How Not to Treat Your Child After an Accident

The island seemed to be casting remembrance spells. I was going in circles with my memories as if I were trying to unspool some curse. I recalled the shrine on the steep curve of Araya along the Beirut-to-Damascus road. My mother was driving. We might have been going to some town in the mountains. We were in the Peugeot, before it belonged to Firas, before its numerous capricious deaths and resurrections. He was sitting in front next to my mother. I, the youngest, sat in the middle of the back seat, Mazen to my left and Aida to my right. I must have been eleven. My mother was upset about something. My father was on one of his hunting trips in Deir ez-Zor, staying with her family. She kept telling me to shut up, but I wasn’t saying anything, just laughing. Mazen was whispering, pouring pestilent puerile jokes into my left ear. Shut up, Ayman, my mother would yell. What did Batman ask Robin before they jumped into the Batmobile? A question and answer that only I heard, and I would laugh. I swear, my mother said, if you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to slap you hard. What did the doctor say to the cookie? My mother demanded that my sister hit me. Aida smacked the back of my head. Mazen whispered another bad one. My mother reached back and slapped what she could reach, my knee. But then she had to make a hard turn, couldn’t retrieve her hand quickly enough to steer. Right next to the saintly road shrine, the car veered toward descending traffic. Firas was the first to scream. A car ran into us head-on. Luckily, both were moving slowly. No injuries. We were all momentarily stunned but only for a couple of seconds because my mother turned around in her seat, didn’t ask if we were okay. She simply began to scream at me. It was my fault, all my fault. I was always trouble, ever since I was born. She never meant to have me. I was an accident and a horrible one at that. Even when the driver of the other car walked over to see if we were okay, she did not relent. I was going to be the death of her. The other driver leaned over to check on us, but my mother ignored him. I thought I was smarter than everyone else she said, her eyes crinkling with malice, but I wasn’t. I was a monster. Mazen slid closer to me, away from the window.