Partner in Crime
“It’s not bad.” That’s what Hayat said. “It’s not bad. From outside it looks like a dump, but the room isn’t so bad. How did you find it?” She was taking off her shoes and lying down on the bed, raising her legs and resting her heels against the wall.
“These shoes are horrible!”
She seemed to have forgotten I was there. Or I was just there to hear the sound of her thoughts. Then she turned to me and asked curiously, “How much a night?”
“Twenty-five dinars.”
She did the math in her head then cried, “Seven hundred and fifty dinars a month!”
“You get a discount if you stay longer. I paid five hundred for a month.”
“And you’re broke now?”
“Pretty much.”
“We’ll get your money back. You can stay with me.”
I wanted to ask her so many things. Does she have a husband, children? What does she do for a living? What happened during those years? But before I could, she said, “So, you ran away?”
“What can I get you to drink?”
“Water. Is he bad?”
“Who?”
“Your husband.”
“In what sense?”
“In the sense that he’s like Saqr, for example.”
“No. And he’s not bad in general. He doesn’t drink, doesn’t hit, he does what is expected of him. Overall he’s a nice person.”
“Then where’s the problem?”
“He’s not the problem. I am. I am no longer capable of playing by this world’s rules. And I don’t want to be forced to. I don’t want to lie and scheme or beg and plead for my rights. I don’t want to have a job because my husband ‘allows’ me to. I want to have a job because I want to. Here’s your water.”
She sat up, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed. I looked at her for a moment and my heart smiled. It was still her. Just like four years ago, the same energy.
“When did you decide?”
“After I started writing poetry again.”
I was silent. It was that fateful moment. The moment that poetry materializes in my life not as an identity or talent or passion, but as a savior, an active force in my life. A partner in crime! For a woman to run away from her husband—who seems practically without fault—in order to write poetry. What a story!
“But why did you run away, Fatima? Why didn’t you get a divorce like other women?”
“Because a divorce is his decision in the end, and I want to participate in this decision. I want to state my point of view. I had to. I had to—” I swallowed, shaking with emotion. “I had to do it for me! To get out of the tomb!”