I got up quietly and went to the mirror. I looked into my reddened eyes. I was at boiling point. I felt the floor rising vertically to meet me. I sat down and rubbed my head. Then I stood up and went over to the shelves. I took his clothes, found the bag he had left behind, and stuffed his clothes into it. I went to the fridge, took off all the notes, folded them, and stuck them in the bag’s outer pocket. I went to the bathroom for his toothbrush. Then I got his beautiful hat. I was going to miss that hat. When everything was in the bag, I put the bag by the front door and lay down beside it. The floor was cold—cold and dirty. I saw that I still had a long day of cleaning ahead. I don’t know how many hours I lay like that—facing Ali’s bag, my cheek stuck to the floor. I felt myself sink into the wooden floor. My arms extended motionless beside me. Only then did I recognize it as the moment of the ending. I fell asleep.
34
The sun doesn’t enter the small apartment in the morning. There’s a large window that takes up the entire width of a wall, but its thick glass never sees direct sunlight. On the other side of the glass there are buildings, some built in the eighties and some much older. And there’s the garden of an embassy that has been there for years. I never paid attention to the colors of the flag raised in its yard.
The sky is as pale as my father’s face on that day long ago, a disturbing grayish white and blue, by turns terrifying and reassuringly calm. I can still see the colors that passed over my father’s face in those few moments. Nine years have gone by since I stood staring at him as he lay in the hospital’s mortuary fridge, terrifying and familiar, resentful of death, finally free of the world’s unending troubles, and angry about the unfinished revolutions he would miss.
I haven’t reached thirty yet. My father left when I was barely twenty-one, a few months after Zayn. Baba, I have done so much in your name: countless marches in the streets of Cairo, demonstrations in which I raised my thin voice in chants, unadulterated joy at the fall of a corrupt regime, nights spent sleeping on the ground in the square. I even broke my heart once or twice in your name. You didn’t see me and you missed the incomplete miracles that were like messages of half-prophets. You had gone to a place of peace and comfort, nine years before.
I spent innumerable hours in my kitchen, knowing full well you weren’t coming. I still served your favorite dishes and sat before them talking to you about revolutions and sit-ins and successive defeats. I heard your voice every step of the way. Every time I was confused, I heard your loud, reassuring laughter. I kept seeing you. I saw you looking at me through the flimsy cloth of the burial shroud. I saw you pound your hands on the walls of the narrow tomb, brush aside the dead bones that surrounded you, and come out to console me after each new departure. You came back to sit with me at the metal table in our favorite restaurant, to be silent with me, and occasionally to chide me for my recklessness and stupid choices. You were always there, always and everywhere, holding my hand and pulling me into a hug that lasted beyond the end of the world.
Nine slow, cruel years have passed. And ten years since Zayn. When I lost Zayn, you were there to make sure that I was still breathing and my heart was still beating. But no one was there to watch over what I became when you left.
The color of the sky doesn’t change much in the evening; it only becomes darker and sadder. So many lights glow behind the big window. Faraway lights that appear and disappear. From behind the window they look enticing, but if you look closely, you see them for what they are: billboards for cooking oils, for tourist resorts promising a better life. Which is why it’s always best to look from a distance.
I get up from the sofa that has been my refuge for nine years. I’ve only ever wanted to leave it when the loud call of demonstrations summoned me. I went and imagined you with me, holding my hand. I clung to you as you tried, from your grave, to protect me, but failed. The window is behind the sofa so I don’t have to face the sky every day and think of your face. There’s the customary background noise of the TV. I wake up to find marks on my side or my stomach, and discover that the remote control was stuck to my skin as I slept. I wonder why I don’t turn off the TV before I sleep.
The same morning headache, the same morning moroseness. It takes me at least two hours to get up and brush my teeth. I count the vitamin pills that I’ve collected from every country I’ve ever visited: one for hair loss, one for memory and focus, and the magic one for energy. I swallow them all, together with two capsules for the headache, and put fresh coffee in the machine. Only when the aroma of the coffee mixing with water reaches me do I start to reluctantly wake up to the world.
I don’t work much any more. A few years ago I managed to save enough money and pull a few tricks to get an
