But I’m edging toward thirty and I still haven’t found any soft mountains or orange rivers. I still haven’t dyed my hair blue like Kate Winslet in that movie. I haven’t jumped out of a plane, held only by a rope; maybe I would discover the secrets of the universe or the rope would break, leaving me to a gentle fall. I haven’t met kings or slaves; I haven’t lain on my back on smooth ice that would either break and swallow me, or hold me and let me watch a sky full of stars. I haven’t seen the world from the top of a mountain or from the depths of the ocean. Nor sipped the local coffee of every country in the world. Nor held hands with a man in every city and been told there was no one like me, and then cried at the moment of parting.
I still haven’t lived a single story to match my fantasies or the books I’ve read.
I lay on that sofa for weeks—or was it months?—and got lost in a maze of repetitive thoughts. I was bored—bored and settled—settled on the sofa, and settled in my lack of passion and longing. I was settled with Ali and because of him. We spoke at certain times, and met at certain times. When the times came, I rose with difficulty out of my long slumber to change my clothes. He might or might not have noticed my outfits, but I changed anyway, with calm, mechanical movements. For the first time in my nearly thirty years I knew exactly what was going to happen next: the passion of the first moments, the sacred embrace at the door, then food and maybe some boring TV, very few words, a little arguing over details that reflect our dull lives, then sleep.
What did Ali see in me, I still wonder. Was I a reflection of what he wanted but lacked the energy to do? Was I just some girl with whom he woke up one day, and because he found his hand holding her wrist he decided to hold on to that moment until he got bored? Did he see me as successful and accomplished? Did I represent a vague idea to him? Did I arouse his curiosity? Or just his desire? I didn’t know why he stayed. And I had no idea when he would decide to leave. That might have been the only unknown in the simple and settled life we led.
My dreams of colorful mountains and vigorous waterfalls were gone. I got used to seeing my awaited cosmos in Ali’s eyes. I didn’t collect clippings and photos of mysterious places to stick on the walls any more, in anticipation of the day when I would carry my backpack and go. Had I really stopped dreaming? Maybe I had just lost my private dream worlds, and the stories and imagined details about people I was yet to meet. I still dreamed, but only in whirlpools of repetitive and predictable events. I didn’t want anything more than the worlds and people I saw in Ali’s eyes. That was my compensation for the imagination I had lost. His eyes were imagination itself. All his disappointments, defeats, and perpetual confusion disappeared in those moments of serenity when his eyes sparkled and became windows on the world.
I wanted to take him with me to the soft, colorful mountains. I wanted us to dip our hands together into the orange river. I wanted to lie on the roof with him and watch the stars, both fixed and falling, in a sky clear of pollution and smoke. Neither of us belonged here—in these closed circles, fixed appointments, and routines emptied of all spontaneity and wildness. We didn’t belong on this sofa that was swallowing our bodies. I saw us all the time, with what little imagination I had left, entering foreign realms and meeting new people. I saw us dancing to unfamiliar songs in foreign languages. I saw us in cities at the edge of the world, waiting for rain, and our childlike glee when the raindrops wet our faces and roused us out of the dryness of the lives we led. So I waited for him, and the fear of boredom filled me. I was scared that boredom would bring us to our end and leave us to regret all the things we did not do. I waited for the real Ali, waited for the passion and curiosity in his eyes to replace the look of fear and sometimes suspicion that had taken over.
He was who he was: reckless and wretched, with the imagination of a child. I was who I was: willing to sell my soul to a mercenary wizard on a street corner for the sake of a new experience. We were just ourselves, and we owned nothing. From curiosity we came and to curiosity we would return. We had no plans, and lived only for those moments of absolute joy, of abandoned laughter, a meditative vision, or one second of innocent awe. Maybe we were miserable because of the historical moment. Or maybe because he was at a crossroads in his life. It was as if we lived in a context that was devoid of our truths. I couldn’t know how long that limited course would run before we were drained of our will to live. The only truth I knew—and knew that he knew—was this: we would end a thousand times, in anguish or in boredom, in silence or in tumult, but after every ending, we would return to begin again.
14
It was going to be a decisive day, and I was anxious. I put on a thick
