Three Suitcases for Departure---a Novel ---my translation-- unedited

Three Suitcases for Departure



~ a novel ~

















Mona Prince















To my father,

Because he bought me stories more often than chocolates





















































“munira, is traveling, really, going to help you?”
“ican’t stay here any longer, suha. I’m slowly suffocating. I need some air to breathe.”
“and you think you’ll find in India what you couldn’t find here?”
“i don’t know. I haven’t accomplished anything here. I may not there either, but perhaps. . . .”
“ perhaps what?”
“enough, suha. i don’t want to go into it. i don’t want to think about it. i’m leaving. that’s final. tonight.”
suha couldn’t think of anything new--or old--to add, so she left saying, “i’ll call you this evening.” she left munira sitting on the floor of her room, surrounded by books and photo albums. she opened the university album, her eyes fell on a picture that showed her with the gang . . . the university gang. they were standing in the shade of an ancient tree whose roots sank deep into the earth. In the background was Qasr al-Za‘faran: colors ,laughters, sunny, poses and latent angst.
No one remained. usama, sayed, and adel left without achieving anything here. they went to europe to hang around the streets, claiming this an experience. And safa, the pure pearl . . . where is she now? working as a schoolteacher in the gulf, not out of financial need but because she too had not achieved anything here. …
Is “here” which I insist on using means that there aren’t any more chances for life here? Is there something in the soil of Egypt blocking us, crippling us, killing us….or is the flaw in us..
She held the picture out in front of her and sighed deeply as she gazed at her friends.
Samira got married and got no children. She cherished her first love even though she had discovered, perhaps a bit late, that it was a big illusion, and that she had wasted the sweetest years of her life chasing a mirage. Now she had adjusted herself to the role of spouse and housewife, paying social calls and lounging at sporting clubs . . . after a revolutionary youth, when she led demonstrations at the university. Where have her dreams and hopes for change gone?
And Suha . . . another revolutionary girl who faded away and left behind another girl whose life centered on nothing but hopes of changing a man she loved. A man who is using her without loving her.
Hussain, the querulous student who was advocating socialism and social justice… how different he is now! He had gone into business and made a big fortune, you see him nowadays, you scarcely recognize him. He wears the most expensive clothes, has a magnificent automobile with a car-phone, and parties in the evenings at five-star hotels. How he has changed. . . .
Yusef and Ali are squandering their lives in the university in a desperate attempt to cling to some sort of identity, any identity… Yusef told me once, “At the university, I’m a student. Once I set foot outside it, I don’t know who I am.”
He would laugh with bitterness dissolving his laughter and would say, “I’m not from the haves, so why should I be in a hurry to graduate from the university?”
Where is the flaw?
Whence spring the thorns that bloody our spirits and impede our course?
Why don’t the questions die, the way everything else dies? These recurring persistent questions… from where do they obtain the elixir of life…from where do they draw power of surviving when everything else has perished?
Death no longer stirs me or arouses in me the questions that used to keep me anxously awake for long nights. Death is mowing down my family and assassinating my dreams, whatever they may be…
She rose to take the suitcases down from the top of the wardrobe, just two: the large one for clothes and shoes and some books, the small one for personal things and cassettes. She stood gazing at these two empty suitcases. She would have liked to travel without any bags . . . without any luggage, but can traveling really be traveling without suitcases? Can she really go away without any weights, burdens…
-1-The first suitcase

She opened the small suitcase first. She picked several pictures of her, taken at different periods of her life, family pictures, pictures of friends, of peasants and old houses that she had taken during her trips to the oases and upper Egypt . she put the pictures with care in the inner pocket of the suitcase. She opened the upper drawer of the desk and looked inside. Some papers, pens, old letters and pictures, other pictures. She looked through them. One caught her attention, a black and white one. A family picture that includes all her uncles and aunts, the two grand mothers, sons, daughters, and grand children, all at the wedding of one of the children. She counted the persons who are still alive. The number has decreased almost to the half. She held the picture for a while and sat on the floor staring at the people present in the picture. Her finger pointed to a tall man with a light complexion that has some of her mother’s facial features. My uncle Mahmoud.









-2-My family is dying out. And this goes back to the beginning of the eighties when my eldest uncle inaugurated the race towards the other world, to be followed later by several other members of my parents, families, my big family.
I was then with my father and mother in the Gulf, where my father was working as a doctor at one of the hospitals, and mother a teacher at one of the state schools. I was their only child whom they had after quite a period of their marriage. Therefore, they were e always worried about me and cared a lot for me. So, I didn’t mix with any neighbours and we had no friends to visit. Our life was going on as follows: we go out in the morning, each to his / her direction, my father to the hospital, my mother, to her school where I was also a pupil. At noone, mother and I go back home, my father in the afternoon. We have lunch then a siesta until sunset, then we get up again, I to study my lessons, mother to prepare the lessons for the following day, watch the Egyptian programs and films available on T. V. and father to read the newspapers, magazines and medical reports and periodicals. A routine life! Nothing changed since we first came to the gulf in the beginnings of the eighties until my final return with my mother en to Egypt in the mid eighties. What happens in the Gulf or the neighboring countries is by no means our concern. My father imposed on himself and us a kind of solitude that made us live as if we were on a different planet, not the earth which is full of people and problems. What happens outside is not our business. Every one concentrates on his / her work and perfects it. This is what father used to say.
My eldest uncle died. That was nine years ago. When a husband of one of my aunts sent a telegram informing us that my uncle died, my mother wore black. I wanted to wear black too immitating her, but she said I was still young to wear it. I was fourteen then falling in an impossible love.
My uncle died. My mother kept repeating the dream she mentioned to me days before my uncle’s death: I dreamt that your grandmother’s, back is broken, the house is full of people wearing black, and Mahmoud`s apartment is so crowded, your aunt zeinab is sitting on the staircases…. I saw this and that. She kept mentioning names of relatives whom I don’t know and whom I have never seen before.
My mother perceived an evil omen, and foretold calamity and when we got the telegram, she interpreted the dream and said didn’t I tell you.. My mother had a kind of disturbing ability to see through thing.
Her dreams, whether the nice ones or the nightmares come true in a way that is really astonishing and puzzling at the same time. The year before my uncle died, my mother dreamt that her mother was wearing white, all white as if she were a bride. In that year my grandmother attended the pilgrimmage in Macca. My mother used to say that she is blessed.
My uncle Mahmoud died. His death was the first that I was aware of but I don't remember that I felt so sad then. I was on more sad for my mother's sorrow. And as the custom in such occasions, the T.V. was switched off and verses of Quran were cited, " By the invocation of God, hearts are comforted ", but do the hearts really comfort … We remained as such for a relatively short period, but it was quite long for me, I quickly got bored and every time my parents go shopping, I stay home and play Indian music and songs. I was in love with a Hindu young man. His name was Sanjay. He saw me one day accompanying my mother when she was still wearing black. He asked me about the reason and I said my uncle died. I mentioned our deceased merits. I said he was kind, compassionate, he loved my mother very much and cared for her, he used to visit us, and normally we don’t remember these details until we lose them … and now when I remember these things, I find that he used to visit us a lot, he used to bring me sweats and toys and he used to tell me about his travels around the world. He visited Italy, India, France, Greece… My uncle was a sailor and he looked like the film star Kamal El Shenawi when he was young. But I never really cared.
My uncle had a son who is few years older than me, Samy. We were friends from our childhood on, he talks to me, I talk to him, and when I am back in Egypt in the summer vacation, we always spend long time together, talking. He didn’t make it through in his studies, and he didn’t find a suitable job, and he didn’t meet the woman who would share with him his ambitions and dreams. I don’t know when or how the feeling of alienation and not belonging crept into his soul. One day he came to me and said : I have no place here, I am leaving. I hate this country. I remember he cursed the country and its people. And I remember very well my reaction. I cursed him and almost slapped him. I lectured him about belonging and loyalty and the love of one’s country and one’s people. He laughed at me and mocked what he called the big words which are useless. Yet, he swallowed my insults and left to Europe, and we remained in touch despite every thing. After I have set the date of my departure, I went to say good bye to him. He was on a short vacation visiting his mother. I told him my decision. Samy couldn’t believe his ears, and said, You ! You are the one saying that ! leaving …. Who’s going to love the country and sacrifice for it ? I didn’t comment on what he said, but I saw the insults he got from me years before. So I said to him, you have the right now Samy to slap me twice.
When we returned in the summer vacation we went, the first thing, to the big house and there started the incessant symphony of crying with its various tones. I participated in the crying for it wasn’t easy to be in a place where every body is crying without being affected and crying too. And it was a day. My uncle was the first loss for the family after a break of about thirty years, since my mother’s father died. We went to grandmother on the third floor. I was surprised. She wasn’t crying or talking. She was defeated. He first son died. They said: he was sick for three days then he died on Friday at the time of calling for prayer … and It was the month of Ramadan. I said: he will go to heaven then. He was fasting, praying and following the religious teachings.
In fact my uncle was the only one among my family who was praying. My mother gathered the rest of the women around her and started telling the dream she had few days before my uncle’s death, and she repeated it over and over again until every body swore that she is blessed.
The feast came, depressing and meaningless. The feast was no longer a new dress, gifts and swings. It has become the occasion of going to the cemetry and crying over the beloved who deserted life and their people.
Our summer vacation came to an end and we returned to the Gulf to find my beloved got married as he said before I leave. He wants to be a father, so he married. I congratulated him.
And I don’t really remember how was my feeling then when I became sure of his marriage. My mind was oscilitating between doubt and conviction throughout the whole vacation. He said he may and he may not. I hoped that he would not, despite my full awareness of the impossibility of myself marrying him. I was quite aware that one day this relationship would come to an end. But I went on and I dared not break it… for what?
That was the first closed way. I was happy and that was enough. That was what I said to myself, but.. is timed happiness enough to be a reason for closing the heart for a time that seems infinite? Are the short incomplete moments of happiness enough to be reasons for imposing solitude on the heart and mind for another period of time ahead of me? Is it really enough to be a reason to keep wandering aimlessly from one road to another?

