Days of Ignorance

by Laila Aljohani

  ‘I want to get it. But I’ll never get it until I see you and we can talk. There isn’t a single part of me that hasn’t suffered, Leen. You think you’re the only one who’s suffering. Pain has torn me to pieces, but I still have hope.’

  ‘Hope!’

  ‘That’s right, even if it doesn’t sit well with you. Maybe I don’t understand why you don’t want to let yourself hope, as you put it. But you also don’t understand what it means to me to have hope where you’re concerned. I gave up on hope once before I knew you, and I don’t want to give up on it again. We should get together and talk so that we can know if we should swear off hope or hold onto it. Give it a try. You won’t lose anything. We met often before, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing for us to meet again.’

  They were enveloped in a heavy silence. Then at last she said, ‘I’ll think about it.’

  He smiled. She didn’t see him smile, but she knew he had. The fact that she knew it amazed her. She didn’t know if she would go to see him or not. However, she did know that if she went, she wouldn’t be the Leen he’d known before, the Leen he was expecting. Maybe she was a bit afraid of what he would find. She wondered if he would love her with this sick, troubled spirit of hers. However, she didn’t pause for long over the question. She was already thinking about their meeting: what would it be like after all this time? She was thinking about it as her cell phone flashed in the darkness of her room: Malek is calling, Malek is calling, Malek is calling. But she didn’t answer. She didn’t want to give in to the pressure he was putting on her. She wanted to go because she wanted to go, not because he wanted to see her.

  In a cool room on the seventh floor of the Dar Al Iman InterContinental, they met for the first time in long months. When she looked into his face, she felt as though he’d suddenly grown old. He’d let his sideburns grow out, which made his face look a bit different, and handsome in a sorrowful sort of way. She went over to a window and looked out at the neon sign advertising the Al Ghazali Trading Company. It blinked on and off with agonizing monotony. Then she turned to him. He shot her a smile so sad it brought tears to her eyes. Anything at that moment could have brought tears to her eyes – even the doodles she noticed on a piece of paper he’d placed on a table.

  When he reached out to touch her cheek, she instinctively pulled back. He knit his brow for a moment, but smiled forgivingly, since he understood that she hadn’t meant to hurt him. She was in pain. He was in pain, too. And here they were meeting after all these months like a couple of old friends who’d run into each other at a station, unsuspecting and unprepared. They both had things to say, but they didn’t know how to begin saying them or put their thoughts into words. They were traveling a secret, shared path in each other’s direction, but they’d lost their way. For a moment she wished she could cry. He brought out a pack of Marlboro Lights, then lit a cigarette and began puffing away.

  ‘O woman of the futile silence, is it not time for thy silence to be broken?’

  She looked at him in some amazement, perhaps at his eloquence and the dramatic tone in which he had addressed her. Fiddling with her fingers, she said, ‘I didn’t come here to talk. I came to hear what you have to say.’

  ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘I don’t deny it. Is that what you wanted to say?’

  He put out his cigarette and drew up close to her. Her body went tense, and she prayed to God that he wouldn’t come any closer. He reached out and laid his hand on her left shoulder. He didn’t seem to understand that she didn’t want him to touch her – at least, not at that moment. She removed his hand quietly from her shoulder, then got up hurriedly and went to the bathroom. She shut the door behind her. Then, leaning against the door, she sat down on the cold floor and wept. The hum of the air coming out of the air-conditioning vent in the bathroom ceiling, the deadly silence concealed in everything, the smell of his cigarette smoke clinging to her clothes, and her certainty that he knew she was crying at that moment without knocking on the door to ask her what was wrong – all these things stood over her like terrifying mythical creatures. She saw the oyster shell closing around her and wished she could scream, ‘Hurry! Catch me before it’s too late!’ She washed her face. The water was cold and her face was hot. Then she came out of the bathroom, got out her abaya which was hanging in a cupboard near the door, and put it on. When she turned to look at him, she found him sitting where he had been before, puffing away on his cigarette.

