Beep beep. Beep beep.
We’ll pick you up in an hour and a half. Be ready [in English].
Woohoo!
I’m in the car heading to Sannine.
Georgios is driving and Zeezee’s next to him.
Zumurrud, Shwikar, and I are sharing the back seat unwillingly.
Who’s sitting by the back windows? Shwikar and I.
The reason for Zumurrud’s fidgeting is me. The weekend’s the only time she gets to smoke, so she needs to sit by the window, but I scream every time I see her light a cigarette: “I’m hung over! I can’t tolerate the smell of smoke! Put it out!”
Zumurrud: “Let me sit by the window then, I’ll stick my hand out of it and you won’t smell a thing! Why are you the one sitting by the window?”
Shwikar: “Really, sit in the middle!”
I argue with them, “Aren’t you ever going to grow up?”
Now they shoot me a look of disgust and gang up on me. And quickly, Zumurrud crawls under me and tries to steal my seat.
I push my butt down on her. NO, she will not succeed.
Shwikar’s hand reaches from the other side, grabs my wrist and pulls me to the middle.
I yell.
They yell.
Georgios lets out a sharp yell that pierces our noise, “Guys! The car!”
We all freeze.
We respect Georgios. His yelling at us means we’ve violated backseat etiquette.
The bullies freeze in their seats while I freeze midair. My move to the middle seat wasn’t yet completed, so now my head looks like a lamp in the rearview mirror.
This isn’t working.
This is embarrassing.
I wish the ground would swallow me whole right now.
I melt and slide into the middle seat with as much elegance and transparency as I can muster. I sit quietly.
They all laugh at me.
I plug in the earphones of my iPod and listen to music.
Where can I find someone like Ali / I keep you in this eye, but in the other one I keep Ali. Sabah is singing.
The earphones get yanked out of my ears. I look around angrily, and everyone explodes, laughing again. I relax and laugh with them. They gave me a return ticket into their circle, so I have to seize the opportunity; I might not get another chance if I rebel and overdo it. And if I don’t get another chance, I’ll find myself with two options: to either die of boredom as a form of self-punishment, or humiliate myself as I try to find an entrance into their conversation.
Blessed are those who know their limitations. Excesses only bring tribulations.
I laugh, we laugh, then we quiet down.
Zumurrud’s cell phone rings. We stay quiet. It could be a work-related call from a psychiatric patient of hers. And it is. So we all keep quiet. Zumurrud’s phone call lasts a long time, as does our silence. Eight minutes of silence. That’s hard to recover from.
That’s the advantage of it. However, the problem with silence, or its disadvantage, is that it either leads to an explosion of conversations, or to eternal silence. That’s how it is with me, anyway. Zumurrud gave me a piece of advice once, on a day when I got angry and did something I came to regret. She told me to be silent after someone, anyone, tries to bait me conversationally. Usually, instead of remaining silent and listening to what the other person has to say, I insult their ideas and, in turn, insult my intelligence. Zumurrud said that by remaining silent, I’d be able to spot the holes in the other person’s arguments and win the debate accordingly. She also said that another benefit of silence is that I might hear an idea from another person that I might benefit from.
So I began treating my anger with silence.
And from that experience I noticed that I have to watch out for the traps that I set for myself. At times, when I’m quiet, I find I’m listening to myself only. I hear part of what the other person is saying and listen to my sarcastic comments tossing and turning inside me. Then a word that the other person says triggers a journey of thoughts in my head and I drift away. Then my arguments don’t come to me when it’s time for me to reply because I wasn’t listening. So I lose my temper again and have another rant and end up looking like an idiot. That’s if I don’t stay quiet for too long and lose the argument altogether because my silence is taken as a sign of consent.
I think I should practice accepting losing an argument. Maybe after that, winning an argument will become less difficult and necessary for me.
Zumurrud finishes her phone call and Zeezee sets off on an eternal attempt to wheedle information out of her. Who? Where? How? Why? When? Zumurrud stays quiet, but is surprised at Zeezee’s persistence, which has been going strong for nine years now without showing any signs of slowing down.
Zumurrud’s profession requires that she keep her patients’ information to herself. And she manages to meet that requirement so easily as if, at birth, she was fed liquid steel instead of milk so she turned into a vault and there’s no cracking her now. She won’t even be provoked. What a disaster.
Speaking of Zumurrud’s professional secrets, I wonder if I should tell them mine.
Where did this come from all of a sudden? Why should I reveal what I’ve been keeping from them? And why have I been hiding it if I’m going to end up revealing it in the end?
Ha! Finally, I caught it by the tail; this obsession of mine is on the move and getting ready to take over me.
I’m not going to tell them about the novel I’m writing.
Why not? Aren’t they the main characters in it?
Why this silence?
Because I’m thinking about what I just said! God! Doesn’t a person have the freedom to even think in this country?
But my thoughts can’t
