Radwa Ashour - Blue Lorries

At the funeral, on the following day, my grief mingled with a fear such as I had never before known. I was trembling and having difficulty walking without losing my balance. Someone put his coat over my shoulders and held on to my arm throughout the funeral. At the ceremony in the great mosque two days later, Nadir and Nadeem accompanied me, and didn’t leave me at the point were the men and women separate, but went with me to the section designated for the women, waiting until I was seated and a friend whom they knew had sat next to me. They went to the section reserved for the men, but Nadir came to check on me, then went back. After that Nadeem came to ask whether I needed anything. They kept on taking turns until the sheikh finished reading the verses from the Qur’an and the mourners began to disperse. They escorted me out of the mosque, and back home.

I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I understood the grief over Hazem’s death, but not the terror. Later, perhaps, I realised that, by some strange rationalisation, I was telling myself that it was Hazem’s departure that was the portent, that the sign was not a mere crow that opened its beak to croak on a tree-branch and then flew off; rather it was the loss of Hazem, at the beginning of the year and of the century and of the millennium. ‘What’s to come is horrifying — what am I to do now, what will we do?’ Then, too, the crow had flown off to the left, towards the College of Engineering.

I related this to Nadir and Nadeem, and began enumerating for them the names of those who had been students at the college and who had died, including founders of the organisation of supporters of the Palestinian revolution. But I didn’t tell them I was frightened half to death, that I saw the grave yawning wide-open and grim. They tried to put me at ease. Nadir said I was submitting to wrongheaded nonsense: ‘I understand grieving for Hazem. His death is very painful to us as well, but you shouldn’t compound his loss with these ghoulish speculations — absolutely not!’ He looked at me with a smile, as if he was about to tease me, but then he changed tack and gave a signal to his brother. They picked me up from the bed and carried me around the house, me shouting at them to put me down while they continued with their antics. When at last they put me down, they laughed, and I laughed with them.

Normally I feel lighthearted, as if I could fly, and I do fly — really, no exaggeration. I was flying when I used to romp with the boys at home, until the neighbours complained of our commotion. I flew when we ran around at the zoo or the aquarium, the boys trying in vain to catch up with me. I would fly — however strange this may seem — while settled in a chair reading a good novel, or translating a beautiful passage, or inventing a dish no one had ever thought of or put in a cookbook, or when I would roar out a song in the shower, noisily destroying the melody, accompanied by the sound of rushing water as it sprayed my head and body. I recall now, too, that throughout the two years during which I participated in the student movement, I would fly to the university, fly to the sit-in, fly to the demonstration.

When I find myself feeling heavy, I know I’m on the brink of a new bout of depression. I told the doctor who was treating me, ‘I have guilt feelings I can’t get rid of. I feel guilty toward my father and toward my mother — guilty feelings there’s no cure for, because they’ve died. And I feel guilty every time one of my comrades dies, as if I had left him or her to bear a burden I didn’t share. I’m aware of the contradiction in what I’m saying, but this is how I feel. Or maybe my words are an illusion I spin because the truth is that I feel guilty every time I look around and realise we’re leaving a mess for the younger generation and expecting them to live in it.’

‘I’m afraid,’ I tell the doctor, ‘awake or asleep. Maybe I rush around because I’m afraid, and rushing around alleviates my fear — I’m no longer aware of it. When fear takes over I find myself unable to get up or to walk. I huddle in bed. Going to work or leaving the house seems an impossible task. I am as afraid as I can be of going out. I’m afraid of people, and at the same time I feel desolate because I’m removed from them. The moment when I wake up is the hardest. It takes me two hours to get ready to leave for work, not because I’m preening and grooming myself, but because I’m incapable of going out to the street, going to my job, and meeting whoever it is I may meet. When I do go to work, and absorb myself in it, the fear recedes as if it had been a dream, or as if the state I was in in the morning had been nothing but phantasms and illusions. I’ve called my feelings “fear”, but I’m not sure whether that’s an accurate description. Maybe it’s something else — weariness, or anxiety, or a mixture of feelings of which fear is only one component. I don’t know.’

He listens without interrupting, except with brief interjections. When I stop talking, he asks me whether I am able to get my work done. ‘Sometimes I have trouble concentrating,’ I say ‘but on the whole I have no difficulty at work. Translation isn’t a problem for me. I can do simple translation quickly and automatically; it is the more difficult type of translation, of literary and theoretical texts — the kind I usually enjoy and in which I find a kind of challenge or stimulating entertainment — that I don’t go near. If I’m tired, I don’t sign on for that kind of translating — or if I’ve already made a commitment, I set it aside and don’t honour my commitment.’

The doctor asserts that I am stronger than I think. He says my defences are strong. I don’t believe him, and am sceptical about the usefulness of these long, costly sessions. I leave his clinic and walk in the street, weeping. I dry my tears and go into the chemist’s to pick up my prescription. I take the medication conscientiously for two or three days, then toss it in the bin. I don’t need medication!

It is essential that I unravel the threads — surely I will find a way out. What is the problem? I must identify the problem before trying to solve it. What is the problem?

Sometimes I am visited by my good angel, and at such times I think there is much to life that makes it worth living. I remember the moments that shone brightly, and conclude that the world, in spite of everything, has been kind to me.

When Nadir and Nadeem turned sixteen, I suggested we have a party to celebrate. We weren’t in the habit of giving birthday parties; it was enough to wish ‘many happy returns’ to the person whose birthday it was, or perhaps mark the event with a bouquet of flowers, a card, or a shirt whose purchase was urged by the occasion.

We didn’t hold the party on the day itself, but rather some days afterward, when the boys came home, each with his identity card confirming that he had officially become a full and independent citizen. ‘Friday evening?’ I suggested, and they agreed. I spent Thursday night and Friday morning preparing the sweets. Then I announced, ‘The kitchen is closed — no spongers admitted!’ This was in reference to Nadir and Nadeem, for Hamdiya had worked with me on the preparations. I took a bath and let down my hair, which I normally kept tied back in a ponytail. I put on my prettiest outfit. The guests arrived and the party became a feast. We sang, danced, played, laughed, and made fun, words flying all around like ping-pong balls in games of repartee, with jokes and sarcastic jibes targeting everything, not least of all ourselves.

When the boys graduated with their high school baccalaureate, we held a second celebration, and we had a third when they graduated from the university. At the end of every celebration I would go to bed — or to put it more accurately, I would drop into bed like a sack of onions or potatoes tossed from a transport lorry. I would sink into a deep and peaceful sleep, while the party continued until the next morning. As soon as I awoke, I would hurry to the bathroom, run the hot water and take a long, leisurely bath, the steam thick around me, while I sang my heart out, songs I loved by Fayrouz or Abdel Wahhab.