The Plunge

Three months after Lesbos, you were with us in Chicago—well, Evanston, to be precise. You had accepted a ten-week teaching gig at Northwestern. You’d end up spending eight of those ten weeks in our spare bedroom. You couldn’t bear the furnished apartment the university offered you, too generic, too beige, too dead. Not one shade of color that would jeopardize neutral. You missed your cats, you said, so you had to cuddle with ours. You missed your psychiatrist, so you needed to lie on our couch, your head on Francine’s lap, complaining about everything and the cold weather. The university recruiters tricked you, told you Chicago was warmer in spring. What you didn’t realize was that warmer did not mean warm. There was always snow in April, just a little less of it than in winter. Oh, the moaning. Oh, the suffering. You were your usual bundle of triggers.

You chucked the novel you were writing about Syrian refugees and began one about what happened to you while trying to help Syrian refugees, pages and pages that you would scrunch and throw into the pit of despair. What possessed you to try and write that? What did you think you’d accomplish? Were you seeking some form of absolution, you fool, you? You went to Lesbos and turned into a mess, or as today’s youngsters like to say, you kirked out. Did you believe that writing about the experience would help you understand what happened? You still cling to romantic notions about writing, that you’ll be able to figure things out, that you will understand life, as if life is understandable, as if art is understandable. When has writing explained anything to you? Writing does not force coherence onto a discordant narrative. You knew that, you told me that. But still, you thought this novel would be magically imbued with your dreams of respite. Even though none of the previous novels you wrote helped you in any way, this one, you thought, would heal your pain. Like a faithful analysand, you believed if you worked hard, wrote long enough, you’d come across the clue that would unravel the puzzle, the one key that would unlock your mystery. Keys, if they even exist, darling, are not found in literature.

Why did you keep at it for so long? Did you believe that if you wrote about Syrian refugees the world would look at them differently? Did you hope that readers would empathize? Inhabit a refugee’s skin for a few hours? As if that were some kind of panacea. You still hoped even though it had never happened. At best, you would have written a novel that was an emotional palliative for some couple in suburbia. For a few moments they’d think how terrible it was for these refugees. They’d get outraged on social media for ten minutes. But then they’d pour another glass of chardonnay. Empathy is overrated.

You were grumbling about your novel. This wasn’t working, that was the worst. Francine stroked your hair. I thought at first that she wasn’t paying any attention since whining is your default state of being and she was reading a book, holding it in her other hand. In her usual quiet voice, she asked, “Have you considered writing about an American couple in suburbia to help the Syrian refugees? If you did a good job, Syrian refugees would be able to inhabit the skin of Americans, walk in their Cole Haans, empathize with their boredom and angst. I bet Asma would love a book like that.”

You bolted upright, shocking all three of us. You tried to get her to repeat what she said, but she didn’t.

You told me I should write my story. Maybe I could make sense of what was happening since you certainly couldn’t. You were retiring. This writing thing was not for you. I should give it a go. You were not going to write another sentence, not one word. You hated writing more than anything. You could go back to working in a hardware store. Or you would write a novel about a Lebanese Frankenstein who creates a monster out of body parts belonging to victims of suicide bombings, a Shiite left arm, a Sunni right arm, maybe a Catholic brain, a Druze heart. Oh, you could do that one. It could work. Talk about internal struggle. Or you could write a novel about a second-generation Arab American whose Arabic isn’t good but who is hired as an interpreter by the FBI regardless and proceeds to screw everything up royally. You could have fun with that one. A romp, yes, you could do something like that. You threw out one idea after another, each more outrageous, then discarded it. You would give up. Or you would write another novel. No, you could never write about Syrian refugees again. I should do it, you said. Maybe I could understand what happened, you said. I could unravel the mystery and find the key. Maybe I could come to terms with my past and heal my wounds. Ever delusional you.

I should write, you insisted.

I wasn’t a writer, I said. I couldn’t do it.

So, you plunged.