Hayat
“I couldn’t believe it when you called.”
She pulled her chair forward and hugged the paper coffee cup in her hands, using it to warm herself without seeming interested in its contents.
“After all these years!”
I still couldn’t talk. I needed long hours just to look at her, at my childhood friend that I hadn’t seen in four years. Her body had filled out a bit. She seemed comfortable in her white cotton shirt and black overcoat. Something in that face said it was her. Something, something else, said that she was much, much more.
It was silent. I couldn’t move, and I didn’t dare look her in the eye. I tried to fix my gaze on the sea outside. My hand grew stiff. My coffee got cold.
“I often wondered what happened to you after the reading.”
Ah, the reading. A cloud in my head. The darkness of absence. A poem running from my mouth. Twilight. Facing the destruction of the world with a poem in my heart and a flower in my hand. Utter absurdity. I almost laughed! I tried to pull the bounds of the conversation outside the geography of my ruin. I was aiming for simpler and fewer things, a trivial and superficial conversation about the beauty of the sea and the cold weather. I tried to keep the conversation ordinary.
“How are you?”
“Um . . . how are you?” She squeezed my fingers. Her hand was warm. Her eyes kept boring into me.
“What did they do to you?”
“Solitary confinement, pretty much.”
“For four years?”
“Three.”
“I called you many times. Your old number was out of service. Then I got up the nerve to call your house. I called several times and your niece told me you were fine and didn’t want to talk to me. I didn’t believe her, and I didn’t know what to do. I tried to visit you at home once. Without even opening the door, the maid informed me that you had gone abroad. I believed her because I wanted to. I imagined that you had gone to your aunt’s in Bahrain . . .”
“I was just in the basement.”
“How did you get here?”
“What do you mean?”
“How is it that now, suddenly, you can meet me in a café? When did that become possible?”
“Actually, I could have done that for a while. I mean, as far as being able to, not as far as being capable of doing it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I think I felt ashamed.”
She squeezed my hand harder, drinking me up with her eyes.
“Ashamed of what?”
“Of everything. Of the poem. Of the slap. Of being locked up. Of the marriage.”
“Marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“A year . . .”
“Congratulations!”
“For what?”
“Things didn’t improve?”
“A little.”
We replaced the cracked wall with wallpaper. I have a living room with modern furniture and cheerful colors in various shades of beige, pistachio, and olive green. A twenty-two-inch TV, three shelves for my books, movies. I have a multicolored Indian bedspread with golden threads. I have a doorknob that isn’t broken. Windows. A vase filled with bamboo stalks, a beautiful Jacuzzi. Yes, things improved.
“Things improved a little, but I’m not okay.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I am not capable of living.”
Her grip on my fingers tightened.
“I’m glad you called.”
I tried to smile.
“What are you doing now?” she asked again. “Did you go back to school? Do you work somewhere?”
“Actually, I was . . . I was hoping you’d help me with this.”
“With what?”
“Finding a job. I’m almost broke.”
Her gaze shifted to the right. “I’ll see what I can do. I know some people.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you thought of going back to school?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t want to?”
“I’m not sure what I want. I’m not sure I even want to live.”
“Does this mean you want to die?”
“I want to forget. Imagine taking your memory, haunted by all that destruction, to your new life. That wouldn’t be nice.”
“Have you thought that you might need help from a professional?”
“I’ve already done that. I have my medications.”
“What medications?”
“Alprazolam.”
“An antidepressant?”
“Yes.”
“Are you taking it under a doctor’s supervision?”
“I was in the beginning, yes.”
“Then?”
“Then there were side effects that interfered with the treatment, so I started buying them illegally online, from a Korean dealer who sells prescription drugs.”
I laughed. Hayat didn’t.
“You shouldn’t . . .”
I smiled. “After all these years you’re going to try to protect me?”
“I’ve tried to protect you my entire life. I was even hard on you sometimes. That day when Saqr came into the room and slammed your head against the wall, I felt the whole thing was my fault. I pushed you.”
“Did he really slam my head against the wall?”
“Have you forgiven me, Fatima?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
I saw tears in her eyes. I saw a half-smile on my mouth. I saw my old hurt nested in her depths. I saw the pain spread while I watched, while I watched with a half-smile on my lips. She dried her tears with the edge of her palm and then asked, trying to smile, “Do you still write?”
She was making my insides quake. I felt my lips tremble and tried—with all the hurt of the world—to be honest in the simplest way possible.
“Yes.”
She let out a deep sigh with a happy face. “I’m happy! Happy you held on to poetry. I think just writing poetry is heroic.”
“It’s the only thing holding me together now.”
The silence stretched out. How could I tell her that I’d run away in order to write? Is it possible for something like that to be understood?
“Listen, Hayat . . .” I swallowed hard. “I ran away from my husband.”
“What?”
“I ran away.”