3
her finger moved across the photograph before stopping at an old woman wearing a black scarf around her head and standing to the right of a young man. She couldn’t distinguish the woman’s features and realized that the sun had left the day behind and started to set. Munira rose from the floor with the photograph in her hand. She turned the light on and scrutinized the face… my paternal grandmother.
I was too preoccupied by my private world to pay much attention to what was happening around me. That was why I didn’t brood for long over my maternal uncle’s death or my paternal grandmother’s death, which occurred two years later. That was before my mother and I returned from the Gulf finally. We had preceded my father to Cairo and he would join us for his vacation in a month’s time. The day he returned we received the news of the tragedy. The tragedy was not so much the event itself but the impact of death on my father, who was intensely attached to his mother… despite his long absences from Egypt. I cried a lot that day, frightened of what this loss might do to my father. I could scarcely believe that my grandmother had died and that my father would never see her again. My grandmother was the first person my father would visit once he set foot in Egypt. I was not unusually close to her--she was my grandmother, that was all--but she loved me a lot because she loved my father a lot. And as the proverb says, “Even dearer than the child is the child’s child.” She always prayed to God to give me anything I wanted.
My grandmother moved to the other world, that which we know nothing definite about, during the period we were in the Gulf Region and at the same time when the Egyptian central security forces were confronting the army, after leaving their barracks in an unprecedented rebellion against their inhumane treatment . . . despite the imposition of a curfew and the announcement of a continuing state of emergency. My grandmother died of heart failure and hundreds of others were killed beneath tanks and before machine guns. however, my uncle informed us later that the funeral had proceeded in spite of the danger and that my parental grandmother was buried in a fitting manner.
I did not know about the details of this rebellion until later. All I knew at the time was that the central security forces burned the nightclubs on Pyramids Street and that these would be rebuilt. My father had no political interests, and consequently matters like these were not to be discussed in our house.
My mother says that ever since 1967 my father remained silent about political matters. When I would ask her why, she would frown, turn away, and change the subject or fall silent. I found that she became upset whenever I tried to discuss this topic with her, so I stopped asking her about it.
No one informed us of my grandmother’s death when it occurred out of respect for my father’s feelings in his self-chosen exile. When my father arrived from the airport his feet could scarcely support him and he almost fell at the entrance to the house, as he felt it in his heart that he would never see her again. My father wept, and I wept too, because he was weeping.
Once more, the television is switched off and recorded recitations from the Holy Qur’an resound, so that perhaps hearts would be comforted, and we visited the cemeteries to recite the opening verses of the Qur’an. I accompanied the others, even though I didn’t feel like it. But I did out of respect for my father.
This death, also, I was incomprehensible of. And, really, I was not interested in brooding about it. Mourners thronged to our house to offer their condolences and the symphony of weeping began all over again, months after the deceased died. I did not like these rituals of condolence or their empty phrases. What does it really mean to tell a family member, “May the rest of the deceased’s years be added to yours” or “May you live”?
I returned to my beloved and clung to him in this depressing atmosphere. His image endowed me with a luminous glow in the midst of profound darkness. I would think of him, talk about him, write him letters, which were never mailed but which I recorded in a violet book, on which I wrote his name: Sanjay
Munira opened the lower drawer of the desk and took out the book. She opened it to one of its forgotten pages and read:
Dearest Sanjay,
People blame me for loving you. They try their best to divert me from your love, but that will never happen. They will fail, because I am not jesting and not lying: I love you. They challenge me that I will forget you. No, my dearest, they will not succeed. I promise you, my beloved, I will not allow anyone else to come close to my heart.
Your lover,
Munira
Cairo, February 1987.
She closed the book, marveling at these words that seemed very naïve now, although they had wrung her heart when she first wrote them. The final sentence with its promise echoed inside her. How many times had she betrayed this promise? Twice, perhaps three times. . . .
She opened the suitcase and put the book inside it. She looked at her watch. I still have a few hours left, but i have to hurry. She threw some personal items and some cassettes of Abd al-Halim, Munir, Fairouz, Umm Kulthum, and a walkman inside the suitcase and closed it.
The Second Suitcase

4
She put the large suitcase on the bed and opened it. She stood in front of the wardrobe and stared at the clothes thrown inside without any order. She had to take all the clothes out of the wardrobe to see their shapes and sizes, and see what would suit her now and select..
She threw some light blouses and cotton T-shirts into the bag. While sorting through the clothes, she grasped a cuff and pulled it. It was an old dress . . . the green plaid / tartan dress . . . the dress Sanjay had loved. She had worn it so often during her first years at the university that her friends had dubbed it the university dress, even though they knew the story behind it.
I began the university phase of my life tied by my emotions--which I protected, nourished, and fostered--and encumbered by rigid instructions: that I was not to mix with my male colleagues, that our companionship should not extend beyond the walls of the university, that I should not get involved in any of the university’s activities, and that I should return home the moment my classes are finished. All of these because my gender is female. I began to feel that being a girl would be a handicap for me. So I resorted to a naïve solution which was to have my hair cut short and to wear men’s clothing. Naturally, this external solution did not resolve the gender issue that afflicts all of us girls one way or another. A feeling occurred to me that I was born with the wrong form: I ought to have been a boy. No doubt there had been some error in the formation process, so I came out a girl; and they named me Munira “Luminous,” although I am dark
My main preoccupation was studying English literature and exploring European culture. Four years had a big impact on the formation of my intellect and my consciousness for years to come. The authors I liked best were George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. In the first, I loved her rebellion against her pretentious, false society. I also liked the fact that her ethical standards were internally generated, not imposed from outside. I recognized some of me in her, and so I read her books. I liked Hardy’s pessimism and skepticism, and he also struck a chord that echoed within me. With Wordsworth I worshiped nature and her holiness, and my imagination went wild with Coleridge and his poems.
And…during one of my four years at the university, fate paved another barren path, which leads nowhere except to a dead end. I did not recognize the barrenness of this path until I was halfway. At that point, I remembered the remorse Macbeth felt after he had already gone half the bloody way he started for kinghood… looking backward, looking forward.. nothing but a bloody way which he had started and could not but continue.. so he did.. A barren a path as mine. And despite the differences of circumstance, time, and place, and the fact that my road wasn’t bloody, it was still as barren and futile. And the return to my starting point was difficult, if not impossible. Thus I was left with only the second choice, which was to continue forward, provided with my knowledge of the barrenness of the path.
I threw the university dress into the suitcase and lifted another one from the floor. It was a dappled blue and sleeveless dress. . . the dress Abd al-Rahman loves. They all love dresses.
I met Abd al-Rahman. And by all means, our first meeting could never have suggested how our relation would develop later on. I still remember that it was on a Thursday, during the mid year vacation, at a public forum at the Book Fair, which I had been keen to visit and to attend some of its public sessions. I heard him say that Sadat had made a pact with the devil, sold out the Arab cause, and squandered the October victory. I was not at all happy about what this man was saying about Sadat and did not like his caustic style of speech. After the debate, I went up to him and asked, “How can you talk like this about the man who achieved peace, returned Egypt to its position of international prominence, and. . . .” The man interrupted me, casting me a glance that betrayed nothing but derision and scorn for me and for what I had said. “You don’t understand a thing about politics. The best thing for you is to concentrate on your studies.” I was no longer concerned about what he had said concerning Sadat or his description of the Treaty of Camp David as an alliance with the devil. I was just outraged by what he had said to me and by his scornful look and by the sarcasm that rang out loud and clear in the tone of his voice. At school they prompted us that Sadat was the hero of war and peace and that he regained our land that had been lost in 1967. And the composition passages on the midyear and end-of-year examinations were almost always mentioning him, glorifying him, and referring to the mighty October Victory.
Despite his tough way and his stern talk, I decided to know him. I don’t know why.
I decided to attend his lectures on the history of modern Egypt. When the vacation was over, I went to him at the university to ask his permission to audit his lectures. He stared at me skeptically, shrugged his shoulders indifferently, and then went away, leaving me outraged for the second time. nevertheless, I forced myself to enter the lecture hall to listen to him. He was a witty, adroit, unpretentious lecturer with a good sense of humor.. traits that were really at odds with his sullen appearance. He fascinated me. The proverb says, “There’s no love except after enmity.”
So, there was the second wrong path stretched before me.. I closed my eyes and set off. It never occurred to me that I would fall in love with him. And even if it occurred to my mind then, I still would not have avoided him. And I didn’t hesitate to reveal my feelings and declare my love. I attended his lectures regularly as well as the conferences at which he participated. I adopted his views.
I would always assert that I would love him forever. I never thought that the word “forever” simply does not exist in our short, changing life, and that nothing lasts forever, and that there is no eternal also. I was young thinking only with my heart. I didn’t realize that my feelings might wane or change one day. It was never ever possible for me – never ever again - to imagine that he would leave me to marry another woman . . But he didn’t.
I was so much occupied with Abd al-Rahman that I had no chance to form any true friendships inside or outside the university. He was all my friends and acquaintances. I devoted all my free time to him. I attended his lectures and panel discussions regularly and discussed with him anything that confused me. He would explain to me and share his knowledge freely and unstintingly. My infatuation and love grow.
There was something else that I found with Abd al-Rahman. And I’m almost sure that I had not found it with anyone else: sympathetic affection. Abd al-Rahman lavished affection, and care, and understanding on me. These were all things I had been looking for and seeking. Abd al-Rahman was a substitute for the absent- in- the –Gulf- father. So I loved him with passion and unstintingly. My relationship with my father was never right. Indeed, I could almost say that I had absolutely no relationship with my father. He just did not care. His principle was that the man works outside the house and the woman inside it. And belonging to the interior, responsibility for me fell on the shoulders of my mother, who would grumble from time to time about this burden and would curse the day I came into this world, forgetting that I didn’t come to this world on my own or even by my wish.
She would always say, “It was a black the day I gave birth to you.” And I would just say, “The black day was the the day you slept with Papa from in the beginning. It’s your fault, not mine.”
“Will you marry me, Abd al-Rahman?”
“I’m at the end of the road and you’re at the beginning. How can we meet?”
“But we do meet.”
He turned his face away and gazed into the distance.
I would shower kisses on his face and tell him, “I love you.” He would say, “Me too. I love you, little baby.” And he would kiss me.
Some times he would treat me like a silly little girl and some other times like an adult woman.
I don’t remember when or how I first sensed that he was exploiting me and exhausting my emotions and my body. I bolted like a wild gazelle breaking free. And I began to reflect. I began to recall the constituent elements of our relationship. I deconstruct and analyse then reconstuct, but they don’t become the same as before. Some kind of defect touched them. I began to wonder how I had allowed my self to revolve around a single pivot, never deviating from it? How I had allowed him to possess me? How I had allowed my self to shrink to that extent? I loved him.




