How to Process Rage: An Instruction . . . Maybe an Example . . . Oh, Never Mind

Mazen apologized to Sumaiya for exhibiting such rage. He assured all of us—Sammy, Emma, the Swedish doctors—that he was quite all right or would be as soon as he went outside for a moment to inhale some fresh air and expunge the negative energy. He gently picked up a confused Sumaiya’s hand and kissed it. “I’ll be completely sweet from now on,” he told her. “I promise you.”

“But what is going on?” Sumaiya asked me. “What happened?”

What I wanted to do was walk the barracks from one end to the other, along the corridor between the serried cots, at a fast pace to slow my own anger, but I could not do so without worrying or frightening Sumaiya. I had trained myself to set aside my feelings for a time while I continued doing what had to be done—or at least not to exhibit these feelings around people. I settled on briefly telling Sumaiya about the exchange and apologized for the screaming. She didn’t understand my anger or my brother’s. How could one not love one’s daughter, she said dismissively. The women were stupid.

There was a time when rage was my intimate, in my late teens and twenties. I was shy and confused as a youngster, to the point of being taciturn, afraid of saying the wrong thing, of behaving inappropriately. I spent my youth terrified of being seen and desperately wanting to be. I held secrets within secrets within secrets, wrapped myself tight in dissimulation. By the time I arrived in the United States, I couldn’t hold anything in any longer. Like the can my mother stored in her pantry for so long, I exploded, and what spewed out of me was venom. My mother cut me off before I changed my biological sex. She declared me dead because of my wrath. I was unable to speak to her without screaming across international phone lines. Such fury, such indignation.

Luckily, I did not remain wrathful for too long. Time away from my youth and its triggers softened the edges of my anger, ameliorated its harshness. I could get furious every now and then, but my temper was no longer as easily lost, and I grew adept at regaining my composure when that happened.

Mazen, on the other hand, never got angry.

Francine wrote a paper about outsider rage. I don’t have to explain it to you, do I?