  ‘I’ll be going.’

  ‘I’ll give you a ride.’

  ‘No. I’ll go out to the street and look for a taxi.’

  He looked at her for a few moments. Then he said imploringly, ‘Don’t be mean. Grant me this one little pleasure. Let me take you home. I’ll let you out near the house. Don’t say no. Please.’

  So she didn’t say no. The blue Camry glinted beneath the huge street lights along the new streets around the holy precincts, streets whose names she didn’t know and didn’t want to know. She felt as though they were alone in the midst of the congestion at the intersection of 60th and Abu Dharr Street. She imagined the crowds of people inside the holy precincts and in its outer courtyards. She thought about how many of the people in the cars around them were either leaving the holy precincts or on their way there for a pre-Ramadan picnic. She remembered all the times when she, her mother and Hashem had put on new clothes and headed for the holy precincts to have a pre-Ramadan picnic with her mother’s friends and their children. She remembered the heat that would emanate from the mushabbak as it melted in her mouth, the taste of the hamam al-barr that she loved, and the popcorn, and the manfoush. How long had it been since her mother had stopped going on pre-Ramadan picnics? And why had she stopped? How long had it been since the city had stopped being what she’d known and loved? She had memories of times and places that were no longer hers. Memories that were so far removed from what she saw now, she thought she must have just made them up in order to keep nostalgia from destroying her. But when had nostalgia destroyed anyone?

  When she awoke from her reverie, Malek had pulled up in his Camry along the frontage road near where she lived.

  He said, ‘I’m not going to pressure you. I’ll wait until you’ve gotten over your bad feelings. We’ll meet again soon, right?’

  She made no reply. She remained silent for a moment. Then she got out of the car and closed the door behind her. But the moment she turned to head home, she saw Hashem standing there on a corner nearby. He was just steps away from her, with a look on his face that unsettled her.

  Time stood still for a few moments. During those moments Malek backed the car up a bit before taking off without noticing her brother Hashem. This, to her, was an answer to prayer, since she hadn’t wanted anything to happen in the street.

  Hashem said nothing when she passed him, and her chest tightened. There was something ominous behind the silence.

  6

  Decay

  Iraq challenged the United States yesterday to show UN inspectors the information it claims to possess on banned Iraqi arms programs. ’Amer al-Sa’di, advisor to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, stated in a press conference that Iraq hopes its declaration of its arms programs will meet with the approval of the United States because it is up-to-date, precise, comprehensive and truthful as required. Al-Sa’di added that if Washington has evidence that conflicts with this declaration, it should present it to the International Atomic Energy Agency or the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), noting that these bodies can verify the matter. Iraq has given UN inspectors a huge file of documents and information on its weapons programs and previous activities which, according to al-Sa’di, confirms that Iraq has no banned weapons in its possession.

  Ahwan * the 5th of Wail,

  the twelfth year after Desert Storm

  He hadn’t wanted life to break her. Yet now he found himself, not life, implicated in doing just that. He’d hoped his daughter would be different. However, this same hope now cau
sed him pain. He’d suddenly realized how burdensome her difference was, and with all the love, fear and concern he felt, he wanted to tell her that nothing could compare with her being his daughter. But the words lodged in his gullet like a piece of dry bread. He gulped once, twice, three times. But the weary, sorrowful words refused to leave their places. He developed a miserable lump in his throat that nothing could take away.

  He said to her, ‘I can’t, Leen. They’ll hurt you, and I won’t be able to bear it.’

  ‘But I’ll be able to bear it, Dad. They’ll hurt me for a while, then get distracted with their own affairs.’

  He took a long look at her. He looked into her eyes. In them he saw everything that life had withheld from him. He thought for a moment about how he’d never seen his mother, the result being that he couldn’t be sure whether there was anything of her in his daughter: some characteristic feature or mannerism. But even if there’d been nothing of his mother in her, this wouldn’t have made him love her any less.

