Beyond Dreaming

Shayma Al-Shareef

@ShaymaAlshareef

Copyright © 2019جميع الحقوق محفوظة

Translated by Maryam Al-Dabbagh

All rights reserved.

Copyright © Yatakhayaloon Co Ltd., 2019

King Fahd National Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Al-Shareef ، Shayma

Beyond Dreaming. / Al-Shareef ، Shayma .- Jeddah , 2019

271p ;

1- StoriesI-Title

813.039531 dc 1440/10587

L.D. no. 1440/10587

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Dedication

To my precious mother,

Jamalat Al-Shareef,

Through you I live, and for you I write;

To everyone who believed in me,

And to everyone who seeks faith.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Mezan Company, Omar Shaaban, Ibrahim Abbas, Mahmoud Marzouq, Randala Rawas,

And to everyone whose heart encapsulated my words.

The First Hour

When our dreams circle overhead…

Why do we remain on the ground?

T here were moments left for it to start. Everything was ready, just as he had prepared it. He took a deep breath. It’s time, he thought. Maybe he’s just late.

Without warning, the room went dark. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something strange: a figure, standing just in front of him.

He turned to face it head-on and flinched. Staring back at him were eyes bulging out of a face mottled with dark brown spots. It was framed by a lower jaw that was hanging loose to reveal a tongue black as though thickly clotted with blood: a monstrous creature. They stood still for a moment, eyeing one another.

Suddenly, the man’s head burst into intense pain. He tore his eyes away from the monster’s, gritted his teeth and clutched the doorknob with all his strength, as though he could transfer the excruciating feeling in his head into it. He couldn’t handle it on his own. The world went black for a moment from the searing agony.

When his vision was clear the pain was gone, as was the headache… and the monster.

He looked up once more at the mirror, composing himself. What happened did not faze him anymore. In fact, he was getting used to it. This time, the monster did not appear in the mirror. Instead, his own familiar face smiled back at him, teeth bared.

It was time.

*

“Let the celebrations of my farewell party commence!”

She hadn’t heard a word of anything that was said before this sentence, nor after it; she’d placed the cursor on this moment by chance after opening this video file on her computer for the first time.

She slammed the laptop screen shut, the video frozen on the face she had known for so long, had dreamed of for so long. There her love had been, standing in front of her, and she could swear she’d never seen him more handsome. His voice, as suddenly cut off as it had been, still reverberated through her ears, bringing her every cell back to life. It happened every time she heard him speak.

But this time, this time would the last – and worst of all, it would be through video, so remote and far-removed! He had decided to make a diary in hour-long clips, with each one telling the story of how his life was going in those days or weeks, recounting endless memories for her, and for him…

Her breath quickened, as did her thoughts. She could think of only one explanation for these recordings…

Oh, God, was he dead?

Her heart sped up until she thought it would have to come to a roaring stop, the rest of the world whirling around her in a blur – her feet couldn’t carry her anymore, she was going to fall –

“Miss, are you all right?”

She couldn’t reply. The next words floated somewhere above her head, not addressed to her anymore, between awareness and oblivion…

“Panic attack, I need help!”

The next thing she discerned was a calm male voice coming closer, indistinguishable – illogically, she hoped it would be him. A paper bag was placed over her mouth and the voice said soothingly, “Take deep breaths. Slowly…”

And to think she had only arrived here a short while ago.

-

The plane had landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Texas after a journey that had taken more than half of a day, if she counted the time spent in transit. She bypassed the baggage claim on her way out of the airport, as she hadn’t checked any luggage. One small carry-on bag of clothes, small and light enough to stow in the plane’s overhead compartment, was all she’d brought with her. It wasn’t everything she needed, but she’d made the decision to jettison anything that could’ve caused a delay.

She hailed a cab and threw herself in, slamming the door; the cab driver seemed nonplussed at her hurry, but understood as soon as she gave him the address. Though her own story would remain a mystery to him – she sat stonily looking out of the window, not very receptive to a conversation – the stories told in a hospital were all similar in events, differing only in their characters’ names… and outcomes.

The cab sped through the streets of Houston, dropping her off in front of the huge hospital building. As she walked in, wheeling along her carry-on, she chided herself for not visiting the hotel first – and realized that she didn’t know if she had arrived within visiting hours. She didn’t even know the room number she sought. Checking her watch as she approached the reception desk to ask about the patient’s name, she noted that she had yet to fix it to the Houston time zone.

The name she had traveled all this way for hadn’t even cleared her lips before the receptionist, nodding, took out a small square box from under the desk and extended her arm to offer it to her.

This wasn’t usually what happened at hospitals when a patient was requested.

“Aren’t you Miss Dareen?” she asked, arm still outstretched.

“Yes…”

“This is for you, from Mr. Hisham.”

The receptionist placed it onto the desk between them and stood there expectantly, as if waiting for this intruder to allow her to get back to work.

Slowly, Dareen picked up the box, turned and walked to where she could sit down to open this mysterious box labeled with her name. She sat down, opened it – and took out a USB stick, the only thing inside. She examined it, frowning, but it was small and nondescript, carrying no clues as to what it contained.

Grateful now for not having gone to the hotel, she took out her laptop then and there. She knew that Hisham wouldn’t have carried out this dramatic move if he hadn’t wanted her to view its contents before she met with him. As she waited for the laptop to start up, a cold fear crept up her spine: what if whatever was in the USB was meant to be a replacement for seeing her… a replacement for a meeting that could no longer take place?

This suspicion seemed to be confirmed upon seeing the video files, which had sent her swooning – and this only made her more determined to continue watching them once she woke up. She was nearly certain that the answer to the questions darting around her mind could only be found in the videos. Gathering her nerve, she clicked on the first video, her heart preceding her…

*

His voice:

Where should I begin my story? I wouldn’t say I was an ordinary person; I was a bit more than that, a bit less maybe. In any case, I was different than most people I met – or so I thought.

Ever since I became a manager a few months ago at the Income Consulting Firm, one of the largest and most important firms of its kind in the Middle East, I had no more time to think about the intricacies of existence. Having begun in Egypt, my company’s ambitions now stretched worldwide, as its branches grew in number across many different countries. It was my job to further those ambitions. Every day of my busy life, made up of an endless whirl of meetings and presentations – so demanding that during the average day, it was difficult for me to discuss or even think about anything other than work.

That being said, I considered myself happy and fortunate, blessed with good luck after all the hardships I’d had to face. My attaining the lofty post of a manager at such a powerful company wasn’t just down to good luck, either. Nor was it due to the customary method of climbing the corporate ladder in this region, the usage of family connections. I had no connections that would be useful in that regard and so I rose through the ranks on my own merit, having had no choice but to exhaust myself to reach the position I was in.

The only one I had to thank for my success was the great woman who I owed everything to, may God have mercy on her soul and give her paradise – my mother. Even then, she didn’t quite approve of the route to success I’d ended up taking. I could still remember her crying on the day I told her I would not be continuing my university education, though I’d done quite well in my lone year of studying. We needed to face the reality that we needed the money, more than I needed a certificate on paper at the end of four long years of no income. It was unacceptable to me to continue to live off of her sewing for the neighbors, after all these years – especially when it came to neighbors like ours…

All she could respond through her tears was with her familiar, overused metaphors. “Don’t be greedy, son – look at a crust as though it’s a loaf, and it’ll fill you right up, but if you look at a roast dinner like a crumb it’ll never satisfy you!”

I shook my head, irritated now at the metaphors I grew up with. “Greedy? As if we even have a crust or a crumb to call our own!”

At that she fell silent, not knowing what to reply, in the midst of the house that was empty of all food but some dates and cheap molasses. I could see her thoughts darting, grasping for something, anything that would dissuade me. That dear heart wouldn’t allow her to see me suffer; not her baby who hadn’t gotten the blessing of a childhood like other children, not her baby who wouldn’t even get an education now.

“Don’t worry,” she started, “the Eid festival is coming up, there’ll be a lot of work coming in, plenty of orders. I can get some fabric and start right now – I’ll sell some things readymade” –

She knew she couldn’t and yet she’d try, damn it!

“Please, Mother, your vision won’t bear it. You know your diabetes is affecting your eyesight, you know you need surgery and the sewing won’t be enough. Let me help. Do you think I enjoy seeing you like this?”

Mother turned rebellious now, drawing herself up at this insinuation of her ill health. “I am quite fine, I haven’t complained of anything!”

“Sorry, I’ve made my decision. I’ve been looking for work for a week now, and I’ve found something – there’s no turning back.”

“But” –

“I love you.”

If anything had gotten worse in my life since then, it was the absence of that wonderful woman. The dear face, on which her Egyptian roots were clearly visible, was etched indelibly on my memory. Mrs. Aziza Abed, once a history teacher, who had taught me the meaning of passion and doing what I loved, even as she sat bending over her sewing machine.

My mother had tried to give me what she could in my childhood of bedtime stories – and what bedtime stories they were, certainly not your everyday fairy tales! Rather than Sinbad and Ali Baba, she would whisper hushed tales of the conquering of Egypt and the great days of the Pharaohs. Her passion for history had never diminished, although she’d stopped teaching once she had married my father, who on his part had left us long ago.

Since that day she had not stopped mourning him. Her dark clothes emphasized the crisscrossing lines of worry and sadness over her features, but underlined still more the haunting beauty of her fair face, clear as ice against the inky fabric. Her beauty never diminished through all the years of material struggle, brought on by the consequences of my father’s leaving. Although he had been a well-off businessman, his purebred Saudi family did not stoop to acknowledge her existence, nor mine. Her own family, except for her sister disowned her after she refused to return to Egypt, as she wanted to bring me up where I belonged…

“Mr. Hisham, the client is here.”

“Send him in.”

A few moments were enough to shelf the child within, where my memories took me – back to the version of the man I was now, back to work…

“Peace be with you,” said the client, a well-known businessman who entered with a spring in his step.

“And with you, and the mercy of God. I’m Hisham, head of training for the company,” I introduced myself as we shook hands. “You may remember, we talked on the phone a week ago.”

“Of course, how could I forget? The famous Mr. Hisham, is there anyone who hasn’t heard of your great successes?”

The conversation started with his listing off all the reasons he was so apparently enraptured with my work; the achievements that had begun when I brokered the company’s deal with an Italian conglomerate, one of the biggest in Europe. As a result, my company had come off with quite a bit of profit; it had been splashed all over the business papers, though whatever small fame that had ensued on my own part was more an embarrassment than a source of pride for me.

Most of the essential workings of the deal were still secretive, however, as per its terms; the man attempted to prod me for further details, but I delicately sidestepped his questions. After talking of a great many peripheral subjects, none of which were significant enough to warrant his coming here himself to meet someone in my comparatively lowly position, he suddenly switched topics, lowering his voice.

“Haven’t you ever thought of working for someone who could pay you much better than anything you’re getting here?”

I replied coolly, “I’m not thinking of leaving this company at the moment, if I ever change my mind I’ll let you know.”

He continued without giving mind to my answer:

“Ah, you’ve misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to suggest that you leave this company, this site of your first success, not at all! You should continue to reap the benefits of your hard work here. No, what I mean is that someone like you, with your abilities…” his tone dropped off again, “can take considerable advantage of your position. Persuading the board of directors to work with a certain company, for example, or suggesting some concessions on contract terms… There are people who would reward you quite handsomely on commission for these favors. You could probably open your own company in just a short while, on these funds alone! Think of the benefits…”

Now, I was by any standards ambitious. I’d dreamed of opening my own company for a long time, and it was an achievement I was definitely aiming for in the long run. This man knew the right buttons to push in his little sales talk. But the stupidest thing I could possibly do would be to throw away the chance I had been given at this company for the sake of this insane suggestion. Without much further ado, I showed him the door.

I was no angel, but I wasn’t a sellout either.

Exhausted after an entire morning of work – a whirl of presentations, meetings and faces – I slumped down in my chair, reveling in the privacy of my own office, to close my eyes for a few seconds of peace.

Naturally, at this very moment the phone rang. I pressed the speakerphone, my eyes still closed. “Yes, Tariq?”

“Sir, I just wanted to remind you that your next meeting starts in ten minutes.”

I held back a groan. “All right. Tariq. Give me five minutes before you come in to brief me, would you?”

“Certainly, sir.”

He hung up and I leaned back in my chair, slowly exhaling. These five minutes would be an oasis of tranquility in my day, and I had to make the most of it.

As usual, my thoughts wandered. Would you have believed that just a short time ago, I was in Tariq’s place? Taking the manager’s calls, organizing his schedule, and sometimes even acting as tea-boy, serving tea and coffee to the big shots coming for high-powered business meetings. I felt utterly incompetent, always thinking I could be doing bigger and better things. The only thing that kept me from quitting were memories of when no one would play with me because I was “the seamstress’s son”, as the neighborhood kids would call me – as though by being that I had committed a sin.

Having no one to play with, I’d gather up empty juice bottles the other kids would throw away at recess and stack them up in different patterns, talking to them as though they could hear me. In a lineup of different shapes and sizes, the bottles would serve as an audience to whatever little skit I had thought up that day, or as passive stand-ins for pupils as I took upon the role of teacher and studiously instructed them in whichever subject caught my fancy that day – science, grammar, or math.

Our childhoods keep us in thrall sometimes, taking us by the hand and pushing us beyond what we would normally do. We think we are adults, and submerge our memories under layers of enforced concrete in our heads; but they remain all the while, waiting for us to open ourselves up to them again after we tire of life’s cruelty. I accepted being the office’s general dogsbody because I knew I never wanted to revert to being that child again; because I was convinced I could make it to becoming something more than just the tea-boy.

I made up my mind to learn whatever I could, from whomever I could, at any time. Trying to prove myself was difficult, as those chances were rarely doled out. Without a university degree, my opportunities were limited… until one day, my manager received an important family call, and he had to leave the office too hastily to tell me to cancel a meeting with some equally important clients. Once they arrived I called him up in a panic, only to be told hurriedly: “You handle them! Haven’t you learned anything over the past several months?”

He hung up immediately after that, barring me from telling him what I really thought: that being a tea-boy was far from being the most educational thing I’d ever done, and that anything I might have picked up could only be the result of a happy accident. But somehow I had. Hands shaking, throat constricted, by some miracle I managed to bypass the nervousness and was able to handle those clients with such enthusiasm that our meeting took four hours instead of one and a half – I didn’t want it to end, and I was surprised that they didn’t seem to want it to either. They asked for my card before I left, and it was even more surprising to receive phone calls afterwards requesting my advice.

I looked back at that moment now, quaking down the phone at the manager’s thundering voice, and recognized it as the happiest ‘accident’ I’ve ever had. Without meaning to, he had put me on the first step towards realizing my dream, and I was now grateful even to the impatience I had heard in his voice. On his own part, the manager was impressed by the feedback he had received from the clients. Slowly he began delegating more responsibility to me until I was acting as his assistant, then as his equal, and finally now as his superior. Before I knew it, I was addicted to the job, and somehow ended up where I am now…

Cutting off this train of thought the sound of the door opening; my five minutes were up. I looked at the door, expecting to see Tariq laden with files, only to be greeted with the blessed scent of freshly brewed coffee, and the sight of a tray holding the steaming mug being held up by a figure I could see through the glass door, struggling with the handle. I half-rose to my feet, intending to help, but she made it through in one piece, looking at me triumphantly after having successfully employed her elbows to keep the door open.

“Hello, Hisham,” said the girl with impish eyes, placing the tray on the desk between us, as well as the files she’d somehow been able to hold under her arm. “Our meeting is starting soon. I was going to come by to talk to you about it beforehand, and then I figured I should start by bribing you with this coffee.”

Her dry tone was belied with a quick, glittering smile. She knew how addicted I am to this particular brand of coffee; roasted to a particular degree, imported from Guatemala, always served in my favorite mug, never in a paper cup.

I smiled, holding back a yawn. “I should warn him against letting in bribers next time.”

“Oh, don’t hold him accountable for my sins, I didn’t take no for an answer. You look tired,” she observed. “I was right to judge you needed caffeine.”

“You’re right in that I’ve barely slept – Tariq’s helping me out with some incredible sleeping pills of his, but I was going to try and take a quick power nap instead, actually. Trying to kick the habit.”

“Oh really?” She raised an eyebrow, and picked up the tray once more. “Shall I just take this and go, then? Seeing as you apparently prefer sleep to my delicious coffee…” She began to step back.

“No, no, stop! I’m sorry. One look at my unholy terror of a schedule will show you how a nap can make a big difference in my day.” She eyed me unsympathetically. “Or a coffee,” I hastily amended.

She shook her head, putting the tray back on the table. “I’ve told you before, you shouldn’t keep overworking yourself. But of course, you never listen to my advice about getting more rest.”

She leaned on the corner of my desk, narrow eyed. “Here’s an idea.” Slowly, as though it was occurring to her for the first time: “How about this. At whichever boring meetings you’re not particularly interested in, why don’t you draw a couple of circles on your eyelids to convince people you’re actually awake, while you take a quick nap? That way you can catch up on some of those years of bad sleep you’re going to eventually have to make up for. You can make them very realistic-looking, you know; an iris, a pupil… You’ve got brown eyes so it shouldn’t be very hard. I can help, I took an art class in college.”

She finished with a grin, and I could only smile back. The spark that touched everything she did flared brilliantly now, this girl who was so hardworking and ambitious it had been surprising for me to learn that she was only twenty-five. Not that she looked any older, but it was rare to see someone who’d risen through the ranks to become director of an entire department – marketing, in her case – so early on in her career.

I could see a bright future for her, given her attention to detail in everything around her: her work, her personality, even her appearance. I quickly looked back up at her disarmingly smiling face.

“All right, you criminal mastermind, I’ll let you know once I decide to take you up on your offer. Can I have my coffee now, please?”

“Given that you have no idea how to enjoy your day, I’ll let you enjoy this. Here you go.”

She set the coffee mug in front of me slightly too forcefully; its contents fanned out,

splattering across my pristine white front.

Her eyes widened, and for a split second I could swear her blood forgot to circulate anywhere in her body but her flaming red cheeks.

“I’m so sorry!” She lunged for the box of tissues on my desk, seemingly about to attack me with them, but I waved her off.

“Don’t worry. You’re as anxious as my aunt Suha. Just thank God that I’m in a mood right now where I won’t be bothered by anything you do. I’ll drink the rest of this, and tell everyone else I meet today that Dareen Al-Husseini spilled this coffee on me. Thanks very much, by the way.”

“Hisham!”

I grinned. “It’s all right.” I got up and headed out, telling her over my shoulder, “Just give me a minute to clean this up, I’ll be back before our meeting starts.”

Her face relaxed with relief, then blossomed once more into a lovely smile I glimpsed just before I closed the door.

Happiness seems to float alongside some people like an accompanying breeze – case in point, Dareen. Her lightness of soul spread out to infuse everything around her with a soft glow. She cast her smiles out to everyone she’d meet, her greetings like the indiscriminate scattering of rain. With her presence, she gifted laughter, and sheer zest for life. She’d awaken in me what I sometimes forget resides between my ribs, brighten my morning with a coffee and my day with her smile. She darted around my thoughts all too often, however much I’d try to shift focus… But my attempts at describing her could only fail, in the end, to convey what I really thought she represents: pure happiness, in a single woman.

However much I scrub, the stain didn’t come out entirely – but I didn’t really mind.

*

After eighteen hours of work I could finally come back home. All the hours I spent bleary-eyed in front of my office computer blurred together now, those hours of work punctuated with sharp bursts of frustration at uncooperative computer programs.

Without any natural knack for electronics, I adapted to computers in a more linear way. Penny-pincher I may be, I never considered wasteful all the money spent attending workshops on operating these tricky gadgets our lives revolve around… but even these workshops were sometimes not enough. Forgetting to save my work, for instance, was a lesson I had learned after bitter experience.

Now, these annoying electronics permeated every facet of our work – and everywhere else. Even in my car, the array of buttons on the dashboard resembled an airplane cockpit more than anything. These electronics did come in handy sometimes, though; I needed to make some quick calls to accounting, arrange for some papers to be delivered early tomorrow morning… The car’s built-in call system rang several times; then a woman’s voice picked up.

“Hello?”

Surprised, a couple of seconds passed before I could muster a “Peace be with you”. I may have been exhausted and overworked, but I could say with certainty that our accountant was male – at least, he was the last time I checked.

“Pardon me… can I speak to Khalid?”

“You really do need to catch up on your sleep, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry?”

The voice at the other end emitted a peal of laughter I knew all too well. I quickly glanced at the screen displaying the calling information – damn it, it was Dareen! Of all the people to mistakenly call… how on earth did I manage it?

Were my thoughts really that preoccupied with her that my fingers would absentmindedly select her name from all the others on a screen?

If she had been there in front of me, no doubt she wouldn’t have let me go without some good-natured ribbing at my expense. As it is, she accepted my flustered attempts to excuse myself without comment, as though communication by phone had put some kind of barrier between us that wouldn’t arise face-to-face.

I shook my head, turning my focus back on the road. Did I have to go take another workshop on the intricacies of modern remote calling? No, it’s social skills I needed, the kind you could only gain with experience. I could soar through a business presentation with ease, yet here I was, tripping over my own tongue at a phone conversation that had been brought about by a simple mistake.

I decisively reset my mind from thoughts of her to the solution I could try; experience was always useful, but so were self-help books, and their results were more easily guaranteed… I believed this no matter how much I’d get teased by my colleagues, who considered such books an impractical waste of time. In reality, though, I couldn’t count the times I’d able to deal with a situation by applying some useful principle I learned through my reading. Those experiences have proven to me just how useful they are, helping me along in my path towards achieving my goals.

And what a path it had been… Although this may sound snobbish, I could only consider my own journey a veritable example of a fruitful route to success. With companies fighting over the right to have me, being generally liked and respected amongst my peers, and inching ever closer to my dream, I should be very happy and content. Fulfilled, wanting nothing more in the world than what I have.

Yet, letting myself into my silent apartment, I couldn’t help but muse that its emptiness reflected my own sense of hollowness, deep inside me somewhere – a hollow that hadn’t been filled since my mother died. I could ignore it, push it down, make myself busy to try and overlook it… but inevitably I couldn’t keep myself working all the time. I tossed my briefcase on the bar separating the kitchen from the living room, and stretched. The refrigerator’s electric hum was the only thing breaking the musty silence until I poured myself a cup of sparkling water, enjoying the sound of its trickle. If only, I thought, the void inside me was as easy to fill as this cup.

Cup in hand, I turned on the lights as I walked towards my bedroom, pausing as I passed the mirror in my entryway.

The coffee stain still hadn’t come out. Like floodgates were opened, thoughts of its perpetrator rushed into my mind: Dareen, so full of life. I was sure she had no matching hollow inside herself… not with her smile. Yet she always managed to tiptoe inside my brain without notice. How could one person single-handedly heft away all the difficulties and preoccupations of this world – my work, my worries – into some out-of-the-way corner of my brain, and stretch out luxuriously in all the space that was left?

I stretched out now on my own bed, staring at the ceiling above me, plain and featureless. Suddenly the silence was too much to bear; I switched on the radio beside my bed and was greeted with the lilting strains of the world-famous Fairouz’s voice.

I’ve got a longing Don’t know for whom It kidnaps me every night From amongst the sleepless It makes me pace Sends me far away That I may now to whom And I don’t know for whom…

For whom indeed, Ms. Fairouz?

I rested my hands behind my head. My mother had been planning to get me engaged as soon as possible – like all Arab mothers – yet death had come too soon, and even then I doubted she would have been able to arrange a marriage for me so easily. My father had disappeared out of our lives forever when I was only ten, leaving nothing behind but some grainy photos and his family name that I had to carry wherever I went, along with a good many worries.

I still recalled the last day I saw him. He wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t acknowledge me. He stood by the door suitcase in hand, speaking above my mother’s soft sobs.

“This is my family’s choice,” I remembered him telling her, “Not mine.”

With those words, he tore his own family apart.

I would rather have lived and died alone than ever put any child of mine through that…

I shook my head at myself. ‘Child of mine’. As if it would even be a possibility for me to get married and have a child; who would look for a wife for me? My mother was gone. My aunt Suha, my mother’s older sister who was the only living relative who had not abandoned us after her marriage, could hardly do much from where she lived in Egypt. I certainly couldn’t go to my father’s family for help. The traditions of the Arab world dictated that marital matters were a maternal responsibility, and so it seemed I was destined to remain alone. All by myself, in this empty house. Yes, it had always served me well, but I couldn’t stop myself from daydreaming about the prospect of having someone to come home to. A life partner to hug, and share my successes with; just to talk to about the events of my day, like a child – who said we ever really grow up?

I tried to celebrate my triumphs, although I knew that just as quickly as I gained them, they could be taken away; my situation today might be entirely different from what would come about tomorrow. I was once small, and with time might be brought low once more. And even success was a lonely thing when I couldn’t share it with anyone.

Sometimes I would lay awake at night thinking about these matters, tossing and turning. I’d wake up after fitful sleep, and Fairouz would greet me on the radio with tales of love and longing. There was longing in my own heart, indeed there was. This hollow within me didn’t just make me feel empty; it gave me clarity as well, a definitive vision of the long and lonely years stretching ahead if I didn’t do something about it.

Dareen strolled nonchalantly into my head once more. The fleeting thought struck me – would her family mind if I went to them myself, sidestepping the traditional motherly step? After all, orphans have to get married some way… The thoughts came more and more quickly. Memories of her voice on the phone rushed through me. The fleeting image of her laugh made me determined to breach the subject somehow; very subtly, very delicately, so she would never notice. If things didn’t come through, I’d bow out with grace; if they did, the prospect of enduring happiness would always be a heady drug…

Like a dam had burst, now I couldn’t stop thinking about it, or her. Fairouz’s voice flowed in my head – but unlike her haunting lyrics, I knew whom my longing was for; I’d always known.

It was time for me to do something about it.

The Second Hour

With clean hands,

Touch your dream…

The dream will purify them further

O nstage stood a man in his mid-fifties, the owner and director of countless companies. Around him was an army made up of the employees of just one of these companies, a few hundred people adorned with qualifications and degrees. The source of his wealth was talent, or luck, or both. His wealth had first doubled just before the alarming Saudi stock market crash, which he had escaped in the nick of time. Another disaster ended in triumph for him with the American economy’s downfall. He took over hundreds of small companies and, with some sleight-of-hand involving Chinese labor, managed to save them and indeed allow them to thrive.

