Adam and Eve
Come to the university library tomorrow at ten, and have some good excuses ready in case you’re late. I don’t want to feel neglected.
We met several times, Isam and I. We met at the university library, between the shelves of poetry and in the discussion rooms. We touched the covers of thick books, inhaled the scent of old dust, distilled wisdom, and pure genius. Our knees touched, our fingers too. We perished and were saved; we clung to poetry.
“Fatima, at last.”
I smiled and turned away. He looked closely at me, drinking up my face. I felt nervous; he laughed softly.
“Do I frighten you?”
“A little.”
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled it out again.
“I brought you something.”
He set a doll on the table in front of me. It was wearing a lilac dress, and had magnets affixed to the back. It would look cute on the fridge, were that possible, if little dolls didn’t chase away the angels in the republic of the big brother.
“You brought me a toy?”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s lovely.”
“I’ve been buying you a lot of things lately.”
“Really? Like what?”
“A jump rope.”
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
“What else?”
“Crayons.”
“I love crayons!”
“A highlighter.”
“Nice!”
“Stuffed bunnies.”
“What else?”
“When I go to a restaurant I order a meal for you and have it placed in front of the chair across from me. I have imaginary conversations with you. I pretend you’re complaining there’s too much garlic.”
“You’re crazy.”
“True.”
“Where are the rest of my toys?”
“In the car. I had to make sure you liked them.”
“Ah. You took precautions.”
“Kind of.”
“I also frighten you, it seems.”
“A little.”
We smiled.
That’s how we met. We met several times. Sometimes Hayat was there, sometimes she wasn’t, sometimes poetry was there, sometimes it wasn’t. We started the fire of questions, blew on the coals so they wouldn’t go out. We burned our fingertips and our hearts, and entered the darkness, exhilarated by the absence of a map, the sudden disappearance of rules, and the gradual fading away of answers. We were going straight into the mysterious fog and discovering the world as if it had just been created, emerging fresh and hot from the oven. Things were no longer heavy with meaning or entangled in a long history of disappointment and defeat. We were the first man and the first woman, a book between us, the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. The apple of temptation.
“Can we talk on your cell phone?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Email is safer.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Of this.”
“What’s this?”
“Crazy.”
“This is the most reasonable thing in the world.”
“What we’re doing isn’t just a crime in my brother’s eyes, it’s a crime in everyone’s eyes: that man sitting over there, the librarian, the Egyptian security guard, the mosquitoes.”
“Look around you, Fatima. People have changed. They interact without any problems at all. Do you see? There? Male and female university students talking and drinking coffee together—it’s completely normal.”
When the world is made new and innocent again, everything becomes possible. Innocence alone can lead to mistakes. There among the library shelves it seemed like we were shedding the presence of time and the burden of place. I would rest my head for a long time against a shelf of books and follow Isam with my eyes while he took out a new volume of poetry from the shelf, opened it in the middle, and read standing up, taking great care to choose the “right poem,” as he said. It wasn’t so much that we always talked about poetry, as poetry’s magic worked its way into everything: eyelashes, fingers, and unscrupulous dreams.
“What have you been writing lately?”
“Letters. Just letters.”
“I love your letters.”
“And I love yours.”
For a moment perhaps, a very brief moment, something funny occurred to me. What if this was how things were with Adam and Eve, when the senses were emerging from their innocence and tasting the world slowly, when language was being revealed like manna, making the rock a rock and the tree a tree, giving things weight and meaning as they crept slowly into existence through . . . language? Through a couple? Did love unfold like that, as though it were a flower to be discovered, like uncharted land, innocent and pure and green?
I asked myself, unconvinced: is he real, this poet? Is he real? He’s a man, a strange man. He doesn’t seem like a wolf. Can my brother be right and my heart wrong? My fingers feel comfortable between his, it seems like he wants to protect me, he’s strong as a roof, spacious as a sky.
“Do you publish your writing?”
“On a blog.”
“Really? And you’re hiding this from me?”
“It’s just random junk I put together. It’s not nearly as good as I want it to be.”
“You can’t make that decision for me. What’s your blog called?”
“Secret.”
He searched for a blog called “Secret” and didn’t find it. He has a lot of lines around his eyes that spread out across his forehead. He looks five years older than me even though he’s just two. He’s not tall or muscular, he doesn’t look like the dark knight on the white horse, and this love that is slowly being woven between our fingers doesn’t match my expectations or my fantasies or the Cinderella stories. It’s greater.
“I wanted to ask you . . .”
“What?”
“Would you be opposed to joining a writers’ group?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Not at all.”
“You know that’s not possible.”
“We could figure things out.”
“How?”
“There are morning groups, sponsored by the university. I’ll try to arrange the time to match the breaks between your classes. Once a week, Fatima. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“It would mean a lot to me, Fatima. I need you there. The silly discussions are unbearable and the writing that people submit . . . it’s torture.”
I laughed.
“I’m really counting on you to join.”
“You’re kidding, of course.”
“I’m serious. I even thought about canceling the group. Then—then I thought, if you were with me there, we could take the discussion to a higher level. You and I are a team, Fatima.”
“That’s exciting!”
“It’s more than exciting!”
One door leads to another, one window opens onto another. The heavens multiply and expand further and further. The walls come loose and the prison bars fall away. There are openings, and spaces, and margins for me to move around in. There’s space enough to touch and experience the world. Life can still grow and bear fruit.
“I’ve been taking a lot of risks for you lately.”
“That’s to be expected. I’m worth it.”