing stores and supermarkets. I even found handwritten receipts, from fruit and vegetable carts, I think. I found a small box stuffed with tags from clothing he’d bought—he pulled off the tags showing the brand and price and saved them. I found corks from wine bottles. Loads and loads of empty medicine bottles, which he kept for reasons I didn’t understand.

  Then I found a neat stack of papers printed in black and white.

  Obituaries!

  An obituary for his father, another one for his mother, a third for his sister, and a fourth, fifth and sixth for people I didn’t know. My vision blurred; suddenly I felt light-headed, and a chill shot from my neck to my knees. I found my obituary! Naseem had written an obituary for me, printed it and added it to the rest. He never told me he was anticipating my death. I knew he was anticipating his family’s deaths and his own, but he’d never spoken to me about mine, even though he had clearly imagined it. I read my name, and the page trembled between my fingers. My name shook. I saw it move left and right, as if it wished to escape the page. I was scared. Not because I thought it was an omen; I didn’t believe in signs. Because I knew that in his heart I was dead, just like his father and mother and sister.

  “Knowledge is death,” Naseem once said to me. I contemplated the phrase, which could mean so many things. I hadn’t wanted to ask and start a discussion that might open up big questions. I didn’t like big questions when I was with him, and immersed myself in the small things.

  Later, I realised that I loved him best when he was silent. As soon as he opened his mouth and began to speak, I felt a sense of aversion come over me. I didn’t know why. When I told Kamil about it, he tried to hide a triumphant smile: my distaste whenever Naseem spoke was proof that I didn’t love him as he was, but as I imagined him to be. When he was silent, my imagination kicked into gear, and when he spoke, it ground to a halt. I thought about Naseem’s words, though: “Knowledge is death.” I knew that novelty impels us to explore. And when we know something well, it becomes something we can possess, and then lose.

  I died when he got to know me well.

  I took my obituary with me. I folded it carefully, the way Naseem folded his shirts and jumpers. (I used to watch, from a distance, how he took a cotton jumper and smoothed it distractedly, how the moment seemed to expand and then repeat, as if it were something from a past life, or déjà vu. He would lay the jumper on the table or bed, fold the sides in, then smooth it flat and fold it again. He would gently pick it up, lay it across his palms, carry it across the room and place it on a shelf in the closet, which looked more like a mother’s or grandmother’s closet than one belonging to a man in his forties.)

  Yes, I folded my obituary carefully and slipped it in my purse. Then I turned off the lights, shut the door and went home, where my mother was still reading her page 24. My little room had a narrow door that opened onto a small balcony full of plants and flowers. I headed to the solitary olive tree in the corner. I dug a hole by hand, and observed dirt collecting under my fingernails. I dug and dug. I buried the obituary there, then filled the hole with dirt and piled more dirt on top of it. I don’t know why I buried the obituary instead of destroying it. Maybe I felt the act of destruction might somehow imbue it with life. I didn’t want anyone to read it. Even if I tore it into pieces too small to read, fragments of words would inevitably survive. I didn’t want anyone to lay eyes on a single letter, or touch a scrap of the paper. So I buried it and forgot about it. No. I didn’t forget about it. Every time I went into my room and glanced at the olive tree, I imagined the paper suffocating under layers of dirt.

  A few days later I had a nightmare and woke up in terror with my heart leaping in my chest, up towards my neck and down towards my legs. I was sitting in a tight space, not quite big enough for me. I had sat down and wrapped my arms around my knees, pulling them into my chest, as if hugging myself. My legs were bent and pressed against my chest, and I hugged them; I could hardly breathe. I was covered in dirt: it filled my nostrils, eyes and ears, and felt damp against my skin. Despite that, I could see. Or maybe I couldn’t, but it wasn’t me in the dream. I was watching myself. I was outside that body, all folded and piled on top of itself. Is it true that the soul leaves the body at night and dreams alone? I was watching myself in the dream, suffocating, begging for air, squirming under the weight of the soft, moist dirt, thinking that even fresh dirt could become hard as stone if compacted. I was myself in the dream, and
I was the paper, buried by the olive tree, on which was written my obituary. Then I saw my name engraved on my back, next to my date of birth. I didn’t see my date of death recorded. I hadn’t died, then? I wasn’t the paper with the obituary in the dream? What was I?