5
That year, my maternal grandmother was seriously ill, she was forced to use a pacemaker for her heart. Members of the family huddled with each other. We assembled more often for misfortunes and crises than for feasts and holidays. I was happy to be with all the members of my family, even though I was pained by my grandmother’s illness and her compulsory stay at the hospital. Most wretched of all was my uncle Muhammad, who was my grandmother’s companion until she died. Then the crisis was over and my grand mother recovered and we all thanked God However, my grandmother was not as strong as before, and that upset her a lot. She resigned herself to the doctor’s orders: not to leave the house and not to eat this and that.
My grandmother was like a towering peak, tall and strong, fair complexion, with brown eyes encircled by blue. She didn’t talk much and did not show her feelings. She would suffer in silence and never involve anyone with her pains.
She was lofty, proud, and with a lot of stamina. She would always ask after me, and if I went too long without visiting her, she would reproach me. I would joke with her and tell her I’d been looking for a bridegroom for her. So she would blush and laugh. I was really happy to be able to make her laugh. She would also laugh when I tell her I loved my uncle Muhammad and he doesn’t love me. I would ask him: “Take me with you,” but he would point to the heavens and say, “He’s the one who takes; not me.” I complain to my grandmother and she would laugh and say, “He loves you.” Her favorite sitting place was beside the window that overlooked the covered tunnel of al-Malik al-Salih, the souk, and the cemetery of the Armenian Catholics. When I see her face looking sad, I would ask her to tell me the story of her marriage. Even though I knew the story very well and she had recounted it to me many times, I still I enjoyed the way she narrated it. I also wanted to ease her out of the depression that frequently afflicted her after my uncle Mahmud died. She would start recounting and say, “I was walking along the street, heading to the souk, wearing a dress--with a floral design--that reached to halfway between my knee and my foot. I was pretty, white, and plump. Men back then liked plump womenand would say of such a woman that she obviously came from a fine family. Your grandfather—may God be compassionate and benevolent to him—saw me and liked me. So he came to ask for my hand. I married when I was fourteen and gave birth for the first time when I was fifteen. When I was your age, I already had half a dozen children. My girl, you’re an old maid, that’s all there is to it. Anyone wishing to marry marries young.”
My grandmother would cheer up as she tells the story. Then she would proceed to recount other memories of her life with my grandfather. “He was a man unlike other men. He was the master of his trade, as big as the world. He never left me in need of anything. He honored me by making me the lady of the household and allowed me to live as such.”
Then she would fall silent and her mind would wander again.
When we couldn’t think of anything to say, I would suggest to her that we should play the game,” the king and the writing”. My grandmother was a monarchist and loved King Farouk. She thought that his days were the best days . . days full of good and blessings. Everything was available and cheap. My grandmother was a child of the early years of the century, and therefore, she had seen changing eras and epochs. She would rank the eras and rate the best in terms of the cheapness of prices. The days of King Farouk stood at the top, followed by the days of Abd al-Nasser. After that all the days were gloomy, miserable days of which she never had anything good to say.
My grandmother’s illness distracted me from Abd al-Rahman for some time. I would leave the university and go straight to her, so I didn’t meet him except rarely. This absence allowed me time to reflect on our relationship. But, in the end, I didn’t reach any definite conclusion. So I left the issue for the passing days to resolve as they saw fit, continuing my studies until I reached the final year.
6
Before the university opened its gates, in the morning of one of the hot days of August, we all awoke to the news that Iraqi troops had entered the territory of Kuwait. opinions were divided between those who supported Iraq and those opposing this invasion.
I was busy listening to the news and following developments. We sent a message to my father to return from the Gulf, for the atmosphere was tense and the situation unstable, without any trace of optimism, especially since Western media kept asserting that Iraq intended to occupy Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates. My father returned home, tired and worried. We were outraged at the Iraqi regime, especially now that it had begun to attack other Arab states, Saudi Arabia in particular, but when the Iraqi forces launched missiles against Israel we cheered for them.
My second uncle, my mother side, died only a few days before the year ended. This was an incident that defied human logic, even if it was consistent with divine logic: how can the young die before the old?
Her eyes looked for the picture. It was still beside the small suitcase. Where was he? Yes, there he was… the tall, thin man to the left of my maternal grandmother. He was still a young man with a smiling face welcoming life.
My uncle Mustafa, who was my grandmother’s youngest son, had lung cancer. For three months he fought the illness until God decreed that he should die. My grandmother was watching, unable to do anything for him. Her heart was wringing and her eyes bleeding, and she is powerless. Here was the youngest of her children dying before her eyes. How ugly a slow death is! How ugly the spirit’s annihilation is!
My uncle died in the hospital. I was at home, and my father and mother had gone there to visit him. My mother told me later that she saw a group wearing black but could not make out who they were until one of them called her and told her Mustafa had died. My mother fell off my father and could not stand on her feet, and remained on the sidewalk.
I had always told my mother that, God willing, he would recover, although I knew perfectly well that he wouldn’t live much longer. She, too, knew, but I wanted to comfort her. I was trying to comfort myself as well, hoping that my words would come true and that my uncle would recover. The whole family wept for him. He was young and handsome, the father of two baby girls who will not remember his appearance when they grow up. Like his big brother, he was a fine man, affectionate and generous. He came to us when he discovered a swelling on the side of his neck. He thought it might be a glandular condition and did not take it seriously until it grew larger and another swelling appeared on the other side. Then my mother insisted on accompanying him to the doctor. My uncle did not know from the physician, his heart told him. and when my mother read the doctor’s diagnosis and knew, she wept a lot. She prayed for him and invoked God’s blessing, but . . . who would have believed it?
My mother would say, “This Mustafa is my son. I’m the one who raised him. I’m the one who helped him with his homework. I walked him to school when he was young. I’m the one who found him a bride when he grew up.” Then my mother’s mind would wander off among her memories.
My uncle Mustafa died, leaving a large cloud over the big house. It never left, and my uncle Muhammad wept bitterly.
When my father returned to the house that afternoon, he told me, “Your uncle Mustafa died.” I didn’t weep, because I didn’t believe him. For a long time I refused to accept that he had actually died. I began to think: how can a man die . . . and why? The logical answer was that some people die and others are born, because the earth cannot take in all these people. Life entails death. My mind rejected this idea and would only say no; but what’s the use of objecting or refusing to be convinced?
Black was worn, the television was switched off, recitations of the Holy Qur’an were heard, and coffee was handed round to those who came to offer their condolences: “We are God’s and to Him we return.”
That was five years after my uncle Mahmud died. I was in the last year of my university education and the world was preparing to unleash a war against Iraq. I remained in contact with Abd al-Rahman. I clung to him as though he would save me from the horror facing us.
7
With the beginning of the new year, the telephone rang shortly before dawn. It was Abd al-Rahman. Iraq had been bombarded
I couldn’t take it in. Like someone who had suddenly lost the ability to speak, I opened my mouth to talk but couldn’t. It remained open for a time until I finally closed it.
I hung up the telephone, took a seat, and stared at the ceiling. I closed the window carefully and turned off the light. Then I sat down on the floor and put my hand on my cheek. I stayed in this position until the day arrived. I wished, then, I could run barefoot through the streets, but I couldn’t.
My mother knocked on my door. She hadn’t heard the news yet. She looked at my position on the floor with an objectionable look. “Breakfast is ready,” she said. I told her, “Iraq’s been bombarded.”
I shot off in the car, cruising through different areas of the capital. Fog wrapping up the houses, the trees, and the streets. I couldn’t see anything. I turned on the radio and listened to a newscaster announcing the legitimized American International aggression against Iraq, the rebellious pupil. Thus began what was termed in the West the Gulf War or the War of Kuwaiti Liberation, as they preferred to call it in the East. Desert Storm Operation was launched. The newscast is terminated to be followed by thepatriotic anthem: “The Greatest Nation” . . . the falling apart dream…
“My beloved nation, the greatest nation,
Day by day, its glories increase.
Its victories fill its life, as
My nation grows ever larger and freer.
My nation, my nation!”
It was just impossible to listen to this fantasy anthem at this particular time. About which nation they were talking? What glories and victories?
The dream, the long cherished dream of the previous generations until the early seventies… a remaining of a dream for our generation until just this moment… we had grown up with it and been reared on it… here it is vanishing before our very eyes.. to become the remains of an ancient past… from times gone by . . . a bunch of muddled dreams.
can they teach our children at schools the lessons of Arab nationalism after this? The dream. . . . It had fallen apart, and even “fallen apart” was far too weak and too mild for what had actually happened. It was over . . . this, too, does not fit the meaning..
As if I have spent my whole life worshiping my god, revering it and sacrificing for it only to discover afterwards that there was no god . . . that it was just a fantasy I had dreamt of and imagined. It…. I reified it, and then, it let me down.. The dream. . . . How dared it. . . .
I turned the radio off and let my car take me to where Abd al-Rahman was. He was standing on the balcony, staring gloomily at the sky.
He opened the door for me and went to the kitchen. I followed in and watched him make coffee. We stood silently in front of the stove with our eyes fixed on the coffee, which boiled over, without our noticing that.
I left him and went to the balcony searching for something there in the clouded space in front of me. A dog was barking in a nearby ruins with growing plants that no one tended. A child, naked from the waist down, with bare feet, came out weeping from the entrance of the building next door. His foot slips in a hole and he falls. His crying echoes loudly. He wipes his eyes with the filthy palm of his hand. My eyes follows him to the ruins and to the dog whose barking lowered down, while its body started to quiver as it watched the child.
I sigh such a deep sigh so that may be it reaches the heavens, then may be god hears. Where is it now? Does it like what is happening? And If it doesn’t not . . . why then what happened happened?
I went back to the sitting room, where Abd al-Rahman was sitting, staring at the wall opposite him. I took the cigarette butt that was about to burn his fingers and put it off it in the ashtray, where the butts piled in a contorted mountain shape.
I sat in the chair facing him and watched him. His face filled with deep wrinkles that I had never seen before. It was so dark , and it was never like that before.
“Abd al-Rahman. . . .”
He did not hear me, and he did not lift his eyes from the point he was staring at.
“Abd al-Rahman. . . .”
Suddenly, his voice rose “ no use . . . no use.” Then he threw his head back and closed his eyes, murmuring “no use.”
“Abd al-Rahman, I need you.”
My tears started to pour down, against my will, and flowed forth until my weeping heightened.
“Abd al-Rahman. . . .”
I knelt down by his knees and buried my face in his lap. He didn’t move. Then his fingers began to sink into my hair slowly and gradually until I calmed down a little. I looked up at him. His eyes were still closed. I touched his lips… they were dead.
Suddenly he raised me to my feet and stood up. I clung to him. We went to the bed. He held me to him without looking at my eyes, which were still imploring . He tried, and tried, and tried, and couldn’t. We remained silent.
Strange. It wasn’t the first time that we had been together without really communing. But the strange thing was my rushing to him and my panting for him as if he were my savior or as if salvation lay within him.
Our reunions were really one-sided before. I was not communing with him before. I was just receiving him the way a mother receives her baby. I was treating him like my baby which I didn’t get yet. He rose and left me behind with my head bowed. I dried my tears, put on my clothes, and followed him.
We went out into the street, watching the gloom on people’s faces… or astonishment.. or incomprehension.
“A fool , he didn’t know how to make it”
“Do you think they would have allowed him to really make it ? They would have attacked him sooner or later.”
Words were faltering on our lips….
We stopped talking..


