Days of Ignorance

by Laila Aljohani

  Those had been the good old days, although, as far as her mother was concerned, they hadn’t been fruitful ones. So she’d kept on repeating her prayers and supplications while making regular visits to women she’d been told might be able to help her. Looking back, Leen realized how hard it had been on both her and her mother. She remembered going with her mother one day to the house of one of those women. As she waited outside under an almond tree, its untrimmed branches hanging down about her, she’d looked for a cloudless sky where she could shout, ‘O Lord, give my mother what she wants!’

  And He’d done it. Her body had ballooned in an alarming way, filled with a secret sap that nearly concealed her eyes beneath mounds of flesh that were soft and supple to the touch. It also caused a few freckles to appear on her neck and cheeks and raised the level of albumen in her body. But because she was so happy, she was beautiful.

  She still remembered how happy her mother had been as she bought diapers and baby clothes, and how certain she’d been that she was carrying a boy. She only spoke of the baby as ‘he’ or ‘him’, and her entire life was changing on account of this little one who’d taken so long to appear. Her mother had believed he would survive, so he did, and when she came home from the hospital carrying him in her arms, her face radiated an overwhelming joy. Bringing him up close to Leen, she’d said, ‘Kiss the head of your protector.’

  Oh my God, how ludicrous that word sounds now!

  She hadn’t said anything, and she hadn’t come up close to him. She just stared at him as he stretched in her mother’s arms. Then she said, ‘Why is he so red? He smells funny.’

  Her mother smiled as she breathed him in. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He smells sweet.’

  Her mother had named him Hashem, and kept him at a distance from life. She doted on him, banishing Leen from the circle that enclosed the two of them. This had grieved her immensely, because at the tender young age of ten she’d been incapable of either comprehending or excusing.

  Once Hashem appeared in her mother’s world, her life came to rest on three foundations: his health, his demands and his mood. The minute any of these three was shaken, her universe would turn upside down, and the sky would change its color. Birds no longer had names, people no longer had faces, hope lost its meaning, and God in His heaven was no longer merciful as she’d thought Him to be. When her baby got sick – and he would always be her ‘baby’ – she would lift her eyes to the heavens and say reproachfully, ‘Why, Lord? He’s the only one I’ve got!’

  Then she would cry. She would cry if he got sick, and cry if he got well. She would cry if he cried, and cry if he smiled. She would cry if he left, and cry if he came home. She would cry if he spoke, and cry if he said nothing. She would cry because before he arrived, her life had been empty, and cry because after he’d arrived, it had gotten overcrowded with his details and his little things. She was afraid he would abandon her, leaving her with a life that had been devoid of him twice: once before he had come, and once after he had come.

  In the past Leen had thought about her mother. She’d loved her, but she hadn’t understood her, and the ability to understand is sometimes more important than love. Now she did understand her, and she had something to protect her from desolation, something to protect her from the belief that her mother had deliberately neglected her. But now it was too late. She’d stopped blaming her. However, she couldn’t forgive, because she’d always believed that children are God’s gift and that they don’t choose to be female or male, and perhaps because she’d realized early on that she was better than him. But the fact that she was female had been an unforgivable sin.

  Yet in spite of all her pain, her mother was still her mother, and Hashem was still her mother’s Hashem: her first and last dream, the unborn child before whose arrival she’d knocked on so many doors. He was still both her dread and her refuge, the key that had opened the gates of women’s paradise for her. She’d once been Selma, and was now ‘Umm Hashem’ – Mother of Hashem. The tongues that had wagged behind her back, labeling her ‘poor thing’, had been cut off. She now had someone on whose life, whose nearness, whose absence and whose presence she could swear – though never once had she sworn by his death. Her existence had at last been validated, and it no longer mattered to her whether she conceived again. So she made no more efforts to do so, being content now with her Hashem.

  Leen watched her mother float on the water of life, weightless as a feather. She was beside herself with delight as she watched Hashem grow. She watched the little boy open up to reveal the teenager within. She watched the teenager open up to reveal the young man within. However, what was revealed wasn’t always good, since her pampering had spoiled him. Then his limited intelligence had taken care of the rest, spoiling both his life and hers.

  Leen found herself thinking about how her life had been ruined by an inept, worthless child, certain that it would never be the same again. Nothing and no one would go back to what they had been before Hashem’s act of folly: not her mother, not her father, not she, not Malek. Indeed, Hashem himself would never be the same again. She thought about how discomfited he’d been when he saw her, his panic attacks at night, his burning desire to flee. She wished she could see the horrific nightmares that filled his nights, tormenting him and driving him out of the house, the nightmares that had caused him to speak unconsciously and reveal what he had done. She wished she could know the words that hovered at the edges of his throat when he saw her. They choked him and forced him to run away from her, leaving her with nothing but sorrow and helplessness.

  She wished she’d said to him, ‘Take it easy. I may blame you for a while, but some day I’ll stop. It isn’t your fault. You’re nothing but the pathetic echo of a voice that’s even more pathetic.’