That kind of money, and power, brings enemies – so naturally, his next step was to buy up a security firm. It was one of the best in the field. Governments even used its services in wide-ranging capacities, when they didn’t want to get their hands dirty.

At present, his security retinue was made up not only of people, but dogs – and today at the foot of the stage two enormous German shepherds circled warily, sniffing out the man’s many enemies in the midst of the crowd. Milliseconds before he was about to speak their hackles rose, and they let out twin growls. Someone was there; someone who, albeit his calm demeanor and artificial affability, posed a threat.

The dogs charged. Their impeccable training and strong senses of smell led them straight towards their target. They parted the crowd before them, ignoring the panic they set off, and did not stop until they reached a short, unassuming-looking man who everyone knew. Barking furiously, the German shepherds attacked, and brought him to his knees. Something dropped out of his pocket as he fell, the most significant fall of his life…

Four enormous black-clad bodyguards, muscles bulging under tight uniforms, arrived moments after the man had reached the ground. Surrounding the target, they looked almost identical, strong jaws tightened and cold eyes narrowed. The dogs’ deafening barking still rang through the auditorium. A fifth man soon approached, looking even tougher and more experienced. He wore a white thobe, traditional Saudi dress, with a wide black holster slung across his shoulders and back. A revolver of gleaming metal rested there snugly, well within reach of his shooting arm.

The man on the floor was still trembling. The newcomer picked up what he had dropped, no bigger than a matchbox. The dogs stopped their barking abruptly as the man got to his feet, brushing imaginary dust off his pristine suit. Over the intercom a voice began reassuring everyone that the threat had been contained; enjoy your evening. Seeing the source of the interruption brought under control, everyone slowly came to relax and the buzz of small talk sprung up again. The bodyguards led him off, and he did not protest. His interrogation was about to begin.

*

What do I do?

Humans were not born with the adaptations that make it easy for so many animals to survive on this planet; no fur, no spikes, no claws. Instead, they were blessed – or cursed – with a brain that filled in for all of those, and beyond. What has kept mankind alive for so long is their brain’s ability to understand problems, and thus overcome them. Dareen had lived by this principle for a long time. To overcome a problem, all you need to do is identify it, and then ask the essential question.

“What do I do?”

The trick here was to answer it… and Dareen had no idea how.

From being simply a visitor come to console someone she considered a pleasant coworker – or perhaps a bit more – she was confronted with this conundrum. Where was he, and what had happened to him?

She had been turning the USB stick over and over in her hands, eyes afar. There were more than ten hours of video on there; it was hardly realistic that she could watch all that footage without even knowing if she would find answers. Her aunt Khadija, who lived in Houston, would be waiting for her to join the family for lunch in a short while – and Dareen had to find out at least something before she left.

Her aunt had been her excuse to come here, in the plan she hatched up with her cousin. Of course, she had begun by asking her mother.

“Mama, would you let me travel to visit Aunt Khadija? I haven’t seen her or cousin Amani in so long!”

“Even if I agree, your father won’t. You know how much he fears for you.”

“The only time I’ll be by myself is on the airplane! After that, either Amani will meet me at the airport or I’ll go straight to the hotel that’s right next to their house, and then visit them there!”

“Won’t you be staying with them?”

“I’ll be there for a month – I don’t want to disturb them, so I’ll just stay at that hotel. Come on, it’s a win-win situation for everyone! It’s really simple, believe me... and I’m desperate for a holiday, the last time I took a vacation was when Baba was sick. I need some time off – please!”

“I’ll talk to him, but no promises.”

In the end, it was Amani who’d been able to sweet-talk her uncle into letting Dareen come. The cousins had always been good friends, but hadn’t seen each other since Amani’s father had become a diplomat and left the country. For two years there had been talk of visits, and it was time for all the talk to become reality. As luck would have it, he was stationed in the precise location where she needed to go…

Now here she was – alone, tired, confused, and utterly unsure of the answer to that question:

What should she do?

She scrolled back up to the USB file on the computer; her first cursory check had revealed nothing but files, all labeled with numbers. She’d opened several of them, and there were only more videos in each one. She decided to go through them again; maybe she’d missed something the first time. One file at the very end was labeled with a letter, rather than a number; alongside the video there was a word document.

She opened it hurriedly. Her first scan revealed not much text; inwardly, she sighed. We don’t like things in installments, instead preferring to consume whatever it is all at once. Medicine doesn’t heal in too-small quantities, nor do minute portions of food satisfy entirely. They just make us salivate more, hunger for more.

So it was with this document; she found the answer to at least one of the questions darting around her mind in the first few lines, but every word after that left her wondering still more.

“I read your last letter – I left it unanswered on purpose. Forgive me for having to use the fact that I know how stubborn you are. I wanted you to come as quickly as you could… and here you are. I told you I know you well, however much you try to deny it.”

At this point, the tears that had sprung to her eyes blurred her vision too much for her to continue. She wiped them away, smiling for the first time since she’d got here. Absurdly, in the midst of this insane situation, she was happy: happy for how much he knew her, how he had paid so much attention to her reactions that he could predict whatever she was going to do next…

“We can’t count time through hours, but rather through the questions we find answers to. You may not understand at this moment the reason I want so badly to spread my story… but after you watch the clips, and time passes, you’ll understand. I know I can trust you. Lately, I haven’t been able to understand so many things in my life… I couldn’t give you answers I didn’t have. But here I am, leaving behind me some of what you seek. I had to find my own heart to answer your questions. Am I too late? If I am, forgive me.”

That was the end of the document. Slowly, she clicked the window closed, and brought the laptop screen down.

Up until now, he had never been truly open with her regarding her place in his life. Even when she had boarded the plane to get here, she had never had an outright acknowledgment on what she meant to him. Not once during the countless conversations they’d had. Not since the very beginning, up until the final days when he had started to tell her of strange visions he had seen; nightmares he swore he could see when he was awake… Nightmares that made up for his lack of sleep…

He had told her one day that he had seen the earth split open from underneath him, and a tree sprout up from the yawning chasm. He could tell exactly what the tree was, although he’d never seen it before. It was the tree of Zaqqoum, that foul creation from Hell mentioned in the Qur’an. It filled the place with its enormous monstrosity, its sickening stench. Just as God had described it, its low-hanging fruits were so ugly as to resemble the shrunken heads of devils. He could feel his intestines being torn apart, as though he had taken a bite of some of its thorny flesh…

These nightmares, whose descriptions had so frightened Dareen, had started coming on more and more. Visions that were similar in their shared horror, and how quickly they came and went, leaving behind them splitting headaches he could hardly stand… The funny thing was that Dareen knew everything about him, even his madness, and yet she knew nothing about his heart.

At this moment, she couldn’t let go of anything that was a link to him. She called her cousin Amani, who reassured her that her aunt was at a social gathering with her husband, and that it would be a couple of hours before they would be expecting her. There was no time or reason to inform Amani what had happened; Dareen only asked her to call if she needed to get in touch with her.

*

I could hardly hold in my excitement as I got off the phone, arranging for still more details about my upcoming trip. One of the biggest goals of my life was going to come true in a few weeks. I had traveled very rarely as a child, only going to Egypt once or twice to visit my mother’s family before they had disowned us – except for Aunt Suha, of course. Even now, I had only visited a few Arab countries on company business.

Yet the city I was headed for, I knew just as well as I did my own hometown of Jeddah: the city of Bologna, capital of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. A city of great cultural significance, it has a reputation of being an excellent place for studies, as well. I consider the University of Bologna to be one of the top universities in Europe, and rank it alongside Qarawiyyine University in Morocco, Al-Nizamiyya University in Iraq and Al-Azhar University in Egypt.

Most importantly, it is the place where my father had wanted me to study engineering, in happier days. I can remember him holding me as a child, making me repeat the name of university, and the city, again and again. He would go often. He had first gone there on business, the same reason he had gone to Egypt when he had met my mother in Damietta. When I first learned to use a search engine it was the first city I had looked up, and I had memorized all I could about it… a scrap I could use to enforce in vain the tenuous link I had with my father. That is, when that link would matter to me. Long after my father had ceased to mean anything to me, the facts remained inside my head, lingering.

Now, finally, I was going to visit the beautiful city. I had received an invitation to attend a conference there from one of the Italian team members I had met when the contract with our company was signed. I would be giving a talk at the TEDx conference organized by the University of Bologna. In return for my short absence from work, I was to complete a project before I left and submit it – then I’d have the whole conference to myself, a well-deserved vacation.

It may be difficult for you to understand why I was so happy. What I was feeling was pure triumph: my father had taken everything away from me when he left, even the dreams he encouraged in me. Just as he had built them up brick by brick, he tore them down, watching as they toppled. It wasn’t enough to rip apart my wide-eyed dreams of the future. Even the simplest joys of being a child, like watching cartoons, were stolen away from me, quite literally. Yet even then, when I was young, I never resented my father until years after the fact, when my mother had had to sell our television. Things had got difficult for us, as they so quickly did.

However, I discovered a way to continue watching my favorite shows by climbing onto the roof of our house, where I would watch the neighbors’ TV through their window. This ruse worked until I was discovered by one of the neighbors’ boys, who was older than me and thought I was spying on his sister. He waited for me one day outside of the mosque after the sundown prayer, with a group of other hulking neighborhood boys. They ambushed me without warning, and beat me up mercilessly. The last thing I heard before I blacked out was: “Know your place, and don’t steal looks at your betters.”

I woke up in the hospital, and once I could speak asked my mother:

“Why don’t we have a TV?”

She didn’t answer. I was engulfed in humiliation. It wasn’t the injuries, the breaks, the cigarette burns that bothered me. It was the fact that I had been beaten on the face with a shoe. And it was at that moment that I began to hate my father. I finally recognized the fact that the misery in which we lived was all due to him. Ever since that day, I vowed to achieve all my dreams myself. I was now going to the place where he thought I would never make it, as a consequence of his abandonment. How satisfying for me to be able to visit the city, not in the capacity of a student but as a successful man, without having needed his money, his encouragement, or his support.

I cast my gaze around, marveling for the umpteenth time at my good fortune to have reached where I am now. I consider my office my own personal heaven-on-earth. It is light and airy, with white marble floors that reflect the sunlight streaming in from the glass front of my office, looking out at the secretary’s desk and the rest of the office beyond. The rays pour generously into the office, with nothing to block them other than my huge black desk and the meeting table close by. Scattered around the different surfaces in the office are some beautiful specimens of Swedish crystal. The light dances when it passes through them, bursting into seven colors of a miracle.

Facing the other way is a floor-to-ceiling glass window that looks over Jeddah, spreading out like a carpet thirty stories below my feet. I love it more than any other place on this planet. It’s not only that it’s a beautiful place, like a concerto piece featuring the sun as the maestro. It’s because this is the place where I do what I love.

Suddenly, cutting off my train of thought, Dareen entered without knocking. It wasn’t like her; she looked like the carrier of bad news.

“Sorry,” she started, “I had to talk to you.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Tariq,” she replied.

“What about him?”

She hesitated. “Something strange… I thought I’d misjudged him, but then I kept on watching him a bit more closely, and I realized I had to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Serious-faced, she leaned forward. “Yesterday, I came to your office a bit early for our meeting. When I got here, Tariq was taking an envelope from someone. I didn’t see exactly what was in it, but Tariq had it open and it looked like he was counting what was inside, as if it was a lot of cash. I couldn’t see who it was that gave him the envelope, but he told Tariq not to worry, and that it was going to be all right. When Tariq closed the envelope, he looked angry. He told the man not to come to his work again, no matter how important it was. That these agreements had to take place in the house of the ‘wali’, and that he was prepared to help them, but not at the expense of his job…”

“Are you serious? We don’t even deal with money here, all that goes to our accounting department.”

“As if I don’t know! Let me finish. When Tariq saw me he looked worried. He waved the other person away and put the envelope inside a drawer in his desk. When he went to call you I tried to open it, but he’d locked it with a key. I don’t know what to make of it all, honestly. You should ask him about it and see his reaction. He might be caught up in some underhand dealings with this ‘wali’ of his.”

“Dareen, don’t exaggerate… You assumed that whatever was in that envelope was cash and built all your assumptions off it, but there’s no reason whatsoever to be suspicious.”

“Maybe,” she conceded, sitting back. “Well, now you know the whole story and you can do what you like. What makes me more suspicious is the fact that for the rest of the day he tried to indirectly put me at ease about what happened. And I could tell he didn’t really mean it.”

We sat there for a moment in silence, mirroring each other’s frowns. I quickly convinced myself there was no reason to preoccupy myself with unsubstantiated claims. Dareen’s suspicions were just the result of excessive worrying. I hadn’t even told her yet about my plans to travel to Bologna. This I quickly did, overlooking her worried features.

At first, she didn’t understand my over-the-top enthusiasm. “I’m happy for you… but why are you so thrilled? You’ve been to a lot of conferences lately, why is this one so special?”

“Oh, my excitement is very understandable.”

“If it were me, I’d understand. Women like shoes and fashion, and Italy is the fashion capital of the world.”

“Hardly!”

“If it’s for the TEDx, there are countless numbers of those conferences all around the world…”

“Do you know what I’m going to talk about? I won’t talk about my own story this time – I’ll talk about… about talking! I’ve been getting into linguistics as a hobby lately, and it’s fascinating…”

She sat back, smiling indulgently at my childlike eagerness.

“Language, if you think about it, really is a miracle. It’s the easiest and hardest way to express ourselves to others, not to mention the best way. But it can only be used in that right way when we speak truly from the heart!”

“You don’t say.”

“Make all the snarky comments you want, but even if people are already aware of this concept at some superficial level, they don’t apply it. That is, no one but a very lucky few. Really, imagine what it would be like if everyone said what they really meant! I’ll show you the presentation after I’m done, if you’re interested.”

“I’m intrigued,” she said, sounding the opposite. “But tell me, you can’t be this excited just for a free holiday. Unless you really are criminally overworked.”

After what seemed like an unending amount of guesses, I finally told her the whole story of my connection to the place… along with the story of the man who had made it mean something to me. She was the first person I had ever been willing to talk about my past with, and I told her so. But as the story continued sympathy began to dance across her features, along with a touch of pity – which I hated. It made me immediately regret opening up to her, and brought me to end brusquely:

“I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, and I don’t care.”

“But what if he needs you now?”

“Where was he when I needed him?”

“Ask Tariq to look for him… He’s a businessman; we’re a company that deals with businessmen. There must be someone who knows of him or has heard of him, even within the company!”

“I don’t think I’ll waste my time on him.”

She shook her head, getting to her feet. “That’s your ego talking.”

She left, leaving me with a slight but undeniable sense of relief that the prospect of looking into those pity-filled eyes was gone.

She came back soon enough, waving her phone in excitement. I looked up at her amusedly. “What is it now?”

“Hisham, I think I found him… I think this is him.”

My smile froze, searching her face. “What?”

“Your father!”

I had never exploded in anyone from anger the way I did at that moment. All those years of agony because of him gathered up in one raging swell of fury.  In a second I was inches from her face, screaming:

“Did anyone ask you to? Did I mention in any way that I wanted to know anything about him? Did I cry? You think I ever felt or ever will feel anything for a man who took advantage of a woman, had her the way he wanted, and left without a shred of guilt for what he left behind? He talked a lot about ‘halal’ and ‘haram’, what’s allowed to us and what’s not… Did he think what he did was halal? And what do you have to do with this anyway?”

She stared at me unblinking, face white.

“It’s my own fault,” I muttered, “I’m the one who let a coworker intrude into my personal life…”

Before I said another word the tears spilled over onto her cheeks, and the sight of them streaking down her face brought me back to myself, engulfing me in shame. The reason she was crying could only be my inexcusable yelling at her that had crossed any possible red lines – although afterwards, it became clear that it wasn’t only the way I had said the hurtful words, but their content as well. I had described her as a mere ‘co-worker’ who meant nothing to me.

I could not find the words to apologize. Linguistic study aside, sometimes words really were not enough. It was beyond me to convey the shame and guilt I felt, and I could not reach for her in a comforting hug, allow myself to touch a woman… That would make me like him.

Hesitatingly, I said, “I’m so sorry…”

As though a spell had been broken, she unfroze, shaking her head, turning her face away as she wiped away her tears. She didn’t want me to see her cry. She turned abruptly and headed for the office door. I had to stop her before she left; something told me that if I allowed her to go I’d never see her come through there again. I asked the first thing that came to my head that might defuse the situation:

“What did it say about him?”

She stopped for a moment. Keeping her back to me, she said, “Well, that was it. It said where he had been, but nothing about where he was now.” She took a deep shuddering breath, still not turning around. “Please excuse me.”

Without giving me time to reply, she swiftly left the room, leaving me to bury my face in my hands with frustration. How had things gone so wrong?

I got up and started to pace the room, playing the past few minutes over and over again in my head, torturing myself. Ruing myself for my stupid, miscalculated overreaction – my poisonous words, inexcusable tone, misdirected anger… I couldn’t keep myself from groaning when her eyes, brimming with held-back tears, floated into my mind’s eye.

I had to apologize somehow. I’d ruined everything …

“Mr. Hisham?”

I turned, wishing it had been her lilting voice rather than the inquiring tones of my assistant, here to inform me with the latest regarding one of the innumerable projects I had to see to before I left.

Once he had finished and turned to go, my mind took me further beyond the latest disaster, back to what Dareen had come to tell me.

I was disinclined to believe her exaggerations. However, the truth was that – as much as I tried to deny it to myself – I had in fact begun to keep my eye on Tariq from a distance. This was an unvoiced suspicion, something I had barely even let myself notice… But if he really had suspected that Dareen had told me anything, a guilty person would’ve shown it somehow.

For the rest of the day, I casually left my office door open. I could see when he’d look for something in his desk (if Dareen was to be believed, a desk that currently contained a suspicion-arousing envelope full of cash), when he’d pick up the phone, the way his facial expression never changed… Impassive as always. If you were inclined to think that way, the truth was that Tariq was indeed a mysterious figure. He hardly spoke, but then again I liked that. It meant that he was focused on work, which was most important to me.

Over the time he’d been working at the company, I’d been able to come to know some things about his background – don’t ask me how. He had emerged from difficult circumstances, like I had. He was supporting his divorced sister, whose husband had left her with two daughters, along with his own wife and young son. Knowing this had made me trust him more, and I don’t trust people easily. There was another characteristic that we shared: the fact that we had both been through a lot before we had reached our current positions. He had an interesting past, that Tariq.

Of course, I wasn’t one to judge. My own employment history contained gems like fast food cashier and tour guide to Old Jeddah, along with a host of other odd jobs I’d squeezed in with my studies. This was nothing compared to his, though. He had worked for one of the sheikhs who read Quran over people who had supposedly been struck by black magic. When I found out I could only start laughing hysterically, which stopped abruptly once I discovered how much money he’d been making. It was an amount that wasn’t much less than what he was making at the company now.

If the company had known that about him, I had no doubt that he wouldn’t have been hired. Then again, if they knew everything about me they probably wouldn’t have hired me either. It was one of the reasons that motivated me to agree to hiring him after his interview. In his eyes, I could see the same hunger that drove me. I smiled whenever I thought of what his family’s reaction must have been when he heard he’d gotten the job, and his own. It’s very important for a man, to be able to take care of one’s family. I was glad I’d played my part in ensuring that for him.

He did his job all right, and did it well. His focus was squarely on working, which no doubt alienated some of his fellow employees. He didn’t mix with them much, seemingly preferring to just do what he needed to do and go home. I wouldn’t doubt his honesty, or his dedication. But there was something not quite right about him. Just as I was watching him now, in the past I could tell that he was watching me. Sometimes the hairs stood up at the back of my neck, and I’d turn to see him quickly glance away. Sometimes, it would frighten me.

At the same time, I could hardly hold that against him. Some people have uncomfortable personalities, and it’s just the way they are. I wasn’t going to marry him, in any case – let him do what he likes…

I could hear his voice now, answering his phone. “I’m still at the office,” he said, “I’ll be out soon.” There was a pause, as he listened to the other end. “Sure, I’ll bring it. Bye.”

He hung up, raising his eyes – and met mine. An uncomfortable second passed as we held each other’s gaze. He finally roused a slight smile, which I returned uncomfortably.

“I can’t think of who left the door open,” I said weakly. “Would you mind closing it?”

Obligingly, he stood and strode to where the office door loomed open. Before he closed it, he turned to me as though he’d just thought of something.

“By the way, is everything all right?” he asked. “Miss Dareen looked a bit upset when she left.”

I looked at him, eyes narrowed – but his own were wide and blameless, the accompaniment to an innocent query that would’ve crossed anyone’s mind.

“Yes, everything’s fine. Thank you.”

He nodded, closing the door. Leaning back in my chair, I shook my head at myself. It sounded like he was engaged in nothing more troubling than what he had to bring home for dinner. There was no doubt that Dareen’s misgivings were misplaced, created upon a fragile foundation I shouldn’t have paid any attention to.

Time to get back to work. I mused over the upcoming final project, a challenging one. Bringing an inert place to life was a special kind of magic only a few could hope to master, but it was my specialty. For the rest of the day I gathered up all the information I needed. I let the excitement slowly build as I anticipated what was to come next: one of my favorite parts of the job, that wouldn’t start until I had left the office. Simple, yet very effective, a strategy I had come up with myself. All I needed was the right information, a full tank of gas, and my glorious new Lexus.

Once I was in the car, I’d start driving around to nowhere in particular. With my phone recording every word, I would speak out loud without thinking, letting my mind range over the limitless possibilities. It was difficult to predict when inspiration would hit, how long it would take, or what form it would be in – but I could trust it to come. The strategy was foolproof. Letting my eyes wander over the city’s features never failed to kick-start my brain. Every street had a story, and every few miles you’d come to wonder if you hadn’t unwittingly been teleported somewhere else. It was all so different, and yet so close together: rich and poor, organization and utter chaos, glitzy malls and street vendors. Old Jeddah was a different story, of course, its streetlights probably the only thing in common it held with the rest of the city.

Yes, wandering aimlessly was the key, and the only rule I had was doing my best to avoid traffic – a hard ask, given the way things were in this city. But even braving the traffic was worth it, when I’d go home or back to the office and listen to what I’d said, writing down whatever was important. Every day my dream would materialize further, just as solid as Jeddah’s hot atmosphere was shimmering. I breathed it in like I breathed the humid air; I could turn off my cigarette, but never my ambition…

Time to get back to work, and forget about Dareen’s meaningless suspicions. I’d find a way to make it up to her, my awful behavior, but it didn’t mean I had to believe her.

It was only later that I realized how much smarter than me she had been, and how stupid I had been at the time…

The Third Hour

When your dream floats away, ask yourself:

Is it rising on its own?

Or did you let yourself fall?

T he suspect sat, motionless. His face was thrown half in shadow by the harsh light of the lamp just above him. The man in the white thobe sat directly in front of him, across the rectangular table. It resembled a scene from a gangster drama film, and there was no doubt whether the man in the white thobe was being the good cop or the bad cop.

“Do you know why you’ll come to hate yourself?” he asked, his casual tone belying the menacing words. “Not because you’re a drug dealer, peddling stuff we’ll know more about all too soon, not because you’re an addict working at a respectable company… but because you dared to bring your merchandise to the Chairman’s conference. That’s why my orders are to make you hate yourself.”

Snapping on some plastic gloves, the man took an envelope out of his pocket. He carefully brought out a small capsule, and started twirling it between his fingers.

“Let’s start with a simple question. What’s in this pill?”

The answering silence grated on his ears.

“If you don’t want to answer, we’ll make you swallow it. You had quite a stash on you, plenty to run tests on. We’ll know what it is soon enough.” He was still idling it between his gloved fingers. “Doesn’t seem like much, does it? But our dogs are trained to detect things that don’t seem like much.”

The man across the table sweated silently, his gaze averted like it hurt him to even look at the pill. Berating himself in his head for being so careless, risking everything he’d worked for, for so long.

Apparently growing tired of the quiet, his interrogator reached into his pocket again. “Let’s try this, then…”

He flicked his lighter open and held the pill just by the flame, finally eliciting a reaction when the man shrieked, “Don’t! Don’t, you idiot, you’ll…”

Satisfied that his provocation had paid off, the interrogator turned off the flame and put the lighter back in his pocket.

Sickened at the triumph on the interrogator’s face, the suspect wordlessly put his head in his hands.

*

Dareen’s sleep-deprived brain had finally thought of asking the receptionist who’d handed her the USB where she might find Hisham, but she was nowhere to be found. In her place was someone new, who informed her that the other receptionist wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. When she asked about his room number and if she could pay him a visit, the receptionist asked about her name. Upon hearing it, she shook her head.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t give you that information without your being authorized by the patient himself as his next-of-kin. Your name is not on my list.”

Silently she berated him. “Well, he was a patient here, wasn’t he?”

The receptionist’s carefully composed face betrayed nothing.

“Can’t you at least tell me if he’s still here?”

She glanced back down at her computer screen. “I’m afraid not.”

“Well, I’m not leaving until I get an answer to that question.”

“You’ll have to take that up with a higher authority than me, and administration’s hours were over at 5.”

“Fine. I’ll just sit here and wait.”

“But” –

Exasperated, Dareen turned away and marched back to her post on the chair to the side of the lobby, still dragging her bag with her.

“Ma’am…” the woman started, and then seemed to have been struck by pity. She rooted among the desk drawers for something, then stepped out from behind her desk. She handed Dareen a brochure for a hotel called the Jesse H. Jones Rotary House International. “I’m afraid I can’t let you wait here all night. You might want to have a look at this hotel… it’s very popular with relatives, right across the street. And with patients, once they’re discharged from the hospital but still have to come back for checkups.”

“Thanks.”

Although she had already reserved a room at the hotel near her aunt’s house, Dareen decided to check it out. Maybe, like the receptionist had said, he’d finished his treatment and had been discharged, then left her the USB on his way out.

“You don’t even need to step outside,” the receptionist said, as Dareen got to her feet. “Just take the elevator up, and there’s a bridge on the second floor connecting us to the hotel.”

“I will, thanks.”

The hotel staff would probably be less strict about security than the hospital was, and would at least let her know if he was a guest or not. Even if he wasn’t, at least she could cross it off the list of possibilities on this hunt of hers. Inwardly she rebuked him for leading her on this wild goose chase. Why did he have to be so elusive?

