Rabee Jaber - Confessions

Ilya told me — when I spoke with him — that the mayor he remembered from the time had died several years ago. But even if he hadn’t died, what would he know?

Antoine suggested we put an ad in the paper. I felt drowsy (after the exams, my body collapsed: I was tired all the time, like I needed to sleep, but when I lay down on the bed I couldn’t sleep. I only slept a little, sometimes the whole night would pass and I wouldn’t sleep more than two hours), and replied: “What would we write in the ad?”

The way I walked changed. While I was walking on the streets that ran from Bliss to Hamra, I’d turn and see, reflected in the storefront windows, a person hunched over like an old man. There was a knot at the base of my spine in those days. Was that a memory or my imagination? That’s how I remember myself back then. And my eyes were bloodshot.

When the pain in my head kept me from sleeping, I went to the university clinic. You know the clinic: it’s near the dorm, buried in the shade of giant trees. The place was empty then, during the break between semesters. I remember how slowly I walked, how I stepped on the dried leaves in the passageway — I heard that distant sound (something dry cracking) without understanding it. What was there to understand? I remember the sour taste in my mouth, the acidity rising from my belly as I leaned against a tree. There was a metal plaque on the tree: the words “Origin: India” were engraved on it, and the tree’s flesh had grown over the edges of the metal plaque. I placed my hand over the piece of steel, covering it. I still, to this day, visit that tree whenever I’m passing by.

The doctor asked me if I smoked or drank. He didn’t get up when I entered his office. He lifted his head from his papers and motioned for me to sit down. His white robe was unbuttoned, and the whole time I was there he kept playing with the stethoscope around his neck, as if he were trying to fix it (or break it). From the beginning, he had an antagonistic look in his eyes, a look of utter contempt. He noticed I was silent, that I’d come in and sat down and forgotten to speak, and when I told him what was wrong, he said migraines were common both during the exams and after them, they were caused by the stress, when you get stressed your brain becomes fatigued and revolts. He didn’t approach me, and he didn’t touch me. I thought it was better like that — did I want him to touch me? Did I go there for that? He wrote me a prescription on the white stationary with blue lines, and he was breathing with difficulty (did he have asthma?). He handed it to me, and I looked at it and saw that special handwriting the doctors have, which only the pharmacists can decipher.

The pharmacist told me the medicine was excellent, much stronger than Panadol, but without any of the side effects. All of this is etched in my memory: the tree outside the clinic, the doctor’s white robe, the scrawls on the paper with the blue lines, the container the pharmacist tossed onto the glass of the table that separated us. Why do I remember all those worthless details while my old name lies buried in oblivion? In bed, I used to struggle to remember my first name (sometimes with my eyes closed, and sometimes with them open). I struggled to remember who I was, and the more I struggled the more I forgot. There was a point when I even had trouble remembering the house in Achrafieh.

Then that night came: it was hot and I woke up panting, out of breath. I was drenched in sweat, and the smell of the smoke that clung to my fingers and pajamas and hair made me feel nauseous. As if it weren’t my smell. As if it were the smell of someone else who’d come while I was sleeping and put on my body and my pajamas, chasing me away to hell. I was woken up by a headache, the likes of which I’d never known. The pain was focused on a single point above my right eye. I felt the blood surging in my brain, I felt it becoming heavy, I felt it crying out. My brain was full of blood. I held my head between my hands, I wanted to scream. My roommate was asleep. He wasn’t snoring for once, but he was fast asleep and unaware of everything. I was in hell, and here he was sleeping. I was afraid the blood would start coming out of the pores around my ears (afraid? — fear wasn’t even possible, that excruciating pain didn’t leave room for anything, not even fear). I got up and went to the bathroom. I washed my face. I put my head under the cold faucet and let the water run over it. But the headache didn’t recede: it grew sharper. My head was heavy, I was resting it in my hands, afraid I’d fall (I almost fell). I swallowed the medicine with a lot of water. I sat down at my desk and turned on the lamp. I heard my roommate mumble in his sleep, and saw some movement beneath the covers, but then it subsided. I opened and closed my eyes, trying to get rid of the pain, but it was useless. It felt like the blood surging in my skull was putting pressure on my eyes from within, as if it wanted to flow out of them — my right eye felt like it was about to pop out of its socket.

