Above Us the Milky Way

by Fowzia Karimi

  open

  And Mother’s heart was big. It was deep. It was soft, warm, pulsing, bright. Open. Like her front door, her heart was always open to woman, child, man, friend, neighbor, guest, ghost, god, infidel, immigrant, vagrant, stray, invalid, sufferer, dreamer: being, living or dead; being, real or imagined. Mother’s heart was big, its interiors vast and limitless. And the girls were at once within and without it. Her great heart was the universe they inhabited. Everywhere they turned, there was Mother’s heart, encapsulating their turnings. Everywhere they turned, there was Mother’s heart, stretched far and wide across the dome of the sky, smiling down on them, illuminating their tender emotions. And when she held them for even the briefest of moments, the girls felt the red living thing pulse and press through Mother’s ribs, through her breast, through her bra and her shirt, pulse and press to reach them, to touch their beating young pink hearts within their small narrow chests.

  13

  Mother, on a Saturday, drives the many miles over the concrete highways, past the contiguous cities great and small, towering and highway-flush, to reach the doctor, the distant acquaintance, for whose efforts she collects money and clothing regularly. The immigrant doctor, long established in the new land, brings the injured and the maimed from the first land for intensive and immediate surgery and therapy. The war, now sufficiently rooted, and the visiting forces, now satisfactorily assured of their hold on that country and its enervated population, allow the occasional opening of its border for the temporary release of the handpicked woman or youth, orphan or widower. Those whom Mother visits are the few, the lucky/unlucky, able to take respite from the never-ending war for a few weeks of treatment in the sunny land. They arrive to see the interiors of airports and hospital surgery and recovery rooms and, if capable, ride in the back of a comfortable and air conditioned van to the seaside, the city center, and the amusement park, before being flown back to the war-land. And when they arrive in the golden land, Mother takes her Saturday off of work to deliver what she has collected from friends to the temporary patients, and to spend a few hours with them to salve her own ailments, her longing and her guilt.

  The patient sitting up in the hospital bed sways to and fro, beats her thighs with her fists, only occasionally stops to adjust her head scarf, and all the while screams, “Thirteen, thirteen!” She is unaware of Mother and the doctor who have stepped in to visit with her. Mother next stops with the two young men in the adjacent room. The one in the first bed, the older of the two, is unable to communicate, having lost his sight and speech, and his right arm, picking up a mine in an empty lot behind his father’s vegetable stand. But he is happy to hear Mother’s cheerful and warm voice speaking to him in the familiar tongue and tones and holds her hand in his hand as he might his own mother’s. His friend in the next bed, bright and talkative, speaks for both of them. He is all in one piece and tells Mother that his injury, and the weapon that injured him, are inside, trapped within his skull just above his left ear. He pulls back his hair to show her a small scar and asks Mother to come back the following week to celebrate with him post-surgery. He will show her the piece of metal the doctors remove. He plans to make a necklace of it and Mother promises to bring him a leather cord for the purpose.

  Mother visits with the other seven or eight patients, kisses their faces and hands, sets out pastries, pours tea from the thermoses she’s brought with her, and shares stories and gossip as she might with her own siblings and aunts, though she has only just met these patients and will likely never see them again. She returns to the wailing woman in the first room, the woman oblivious of Mother and the culture that binds them, and yet only too aware of where she is and what has transported her here. And Mother, whose charm and warmth open a line to everyone she meets, is unable to reach this woman who sways and pummels and moans, “thirteen, thirteen …” Mother sits and waits. The tea she has poured cools on the table. The woman rocks and moans. She falls back into the headboard and the wall, pushing buttons and setting off beeps and alarms, unintentionally calling in nurses, who repeatedly come and go as Mother waits, as the sky outside shifts from midday to afternoon. And the woman falls back into the pillows and the wall, lies staring at her lap or the end of the bed, then sits up to begin the cycle again, the rocking, the beating, and the wailing. She rises. She falls.

