And so I didn’t want to know what I didn’t need to know.
Ali always came in the end. On the doorstep he would take me in his arms and hold me tightly, for five minutes, maybe ten. I no longer experienced time as I used to. We would eat together, maybe spend some time watching TV—I looking for news, he grabbing the remote to look for anything that was devoid of violence and disturbance. As we sat side by side on the sofa, he would take me in his arms again, maybe for an hour or two. Maybe less. I only noticed the time when the call to prayer rang out from the neighboring mosque, signaling daybreak. We were quiet for a few minutes before sleep, or sometimes we talked about random things. I could be talkative when I was in a good mood, and Ali liked to hear my stories and reflections.
I remembered our shared details and lost track of time. I watched cigarette ash drop to the floor and breathed in the unpleasant burning smell of the fourth cigarette filter, or was it the fifth? I turned on the TV to find Kamal al-Shinnawi holding Shadia and whispering in her ear, “Nawal, forget everything but this moment that we have together.” I had watched this film so many times before, but it still always held my attention. The ashtray beside me slowly filled up. I empathized with Shadia, the cheating wife resisting the end of the affair with her lover. The same scene got me every time. Endings are the same in all their forms, but are especially painful when one side does not accept that it really is the end and gets stuck instead in an endless loop: final attempts, pleas, anger, repeat. The end is the end. I shivered at the thought. I put out my seventh cigarette and hugged myself, trying to expel all thoughts of leaving and dying. There wasn’t much difference between the two. Leaving is a form of death for me. Every time someone I loved left, my subconscious translated that as a death. He was not coming back. Those who die do not come back. My brain buried them in a darkness akin to the grave. Those who leave do not come back.
The chicken was completely defrosted. I had to cook it before it went bad.
23
I knew Ali well. He was like a child. When he listened to me, he was full of curiosity and passion, always wanting to know more. When I stopped, he begged me to finish the stories I had begun. I became his Scheherazade of sorts. A story was always required to keep him interested and happy, even if it made him nervous. Without stories, he found everything about our post-coffeehouse closeness boring—the dinner, the TV, and me. He didn’t talk much, and when he did, his stories were no match for those of his sad Scheherazade. He was like a child asked which he loved more, his mom or a toy, and who replied with endearing enthusiasm, “I love the toy more because it’s pretty and doesn’t yell at me.” He was clumsier and more tactless than a child; he would lie next to me and talk about boredom, and about his lack of feelings. He would go on about his sins and mistakes, occasionally blaming me, often making me so angry I had to get up and lock myself in the bathroom, behind the only closed door in my apartment. I cried a few tears then, before washing my face and rejoining him as if nothing had happened. When I did that, though, he became sensitive for a few days in order to avoid upsetting me or maybe to avoid the feelings of guilt that would follow him into his closed coffeehouse circle.
The streets remained unchanged. So did the ceiling of my room. And time. Time passed slowly and heavily, as if the hands of the clock were carving the numbers on my body. Death remained present too: in the kitchen knife, in the large window that tempted me to see the view upside down, in the delicate noose-like scarf I wore for warmth, in the speeding cars that I barely avoided, their drivers yelling at me in panic. Death was present in everything around me. I was scared of where those thoughts might lead me; my fear was of losing the bit of fear still left in me and one day finding in myself enough courage to follow those thoughts to the end.
Ali always came—sometimes he was days late, but he always came in the end. Sometimes I went away for long periods, other times we fought over trivial matters and didn’t speak for a while, and sometimes we were just silent, but we always found each other again. And every time, there was the doorstep hug, which I never tired of.
On those days when Ali came and brought happiness with him, the food was delicious and the TV fun to watch, our bodies on the sofa merged into one, a fading sun shone through the large window. When he was in a good mood, I could see his very soul shine through his big, childlike eyes. On those days, he talked without fear or inhibition, or he shed his inhibitions as he talked, at peace with me and the whole world. Those days flew past with unbelievable smoothness, like hours stolen from time itself, spoiled by nothing but the moment of parting.
We held everything between us: dreams, warm
