Silence was reigning once more between Ali and me. For a while, there had been nothing to say. He was feeling down and didn’t leave his house. Did he not want to see me? I couldn’t tell. I went about my days mechanically. Nothing mattered really, not then and not ever. Then he reappeared, briefly. I told him that I was fed up, that I wanted to go somewhere far away. He didn’t want me to go. “Do what you want, Nadia, just don’t leave me.” I stared at the ceiling of the room. In truth, I didn’t want to go yet—not if he still wanted me beside him. I combed his long hair, and with a kiss sent him off to work. He wanted the sacred doorstep hug to last forever. So we stayed together, united by our misery and by the doorstep hug, which was the only thing that mattered.
I put some wood-cleaning powder on the yellow cloth and sat on the floor. I rubbed the wood vigorously. There were so many stains. I wet the towel and squeezed the water out. I scrubbed and scrubbed until my hands hurt.
After another period of disappearance, Ali returned as he usually did. He spent an anxious night, then got out of bed early. Was it six? It was still dark outside. His movements woke me. He said that he was leaving and probably not coming back. His voice was loud, and I hate loud voices. He didn’t want to be questioned. He didn’t want to see the ceiling of this room ever again. Everything here suffocated him and increased his misery. I turned my back on him and went back to sleep, only waking when the door slammed shut. Hours later I woke up properly to realize it wasn’t a bad dream. He had left and wasn’t coming back. I felt angry and decided that I would tell him it really was over, that I no longer cared about him, and that I blamed him for all the floods in the universe, all the earthquakes, volcanoes, and unfinished revolutions, for all the sins of the world and all the troubles of all lovers. I sat unmoving for hours, barely breathing. This was yet another separation. It was just me and the ceiling now.
*
The cleaning was unending. The apartment was steeped in filth. The toilet couldn’t be cleaned using normal methods, so I put large quantities of disinfectant on a cleaning towel and added some kerosene—I thought of using acid but was worried it would burn my hand—and pushed my arm up to my elbow into the toilet bowl. I scrubbed at the dirt that lurked in hidden places. The corners were dark yellow, as if they hadn’t seen soap or water in months. I cleaned and cleaned—I had never seen the place so filthy. My fingers hurt but I continued to scrub. The smell turned my stomach but I pinched my nose with my other hand and persisted.
Days passed after Ali left. Long, suffocating days. I found it difficult to breathe. I couldn’t do much beyond staring at the ceiling. My body was dug into the sofa, my limbs rigid from lying there. Ali’s things were still in their usual places: his clothes neatly folded on the shelf allocated for him, his toothbrush in its place on the bathroom shelf, his small red hat on the bookshelf, the notes I used to leave for him still up on the fridge. Everything was in its usual place. I woke up every day to check that it was.
Then one day, I got a message: “I’ve missed you.” He asked to see me. He was coming back to life, breathing again. I went to him. The toilet bowl had started to regain its clear whiteness, the yellow stains slowly disappearing. I hesitated a bit, but I went. Ali received me eagerly. I barely saw his face. He immediately pulled me into a long embrace. The world stopped around us. I didn’t see the room or him. I just let myself be in his embrace, the sweetest since we’d first met. I closed my arms around him, encircled his ribs, moved my hands along his back—I really was in his arms. It took me a few seconds to understand that this was the moment I had always sought, through other lives and in this one, in parallel universes, on faraway planets—this was the moment, and nothing else mattered.
Once again I found the spider in the bathroom. It ran away at an insane speed. The bathroom was full of insects. I sat on the floor, my legs extended before me, and started scrubbing with the brush. I poured disinfectant on the floor. A few drops weren’t enough. I needed large amounts of disinfectant. Everything was filthy. Half the bottle was finished, the brush had gone black, and the wire scrubber was ruined. I brought out a new brush. I knew the drill when the place got so dirty, and I was well prepared. I lit my fifth cigarette and started cleaning the bathroom floor with the new brush. My clothes were dirty and wet. It was cold and I was shivering a little. The ashtray was next to me. I didn’t want to dirty the floor further with my cigarette ash.
The last time I saw Ali he didn’t sleep. I talked and talked and talked, fearing the return of the silence between us. He hadn’t said a word in days. Then, early one morning, he called and said calmly that our story was over. It wasn’t ever a story. A miserable one? Maybe. He insisted that it wasn’t love, and that whatever it was, it really was over. There was no going back. I listened without comment. Then I asked a few brief questions, and he repeated that this time he was leaving and not coming back. He