  The doctor has told Mother what has brought the patient here. And it is this that keeps Mother in her chair at the woman’s bedside. Only months prior, the woman was at home with her family. They had gathered, as they regularly did—her sons, young and grown, her daughters-in-law, her grandchildren—to share a meal. They began to set out dinner, and she went up to the rooftop to collect the laundry. As she pulled clothes off the line on one corner of the roof, two rockets sent over the city hit her house, nearly simultaneously. The house crumbled and gave way beneath her, killing everyone inside. She was left standing on the one corner still erect. Though it is growing late and Mother has a long drive home over endless miles of freeway, she remains beside the moaning woman. She rises to pour out the cold tea and replaces it with a fresh cup. She uncovers the meal the nurse has brought in and pushes the table nearer the swaying woman. She straightens up the hospital room, leaves momentarily to retrieve more pillows from the nurse’s station, and returns to place them behind the patient. Mother pulls her chair nearer to, and attempts conversation again with, the now humming woman. Finally, the woman looks/does not look at Mother. She speaks/does not speak to her.

  And what is left? Tell me. This? What is this and what am I and what for? I know where I am. Why am I? This? Here, I sit. In this bed, under these cold chirping lights. I ask them to shut them off. But the sun outside! Here, the sun again. And I, plucked from the debris, from the waste. Pulled down, carted over, driven there to here, here to there, lifted from there into the glaring sky, dropped here, hospital to hospital, desert to desert. Here. A cold hospital bed. I asked for none of this. Why am I still here? That blazing sun looks in. Gapes. Am I fated to suffer this? This? I had thirteen boys. I am their mother. I did not send them to fight. I kept them here. Under my skirts, within my arms. Protected. Then I stood above, as they were buried beneath my feet. I have no feet. Look, the two are gone. This! This is why they have brought me here. Footless. What need have I for feet? I had thirteen sons, torn from me like limbs, like flesh ripped from my body. My womb inverted, sucked out by something, what? A cloud? Count. Thirteen. Before you reach it, they will have all vanished. Count! Thirteen, all smothered. Extinguished. Thirteen. What use this tongue? It flaps. Thirteen! They said I was blessed. They said, thirteen! All boys! All healthy. All strong. All safe. All whole, limb and livelihood. I went to gather the laundry, their things, trousers and shirts, underwear and socks. Bricks like cards. Like biscuits. The dust. The cloud. They told me it was immediate. But the cloud rising out of the gaping hole below me spoke, it whimpered, it gurgled. Beneath my seared feet, it moaned. And I stood, teetering. Listening. Past my own choking, hearing. Below. In my girlhood dreams, the cloud descended from above. A soft feathery cloud, descending softly from a clear blue sky. It spoke, softly. It said to me, you are blessed. Tenderly. This? This sun you have here! I have nothing to tell it. Do you have no shame? An old woman. My breasts are dry. My hands dish rags. It swallowed my feet, yet I stood. Two pegs. I stood, tottering. Welded to the rooftop. The dusty dull cloud moved up my pegs, between them, inside me, and suctioned out my womb, turned it inside out, and tore it clear away. It knew where I kept them. You’ll see no scars there now. They said it was immediate. They say these things. I know what I heard. Here, in this hospital bed, clean, dry desert, through that window, the shameless sun. The same one. Has it not seen enough? It was there. And there are others, plenty. Places, plenty. Smothered, plenty. Sons. Mine. Sun, away! Ramble on your course. Turn. Totter, I. What need have I for feet? I teeter. Ramble. This flapping tongue! I have no rest. So. This searing brain. They say eat. This? They say rest now. I ask, this? So.

  l
eaves

  I have led you astray again. The dead do not reside in or pass through books. The dead author the books. It is the living who arrive from disparate stations at various hours of the day to enter the books. It is the living who come to rest within a while, who stop to fan their flushed cheeks, or to amble in the shade of the many leaves.

  the Straw Road

  Take this path through the alphabet, steady reader.

