The Slap of Dreams

I used to wish he’d slap me and that would be it.

I prayed hard for that slap.

I called it the slap of my dreams.

If he’d gone so far as to slap me, I would have been able to point my finger at him and say he’s cruel. If his animosity toward me had been overt, I would have been able to hate him without hesitation, without feeling I was rotten inside, full of ungratefulness and overflowing with lies. If he’d raised his hand and slapped me I would have given up, perhaps, on trying to fit into a world of such illusion and barrenness, and on calling those attempts getting closer to God. I would have felt less guilt. I would have liked myself more.

But he didn’t. And I—I avoided him for seven years. I snuck out of the house and returned, the way a bird with clipped wings goes back to its cage, because the sky is so much bigger than it.

I needed that slap to believe I was his victim. I thirsted for it and prayed to God for it, the slap of my dreams, the slap that would be the end. When would it come? And why wasn’t he more transparent, more manly, in his hostility toward me? Rather than repeating that my voice was “out of tune” every time I hummed a little. Rather than telling me my face was funny looking, and that when I smiled I looked like a schizophrenic. Or constantly saying that I was a ripe banana no one wanted, that I wasn’t smart, wasn’t competent to read or think. That I was much less than I would need to be in order to earn his approval in anything. If I wasn’t capable of pleasing him, he who was just an older brother, how would I please God in His heavens?

I took his words as divine revelation, given his beard and the miswak in his mouth. In my mind, Saqr spoke the truth, a truth that filled me with pain and sapped my strength. He was like rust upon my heart, and I could no longer make out the right path. I was lost.

O Lord, bring him to slap me, a strong and resounding slap on my right cheek. Dispel the nightmare, and throw me into the living hell. I prayed again and again. For years I prayed to God to make his hand rise and slap me, so I could be freed.

I never imagined that this would really happen, and that it would happen in front of an audience of professors and friends, at my first poetry reading.