Because My Graves Are Many

I walked to Salim al-Mubarak Street, adjacent to al-Fanar Mall, al-Bustan Mall, and Layla Gallery Mall. I looked at the hotel in the Omniya Shopping Center, which looked nicer than my hotel. Maybe I would move here later. I had to do something about the mirror pointed in my face like an accusing finger.

I walked until I reached Maryam Shopping Center, went down to the basement level, and sat on one of the store couches, looking at the children’s clothes and acting as if everything around me existed to give me a kind of solace. I looked at some frilly skirts, size one year and a half. I walked far in memory, went deeper. I returned to myself at nineteen, the first time I tried to run away. It seemed I was just finishing the job.

My little graves are all over the place now. I fall apart, and my pieces bury each other. I have unseen limbs and organs interred in public gardens and beaches and abandoned flowerpots. My graves are many, more than my parts and the days of my life, and much more than my body.

I was systematically buried alive, and when I pulled myself out of the pit and left I discovered that I was no longer capable of happiness. I had been emptied of my capacity to love and give and live. They drained me of my femininity. I was nothing.

“How much is this?” I asked the worker busy folding small pairs of jeans.

“Seventy dinars.”

“I’ll take it.”

I needed to buy it. Even though my resources were barely enough, even though it was expensive, even though I’m not the mother of an eighteen-month-old child, even though I don’t know anyone to whom I could give this pink frilly skirt. I needed to allow beautiful things into my life.

I took the small bag, with the skirt that I was much too old for, and made my way to the sea. I was going to spend the remaining hours of my day there. A free woman without attachments, discovering herself. I will commune with God. I will pray my prayer.

 

O Almighty, give me strength.

The strength to think, the strength of instinct,

The strength of the truth, the truth of the question.

The strength of the ‘t’

The flexibility of the ‘e’

The lightness of the ‘k,’ despite the restraints

And the wrists tied together overhead.

O Almighty, give me strength!

The strength of the plant that cuts into the wall,

The strength of the drop that bores holes in the rock,

The strength of the prayer that brings rain.