  S

  Will you think it strange if I confess that I have a deep sense of myself as something like an astronaut, floating weightlessly out in space, high above our tender earth, there to do naught but marvel at the absolute beauty of the stars. Sometimes, I feel that it is the thing I was born to do: love the sky with all of my being. And if my eyes, naked and unblinking, fixed themselves upon the stars for a thousand years, it would not be long enough to quench their thirst. How beautiful they are. How absolutely and fundamentally beautiful.

  one

  The sisters are one. It is their fascination with numbers that sees them multiply and contract, tally and deduct.

  subtraction

  When they brought her first one home, her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the floor before anyone could catch her. She didn’t try to regain the breath that had been clapped out of her and, somewhere far back and deep within her, she worked to will it away, as she worked to will away the image she’d glimpsed of her boy carried in through the door in his uncle’s arms. But her breath returned of its own accord, and then the wailing began. The following year, her eldest was driven home by strangers, fellow soldiers of her son who’d taken care to cleanse his wounds and wrap his body though they knew it was not their place and his family would see to the ritual and see what was left of him when they did. She heard the army vehicle’s motor, listened for the truck to slow as it advanced up her street and, hearing the squeal of brakes and the grinding of gravel, began to sway and reach out with her hand for the nearest wall to brace herself, while her other hand went to her scalp to grab her hair at its roots. A scream gathered itself within her belly, thrashed within her ribcage, rattled up her throat, and released before the front gate was opened. It silenced the entire neighborhood. In the fall of the same year, her third boy came home; his body was followed in by a procession of neighbors with bowed nodding heads who were now adept at the routine and were prepared to take over her household duties. This time, the void that opened before her allowed her entrance. It closed about her for several days, let her sleep the sleep of oblivion, and released her changed to a changed world. She missed this third funeral and her family and neighbors were not sorry for it. The dimmed world she returned to operated by rote, like a mindless machine. The dull sun rose and the dull sun set. The moon ballooned and dissolved and looked in her window six nights a month. The new world was occupied by people, some familiar, who spoke words that blistered and popped like water in a kettle and evaporated before she could grab hold of their structure or arrangement. Her neighbors and her cousins, her brother and her own aged mother were the gears and cogs that operated the breathless, mechanical world. In bed, she was shifted and turned over, undressed and dressed again, fed and wiped clean. In the bath, her arms were lifted and set down, her legs stretched out, kneaded, and folded again, her upper and undersides scrubbed and rinsed, her hair shampooed and combed, her nails clipped. And in time, she too was a gear, and her turnings produced steaming meals and neat piles of laundry and spotless windows. When they brought news of her fourth and last son, a young man forcibly conscripted, whose body the military was still negotiating to have released, she dropped the needle and the handkerchief from her hands. She stood up and stumbled out into the courtyard, into the daylight, tore open her shirt, pulled down her bra, and, near the feet of the neighbors duly arrived, she threw herself to the ground and grated her breasts across the dry, pebbly dirt, crying, “I’m burning! I’m burning!” She ground her flesh into the earth and cried, “I’m on fire! Let me in!” But the earth did not extinguish the inferno in her chest. And the earth did not open up to take her in, though it sopped up her blood and her milk.

  riveted

  And what have they not been witness to—the sun, the stars, the moon, the planets, pinned to our firmament like many captive eyes, blinking and unblinking?

  in the first land, childhood

  In the first life, all was sound, and color. The street peddlers’ calls—lab-lab-ooooh and puqhana-puqhana-puqhana—reached the sisters’ house long before the itinerant traders themselves did. But it wasn’t the peddlers’ melodic proclamations, describing the names, qualities, quantity, or value of their various wares, that excited and entranced the sisters; it was the bobbing of their boiled red beets, or their innumerable and colorful, buoyant balloons, or their hand-painted, jingling tambourines over and along the garden wall. With the peddlers hidden by the towering walls that enclosed the garden and the five small girls, the wares seemed to have lives and personalities of their own as they bounced and danced first above and along one wall, then around the corner and above and along the other wall. And the sisters themselves jumped up and down and they beamed ear to ear. The older sisters loved the sweet boiled beets, while the younger ones gagged at the sight of them. The younger sisters each had their favorite color of balloon, which changed with the seasons or the day. All expertly examined the fit of this or that tambourine in her hand, the jingle of these or those bells in her ear. And Mother could only occasionally deny them, only sometimes stop her girls from opening the garden gate and chasing down the peddler, who never looked as he sounded, who always looked shabby next to the riches he peddled.