  I struggled to open my eyes. I thought about the tattoo. The one Naseem got done in late 2011. We’d been alone in his house, sitting next to each other, and he lifted his cotton jumper to reveal his back. Inked on his skin, I saw his name written in Arabic, alongside his date of birth, his address in Damascus, and the address of his family home in Homs. He told me he was afraid of dying in an explosion or under the shelling and becoming an unidentified body. Without time to identify him, or search for his family, he would be buried in the closest plot of land. I didn’t say to him that if he died in an explosion or bombing, his body might be so mangled that his tattoo would be indecipherable, even if scraps or pieces of him with fragments of words were found. I wanted him to hold on to whatever could comfort him, even if it was an illusion.

  NASEEM’S MANUSCRIPT

  My mother knocked on the door to the building. In that instant, an image from years earlier flashed across my mind. I saw her raise her head to the sky and shout: “Mammaaaa…Mother!”

  A woman in her seventies opened the door. She welcomed us in. My mother went first and I followed. A short, narrow corridor linked the door to the building and the inner courtyard. I was surprised by how small the courtyard was, barely big enough for my mother and me, with lots of doors leading to little rooms. With eager eyes I searched the house, the first place I had formed memories. I looked for the long staircase brushed hundreds of times by the hem of my clothing as I flew up and down. But all I found were a few steps, no more than ten. I scaled them quickly, in less time than the space between “Mammaaaa…” and “Mother…” The “sunroom,” which had been my playground as a child, was not there. All I found was a small space, just enough for a chair or two. There were three bedrooms, where I had sat on the bed or quietly played, whose combined area was no greater than my current bedroom. Where had our vast house gone? In losing it, I also lost that expansive period of my childhood.

  The realisation that children measure places according to their small, fragile bodies surprised me! To my young self, the place had seemed huge; to my little legs, those few steps were a tall staircase and it took ages to descend them from top to bottom. The house’s other distinctive features had been obscured by its new occupants. They had covered the floor with cheap, olive-coloured carpeting, and had painted the walls dull colours. The house looked ugly. Irredeemable. Restoring it to how it once was: impossible. We left, mournfully. My mother was sad because the house was no longer filled with her family or their stories and memories, which had slowly seeped away. The new residents’ memories filled the place, as did their smells and the cells of their bodies, which drifted onto the sofa and walls and accumulated with the passing days. Just as in my aunt’s house. The sofas were covered with layers of them, hard to get rid of.

  My mother did not buy back her family home. She did not recover her childhood, not entirely. But she did recover part of it when she bought a house nearby, further down the same street. Her new house had three storeys too. But we only spent one night there. This was at the beginning of the revolution, after we had sold our first home because we could not live there any more.

  A few weeks before my father died, he asked my mother to call the lawyer and tell him to come to the hospital to put the house in my name. He did the same with the house in the village, where my grandmother still lives. It never felt like I owned a house, much less two: they did not feel like they were mine; I didn’t even have the keys. I certainly didn’t carry them in my pocket—I rarely had keys to the house in which I did live. In fact, I never went home unless I knew that someone would be waiting for me.

  I told Kamil that I have a strange relationship with keys; that I’ve had no interest in keys for a long time. Since when? asked Kamil. Since the day I found a green notebook in a shop near our house, I told him. Its cover was made of fabric, embroidered with blue and red flowers. It also had a lock. I asked Baba for money to buy it and mentioned the lock. He firmly refused. He said there would be no secrets between us. He told me that we trusted each other, and that we were not afraid of being snooped on, because none of us went through each other’s things. Our bedroom doors had no locks. In our family of three, our lives were open; no one was on their guard or felt embarrassed. The wooden dresser where I kept personal things had no locks on its drawers either, and my parents never looked in there because it was mine. So keys meant nothing to me. They became useless pieces of metal, and I could not stand to carry them or hear them clinking in my pocket or purse.

  When I left Damascus in mid-June 2011, I did not take my house keys. Not because I did not think I would return, but because I was not accustomed to carrying them.