The hotel lobby was so huge that she felt like a teardrop in the vastness of the ocean. This hotel calling itself a ‘House’ was more like a grand castle. She strode the twenty meters from the entrance to the receptionist desk, and waited for her turn in the long line. Apparently, travel for medical treatment was getting more and more popular…

As she waited her thoughts drifted, inevitably, to her predicament, and to the feelings that had brought it about. She had known Hisham for two years, and as time passed her emotions had only gotten harder and harder to control, both within his presence and without.

What had happened to her? Look at her now, how desperate she was to find him… She never would have expected herself to act like this. The logic center of her brain must be utterly damaged. She had lost every attempt at trying to regulate herself – at first she’d tried avoiding him, yet inescapably she’d get drawn back into his orbit.

Well, until she’d been forced to.

After that awful afternoon – she could still see his reddened face and bulging eyes as he yelled at her – she had been quite happy with keeping their interactions to no further than the bare minimum. No more did she visit his office bearing coffee, no more banter and friendly smiles; when they had to come together for group meetings she was usually the first one to leave. All the while he had apologized to her again and again for his behavior; for what he’d done, what he’d said. His sad, genuinely remorseful eyes said more than his words ever could.

She told herself to strengthen her resolve, harden her heart against him. But he showed so much contrition, in both words and deeds, that she started to sympathize with him again.

Sure, she was a fool in love – but even beyond that detail, the story he had told her of his father colored her memory of his reaction considerably. No doubt he had pent up a good deal of the trauma he had suffered. He’d said she was the very first person he had ever told… and her subsequent search for his father must have seemed like a betrayal.

Yes, he had been wrong to react like that, and his conduct was inexcusable. Justified? Not at all. But understandable. She started thinking about how she could broach the chasm that had opened up between them. It wasn’t like she could just stroll into his office and pretend as if nothing had happened. She had her pride to consider, after all.

No, she would get him a gift. She would even get it delivered to his office, instead of her going in to present it to him. That would pave the way for a friendly reunion later on.

She began thinking of which gift she should get him, rotating the chair in her little office. The walls were plastered with frames, some of her diplomas and certificates – she had always been an over-achiever – and others of newspaper clippings of her dear father, listing off some of his many accomplishments. In pride of place just by her desk was a picture of them together. Her father was a connoisseur of watches; she wondered if she should ask him on the latest men’s styles, one that Hisham might like. But watches were so commonplace. She had to get him something special, something that would make him recognize how well she knew him…

Without warning or the courtesy of a knock, the door opened. In came Tariq. His countenance promised nothing good. He glanced around the office, ensuring no one else was there. His eyes lingered on the pictures of her with her father. He sat without being asked.

“You’re the daughter of an important businessman,” he began, not bothering to preface his statement with a greeting. “I’m sure maintaining his reputation is a priority of yours. You wouldn’t want to cause damage to it, now, would you?”

The most hideous smile she had ever seen in her life spread across his face.

“Especially not with the kind of scandal that might result from this picture…”

He flipped it onto the table with triumph. She forced herself to look, and when she did her heart sank. It was a picture of her with Hisham, their faces rather too close together. Her hand was resting on his chest, and he was leaning forward across his desk. It looked like the beginnings of a torrid office affair from the tabloids.

At first, it made no sense. Nothing of the sort was going on. Then she remembered the day she had accidentally spilled coffee on him. This was captured at the very moment she’d leaned forward to try to wipe it off. Innocent enough, but the picture made it look very suspicious indeed.

“How dare you,” she started, but he raised his hand to cut her off.

“Don’t misunderstand me… the scandal will only come about if you tell your dear boss Hisham what you saw.”

Neither of them had any doubts about what exactly he meant by that.

“Let’s agree to something: a very simple agreement. You stay in your business, I stay in mine. If I catch you snooping around in any way, I will not hesitate to splash this all over the papers. So what’s it going to be? What’s more important to you… some half-baked suspicion about me, or the wellbeing of your own father? In the end, you’re going to have to decide.”

She held in her reaction with difficulty, knowing that exploding at him might backfire – as much as she did want to wipe the smirk off his face. She kept eye contact with an intimidating, stony glare, and was satisfied to observe him wavering slightly.

Without another word he fled her office, and left her to sit and smolder in her fury.

It was so unfair… Perceived moral failings were not excused lightly in this society. That picture, with or without her explanation, could irrevocably damage not only her career, but Hisham’s as well and maybe even her father’s. Hisham had just started out as a manager, and she would hate to be an unwitting factor in reversing all the progress he’d made. Although his standing as a businessman had been built up over many years of hard work, negative news about his daughter might spell an end for his well-earned reputation. Even worse, he had just come out of physical therapy after a stroke that had nearly ended his life the year before. An additional shock might be too much for him to handle.

Her father had always trusted her, and she would honor that trust. Yes, she’d grown up in several European countries where matters were decidedly more lax than they were here, and yes, she did have feelings for Hisham. But she never compromised her moral and ethical standards, and never would. Unfortunately, not everyone could know that. Although she had a perfectly plausible explanation for that photo, if she allowed Tariq to do what he threatened to do, there was no guarantee that a clarifying statement would correct the damage.

Her own career didn’t concern her as much; she could always find another job somewhere. But when it came to the possibility of hurting the two men that meant most to her in the world… Hisham did not deserve to have his promising career brought low, especially not now when things were going so well for him. And she would never put her father’s standing in danger; it was the least a proud daughter could do.

His success in both company and personal business made him her role model. Although she could have taken advantage of her connections through him to get a job, she decided instead to go through all the regular channels and start from the bottom, like he did. Here at the company, she was a regular employee, albeit one with a famous last name. He had taught her so much. And she would never hurt him, whatever might arise as a consequence.

No matter what that insect Tariq might request, built on his tangled web of lies, there was no way she could refuse it with so much at stake. Blackmail, pure and simple: but simple is always effective, is it not? She bristled at the thought of him coming into her office again and making further demands. But at least now she knew that her suspicions had been correct. Something was going on with Tariq, and it wasn’t anything good if it was big enough to threaten her about.

Of course, so far all she had was suspicion – her word against his. For a moment she considered telling someone, or trying to investigate it further. She abandoned the idea when she realized that first, there was hardly anyone she could tell – and second, she had been watching too many TV shows. She was no detective. Even if she was, it was unlikely that she would be able to get any proof. He would be very wary of her, and like he said – at this point if she let slip the slightest hint that she was trying to investigate him, the worst would come to pass.

Whatever Tariq was doing, her loved ones were more important. No matter the humiliation, she would have to bear it, and lay low until he got complacent. She would keep her eyes open, and he had to make a mistake sometime. Then, with proof, she would denounce him to the authorities – and at that point he would realize that blackmailing Dareen had been a fatal mistake.

Until that could happen, things had to appear as usual. She couldn’t risk Tariq getting yet more blackmail fodder, so she would stay away from Hisham for the time being. He would continue to think she was upset with him for yelling at her, and she would continue to gently rebuff his apologies.

It was only a pity that she had just thought of the perfect gift for him… maybe she should get it sent anyway, as a final token for what she felt for him until she could voice her feelings out loud…

Her thoughts drifted back to where she was now, here at the hotel thousands of kilometers away, still waiting in line. She heaved a weary sigh, checking her phone. There were two numbers saved for Hisham, his local number – which had been closed every time she tried it – and an international number she thought he might be using here. She’d attempted to get in touch with him constantly, maintaining her hope that he would finally pick up.

Time and time again she had tried calling this number, and each time it took her straight to voicemail. It had become a habit – her fingers dialing, raising the phone to her ear and waiting, and dropping to close it once she heard the tinny yet unmistakable voice of the man she loved, his recording present if not his own self. Sometimes she wondered if the only reason she kept trying, when all the while she knew it would be in vain, was to be able to hear his voice, if only a pale imitation of it.

Here he was again, smiling in her ear. “You’ve reached Hisham Al-Sayid. Please leave your earthly messages after the tone. Any heavenly messages will have to go straight up to the sky – nothing’s left there but prayers.”

She shook her head, about to close the phone as usual, but she hesitated for one second longer than she should have. The tone sounded, and she was struck by the necessity to say something, anything.

“Hisham – Hisham, this is Dareen, I’m here, where are you? Please pick up… Answer me… Where are you? Where can I go to find you? Just tell me how I can find you, please…”

She was cut off by the ending tone. Blinking away the blur of tears that had suddenly obscured her vision, she put the phone away as she reached the front desk, and mustered a smile.

“Hello, I’d like to ask if there’s a visitor here at the hotel right now – his name is Hisham Al-Sayid.”

The man nodded briskly, used to the question. He would be compelled to answer her, not like that tricky hospital receptionist. He typed away at his computer, asking her to clarify spelling and nationality, asking if she knew his room number (which she did not) and finally shrugging.

“I’m sorry, no one of that name shows in our records as a guest. Sorry.”

She nearly crumpled right then and there, but then again what did she expect. She sighed and smiled at him wanly. “Thanks anyway.”

“No problem, Miss. Do you have a reservation?”

Automatically she asked, “Are there any empty rooms?”

He nodded. “It’s the rush season, but we’re a pretty big hotel.”

“I can see that,” she replied distractedly. Her reservation at the hotel near her aunt’s house beckoned, but now – after the travel, her exhaustion both mental and physical, and the toll of her frantic search – she needed rest desperately. Her aunt’s house would be around a ten-minute drive by taxi, but it had never seemed further away.

“All right. I’ll take a room, please. Just for tonight.”

It was that simple. As she stepped into her room, this haven of comfort, she marveled at the luxury in which clients were pampered. She wished she could sink right into bed – but first things first. She called her mother to reassure her she was well, and would be meeting the family for dinner instead of lunch.

Then she slumped, shoulders down, sitting on the bed. She was in that strange limbo of being too tired to go to sleep. Perhaps instead of sleeping she could use her time here. She turned on her laptop, and opened up the file that had been on the USB. These recordings had been raising more questions than they answered, but at least they gave clues regarding his state of mind, a way to reach across to him where now he seemed totally inaccessible…

*

I can confidently say I had never before used Youtube as much as I did that month, in preparation for my TED talk – or sleeping pills, for that matter. I was so energized and excited that it would sometimes take several of them to get me several hours of sleep. They were enough, though. I would wake up with my brain raring to go. I trawled hundreds of TED talks from all over the world, from countless cultures, given by people who were as different from one another as their stories were different.

Then I would turn to the challenge of telling the story that I wanted to tell… a challenge I threw myself into as I did all challenges. I reached a curious conclusion at the time, helped along by Shakespeare: life really is a stage. Every person is standing in their own ‘spotlight’, otherwise known as a comfort zone. A habit cultivated, consciously or unconsciously, by someone until it becomes second nature. For some, it’s their daily routines; others are addicted to success, or even failure. This metaphor has helped me to understand why we fear change so much; why we dread every shift and curve of the journey life brings.

It’s because leaving our comfort zone is like leaving the spotlight we’ve gotten used to basking in. We take a step forward into the dark, hesitating, unsure of whether or not the light will follow. It’s like being struck by stage fright all over again, when you think you’ve conquered it. To have something you believe you’ve vanquished rear its ugly head yet again is one of the most unsettling things that can happen to a person.

I didn’t intend to have this happen to me. The trick – which I had read about in one of my favorite self-help books – is to make every new experience a habit. I still experienced some jitters when I went up onstage, but they were slowly receding more and more. Except when I remembered what I would be doing in just a few weeks, the hundreds of people who would be listening… then the nervousness came back in full force.

“Mr. Hisham?”

I looked up. It was Tariq, his face questioning. “There’s a delivery man with a package here, he says it’s for you.”

“That’s strange. I wasn’t expecting a package. Who’s it from?”

He shrugged. “That’s the weird thing. There’s no name on it.”

I stood up and walked over to where the man stood with it; it was small, nondescript. I wondered what it was.

“Sign here, please.”

After sending them both out and closing the door, I turned the package over and over in my hands, asking myself who could’ve sent it and finding no answer. The identity of the sender was a mystery, and so were the contents of the package – but that mystery would be cleared up very soon. It was light, and there was no sound when I shook it. But it was carefully packaged in bubble wrap, tightly wrapped with tape, and it took me a good while to undo all the packaging before what was inside finally emerged.

Inside the wrapped box was a delicate crystal figurine of a building I recognized upon sight: the University of Bologna, surrounded by elements of the rest of the beautiful Italian city. It was stunning. Enjoy your trip was written in elegantly slanted handwriting in a card nestled within the box – unsigned.

The sender had clearly taken pains to remain anonymous… but the unimaginable possibility in my mind was none other than the woman who had been ignoring me since I had treated her so unfairly. Even this morning, she had responded to my greeting with nothing more than a brusque nod.

Shame enveloped me yet again as I remembered the way we’d harmonized together so well, and how I had singlehandedly ruined it. No doubt she’d sent this before that had happened, as a token of her friendship. Now I had squandered that friendship, in the worst way… But perhaps this might serve as a reminder to her, of a better time. Maybe, if she was indeed the sender, it would allow her to remember all the good times we had shared, and persuade her to overlook what had so unfortunately transpired.

I took the figurine out of its box and set it on the desk. Another lump in my throat emerged; characteristically, she had noticed how much I liked crystal, how I enjoyed watching the interplay of light and color in the office that was my own little temple. She had remembered my excitement about my upcoming travels, and given me something I could treasure forever…

Not long ago I had dared to allow myself to consider the possibility – as remote as it now was – that Dareen and I could somehow end up together. What was it that I felt for her? Was it love, or mere infatuation? I didn’t trust myself to distinguish between the two… But hadn’t I bypassed the level of infatuation? What excited me about Dareen wasn’t any shallow admiration of her looks, but my deeper appreciation of so many aspects of her personality. And I had never been easy to please.

There’s no question that Dareen would be perfectly capable of fending for herself… yet my affection and concern for her was to the extent of regarding her like an innocent child, and feeling this inexplicable urge to defend her against any harm that might come. This despite the fact that I hardly had the right to do so.  The strong personality that sparkled through her seemed to leave its defense mechanisms at my office door. The confident, capable businesswoman would become a playful child with me, innocently mischievous. She was also inherently adaptable; whenever she would sense weakness within me she’d rise to the occasion to support me, whatever had gone wrong.

The truth was that I didn’t have a definition for my sorry state – the way she was constantly in my thoughts and emotions couldn’t possibly be labeled by a single word, so I didn’t try to. Guesses about the way she might feel towards me, however, had always darted around my mind. If I’d received this figurine two weeks ago I would have been overjoyed, considering it a sign of her regard for me – even if it was strictly platonic, it could have been a portent of better things to come. But now… now I was like a doll in her inscrutable hands, desperate for her acceptance of my apology.

I couldn’t help it. I picked up the phone and dialed her extension, meaning to ask her up front whether or not the beautiful gift was from her. The telephone clicked; instead of hearing her melodious tones I heard my assistant.

“Hello, sir, the call won’t go through – Miss Dareen seems to have put her phone off the hook, probably in order to concentrate on work.”

I sighed. “All right, Tariq. Thank you.”

I slumped back in my chair, missing her miserably. My eyes went to my office door, and I wished that somehow she could step through there, and we could get back to the way we had been...

Obligingly the door opened, and for one brief foolish second I thought my prayers had been answered. But once again, instead of her slim figure carrying the tray, the lumbering form of my assistant stepped through the door. The pungent scent of roast coffee filled the room; it wasn’t quite the way I liked it, I could tell. But then again, no one could get my coffee as exactly right as she could. I’d had to bear with these awful excuses for beverages for the past two weeks, as long as she had been angry with me.

“Coffee?”

“Thanks,” I said, taking a sip and managing not to grimace. I gave him a quick smile. “I’ve got to stop cutting back on these, I’ll never get off those sleeping pills otherwise!”

His own returning smile was wan and uncertain, as though he wanted to tell me something that he couldn’t quite articulate.

“Anything wrong?”

“Mr. Hisham… Erm, your teeth are a bit stained. Perhaps you really should cut back on the coffee. You might want to get them whitened before you go and give your speech.”

My eyes widened. “Thanks for telling me, Tariq.”

He nodded and left the room, leaving me to sulk.

Dareen was definitely avoiding me. Not answering my calls, hardly returning my greetings, disregarding me whenever she could. Of course, her busy workload couldn’t be a big help either. I decided on a kind of test: on an impulse, I picked up my phone and texted her: “I miss your delicious coffee .” At least her coffee wouldn’t stain my teeth. And she had no excuses not to eventually text back, no matter how long it might take…

I spent the rest of the afternoon with my eyes darting between my phone, the swiftly cooling coffee cup, and the door – hoping against hope. Yet when the next tray came in, bearing my favorite blend of coffee in my favorite mug, it was held by none other than the humble doorman who had come to drop it off. Not the person I yearned to see.

There was no longer a question about it; she wanted to alienate herself from me, and me from her. At that very moment my growing feelings for her had been getting stronger and stronger – and yet all she was doing was stringing me along. How utterly stupid I had been, and continued to be. I had given her my apology. I have begged her pardon multiple times. Her childish attitude apparently also stretched to treating men like toys. Why did she think she could be above all that, and still deserve my love, my care?

Once again, I returned to the programming I had grown up on: that the only person I could ever trust to truly care about me is myself.

I left the coffee untouched. I called up Tariq to book me an appointment at a dentist as soon as possible, and refocused on work for the rest of the day. There wasn’t much time left before Bologna, and I had a lot to do…

Whoever tries to claim that men are not afraid of anything needs only to observe dentist waiting rooms. The cold curdled fear shared on people’s faces was palpable. I thanked God I was only there to whiten my teeth. For the past hour of waiting I had wished my name was ‘Muhammad Abdul Jabbar’ or ‘Abdallah Naseef’ or any of the other names the nurse came in to summon. Just before my patience had run out, my own name was finally called.

The calm I had enjoyed in the waiting room slowly dissipated, as slowly as the dentist chair leaned back inexorably. The tools that lined either side of the chair didn’t much allow for calm. I reassured myself again, I was only here for a quick whitening and before I knew it, I would be back out. The dentist apparently thought the same thing, putting me at ease with the small talk he shared with all his patients, before he went quiet.

“Could you stick out your tongue for me?” he asked, and I obliged. He directed me to further acrobatics with my tongue, explaining that he wanted to get a better look at what looked like an ulcer on the side of it. I assured him that it had been there for years as long as I could remember, and had never hurt. He held up a mirror to it to ask me if it had grown at all since that last time I had noticed it. True, it was a bit swollen… but I wasn’t too concerned. I was used to it. As for the dentist, it seemed to worry him. He stopped what he had been doing and directed a quick interrogation at me.

“When was the first time you noticed it?”

“A long time ago, I can’t really remember.”

“Has it ever caused you any discomfort or pain?”

“No.”

“Do you smoke?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been smoking?”

“A while…”

He took off his gloves and started rooting through my file. I shifted uncomfortably in the chair as he said, “The general surgery doctor should take a look at it… he should be available next week when he comes back from vacation.”

“I’m supposed to be traveling at the end of next week, can’t it be delayed?”

Politely but firmly, the dentist said, “I’d rather you didn’t.”

Annoyed, I shifted onto my side to observe him as he scribbled on my file. Who was he to think he could control me? I tried to gently dissuade him, but he was resolute. Over his shoulder I observed that he ticked the ‘urgent care’ box…

“Doctor, is there anything wrong? Does it really require urgent care?”

He finished and recapped his pen, smiling reassuringly. “It’s just to ensure you can travel as soon as possible.”

Thank God! All I had to do was wait…

*

By now you may have understood that emptiness of any kind makes me uncomfortable. I’d never come across a room emptier than this, filled with a silence that was more foreboding. Silently I thanked God I had never become a doctor. I couldn’t imagine spending more than eight hours a day in here.

The room was bereft of any details except for a couple of lone posters tacked vainly on the wall in an effort to liven it up. The posters did not succeed. The walls were vast and pale, and stubbornly silent. Not quite saying you were dead, or almost dead, but not reassuring you of your lifespan either. Confronting you with the fact that, sitting on the lone bed in the corner, you were now one of the hundreds of people who had passed through here unwilling, unwanted, and unmistakably afraid. The array of machines at either side of the bed inspired any feeling but comfort, instead a visible warning of the inevitability of disease.

The strangest thing about this room was that everyone standing outside hated the fact that they were here, and yet outside the door I could hear arguments going on regarding who was going to come in first, people who didn’t have an appointment whose desperation was evident in their voices. I hadn’t had to wait this time. Once the receptionist saw my file, with the Urgent Care box ticked, I was ushered in.

The doctor, called Hani, had asked me about my complaints without much ceremony, his eyes becoming riveted as I told him everything I knew. Hani took my file and began leafing through it, his features sharing the same cold concentration of any doctor. The first dentist had noted ‘Swollen ulcer’ alongside Urgent Care. Before he examined me, he started asking me questions – dozens of questions. When it had appeared, if I’d ever had fittings on my teeth, how many cigarettes I smoked a day and how long I had been smoking… The questions went into more delicate areas, as though he was interviewing me. Did I ever chew qat, a leafy drug? (“Of course not,” I answered, affronted.) Was I married? Where did I live? He carefully noted down my answers to these questions and dozens more in indecipherable handwriting, like an attentive student in class.

I became convinced that, alongside students, doctors are most like detectives.

He finally began my physical examination. He measured my heartbeat, blood pressure, and temperature. His examination wasn’t just of my tongue, but also inexplicably my neck and chest. I felt like a deaf person at a wedding. As he poked and prodded me with instruments I’d never seen before, boredom began creeping over me that was unpleasantly tinged with worry. As perfectly composed as the doctor’s face was, as doctors have to be, the concern in his eyes was unmistakable.

I asked him what was wrong; he answered evasively that he would have to take more tests.

Sitting at his desk, he wrote down the following: X-ray of the mouth, transsectional rays for the chest and throat, and finally a sample of the ulcer in my mouth that required hospitalization for a day.

“What’s all of this for?”

“Oh, just to make sure we cover all our bases…”

I didn’t believe a word he said. I knew what his expression meant, like someone who is sure of something and only needs evidence.

“We’ll do them as soon as possible, no delays. It’ll be two days to get it all done, and see the results.”

I had been planning to travel three days before the conference. Now I would have to delay my flight. Worry was beginning to steal over me, inexorably creeping, a worry I could not voice out loud…

When the two days passed it was impossible for me to sleep. My mind was whirring too much, and I preferred to stare at the ceiling rather than self-medicate myself into unaware slumber. Every day for the past two days my thoughts had been confused and jumbled, mornings spent in quiet concentration at work until midday, when my lunch break would be treated by my own head as an excuse to obsess once again over what had happened… But anything was better than the night, when there were no distractions to keep me from my concern over what might be happening to me.

When I finally knew what was going on, I realized that this concern had been much less than what was really deserved – and that my life was about to change, permanently…

The Fourth Hour

What do you choose?

When you are suspended in the air,

Through no choice of your own?

“I ’ll ask you one more time… What is this for?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Our dogs scented it, and they’ve been as well-trained as those in the American military. Don’t try to convince me that this is just an ordinary pill.”

“You’re smarter than you look, but not by much.”

The man in the white thobe was tired of his prisoner’s insolence. Getting to his feet without warning, he cuffed him across the face and the man fell to the ground, the chair clattering alongside him. His head hit the wall, and he slumped down in a faint.

*

The black marble dinner table, five meters long, doubled as a runway for Aunt Khadija’s culinary creations. This time she had turned her deft attention to Italian food, and mouthwatering dishes stretched as far as the table went on. No doubt each of them had been created with the freshest ingredients, to the highest standards. But Dareen was not tempted. The delectable scents of marinara sauce, oregano and melted mozzarella were useless to her careless nose. None of her senses were quite present, since her mind was preoccupied elsewhere – and all senses truly originate in the brain, do they not? – with him…

Aunt Khadija noticed none of this preoccupation, as Dareen had filled her plate and was poking at it listlessly. She was too busy telling stories of her heroic feats with the wives of other diplomats, and how her home was a palace compared to their humble abodes. This place was like her own personal palace, to which she dedicated much of her time and her husband’s money. The table barely stretched half the distance of this massive room, where she did most of her entertainment, where the walls were painted with delicate gold ornamentation. The massive dome above the room was also adorned with beautiful decorations, which she had designed herself (along with the minute help of the architect himself, of course).

These tales went in one ear and out the other for Dareen, whose thoughts were as far from her aunt’s exploits as they could be. One part of her brain had just begun to realize how very foolish she had been, crossing oceans for a man who had never said outright that he loved her, that he even cared for her. He had never even suggested it. It was all her own doing. Ever since she had met him, the thought that she would see him tomorrow had been enough to drug her, her eyes taking daily dosages and her mind occupied after work with dreaming about him. Weekends were like checking herself into rehab, attempting to take herself off the IV, but every new day at work was a fresh relapse.

Maybe all this – all her feelings, her every thought about him, every dream – was nothing more than the wretched symptoms of infatuation, but she knew she loved him, and she knew that her love was taking her day after day closer to madness. She had thought that she was the most reasonable and logical woman on the planet, and that love was the sole property of the insane. The malady had crept over her so subtly that she had not realized her own insanity until it was too late. When she did realize it, it had been enough for her to see him every day, until that accursed assistant of his had forced them apart.

She remembered the day she had seen him again. For some time she had been comforted by the thought that he would be gone soon anyway, on his trip to the place he had so badly wanted to visit. She wished she could have seen the speech that his eyes had lit up for. Until he did leave, though, she would have to bear with the difficulty of seeing him while not truly seeing him. Staying away from his office was not easy; it was like she had left her own heart there. She avoided it anyway. One day, she was forced to; she took the stairs up to his floor to drop something off at the office of another of her superiors, every shortening of distance like she was being reunited with what was beating inside her chest. Once she was done with what she came for, she couldn’t help taking a slight detour.

The sight of his assistant’s desk, empty and blessedly abandoned, had been enough to allow her to give into her impulse and take the familiar path to his door. The decision clicked with ease once she had made it; like what she had read about people who committed suicide, a well-marked trail and determination was all that was needed to take the plunge. What would she tell him? Anticipating his reaction to her was like anticipating death, worse than death itself. Maybe she really would end up a suicide, one of the innumerable victims of love, idiocy or both!

She shook off these morbid thoughts with difficulty. What would she tell him? How would she explain her coldness, her distance? She couldn’t tell him the truth; he would only hear the broken record of what seemed like her groundless aversion to his assistant. But had he even noticed her absence? Had he missed her? Avoiding him had been like avoiding the sanctuary of a warm shelter in the middle of a blizzard… and yet he had avoided her as well, as though he hadn’t noticed or didn’t even care.

