My Birthday Present

On the day of my twentieth birthday, which no one remembered, or which everyone remembered but pretended to forget because “birthdays are haram,” I felt like I owed it to myself to try.

“What were you trying to do, Fatima?”

“I was trying to live.”

I said to myself: If there’s someone in this world who can help me, I’m going to knock on their door. Unfortunately, this brilliant idea didn’t come to me until after nine in the evening. I put on my hijab and my shabby old abaya and went out. Saqr asked me where I was going. To the bookstore—I forgot to buy something important for tomorrow’s class. He told me not to be late.

I went to Jabriya and walked slowly by the many clinics. I was certain that I’d seen a mental health clinic here. Maybe that’s what I needed to get rid of the problem, I thought. What was the problem? I wasn’t sure. Maybe the problem was that I was me, and that the world was the world, and that we—the world and I—weren’t getting along as we should, and needed to come to terms with some things.

I went to the clinic, without pausing for a moment. In fact, I was going over the lines I had decided to recite to the doctor: Doctor! I am completely broken and I need to be saved. Give me something to help me adjust to the world.

I imagined that he would laugh, but I had nothing to lose, with all the tears that had started flowing so liberally, thinking sardonically about the fact that I was giving myself a trip to a psychologist for my twentieth birthday.

The clinic was closed, and I was enraged. Even though I knew there were security cameras, I started kicking the door. I kicked the door three times and left.

I didn’t go back. I didn’t go back because for the days that followed I imagined the doctor and the security guard watching the recording of a broken girl kicking the door. Perhaps the security guard was laughing with the doctor and asking him, No offense, Doc, but is this one of the crazies that comes to see you?