8
We had to do something. And I have already started to be involved with my colleagues in political matters. We agreed to stage a protest demonstration at the university immediately after the mid year vacation, which had been extended for more than a month as a precaution against what were termed student conspiracies. Some students known for political activism had been detained, along with anyone suspected of stirring up riots at the university, as security precautions.
It was the first Monday after the break, my colleagues and I proceeded from the Faculty of Arts and joined another group on the road to the Faculty of Law. We organized our lines and held banners that expressed our position:
No to the Aggression against Kuwait..
No to American Interference in the Arab World…
No to Zionism..
Jerusalem is Arab ..
I was at the front of the demonstration with Samira, Suha, and Safa’. Yusuf, Ali, and Usama were close to us. We were all led by Husayn, who was preoccupied with national issues.
The university locked its gates, as the usual custom, when phenomena risking the security of the university and of the nation occur, as one security officer put it. The guards were fully prepared with their walkie- talkies at hand, so that should matters—God forbid—get out of hand, the central security forces emerge, in few seconds, to ward off the sinful aggression unleashed by the throats of the students.
I was surprised, while it doesn’t surprise me now any more, that most of the students weren’t concerned about what was happening to their country or to themselves. They blinkered their eyes, busied themselves or were diverted by excursions and parties. I cursed them, even though I feel sorry for them now. I turned my face and cried with the others: “My country, my country, you have my love and my heart.”
That was the first time I took part in a student demonstration, merging into it with my colleagues. My relationship with Abd al-Rahman and, before him, thoughts of Sanjay had distracted me from every other thing. Perhaps I had been like those students I had cursed moments before. Because it was the first time, I had no idea about the punishment.
The march ended, and we went back to our faculty. I was surprised to find myself suspended, along with Samira and Husayn. That was not new to Husayn, for he had been suspended and detained before, but Samira and I had never been suspended before. We went downstairs to the man in charge to ask why.
He said, “I’ve suspended you, because you disrupted the study and destroyed the plants for which we paid five hundreds pounds.”
I said, “We didn’t walk on the plants and didn’t disrupt any classes. The students were preparing for excursions and parties and were selling tickets.”
He said, “What you have done is considered high treason, and you deserve execution, not just suspension.”
I was about to laugh, so much from my anger, so Samira gave me a look . The official looked at her and asked, “and wearing red, too …so a Communist.”
Samira showed her astonishment and asked him, “What’s the meaning of Communism?” I liked Samira’s retort which ended the conversation.
We were suspended for a month. I did not tell my family. My father was in Cairo at the time, and I didn’t want to upset or worry him, especially that I know very well that he would never support me. He is an advocate of minding your own business… as if my wellbeing could be separated from that of the community..
When I returned home that day, I didn’t speak to anyone. I went straight to my room and stayed there, pacing back and forth across the room until supper. Then I went out of my room and said everything. “don’t get involved in these things… girl, keep to yourself.(mind your own business)…what you’re doing is of no use… So-and-so who participated in a demonstration fifty years ago,until now they get arrested whenever anything happens. My daughter, why you bring yourself and us problems… my daughter, you’re going to destroy your future. You’ll just mess yourself up without any benefit. You’re not going to do anything. You’re just exhausting yourselves for nothing.”
I fled to my room seeking refuge with its solid walls. I called Abd al-Rahman and told him what had happened.
“They’re right. Listen to what they say.”
I was baffled by Abd al-Rahman’s response…. Is he the one to say something like this… I ended the conversation and hung up….disbelieving “They’re right. Listen to what they say.”
We didn’t accomplish anything. And here we are …wandering about clouded paths. Were they right? Were we wrong?
Questions . . . questions . . . questions.
I threw the blue dress away.