As she came closer and closer she could hear her own breath in her ears, and feel the thumping of the vein at her temple. There was a mirror to the side of his office; her tense features told her she should wait and compose herself before entering, but she couldn’t wait much longer. The assistant might come back, and she couldn’t afford to tear herself away when she was so close. She stretched out her hand to bring the door open, and her turn of his doorknob was done with the decisiveness of a depressive reaching for her gun.

She had not entered his office for a long time, but that did not excuse the difference between the last time she had entered and the way it was now, more like a haunted house than a sanctuary. She was used to entering into the brightness of sunlight streaming through the windows. Now there were blinds closed over them, and she blinked several times before her eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, broken only by the light of a small lamp at his desk. The air was musty, like the room needed a good airing out, and foggy in a way that was explained by the cigarette butts left in ashtrays around the room. It looked like no one but the man who sat motionless at his desk had entered for several days.

As for him, he looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. She had seen him before at times when he was running on pure adrenaline after several sleepless nights, but she had never seen him like this. Then, his eyes would be ablaze with the heat of an unquenchable idea: now, his eyes scarcely flickered in recognition at her presence.

She asked the man she barely knew, “How are you?”

His eyes darted away. His reply was toneless. “Fine.”

Towering on either side of him were precariously teetering stacks of files and papers, strewn here and there on his customarily organized desk. He wasn’t the best dresser in the world, but he was usually neat and tidy. Today his clothes looked rumpled, as though he had slept in them and hadn’t changed.

Everything here was worrying. The man who had always returned her gaze with appreciation did not even lift his eyes. As much as she had been incensed at him, as hard as she’d tried to distance herself from him, he was still the person she cared the most for in the world. How could she even begin…?

Those memories took her from her aunt’s dinner table to the vast spread of life. Sometimes we are served dishes to our heart’s delight, and other times are confronted with what we cannot stand. She needed a few seconds to drift back down to where her aunt was looking at her inquiringly, asking why she hadn’t eaten anything on her plate.

“It’s all delicious, Auntie, thank you so much,” she said. “I tried a bite of everything, but you know my appetite.”

“But you’ve hardly eaten anything! How are you going to survive?”

I’ve survived on love long enough, she thought to herself.

Her cousin Amani came to her rescue. “Ever since we’ve known her she’s never changed how much she eats – she’s got the body of an adult but the appetite of a little kid,” she said playfully, poking her in the stomach.

Dareen smiled wanly. “Thank you, Auntie… I really have to get back to my hotel now,” she said.

“Why don’t you stay the night?” said Amani.

Dareen yawned. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be a really great sleepover. I’m dead tired.” To her cousin’s pout, she said, “But I’ll come right away tomorrow, and we can catch up then.”

“All right. You have to stay the whole day, though. And the night, too. We can watch a film! And we have a lot to talk about.”

It didn’t take long for Dareen to agree. She needed support from someone, anyone; she could tell her cousin everything without being afraid of the consequences. She needed someone to pass her tissues, to help her wrap bandages around her heart, to stem the bleeding that had gone on unabated for so long.

Back on the hotel room, she opened her laptop.

*

We can say what we like, do what we want, but we need to have Plan Bs – the more the better. Change in life is inevitable, and we must be prepared. But the biggest problem lies in when change occurs in a plan that was integral to your life, essential to your existence, and to what you live for. There’s nothing worse than having that change lead to a dead end, leaving you without much choice and with Plan Bs and Cs that you cannot implement – either because they are no longer viable, or because you simply do not have the time left to achieve them…

I soon discovered I was in a crisis of color, that my aversion to the color white was growing stronger and stronger with my every hospital visit, confronted with the blank pale walls. I was reacting to inanimate objects now, next on the list being hallways. For me, hallways could no longer be measured with meters or even kilometers; in a unique twist of the laws of physics, their distance was tied in an opposite relation to time.

And since my brain now has an equally unique method of measuring time, devouring me alive before I can reach my goal like a friend who’s stabbed me in the back, the hallway to the clinic stretches in front of me into infinity. Longer than last night, when once again I couldn’t sleep, and longer than all the waiting I’ve ever done before…

What could it be? That was the question that dogged me. Foreboding crept up more and more when, after doing the first round of tests, no answers had materialized. The test results, peppered with medical terms, meant nothing to me, and only led to more tests being ordered. I had tried to read the doctors’ handwriting upside down from across their desks, but none of them had decent penmanship. Asking them questions up-front would get only evasive answers.

I had despaired of attending the conference, which was enough to send me into depression. Now all I wanted to know was what was wrong with me.

At the moment, there were two doctors poring over the results of a test – I had already forgotten what it was for. Apparently just one was not enough anymore, no; my complex and complicated existence needed two people to explain it. The atmosphere became more and more clogged with tension. They muttered back and forth between themselves as I strained to hear. All I could catch were more specialist, scientific medical terms – dammit, I needed answers!

“Excuse me – could one of you please tell me what’s the matter?”

“Eh? When’s your next appointment with Dr. Hani?”

His avoidance of the question, along with a hardening of his features telling me that pressing him further would yield no results, helped neither of us. I wouldn’t give up so easily.

“I heard what you said just now. You told your friend that the situation was worrying.” The one set of normal words I had been able to pick up among all the other impossible-to-understand terms.

As the other doctor quickly excused himself, his face betrayed embarrassment; he muttered quickly, “I don’t have the authority to say anything. I might be wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

Questioning him further was useless. He finished setting me up for yet another X-ray of the mouth without saying another word. All I could do was search his face for answers. The screen spoke only in black and white. Apprehension was now a permanent feature of my bloodstream; I wouldn’t be surprised if they could measure it along with my white blood cells and platelets.

Finally, I was back with Dr. Hani, who looked through my test results with the guarded expression I had come to know so well. It seemed like my journey of tests and samples and X-rays was finally over… My night in the hospital had been the worst of all, and even my pill scarcely helped me get some sleep. It had only been a week, but it had been the worst week of my life. If my calculation of time was correct, the TEDx conference was going on right now.  At this exact moment, I would have been onstage instead of slumped in the chair at the doctor’s office, awaiting news that could only be devastating.

Minutes, hours, passed by before the doctor said anything. Did he even register my presence? He started with meaningless questions – it seemed the interviewing habit was hard to break. How had my experience been with the tests? Hopefully it hadn’t been too exhausting. These meaningless platitudes were answered with more meaningless platitudes on my part. They were the only things I could manage as I dripped with sweat, feeling as though that accursed ulcer on the side of my tongue was preventing any blood from getting to it, so much so that I could hardly speak.

As much as time had slowed over the past several days, my brain’s time measurement abilities were exceeding themselves once more. Now, time sped up. Time had finally gotten the better of me, and comprehension of it was beyond the scale of the brain that had abandoned me in my hour of need. I blinked my eyes and suddenly I was no longer in the doctor’s office. I was now at the hospital entrance, looking at my own reflection in the glass sliding doors, wondering which one of us was the real Hisham Al-Sayid.

I examined my warped features in the unclear reflection as though seeing them for the first time. I clamped my hand on my face and then my neck, skin slick with sweat, as though shaking myself awake from a nightmare where my features melted under my own touch. I couldn’t focus – I tried to focus. I stuck my tongue out at my reflection like a bully on a playground. There was the idiot who thought he could achieve what he wanted. I eyed my reflection like it was the last time I would ever see myself – at least, the way I looked now.

Everything was alien – the world outside, the people walking by bustling around the hospital lobby, the doors opening and closing while allowing me to catch a glimpse of the phantom that looked like me, but not quite; that was the strangest alien of all. My face seemed to have shifted. Either I had forgotten the way I looked, or my face had taken on the features of someone else, or the soul of someone else was looking out through my own eyes, or my own soul had been eroded into something unrecognizable.

I asked the apparition in front of me, “Which one of us owes the other, you or me? My body, or myself?”

I realized that people all around were looking at me strangely, at my pale face and unkempt hair; the way I had stuck out my tongue; the questions I was asking myself. Why would they wonder? Soon I would not be able to do even that. It was like I was seeing my tongue decay before my eyes. When do we truly appreciate things other than when we know that soon enough, we will no longer have them? Pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to talk – no wonder I was sticking it out. I had to have proof it was still there. Pretty soon I may not even be above the ground…

He’s wrong he’s wrong he’s wrong…

As I staggered away from my grinning reflection, unable to feel my feet anymore, my mind reverberated in denial. From behind, reaching me with an echo as though from within a cave, came the inquiry, “Are you all right, sir?”

I didn’t answer. The weight on my tongue, the weight on my shoulders kept me from reaching out to speak, to think. Everything around me seemed obscured by fog, and even the air wouldn’t deign to visit my lungs anymore. I imagined I could hear my mother’s voice – my own mother, my mother who had died! Was I about to join her? The paralysis in my limbs echoed the paralysis of my mind. I could see the shocked glances of others around me, looking at me like I was insane. Maybe I was. I didn’t care.

I cared nothing about their presence until the pressure increased from my head to just behind my eyes – liquid pressurizing my eyelids and threatening to come out in the form of tears. That I could not accept. I could go crazy in full sight of anyone, but I wouldn’t cry in front of them. My senses woke up, my brain kicked itself into action, into control of my limbs again. I aimed for the doors as quickly as I could, teetering on my own feet. Someone caught my elbow, trying to help, and I pushed him away with all my strength instead of thanking him. Nothing was making sense now – why should my own conduct make any sense?

I clung onto anything that would support me like a drowning man, making my way through the parking lot until by some miracle I reached my car. I had scarcely remembered where it was. The car keys seemed to weigh multiple tons, and I had to grasp them with both trembling hands.

I threw myself down on the leather seat, finally letting myself go. The dizziness had left me breathing shallowly. I slumped forward on the steering wheel as I took in a deep sigh of relief. I had only been able to feel emptiness all around me, and within me. The steering wheel was now reassuringly solid under my forehead.

I stayed in that position for hours, taking deep breaths to try to calm down and disperse the thickening fog in my thoughts and before my eyes. The fog blocked out everything in my head but the doctor’s words… the words I had pressed him to say… if only he’d never spoken!

I began heaving with sobs, my tears falling as they had never fallen before, except at the death of my mother.

Time skipped forward yet again, and I was now quite calm, straight-backed and on autopilot. My hands and feet moved on their own accord, taking the car forward through the streets to no purpose. Whenever I passed by a place my brain would play back any memories associated with it, like the funeral march of a final hurrah. As though, to my city, I was saying goodbye.

When death knocks at your door, you think of all the times it passed you over for someone else. I found myself at a neighborhood called ‘Ghaleel’, and thought of the last time I had seen Uncle Ahmad, five years ago. (The title of ‘uncle’ was given to him not because he had any blood ties with me, but out of respect, as is customary in Arab societies.) He had served me coffee, as we had both grown accustomed to; he had been at the company for a decade and a half. His presence was a natural part of the office; true, he was past fifty but he was in good health. I expected him to continue to play his part for many years to come.

Our conversation was not a long one. I remembered what time of year it had been. The celebration of Eid was coming up soon, so I asked him offhandedly, part of the small talk we bandy about without thinking:

“Are you going out to get things for Eid soon? There’s not much time…”

“My boy, I don’t need to go shopping for Eid. New clothes and extravagance is nothing more than what people use to make themselves imagine they are happy. Eid, for me, is being with my children. They’re seven of the best gifts of all. God has made me wealthy through my children, and I don’t need anything else. They are where I get my happiness.”

I smiled at this touching display of love, but he was quite serious.

“Did you know that that my son is halfway through his university degree, studying science, and that I’ll be attending his graduation soon? So which do you think is the real Eid for me?”

“Congratulations. I pray you’ll have six more Eids from your kids, and may they last you the rest of your life.”

He inclined his head with a smile. My prayers went unanswered. At his funeral no one stood of his children, or his father, or his brother. They had all passed away at the same time. He himself had died on his way home as the floodwaters overtook his car. He tried to get out, but the water was up to his chest. There was no one to help as he surrendered to the treacherous waters, and died on a bed of rainwater with no roof but the sky. Most of his family met the same fate; some of them, to this day, were never found.

I remembered his gentle smile and impassioned words, and his memory remained an inspiration for me. At that time, when the floods of Jeddah had happened – brought on by nothing more than rain! – and after I learned of his death, I had joined the volunteers who tried to help the affected in this area of Ghaleel. Those who we saved had been determined not to let the floodwaters steal away their lives; they had already lost everything else. They had all chosen to live – they were too stubborn to let death overtake them, and they would fight until their last breath. So would I…

My absence from work for vacation had been converted into sick leave, so I hadn’t been there for a week. I called up Tariq anyway.

“What are you doing? Where are you?” I demanded.

His voice sounded groggy – it was late at night, after all. “At home, do you need anything?”

“Just letting you know I’ll be back at the office tomorrow.”

“Are you all right? What did the doctor say?”

“I need all the files for the past week available on my desk.”

“All right, but what did the doctor say?”

“I’m fine. See you tomorrow.”

I clicked off smartly, my thoughts wandering. Work was really the last thing on my mind, but it was the one thing I could trust to occupy me from anything unpleasant. Work could keep me on track, keep me moving, and momentum was what I needed right now. Never mind my sick leave – if the doctor was right, I should save my sick leave for when I really needed it, soon… but what if the doctor had made a mistake? What if I had been right, telling Tariq I was fine? Many of my self-help books had emphasized the fact that you create your own reality. Maybe I should totally ignore the doctor and continue with my life, and my body would soon realize that everything was fine…

I needed a second opinion anyway. Maybe Dr. Hani didn’t have much experience. I shouldn’t have taken him at his word. All the X-rays and tests and samples could have been misread. The doctors must be mistaken. Not me… not me…

Back at the company, I didn’t leave for days. There wasn’t really all that much to do, as I’d cleared up my projects anticipating I would be gone. I sent Tariq home and did his work instead. For a few days that was all I did: working in the mornings, sleeping on my uncomfortable office couch only when exhaustion had forced my eyes shut. Trying my hardest to avoid empty stretches of time, for that was when my mind would creep up on me. The paralyzing thoughts of decay and ruin would take me further away from my dream than I had ever been. Even if I managed to avoid these thoughts, I could not escape the nightmares that had started to plague my sleep, night after night. These nightmares were not simply fevered imaginings of an infected brain, but heightened memories I would rather forget. Their effect was amplified in every way by the dread of knowing what was going to come next, without having any of the power to stop it…

“Many organs of the body, Hisham,” came Dr. Hani’s carefully modulated voice, “are covered in cells called ‘squamous cells’, such as the skin and most of the organs of our digestive track like the tongue, the bladder, the lungs and other organs. Of course, their exact appearance and number of layers depends on their function. In the kidneys, for example, these cells are confined to the surface and are made up of just one level, in order to act like a sieve filtering waste out of the blood until the waste can be expelled from the body. That’s how it is with our lungs. As for those covering the bladder, they are in several layers in order to expand and contract with urine.

“It so happens sometimes that one of these cells loses the ability to divide itself properly, and begins to produce a number of new cells whose division has occurred without control. Simply, this is cancer. The causes of cancer range between genetic causes, lifestyle causes, and causes in the environment. In your case, for example, smoking is a significant cause of the kind of cancer that has struck you – that is, cancer of the tongue. This kind of cancer is considered very savage, and it spreads like wildfire devouring farmland… In you, it has spread across the entire left side of your tongue, some of your lymph nodes, and a portion of your lower jaw.”

When morning came I would open my eyes, having to remind myself that though death surrounded me even now, I was not dead yet…

There was no clear direction to my thoughts, and this was not something I was used to. I had always been driven, directed by an inner passion, a motivation that was self-fueled and seemingly indestructible. All that was gone now, as though where there had once been train tracks leading me to a certain destination I could find only, barely, their traces, growing weaker with every day that passed. Emptiness stretched out ahead of me at all sides. Certainty and clarity were things I thrived on, but these were no longer elements of my existence. There were no more defined variables; I knew nothing at all. The empty space enveloped my future, my life, and every aspect of who I was until everything became unknown.

I didn’t tell anyone about what was going on, of course, although Tariq tried to get it out of me. He could sense something was wrong. I limited my interactions with him to orders and requests, becoming colder and more domineering with him at the same time.

I’ve read stories about dystopian futuristic worlds where people give themselves entirely up to their nightly dreams, their bodies wasting away while enjoying the countless fantasy worlds their mind, enhanced by machines or drugs, concocts behind their eyelids. Inevitably, they die – yet they may have lived a more fulfilling life than anything their ‘real’ existence could have offered them. Who would willingly give up their dreams without having the prospect of anything similar ever materializing in reality? Those stories are, necessarily, fiction; I hate to think what would happen in the real world if anything like that ever became a possibility. Yet I could see myself doing the same thing: accepting my place among the dead once I despaired of ever fulfilling my dream.

Obsessively, my mind returned to the one thing it clung to: the doctor must be wrong! There must be something that can be done. The headlines are rife with tales of medical error, it would perfectly commonplace for the incompetent hospital to switch around my tests with some other unfortunate soul’s, for the ill-trained doctor to mistake the results for something they weren’t, for any of a thousand things to happen that would make my diagnosis something I didn’t have to believe…

My head spun with the possibilities I wished would be true. Behind me, a knock on the door and a question:

“Hello, could you give some of the new employees a workshop? Just for a couple of hours sometime next week” –

“Are you kidding? Looking like this?” I could see that wasn’t a convincing excuse and hastily added, “I’m swamped. Very busy, sorry. Try Jameel, two doors down.”

I knew they wanted me to give a specific workshop whose details I had honed myself, which was very popular with new employees. But I just couldn’t do it right now…

I got back to work with renewed concentration, only to have it shattered to bits when the one person I was incapable of seeing right now entered the room, without much ceremony. To my heart, it was like she had entered with all the trumpets and fanfare of a city parade – and then brought it to a screeching stop.

Dareen.

For a moment I forgot everything, feeling only the simple happiness of a child at seeing someone long-missed. But then I saw her glance worriedly over the decrepitude of my office. I remembered how she had abandoned me without warning, callous and uncaring to all my attempts at mollifying her. As she turned to me, I hardened my heart towards her. She’d see that I could be just as callous and uncaring as she was.

We started off with meaningless pleasantries, and she bit her lip, hesitating before she continued.

“How was Bologna?” she asked.

An ironic smile twisted my lip. “I wish I knew,” I replied.

“Didn’t you just come back from there?”

“I never went.”

Astonishment too genuine to be faked spread across her face. Good. News of my illness – or what appeared to be my illness – had not spread across the company yet. Tariq still had my back.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” I got to my feet, stretched and shrugged.

She frowned. “I don’t know… Did something happen?”

I started taking some meandering steps around the room. “You could say that.”

“Hisham, what’s wrong?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“Dammit, Hisham, I didn’t come in here to play guessing games! I thought” –

She cut herself off forcibly, curtailing her raised voice. When she next spoke her tone was more level. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, that’s all.”

“Right.”

I left it to hang in the air, an unvoiced accusation. She was clearly uncomfortable, and attempted to shrug it off with a slight laugh.

“Quite a while… Several weeks, really.”

“Indeed. So enlighten me, Dareen,” I said sharply. “What exactly were you thinking, coming in after all these weeks? Did you think I was going to get down on the floor and kiss the hem of your skirt, marveling at your presence?”

“I was upset with you.”

“And I apologized!”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t that…”

“Then what was it?”

She sighed. “I can’t tell you.”

“What?”

“I cannot tell you, and believe me I would if I could. But these past several weeks… It wasn’t my choice. Yeah, for a while I was angry at you for yelling at me. But I was going to accept your apology – and then something happened that made me… unable to.”

“What was it? Something else I did?” My tone made it clear how preposterous a suggestion this would be.

“No. Nothing to do with you. This is entirely external – but I couldn’t come and tell you about it. I had to avoid you. It was out of my hands.”

I snorted. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I swear I couldn’t come to you. Why don’t you believe me? Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know, Dareen, why would you lie?”

“I wouldn’t.”

I sat back down, the fatigue returning to my limbs all of a sudden. The anger that had sustained me since she had come in suddenly vanished. Now I was only tired.

Her voice was soft. “Tell me what’s wrong, Hisham.”

I put my head in my hands, unable to look at her. “Everything.”

She sounded closer, now. Like she’d stepped around my desk and was standing over my shoulder. “Tell me.”

“I’m sick.”

“Sick, how?”

I steadied myself to look up at her. “I have cancer, Dareen.”

She blinked in momentary confusion, and then her eyes grew wide. “Cancer?”

“Yes. Cancer of the tongue. Or at least that’s what the doctors tell me…”

“When did you find out?”

“Just a couple of days ago.”

I slumped down once more to look away from the utter shock on her face. “I’m still planning on getting a second opinion,” I added weakly.

But even as I said it, I knew I had only been trying to avoid reality. I could feel that ulcer on the side of my tongue my every waking moment, and some of my sleeping moments as well. It wasn’t going anywhere.

“Oh my God, Hisham… I’m so sorry.” The lightest of touches came on my shoulder, and went. It was like when my mother would comfort me. I felt the first peace I had felt in what seemed like weeks.

“Thank you,” I said, equally softly.

A few moments passed. She was back at the other side of the desk now. She began mirroring my movements a moment ago, pacing.

“Hisham, you need to research this… You have to fight it. You’re overwhelmed now, and no wonder, but you need to start focusing.” She turned, reached for a pen and notepaper among the stacks on my desk and placed them in front of me. “Make a to-do list.”

“Well, I’m seeing my doctor tomorrow. He’ll tell me about all the treatment possibilities.”

“Good.” She nodded, her face hard in determination. “You’ll get treated here?”

“Well, I wasn’t considering anywhere else.”

“You should go abroad. You need the best treatment at the best hospitals, and I’m not sure you can guarantee that here.”

“I wanted…” I cleared my throat. “I wanted to stay at work.”

Realization washed over her face. “I understand. But I think – and I think your doctor will agree – that you need to start focusing on your treatment now. I’ll help you research it. We’ll work together. You’ll overcome this. Then you’ll come back to work, once you’re healed.”

She sounded more enthusiastic about getting me healed than I was. I knew that set of her jaw, when she was determined to get something done. It was like she had just learned of a new project of hers, and was vowing to implement it until the end. It was touching. Yet I wouldn’t expect anything else from her.

“I’ll see what the doctor says,” I allowed. “I’ll see out the end of this week here, at least.”

“All right. I’ll be back in the next few days, then, to hear about how your doctor’s appointment went. You don’t mind, do you?” she said suddenly, turning as though she had just thought of the prospect. “I don’t want to be butting in.”

I shook my head. “Not at all. I appreciate that you want to help me.”

“Least I can do,” she responded.

“Thanks for this, by the way.” I reached for the crystal figurine behind my desk and turning it over in my hands.

“Oh. You received it.” There was a hint of satisfaction in her voice she couldn’t mask.

“Yes, I did. It’s beautiful… and it’s the closest I’ll ever get there,” I said with a touch of bitterness.

“You’ll get there. One day, you’ll get there.” She hesitated, and added, just before she left: “In shaa Allah.” God willing. Yes, God willing, if I was still alive.

Dareen’s presence was like a dynamo, an engine that had set me to work, jolted me awake. I had to start arranging things. Briskly, I reached for the pen and uncapped it, starting to write. I had to ask about sick leave – my God, what did people do when they had cancer? – seeing about arrangements for work, start looking into alternate treatment methods…

My writing came to a rattling stop when I came to realize what I was doing, and the fog came over my brain once more. I dropped the pen, staring down at it. The sharpness in my head dulled as I realized I was about to give up my entire life. My destiny was darker than the ink of this pen, and I was just as finite as its last drop.

I reached for the paper, tore it off the notepad and crumpled it into a ball, throwing it in the trash. The sickening thought crossed my mind that I might be gone before that trash can was emptied. On the clean pristine white I wrote one sentence. And another. And another. And another, all in straight lines. When the page ran out I started another column, until the whole page was filled. Then I turned the page and started again…

I wrote what was in my head. I might say that the process of beginning these recordings started then, with writing. Talking to paper has always come more easily to me than talking to humans; it doesn’t judge as readily. On the page, you are presented to yourself in the most transparent way possible. Ever since then I have been writing down the details of every day I live – first on paper, then electronically, now this. I’m sure a psychologist would say it was a defense mechanism, preserving my self and my thoughts on paper as a desperate, last-ditch attempt to prolong my own lifespan. Whatever the explanation is, it comforted me.

Dareen knew I liked making notes to myself whenever I needed to remind myself of something – an appointment, a thought-provoking quote, anything – but she didn’t know that what I was writing was my destiny. This was one truth I didn’t have to remind myself of. It was a truth that was always at the back of my mind. Something I could never forget, even if I wanted to. Three words, over and over.

My dream is dead.

The Fifth Hour

I’m falling…

Without a parachute,

Without dreams

Has that ever happened to you?

T he prisoner was still sprawled on the floor, unconscious. The man in the white thobe headed towards the door, and motioned for one of the guards standing outside the door to enter alongside him. Silently, they approached the prisoner and sat him back down on the chair. Tying his hands behind him, his feet to the legs of the chair as his head lolled. Then they waited: the guard at his back, the other at his front.

The prisoner came to, his mouth open, spit dribbling down his shirt. The guard quickly directed his head upwards, forcing his mouth open still wider and clamping down on his nose. In surprise the prisoner started making wordless protests from the back of his throat that became more panicked as he saw what the man in the white thobe had in his hand as he advanced towards him.

Pill in one hand, glass of water in the other, he dropped it down the prisoner’s throat and followed it with the water. The prisoner began to gag; he had no choice but to swallow or choke, or stop breathing. With his nasal airway blocked, he’d die in seconds without breathing out of his mouth. It was a diabolical idea that could only occur only to a heart without mercy.

The prisoner swallowed, in spite of himself. Then it happened again. And again. They forced down several pills, and with each he struggled and struggled but to no avail. Finally the man in the thobe motioned with a hand. After a few seconds of additional pressure, the guard left off. Lunging forward, the prisoner coughed and spluttered, gasping for air. Attempting to speak, no sound emerged from his throat. The man in the white thobe gave no reaction but lit a cigarette.

“Oh, no need to talk anymore. We don’t need to know anything from you. We’ll just sit and watch.”