  She’d tried to say it on a couple of occasions, but when she found herself unable to get the words out, she’d stopped trying. The wound was still fresh, still oozing pain and sorrow, and it would be a long time before its scab dried up and she could scratch it without hurting all over again.

  Now she was conjuring her brother’s features. She was sure it would be a long time before she knew which, of the many feelings churning inside her, she would experience from then on whenever she saw his face. Which feeling would cling to her spirit? Sadness? Rage? Pain? A sense of betrayal? Bitterness? She bowed her head as she suddenly realized that none of the emotions keeping her spirit in such turmoil would bring Malek back. Not even her brother’s remorse could do that.

  She closed her eyes and realized that, as she attempted to make sense of what had happened, she was a spirit that had suddenly been emptied of its joy. From then on she would have fish eyes: lifeless eyes that rotate in their sockets without betraying the slightest warmth or intimacy. If she wanted to die now, she could do so without worrying about leaving him behind, since he was no longer either behind her or in front of her. She no longer knew where he was, or even where she was, for that matter.

  She could die now, because she wasn’t going to live anymore, and might not even try to. When he told her about the ‘absolution’, she had died a little. However, she hadn’t died so completely that she couldn’t revive again when something shook her powerfully. This ‘something’ had caused her to wake up before her spirit escaped from her. Now, though, she knew she would close her heavy door tight and hear the bolt sliding along its track. That would be the last sound that connected her to life, the life she wished she had known how to live without being blamed or having war waged on her most of the time.

  But . . . there wasn’t any more life for her to live. There was nothing but a vast desolation. Even if she were given another life, it wouldn’t be enough to enable her to lift him up again. Her spirit was so tattered, how could she mend its holes all over again now that everything she’d counted on had seeped out through them? Who and what would protect her now from the secret desperation that was spreading like a stubborn oil stain on a piece of untreated red silk? It was bound to shrink if it was
washed, and rubbing it would ruin it. Its color might fade a bit, and every time she looked at it she would go on seeing the spot. Besides, she wondered, can anybody wash despair out of his or her heart?

  How stupid she was!

  How could she have thought that others would make peace with her way of thinking if she couldn’t impose it on them? How could she have thought that the confrontation would be easy? On what basis had she assumed that she was different from Muznah, Ayisha, Reem or any of the other girls whose papers had crossed her desk at the Home? How could she have thought that she was immune to a fate like Sharaf’s? Why had she believed that her fate was in her own hands, that her life belonged to her and that no one would take it away from her? Now, in pained surprise, she’d become aware of the fact that fates can be similar even if the paths that lead us toward them are different, and that her life could, indeed, be taken away from her regardless of how different she seemed from these other women and girls.

  Different?

  What would have led her to believe that she was different from the other females around her?

  Was she different because, if she wanted to, she could drive a car without her father objecting?

  Was she different because she’d managed to get her own ID card?

  Was she different because she traveled without an escort?

  Was she different because her cell phone and most of her other belongings were registered in her own name rather than that of her father or her brother?

  Was she different because she . . .?

  Was she different because she . . .?

  But now she saw all these things as tenuous and tainted, like sawdust floating on the surface of stagnant, putrid water. Now, belatedly, she knew her true size, and she knew what she had to be. She knew the boundary she wasn’t to cross, and that she mustn’t allow others to cross.

  4:30 a.m., her room

  She thought about how Malek’s spirit must be roaming the heavens bewildered at that moment, and how everything she was feeling stood between her and the possibility of bringing that spirit back. She thought about how, if she was distracted momentarily, his spirit would pass through the tunnel and there really would be no hope. She was terrified. Her life had been tied to him even in its minutest details, and she’d loved him so intensely that she’d never once thought that part of her life would pass without him.

  When she saw him the next morning she would wipe his face with her perfume. She would tell him she wished she could have stayed with him, but that the things standing between them were things that other people considered to be more sacred than what God has spoken from His heaven, that they would hurt her father, and that she didn’t want anybody to hurt her father. He’d been a good father for as long as she could remember, and she knew he would go on being a good father as long as she lived. He would put up with whatever silly things she might do or say in the future, and would never hate her. He might hate what she was doing, or what she had done. He might wish to himself that he’d fathered her in some other time and place. But it wouldn’t be because he hated her. On the contrary, it would be because he loved her. Yes, he loved her. And all she had to do was calm down.

  ‘Calm down, Leen. Calm down. And take refuge in the water.’

  She pulled back her blanket, opened her wardrobe and took out the first thing she came to. She hadn’t brought a towel with her, but that wasn’t important. She went to the bathroom, where her body trembled slightly before she stepped under the cold water that gushed out of the showerhead.

  ‘Water – what an incredible blessing: a molecule of oxygen and two molecules of hydrogen, and you have water, and tears.’