9
Abd al-Rahman phoned me some time afterwards and said he wanted to see me. I didn’t feel like meeting him but I went. He was a little bit weak, so I made him something to eat. Then I started making coffee.
“The coffee boiled over.” I said. and disentangled myself from his the grip of his arms and started to make coffee for the second time. But he didn’t let me. He pulled my arm, pushed me into his bedroom, and threw the weight of his hot, agitated body on my still body.
I felt that I hate him . . . that I can’t stand him…and I don’t know whether I felt that way suddenly or it built up gradually then announced itself at that moment.
I felt sick. I pushed him away from me and rushed into the bathroom. I leaned over the basin, vomiting and weeping.
I left him.
I went to the Nile, my asylum and refuge. I crouched on its bank with my head between my hands and stared into its depths. I wished I go down deep into it, to give myself to it, to throw my burdens and flee. I wanted to bathe… to purify myself. An irrepressible desire gripped me to swim naked, and I did. I took off my clothes and shoes, put them by the river’s edge, and descended to the river: a wish that had always tempted me. My tears blend with the waters of the Nile….
Would it flood…

10
I returned to Sanjay, remembering him and thinking of our meetings and our conversations… and his eyes, which were looking for me at one point in time. Where are they now? I began to imagine the possibility of reunion.. He had told me once, “I’ll come to Egypt to drink from the waters of your Nile and to see your pyramids.” Isn’t it possible that we might actually meet? The idea filled me so much that once, when I was walking alone beside the Nile, I thought I saw him: Sanjay. I ran toward him, heedless of the impetuous flow of traffic, and called to him. The man didn’t reply, but I told myself: perhaps he didn’t hear my call. So I bounded out in front of him. The man’s face colored with expressions first of inquisition, then astonishment, then disapproval. It was not my Sanjay. I apologized profusely and I felt embarrassed about my rash behavior. I continued my walk but realized that Sanjay now is nothing but an illusion in my imagination, a deceiving mirage I shouldn’t pursue.
I remember that on this day, too, I met a young man who raised my level of despair and added a new frustration to my previous frustrations. I didn’t have my car with me. I left it in a somewhat wrecked condition on the sidewalk by our house. I don’t know whether a heavy truck or a bus had run into it, damaging it severely. So I took the bus home, and by chance, there was a vacant seat next to a young man who looked fatigued and little unconscious. I asked him if he was sick, or exhausted, or something like that. He said he was just a little tired, but I didn’t believe him. I don’t know from where I got the idea that he was taking drugs. I whispered in his ear, “Are you taking drugs?” He said, “I smoke shisha (narghile).” I asked, “Does the shisha do this?” He said, “When I smoke more than twenty times.”
I was silent for a moment, I studied his face.. a young man, is not even twenty. What would drive a young man at the beginning of his life to waste himself this way? I resumed my conversation with him, and he informed me that he works in a factory for plastics, and that he is paid a good salary that he spends entirely on himself, for his family doesn’t need any money from him, because they all worked. I asked him why he is wasting his time and money in café and killing himself slowly like this. His response surprised me.
“There’s nothing else I can do. Yes, I’m killing myself.” He said it… with a glaring desperate tone coming from the deep inside…
My God, how can the flowers wilt before its time, before even they bloom? How can the leaves of trees fall in the spring? How can the twigs become wild, interwine, creep into the buds and hurt them… How can a young man, not yet twenty, speak of suicide? I asked him to read, or watch television, or to practice any sport, but he told me he doesn’t know how to read or write. When he was in school as a child all he had was hard beatings. So he hated the school and fled from it. Television had nothing useful to offer…and he was right about that. But, occasionally, he played football in one of the public squares.
I couldn’t think of anything to say to him so I remained silent. I looked at him reproachingly and asked him if he wasn’t ruining the best years of his life in this absurd way. He smiled sarcastically and said, “Thanks.” I knew that he wouldn’t listen to my advice, and that he was just keeping up with me to leave him alone. My stop had arrived. I shook hands with him and said, “Take care of your self.” And I got off..
I wanted to tell someone about this tragedy. There was no one home except my mother, and so I told her what had happened. And I said I wanted to help him in some way, perhaps by teaching him to read and write, for example.
My mother screamed at my face saying: “Now it’s street rascals you’re going to befriend. That too!” and ended the subject. I didn’t argue, not because I knew in advance that she would never agree to this plan but because I feared if I do it, this young man might get attached to me and things complicate. So I dropped the whole subject, even though it’s still in my mind.
I don’t know why this incident reminded me of another one, similar to an extent, that happened during my childhood. I remember that I saw a miserable child begging on the street. He was crying and saying that he had no one, no father or mother. I felt sorry for him. His name was Sa‘id. I brought him home with me. And when my father saw him, he said, “What’s this?” I told him the story and asked if Sa‘id could live with us, since he was alone in the world and I didn’t have any brothers. My father was horrified by what I said, looked threateningly at the boy and threw him out of the house. As for me, I received a slap I never received before. My father threatened: “If you ever do that again, I will cut off your neck.” Thus ended the subject of Sa‘id.
11
After my uncle Mustafa’s death, the number of my big family’s members started to decrease … the speed of going up to the heavens and going under the earth increased….one person by year...
The year following my uncle’s death, my aunt Shadia died. She looked at the family picture….here she is, holding my father’s arm….she wasn’t married yet, on her lips a broad smile revealing her white teeth….she was wearing a short dress without sleeves and a wig with short hair on her head
I was then at the club, practicing judo when the telephone in the judo hall rang. It was my mother: “Come now. Your aunt died.”
“Who? My aunt? Which one?”
“Your aunt Shadiya.”
“Tante Shadiya . . . no...”
I returned home and asked my mother, so she took me and went to my aunt. I entered her room, she was stretched out on her bed, in the direction of Elqebla. Her features had softened. I touched her. She was still warm; the coldness of death had not yet reached her. I tried to rouse her. she didn’t wake up. They took me away. I began to feel that death is really something hideous. How does man die? A question that was forcing itself upon me, and I didn’t find an answer for it. They washed her, wrapped her in the shroud, and prepared to go. The wailing started loudly. I remember now I loved her a lot, although I visited her only on occasions. The last time I had seen her was Eid al-Fitr, she brought us some feast pastry without sugar, and lupine seeds for a snack, insisting that my mother and father eat some. I told her, “I’ll eat on their behalf, I won’t let you down...” I ate. she rejoiced and kissed me. She loved me a lot.
Then she died…. the bier appeared. As if she was longing for her mother, she was running, faster than those who carried her. I couldn’t follow her. I call her, and King Lear cries out in my head: Is man nothing more than this?
I stood there in the street, uncomprehending... is this really what man is? I wonder again how man dies. The question persists.
My father phoned from the Gulf and asked specifically about Aunt Shadiya. We said she was fine and didn’t tell him that she had died. But he sensed it instinctively, and arrived a week after he phoned. My father returned to find that my aunt had followed her mother. My father wept heavily for her. He would say she was like a mother to him, even though she was his younger sister. she had a good heart and was very kind
The television was switched off, the voices of Qur’an reciters resounded, and we went to the cemeteries.
12



I don’t know why the tragedies burst out altogether at the same time. In the midst of my grief, sorrow, and doubts at that time, Samira came to increase my distress and to deepen my pain. She came to tell me that she was getting married.
“what’s this nonsense!?”
“I don’t have another choice.”
“Samira, did you lose your mind? Getting married this way doesn’t solve problems, it’s the true beginning of a chain of problems.”
“munira…I can’t bear any more the restrictions and pressures my family imposing on me…I can’t realize myself…there is no other solution.”
“and you will realize yourself when you get married!!! Samira, you are running away from facing facts…this is not the way to overcome your feelings towards Hussain, and marriage will not free you from these restrictions you’re talking about..you are the one who have to face these problems and try to rid yourself of them…the solution is not a veiled knight on a white horse coming to kidnap you on his horse and lift you to the heavens…my dear, freedom is not given, it’s taken.”
“it may be that marriage is not the best solution, but it’s what’s available now ..i agreed..”
“here we are ..back to the beginnings of the century!!
I didn’t find a way to convince her to drop this passive solution which I don’t consider a solution at all…I met Suha, Safa’a, youssef and Ali and discussed this marriage.
No one agreed. And we all felt like Samira is betraying us and betraying herself before any one else..Samira, the revolutionary, rebellious girl, can’t face her family and take her basic human rights…and marries someone far below her, intellectually, and expecting from him to give her her denied freedom.. is she dreaming? How did she reach this stage of despair.
“I am worried about myself from absurd thinking…I don’t see any use in any thing now… I lost confidence in myself and in the others.
“A failed love experience, Samira, does not mean the end of the world…I have an ample share of failed experiences myself, nevertheless this despair does not wring me and this absurdity you’re talking about does not affect me…”

I don’t know what happened to her. Bouts of depression attack her from time to time and she would keep away from people, her friends, and would not talk to any one. Sometimes she cries and sometimes she laughs without a reason..She started to follow the traditions and rules which her family impose on her without a complaint or a grumble…even her ability to resist, that too she lost…I am worried about her from this kind of self-destruction..Samira has never been like that before, never..Hussain is the reason… she loved him like no one ever loved before, but he engaged another girl.. why, she doesn’t know. It’s just that hussain’s character if full of contradictions, and Samira couldn’t take the whole of him like he is…she was ready to oppose her family for him but he let her down..

The wedding date was set. And we went to celebrate this sad marriage. Samira was,of course, not happy, but she tried to hide her true feelings. She put on the mask. And she gave herself into the wedding rituals, made it even over and danced herself in the party.

“ what’s this you’re wearing…you think yourselves In a real wedding..” remarked Youssef with a meaningful look at our festive clothes, especially, at me and Suha. So I said, “we are not in a funeral, it’s a wedding.”