He smiled at the horror in the other man’s eyes. “Remember, you chose this.”

*

She woke up several times through the night, her pillow soaked with tears. She remembered crying herself to sleep. It was a combination of the physical exhaustion of travel, the emotional devastation of a search that wouldn’t seem to end, and the cold December weather that – while still above fifteen degrees – compared to what she was used to, chilled her to the very bone. She checked her phone; there was nothing from him. She went down to the hospital, and the receptionist who had given her the USB was not there. Tired of the constant letdowns, she headed towards her cousin’s house. Maybe this day with Amani would cheer her up.

Amani did her best. They spent the day touring all of her favorite places to go, that she wanted to share with her cousin; they visited a restaurant, had a delicious lunch, then ate ice cream while walking through a park… Dinner was back at the house, yet another enormous spread from Aunt Khadija, and then they went back to Amani’s room.

First they had to select a film from her enormous library, categorized according to genre. She was studying to be a director, and so this was a very serious thing for her. Dareen categorically refused any film that was a comedy, action or classic, so the one option left was drama. Otherwise, she left it up to Amani, who took on the challenge determinedly.

While drama was one of the smaller categories of her collection, there were still about 500 titles, organized by release date. She considered several films – The Godfather, A Perfect World, Dead Man Walking, Guilty by Suspicion – but in the end none of them really seemed to suit her cousin’s emotional state.

Getting to the year 2006, she reached one called The Fountain which did not have any of her notes scribbled on the side – which meant she’d never seen it. She snatched it out of her CD case, taking it as a personal affront that there would be something in her collection she was still unaware of.

“Come on, let’s watch this.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen it.”

Dareen examined it. “It looks like a love story. I’m tired of love stories.”

“Come on! You’re the one who said you wanted a drama, and after my exhaustive search ends in this you’re going to make me go through everything again?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t even watch a film. I’m tired…”

“Oh, really? So what else are you going to do until tomorrow, cry? You’re my mother’s prisoner, you know,” added Amani wickedly, “she’s preparing another one of her feasts for breakfast for you.”

Dareen groaned. “God, it’s just… Nothing is working out the way I wanted it to. I went to the hospital earlier today, and they still won’t tell me where he is since I’m not his relative.” She hadn’t told Amani about the USB, guessing that she would be a bit too curious about the recordings. He had seemed to intend them for her ears alone, and she’d respected his privacy.

“Still obsessing about him?”

“Amani, you don’t understand… You don’t understand what it means to have someone crash into your life and shift your perspective so suddenly, it’s like half the things you cared about don’t even matter anymore. When constantly, constantly at the back of your head you’re just thinking about him, and you feel like everything you do is indirectly connected to him. Like everything logical in your head towards him is just gone completely. You thought you knew the way your life was going, the way your career was going… but it’s all meaningless without him. It’s like you’re a kid again, imagining some hero in a cartoon defending the helpless – or like a teenager daydreaming about a knight in shining armor – or even an old woman looking back at when you truly tasted happiness…”

Her voice trailed off and Amani looked at her a few moments, nonplussed.

Then she waved the DVD cover in her face. “Let Hugh Jackman distract you from him.”

“Nothing can distract me from him.”

Amani sighed, done joking. “Listen. Have you ever thought that your feelings for him might not be love, but maybe that you just pity him? After everything that’s happened to him, it wouldn’t be a surprise for you to confuse those feelings with love… Could you?”

“I love him, Amani! It’s not like what you think – and I don’t care what you think anyway.”

“Since when have you been so impulsive? Since when have you lost your mind and started panting after someone who probably isn’t even thinking about you? He’s got cancer, for heaven’s sake!”

Dareen turned away angrily. “You don’t have to help me.”

“Try to understand,” said Amani. “I would help you all the way to Mars, but please – just watch out for yourself. Watch out for your own dignity, your heart. What are you going to do when you find him? What are you going to say? ‘I know you didn’t reply to any of my messages, and you never even once admitted, not even indirectly, that you liked me’ – much less loved me! – ‘but I’m still here for you’, is that your grand speech?”

She couldn’t tell her about the note he’d left her on the USB, which was as direct a confession of his feelings as he’d given her.

So she said stubbornly, “Something like that, yes.”

“What if there was someone else? Have you ever thought about that? Is he even looking for a relationship right now? He’s hardly in a position to consider marriage, he’s fighting for his life! And let me answer that for you, no you haven’t. Because you don’t want to, and you’d refuse to recognize that if you saw it right in front of your face. I won’t ask you if you’ve noticed anything because you’d just lie, anyway…”

“Stop! Enough! If you don’t stop I’ll get out of here and go back to my hotel. Tell your mom I didn’t feel well.”

“No, no, no – come back,” she dragged an indignant Dareen back to the bed and sat her down. “I won’t say anything, I promise. Not a word. Let’s just watch the film, and you can forget about all this for a while.”

What Amani didn’t know was that this film would not only remind Dareen of her situation, it would do the equivalent of pouring vinegar, and then salt with a dash of lemon, into her wound. But through the pain, Dareen was utterly mesmerized.

The film tells three stories at once. The first, and most important, is about a man who refuses to believe that his cancer-stricken wife is going to die. He decides to invent a cure for her somehow… although his wife, on the other hand, has come to terms with it, reaching the conclusion that death can only be the beginning of a new life. While preparing for an experimental surgery, the husband loses his wedding ring. The wife is overcome with jealousy and hurt, thinking that he must be having an affair with someone else, awaiting her death so he could live with her.

Dareen couldn’t hold back her tears, but wiped them away to continue…

The wife comes to know the story of a dying star, ‘Shabalba’, which was going to explode soon into the birth of a new star. And she learns from an Indian shaman that when a tree is planted over someone’s grave, whoever is within becomes a part of the tree – its roots, branches, leaves, fruits – and thus the dead remain ever-living.

In the second story, the hero looks for a tree whose roots give the elixir of eternal life – but when he finds and drinks it, his body begins to grow flowers until he himself dies. We can spend our lives searching for any number of explanations for death…

Dareen wondered, isn’t the most peaceful option to believe in a return to God after a journey of yearning?

The final story was the strangest, as the hero begins remembering all his memories of his beloved wife…

Once the film was over, Amani gave an excited commentary from a filmmaker’s perspective on the technical aspects of the film – the acting, the CGI, the editing – while Dareen remained quiet, pondering over it. She stayed awake, staring into the darkness, as Amani dropped off to sleep. There was nothing else to do but listen to her heart, and watch the next video.

*

After the soul has left the body, nothing is of much importance. Nothing I wore mattered, nothing I ate or drank. It would all turn to ash in the end, and I would be buried in white in the bed of earth that was my grave, under the roof of wispy cotton that was the sky. It was a sky I had aspired to reach, guided by my dream – now I was floating up to it on my own accord. It was a strange feeling, as though sinking upwards, everything below me falling beyond reach.

I had been weighted down by countless concerns, but here I was gliding with ease and lightness, almost as transparent as the fog I undulated through. A beautiful breeze caressed my entire body. I no longer felt worried or afraid. Looking at where I had been on earth I could see only a spot of dirt. People had been gathered around it, and now they were leaving. I knew most of them down there, but I wasn’t too sorry to see them go… I knew that it was time.

On earth, I had been paralyzed within my own skin, weighing it down and being weighed down, but now I was in a new kind of body that took easily to flight, the heaviest thing in it being air. For a while I soared through the clouds, without any care in the world… There was another figure alongside me in the clouds, and I looked closely – it was my mother! I’d never seen her so beautiful, flying in and out of the beautiful wisps. I heard her dear voice in my ear:

“Why did you let your heart’s lights go out? You’re the only one who holds the key to it… You’re the only one who preferred the darkness…”

Just as suddenly as I had caught sight of her, she disappeared. And then I noticed something strange. I could feel something in my mouth – in the mouth I had thought was purified, elevated in this new body of mine. It was the ulcer, the detestable swelling on the side of my tongue. As I felt it, all my fear flooded back and heightened into panic. It was lie, it was all a lie – this was no new body, it was a trick, a mistake.

I began falling at an insane speed, my body betraying me once more. All my pleasant feelings were replaced by pain, endless pain. Inside my mouth could feel the swelling growing bigger, and bigger, and still bigger – doubling then tripling then quadrupling its size until my tongue was finally torn off entirely with the massive weight of it all. I screamed. I was hurtling towards the ground faster and faster. I could see my grave opening up once more, ready to engulf me, choking me in dirt… I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the end…

On a bed sopping with sweat, and to the sound of my own screaming, I woke up.

In Arabic, a human is called ‘al-insan’, coming from the root word ‘nasi’, or ‘to forget’ – because by definition, a human being is forgetful! True as that may be, it did not apply to me anymore. By that definition, I was no longer human. The entire world seemed to conspire to keep me always from forgetting any element of my torturous state. Nightmares plague my sleep to awaken me in panic; living nightmares attack me without warning during the day, never leaving me alone…

Even worse were the looks I got from others. Today would be my last day at work, although I was inclined to continue working just to keep myself distracted. I had arranged for my sick leave – and the news had spread like wildfire. Pitying glances were aimed at me like darts from every direction, except from Tariq and Dareen. They were looks of conciliatory farewell, as though expecting me to drop dead right then and there in front of them.

The news from the doctor had not been good.

“What’s the survival rate?” I asked, expecting to start with something positive.

“Around fifty percent,” he replied. Hardly the encouragement I had been looking for.

Still, I pressed on. “I found this article in the newspaper the other day.” It was a piece about an experimental new treatment for tongue cancer being done in Texas. “They said they’ve been able to bring it into remission without the standard invasive treatment.” I was yet to know just how invasive it would be. “Is there any chance I could also follow this treatment?”

I handed him the article and he looked over it. “Yes, I’ve heard of this. It’s only available in the US, though.”

“I have no problem traveling.”

“No doubt. The problem is, though, that there are very narrow parameters for this experimental treatment’s effectiveness – and your form of cancer doesn’t fit, from what I’ve seen so far. It works only on about 0.5% of patients. I wouldn’t risk going all the way over there for a 0.5% chance.”

I nodded slowly, my businessman’s mind absorbing the overwhelming odds. It was only realistic. “All right, then. What’s the standard treatment like?”

“Generally, after placing you on a course of preoperational drugs, the cancer-struck part of your tongue will be removed – along with some that’s seemingly uninfected, since we don’t want to risk undetected cancer cells from continuing to spread. We might have to remove the left side of your tongue completely.”

“Half of my tongue?”

“Yes, if not more.”

I sat there, staggered. “What about eating, and speaking?”

“At first, you’ll face issues speaking, and you’ll have to be provided with nutrition through a tube through your nose until your tongue heals. Normally, patients can expect to return to being able to eat without the tube soon enough.”

“And speaking?”

“With therapy, odds are that you would be able to regain your speaking abilities somewhat legibly, like most.”

“Like most? What about the rest? Do they end up speaking normally again?”

“Hopefully you’ll be one of the majority in this case. It also depends on what you define ‘normal’ as. Sometimes there remains an impediment, whether severe or slight; it differs from person to person, so I can’t tell you for sure.”

“So after therapy, I could get back to speaking as clearly as I’m talking to you now? I mean, Doctor, this is my job…”

“I have to be honest with you – I’ve never encountered reports of any patients who have managed to retrain themselves to speak exactly the way they did before. But there’s always hope, and you needn’t be afraid – often they are quite understandable!”

But ‘understandable’ wasn’t enough for me, and this was only the first of the shocking news the doctor imparted.

“We’re also going to remove your lymph nodes… and your lower jaw.”

“How can anyone live without a jaw?”

“Oh, it’s perfectly possible. In your case,” he studied my files with a frown, “we would probably have to remove most of the left side of your jaw. If not remove it in its entirety. After that” –

“But it’s replaced by an artificial jaw, right?”

“There are options for surgical enhancement – where a portion of one of the bones in your leg is crafted to resemble a jaw, and then placed there – but that kind of surgery can’t take place for at least two years, maybe three.”

“And before then?”

“Well, you simply would not have a jaw. Or – the left side of your jaw.”

His self-correction was not comforting.

“And my teeth?”

“Well, they will also be removed, of course – along with your jaw.”

“What would I look like?”

The doctor pursed his lips, the first disruption of his placid countenance so far.

“Well, not your best – but you’d get used to it, with time. I suggest you search for stories of others who have had to deal with your situation, and how they’ve been able to adapt to their new lives and appearances. And of course, throughout your treatment here there would be a psychologist providing you with support, to ensure you safely get through this stage…”

I shook my head in disbelief. “What are you saying?”

“There’s one more thing.”

“Please, don’t tell me there will be more disfigurement.”

“After the operation where any tumors are removed, you’ll be treated with chemotherapy, which has some side effects… To ensure that the cancerous growth within you is gone entirely, Mr. Hisham.”

I gasped upon hearing the words ‘cancerous growth’, ‘tumors’ and my own name in the same sentence; it was like a slap in the face, as though I was hearing it for the first time. I looked right in his eyes, unwilling to believe it, waiting to see a lie or a joke in his eyes – but there was nothing, just his damned calm countenance staring back at me coolly.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I got to my feet with suddenness he seemed to be unprepared for, and I saw a jolt of surprise in his eyes that only gave me satisfaction. He didn’t know what to expect. Normally I was a quiet, calm person – but lately it was as though my temper was always teetering precariously on some edge, and any movement could send it off. I started shouting at him, swearing, accusing him of lying.

But after that first moment of being unnerved he regained his composure. I thought later that this might not be the first time he was on the receiving end of such abuse; he knew what to expect. He waited for me to realize that nothing I said mattered. I had been struck by cancer; there was nothing I could do about it. He merely sat there, waiting for my energy to run out, and soon enough it did. I slumped down in my chair, too drained to cry, too embarrassed to say anything but a quick mumbled apology before I left the room.

There had to be some other way. I couldn’t go through what the doctor suggested – that was impossible. Better to die than to live like some disfigured animal. My entire life, I had depended upon myself to adapt to situations that seemed untenable: to seek a way out where there seemed to be none. I had to get a Plan B, and what Tariq suggested served exactly that.

I started going to different sheikhs who claimed to have healing powers. They would read garbled versions of the Quran, reading nothing that could be found in the Prophet’s traditions but what I feared was something their own imaginations came up with… It was an unending labyrinth over a whirlwind several days that, later, all seemed to blur together.

I visited sheikh after sheikh in hierarchies that reminded me of what I had read about Masonic temples. You had to start at a lower level and then gradually make your way to the top, or else you wouldn’t be healed. Every level had its own value; and with each rise in value came demands for more and more cash. According to Tariq, some women would even pay in gold and jewels. Their waiting rooms were packed with ‘patients’, whether looking for healing or for more sinister requests: to turn a man from his wife, to cast disease upon someone, or even death …

To this day, I don’t understand how I managed to lose my mind and go voluntarily to those places, but I was desperate. Tariq helped me; it seemed that this was the only way he knew how.

I remember once we were met at the door by a sheikh’s ‘secretary’, who demanded ten thousand Saudi riyals before I could enter into his presence – as an advance. “The rest will be due afterwards.”

What could I do? I paid him. I entered the smoky, incense-choked dark little room, walls painted black and hung here and there with animal skins. A camel’s head was in pride of place at center. The sheikh sat on a grand throne engraved with what looked like Arabic letters – but I couldn’t make out any of the words.

He did not reply to my “Al-salamu alaikum.” “Before you sit down,” he said, “did you pay my manager?”

I replied, “Yes.”

He nodded, satisfied. “Before we start – I have one condition. Do not go to anyone else but me, and do not get treated anywhere else. Otherwise… they’ll get angry.”

I had no idea who ‘they’ could be, and to be honest I didn’t care. “Not even in a hospital? What are your reasons?”

“If you believe in the One who heals, He gave me his reasons…”

I was surprised, but didn’t bother arguing with him. It wasn’t like I had to listen to him anyway. I agreed, telling him I wouldn’t go anywhere else – and he began to chant…

The more I listened, the greater my fear grew. This was like nothing I had heard before – no language, no form of human speech sounded this way. I knew the language of the Quran and understood it, and I could distinguish the Prophet’s traditions as well. What this ‘sheikh’ was babbling could not be farther from that if he tried. I wanted to stop him, but he couldn’t see me – his eyes were rolled back in his head. I looked over at Tariq, motioning with my head for us to leave, but he gestured for me to be quiet – so I sat back for a moment.

Sweat began dripping down my back. Pure fear entered my heart. I could hardly breathe through the choking smoke. The darkness all around grew more and more foreboding; I couldn’t stay here any longer. I realized the truth, all of a sudden – this man was not a pious ‘sheikh’, he was a magician! How could I have allowed myself to come to a place like this? Where was my faith? Where was my mind? I had to get out of here – this place where only the devil could reside. Even if I was going to die soon, better to die a natural death than to be saved by this corrupted, rotten semblance of a healer.

I got to my feet abruptly. The sheikh had begun to spin around me, and I was tempted to trip him over his own cloak and run. Still, I steadied myself to poke him in the shoulder; he stopped, affronted at the breaking of his trance.

“I’m so sorry, sheikh,” I said, “I think I’ve gotten very tired – it’s always this way the first time, isn’t it?”

He watched me a few seconds, and I could feel my lungs straining for air.

“Very well,” he said. “You must be struck by a very powerful evil eye. Go and arrange for a second appointment.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. We left that stuffy little room and never turned back.

On the way back to drop Tariq off at his house, I didn’t say another word. I thought he’d understood how shocked I was until he said, “Why didn’t you wait a bit?”

I exploded at him; I didn’t even know I was so angry myself. “That wasn’t a sheikh! That wasn’t Quran, or hadith, it was something – something devilish, that was a magician! He’s not going to heal me, he’s just going to make me worse!”

He shrugged. “Maybe it really was the power of the evil eye that was placed on you, like he said.”

“Just shut up. Please.”

“I know a lot of people who’ve been to him and gotten better as a result.”

“Over my dead body!”

“So what are you going to do?”

“If death is the only other option, so be it.”

Death, after all, was not the worst of all the options afforded me. That honor went to the doctor’s brilliant solution of becoming a freak whose words would be slurred for the rest of my life. I remembered what the doctor had said, word for word, moment by moment. Don’t even cancer sufferers deserve some semblance of peace to live out whatever was left of their lives? It’s the least that can be granted by a world that has so cruelly abandoned them, giving them no cure – none that would be better than the alternative of wasting away.

The doctors have no excuse. After all, the Prophet did say that every disease has its medicine. No, all the doctors can do is medicate, numb, try to dull the pain that rips through their bodies with larger and larger doses of painkillers, so they can slip into death mercifully relieved of pain, for once. Isn’t what they suffer through enough – what I would suffer through enough – without having to contemplate a cure that would be even worse than the disease? Living the rest of what no one would call a ‘life’ in solitude, wasting away without a face, unable to rejoin society or contribute positively, or even hope to achieve any of the pathetic little dreams that occupied my every waking moment for so long? What would happen to me?

What followed was the longest night of my life… Torn between two crevasses, each darker and deeper than the other, I oscillated like a pendulum. With every gain of determination, I would waver; where my former desperation had led me now filled me with a profound sense of shame, and I felt that even if I did die I could hardly bear to face my Creator. Pushed one way, pulled the other, I lay awake, my mind whirring. I did not feel deserving of mercy. The minutes inched by, and the dawn seemed not hours, but years away – as though daybreak and midnight were no longer on speaking terms and thus refused to shake hands and trade places. I had almost lost hope in the daybreak – when, finally, it arrived…

The Sixth Hour

I think now the thoughts of the dead

I see through their eyes…

F or the first time in many, many years the man in the white thobe was both speechless and struck by an inexplicable sense of pity – or was it fear? Whatever it was… he had never seen the likes of this in all the years he had worked for the security company. Torture was not a stranger to him, in the line of business, and torture wasn’t too far off from what had struck the man lying on the floor, who had almost died in front of him. They’d had to untie him from the chair, just to make sure he wouldn’t.

“How could I not know about this drug?” he asked himself. “If anything, it simplifies a good deal of torture sessions in one little pill…” Or maybe it was just the overdose. Well – they would know once the results got back. He sent a guard off with another pill to the lab where their other samples were being tested. The lab was operated by a pharmaceutical company, which was owned by the same conglomerate… headed by the same man.

The guard headed into the building with an air of authority, stopping at the receptionist’s desk to flash his card in his face. He was told to wait a moment. The man behind the desk then dialed in a number on the keypad in front of him.

“Security’s here,” said the receptionist, “a man in a uniform like a soldier’s camouflage.”

“Good. Send him up.”

The guard went through a door labeled ‘General Manager’, and entered without knocking the door. Inside was a man behind a desk who was on the phone, and another standing to the side dressed in a labcoat. The guard handed the poisons specialist the pill straightaway; he examined it carefully.

“Interesting. Looks quite generic.” He sniffed it. “No particular scent…”

“Can you identify it?”

“Not just yet. Give me some time.”

“How long?”

“Can’t say for sure.”

“I’ll be here. Finish your work quickly.”

The specialist did not answer, already on his way to the lab where he would reverse-engineer it. The guard followed.

*

Just an hour was left until Dareen would be set free from her aunt’s house. Her aunt had gone to some brunch meeting with other diplomats’ wives. She’d be back in fifty-nine minutes, and not a moment too soon. Memories of the film still swirling around her mind, she was raring to get back to the hospital and find him.

If only she could get her hands on the receptionist who knew her name. If only she was related to him in some way; she’d have the authority so no one would be able to turn her back. She rocked back and forth on her heels, thinking, trying to strategize – but all reached a dead end unless she was able to somehow gain access to him. If only she could impersonate a relative of his, she thought with a dry smile, walk in there in full disguise to totter in by his bedside.

As what usually happens, the idea wafted idly around the back of her mind unnoticed – before it flared into full form and struck her like lightning.

Of course. What an idiot. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

It didn’t take her more than a minute to look up the number. She patiently navigated the automated messages until reaching a human being.

“MD Anderson International Medical Center, how may I help you?”

“Hello, I’d like to ask about a patient…”

“Yes ma’am, please go ahead.”

“I’d like to ask about a patient named Hisham Al-Sayid.”

“Are you a relative?”

“Yes,” she hesitated, taking a deep breath, “my name is Salwa. Salwa Abed.”

She hoped and prayed that she had remembered the name correctly. He’d always told her he had no family apart from her; she remembered his mother’s last name, and his maternal aunt was the only one he had ever mentioned, the only possibility for being listed as next-of-kin.

“All right, ma’am. One moment please.”

Her eyes widened – had they really believed it? Was she really in? Elation flooded her; now she knew how bank robbers felt in the getaway car…

Heat began prickling all over her body, traveling to her head at once. She could feel sweat beading on her forehead, her heart thumping within her chest. In that moment, she closed her eyes tightly, and prayed:

Oh God, you’ve held my hand through all these years… You’ve healed me of everything that has struck me with harm. You’ve dusted my heart off when it was hollow and empty and filled it with love. Hold my hand – I know that even if I close my eyes, You won’t let me go. I know You’ll always hold me.”

“Ma’am, are you on the line?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“Mr. Hisham Al-Sayid is in the treatment room now.”

“How long has he been in there? Will he be out soon?”

“It’s been a couple of hours… I’m not sure, ma’am. With these kinds of treatments, it’s hard to tell.”

“How,” her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “How is he now?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. I don’t have any details.”

“Thank you. Can you tell me where his hospital room is normally? And where the operating room is?”

“He’s in Room 804 on the eighth floor, and the treatment rooms are all on the second floor.”

“Thanks so much.”

She hung up the phone. An hour would be more like a century; the hands of the clock scarcely moved. She got ready to go, and only six minutes passed by. Nothing would distract her from him except from him; she would watch the sixth hour.

*

This morning, I found on my desk some get-well-soon cards wishing me well, and that put me in high spirits. Nestled among them were some booklets I leafed through inquiringly; they were religious pamphlets about death, and the necessity of growing closer to God before facing one’s destiny. I didn’t know who had sent them, but I didn’t want to die in fear of God. I had only just accepted the possibility of my own death; now all I wanted to do was die in peace.

For me, finding that booklet was a sign, with a message clear as day: run. You will not survive here. People will bring you to your death, either by making you fearful or by their relentless, choking pity. Run – there’s nothing left for you here… nothing except her. But then, what would she want with me? A dead man walking on the surface of the earth, relishing the way it felt beneath my feet instead of surrounding me, as it would all too soon. A dead man – or one who would soon be worse than dead.

My thoughts grew more and more morbid.

Does death have a smell, a taste, a particular feeling? Only the dead can answer… And if their answer is yes, then I would say I’d breathed it in, tasted it, felt it at every moment. It was like it was sitting alongside me wherever I went, whatever I did. All the time: watching me while I work, eating what was left on the plate I used to finish, sharing my thoughts… then overtaking them. All except for sleep – death does not sleep alongside me, rather it stays awake to prod me out of whichever sliver of rest I get. I had finally given myself up – no more struggling.

Fatigue overtook me, and I tried to shake it off. I hurried to the office bathroom to wash my face and broke down crying yet again. I hadn’t cried since that day in the car. It became difficult for me to breathe, and my eyes turned foggy once more.

Out of nowhere an apparition appeared in the mirror, morphing my features into something disgusting and unrecognizable. A monster covered all over in brown spots with bulging, staring eyes intense with anger. I had never seen anything like it – could it be the Angel of Death? Angels shouldn’t look like monsters… At it opened its mouth as though to speak, I gagged at the sight of a black tongue dripping with blood. As soon as the drops reached the ground they became as black as where they had come from. While the sight of them on the ground fixated my gaze downwards, something else fell, looking leathery and brownish. I looked up again, only to see the monster grinning at me in the mirror as his skin started to fall… then flesh… finally his entire jaw became unhinged and fell to the ground, leaving the bottom end up his face gaping open, his mouth in a hideous half-smile. It was like watching a superbacteria devour flesh in flash forward. I tried to tear my gaze away but suddenly I could no longer see, as a piercing headache drilled through my head like a hammer. The pain increased until I couldn’t even scream – the pangs of death? Just as suddenly, the pain disappeared…

All my senses of the outside world dissipated, and this time everything around me disappeared completely. When I came to, I was surrounded by inquiring heads, some suggesting ways to wake me up, while others urged everyone else to stand back and give me some air. Others were simply nosy, while I could hear other concerned voices from further away.

