“I Saw Nothing but Beauty”
One step into the cave.
“Who is it? Who’s there?”
“Me.”
I saw him. A pile of bones called my older brother. White gauze covered his right eye. There were white tubes in his veins, a white dry patch on his mouth, a white beard, white scalp, white bedsheet. He was barely breathing. Is this the dragon that guarded my tomb?
“Fatima?”
“Yes.”
“So you came?”
“Yes.”
“You decided to remember your older brother who raised you and looked after you?”
I smiled. “How could I forget?”
“You haven’t visited us since you got married! We haven’t seen you since Eid al-Adha last year. When did you decide to cut off your family? Aren’t you familiar with the verse: ‘Then, is it to be expected of you, if ye were put in authority, that ye will do mischief in the land, and break your ties of kith and kin?’”
I smiled and recited the next verse, “‘Such are the men
whom Allah has cursed for He has made them deaf and blinded their sight.’”
My voice was encased in a surprising sonority, and his face started to quiver.
“Did you come to gloat over my misfortune, my blindness?”
“No.”
“You were always ill-natured and hard-hearted.”
“When you look at me, you see the reflection of your own true nature.”
“And what do you see in me?”
“‘A man for whom one eye is enough.’”
“You’re gloating over your brother, your brother who raised you . . .”
“Never.”
“Why did you come?”
“Why did you ask for me?”
“Why did you accept?”
“To tell you a few things.”
“What things?”
I took a deep breath. “I came to tell you that I forgive you.”
His cheek quivered. “Forgive me for what?”
I swallowed. This time my voice shook as I spoke; it came out patchy, with a muffled sob. After all these years he’s going to deny what he did to me?
“You hurt me a lot, and you know that.”
“I did my job.”
“What job? That of a jailer?”
“The job of a guardian.”
“A guardian who beats me with his iqal and slaps me with his shoe.”
“You were wrong, and the wrongful must be punished.”
“By being placed under house arrest for three years?”
“That was to protect you. You were sliding down unsafe paths. Poetry readings and male colleagues and God knows what else.”
“I was in love.”
“You dare to say it to my face!”
“I was in love with Isam!”
“Damn you and your bad manners!”
He turned away from me. I saw that he was weak.
“I could have married a man who loved me, but you weren’t going to allow that. You weren’t going to allow me to have anything that made me happy, not love, not poetry. And when you got tired of having me in your house you threw me to Faris.”
“You married Faris out of your own free will.”
I took a step closer. I sat on the chair to his right, looking into his one eye.
“Tell me. . . . What are you going to do after you die, if you meet God and find yourself accused of insulting Him?”
“I’m not the one who needs to worry here.”
“How do you know?”
“I read the Quran and the Sunnah and I don’t take my creed from poets!”
“You put thousands of barriers between me and God, you monopolized God for yourself, and all those years you repeated that I was sinful and inadequate and bad . . .”
“I was trying to wake you up. Don’t blame me for your weak faith.”
“In the end I am your creation. The fruit of seven years in prison, three of them in solitary. Your crimes against me, you committed them in the name of God alone. You can’t wash your hands of your responsibility to me so easily. That’s why you asked to see me . . .” I exhaled. “Don’t worry, I forgive you.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong to warrant forgiveness.”
“You don’t deserve forgiveness but I am giving it to you because I deserve it. I want to live the rest of my life without constantly wondering: why did that happen to me? Why did you hurt me so much? Why do you hate me?”
“I didn’t . . .”
“I forgive you. I forgive you, Saqr. Believe me, ‘I saw nothing but beauty.’”
“I don’t want to talk anymore. Let me rest.”
“You don’t have to say anything. You can rest now and stop asking for me and summoning me. You can also stop repeating that garbage about cutting off your family. I didn’t cut anyone off—you stomped all over our family ties with your shoe. There’s no need to hide behind that beard because I can see you very well from where I’m at.”
“Get out of my room!”
“I’ll leave. I’ll leave with open arms because my life will begin as soon as I leave you. I will divorce Faris, I will work as a journalist, I will write many poems. I have my life back and you didn’t win.”