  In the cold and gloomy Damascus International Airport, I sat on a metal chair with white enamel so scratched that only a few flecks remained. It was around three in the morning. I gazed at the duty-free shops selling Damascene sweets and supposedly traditional clothing. A sluggish cockroach with a heavy gait passed in front of me. It did not even stir fear in me. I wondered if Syrian cockroaches were suffering as well, if they too had lost all desire and moved lethargically now. I thought about running away from the airport and going home. But I remembered that I had checked in my bag. So what? My bag would travel on without me, then I would get it back in a few days. Eventually I decided against the idea. That was how things always went. I was sitting in the airport, thinking about going back, but I had lost my house for good. I no longer owned the thing to which I wanted to return. I had left my house in Damascus, and had no home to go back to. I may as well have been living in the airport, with all the planes taking me from homelessness to homelessness.

  But…I did return to Damascus, a month and a half later. I stayed for two weeks. Then I went to Beirut on 12 August 2011. I left Damascus thinking that I would not stay in Lebanon more than a month or two. That was four and a half years ago.

  I had expected Naseem to write about the revolution, but he couldn’t seem to make progress in his novel without getting lost in the details. I remembered how we bickered about his inability to write. Naseem thought that current events were stalling his imagination. He said he could have written about a fictitious revolution, but that writing about the revolution happening in front of our eyes, something we had feelings about—that was too challenging. I thought that ignoring what was happening and writing about something unrelated was just a desperate attempt to escape reality. I was certain that the revolution had nothing to do with his inability to write from his imagination; I knew the real culprit was the medication he’d been taking daily since the revolution began, a final attempt at salvation. The antidepressants erased his imagination, along with his anxiety. He mocked me. “It’s just a little white tablet.”

  Has he stopped taking medication in Germany? The tablets he took with him must have run out by now, and he wouldn’t get more without a prescription. Even as a general practitioner, Naseem can’t write himself a prescription in Germany, and it would take effort, a little effort at least, to make an appointment with a psychiatrist. I understand Naseem well; I know him by heart. I know he won’t make the effort. He won’t have registered his medical degree or learned German so that he can practise medicine there.

  (Was he even a real doctor, or a real writer? He was Naseem. He’d left his fear in the margins of his novel; had flirted with it, approaching yet never arriving.)

  What revolution are you writing about, Naseem? The revolution ended the day you and everyone else left. Revolutions don’t come from books, Naseem, they don’t spring from words on the page. Revolution means begging my mother not to fall ill, every morning and night. My eyes silently plead for her to stay healthy, to not contract a virus or other disease. Do you know what
happened to our neighbour Ferial? She fell ill. Got a bladder infection. Her son, who lives in France, told her, “Don’t worry about the money.” But medicine was expensive. They paid seventy thousand lira for a bottle of antibiotics. Her condition didn’t improve. The doctor suggested transferring her to the hospital, so they could give her a higher dosage intravenously. Meanwhile, her son called every day, and every day he said, “Don’t worry about the money.” But money wasn’t the problem. Ferial needed to stay in the hospital for a week, but her daughter couldn’t find a bed that would be available that long. She took a day off from work to search for one. Finding a hospital bed requires a vacation! Now that’s revolution. She didn’t even find half a bed, not even the right half where you feel you belong. Not even that. Her son sent money and they found a nurse instead, one who made daily house visits in exchange for a significant sum of cash, and she administered the serum for a week in their home. But Ferial didn’t improve. Every time I visited their house, I heard her muttering: “Oh Lord, let me rest. Take me, and let these children go home.” And so, silently I begged my own mother not to fall ill. I didn’t have the strength to search for a hospital bed.

  I wrote Naseem a letter but didn’t send it. I added it to a stack of letters I hadn’t sent. I described how Damascus had changed since he’d left. I told him I thought of him with every step I took outside the house. He would have found it difficult to handle life in this terrifying city. He would have been forced to face his fears every second. Traffic, cars packed bumper to bumper, waiting to proceed. Checkpoints, conscripts’ questions. His fatal identity. Homs. Doctors leaving the country, hospitals unable to accept patients when people fell ill. You can’t fall ill unexpectedly any more, or for free. You have to choose when your health will fail you, Naseem. Just the way you chose the moment of death for yourself, me and your family. If you had stayed in Damascus, you would have killed yourself by now…well, maybe. Or maybe you would be losing yourself in wild parties, whose pulse reaches my ears on a constant, steady beat, honing the edge of my fear.