They helped me to my feet – I was too weak to refuse their assistance – and put me on the couch in my office. I fought against the overcoming of sleep yet again, but it was a losing fight. Before I drifted off, I waved everyone out of the room; my nightmares were not simply fevered imaginings of an infected brain, but heightened memories I would rather forget. Their effect was amplified in every way by the dread of knowing what was going to come next, without having any of the power to stop it… I didn’t want anyone to have to witness it.

Strangely, in an unforeseen blessing, it was the first time in a while that I did not awaken screaming at whatever horror had plagued my sleep. Instead, I woke up to the sun in my face; the people who’d carried me inside the room and dropped me unceremoniously on my couch had opened the curtains. Blessedly, I had been left alone. Only one person was sitting at the end of the couch, perched on its arm, who smiled in relief as our eyes met: of course, it was Dareen.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

I struggled to sit up, motioning her back when she moved to help me. “Fine. I’m good. What’s new with you?”

“Good, alhamdulillah,” she replied. All thanks to God. Silently, I repeated it after her. “Had a good sleep?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You started saying something in the middle. You looked frightened. I thought of waking you up, but then you calmed down.”

“Yeah, I’ve been having nightmares more and more these days. But that’s strange, they usually last until I wake up,” I said thoughtfully – then I chuckled at myself. “Well, I have no guarantee that I won’t be seeing some new horror soon, even if not in my sleep.”

“What do you mean?”

I hesitated. “You might think I’m crazy…”

“Just tell me.”

“Well, that’s partly why I fainted.” I told her about the nightmares, the hallucinations – and how I thought they might be triggered by the doctor’s horrific descriptions of what might happen to me. Her hand covered her mouth, eyes wide in dread. I spared no shocking detail. I wanted her to be aware of what was going to happen to me.

“You’ve got to do something about this, Hisham,” she said finally. “There has to be some other alternative, some new treatment…”

“I wish there was,” I said flatly.

Her turn to hesitate. “Listen, I know you don’t like me butting in on your business, and I’m never going to go snooping around in what matters to you again…”

I waved off her concerns. “That was – that was a one-time thing, and I’ve already expressed my regret to you. Please tell me everything you know.”

“Well,” she started, “I spent eight hours yesterday researching your case – like what you said the doctor told you. Starting with squamous cells, then cancer of the tongue, how it spreads, everything… and finally, the best places to be treated.”

She was thorough. I was lucky to have her on my side. “Tell me more,” I said.

“I found two hospitals in the US that are doing experimental research: one in Maryland, and one in Texas. They might have alternate treatments for you, something that doesn’t involve any…” she shuddered. “Excising.”

“Experimental treatments? Sounds a bit too good to be true.”

“They aren’t suited for everyone,” she said quickly. “Just certain cases. But you should explore that option, at least! You have as much chances as anyone else to be eligible for this treatment.”

“I don’t know, Dareen… to head there on a chance?”

“A chance is better than nothing,” she said fiercely.

I shook my head. “I really don’t know… I’ll be up front, with you Dareen. My cancer has a 50% survival rate. That means there’s a 50% chance I’m going to die. And you know, lately I’ve been thinking that maybe I should just accept that. Enjoy whatever life I have left without any invasive surgeries that’ll turn me into half a monster. Just die here, and be buried alongside my mother.”

She was listening quietly, but I could see the emotion on her face.

“Of course, logic dictates that I seek the best treatment possible. I don’t deny that, and I don’t mind traveling. I wouldn’t mind getting away from here as soon as I could. But I’ve done a bit of my own research. I’ve read about that experimental treatment you’re talking about – I mentioned it to my doctor, and he said not to get my hopes up. Very few people are eligible for that cure. So the reality is that most probably, I will have to go through the standard treatment. And that means that, whether I die or survive… my life is over, Dareen.”

She shook her head. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth! If I somehow survive, by some miracle, do you know how I would look after treatment? What kind of a repulsive freak I would look like? Would anyone accept an employee like that? Would I have the right to hope for anything, dream for anything after that? I’d be better off dead!”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself… There’s always hope.”

“You’ve done the research, you must have seen the pictures. It’s revolting – for any normal human being, it’s horrendous and sickening. I wouldn’t look like myself anymore, I wouldn’t look human anymore. I’d live my life out in misery. None of my old friends would bear to see me, no one would dare.”

“I would.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. You’d stay away from me – you’d be scared of me.”

“Are you insane? I wouldn’t stay away from you. You could never frighten me.”

We stared at each other, her brimming eyes a mirror for my own.

“Tell me I’ll be all right,” I said finally. “Tell me that everything is going to be OK.”

“I can’t,” she said, despairing. “Only God knows what will happen.”

She reached out to take my hand, and squeezed. “All I can tell you is that I’ll be with you… no matter what.”

Our tears began to drop in unison. Silently we wept alongside one another, until she wiped her eyes and let go of my hand. We both seemed to have realized the reality of the situation, and for a moment the silence in the room was tinged with embarrassment.

“Don’t be scared,” she said finally.

I shook my head. “I won’t.” The tears had filled me once more with clarity. “Tell me what I need to do to get that treatment abroad, or at least see if I’m eligible for it.”

Now her eyes were filled with triumph. “Make the decision, and I’ll help you with all the arrangements.”

“How?”

“I learned how to when my father had his stroke. They can move very quickly, you know – you could be there by the end of this week.”

“By the end of this week,” I mused.

“What would hold you back?”

“It’s a bit frightening,” I said. “If I go there, I’m going far away from everything I’ve ever known – and everyone I’ve ever met. I would be entirely alone.”

“I’ll come with you.”

I looked at her quizzically. “Are you crazy?”

“My aunt lives in Dallas. I’ll come to visit you, at least, I can’t guarantee I could stay throughout the treatment. But whenever you’d want me, I’d come.”

“Well, I know it would never happen, but of course it would be great to have your support.”

“Then I will be there.”

Once again, her jaw, set in determination, told me she wasn’t kidding. She showed herself out, after promising to pass by later in the day to show me the preliminary arrangements. I would have to call my doctor to get him in touch with the other hospital, in order to transport my medical files. There was a lot to be done.

But it was nothing Dareen wasn’t perfectly capable of. I was a very lucky man to have her help.

If only I could have her heart…

-

What would be the last thing you’d want to do before you died? You certainly wouldn’t consider reading your daily newspaper in the same place, taking your coffee with sugar as usual; would you breathe it in, trying to remember its scent, or give it a nostalgic farewell? Would you dress the clothes that suited you most, or the ones that were most comfortable? But these were all superficial matters…

Would you meet with the people who had supported you most, or the people you most loved? Would you love without limits or hate with all your might? Would you feel sorry for yourself, or let others feel sorry for you? Would you wallow in sadness over the loss of your dream, or would you be strangely relieved for it?

Where would you go? What would you do?

The crystal figurine on my desk was a bittersweet reminder that I would never fulfill my dream of travel. The next best thing was to go to my favorite place in my hometown, Jeddah’s beachside, what we call the Corniche. It’s become a habitat for street cats and rats, with its piles of trash collected like others would collect seashells. Yet I had a soft spot for it anyway.

I came here to say goodbye to my dream, staring out at the endless horizon like I had been when I first came up with the idea of starting my own consulting company. Here, my imagination had hewn together the details of every little element: the desks, the employees, the enormous auditorium in the HQ. Dominated by a huge polished-wood stage, its walls would be soundproof. All the dark blue seats would be full, the audience thoughtfully taking notes on the little maneuverable side tables that could be pushed in and out. And they were all sitting there listening to me.

Yes, there I was, at the center of it all: first a consultant and now a public speaker, a motivation for people far and wide, someone who inspired thousands – no, millions! – and helped them to improve their lives.

Here on the beach, my dream had been born. And here, in the vast sea, it would drown.

-

Next I visited my mother’s grave, at the graveyard of Hawaa.

“Tomorrow night I’m traveling, Mother… I don’t know if I’ll be coming back or not. You’ll ask me who else would care for you after me, and I’ll respond with another question – who do we have but each other? At least we might be together… Maybe. Mother, I’m afraid of death, I’m afraid to live, I’m afraid I’ll never come back here even if I do live.

“Did you hear the doctor’s description of what will happen to me? Have you seen the pictures with me, read the stories? I’m so sorry I couldn’t give you the fruit of how well you raised me, that I can’t give it back to the world… I’ll give the world either a dead person or a devil. But I’ll do my best in the time I have left. I would never let you down.”

‘Hawaa’ is the Islamic name for Eve, and legend has it that the name of the city of Jeddah comes from the word ‘Jidda’, which is ‘grandmother’ – our grandmother Eve. Some say that when Adam and Eve fell from heaven she landed here in Jeddah; others say she’s buried in the graveyard that carries her name. In this graveyard is the history of generations, the dreams of the dead – goodbye, grandmother. Goodbye, Mother.

-

I went back to work one more time on the day of my travel to say goodbye to the most important place and person in my life – the office, and Dareen. First, I said goodbye to all the faithful employees who’d served alongside me so well, and embraced Tariq with a few last-minute instructions so he could fill in for me. His face was stiff, as though he didn’t quite know how to say goodbye. He’d asked me if I wanted a ride to the airport, for which I thanked him – he was always so willing to lend a hand!

“I wish you a bright future, Tariq. Be grateful for everything, even when you struggle, and tire, and fail – those are the moments that really make it all worthwhile, because they promise you what will come afterwards.”

“You’ll come back healed, inshaa Allah[1].”

I shrugged. “If I do come back, I won’t be myself – I’d be a ghost of myself. You won’t see me after today, that’s the most I can tell you. Forgive me for anything I have done wrong to you.”

Something in his face flickered. “I forgive you.”

The hardest task of all was going to her – after everything she had done for me, all the help she’d given me, I was now leaving her behind.

“I’m sorry… for everything.”

“MD Anderson is the best hospital there is to be treated at,” she said briskly, hiding behind a businesslike veneer. “You’ll be healed soon, inshaa Allah. I’ll keep you updated on when I can come visit you.”

“Watch out for yourself, and your good heart.”

“I will.”

We stood, and shook hands. It was one of the shortest, least emotive conversations we’d ever had, but I could tell it was all either of us could bear. Her eyes told me what her words could not.

-

I found myself on the first plane already wishing I could escape the cramped, airless space. I carried two bags with me; one was a backpack, the other a carry-on. The first had my passport and official papers, my wallet and a shaving kit. Most importantly, inside it was the paper I was to present at the hospital I was going to. I kept it close by.

The carry-on, stowed in the overhead compartment, contained my few clothes, the appearance of which I no longer cared for. Nothing mattered except the fact that they’d keep me decent. I preferred bright colors, something I could die in with pride rather than the sickening white of hospitals. Every time I wear white, I wear the hospital like I wear my disease. Sickness and hospitals are so intricately interconnected I prefer to keep them apart off of my own body. God knew I was going to have enough of hospitals soon.

I didn’t know which color truly represented me, but I had to have a battle uniform: I was going into a war in which I had no might or strength, with nothing on my side but my own unknown destiny. My body was in the middle of a bloody and deadly battle against a dangerous enemy – against itself. Like the violent revolution of a treacherous rebel faction against an empire, there had been a schism between my body and a few treasonous cells, who were now waging open war against it.

Normally, any political observer would deem a great and powerful empire far more capable of annihilating its diminutive foe than the other way around. On its side my body’s empire had numbers, weapons, strength; the cancerous cells were fighting against enormous odds. But when the opposition is cunning, and devious, and has little concern for the ethics of war – what then? At that point, victory for the empire becomes another question entirely. Its very existence is at stake. No one really knows why these schisms happen, and no one can deem themselves safe. I have been struck by it, and all I can do is either fight it, or surrender myself to the guillotine to appease the bloodthirsty mob of sedition. Either the resistance will raise the white flag of surrender, or I will wear white to my grave!

-

I looked out of my window as the plane took off, saying a silent goodbye to the sandy desert and city stretched out below. I could see the largest of the buildings getting further and further away, like my dreams – the higher the plane got, the further I was from what was dearest to my heart… Only time would tell if I would ever return.

Although I had been anxious to leave, I had been somewhat late getting to the airport. I’d been searching for a record of mine I found with difficulty, but I wasn’t going to travel without it. Its heroine managed to convey a message to the world I wished I could convey in my own way someday. It’s a rare achievement, to be able to catch the world’s attention. Most of us become mere statistics, numbers on a spreadsheet or, if we’re lucky, in a headline. Few get the opportunity in life to tell their stories, whether through writing or speaking – or in song.

This record I loved was by the famous Italian opera singer Amelita Galli-Curci, who entranced the world with her voice, and had helped to revive an almost-dead art. I had never been a fan of opera, but lately I’d begun to hear myself in her, as though seeing myself on stage. We shared a passion for telling stories through voice… and shared a more tragic element of our lives, as well.

Amelita had undergone surgery on her thyroid gland, and a nerve to her larynx had been damaged. This made her unable to reach the high notes she’d once trilled with ease – and spelled the end of her career as a soprano. Her legend was lost; it brought her face to face with her own inevitable end. When she attempted again after the surgery to make a comeback, she failed miserably. I could understand the way she had felt, just then: like the entire world had turned against her, her melancholy beating at her heart relentlessly.

Perhaps the saddest element of this story was that Amelita’s voice was not gone forever – no, it would live on long after she was dead, preserved for posterity in all its original perfection! She would have been able to listen to recordings of herself, as well, despairing with every note she heard for what could never be again. In the same way, I would look at pictures of myself in the future, a bittersweet reminder of not just the way I had looked – but also of everything I had dreamed of, and had failed to achieve.

I closed my eyes, and dreamed… Amelita and I were together onstage. Strangely, although I had seen old black-and-white pictures before, she didn’t quite look like that. Mostly, she resembled Dareen. Her lovely voice was providing the background to my TEDx speech. With every pause for breath, we were inundated by applause. I basked in audience’s praise, soaking it in.

Amelita and I exchanged knowing glances; I was about to reach the most important part of my speech, and she would be accompanying it with the most piercing, clearest high note she’d ever sung. I began and at first, everything was going all right. She took her voice up the musical scale; the audience was going wild. Our collaboration was one made in heaven. I took her hand, raised it to the sky –

And then her angelic voice went silent. It was cut off as suddenly as though someone had ripped out her throat, and she stood there with her other hand clutching her neck as though she could put it back together. She attempted again and again, but no sound came out – then she doubled over and began to choke. I dropped her hand, screaming frantically – water, some water! – but to no avail. Her eyes were growing dim, her head lolled to the side… Dareen was dying…

I woke up from this to a greater nightmare. The plane was shaking, juddering like it would never stop. Somehow the overhead compartments had opened, and the bags began to teeter and fall out, one by one, in the central passage and onto passengers. From my window I could see thick black smoke cleaving the sky in two, trailing from our plane. The oxygen masks dropped from above us, and in a ludicrous undercurrent to my panic I was pleased at finally getting to put into practice all the interminable airplane safety videos I’d ever seen. I put it on like a pro – no children to assist – and looked around.

My momentary satisfaction quickly dissipated as I realized the seriousness of the situation. No one had moved. It was as though all of this was entirely normal. Everyone was ignoring the masks, which were jumping around almost in their laps. Parents didn’t help their children put it on, and they were still watching cartoons as if nothing was wrong. Panicked, I took another glance out of the window; the plume of smoke was still there, thicker and blacker than ever, and the plane was beginning to tilt forward as it plunged towards the earth.

I screamed for the stewardess, but it was like Amelita’s affliction had struck me, and no sound would come out. I tried to get out of my chair to try and help, raise the alarm – I’m dead anyway, might as well be of some assistance to the living – but the seatbelt would not come undone. The plane’s speed was picking up, and I could feel my stomach lurching as my head exploded in pain. I squeezed my eyes shut, leaning forward against the seat in front of me: the impact position, as we had been instructed to do at the beginning of the flight.

The sounds around me began to blend into one another: the insistent beeping of the plane’s warning systems as we hurtled downwards, the calm voice of the stewardesses asking if anyone wanted a refill of their orange juice, the laughter of the kids at their cartoons – they heightened my pain, crowding out the rest of my mind until I could hardly breathe –

And then the pain stopped. The sounds stopped. There was no shaking, as there had been moments ago; we were cruising along. The oxygen masks had not come down. I blinked, and looked out of the window next to me. Outside there was only the calm blue sky, untarnished by thick dark plumes of smoke. Everyone else was just as calm as they had been all along. The plane was fine, everything was normal, and I was the crazy one.

The Seventh Hour

Chase away from me all the monsters,

All the demons of the night –

Could you?

If not you, who then?

Me?!

T he prisoner was murmuring to himself – perhaps an aftereffect of the madness that had struck him so utterly?

“I didn’t mean for it to go this far out of control,” he was saying. “I don’t want him dead, after all… Or insane…”

The interrogator watched him impassively. This was the kind of thing innocent people said – but didn’t every guilty person have innocence within them somewhere untarnished, deep inside?

The prisoner was back in the chair now, still slightly slumped over, foam at the side of his mouth from two hours of moaning and writhing about devils and monsters and murderers, like they were all around him. He had been utterly convinced of their existence, blind to the guard and to the interrogator except to appeal to them for help.

Now it seemed as though he had regained full control of his mental faculties; the same maddening coldness and defiant gaze, but there was regret in his eyes. ‘Temporary insanity’ wasn’t something just brought on by a pill that induced hallucinations, after all – baser, more essential emotions could motivate a complete departure from logic in the same of a worthy cause.

What Joseph’s brothers had done to him, for example; by any measure, that was illogical. Founded on reasons that were far from rational – but who said love is rational, or hate? Their love for their father had induced them to internally logical madness that served as enough self-justification for throwing their brother in a well. After all, the only ones we need to convince of the justice of our cause are ourselves. They had abandoned any powers of clear thinking they’d had in that well, along with their brother; only later, when the madness had passed, could they retrieve it.

It seemed that this was the stage the prisoner was at now.

“You know, you’re not going to find any side effects left behind in my body,” the prisoner directed to him now. “In spite of everything you saw, the pills only cause temporary hallucinations – and only after you’ve been taking them for a while. I guess what you saw was a result of the overload on my system. I’ve never tried slinging half a dozen of them at once…

“The only permanent side effect is that sometimes, your memories start coming back to you very strongly. Certain memories – sad ones. And sometimes you’re trapped in your head for a long time. Combine the two and that’s pretty painful. But I had no idea it would be like that, once I started. And I’ve never seen complications in anyone who’s taken it so far – that is, until last month…”

“Who were you giving it to? What happened last month?”

The prisoner paused, his gaze far away. “I think I’m going to have killed someone soon.”

“How?!”

“Don’t act as though you’re taken aback, I’m sure you’ve done far worse in your time… and he’s not dead yet, but he will be soon. I didn’t want it to get this far. Maybe it was his destiny. I may not be the reason, anyway.”

“Goodness, am I witnessing a crisis of conscience?”

“Not that you have one.”

“Ah, we’re not all that different, believe me.”

“Don’t compare yourself to me!”

“Haven’t you had enough? Or would you like some more of your magical pill?”

That got through to the prisoner. He gave his interrogator a dirty look and fell silent.

*

Finally, the hour was over! Her final vestiges of patience were gone. She hurried out of the house, passing her aunt at the entrance and giving her a hasty farewell. She got into the first taxi she saw, and in the car called Amani – it went straight to voicemail.

“Amani, I think I’ve found him! I hope I’ve found him. I’m going there now… where my heart is…”

She finally reached the main building, went to the same front desk she’d gone to earlier. She didn’t recognize the receptionist who was there this time, and asked him how to get to the second and eighth floors. He handed her a map of the hospital grounds, and pointed out what he started to describe.

“You’ll have to take different elevators to access those. Elevator C gets you to the second floor, Elevator A to the eighth. But you won’t be able to go very far into the second floor; that’s the treatment room floor, and no one but patients and hospital personnel are allowed beyond the waiting room, here.”

“If I wanted to see how someone’s doing…”

“You can find that information in the waiting room. But like I said, you won’t be able to go much further.”

“Thanks.”

She headed towards Elevator C, which was at the back of the lobby, and took deep breaths to steady herself. This would be a couple of hours into his treatment – how long could it take? She decided to sit in that waiting room and watch the next couple of videos before moving onto checking out his room on the eighth floor, which would probably be locked anyway. Still, she wanted to try to see the place where he’d been for the past couple of weeks. If she could discern traces of him there…

Inside the treatment floor waiting room there was a big touchscreen. Numbered from 1 to 40 were patient names; she found his name without much effort. At the bottom, it said ‘touch number to see patient status’. She did so, steeling herself for what it would say – but there was no further information than the time his treatment had started, and the reassuring proclamation of ‘stable’. That was all.

All around her in the waiting room there were other worried faces, but none she could seek comfort from. Everyone was too preoccupied with their own concerns, their thoughts all with their loved ones beyond the double doors that said AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY on the far side of the room. There was no one she could ask for further information. This might be a while. There were books and magazines on a side table, but she had all she needed with her.

She took out her laptop; for the first time in so long, she was hearing his voice when he might only be meters away…

*

For a long time, I hadn’t watched the news. This was for several reasons, primarily that the news in our Arab world was a such a sure harbinger of depression, alongside other illnesses that have no name and no cure. However, lately I’d been getting up to date with what’d been going on there. Here, the hospital staff is familiar with the Arab Spring and, to a certain degree, with its wintery aftermath. It’s a difficult subject to make sense of. It is said that opposites never comes together; that white cannot resemble black, that the night is easily distinguishable from the day, and that a pulse clearly delineates the living from the dead.

I could only laugh at these simplistic conceptions of life since I’d begun watching the news again. They are based on assumptions that teeter and fall at the very first minute of every news hour. Every hour, day becomes unclear to the oppressors and the oppressed, and looks blacker than the night. Death and life comes together more than lovers. Entire nations meet with death every morning, conveying greetings and speaking, inviting death into homes, taking death to work, sending death a postcard in the name of one’s nation… Death chooses its witnesses as life chooses its prisoners.

On the subject of truth and falsehood, here on TV was one of our splendid array of Arab dictators making a speech on plans for reform and fighting the corruption that he himself is knee-deep in, and oversees night and day. He will come down from his podium soon to continue his campaign to commence regular massacres of his people, which occur with his blessing. Tomorrow morning he will resume the podium once more, to mourn the people in the name of the nation. Yes, I remember why I avoided news of our Arab world. It was to maintain my sanity – but it’s too late for that now, isn’t it?

I don’t think anywhere in the world grapples with life and death as much as the Arab world apart from hospitals. Here, the number of times death has encountered life are uncountable. I imagine that every morning, death dons a lab coat just as the doctors do, carrying a clipboard where he overviews the names of patients and their statuses, making rounds like doctors’ rounds in his selection of souls to take with him under God’s orders. The rest, he gives respite until the next morning, when he will make another review of their destinies.

I’m beginning to doubt that death ever leaves the place; I’m beginning to doubt he is such a mortal enemy of life. Perhaps they meet with each other, discussing their affairs and bemoaning all the work they must do. They meet in the lobby and part, life heading to the maternity ward, death to the intensive care unit – and then they trade places. I’ve started to understand that things that seem contradictory are far closer together than they may seem at the outset. After all, my own body has abandoned me now like the Arabs have abandoned their brothers in Palestine…

One thing I was grateful for in that hospital was that the walls are not white. In my little room, I was surrounded by the calm pale blue of the sky. The rest of the room was the same as one in any other hospital; a bed, a table for food and medicines, a wooden closet, and the television. This one received four Arabic language channels, one of which is the news channel I had been frequenting lately, whenever I missed my country. Alongside all of this permanence – how many people have been where I was now, resting in this same bed, pressing the buttons on this remote? – was the temporary occupation of a soul within its treacherous body.

My room overlooked a main street with four lanes, a bike path and a bus station. I’d asked my nurse about the layout of this enormous hospital; it’s made up of several buildings, each dedicated to a certain specialization. There was a bridge system connecting each of these buildings to each other for easy access, and in the main building there’s a cafeteria and rooms where patients could gather for therapy sessions or support groups. I was interested in neither of these options.

There was also a small flower shop nearby, placed for convenience so that visitors can bring patients wilted signs of their regard and caring for them, without going to too much trouble. I hated the idea that someone would buy a gift ‘on their way’, as though visiting the sick is such a heavy burden that going to the trouble of looking for a gift would be a bit too much!

I hoped whoever worked at that shop felt guilty enough to hide from patients inside his little shelter. No matter how he tried to decorate it to himself, to sentimentalize it and paint it with the loveliness of flowers, the fact remained that he took advantage of our illnesses for his own profit. Hide behind your walls of roses, shopkeeper, I thought. It won’t protect you if I ever come across you. I won’t hide my scorn.

Finally, my room overlooked a garden immediately outside the hospital doors. I wasn’t sure whether the gardens were part of the hospital itself, but I had no desire to go there. I wouldn’t be comforted by something as insignificant as a few trees and mowed grass.

So far, there had been no one to bring me flowers. My one visitor was my new doctor, called Dr. Steve. He resembled a robot more than a human being, a feature he shared with Dr. Hani. The difference between them was that Hani maintained an air of impenetrability that he occasionally broke by accident. Steve tried to come across as understanding, but his expressionless face didn’t cooperate.

I was tested to see if I was eligible for the experimental treatment a few days ago, and Dr. Steve’s “sorry” when he told me the results were negative didn’t reach his eyes. Hani’s predictions had been right; I would have to undergo the same excision of my cancer-riddled flesh that he would have done back in Jeddah, with the difference of perhaps a few extra millimeters I could retain due to the slight advancement of the American machines over ours.

Dr. Steve had insisted on explaining all the details of the surgery to me, although I told him I’d already heard all about it. He emphasized the fact that I needed to have it done as soon as possible, and reinforced this by warning me of the consequences of further delay or not doing it at all. Without the operation they could put me on chemotherapy, but it wouldn’t achieve much apart from prolonging my life for just a few months. Either way, I would be dead within the year. I would have to make my decision in the next few days.

“What about the consequences of having it done? I might die on the operating table, the cancer might be too deeply rooted to remove, and if I survive then I spend the rest of my life looking like a monster with half a tongue, half a face, not being able to speak and having to be connected to a tube for food for the rest of my life.”

“Not quite the rest of your life,” interjected the doctor, but I continued nonetheless.