But true…it was a real funeral for us…we paid a farewell to a companion who left not to return..
Samira got married.

“ Samira, are you happy?”
“ I don’t think of these questions any more..”
“ that’s not an answer..”

But really, I was in no need to hear her answer. The answer was clear on her face and in the way she lives now..
She said she would have more freedom after she gets married, and that she would be able to pursue all her different activities, and that she would proceed on the road which she has set for herself …
Ok…she got married, she doesn’t go out except with her husband, and only to his relatives…or she stays home alone..he forced her to wear the veil and she submitted.

I can’t believe that the time won’t come for Samia to awake and get back to her real self..to protest against this humiliating situation for her humanity..but the time hasn’t come yet..

I have the same worry about Suha.. that she might end up the same way… but there is a difference, Suha knows that Medhat doesn’t love.. but she is giving him every thing he wants hoping that one day he would change and truly love her..

“Suha you won’t regret it if you don’t reach your goal at the end?”
“ no I won’t, because I am enjoying every minute I spend with him.”
“ but he doesn’t love you.. and you know that… why you go on?”
“ because I love him..”

there is no use talking to Suha. She loves him and that’s enough. But why am I astonished…wasn’t that my logic at one time… she won’t change her mind… not now at least. As for the future, no one knows… could any one imagine that Samira would marry like that and give up the principles she believed in and defended..




13

Then it was my grandmother’s turn. I wished she would live for ever. The death of her eldest son broke her back, and the death of her youngest one broke her soul. And between the two deaths, she was preparing herself to get rid of the capture of life and go to them. My uncle Mohamad did the impossible to save her and refused to believe that she was dying. All the medical evidences indicated this, but he cursed us and the doctors all together. She wasn’t just his mother.. she was every thing in his life..they never separated, he told me after she died. He said, “ after you all leave the house, only the two of us remain and talking to each other.”

I wish I spent with her longer time than what I actually did. But I didn’t like visiting sick people that much. Her panting lungs exhausted her and she wasn’t able to breathe. My aunts took turns staying with her. Sometimes, I accompanied my mother, but I spent only one night with my grandma in the last week preceding her death. I helped her to the bathroom and asked her if she wanted anything else.

She said, “you go to sleep”.
Up till the last moment in her life, she didn’t want to disturb the others.
Then she was taken to the hospital for the last time to leave it to the cemeteries in less than twelve hours of her entering the hospital. Every one asked her “ how are you ma”, and without looking at our direction, she said, “praise be to God” in an unclear weak voice. I left her telling myself she won’t survive until the morning.

And the telephone rang at midnight.
My mother tried to convince herself that the call is from one of my friends. She looked at me and lifted the receiver. It was my aunt Zeinab throwing the heaviness of the news on my mother as if she wants to get rid of the burden herself. My mother weakened. I hugged her and said “God will have mercy on her…she is at peace now..”

We all went to big house which has become no longer big. It diminished and shrank…this house which we used to play in its yard and on its roof..hop-scotch, hide and seek and cops and robbers. The house in which we used to lose our ways in its corridors and numerous rooms… this house which resounded with our laughters and childish screams and our innocent fights and naughtiness. It reminds me now of the ruins possessed by ghosts. You don’t hear in it nothing except talk of feath and the deep sound of weeping…the good times are over.
I found my uncle Mohamad sitting on the chair next to the door of his room, his head between the palms of his hands…unbelieving. He refused till the last moment to believe his eyes…he believed his heart…but…
We spent the whole night awake. And in the morning, we went to the hospital to take out the corpse. My grandma became a corpse…my grandma became a corpse… I say it, I weep, and I smile at the same time. The car for “honoring man” carried her, and led the procession. They prayed over her…then to the final place of rest.

And the question fell on me suddenly. How can a soul in a body that was just walking on earth and pulsing with life to leave its place and go? How can the soul betray its intimate companion and leave him a motionless body, borne on the shoulders to be thrown into a dark tomb? How can the body that was voicing on earth die away stay still under the ground?

I saw my uncle rushing after her, not wanting to leave her…he never left her in her life…how can he do now..
We pulled him by force. I held him in my arms. And the question persists in my mind and bleeds my heart. How man dies? How can he transform in one moment into nothingness…and why? And Lear cries out deep inside me…is man no more than this?

She looked at the picture a final look and placed it among the other pictures in the small suitcase.
14


when the year drew to its end, every one of us started to prepare for the final exams with a heavy heart and a distracted mind. Youssef didn’t show up at the faculty for several successive days, so we were worried that something bad might have happened to him or that he was sick. We decided to visit him in the afternoon of the following day. So we parted with the consent that we meet at noon next day then we go all together to Youssef’s house and check on him.

I returned home absent minded, thinking of what could have happened to Youssef. It was not like him to get away from his friends for days like that without telling us or without a clear reason. I tried to sleep. I couldn’t and remained restless, so I decided not to wait for the afternoon of the following day. I went to Youssef’s house and didn’t find him.

“ is he ok,” I asked his mother.
“ may you be visited by good health always, my daughter..he’s fine and he’s at Ali’s house studying.”
Studying!!
The word kept ringing in my head… I smiled against my will… I was about to repeat the word after her, but I repressed my astonishment and said, “true, exams are close at doors. May God grant him and the rest of us success.”

But why didn’t Ali tell us then that Youssef was at his house ? and Youssef is studying! Since when?! And why the hurry..still early…true, it’s his final year, but it’s not his custom to pass on the first time…he has to re-take the courses once or twice at least!

I went to Ali. I rang the doorbell and waited for a moment. It seemed like no one heard the bell ring, so I tried again knocking on the door. I listened intently. Some moments passed before Ali opened the door staggering and with wandering eyes. The smell of alcohol, sweat, and smoke greeted me…I felt a little bit embarrassed, and my hesitation showed up.
“ why don’t you come in, or are you afraid?”
“ it’s not that I am afraid…but..”
“ come on in..come on in..”
so I came on in..
“ it’s Munira, Youssef…can you imagine!

The sitting room was almost dark except for some dim light coming from a lamp that was placed on a little table in a corner. Next to the table, some empty bottles of beer clustered, and an ashtray piled with buts of joint cigarettes.

“ very poetic!!”
“ Muneeeraa…”
Youssef called out my name with a high pitch of sarcasm coming out from all the syllables of my name as he pronounced it stretched like that. He rose up welcoming me and opened his arms. I turned to him. He looked strange with his beard grown long and his cheekbones jutted out.

“ hello, Youssef.. how are you?”
“ how are you doing?”
“ I thought you were sick, that’s why I came to see you…but it’s obvious I misunderstood.”
Ali remarked sarcastically, “normal, you always misunderstand…what’s new!!”
I gave him a hard look without saying any thing…but Ali is really right about that.
“ have a seat Munira, why are you standing.”

I sat down and looked at him intently. He didn’t run away from my eyes. On the contrary, he tried to focus his wandering eyes on my eyes and stared coldly at them.
“ why don’t you speak..i am listening..a surprise, isn’t it”
“ Youssef…Youssef”
I opened my mouth and closed it again without saying anything. The speech failed me. So I remained silent. I wanted to tell him it’s a sin..it’s a sin to waste yourself, to kill your potential in this way…Youssef you are a poet…it’s a sin to bury alive your talent. I wanted to say other things, but they stifled inside me and I couldn’t say a word.
“ I know what you will say.”
“ Youssef.”
He was silent again. Then he picked up a joint cigarette, took a drag and sipped a little from the glass which he was still holding in his hand. He relaxed a little bit in his seat, then the words spilled from his mouth. And I listened.

My song, be short
My song, reach all the people
My song, explain
My song, tell the dream of the children
My folk are people like other people
Working hard for living
But they are not slaves
My song is for the people
Not a croon, not a sob, not oh, not a sigh
My song is a ballad
My song is a ballad, my song is a ballad, my song is a ballad

A ballad for an obstinate dream, a ballad for an obstinate dream


He stopped. His eyes wandered a little, then he bowed his head and fixed his eyes on his empty glass.
“I don’t remember what’s after that…it doesn’t matter…oh, I remembered…”


I wrote you on the moon forehead as my destiny
And wedded to you my songs
And stretched for you my steps
And when the road was about to be reached
And thought it will come with laughter
The palm trees of your earth
On my earth, my trees wilted
I drew you at the end of the horizon as an end
And I dwelled in my poetry
And said come to end my road
And when the pains softened
My heart gathered all the sails
Dwelled in your land
And across your land became a traveler
And despite the night and its pains
My dreams, don’t break
There will come a day
A day on your land
Even after some days…


His voice broke confirming the last assurance, and his tears fell pointing with his hand that this day will come…
He fell to the floor, and the rest of the glass spilled on his clothes. Ali and I carried him to the interior room and stretched him on the bed. I looked at Ali without saying anything and left the place.

15


I obtained my Bachelor degree, and so did Suha and Samira. Youssef and Ali failed out of their own free will (if that’s the right way to put it). They didn’t attend some of the exams, thus declaring their desperate wish to stay behind. I don’t know why they don’t realize that life is short, or may be they realize…but what’s the use of knowing?

