The Fog
“Fatima? Fatima . . . ? What’s wrong?”
The blue fog dissipated. I had a mist in my eyes and a poem in my heart. The things around me started to appear clothed in their material existence and sank under the weight. Their edges, colors, forms, and dimensions appeared; music spread through the air. I looked around me and took in the place. The spaces of this restaurant in Thailand were wrapped in a lavish green. There were wooden masks on the wall and an old wooden bridge that ran over a pond of golden fish with puffy cheeks swallowing bubbles to an island of wooden cabanas, each with about four tables, orchids, and a sea extending outside the window. The place was too beautiful.
“What’s wrong?”
“What happened?”
“Did you hear anything I said?”
“What did you say?”
“You’re kidding. Have I been talking to myself for an hour?”
“I’m sorry.”
I put down my fork. I folded my fingers into a fist and they curled up inside the palm of my hand. I left the cup of jasmine tea on the table and looked at it. I must not disappear.
How can I explain to him? How can I explain that I become deaf when I sit at a dinner table, that for seven years it was my way of saving myself from the hunger tearing at my insides? How can I explain that I dive into a bottomless absence, in the eternal blue fog, between many clouds and black holes. It was pointless to explain to the man who had become my husband just yesterday that I was in this much pain.
“What were you saying?”
I decided to stop eating, in order to prevent myself from wandering off into the twilight that spread through my chest.
“I was saying that the marriage happened quickly.”
“Yes.”
“We didn’t have a chance to get to know each other.”
“It’s the tradition of both families.”
“I respect tradition.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it makes things run more smoothly.”
“I don’t respect it.”
He looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that we are burdened by enough cages. If we’d met before getting married, for example, many things might have been revealed to both of us about the other. You know, something better than this scratch-and-win marriage.”
He smiled. “Well, I won, at least.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Why would I be kidding? I have a beautiful bride.”
I laughed. I no longer heard this word in my life. I’d read it once, in a letter, in another story, in a wayward beat, in a poem.
“Fatima? Fatima . . . ? Fatima!”
“Oh . . . sorry.”
“Where were you?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“No.”
“I said, tell me about yourself, so I can know you.”
“Socrates.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Socrates said that.”
“Socrates said what?”
“Speak so I can see you.”
I smiled. He almost shouted, surprised: “You’re educated!”
“Because I know a famous quote by Socrates?”
“It’s not nothing.”
“I know Socrates and I don’t know MBC2. That means nothing.”
He burst out laughing and clapped his hands while shaking his head. I didn’t know I was funny.