“I’ve seen those pictures, doctor, of people who’ve had their jaws removed. I’m afraid of them myself. I’ll look like I walked straight out of a horror film; children will be afraid of me, parents will use me when they want to give their kids chills at night. I’ll have to go into hiding away from people, totally seclude myself from everyone I used to know. I’ll never be able to have a normal relationship with anyone, much less get married or have kids of my own… I’ll be apart from the entire world. Doctor, did I tell you I wanted to be a motivational speaker, a training coach? Do you know what’s going to happen to that dream of mine? It’ll be like I never existed! So why don’t you tell me about those consequences? I know what’ll happen to my body – why don’t you tell me what’ll happen to my soul?”

Dr. Steve let me finish, but my impassioned question didn’t seem to make much of a difference to him. “I understand your concerns, and they’re very legitimate. But I can only treat your body, not your soul.”

Naturally.

“Of course,” he continued, “you’ll have a psychologist continually giving you support throughout the treatment, and we’ll have an entire team working for and alongside you. Have some confidence in us; try to find within yourself the faith that’ll lead you to doing the right thing.” This appeal to emotion was clearly uncharacteristic for him, and he resumed regular programming in the next sentence. “Because, Mr. Hisham, I’ll be blunt – without this operation, your chances of survival beyond the next three months go down to zero.”

Damn his shortsightedness… I was going to be the one facing the world with the face of a devil, not him. I was the one going through the pain; I was the one whose chances of survival were dwindling before my very eyes. He couldn’t relate at all, of course not. How could I ever hope to convey to him what I felt? Maybe I shouldn’t even have tried.

The kindest person in this prison was my nurse, Amy. She would wake me up with a kind greeting, asking how I was like someone who actually cared. She’d take the routine measurements every morning, like my blood pressure and temperature, with a smile as though to reassure me that all was well.

I’d ask her in my simple English, as though she was the only one I could trust: “Should I be afraid?”

Her smile would reassure me before she replied, “Have you ever heard of anyone whose fears cured him? Don’t make yourself afraid.”

And somehow, her words would work magic, and I would be comforted. I was still unsure of whether or not to take the final decision of rejecting the operation and leaving myself in death’s hands; whether he would adjust his watch and come get me, or I would go to him. Or should I fight him, accepting what I might become? My battle uniform looked, more than any other color, confusingly grey…

On the TV I could hear a young man on one of the Arab channels quoting poetry by the famous Mahmoud Darwish: “We love life, as long as we find a reason to.” And so the Arabs live in search for a reason to love their lives. But what if we are lost? What if we cannot find a reason to search anymore?

Here in the hospital, it’s as though time had lost its own watch. A second lasted a minute, a minute lasted an hour, and an hour stretched on and on… Things were featureless, and people were more like ghosts. I stood every day at my window, watching the people outside and marveling at their will to live. Once, I had been one of them. I watched them, as though by doing so I could regain my understanding of what propels them forward through the endless days. I had lost my own long ago.

Sometimes, the sick would join the healthy outside; some put on sports shoes and walked, even jogged around the garden. Others observed life going on around them from wheelchairs, just as I observed from my window. I’d come to recognize some of the faces I’d see in the garden every day; I’d know what time they would come to the garden, what they would do and when they would come up again. The strangest of these daily visitors to the garden was a patient who was very old, in the seventh or eighth decade of his life. I had seen him around the hospital before, with his hunched back and wrinkled face, with features that were as strange as he was aged.

The first time I’d noticed him was when I had been listening from behind one of the sitting rooms where a support group was meeting. Each of the patients there had introduced themselves, talking about their hopes and fears, and what made them happy. This was seen as a way to improve their morale, since the doctors said that it was an important part of treatment. I didn’t bother to enter; I had nothing to say to the rest of them. I didn’t want them to see me, either. I refused point-blank to attend any of those meetings, as much as Amy tried to persuade me to go. The most she could do was practically force me to create a blog in which I could put down my thoughts, which I did with as much venom, depression, and pure angst as I could muster. Behind a screen, I had the courage to vent out exactly what I felt. But I could never do that in front of anyone.

But as I was watching from outside the room, that old man had somehow caught a glimpse of me. The observer had become the observed – I quickly fled.

After that, he began passing by my door ever day. He would stand at the door until I saw him, then give me an inexplicable smile with his yellow teeth and leave. If I didn’t know he was going to die soon I would’ve attacked him then and there, but the last thing I wanted was to have to cause another person’s suffering. I didn’t know what he wanted from me; he would pass by every single day without fail, and wouldn’t leave until he knew I had noticed him, and he had annoyed me. He never spoke to me, and I’d rather he didn’t. I didn’t know what he would say to me. It was as if he was intentionally trying to antagonize me – but why? Was it because I was a foreigner, because he was affronted by my origin, my religion, my color – or the fact that I shared his disease?

Suddenly amidst these thought, my hospital room began to fold in on itself – roof collapsing, walls coming closer together, the thundering sound of these movements almost deafening. The floor cracked in two, I could feel the dust that rose from it on my body. The noise heightened more and more, the sound of screaming was everywhere; we were all going to die. Oh God, have mercy!

In seconds the whole world had buckled in on itself. I didn’t know where the floor ended and the roof began. Everything was spinning, as though I was looking at it through a kaleidoscope. The pain in my head felt like someone was yanking at my scalp, tearing my hair and plunging a dagger through my forehead at the same time. It was the longest minute of my life – and then, nothing…

Nothing until I woke up in a perfectly intact room. But then again, I’d gotten used to this.

I was afraid to ask the doctor for further details about my condition. My instinct was to dismiss my fears by assuring myself: what’s the worst that could happen, but death? Death had become a familiar foe to me. But… what if there was something worse?

The doctor was waiting for me to ask. Every single visit, after he would inquire about how I was feeling and leaf through the latest on my file, he would ask if I had any questions. Usually I told him I did not, although my brain was filled to bursting with questions I yearned to find answers for… but I knew these questions would be useless, and I was scared so I ignored them.

In the end, I managed to muster some courage to ask about my madness; I confessed to the doctor the strange and disturbing visions that plagued me, both awake and while I was asleep, separating me from the world into a realm of horror. Was it a curse from one of the magicians I had unwittingly visited?

The doctor tried to mask his nervousness with a smile, saying, “Why don’t we run some tests?”

“Could my tumor have spread to the brain?”

“You seem to have researched your condition well, but don’t jump to conclusions.”

It wasn’t more than half an hour before the whirlwind of tests and X-rays began. By the end of the day I was almost dead with exhaustion, but my daily plague with sleep remained. I wished I could take one of the sleeping pills Tariq had given me to ensure a dreamless sleep, but they’d been confiscated once I’d entered the hospital, for fear they could intervene with the drugs I was being pumped full of…

I was surprised to be awoken not by Amy’s gentle “Good morning” but by the doctor’s knock on the door. It must have been six in the morning – why would he come at this time? It looks like what I had feared had come to pass.

“Good morning. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

“What is there, a tumor? You can tell me – am I going to die? I can say goodbye quickly to this hospital, to everyone in it. I can say goodbye to the whole world, I’ve done it before…”

“Take a deep breath. This kind of panic is what causes your attacks. Now can you answer me this question?”

I nodded.

“Have you ever been through the death of someone close to you?”

“Yes… my mother, two years ago.”

“Do you remember how you were back then?”

“Yes, of course. I was devastated.”

“Did you have these panic attacks back then?”

“No, I would just have these very powerful memories of her, like I could see her in front of me – when I knew she was dead…”

“Grief is a very complicated process. There are greater implications than what we may know. You’ve probably heard of the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The length of each of these five stages differs from one person to another, and for different reasons. Sometimes it just depends on someone’s personality. The brain can recall both memories, and other visions that are entirely fabricated by the imagination. This applies to the nightmares you see when you’re sleeping, or the hallucinations you see when you’re awake…”

“Hallucinations? So I really am crazy?”

“I wouldn’t be worried about that. To all appearances, it’s a temporary chemical imbalance of the brain. I could try giving you medication, but I’d rather not overload your system. So in the end, it’s just a matter of time. But let me know if it gets unbearable.”

It had always been unbearable, but I didn’t tell the doctor that…

Sometimes I would go on my laptop for hours, ostensibly for ‘research’, but inevitably I would get into a spiral of self-defeating doom, scrolling through endless awful post-surgery pictures of people who suffered from the same disease I did. I couldn’t imagine myself that way… How frightened I would of – of myself!

I checked my email. There were plenty of messages, mostly from clients, that Tariq had forwarded to me. I hadn’t asked about who was to take my place in the company, and Tariq had called me the first four days of my stay before he stopped. From the entire world, the only one I had left was Dareen. There were three messages from her waiting for me, the final one with a subject line of ‘I miss you’.

Amy was insisting that I go down to the garden this afternoon, so I would have to respond quickly to Dareen’s emails. But as much as I was happy that Dareen seemed to still care for me, it had started to worry me. What was she waiting for from me? I was never going back… I’d left behind my life forever, whether I lived or I died. I couldn’t ask her to bear the way I would look after the operation, and even if by some long-shot miracle she could bear it, I certainly wouldn’t expect her father to accept me for his only daughter.

My heart screamed, “I miss you too, my dear whose smile gives me life!” But my fingers wrote, “Please don’t, and leave me alone… I miss myself.” The contents of her second message were the same as the first. Guilt quickly descended upon me… I had allowed her to become attached to me. I couldn’t let that happen. I would read the third message, then tell her that she couldn’t attach any hopes to me… I was a dead man. I had taken advantage of her kindness, of her help – I couldn’t take advantage of her any more.

I thought that the third would resemble the two that had preceded it, but it was like nothing I could have expected.

Dear Hisham,

I greet you from the heart. I hope you’re doing well. Please don’t ignore this message. I hesitated before I sent it, but I was afraid you might get it from a source that does not wish you well and that it would be more of a harmful shock otherwise.

Tariq has taken your place at the company.

Until now, it’s temporary, but I don’t know how much longer that’ll be true. A lot of details have happened, but I’m sure you’re strong enough not to be weakened by this news…  I will be coming to you soon, I promise. The prayers of everyone at the company are continuing for you.

Always,

Dareen

I couldn’t bring myself to answer. What would I do with my life now? Here I was now without a job, without a dream… What was happening?

I grasped my phone, with no idea who to call – Tariq? How would I get in touch with him? What would I say to him?

Was I crazy? There must be some misunderstanding, somehow.

But what did I expect them to do? I wasn’t going back to the company. They could do whatever they wanted; I wouldn’t be surprised at anything they did…

Suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore – my helplessness towards everything that was happening thousands of kilometers away. I couldn’t do anything in this prison, but I couldn’t leave the prison before I got rid of that damned tumor. I had to get out of this room before its walls swallowed me up…

I left my laptop open and grabbed a coat; it was cold outside, although I was sweating. I needed some fresh air, Amy was right. I should go to the garden.

I got up, but before I left I signed out of my inbox – forever…

The Eighth Hour

Turn on the light of your hearts

Disperse the thoughts that accumulate in the night…

T he lab technician who’d been handed the sample hurried to his boss. He didn’t understand why he had been assigned to analyzing this pill – couldn’t anyone distinguish what it was? Why was there so much attention dedicated to a drug that could be bought off-the-counter, without a prescription, at any pharmacy?

He felt he’d wasted his time for nothing, especially when he’d been given the impression that this was a vital and urgent assignment. That, as a lab assistant, working with one of the highest specialists at the pharmaceutical company to discover the secret of this mystery pill was an unimaginable boost for his career. There were still some elements of the riddle that would require a few hours to solve, but it was hardly the enigma it’d seemed to be.

His boss had insisted that he accompany the preliminary report to the person waiting with the boss upstairs, based on the expedited orders to work as clandestinely and quickly as possible. When he arrived, he placed a brown envelope containing the preliminary report on the desk in front of him, and said: “The pill is nothing more than an antihistamine.”

The boss held back a laugh, and the other man, who was wearing a military uniform, asked: “What’s that?”

“Have you ever had an allergy in your nose or eye?”

“Of course.”

“You’d take an antihistamine to clear up those allergies. You might know it as Claritine.”

The military man looked dumbfounded. “So that pill… is an allergy medicine?”

The lab technician shrugged. “Well, the antihistamine is covered in a layer of another drug we couldn’t identify yet – and that might need some time.”

-

The man in the white thobe was not pleased with the results he heard over the phone, especially after making a quick Google search for this ‘antihistamine’ the guard had mentioned. He composed his face before he went back into the cell; as soon as his phone rang, he’d hurried out. Let the prisoner wonder about what what it was.

Once back inside, the interrogator resumed his seat opposite the other man, and merely returned his gaze levelly.

“Ready to talk?” he said.

The prisoner had begun to rethink his choices once he’d realized they were taking it seriously, and that they would find out the truth sooner or later.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

*

Of all the possible causes of death, it struck Dareen that death by waiting was the worst, and the most painful. She had watched two videos in quick succession in that waiting room, and still there was no change in status or update on how he was. He wasn’t coming out for a while.

She decided to head up to room 804 on the eighth floor, taking her laptop along with her. Strangely, it wasn’t locked. The moment she stepped in, she knew she was in the right place; she could smell the perfume he always wore. She wondered if he somehow knew she was there… if he’d known how many tears she’d shed for him, if her yearning had reached in heart in some manner. Stepping into this room had awakened memories within her she hadn’t even been aware of. Seeing the bed he slept in, pillow still dented from his head, made her heart inexplicably tender. But for some reason, it looked familiar – and then she realized why. It was because this was where he had filmed most of the videos.

She stood at the window, looking out at the garden he had described. Just as he’d said, there were people running beneath the trees, through the grass, others relaxing in the sun from their wheelchairs. She continued to let her eyes rove over the lovely grounds… but there was something missing. Her eyes narrowed, and she craned her head to the left and right, searching. Still nothing. Something was missing.

She checked the map that the receptionist had given her. Her frown deepened further. She headed out of the room to the closest staff table, and asked the nurse she found there. Down the elevator she went, in accordance with the directions she got… She reached the shop marked on the map, a little place nestled on the mezzanine floor. It mostly sold gifts, along with a few flowers and some wigs. The shopkeeper was an old lady, who smiled at her with dentures and informed her upon being asked that no, there was no one else who manned to shop.

She went back to the room and looked out of the window, biting her lip thoughtfully.

At first, she’d only wanted to buy him something from the flower shop she had assumed was just as he had described it. But now she was really starting to worry – she wasn’t sure it was an issue that could be so easily dismissed, he’d emphasized it over and over again, sounding very sure of himself…

Because unlike what Hisham had said in his video, there was no flower shop outside the hospital.

*

Cry, for it might help you attain faith

If you truly believed, you wouldn’t cry

Another poet distributing his words like wares on Arabic television, like a voice from heaven. Sometimes I think all this is for nothing. Why should I be telling you anything? Who’s going to listen to what I read, or what I write? I get confused – details get muddled up. Is it making any sense to you? I try to pick it all apart to make sense of it myself. I don’t know if I’m just wasting my time, but I have no choice but to keep going.

I’ve started going to the hospital garden more often now; today is the third day of our acquaintance. We’ve established a routine since the beginning. After I pray the dawn prayer, Fajr, I walk for an hour before the sun joins us. The garden and I appreciate its company. I also encountered a comfortable bench that has become my favorite spot, and it’s come to know me well without having to ask any questions. I don’t have to ask it questions either, although they do occur to me. How many people have sat on you before? What are there stories, how old were they? How were they doing when they sat here, and who was sitting with them? Most importantly… where are they now?

This bench has its back turned to the hospital building. The bench doesn’t care how tall it is, how imposing; the building’s slick glass fronts and minimalist design are not tempting. Paraded in front of the bench is all of God’s creation, limited by nothing. A universe that is decorated as is required, fitted out with everything it needs. For the first time since – well, since forever really – I feel part of the larger scheme of things… an organization of sorts that, as enormous as it is, still envelopes me with care.

Every other organization I’ve attempted to join has abandoned me, and so I am left with no company, no establishment, no family. Here in the garden I’ve started to become aware of the magic of belonging once more, ever-so-slowly. How can we not allow our souls to take comfort in everything that was here long before we were, and will be here long after we are gone… the birds, the mountains, the trees, the stones, the winds, the clouds, the rain. All this wonder that was created for us human beings. But we don’t appreciate it. We become addicted to our worries, our cares and concerns, so that even when we are relieved of them we miss them. Sometimes, we want to feel anxious; it’s become a crutch for us, something that allows us to feel we are important, part of a bigger picture. Yet how shallow-sighted we are!

They say that things are known by their opposites. Perhaps now, at the doorstop of death, I have finally come to understand life. Or maybe all my musings are the meaningless ravings of a dead man, I don’t know. They also say that someone destined for death changes somehow, forty day before he is to meet his end. As though a window into the next world opens up, something only he is aware of, and even then it’s something he can’t quite explain.

Although I still speak with the voice of the living, that may be what is happening to me. Seeing and speaking through the dead… Articulating the thoughts of those who are watching, with jealousy, those who still have the precious gift they were robbed of. A traveling stranger, giving an objective evaluation to a region he will be abandoning soon.

I haven’t heard news from anyone I left behind at home, and I don’t know how they’re doing – except for Tariq, of course, who is undoubtedly doing quite well for himself. I wonder about people I’ve known, faces I haven’t seen in years, half-forgotten. Do any of them miss me? Do they think about me at all?

I have no doubt that Dareen hates me now… I never knew whether I truly loved her or not, or maybe I shied away from answering the question for myself. I knew she felt something for me once – love? – but I have no idea why. Is it possible for someone to be loved for something he doesn’t have? Everything I am is undeserving of love, and any deal made for my love will surely be a losing bargain.

I was never suited for that kind of thing but she, on the other hand, was the most attractive woman I’d ever seen. The strongest, the cleverest, the kindest – she had it all. How could she think to throw herself away on me? I wish the flower shop sold the power to forget; I’d have sent it to her alongside an apology, a kiss, a song. So she could take relish a gift from me – something she deserved far more of – before she put me out of her mind forever.

I always used to think of myself, during my teenage years, as the spiritual descendant of a singer called Hasan Al-Mirwani, whose poverty kept love away from him. He wrote a song called ‘Layla and I’:

I’m torn apart

With no comfort, no luxury to tempt you

Leave me to my bitterness!

For if you could wring out all the years of my life,

They would bleed with the wounds of my heart

The truth is, there’s nothing left to wring out of the years of my life.

My reverie was interrupted by the presence of my enemy, the old man, settling himself upon my friend the bench. I had no idea what had brought him to my side, but I certainly would not give him the satisfaction of seeing that he had bothered me in the least. I didn’t look at him, and he didn’t look at me. We both became preoccupied by the blue vastness of the sky for quite some time. As much I steeled myself to keep from showing it, his presence was disturbing – and I bet he knew it. I took a few surreptitious glances around the park, thinking that maybe he had been driven to me because all the other benches were full. But I was wrong.

Still watching the sky, he said, “We think too much of everything. We call the beginning of a chapter the ending of another one. Like death, for instance.”

I didn’t understand a word of what this lunatic had said. I turned to him, keeping my voice steady. “What do you mean?”

He answered my question with another. “What comes after death?”

“Heaven or hell.”

“All right. If there is something after death, then that means death is not the end. Death is just another stage of life. Were you afraid of life as you approached it? Did you plan how you were going to get here, into this big world?”

He gestured around expansively as I sat there, speechless, at his garbled philosophizing.

He continued: “You used to be content with playing, and exploring. Then you wanted to grow up, and learn more. You chased behind life. Now it’s time to chase behind death.”

With that said, he stood as though conveying that incomprehensible message was what he had come to disturb me for.

He turned his back to me and finished his speech as he was walking off by saying, “When you stop being afraid, you’ll learn that if you really did believe, you wouldn’t be afraid. If you were really a believer, you wouldn’t cry.”

Then he disappeared around the bend, and there I was, left in the muddling clouds his words had dumped onto my thoughts. What death was he talking about? Did he have any idea about my situation – and how dare he make assumptions about me? What did his words even mean? Who was he, anyway? And, most importantly – what did he want from me?

I asked Amy about him. “Don’t be afraid of him,” she said.

Why was ‘fear’ always the assumed link between him and anything else, and why did she assume that I would be afraid of him? My annoyance was reawakened by how clearly she held him in high regard, but I did my best to conceal it. I asked her to tell me more about him. Apparently, his name was Jimmy. He was the retired manager of a technology company, and he had been at the hospital for five months. He had no children, and his wife had died about four years ago. No one ever visited him.

This last fact was not a surprise. I told Amy about my strange encounters with him, and she only smiled her usual smile, which for the first time I did not like. It seemed phony to me, like she was trying to tell me something with it that she couldn’t say out loud. But I didn’t understand. Out of curiosity, I asked about his room number, and she duly informed me that it was 501 on the fifth floor. “But don’t visit him tomorrow,” she said. “He won’t be feeling well.”

As if I had been planning to visit him! But then I thought about it more, and decided that I’d go tomorrow anyway. I had to know what he wanted with me, and I doubted that someone so belligerent could really be in all that much pain. Was that cruel of me? He had been the one to antagonize me, with his inexplicable behavior that would’ve reduced the calmest of people to a raging bull.

For the first time in a while, as I was in bed before I slept, I wasn’t thinking of my disease, my voice, or myself. My thoughts had drifted on their own accord to what the old man had said. I thought of it while I prayed, and his words echoed in my mind just before I fell into sleep.

If you really did believe, you wouldn’t be afraid…

It was the first time in a while that what awaited me in sleep was not a nightmare, but a calm and peaceful dream. I was in a place whose light was so strong I could hardly see the ground, and the sky was very clear. I didn’t move. Soon I noticed a glass door that was entirely transparent; the only reason I had become aware of it was due to its golden doorknob. The light refracted like a prism through the door, and it reminded me of the beautiful glass sculptures in my office.

I could see through to the other side, which looked like a child’s park. Suddenly the doorknob was turned, and out came my mother. I started to cry with happiness, but I couldn’t speak. She approached me quickly, like she was walking on air, and put her hand on my shoulder. Coolness radiated through me from that point, like a summer breeze that put a dull edge on the fear that cut through me constantly. She told me with a smile, “Remember who you are, my son.”

I smiled back at her and then she was gone. The dream was over.

I woke up, and it was time to pray Fajr.

It hit me then, as though my mother had left a present for me, unwrapped until I was aware enough to realize it. The solution is to believe. All the others had failed, and I had tried so many of them… Oh God, take witness that I am praying, and I pray because I want you to make me a believer. No more than that. I don’t want to worship a bank that gives me whatever I ask for, that lets me take my desires as my one true god. I don’t want to worship the regard of others, only to be stabbed in the back by them. For what is worship more than wholehearted regard for something, or Someone?

I want to worship You, God, I want to worship You alone. I want to love you, not to fear you. I want to grasp Your presence every time I sit on that bench in the garden. I want you to surround me like You surround every atom in the universe. I am trying to imbibe everything I say with the meaning and significance that it truly has, because I want my heart to be connected to You. I don’t know if I want to be healed or not, but I am certainly trying to understand my disease – and through that, understand my fear, and come to know myself.

That morning, I prayed like I had never prayed before. I relished it, that prayer; every word and every motion. In prostration, the closest position to God, I spoke like I was telling Him my story for the first time – as if He wasn’t already aware of every last detail! I talked and talked, in a stage I had never before encountered the likes of in enormity and majesty. I could feel Him listening to me, and that was enough for me before the whole world.

I finally knew what it meant now, to stand before Someone with whom you are privileged to have an audience with five times each day. In front of Him you can be open with every element of your humanity: your weaknesses, your fears. You can confess your love and hatred, you don’t need to hide your selfishness and the worst of yourself… But always concluding with the prayer for Him to take your hand, and to guide you to the straight path; “the path of those whom He has blessed”.

How could I have forgotten that I was not alone? How could I have forgotten that He was with me? The tears began to stream down my face, and this time they were not tears of fear from what was surely to come – rather, they were tears of a lover missing his Beloved, who had finally glimpsed the One he loved after a long period of blindness.

Back in the garden, I sat in the same bench. Yesterday he had been looking for me, and today I looked for him. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to say to him. This morning I had stood for a long time in front of the mirror, as though I was seeing myself for the first time in my life, as though I’d been keeping secrets from myself this whole time. I was strangely confused and nervous, but my dominant feeling was definitely curiosity.

My thoughts did not stray for today, but kept me in the garden, aware of every movement around me, and everyone who entered. Three hours later I began to realize he probably wouldn’t show up, but I felt I had to see him today. Perhaps I wanted to show him that I had believed, to prove to him and to myself that I was worth believing in. Was I really so desperate for his stamp of approval? Maybe it wasn’t his approval, but simply his recognition that I sought… After all, his words had been the catalyst for spurring me to the state of mind I was in now – weren’t they? I wasn’t sure, but my heart told me that talking to him was the only way I would find out.

Since he wouldn’t be coming to the garden today, it looked like I would have to find him.

His room number had somehow slipped my mind. I tried to find Amy to ask her again, but her shift had ended. All I could remember was that his room was on the fifth floor, which was where I headed next – somewhere that, as late as this time yesterday, I could hardly have imagined going for the sake of visiting him!

Now I checked the rooms one by one in search for him, looking for the name ‘Jimmy’ on the door. Thirty rooms were all alike in that he was not inside – but the minute I saw number 501 I remembered Amy telling me so. Now that I had found it, the determination that had driven me to this point faded, and nervousness overtook me. What was I going to say to him? I was half inclined to retreat, but curiosity spurred me forward. I needed to ask him what had made him talk to me in the first place.

I knocked on the door and there was no answer, yet the door was open; I stepped inside.

The voice that greeted me was caustic, although underlying pain was clearly evident.

“Did you miss me that fast? Unfortunately I’m going to die soon, so let your eyes take their fill of me now.”

He seemed to be making fun of me, or death, or both, so I replied hesitantly.

“Is it an inconvenient time? I wanted to ask you something, but if you’re tired I can come back later, no prob” –

“I don’t have time for small talk,” he interrupted. “Go ahead and give me all you got. I’ll be gone soon enough.”

“What did you mean by what you said yesterday? ‘If you were really a believer, you wouldn’t be afraid, you wouldn’t cry’? Believers are known to have the softest hearts of all, and they always shed tears for their creator. So what did you mean?”

He laughed, then went silent when he could tell I was too impatient to wait long. “Your tears were never tears of faith,” he said. “I don’t know what disease you have and I don’t care, but I know you’re afraid of death… and a true believer is not.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So you’re not afraid?”