  As he looked at her, he wished he could tell her how much he loved her, and how much he’d loved her even before she was born. He wished he could tell her how his attention had been arrested by the fifth verse of Surat al-Hashr, which reads, ‘Whatever of their palm trees you may have cut down, or left standing on their roots, was done by God’s leave . . .’ He wished he could tell her how he kept repeating to himself, leena, leena, leena – ‘palm tree, palm tree, palm tree . . .’ He’d read in Lisan al-’Arab,

  In the passage from the Divine Revelation, ‘Whatever of their palm trees you may have cut down’, the word rendered ‘palm tree’ (leena; plural leen) refers to every part of the tree with the exception of the dates themselves.

  The idea flashed quickly through his mind, and he held onto it: he’d name his baby girl Leen. The name Leena seemed too common – not terribly common, but well-known and familiar. But the name Leen struck him as unique. He didn’t want her to have a name that was hackneyed and worn-out. He didn’t know why he had believed, at the time, that her name should be worthy of her, but he’d developed a growing certainty that she would be no ordinary human being. It was a certainty that had nothing to do with parents’ pride and their overblown ideas about their children. No. If it had been that sort of thing, he would have known how to ignore it. Rather, it was a goal, and because it was a goal, he would achieve it. This is how he had thought, and this was what he had decided at that time. And now here he was, standing before her. He saw how the days had clothed his certainty with flesh, nerves and bones, and how they had given it a tongue with which to address him.

  She stood before him in the grip of a silence saturated with reproach. He bowed his head, wondering how he could persuade her that he had been choosing her, not other people’s approval, when he said no to Malek. With what words could he tell her that he saw what she didn’t see, that he was aware of things she wasn’t aware of, and that he was being no less courageous than she was when he had chosen to say no? For although the price of saying no might be exorbitant, the price of saying yes would have been more exorbitant still. If he’d said yes, he would have been opening the door to her misery with his own two hands, and he could never have stopped blaming himself whenever a shadow of torment or pain crossed her face.

  Perhaps, if he’d loved her less, he would have said yes. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Two nights had passed since Malek broached the subject with him, and all he could do was toss and turn. He could see clearly what would happen to his daughter if he said yes. She would be happy for a little while, and be in torment for long years to come. He knew people would never leave her in peace. They would tear her apart in his presence and in his absence alike. He’d also become increasingly convinced that people wouldn’t be content with mere words. Rather, they would try to change what wasn’t to their liking.

  It dismayed him to think back on all the stories he’d heard in the course of his work at the court. He remembered the story of two young men who had abducted their paternal cousin and her husband by force and taken them deep into the Du’aythah region far from watchful eyes. Once there, they’d ordered the man at gunpoint to divorce their cousin. When he refused, they’d murdered him right in front of her. Then they fled, leaving her alone with her treacherously murdered husband. And why had they done this? Because her husband didn’t belong to their tribe! He had spent many a sleepless night thinking about those two young men’s paternal uncle – the young woman’s father – who told the judge with bitter sobs how his daughter had been taken to a mental hospital in a state of collapse. He said that killing his brother’s two sons wouldn’t restore things to the way they had been, that they were his flesh and blood, and that he’d already lived through two tragedies and didn’t want to cause a third.

  It dismayed him even more to remember a white girl who had come to the court with her brother to be wed to a young black man her father had refused to allow her to marry. Some religious authorities at the court took her to a side room and began grilling her: ‘Why do you want to marry a black?’ ‘Is he threatening to do something to you? If so, tell us, and we’ll take care of it.’ ‘Have the two of you committed sexual immorality?’

  God!

  What would people do to his daughter if he said yes to Malek? What would the religious authorities at the court say to him?

