I Didn’t Cry at My First Funeral

It wasn’t the first time. 

The first time I snuck out of the house I was nineteen years old. It was unplanned and careless. Life was a mess so I went out, and called going out “running away.” Then I called running away “salvation,” and salvation “death.” I said I won’t go back no matter what. I’d only go back as a body.

I drove the black Subaru to the nearest Burger King and bought a super-sized Double Whopper. I wanted everything to be huge, greasy, and excessive. I paid, took the paper bag in one hand and the bucket of Pepsi in the other, and crossed the street to the girls’ high school that I’d graduated from two years earlier. I crouched in front of the entrance and started eating.

It was in exactly this spot that I used to stand after school every day, waiting for my older brother to arrive, famished and dying to eat something. I’d inhale the greasy smell of fried food and think about french fries.

Getting to the other side of the street seemed impossible given the school’s tight security. The school counselor would wait until the last student left before going home, her conscience clear. She had made it her duty in life to make sure we didn’t cross those few meters to the restaurant unaccompanied by our “guardian.”

The girls who were braver than me, who dared violate the sacred and shatter taboos for the sake of a Whopper meal or a Chicken Royale, those intrepid girls, fully in tune with their desires, were taught a lesson the next day, forced to stand in the middle of the schoolyard during lineup, where we all witnessed what I called the “three-minute roar,” because the principal’s voice went beyond mere yelling. It was perfectly humiliating, and delivered in such a manner as to produce a “story” from which we’d take away the moral and our lesson on the fate of wayward girls embroiled by desire.

Why didn’t we just wait for our guardians then? Because the driver isn’t considered a guardian. Because guardians would never permit their daughters to eat outside the home when the table there was overflowing with platters of rice and rich meaty sauces. Because there is pleasure in the forbidden.

The public humiliation hadn’t scared me, and I wouldn’t have minded the principal’s verbal beating, or the scandal of the public punishment in lineup, as much as I feared my brother would find out about it and the octopod arms of the school’s punishment would reach into my home. In those years I was convinced that bad deeds were rewarded ten times over, and good deeds were worthless.

Four years and I didn’t cross. I never gave in. I abandoned the voice inside me and just stood there, the sun boring into my head, eating the Whopper in my imagination—picking it up in my hands, tasting it, hot and juicy in my mouth.

That day, the first time I ran away, I purchased my forbidden fruit and sat with my back to the school entrance and ate. Screw the principal and the teachers and my big brother. I had my revenge.

I finished the mountain of rubbery American food within minutes, half in attempt to smother my fears. I grew heavier and calmer. I walked back to the car parked in front of the restaurant, wondering, now what? The food I’d eaten suddenly heaved in my stomach, then came up fiery and acidic. My cheeks were hot and my eyes burned with tears. I wiped my mouth with the napkins and paper bags in my hand and sobbed. Why had the forbidden fruit I’d craved for so long rejected me?

It had been a year since I’d gotten my driver’s license and I wasn’t familiar with the streets. The Subaru was the driver’s car; they’d notice it was gone any moment now. I was afraid I might get lost, but I was more afraid that my failed attempt to run away would become a scandal. Had I been serious about leaving, things wouldn’t have happened so randomly, without a suitcase or money or even a passport.

The horizons collapsed before me. I kept driving forward, forward, always forward, sobbing. I knew I was fooling myself, but going back to that place, that house, that tomb—I wished for a moment that a car would hit me and I’d die and it’d be all over. Then I figured out the solution.

If I really died, all of my problems would be over. If I surrendered to death, getting through the rest of my days wouldn’t be this hard. I’d deal with things like a corpse. My death would be thick, and the world wouldn’t be able to get through.

I took the Fourth Ring Road to Jabriya. I turned right and continued until I got to a flower shop. Since I only had three dinars left after the super-sized lunch I’d eaten and vomited back up in a half hour, I bought the cheapest flowers: a bunch of day-old white daisies, simple and starting to smell bad. I drove to the Jabriya public garden, empty except for some Asians and Syrian families eating sandwiches on blankets they’d spread out on the grass. I walked in a straight line, as though following a secret call. I searched for the right gravesite, someplace appropriate for me and my symbolic death. While walking, I cursed my uncomfortable shoes and rash decisions. In the sandy space between two cactuses, I dug a hole and buried the white flower petals in it. I decided that I’d died, and called that spot my grave. I’d died and found peace and it was all over.

I didn’t cry at my first funeral. I thought, if somehow they found out about my death they wouldn’t have cried either. I had a strange feeling of relief as I finished my ceremonial burial. I wouldn’t feel any more pain now, because I was dead.

I went home. No one had found out that I’d snuck out, or returned, or that I’d died. For them, nothing had happened. But I knew that the part of me that had died, that I’d buried between the cactuses without tears or fanfare, was something I’d never get back.