Raja Alem - The Dove's Necklace

All the while, my head’s central safe was still hovering in the air, where not even dynamite could get it, staying out of reach of all the questions aimed at figuring out the secret combination to its lock.

“Do you feel a sense of loss? Do you want to express your pain?” Are your dead relatives contributing to the problem of global warming?

His questions were like the endless pages of Chinese horoscopes or personal ads in women’s magazines.

I made it through all those questions without giving up a single digit of the secret combination.

When I got back from Bonn, I stuffed the safe under my bed. I avoided the room on the top floor where they still sleep …

In the middle of the night I can hear their dreams,

Once one of them woke me from a nightmare,

And once my dad came to the door and stared at me while I was sleeping, and said “Don’t forget to wear your nightguard!” The plastic mold that I have to put over my top teeth to stop me grinding and squeaking them all night.

P.P.S. Azza sleeps with her legs wide open …

I find that so disturbing.

Do you dream of having a woman like that in your bed?

P.P.P.S. I remember the first nights after Ahmad left me:

One night, while I was fast asleep, I sensed my father standing at the door of my cubbyhole watching me sleep — he came once at midnight, and then again around dawn,

He found me in exactly the same position: lying on my back with my hands one on top of the other in prayer position and my two long braids lying undisturbed on my chest,

He shook me violently, thinking in panic that I might be dead.

Do you think Azza sucked all my energy so that she could be extra open, extra free?

Can you hear the sound of the Muhammad Abdu song coming from the cafe? “Push me to my limit …” I tremble at the limitlessnessyou’ve opened up within me …

An Apology for Azza

April 6, 2006

How long has it been since the Yamaha slept?

Tonight the Yamaha veered expertly to avoid the bus that had suddenly left its lane. It was the motorcycle’s sudden responsiveness that foiled the bus’s attack; it only managed to nick the back bumper of the bike, but that was still enough to send it skidding down Shamiya Hill. All the lights shining on me kept me from feeling the asphalt tearing up my legs. All I was aware of was the crushed metal and spilled gasoline. When the many lights became a single light shining into my face, I woke up to find myself in an operating room and then suddenly in an operating theater as long as a bus.

“As a trainee on his probation period, he is not party to the medical insurance benefits we make available to our permanent employees.” With that the advertising agency washed their hands of me, and I was forced to rely on the free medical services at the Nour Hospital.

Azza, don’t cry.

My mother brought me the cloth on which you’d drawn in chalk and charcoal. You’d written out an order on its tatters: “Stay alive!”

She also brought me your words: “No hope.”

And, “Get well soon.”

Are you actually angry?

Do you remember that day we were trying to save those black puppies on the roof of that abandoned building? When the walls collapsed on us, I broke my leg but you landed on your feet like a cat, if a bit dinged up. You started hitting me wildly when they brought me back later that day with my leg in a cast.

You didn’t speak to me for days.

I understood that you were a glance; as soon as you fall you fly off again. You amputate the damaged limb.

You strip off anything that slows you down.

They swapped my crushed knee for a metal knee. Mushabbab had to pay twenty thousand for them to perform a surgery that was meant to be free. I have no idea why he was so keen on investing in my misfortune or why he uttered prayers over my knee that it would be repaired.

It looks like I’m going to be laid up here for a while. At least until your anger runs out.

I promise you I won’t be a burden and that I’ll resume my plan for making inroads as soon as I get out of the hospital. As you can see I’m slowly turning into metal, starting with my knees.

Here I am, jettisoning all my limbs like the bodies you draw, so that I can escape this picture-frame.

Sitting cross-legged Gandhi-style on the floor so much means that the knee joints of most women in Mecca wear out eventually. And they all have to replace them with metal ones; the female sex is racing to be transformed into steel. Do I look like I’m changing sex, too? Let me talk nonsense … Don’t be mad.

Nasser made a note: Yusuf limps.

FROM: Aisha

SUBJECT: Message 25

‘Death is all right — nothing better.’

‘Yet you don’t want to die,’ she challenged him.

He was silent for a time. Then he said, in a voice that was frightening to her in its change:

‘I should like to be through with it—I should like to be through with the death process.’

‘And aren’t you?’ asked Ursula nervously. They walked on for some way in silence, under the trees. Then he said, slowly, as if afraid:

‘There is life which belongs to death, and there is life which isn’t death. One is tired of the life that belongs to death — our kind of life. But whether it is finished, God knows. I want love that is like sleep, like being born again, vulnerable as a baby that just comes into the world.’

‘Why should love be like sleep?’ she asked sadly.

‘I don’t know. So that it is like death — I DO want to die from this life — and yet it is morethan life itself.’

( Women in Love )

Dear ^,

In the mood for dying, I read Women in Love —a scandal — in the open air of the rooftop. The Lane of Many Heads took in the scent of a woman in love. And the down on the back of Ursula’s neck. It stood there, yearning, waiting for the musician who’d just then opened his mouth and begun to sing.

By reading it out in the open like that I knew I wasn’t just goading my father, I was challenging every one of the Lane of Many Heads’ many heads. Including my own.

We were raised to fear the outside world. You probably can’t believe that the woman you treated, and then invited out, had never been alone in a room with a strange man ever before. Had never walked in the street by herself before. Had never been alone before. Had never exited the bubble of fear to see what she was capable of.

The thing I feared most was waking up without an address. That I wouldn’t get off at the Lane of Many Heads one day. You’re the first address on the outside I’ve ever longed for.

That’s why I simply couldn’t die in Bonn. It was impossible. Not even when I was brought to the very precipice, more than once, as my lungs failed.

In my mind, moving will always be associated with a black-stuffed yellow cube. Can you guess what the cube is? The setting: Women’s Teacher Training Academy. Time: 1985.

I set the cube before you, and I warn: what is it?

The security guard shuts the door of the academy, locking it with a chain and padlock. On the other side of the door:

We girls, she-goats, sweating in the heat, stinking of adolescence.

We get ready in a hurry. Our heavy black: abayas.

Our translucent black: headscarves. We put on our abayas and lay our headscarves over our faces. One layer, a second, a third, a fourth … It makes us proud to break the record for how many layers of fabric can be worn without tripping up.