  ‘My goodness, Abu Hashem! Couldn’t you find anybody but this slave to marry your daughter to? Has she gone bad so that no men want her anymore? If you’d only told us, we would have taken care of it. The country’s full of eligible bachelors, Abu Hashem.’

  Hashem?

  What would Hashem do? He was sure to commit some folly no less cruel than what those two young men had done. Hashem disapproved of many things his sister had done. So how could he possibly approve of her marrying Malek? He might murder him, or murder her. He was hotheaded enough to do something like that. What would he say to the judge then? And what would he say to her? How could he protect her from herself? How could he persuade her that life wasn’t a mirror image of her ideas?

  He’d been close to her in the past, but he hadn’t felt the need to protect her the way he did now. And he would protect her. He certainly would, even if he had to cause her pain in the process. She would suffer for a while, then recover. Her recovery might take a long time. Yet that would still be more merciful than losing her forever. She’d been given to him once, and never again would he have another daughter like her.

  He thought back on the feeling that had come over him when the nurse brought him the happy news of her birth. God, it was as though it just happened yesterday. And today he suddenly realized that his daughter had turned thirty. Her grandmother had placed her in his arms and he’d recited the adhan in her right ear and the iqama in her left. As he did so, he’d been flooded with a wave of bliss that made him feel as though he were floating on air. Then he left Leen, her mother and her grandmother at the hospital and headed for the holy precincts. He felt he ought to say thank you to God for the gift He’d given him, and for her and her mother’s wellbeing. As he made his way to the holy precincts, he thought about many moments in his life that had changed him or the world around him, and he sensed that the birth of his daughter had turned all the moments he had experienced in his youth, and which he had thought of as so incomparable, into ordinary moments that now retreated into the recesses of his memory: Gagarin’s orbit around the Earth and the uproar that had attended it, King Saud’s removal from power, the beginning of TV broadcasting, the first used car he’d ever bought, the Saudi-Yemeni war, the Arabs’ defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Americans’ landing on the moon, and his first airplane trip a few years before Leen was born. All these moments, and others as well, paled into insignificance when he first held her in his arms and felt the warmth of her tiny body.

  On that day, when he passed the school for orphans at Bab al-Majidi, he sighed as he thought about how life, monu­mental as it is, is fragile, and how joy and sorrow prompt people to t
hink about it in new ways that may cause them to rearrange its details all over again. He remembered the fear that had overtaken him as his wife went through labor behind closed doors. As he paced the corridor, anxiety chewed him up, then spit him out again, then chewed him up all over again. Every time the door opened and another stretcher came creaking through, he thought they’d brought his wife out. Nurses went in and out time after time without looking his way, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit down, even for a little while, even though his bones were getting stiff. But all that fear had vanished the moment he took his little girl in his arms and breathed in her pristine aroma.

  He had traveled life’s roads alone for a long time before his daughter was born. When she was born, he felt there was hope that she might bring him some companionship. Once, many years earlier, as he was on his way to the holy precincts, he’d thought about this. He’d also thought about what life had in store for her. His life hadn’t been an easy one, and when he bowed in prayer in the Dome of the Prophet, asking God not to let him die when she was still a child, he realized how much he feared that she might meet the same fate he had. He feared that she might find herself an orphan, alone. His mother had died two weeks after he was born from childbirth fever, and his father had followed her a year later.

  For a long time he had asked God not to let him die when Leen was still a child. The thought of it terrified him before she was born, and it terrified him even more after she was born. His father’s paternal cousin had supported him when he was a boy. But who would support Leen? Her grandfather was an elderly man, and her maternal cousin was a teenager who was still wet behind the ears and hadn’t seen life’s troubles yet. And she didn’t have an older brother. She would go to ruin in no time. If he, a man, had gone to ruin, how would she avoid the same fate if he left her young and alone? Something inside him had been damaged. He was aware of his weakness and his terrible aloneness, and he’d discovered how debilitating it is to be born, then be left to face this life on one’s own.