One of them turned twenty seven and the other is about to be the same age. “ still early..we still have the whole life before us..” that’s what Youssef would say with a sarcastic note in his voice. I know that he knows that life is short, and may be he knows that much better than any one of us. But it was like some one whose limbs were stretched out on a hot iron cross, can not but open his mouth to pronounce some words or perhaps some murmurs, from time to time, whenever he felt like doing that…

Life is short…so what…it’s all the same for him and may be for us too…so what…let it be.

I was employed in a state organization. I go to my work in the morning and I read at night about the dilemma of contemporary man in the East and West, which is the topic of my thesis for my masters degree. Sometimes, I go out with my friends, sot in a café and talk. And the talk does not but add to us more despair over despair…just to reach the conclusion that there was no hope. The situation is bad, the alternative is worse. Then let the present situation remain with its evils, then there is no hope, it’s a vicious circle besieging us. And so, in order that anxiety does not kill us and despair does not swallow us, we would go out to the Nile, rent a sail boat and commune with the Nile.

O gold dust flowing between two banks
O beautiful, o dark
But for the dark in your eyes, there would be no light
O beautiful, o light

The boat sways to the right and to the left, and Youssef screams fearing to drown. We joke at him and laugh, and a real fear is seizing us…fear of the unknown…fear of the future…that which we can’t figure out its features.

There must be a picture of that day. She opened the drawer a second time and looked through the other pictures. Yes, there it is… true..Youssef was very scared and the rest of us were laughing and Suha dancing…Safa was the one who looked absent minded.

Safa was not in her usual unruffled form. A deep worry showed op on her face. She tried to conceal it so that not to spoil our temporary joy. But her anxiety and sadness were clear as she didn’t really join in our jokes and laughing, and in her look that that stretched out to the horizon.

“ what’s wrong , Safa?”
“ I resigned, or to be more accurate, I was forced to resign.”
She said it in a very quiet tone, and very simply.

“ again, Safa..”
Astonishment showed up on our faces, and youssef immediately asked her a question that sounded disapprovingly…
“ why?! Did you refuse that the manager share with you the profits of the private lessons..”

Safa replied, “ because I refused to give paid private lessons, Youssef..
Because I wanted to offer something to those students whose parents can’t afford to pay for each subject in which they have private lessons.”

Ali said, “ of course, you want to give free private lessons, and the rest of the teachers shut their mouth about it…of course, they have to be against you and fight you… because , from their point of view, you’re depriving them from their livelihood… although you don’t take your fees, and of course, the manager is losing because she is sharing with the other teachers…so you want your ladyship to come and take all the students under your wing… what .. you want they go begging in the streets…”

“ Ali is right…” said Suha

but Safa was really disappointed. This was the second time she had to resign because of those ideas they say were old fashioned. The first time was in one of the prestigious languages schools.
Safa tried to implicitly spread her ideas through the subject she was teaching…social justice, equality, freedom of expression…
Then one of the students’ father came, angrily, to the manager and complained that his daughter was talking to him about the poor people and about helping them…so the manager just asked Safa to submit her resignation, because Safa, as the manger put it, was trying to disrupt the school system and to plant poisoned ideas in the minds of the students.

When Safa decided to follow her sister who was working in the Gulf, no one of us could say no or even argue. But we felt the loss.. a gross loss.. And Safa left.

The second suitcase was filled to the top without taking all the things Munira wanted to carry with her. She had to take out some clothes to be able to firmly close the suitcase. She frowned looking at the only short dress she has…how come she hasn’t noticed it when she put it in the suitcase.





The Third Suitcase

16


She decided to take another suitcase, but a small one. The third suitcase. To put what was left out of clothes and other things. The first thing she put was that short dress she was wearing when she met Ahmad for the first time.

I was in a deplorable state of weakness, perplexity and confusion which afflict me from time to time, for a short a long period of time…according to circumstances. I search for the future, and as is usual with me, I choose the blocked path out of my own free will. I was like that when I met Ahmad Abd Elhamid…one of the distinguished intellectuals. We had met before in many public cultural forums, but we never had a conversation together.

Ahmad infatuated me with his intelligence, his profound analytical mind, his preoccupation with public matters, and by his sense of humor…and by a wandering look that is searching for something new. We met at one of the cafés down town, we sat drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, discuss different views of general matters, change the talk, to reach at the end the beginning of the talk…the need for solidarity in order to make a change…the need for a new beginning…and I wonder how, when we don’t have the right to make the change, and we don’t have the means for that. I felt sterile, and it showed up on my face. So Ahmad held my hand and said, “don’t despair”.

I said, “ Latifa Elzayyat led the student movement in the forties, and we today talk about the veil of women and that she should stay home…how does the time proceed, forward or backward…
Things were clear and final. You know who’s your enemy and fight, and there was a common goal and one foreign enemy..
Can you imagine that I have a neighbor, after he graduated from the faculty of engineering, he let his beard grow, wore a galabeya, put a mat on the ground in front of the mosque, selling incenses and herbs, saying “the money of the government is sinful and illegitimate”..




When we were kids we used to play together bride and groom, now he sees me and turn his face away and doesn’t even say hello.

I looked at him as he was watching me talking, the cigarette in his mouth, before it’s completely done , he lightens another one…until the ashtray filled with shaken and confused butts.

We left the café promising to meet again
I don’t deny that I found myself attracted to him, I would also claim that he, too, was attracted to me…

“ shall we walk a little bit along the Nile?”
“ yes, I would love that…”
I got into his car, and he set off to the corniche of Ma’adi. I didn’t know where exactly he was taking me, so I played with him,
“ to where you’re kidnapping me…?”
“ Ma’adi.”
“ oh, you’ll get a strong thanking letter from my family..”
He laughed and said, “ you must be causing them a lot of trouble.”
“ yes, I shock them all the time, but not really on purpose..
but this the nature of things..this gap between generations. The problem is that they don’t move with the time…and not that only, but they want to us to live according to their own norms, forgetting that things change so fast and that principles and values have become relative, and on all levels…”

He stopped the car by the side of the road…”let’s walk”

He surprised me by engaging my arm. I looked to him, questioning…so he said, “ we’re going to walk like a man and a woman, not like two men..”. I didn’t object.

The moon was full, and it’s light reflected on the Nile flowing by our side, following us with it’s deep, pure silverfish ray… he asked me about love. I said that I loved an Indian man in my adolescent years…and I talked about him. It always pleases me to talk about Sanjay.

He said,” and now..”
I asked him, “ why do you walk with me now?”



“ what is your explanation?”
“ for me I think it’s a symptom of my strong need to love…to life…but, for you , what makes you go out with me?”
“ may be , it’s the same need.”
“ but you are married and you have kids.”

He was silent for a time, then sighed and said, “this doesn’t mean anything.”

I felt the danger. So I said , “ but we shouldn’t love each other,” and he agreed on that, and we agreed that we should remain like that. But I didn’t know what “that” means. That was the first time I go out with a man and let him engage my arm, and let him enclose my waist with his arm, and walk together along the Nile looking at the moon. I told him this. He looked unbelieving, but of course it pleased him.

He drove me home. And before I got off the car, he asked me to kiss him, and I did…and laughed. I said to him, “ we’ve become very westernized!!” And he said, “ aren’t you culturally European…” we promised each other of a next meeting.

I didn’t sleep that night. I was like hypnotized… these things were really new to me..was I dreaming… no… I couldn’t even dream of such meeting…. As simple as it was, it left a great impact on me. Really, I didn’t believe that I went out with Ahmad Abd Elhamid, and that we walked together along the corniche, hand in hand, and that I kissed him before I left….. so new these mixed feelings are. I was filled with an overwhelming feeling of happiness that never completed…but he is married…the phrase shocked me hitting my happiness at a sensitive point…may be he’s is not happy in his marriage…otherwise he wouldn’t go out with me… I was naïve.

A week passed over that dream meeting. I was excited about the next one just to be sure that the first meeting actually happened. We met at our regular café, talked a little, then went out to walk along the near side of the Nile next to the famous Andalus Garden.

I remember that it astonished to see that one partner of all the couples walking along the Nile, like us, was veiled. I looked odd among them, and I expressed my worry. Ahmad said, “don’t worry, you’ll find who is like you soon..” we’ve walked a long distance before I saw a girl like me with an unveiled head, and wearing a short dress. I said, “ ah, there is one indeed.”
And we laughed.
I was crossing the street in crazy way. I never wait for the red light. It’s the cars which had to wait for that. One car almost hit me, and I didn’t care.
Ahmad said,” you’re going to die like that.”
I sighed, and said, “ and what will change if I die or live…nothing will happen..”
Ahmad said, “ the country will lose one unveiled girl.”
I laughed.. I liked that. Ahmad had such witty wisecracks.

“ can I ask you a very personal question.”
“ yes.”
“ are you happy in your married life?”
“ sometimes, and some other times… sometimes, a state of rebellion against the reality, with all its components including my wife and kids, seizes me. And I escape from this reality by going into new relationships over long intervals..”
“ so, I am a link in a chain..” / (so I am an episode in a series )
“ do you like lupine seeds..”
“ yes.”

