“Where are you?” a panic-stricken Jalil said, as I answered the phone.
“Is everything all right?”
“I need you to come, quickly.”
“Okay, sure. I’m on my way.”
I’m sorry. Something has come up. It’s urgent. Can we please reschedule? I texted Sandra as soon as I got off the phone. We were supposed to “talk.” I was not quite sure what that meant, but it made me feel as though there were a thousand spiders nesting on my head. After a week of not speaking, she had emailed me saying that there was something she needed to get off her chest. She only ever emailed me when it was serious, like when she got called into a meeting by Mrs. Sundermeyer and was scared she was getting fired but ended up being offered a new role, or when she suspected me of sneaking into her classroom and taking from her “secret snack drawer,” which I had, but that was beside the point. I rushed out from work and made my way across town to Jalil’s.
“What’s going on?” I said as Jalil opened the door to let me in.
“Yooo”—he gave a stunted greeting—“you got here fast.”
“I know. You said to get here quickly. Is it Baba? Is he okay?” I said as I walked into the living room and found Aminah, sitting there, arms crossed, one leg over the other.
“Baba’s fine,” she replied, her voice two discordant chords attempting to harmonize.
“I thought it was an emergency?”
They both hesitated to respond. I looked at Aminah, and she looked as if the warmth of her body were fleeing her. Jalil looked nervously around the room, eyes shifting until his met mine.
“It is, bro…,” he said, in a pleading tone. “Listen, you know how Baba is in a bad state, it’s not looking good. And I’m trying to explain to Aminah.”
“No. What you’re not about to do is use one of your preambles to make it seem like—”
“Can I finish?”
“Like you’re justified in what you’re asking.”
“But can I fucking finish?!” Jalil yelled, plunging the room into a barrel of silence.
He cleared his throat before continuing, “Sorry. As I was saying, it’s a difficult time”—his voice returned to its pleading tone—“and you know how much Baba wants me to be married…” His voice started to break, and a single tear fell onto his cheek.
“He’s asked me if I would marry him,” Aminah cut in, “but not actually for real, just a kind of pretend marriage for—”
“Baba has a serious heart arrhythmia. It’s not looking good. I’ve been spending all my days at the hospital. I should have told you.”
“It’s not fair. You can’t use your father’s illness to manipulate me into a fake wedding.”
“It’s not manipulation, habibti. I’m trying to fulfill my father’s wish, I want to make him happy.”
“I would have more respect for you if you actually asked me to marry you.”
“We’re not there yet, we’re not ready yet.”
“But we’re ready for this?”
“What difference does it make if we’re going to get married eventually anyway?!”
“The difference is, I won’t be some dumb woman to go along with your stupid plan. Who do you think I am?”
“But I love you.”
“I ask that you respect me first, before you love me. You would not ask this of someone you respect.” Jalil lowered his head.
“Have you got anything to say for your friend?” Aminah asked.
I stood there with my mouth half-open, the fury of Aminah’s eyes slowly burning through me. She scoffed.
“Oh, I’m leaving,” she announced, before pacing out of the door and slamming it loud enough to shake the walls. Jalil looked at me with bitter disappointment.
“Why the fuck didn’t you say something?” He paced around the room, hands gripping his hair, almost tearing it out.
“What was I supposed to do? Tell her to marry you?”
“Bro, I’m going to lose everything. Everything!”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m broke, man. Broke. I’ve got no money, not any real money. And getting a job, a real job, is hard, so I’ve just been doing whatever. You know, buying and selling stuff…”
“What do you mean?”
“No, nothing like that. All legit. Kind of.” Jalil huffed as I looked at him suspiciously, not knowing which of the words he spoke to believe.
“And now Baba thinks I’m living some wild lifestyle,” Jalil continued. “Baba says he doesn’t trust me to take care of everything on my own, so he’ll give away the house and my inheritance unless I marry. He says a wife and family will humble me. Help me learn the true purpose of my life. But I know that what he really wants is to see me in a suit and tie. That’s what he thinks being responsible means.”
“I don’t get it. Why don’t you just ask Aminah to marry you though?”
“Because I’m not ready. I’m scared, okay? I am scared. And now all of this has come along, it’s too much pressure. And it’s too soon. Would you marry someone you met after three months?”
“Maybe. I would if I knew that I was going to marry them anyway.”
Jalil quietened, lowered his head, and placed both his hands on his waist.
“It’s not too late. Do you love her?”
“I think so”—his thick eyelashes flickered as his eyes blinked rapidly—“I mean, yeah, I do. I don’t want to lose her. She’s amazing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t sound like it.”
“What do you mean, man?”
“Bro, what do you want?”
“What?”
“Out of life, like, what do you want?” I asked Jalil as though I were asking myself.
