Yellow Post-it

Dear Faris,

I think we did what we could, but it wasn’t enough. I’m too different, and it’s more than you can bear. Your love hurts me; my inability to carry on hurts you. Recently my memories have started to afflict me, and I’ve started to understand the extent of the damage. I’m broken and unable to be in a relationship. I can’t be anything to anyone. Forgive me. And divorce me. If you truly asked your heart, it would tell you that my leaving is the best thing that could happen to you.

Take care of yourself,
Fatima

 

Had the paper been a bit bigger, I might have added other things.

Apologies and more apologies. An insistent and bothersome recall of the fits of fright in the night and my inexcusable typhoons of anger. The antidepressants, migraine drugs, and other indications of my misery and unsuitability. I probably would have reminded him of how many times he found me curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor, and how many times he had to carry me to bed because I had decided to stop existing. I would remind him of the six sessions with Dr. Heba Rushdi and her failure to pull me out of my eternal sinking into scream. I would remind him of those days when I started to stagger and rave, pointing at him and repeating al-Nawab’s lines: “Filthy! We’re filthy! No one is exempt.” The news reports, the newspapers, the law, and even the touch of a hand and look in an eye. Everything disgusted me, as though I were an inflamed wound opening its eternal mouth to the world.

The poems by Muzaffar al-Nawab that tore through me, my long sobs. His arms when they encircled my body while he asked me to hold myself together and I . . . didn’t hold myself together. I fell to pieces, collapsed. What do you want from me? I’d ask him. I want you, he’d say. I also want me, I’d say to him. Divorce me so I can have me. I won’t divorce you, he’d say. I love you. I’d ask him, What do you—you—know about love? I’d raise my finger in his face and whisper al-Nawab to him: “Now I’ll expose all of you.” There is no power and strength save in God, he’d mutter. He’d dry my tears, carry me to the bed, call the doctor. Take her to the hospital, she’d say. Another injection, and another and another. He’d say, What do you want? I’d say to him, I want me for me, I want to write. He’d say, I can’t do it! I’d say to him, I can do it. So why can’t you let me do it? He’d say, You’re my wife. Another injection in my vein. Waiting for another fit. And the one that follows, and the one after that . . .

Had the paper been bigger I might have reminded him of things he knows, that I am barren and can’t give him sons, daughters, a future. That I’m happy being infertile and dance around repeating, “I’m barren! I’m barren!” That I nearly lose my mind when I imagine what would have happened if I’d brought a female into this world. Another female. A functional being to justify violation, a being cut into and undergoing revision, objectified, crucified, an offering to attract man’s violence, to release the lust for blood. I used to squeeze my legs together in bed shouting at him so he wouldn’t come near me. “It would be a disaster! A disaster!” I don’t want to be the cause for another being brought into this frightening place, I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s pain! I hugged the medical certificate that proved my infertility with more than relief. I hugged it and danced with it like a triumph.

Had the paper been bigger I might have told him that everything he does and every gesture he makes wounds me and causes me pain in a way he can’t understand. I would have told him that I am worn out and wasted and interpret every glance of tenderness with the worst possible intentions. I would have reminded him that our life turned into a hell after I started writing again. That I can’t not write because I tried not to write. That since I started resisting writing and denying its calls, language started biting my fingers and making them bleed. That I am lame and run into windows. I see witches in the mirrors and red apples and forests filled with spirits, and these creatures, these many creatures that chase me, won’t leave me alone. I would have told him that I ran into Susu, even though I was sweeping the parquet floor in my super-deluxe apartment. I saw her there, on the wall. Her teeth were still rotten and she laughed at me and called me “Fashila.” That I can’t. I can’t be in the same place as Susu. It’s me or her.

Had the paper been bigger I would have told him about that night I dreamt of all the poems I drowned in a bucketful of tears. The poems assumed their old form and emerged—despite their complaints and dissatisfaction—from the fleet of ships that sank at the bottom of my sadness; the poems came back and filled me with memory. That morning I jumped out of my bed and opened my notebook and wrote, I wrote the memory that returned, I wrote it with rumpled hair without getting dressed and without washing my face. I wrote the return of language. I wrote until I ran out of strength and he returned at 4 p.m. to find me a near-corpse, wide-eyed at the horror of the past. Memory had ambushed me and torpedoed the mounds of delusion that I had tried to build up inside me in order to make this marriage succeed. The past had led a ferocious attack on me and laid everything to waste.

I would have told him many things had the paper been bigger, had my mind been clear as it is now, as I lie in my double bed, a double bed for one, for my loneliness and my running and my fits of fright. But I didn’t. I wrote my paltry excuses on a yellow Post-it, stuck it to the bedroom mirror, and ran.