I couldn’t even stay seated on the chair. I stretched out on the bed once more. I pushed away the pillow (it had become hard beneath my head, and my head couldn’t take it anymore, which was becoming more and more sensitive, even my own touch caused it pain). My head sunk into the bed. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I raised my body once more and leaned my back against the wall. The small fridge that separated the two beds was giving off its familiar hum: I tried to focus on it. Maybe I could distract myself from my head that way. When I remember that night now — that night in hell — I wonder if my mind really was revolting, like the doctor had said. Had I worn myself out studying the law of gravity and the equations for electrical circuits and free falling bodies? Had I worn myself out studying how matter turned into energy (how light speed was reached)? Had I damaged my mind while I was sitting in the microfilm room, turning the roll by hand to look at the tiny black words on the yellow screen? I saw the words and the old black-and-white pictures, I saw Karantina and Tel al-Zaatar and Jisr al-Basha. I saw the roads, the piles of corpses on the roads, and the fighters trampling the corpses, making toasts as they drank champagne from overflowing bottles (there were some faces I thought I remembered — a fighter with a black beard, his big eyes looking at me with affection). I saw corpses lying on the ground. And I saw three young men with rifles hanging around their necks. One of them was pointing at the half-naked corpse of a woman on the road. Another one was carrying a guitar and had thrown a large shawl over his shoulders — no, not a shawl, I don’t know what you call it, it’s like what the Mexican peasants wear in American movies. Had I damaged my brain, looking at those faces smiling at the camera? Was there still water on the road (or was the picture blurry)? Had I damaged my brain while I looked at picture after picture, remembering my father — were those my memories, or were they Ilya’s? — as he headed home, the strong smell of smoke and blood coming off his clothes?

I wanted to get rid of the pain. I wanted to scream. My head was in my hands, and it wasn’t my head. It was as if some inhuman power had removed my head while I was sleeping and put this other head in its place. But it was my head. It was heavy, and the blood was boiling in my brain, and I felt like I was dying: “If this pain doesn’t stop soon, I’m going to die.” That’s what I said to myself. The pain was so bad I couldn’t breathe. I tried some breathing exercises (long inhales and long exhales). “My brain needs oxygen,” I said. I tried, but I couldn’t manage. I stretched out on my back and surrendered to the pain — surrendered? I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. I stretched out on my back and said to myself, “Let it go, let the pain in my head go, let this pain be gone.” I grabbed my penis with my hand and started pulling it from its base like I used to whenever I had a high fever when I was young. I pulled on it from the base, I put pressure on it with the palm of my hand, I tried to focus all of my body’s energy there — maybe the pain would leave my head, maybe the pain would move around, maybe it would spread around my body and my head would feel a bit lighter. As I pressed down with my hand, I saw a red cloud pass through my brain, and with all the strength I had left I summoned some images to save me: I entered the dark palace of memory and summoned them. There were countless rooms, but I couldn’t see them because the doors were closed. I kept calling them, I summoned Hilda and she appeared, her body white and naked: she came and slept beside me in my bed, and she put her hand on me. I’d asked for that, I’d asked for a hand to touch me. Was I real? Was I actually there? The red cloud spread across my eyes and blurred her face. Her face disappeared, I tried to remember it, but she was gone, as if she’d been buried there, while the torn plastic bags slid away, and the soil slid away, and the old cans slid away, and the slashed rubber tires slid away…. Everything was sliding into the sea, the whole dump was collapsing, and now garbage was floating on the surface of the water.