“I don’t know, I guess I’ve never really had to think about that. I’ve just been okay with moving from one thing to the next, and not taking things too seriously. I’ve used staying in university as a way to seem like I’m doing something, but I don’t really care about all that. I just want to be okay, you know?” Jalil looked away, breaking the eye contact we’d held. “I want everything to be okay. But I don’t know what I want to be or do.”
“Well, that’s what you have to figure out for yourself; you can’t just go around letting life happen to you, otherwise, it’ll eat you up inside.” Jalil nodded as I spoke, and as soon as the words had left my lips I wondered if I were speaking to him or me. “Then it isn’t too late to do the right thing.” I brought my words to a close, sounding like the ever-confident counselor; there for others, for everyone else but himself.
If there ever was a moment to watch the weight of the world fall upon a man’s shoulders and collapse him, this was it. What a good problem to have: marrying the love of your life for a windfall of your father’s cash. What a privilege it was, even, to see your father die. To know where he was buried, to know where he could be found. What a privilege it was to inherit more than just absence, more than loss or trauma. But we all carry our burdens no matter the weight. They are heavy because they are upon our own shoulders. Who among us would swap our burdens for another’s if we knew not the weight?
Jalil sniffed and dropped his head into his hands and started to cry. I reassured him, taking him into my arms like an orphaned child into adoption, a rough sleeper into a home.
I walked into my classroom and threw my coat, scarf, gloves, bags, every weight I had on me, onto the floor and crashed into the chair. I felt my body, stiff, joints clicking and squeaking like rusting metal, limbs ready to snap as if elastic stretched too far, and a migraine thumping the side of my head. But deeper than this, I felt an intrinsic tiredness, not just of the body, beyond the mind, and deeper than the soul; a fatigue that had yet to be named. Luckily, it was professional development day so there were no students in. The quiet and peace throughout the building was self-evident. I decided to avoid the staff team-building activities and spend the entire day in my classroom; a prison or a sanctuary from the world—on days such as this, I knew not which.
I’m sorry I had to cancel yesterday. I know you wanted to talk and how important it was to you. Are you around today? X. I replied to Sandra’s email. I knew she was in, not because I had seen her, but because other people would have come to me if she weren’t.
I spent most of the day staring into the back wall, watching the hands of the clock move but not at all. The minutes passed, but the moment seemed to stay the same. I printed out what I had been writing, stuffed it into an envelope and into my pocket. I walked through the corridors of the school, this time with a different feeling; of ambivalence, and vacillation, between two minds, between two worlds.
I knocked on Mrs. Sundermeyer’s door before I went in. Her face remained serious as if she were posing for a portrait. She had already begun listening before I even spoke.
“If you’ve got a minute, I just wanted to talk and let you know…”
“Of course,” she said, reassuringly.
“I don’t know how to say this but… I am leaving. I am quitting my job.” I took out the envelope in my pocket and slid it onto the table.
“I haven’t been coping. Each day that I come in, it gets worse. I feel like I’m breathing in this smog; it’s dark and gray. I can’t see it. But I know it’s there. I feel it on my skin, in my lungs. I cough it up, I spit it out. It never goes. It’s always there, some days more than others, but it is always there. Lately, it’s been there more and more: when I wake up, before I go to sleep, in the middle of a lesson, always. I find myself randomly staring into nothing, feeling empty, and I won’t know how much time has passed, sometimes a minute, sometimes an hour. I can spend the whole day just staring into nothing.
“I take long baths just to feel the warmth, but it’s only so long before I start to feel as though I’m drowning. I don’t know what to do, but I know that I can’t be here, anymore, because it makes it worse.
“Imagine there’s something trapped inside you, a sharp-clawed animal, and it’s running out of air, so it’s scratching away, trying to break free. And the more the air runs out, the more it scratches at you, inside, trying to escape, and it hurts you more and more. And all you can do, on the outside, is just stay calm, because no one knows you are carrying this thing; no one knows, and sometimes you don’t even know.”
I was shocked at myself to be saying all of this to her. I regretted it instantly. I had tried to hold it back, but couldn’t; every memory, every pain, every cramp of the heart, every ache of the soul, every tear of the spirit, came rushing back to me. Even the happy memories, the joy, the laughter, the smiles, made me cry some more, for I knew that I would not see them again; this ship had sailed, and I was left on an island alone. Mrs. Sundermeyer remained in the same portrait-like position that she had been in when I walked in, as if she was unmoved, indifferent, or had yet to take in what I had said. She doesn’t care.
“So, I have to go. That’s my notice. But I don’t want anyone to know, none of the students, none of the staff. No one. I don’t want any leaving cards, or cake, or goodbyes, or anything else. I just want to quietly disappear, move on, and do what I need to do.”