Ahmad bought a paper cone of the lupine seeds, and we sat on the edge of the fence. He filled his palm and I picked the seeds from his hands. I looked like a pigeon plucking the seeds from the hand of its companion, who is feeding her… I was happy. We continued walking. And on our way, an old woman tried to sell us sweets, and she started to swear to Ahmad by the one whom he loves, which was supposed to be me… so I told her, “ madam, he doesn’t love me…doesn’t love me..” we went away, and I said to Ahmad, “ she wanted us to make the mistake..” He said,” not the mistake, it’s the forbidden…”
“ why do we go out together then ?”

I burst out angrily, even though I didn’t know the reason of my anger. We agreed that we don’t love each other, and I said to him that I don’t want to love…and that I don’t want my life to centralize on a person who would have the right to make me happy or miserable…no…I don’t want

But I got angry by what he said…then what is the reason for us to go out together…I am not one of those girls who would just have a good time, and then it ends at that. I am after love, even if I claimed the opposite.




And thus, I hardly felt the taste of the forbidden fruit when it slipped off my fingers…. It was not the apple…a quiver of a firmly closed heart… in a cold winter…in desolate night…in infinite darkness… a quiver of a heart living in death…a quiver playing a short tune to life… for a moment that never completed…

She sighed deeply and looked at the suitcase and to the remaining things. The socks…the shoes…one or two handbags…. And one hour.
17
Ahmad Abd al-Hamid didn’t love me. But he presented to me moments of true happiness. He give me life, even though it was for short and incomplete moments. Ahmad managed to satisfy my intense thirst for the simple sensation of love, for the sense that I still have buried emotions in need of someone to awake from their stillness. It was enough that he had awakened feelings I thought had dried up and withered. I thanked him for that later on, when he decided we should end our relationship, “out of concern for your sake,” as he put it. I didn’t grieve. But I felt the loss…. The loss of what might could be despite the impossibility of it’s being. I said, “Let’s at least stay friends.”
I convinced myself that this was the right thing. That, in this way, he ended an ethical contradiction inside me, which had been keeping me awake nights, even though it did not mean that much to him. I believed that a married man should not enter into other relationships. May be it’s natural, but it was not ethical. I was justifying his stance by thinking that it is natural that the individual would incline toward change and renewal in one’s life. Familiarity with something eventually robs it of its importance and significance, as Shklovsky expressed it in an essay about the techniques of art. And art is drawn from life. Therefore, renewal is healthy and indeed desirable. but I couldn’t accept my logic entirely. And something kept bounding inside me and say, “No, it’s wrong.” The standards for right and wrong were relative. They weren’t external but evolved from within me. Couldn’t it be that I was wrong?
Ahmad Abd Elhamid remained inside me. And it seems he wasn’t really serious about breaking off our relationship. Later on, he asked me how I had received his decision to break up. I told him, “I didn’t grieve much over it, though I felt the loss. “Thank God, I have a high ability for enduring emotional shocks and even overcoming them.”
“Do you still want to love?”
“No, I decided not to love and never to need it.”
“Ultimate power.”
We sat in a café. He looked exhausted and tired. I felt that may be he needs me. He took my hand and put it in his hand. I said, holding a lit cigarette between my fingers, “ I will burn you..”
He looked at me with a questioning look.
I added, “Then I break your teeth.”
Ahmad smiled and said, “and then?”
I said,” then, smash your head, for example.”
Ahmad said, “and then? What you want to reach? What’s the point of all of this?”
I looked at him, as I had fully understood the question. I withdrew my hand from his hand… we left the café. I did not have my car with me, sohe drove me home.
On the way, he kissed me many times and kissed my hand.
I asked him, “What’s all this love?” He laughed and let go of my hand to change speeds.
He asked, “and you, why do you keep up with me?”
I said, “Because it makes you happy.”
It seemed that he was pleased by this phrase, so he raised my hand to his mouth and kissed it again.
“Thank you.”
I added, “It’s a human inclination that betakes me sometimes, but don’t count on it too much. I’m changeable. Sometimes I am wild and as ferocious as a wild animals. So watch out.”
He said, “It’s been a long time before I meet another crazy girl.”
“You haven’t seen the craziness yet.”
I was perplexed about my situation. Here he is, coming back into my life. Why I don’t resist him…. Why I respond to him… Why I follow him… I am afraid I fell in love with him without realizing it. Can a person fall in love without being conscious of it… And, what if I do love him…. I will not deny my self from it …I will give it a chance to be happy, even if only for some counted moments…. Here I am repeating the same mistake , and I am aware of it…. I fall in love with Sanjay without caring about what happens after…. I fall in love with Abd al-Rahman, and care nothing about the future…. Here’s Ahmad, I rush to him, and I know that he doesn’t and will not love me in return. .. but it’s the blocked path which opens for me, and on which I set off by my own will and consciousness..
I decided to live the life as it comes, and without any planning. I decided to live my present, for the future is unknown, and may turn out to be not better than my present situation….so why shouldn’t I grab the beautiful moment and live it to the full…but what I say sounded like hedonism or pragmatism….and these were concepts I didn’t believe in before…how can belief change like that…how is it possible for the firm beliefs and absolutes I believed in for many years, to fall apart in hours....
According to this decision which I made, our meetings continued, even though they were colored by extreme change from one state to its complete opposite…and I lived the beautiful moments fully, and swallowed the bitterness of the miserable moments, also fully.
I discovered that I was circling in his orbit, not in my own…and that I don’t own myself like before….one word from him may make extremely happy or extremely outraged…I neglected my studies and my friends, and my mind focused only on him, even though I occupied the smallest part of his reflections. Why do I blame myself now… wasn’t it me who had chosen and decided to set on that closed path… Sanjay . . . where are you now… Why do I always return to him when I am defeated… Do I seek his protection… he is the reason for how I am now… no, he’s not the reason…it’s you Sanjay never imposed on you that you should cherish him in your heart and memories throughout your whole life. He chose a fruitful new path , and went into it, and you remained in the same old path stumbling around….
For how much longer. . . ?

18
I was absent from my appointment with Ahmad twice. Then I went to him, and he asked about the reason for the absence. I told him there was no use, therefore there was no need for my presence, and my absence will not make the matter different.. Ahmad ignored my comment and asked, “Why didn’t you attend the last forum? It was important. We discussed the issue of cultural dependency and the role the Arab intellectuals should play
I didn’t feel myself except when I laughed out loud and tears welled up in my eyes.
“Talk, talk, talk . . . useless talk… It seems the saying that the Arabs are a verbal phenomenon really applies…. To whom are you addressing the discourse? To yourselves! You speak and listen to the echo of your own voice. No one hears... No one understands. Believe me: it’s useless.”
Ahmad was gazing at me while I was speaking... Perhaps he was wondering what had happened…. nothing had happened. Here, nothing happens…. I just realized that it was useless.
He continued to smoke his cigarette with his eyes questioning me... I felt my strength weakens and that the earth could barely support me. I sat down and lit a cigarette and tried to speak… to explain. I couldn’t. My hands remained hanged in the air, attempting to explain what my tongue could not utter. When they didn’t succeed I put them beside me.
Finally I spoke: “I will travel...
I need to go away a distance that would make me see things clearly . .. I need to face myself…to reorder my elements ..to reformulate them before reordering them…right now, with my condition like that, I am not fit for anything …I have to go away. . ..”
“ to where?”
“India.”
“India? Sanjay, you mean?”
“No, India.”
“Why India in particular?”
“may be I’ll understand. . . .”
The words stumbled and fled from the tip of my tongue and I didn’t finish my sentence. I thanked him for everything and left. Before I leave the café, he called me, “I’ll drive you home.”
“Thanks, I don’t need that any longer. I have my car with me.”
Our eyes met… possibly for the last time.
It won’t mean much to him… What was I to him… One link in a chain. . . . What was he to me…. A link in a chain, too . . . a chain I put around my neck . . . I try to free myself from it now.
She closed the suitcase firmly… she sat on the bed, resting a little and looking around the room making sure she had not forgotten anything. Then, she looked at the portrait of her father, framed with a silver frame and hanged on the wall… through the cigarette smoke hovering around her...
My father tried hard to dissuade me from traveling…and for the first time in a long time, I feel the presence of my father. I feel a strong relation binding us together, but it was too late. I couldn’t stay in Egypt. I couldn’t. I kissed his hand and shook hands with him, then we unioned in a long embrace. Perhaps if that happened years before, things would be different now. My mother was angry as usual, cursing the day she gave birth to me, but her tears were faster than her words. I took her hands and kissed both of them, and she embraced me.
I began to laugh to lighten the difficulty of the situation and told them, “I’m traveling so you two can enjoy a honeymoon without disturbance. So seize the chance because I won’t be gone for long.”
I was lying. I had no intention of returning.
She looked at her watch for the last time…. Time is slipping from my hands like water. …and if I grasped few of its drops they would dry as quickly as the time that’s slipping away from my senses… She carried the three suitcases, one after the other and put them near the door of the apartment…. Questions crowd inside her, their screams rise so high…. Would traveling really help… Will I find there what I have lost here? Will I achieve what I have been unable to achieve here… Will I be free myself from . . . .
The telephone rang. She turned to the direction of the sound… stepped one step toward it…and stood for a moment…then she turned toward the three suitcases… and the reverberation of the ring continued to resound throughout the place.