Ali almost never called. He mainly sent me text messages to say that he was or wasn’t coming to see me. I barely knew what he sounded like on the phone. I would just see his name on my cell phone and find a short message, usually with the time of our next meeting, rarely accompanied by chatter of any kind. When I was done frying the vegetables, I layered the eggplant, pepper, onion, and tomato in a baking dish, mixed the garlic into the meat, added that too, then put the dish in the oven.
Count the stars
Count the people
Leave me but always come back
Warda was still singing. The aroma of moussaka filled the apartment. No one had called. No one was coming to eat with me. I wasn’t really hungry. I lit a match and smoked my seventh cigarette, then turned off the oven and went to bed.
12
I could barely move around my apartment, which might have been the smallest studio in the world: four walls, a small corner for the kitchen, a small built-in cupboard. It took exactly seven steps to get from one end to the other. I paced within the walls of the apartment, in my shoes, patiently counting my steps, until I got bored and made the difficult decision to go out. In the elevator I avoided looking at my neighbor, who always regarded me with curiosity. I knew he was dying to know who I was and what I did for a living, but I wasn’t going to let myself be pulled into small talk merely to fill the fifty seconds it took to go down eight floors. I didn’t have space in my life for a transient stranger who in a few weeks or months would no longer be part of it.
I walked to the end of the quiet street until I got to the main road, noisy and full of cars and buses. Suddenly filled with panic, I turned back to the quiet street and kept walking. There were so many embassies, but I could never make out the colors of the flags, as they were all usually folded on themselves, even when it was windy. I looked up at the nice old buildings, mostly covered in soot but still beautiful, ruined only by their ugly neighbors that had been built during the Sadat era in the 1970s—ugly times those were.
Finally I stepped into the Italian café in a street parallel to mine. It was a small, modest place—I didn’t know who owned it, but the fact that it had wooden columns was enough for me to frequent it. As usual, I was on my second cup of coffee before I started to look around me. There were no familiar faces, thank God. I didn’t want to see anyone I knew and have to force a smile or make the effort to fill the void that came after the first greeting. I put my headphones on and plugged them into the laptop. I wondered if I should listen to ABBA or Baligh Hamdi, Georgette Sadegh or Hoda Haddad, but Fairuz was the choice I had stuck to every morning for at least ten years. She sang “Morn and Eve” while I drank my coffee until my nose reached the bottom of the cup.
I was terrified of the world that lay beyond me. That desire to be isolated from the world, from the details of streets and living beings, was constant. The imaginary lives I held within me were enough for me and the populations of a few more worlds. I wasn’t exactly indifferent to life, just to this particular life. Stories of other worlds appealed to me: magical galaxies with different planets and different creatures. I regularly read NASA reports to feed my dreams of travel to other worlds. One day I was going to have my own mini-planet. I would be a wrinkled old woman by then, possibly senile and suffering from dementia, with hardly enough brain cells left to process the new mini-planet I would reside on. Nonetheless, I would build a room on it and paint all the walls dark purple and put up photos of all the people and all the places I love and organize my mementos in small boxes on shelves, like I did everywhere I went.
I stared at the wall before me. Fairuz sang about a tall, fenced-in pigeon tower. The sky outside the café’s window had darkened. It was time to go back to my tiny home.
13
I sit on the edge of my sofa for days or weeks, maybe months, detached from the details of everyday life, just contemplating and anticipating, thinking mostly depressing thoughts. Maybe I have lost that yearning for the unknown that I used to have. Fearless, they used to call me. I was going to do whatever I wanted: visit unknown lands, explore orange rivers, arid fields, and soft mountains. I was going to run with all my might toward the unknown. Travel was going to be my destination, and passion for the unknown my prayer.
I do not want to settle. Settling would be my death. I do not want to know what might happen, where I might go, who I might wander down dreamy roads with, sharing an innocent moment of stolen happiness.
Maybe I’d visit neatly paved roads like those we see in French children’s movies, or find myself in a town where they speak only Swahili. I could watch stories unfold around me and not understand a word. Maybe tomorrow I would be drinking coffee in a sub-Saharan town, with a view of the Victoria Falls, wild animals roaming the unfamiliar spaces around me. Or I might find myself living an impossible romance with an unattainable lover. I’m always drawn toward the impossible, particularly in desperate love stories, like my story with Ali. Dramatic stories, full of pleasure but with
