by Raja Alem
They fixed an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth and carried her into the ambulance on a stretcher that smelled of other, perished, beings.
A siren. It ruined her liberty, and she wished they would turn it off as there was no need to hurry. But it kept shrieking insistently, driving her floating soul back to her shattered body. By the time they reached the hospital she had begun to feel the pain; agony was tearing through her lungs, and she was choking.
They rushed her into the operating room, where they pumped fluid into her and allowed her to float off once again.
Raphael clung to her hospital bed in shock. He couldn’t believe he was losing her after everything they had been through, after their double escape from the siege in the Grand Mosque and the camp in Yemen. She was barely breathing as they kept repeating, “She’s in pain.”
“There’s no way of saving her.”
“Her lungs are crushed.”
“She is dying.”
“Her condition is hopeless.”
And finally: “We must help her to let go, and depart in peace.”
A woman who seemed to be a nun was brought to help her go. As soon as Raphael saw her, his heart was gripped by icy claws. The head nurse kindly asked Raphael to leave the room.
“This is the team that will prepare her to leave our world. The sister will help her feel at peace. Let’s leave them alone.”
“But Sarab doesn’t speak French. How can I leave her with you when you can’t understand each other?”
“She will understand,” the austere woman confirmed with sincere faith, urging Raphael to leave. “Don’t worry, we will communicate peacefully.”
On a way station of her journey, Sarab was bewildered by the murmurings of the sister; for a moment she wondered whether they were words from any of the revealed books. Then the words dissolved and transformed into a great gush of energy running straight from the woman’s heart into Sarab’s. This current enclosed her in warmth; light engulfed her and receded, encouraging the current to flow to its fullest extent, and this surge and ebb rocked her like a child.
“And now, your role is to give her the last push so she can go. Tell her it’s all right that she’s leaving,” the austere woman encouraged Raphael, not unkindly.
“But I can’t. My God, how can I let her go? We’re in love, she’s so young, she’s barely twenty-two; we have a new life waiting for us, we were going to leave Paris to live by the ocean. I promised her the ocean.”
“Her soul is deeply embedded within yours, and you are holding it back. Her soul can’t leave for fear of tearing yours apart. You have to set her free. Don’t be selfish, my son.”
Raphael approached Sarab’s bed and watched her shallow breathing; it stopped for a moment, then started again fitfully. There was a long pause between every inhalation and exhalation. He didn’t know what he could do. Despite his profound resistance to the idea of hurrying her along her path, the words came gushing out involuntarily, burning from the depths where their souls cleaved together and realized the necessity of her journey.
“You can go, my darling. If your body has given up, we have to surrender it.” His words were inaudible, like the inhalation and exhalation of light and air.
Images circled her bed—her brother Sayf, all the comrades and hostages who had been killed or mortally wounded, everyone who breathed their last in the hospital or inside the siege. All of them flowed around her like a refreshing light, touching her cold feet and cheeks. They pressed her numb hands, and it was no longer a source of grief to her that she was dying among strangers. They weren’t strangers any more. There was no longer any concept of being a stranger, a foreigner, or an exile here; they were all a single essence flowing with the name of God, who was running through their existence like a rising river, a river of living light, encouraging her through His radiance to immerse herself in His river and flow into it.
Tears streamed over Raphael’s cheeks and his heart exploded in agony.
I love you.
He stopped himself from saying it, for fear those words would hold her back and prevent her absolute release. He swallowed his tears.
Her face quivered with a delicate smile, the gentlest smile.
Her lips trembled with something resembling words, and he brought his ear close to her mouth, to catch what she was saying.
A gentle breath wafted over his cheek as she sank into the river.
Selected Hoopoe Titles
No Knives in the Kitchens of This City
by Khaled Khalifa, translated by Leri Price
The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor
by Rana Haddad
The Baghdad Eucharist
by Sinan Antoon, translated by Maia Tabet
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