  Depending on the aunt or uncle they visited, depending on the day of the week or season of year, the girls were often treated to music and dance. The young aunt who adored the new films always had cassettes of the new film songs and they were songs to be danced to. Danced to just so with one’s hair tied up just so with red and gold bangles clinking on the wrists just so. The young aunt with the glimmering dark hair taught the precise but fluid moves to the older sisters while the younger ones watched longingly or timidly. And the beautiful aunt danced with her eyes set on something far-off, elsewhere. And the sisters all set their eyes on her. Their uncle, who adored food and loved to cook above all else, loved music second-best. On the rare occasion that he hosted a funeral or a man of god, he forwent the musicians. But at all other times, at the many and regular gatherings at his house, the musicians always arrived first and were seated on the best cushions, and not far from the bounteous array of drink and food. And the singing and playing commenced before the last guests arrived, and the dancing not much later. So all ate and imbibed and sated themselves even as they danced and applauded the musicians and shouted out song requests. And the sisters bounced, swayed, and clapped to the singular rhythms and melodies even as they chased, teased, or gossiped with cousins among and through the warm swarming crowds.

  Mother rocked the sleeping baby sister on her outstretched legs, in and out of the soft sunlight, and the older girls sitting beside her on the floor cushions begged to have a turn, squirmed with anticipation to play mother. At the park, Father lifted the two little sisters into the air, one hanging from each arm, and swung them back and forth while he whistled the old folk tunes. He tossed the intrepid sister and caught her in midair before placing her on his shoulder so that, walking through the avenue of trees, he might show her what lived among their leaves and scurried over their branches. The sister happier with her feet on the ground and her eyes, nose, and hands nearer the velvety radiant flowers and the scurrying shy bugs skipped and tried to keep up with him, and was in awe when she calculated that three of her steps equaled every one of Father’s.

  orbit

  Did I not say I would return again to the beginning? Write, then whirl again. Then write again, in search of what has been mislaid.

  in the beginning: innocence

  Innocence lost on a grand scale, an epic scale. The innocence of:

&nb
sp; a girl,

  of five girls,

  of a young family,

  of an ancient city,

  of a land entire,

  lost in a twinkling.

  shelter

  During the years of steady bombardment, when more rockets than rain fall on the city of hills, the inhabitants of this city under siege learn from their neighbors the secrets to remaining alive another day. And the family of seventeen—made up of brothers and sisters, their husbands and wives, children, and two grandmothers—who’ve come to live under the sole remaining roof among them, set out to apply the latest scheme. They collect rubber tires off of abandoned vehicles in abandoned neighborhoods too far shelled for even the rocket launchers to use as a hub. Or they purchase the tires in the back alleyways of the squatted neighborhoods where orphaned children, making a living among the chaos, barter tires, doors, chairs, picture frames, frying pans, bedsheets, grenades, marbles, eyeglasses, and soap. The family load their car or roll the old tires home, up and down hills, and into their buttressed yard over days and weeks. Soon, they have a myriad and sufficient collection. And they place the tires two layers thick over boards that cover a cramped but ample bomb shelter they have dug seven feet into the rocky earth. The rubber tires, they have recently heard, will protect them from the rockets and the artillery that regularly shell the neighborhoods on the hillside. The day arrives when the last tire is in place. The family celebrate in their regular gathering spot, the porch beneath the grape arbor and adjacent to the new shelter. They bring out the bowls and the fresh bread, they ladle the soup, and sprinkle the garden herbs over it. The rocket that hits the group on their porch is the first of hundreds sent out over the city that afternoon. The family is one moment here, the next gone. Two of their children, who have been shooting marbles with friends in the alley, dazed, dusty, and bleeding, stagger away from the rubble and down the street.