Hayat’s Life

Hayat is me in another life. Hayat is me if I’d had a life.

Perhaps if I’d had a life like Hayat’s, I would have been exactly like her.

It’s like looking at a prettier version of yourself. This is what my life should have been like, had the accident not happened, had I not become an orphan, had there been no tomb or love or poetry or marriage or other things. With this stark simplicity: a woman with short hair, smile lines around the mouth that spread out when her face bursts into a smile, like a secret language. A white cotton shirt, faded blue jeans that are snug at the thighs and widen around the calf, a jacket irreverently belted at the waist, beige with a dark-brown satin lining. This would have been me, had my life not been stolen from me. I look at myself in my other rendition, in Hayat’s life. I like what I see in myself when I am not me.

Hayat—who is me had it been possible to forestall the disaster—opens the doors of her home to me, shows me the secret locations of the coffee and sugar and dark chocolate, pushes a dish filled with cherries toward me, and introduces me to her husband Ahmad and her son Musayd. She was opening wide all the doors of her life for me, but the only thing filling my being and ruling my insides was pain.

Like an endless abyss of darkness and other things. Jealousy of Hayat, of her life, of the cheerful husband who creates traditional paintings and takes her to Zell am See in Austria every summer, the wonderful child occupied with his shiny red bike in the courtyard of the house, the volunteer work, the political activism, and many, many things, could have been mine, had I not . . .

“Do you like your room?”

She said it with eyes that penetrated the mask of my face. My features betrayed me.

“It’s very nice.”

My voice wavered and I cried. I sat on the edge of the bed and the soft, light-blue cotton blanket shot straight into my soul. The parquet floor smiled at me, a painting of the sea filled with sailboats extended their masts to me. It was a very blue room, and I cried from the blackness of my heart.

“It’s not too late, Fatima.”

“Forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what?”

“The fire inside me.”

She smiled. Pulled a chair over and sat in front of me while holding my wrists with firm hands.

“You’re not dead yet, Fatima.”

“They stole my life.”

“I know.”

“They stole everything.”

“But you’re here now, and you can enjoy your life in full. You can write, you can travel, you can love. As far as what you experienced, what you lived . . . the truth that was revealed to you alone, the frightening face of the world that you faced alone, this knowledge that you have inside you, that none of us have in us, believe me, my friend, we all envy you for it.”