  She stood there under the gushing water, contemplating it as it descended in straight, spoke-like lines, then broke over the contours of her body before slipping out through the small metal drain. As it descended, it took with it the pain that had been pulsating for two whole days through her right temple, the joints of her feet and the four chambers of her heart. She heard the pain whirl down the drain, then gurgle through the inner pipes as the dawn call to prayer reached her through the little glass window to her right.

  Oh, God!

  She closed her eyes beneath the flow of water, recollecting everything that was past: the long years the two of them had known together, the letters they’d exchanged, the names they’d cursed, the tears she’d shed, the anger, the coffee, the packet of Halwani semolina cakes he’d brought her once, the feeling that used to come over her whenever a light-blue car drove by, the dreams whose details she would ponder after waking, imploring God not to let them give way to pain, and the times when she’d been gripped by an overwhelming longing for him only to have her phone ring at that very moment and bring her his voice:

  ‘I was asleep, and I dreamed you were calling out to me.’

  All she could do at those times was surrender to silence, awed by love’s ability to make her spirit so light that, like a feather, it could caress his heart and bring him to her.

  Before long the dawn light would be spreading abroad and the city streets would be bustling with life. In the meantime, Malek was still slumbering in his place of in-between-ness. It would be some time before he awoke, and when he did, she would be far away from him, and changed. Her spirit had changed.

  Hot tears streamed noiselessly down, and she was swallowed up by a terrible feeling of loneliness and lostness. She remembered all the nights she’d spent gazing up at the distant sky with its stars suspended in space – at the times when it was possible to see them. They would gleam with a mysteriousness that gave her a sense of her insignificance and the insignificance of her sorrows. During those nights she would wonder how a past suspended in a distant sky could so defeat her. How could a star that had gleamed millions of years before – and that, for all she knew, might still exist, or might have turned into a black hole – make her life, her whole life, into such a trivial thing?

  And now, how would her life appear? And would she be able to bear what this life was to become? Did anything await her? She realized that she had to sharpen her mind so as to preserve for him the image of the life in which he was no longer present so that, if he came back, he wouldn’t be shaken through and through by confusion. They would have the stuff of a long conversation. And when they had their conversation, she would cry. Yes, she would cry the way she was crying now, though not as miserably. She would tell him she’d learned what Hell is, and that she’d pleaded with God not to cast her into it twice.

  5

  The absolution

  The movement in opposition to the war on Iraq is gaining daily momentum in US universities, particularly among on-campus residents, although professors and students do not expect protests to reach their peak until the war is actually underway. Student protests against the possible war are concentrated in New York University and Hunter College. However, some observers believe that the students who are apathetic about the issue still outnumber the activists who are losing sleep over the possible outbreak of this conflict. Some analysts have stated that as hundreds of students rush to Washington DC to demonstrate their opposition to the anticipated war, thousands of others are likely to stay where they are until the first military strike has been launched.

  Dubar * the 24th of Adhil,

  the twelfth year after Desert Storm

  ‘I know I’m late in saying this, and that you might blame me when I do say it. However, saying it isn’t going to change anything.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘I’m almost sure it’s never crossed your mind, and that it won’t mean anything to you. Excuse me. I’m stumbling over my words. I just don’t know where to start.’

  ‘From the beginning. Say what you have to say in the fewest, clearest words possible.’

  ‘I haven’t received an “absolution”.’

  He said it in a tone that he attempted to make sound disdainful, and a chill blew up. The telephone remained suspended, motionless, between her shoulder and her ear. Her eyes f
ixed on a painting on the wall before her, she saw the clouds in the picture move apart, their notched edges looking like demons standing in a long line between her and him. For a fleeting moment she suspected that God in His heaven had stepped between them, and the world disappeared from view behind leaden shadows of hopelessness and heartache.

  An absolution, an absolution, an absolution.

  Where had she heard it before? Where, when, and how? From beneath which mound had this derisive tone emerged, and the guffaw that now filled the empty space in her head? A vulgar, shameless guffaw, it reminded her of the titters of the girls at the university cafeteria, something that might issue from someone who’s overly repressed, but not from a normal, healthy human being.

  Oh, God.

  How many clouds had traversed the city’s autumn sky, suspended, like the telephone, between earth and heaven? How many prayers had left the holy precincts for the Lote tree that marks the end of the seventh heaven? How many spirits had opened the portals to the world of the unseen in those moments, running after the steed of knowledge only to have the steed kick them, then wink and escape with a smile?

  He said nothing. She said nothing. They were hemmed in by a heavy, stifling, alarming silence. When she finally managed to discern something of her surroundings, she saw them stealing into her room from all directions: from under the door, through the window, through the air-conditioner vent, through the electrical outlets. She saw everyone who, before long, would discover that she had punctured the sacred, transparent barrier they’d erected ages ago to keep colors, races and ethnic groups from mingling, and as a result of which corruption had taken up residence in both land and sea. They filled the room and, with sardonic smiles, said one after the other, ‘We told you he was a takruni, but you didn’t get it. Now you’ve ended up with another disaster on your hands, and you’re the last to know.’