He shrugged. “We’re not here to talk about me, are we?”

I folded my arms. “What do you believe is going to happen to all of us after we die, then?”

He let his eyes flutter half-closed, and began to speak thoughtfully. “All religions consider death the best of life’s stages; to die is to return to our origins. A believer can look forward to paradise, or heaven, or Nirvana – different faiths use different terms, but we all mean the same thing. Or there’s the possibility that death is permanent, with no heaven or hell, but only that we get to enjoy an eternal dreamless sleep. So either way, there’s nothing really to be afraid of, if you’re a believer. You’re a Muslim, aren’t you? So you believe in God, and in heaven. What are you afraid of? What do you shed your tears for? At least if you had visitors I could assume you were crying from the pain of being apart from them, but…”

I quickly tried to give an excuse: “No one’s come to visit me because I’m from Saudi Arabia, which is very far away. It takes fifteen hours by plane to get here, so none of the people who want to visit me can make it. But they would, if they could.”

I knew I sounded unconvincing, like I didn’t even believe it myself. The truth was that I didn’t, and I was the first person I wanted to try and persuade. But I knew deep down that no one really cared about me.

He continued as though I hadn’t even spoken. “I used to watch you, you know, during visiting hours. You’d hide behind the door of the common room downstairs – you enjoy hiding behind doors, don’t you? –watching people visit with their family and friends. If you were all right being alone you wouldn’t have been there. You’d be content in your room, all by yourself. But you’re not happy in your solitude. You wish you weren’t so lonely, don’t you? You wish at the same time that you were strong enough to not care that you’re alone. Most of all you wish that you had someone you could be afraid to lose, and you envy the ones who do – although others would call them weak, you know that really, that’s what makes them strong.

“I know you feel that way, because that’s the way I feel too. But although it’s painful, it does make the whole journey easier, doesn’t it? A bit more lightweight than it is on others. The way I see it is, I’m not going to cause any trouble on my account. No one’s going to get upset about me, no one will miss me, and no one will get hurt – and believe me, I’m speaking from experience when I say that death is harder on the living who are left behind than it is on the dead. Right before someone dies, it’s their friends and family that start crying, not them, and they’re the ones who grieve.

“Because I’m alone here, I’ve come to know people. I know a lot of their stories with a lot of detail. And they know a lot about me, too. They know I’m not afraid for death, that I welcome it, actually, to end my pain. I’m not afraid of chemo, either, but damn does that SOB sting.”

I smiled at his joke, and he went on. “This will sound morbid, but really it’s not: every day I go to the flower shop, buy a flower, name it after me and wait for it to die. I think of what it went through, wilting day after day before finally surrendering, and I think that it finally rests in peace. For me, that’s what death is – peace. My body couldn’t bring it about for me, so being released from that body is the only thing that’s going to give peace to my soul. Maybe it’s easier for us older ones to think of it this way, but it’s true for you too, and I hope you’ll come to recognize that someday…”

I brought a tear back from the brink at his words, which had touched my heart like nothing else had recently. The pain he was going through now made death seem the easier, more restful option, the least painful. I didn’t feel a thing, not even now. How weak I was, compared to the suffering Jimmy was going through. I silently thanked God, who had not given me more than I could bear. Forgive me, God – my faith was not up to the challenge, but I’ll do my best to change that now.

I didn’t want him to see me cry. “Thank you,” I said, backing away. “I… I have to go now. But thank you again, and… I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Before I could flee out the door, he chuckled – I couldn’t understand why – and said, “When I die, I want you to be the executor of my will.”

I raised my eyebrows. Maybe he really was crazy. But I smiled back at him; it was the least I could do.

On the way back to my room, I felt something shift within me, convincing me that I knew what to do now. Less than twenty minutes with him had done more than a week with Dr. Steve had done. Tomorrow morning I would tell Dr. Steve that I had finally decided to undergo the surgery. God, I said silently, You sent a sign to me; here I am, following it…

The Ninth Hour

I was told:

Wait for the morning, and do not be afraid

The sun will always rise in your heart

“H ave you ever been able to smell colors? Has your soul ever gone on a journey your body can’t go on, to a place like heaven or even like hell? Before you slap me, let me tell you… Your answer would be ‘yes’ if we could go back to the time when this drug was not yet banned. They called it the ‘miracle drug’. Not even its inventor knew how powerful it could be until he took it himself, and at that point he never looked back…”

“If it’s so wonderful, why don’t we know anything about it?”

“Well, it was banned for a research. Not only banned from production, or consumption; companies didn’t have to just stop producing it, they had to actively ensure that most of the existed produced pills were destroyed. All research into it was stopped, entire labs shut down. Evidence against it had accumulated, so they weren’t taking any chances…”

“All right, if it’s so dangerous and well-kept a secret, how did you get your grubby hands on it?”

The prisoner continued as though he didn’t take note of what the interrogator had said. “Well, to answer that I’ll have to take you through it all from the beginning.”

His face turned blank suddenly, as though wiping his mind’s slate clean to think back to his story. He began:

“I was young when I met our neighbor’s daughter, and fell in love with her the way only an innocent teenager could fall in love. I completed that with an equally naïve plan: I would finish university, get a job, and propose! Simple, hmm? Well, nothing’s as simple as it seems. Before I’d finished my education, someone else had already proposed, and I was very close to losing her. So I came forward, and since her father knew me he agreed immediately. We got married two months later. I was in my second year of university, with two years left before my graduation. I was specializing in biochemistry; I was going to go places, places my own father had never been. He was just a lowly janitor at some company, but I was going to do things he never could have dreamed of…”

The man in the white thobe was getting bored. “Then what?”

“Then my father died – along with most of my family.”

Ah, this was interesting.

“Suddenly I had to provide for everyone who was left. I became desperate. I was one of the best students at my university, and this business with the miracle drug had just been getting started – its discovery was splashed all over the newspapers, all over the headlines. No one knew the negative side effects yet, so I began to work on a version that could be created from the lab, instead of having to start with ingredients that had to be imported from the Amazonian rainforest – which made it pretty expensive. No, my version would be available to everyone. My work would put it within everyone’s reach, no matter how rich or poor…”

“Put what within everyone’s reach? You know, you still haven’t told me what exactly this ‘miracle drug’ is supposed to do.”

“Don’t you remember, from about five years ago: the ‘Enhancer’? Puts you to sleep, and while you’re sleeping rewires your brain to peak performance capacity – makes you feel like you can go on for days?”

The eyes of the interrogator widened in recognition, and that was answer enough.

“My God,” continued the prisoner, “everyone was talking about it. Back then there were rumors that the President of the United States was using it – although they hushed that up when the side effects started appearing,” he added distractedly.

“So you were engineering your own version of the Enhancer?”

“Yes, at my university’s lab. I told you I was a good student. I was testing it on myself too, and let me assure you – I could tell when it started to work. It really was a miracle. But like an idiot, I didn’t go straight to a patent office… like the stupid, naïve student I was, I went to my professor. Someone I wanted to impress. Oh, I impressed him, all right. He wouldn’t let me go to anyone with it – threatened to have me expelled for illegal usage of the university’s facilities if I did. He didn’t let me take a single step without him after that. He’d bring me customers, take a nice big slice of the earnings, and ‘allow’ me to keep using the labs to make more, and more, and more… At first it rankled me, how he’d taken control of everything, but then so much money started coming in I didn’t mind any longer.”

“Was he aware of the preparation method?”

“No, he didn’t want to get involved with it beyond strictly a business standpoint. If anything went wrong he wanted to be able to step back and claim he knew absolutely nothing – and that was true, he didn’t. Only one company held the patent to it, and without a rival legal claim I was selling it illegally. He told me up front that he’d abandon me without a second glance if we ever got caught. Of course, once the Enhancer was discovered not to be such a miracle drug after all…”

“What happened?”

The prisoner smiled mirthlessly at having finally gotten his captor’s rapt attention. “I wanted to stop, of course. But the professor wouldn’t let me. Not only would he get me expelled, he’d prevent me from graduating from anywhere else. I could see my future slipping away before my eyes. I decided to bide my time. The news still wasn’t common knowledge, and most of the students and faculty at the university were my diehard customers. Things were still going well. Then everything changed…”

*

The flower shop wasn’t the only thing that had set her worrying. She seemed to have stepped into a parallel universe; a place where things resembled, but were not quite the same, as what Hisham described in tape after tape. Can grief really cause all that singlehandedly – make us see, very clearly, things that are simply not there? Does it dissolve the heavy curtain between nightmares and reality?

She looked over his room, having never violated his privacy as she was doing now by her very presence in this place where he slept. Now she was about to violate it further; something looked familiar, sticking out of a book that was on his bedside table. It was the corner of a yellowed, tattered paper that she thought she recognized… Carefully, she picked up the book and took the paper out, and knew that she was right.

This was her paper – a paper that she’d lost a long time ago, and apparently one he’d kept since then, its frayed edges a testament to its age. Written at the top in her handwriting was the title, ‘Hope’:

You told me one day that my sniffling was only a sickness, and that all sicknesses are temporary;

I woke up today, and years later here I am, still suffering from it…

The sun quarreled with my eyes and set, and I hoped it wouldn’t awaken the injury like you’d awoken me;

But it did…

I gulped my coffee down, hoping it would numb my pain;

And it let me down…

I read the morning papers, hoping I’d find something to cheer me up;

But everything in it blinded my eyes of happiness…

I stood in the midst of the crowd, eager for one to pick up my heart on his way;

They paid my heart no mind, busy in their own lives…

I left behind the coffee, the papers, the kindness of passersby, and waited for sunset;

The sun set, forgetting me and my tears…

I waited for you so long, hoping you’d spare me a wave;

But waiting has left the last of my hope to run out.

Beneath it, in pencil, he had written:

On my hope in you, and in my dream, I survive.

*

Some books can’t just be read and set aside; they take us to live in the middle of experiences too big to be enshrouded by paper. Some experiences cannot be conveyed through words or stories; they must be witnessed. I’ve come to this conclusion from my own reading, my own experiences of living multiple lives of anyone whose book I’ve read – or rather, those whom I have met through reading their books. I have never understood people who don’t read. How can someone willingly relinquish the experience of a thousand lives to live, time unbound by clocks, places unlimited by borders, characters that are larger than life itself?

It all goes back to our incurable human quality of curiosity – perhaps the first drive of all. Curiosity is what led Adam to want to discover what would happen if he ate the apple. Curiosity drives us to read, to live through others, to wait for a moment that some call ‘enlightenment’, which is as difficult to reach, as it is to describe. The only certain thing is that once you reach it, you’ll know you have.

The Sufis say that it’s a moment where the heart discovers the light of all that was once beyond the reach of its perception, and – though I wouldn’t label myself as a Sufi, or as any other human category, for that matter – I see this description as very precise. In moments like that, we finally come to perceive the weight of the dust that this world has caused to accumulate on our vision. We throw off the blinders that have narrowed our line of sight, like the ones that racehorses wear to keep them focused only on what is just ahead. It’s true that sometimes, this narrow focus can be useful, but those racehorses have lost the ability to see the world as a single coherent entity. They are made to be content with a mere portion of the brilliant whole.

That’s the way I had been as well: so focused forward, I neglected the other 359 degrees around me. Sometimes, such singular focus and obsession is a symptom of insanity, and maybe I was actually crazy. Maybe my heart had been in a morgue freezer before today, and it was my old enemy – well, my friend, really – the sheep in a wolf’s clothing, who with his simple musings had led it to thaw. He had torn off my blinders. It didn’t matter what he was to me; labels are unimportant, and in our deepest moments we shouldn’t care about things on the surface. All that mattered was that, thanks to him, I could now see clearly, feel clearly – and live!

It seemed that I would never be able to thank Jimmy enough. After my mother, he was perhaps the person I owed most in the entire world. Although he was a bit strange, he had saved me… and now all of my surroundings looked entirely different. My room had been somehow transformed. Now it was a cocoon of brilliance, from which I would burst forth like a resurrected butterfly. Of all the things that might change about myself, my voice would remain the same. I wasn’t just going to talk, I would sing; I would make my voice eternal. And my first real usage for my voice was to call the doctor, and tell him of my final decision to go ahead with the operation. I wanted it done as soon as possible; I was going to choose to live. He was happy, of course, and curious as to what had changed my mind. I didn’t tell him up front. For once, this man of a thousand questions could deal with a bit of mystery.

I’d always wondered about the lives of doctors. Were they born without feelings, without sympathy, or is the cold mask they wear a result of too many shocks to their system, which has led to the center of emotion in their brain shutting down? I was amused by the idea that I could tell an experienced doctor from a less experienced one and vice versa, merely by observing their reactions. I couldn’t imagine how many times Dr. Steve had had to break the news of impeding death to a miserable patient, or to distraught families. I wanted to ask him up front: was he ever sad if one of his patients died, or happy if they emerged safe and well? Or would it just be another piece of paperwork for him: Patient No. X to be placed in the red column or the blue column, useless except for end-of-the-year statistics? And what about their consciences… do they consider it one of the vital signs, or are biological processes far more deserving of attention?

As my operation got closer and closer, I remembered a cynical statement of Tariq’s: “Every mistake can be fixed, except for a doctor’s – a doctor’s mistake can only get you buried.” While true to a certain degree, when once I would have obsessed with it in the run-up to my operation, I now paid more attention to other, lesser matters. Like for example, how I would phrase my confession of love to Dareen. Or how I could most effectively cover up my defects before the reconstructive surgery in a couple of years. Silly things like that were now my biggest priorities. It was as though I have never been threatened by fear. Suddenly, life began coursing through my veins as warm and nourishing as honey, and my dream returned. I would be the greatest consultant and speaker in the world, somehow – I would find a way against the odds as I had done my whole life.

This sudden turnaround may seem surprising to you, but my ambition to return to my dreams of having my voice heard all over the world, and willingness to allow my picture – both before and after surgery – publically available, was spurred on multiple fronts.

It wasn’t just Jimmy’s influence that had brought me to this stage. Online, I found countless stories of patients that did not fail to warm my heart; stories of brave and determined role models that would encourage the reader to keep going, and to be strong in fighting the disease. Some websites described the steps that patients should expect at every stage of treatment. Others were blogs of former patients who were now in remission. I was impressed by how dedicated they were to help those whose struggle they had already been through, whether through online support groups, charity work or countless other means of assistance.

Some patients had actually filmed themselves at different stages of their treatment, which was both heartbreaking and a heart-wrenchingly inspiring thing to see. In fact, it’s what inspired me to start these videos of my own. In one of the many hours of footage I saw, one of the most interesting conversations was between a doctor and his young cancer patient, which started out quite bluntly:

“Am I going to die, doctor?”

“Now why would you say that?”

“Well, that’s what the kids at school say.”

I have to admit, I leaned forward at this point. I wanted to see how the doctor would react to this undeniably emotional line of questioning.

“All right, tell me. Have you ever put on 3D glasses?”

“Yes…”

“Do you remember the way you’d put them on, then take them off again, to see how the world looked different?”

“Yes!”

“Well, you can see what’s happening to you in two ways: you can either see it as a murderous disease, or you can see it as a new code your body has discovered. Computers speak binary languages, right?”

Apparently the doctor knew that the child, who nodded enthusiastically, liked programming. I was impressed.

“Right.”

“And every letter is made up of ones and zeros. So for example, ‘10101000’ gives the letter D. Another combination gives the letter H, and that applies to every other letter. That way, computers can understand the orders you give them. Right?”

“Right. But what does all this have to do with…”

“I’m getting there, just bear with me for a second. Do you know why your hair is red and your skin is white, while your friend’s hair is black and his skin is darker?”

“Genes?”

“Yes! But do you know how that happens?”

“Not really.”

“Well, just like computers have codes, so does the body. Codes that are each made up of four variables, and every combination gives a characteristic. One gives black hair, one gives blond hair… and it goes on and on. That’s DNA. The ability of cells to reproduce is also connected to these codes. What your cells have done is to come up with a new code that’s unfamiliar to the rest of the body… and that’s why you’re sick. So our job is to find out what went wrong with the code – and fix it! Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

This doctor’s explanation to a child was exactly what I, as an adult, needed to hear when I had first been diagnosed. Hearing it may have helped me to accept it faster. I only wished that these kinds of resources were available to us in the Middle East… but unfortunately, my search for similar stories in Arabic had never yielded much fruit, in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of accounts available online to Western audiences. This may have been one of the reasons that the little blog Amy had practically forced me to begin writing for the sake of my morale had been getting quite a lot of attention. I was one of the very few people online who were being open about what they were going through – and no doubt people could feel this through the way I was writing, how I held no emotions back.

The “cancer-as-code” explanation was incorporated into one of my first posts on the blog, where I wrote:

“I always used to wonder how I got this disease at such a comparatively young age… But now I am enormously grateful that it left me alone for all these years, and only sprang up to catch me when I had been unaware for a long, long time.

“I used to think that the question was, “What do I not know about my health?” I found out later that the question is, “What do I know?” Because in reality, I didn’t know anything at all.

“Nightmares are going to chase me tonight, as they always do, but I can try to help you avoid the same nightmares I’m going through, day after day.

“Whoever stays up late with me, fleeing the curse of nightmares, please do write something here for me. Let’s live together, giving each other light through the darkness, chasing away the nightmares – or we die together, letting death down before it lets all of us down!”

These words would flow from my keyboard almost without my realizing it. I would get up the next morning, read over my post, and think: did I really write that?

Then I would find comments like these at the end:

“Thanks for this reminder, brother. To everyone else:

Even if you’re not sick, don’t take your eye off the clock. It might be just a bit of time away from you, and just as there’s a chance that you won’t get sick there’s an equal chance that you will.

Be cautious. Learn about your health, and that’ll keep you from ever having to research your disease. Go to the doctor and get your routine checkups. Tell your doctor about your family history, tell him everything about you – you owe yourself that much, trust me!

If you have reason to worry, don’t just sit there. If you’re afraid of diabetes, for example, do something about it. Watch your weight and your food, and exercise! Never allow yourself to regret not doing something simple that could’ve saved you a lot of pain.”

‘Routine checkups’… I had only vaguely come across that term before. I asked my own doctor about it and he gave me a whole schedule of them. I learned afterwards that the labs in my country take these matters like a business, without following international standards. For instance – colon cancer is hugely prevalent in my country, which takes people through awful suffering and finally to their death. We know this very well. What we don’t realize is that this is an easily preventable disease – and treatable too, if only it was caught early. All that’s required are regular checkups after the age of fifty – from a simple stool sample! The same applies to many other diseases that plague our country, and the world. So much suffering might be avoided – if only we knew.

Stemming from my decision to take on this disease in an epic war of wills, I had to take on a name that would convey my decision, as a warrior… a leader… a general – yes, a general! General Hisham, that was me; leading the troops of my faithful body to victory against the renegade rebel cells. I took hope from this title, and my blog’s title became ‘Cancer, From a General’s Point of View’. While it may seem silly, it was primarily a psychological victory, in a war that can only be understood by those who have already fought in it.

I started writing everything, every detail of every day that I would never before have dared to tell anyone. My experiences, my feelings, and my mistakes – thus I stood, a hero speaking in front of the entire world.

I wrote about the doctors who had so annoyed me by keeping the truth of my diagnosis from me at the very beginning.

I wrote about the evil eye, and magic, and how we, with our simplistic understanding of religion, do not take the necessary steps of seeking treatment by all means – not just those of the sheikhs, especially those who consider religion a matter of business, like the ones who sell holy Zamzam water for thousands of riyals, after a certain sheikh has read Quran over it.

I wrote about how frightened I had been when one so-called ‘sheikh’ had begun to read what was certainly not Quran, but what I suspected were spells to try and cast demons around me!

I wrote about all this and more; I wrote for hours without even realizing that the time was going by. I would read incredible things online, things that made me convinced more than over that we, the Arabs, simply do not read. Who should I have apologized to for the survivor’s guilt that I sometimes felt? The ones who’d never stopped their blame, or to my own self for allowing myself to be unaware of so many important issues?

Although I was very happy that I was now considerably more knowledgeable than I had been, my heart wept for all those souls that had slipped away because of their lack of awareness. Ignorance is indeed the contradiction of knowledge, the enemy of humankind, and – as I knew now – the enemy of health. But ignorance is also a powerful motivator…

I should have known that the best way to conquer fear was to face it head-on. After I had fled my fear for so long, I was going to stand up to it, and face my most dreaded fear: the loss of my dream, forever. The way I pronounced words was going to change, to the extent that my speech might become barely understandable. I might not be able to go in front of anyone with the hideous face I was going to have… not because I wouldn’t accept it myself, but because the audience might be distracted from my message by the sight of my face.

So be it. I’d learn sign language if I had to. I’d start learning now, although I didn’t have much time, and continue after the operation. I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d do with it, but I’d do my best to ensure I’d never lose my ability to communicate. I was prepared to do whatever it might take to fulfill my dream. My fear had to relinquish its hold on me; my fear had to die, just as I was predicted to die. Because I was going to live, God willing.

Amy encouraged my newfound determination. I showed her the blog she had made me write, and although she couldn’t read my posts in Arabic, I translated the title for her. She was impressed, and wouldn’t stop calling me ‘General’.

“No one can take anything away from you, including your voice, General,” she told me.

The next morning, I found this sign taped above my bathroom mirror:

LET’S WIN THIS WAR, GENERAL!

Because I loved my job, and after I found out that blogging wasn’t all that difficult, I decided to begin a separate blog where I could conduct training about public speaking, and the most important things to know before giving a speech in front of an audience. These were the workshops that had been so popular with new employees at the company. Since I didn’t really have enough time to do both at the moment, all I did for the moment was visualize the blog’s content in future, its exact layout, and how I would organize the lessons…

It was time for me to go visit Jimmy and tell him about this war I was fighting; that for me, the main part of it was making the decision to fight. Now that I had done that, I could face everything my disease decided to throw at me, through God’s grace. What gift could I bring him, though? Perhaps a rose? My resentment of the concept of ‘convenient gifts’ had been heightened by my general bitterness at the time towards almost everything living in this world. Now that I had come to terms with my disease, buying roses as a gift wasn’t a bad idea at all, especially since they have been used since time immemorial to express feelings. I don’t quite understand the meanings that some attach to particular kinds of roses, but in the end they are beautiful to look at; and I would also always remember the story that my mother had told me about them.

One day, I had fallen sick, and my mother came back from dropping off a delivery with a few roses in her hand, that she had picked from a public park on the way home.

Naturally, I had no idea what to do with them. “Roses are for girls, Mother!”

“Who said that?”

“Everyone at school will laugh at me if they find out you brought me roses.”

“Did you know, my son,” and here I stifled a groan, knowing the signs of a history lecture about to begin, “that roses have held a great deal of significance as a symbol during war? Throughout the fourteenth century, a huge conflict arose between two noble English families, fighting for the Crown: the House of York, whose symbol was the white rose, and the House of Lancaster, whose symbol was the red rose.

“These were called the Wars of the Roses by Shakespeare himself – but although this name may seem very delicate and dainty, that bloody civil war lasted for almost a third of a century, and thousands of people were killed on either side. House Lancaster finally won the Crown; and ever since then, Great Britain has shown the white rose and the red rose intertwined, as a sign of unity.”

She ended this story with an impressive vocal flourish, and I conceded defeat. “All right, Mother, I’ll take the roses. Thank you very much. Just please, no more history lessons.”

“You may have noticed that a red rose appears at the beginning of each English Premier League game.”

“I don’t really remember…”

“It’s said that that is also a symbol to remember the victims of the First and Second World Wars, who gave up their lives defending the honor of their country.”

“All right, Mother, whatever you say, I like roses now.”

“Too late! You’re not getting them.”

“But I listened to your history lesson! Come on, Mother, don’t make me feel guilty, I’m sorry.”

She took the roses and said amusedly, “They weren’t for you anyway; these are for the vase in your room. Pay a little more attention next time.”

She gave me an affectionate smile – one that makes my heart hurt to think of – and went to go put them in that vase.

Here I am now, using roses once more as a symbol of victory; and the only thing stranger than using roses as a symbol of war is using it as a symbol of overcoming death. Although this train of thought was not exactly logical, I trusted it would make sense to Jimmy, as crazy as he was. Truth be told, we were well-matched for each other.

I headed towards the flower shop where I had never been, and where no one had passed by to bring me any kind of present. It was time for me to get to know it. I never did find out who worked there, which was the strangest thing for me. Who would voluntarily lock themselves up in that tiny prison of a shop? – even if it was a flower shop, which would probably be cheerier than, say, a grocery or a butcher’s. Although the shop had transformed from an enemy beacon to one that would cheer me on towards victory, I still occasionally was struck by a slight apprehension towards it… Me, apprehensive towards a flower shop? I really was strange!

I didn’t know which color I would pick out; for someone like Jimmy, one color might mean victory and another would indicate surrender. Certainly I would not choose white, for reasons you well know; in fact, if such a thing as a black rose existed I probably would have got it for him. It would perfectly suit both of our madness. I wouldn’t be surprised if he considered black a color of health, since it’s the opposite of the most common color in hospitals anyway.

And what kind of rose should I pick, and how many? Was there a number that would convey what I wanted to say? Most importantly, I couldn’t really understand why I was so nervous about someone who was hardly surrounded by an air of mystery – I’d be meeting the shopkeeper soon, after all.

In the end, what mattered was that I’d be getting Jimmy a worthy gift. It is said that for every person on earth, there is one other person who is our equal in every way, whom we influence and are influenced by in equal measure. I don’t have the audacity to claim that I had influenced Jimmy, not in the least, but he had certainly had one on me. He was the one who took me from where I was, stuck in a bottomless well of self-pity, and slowly pushed me towards help myself while always keeping my eyes on the light in the distance… the light of health, or maybe even of death.

The place that my room overlooked, where I was headed towards, was just about five meters long, and it wasn’t much wider than that. Its front window was so intensely decorated that I can hardly see inside. At the door, there were giant and elaborate flower arrangements in ornately sculpted flowerpots, and some plants, dark blue and green.

The closer I got to the flower shop, the more I was intrigued. Floating away from it down the breeze were familiar sounds in an intimately known language. My brain simply refused to acknowledge it at first, whatever my ears choose to convey. As I approached further, I got more and more certain of the song. It was the warm voice I would hear every morning before work.

We and the moon are neighbors

Its house is behind the hill

The most beautiful tunes emerge from behind us…

It was certainly Fairouz’s voice, but how?

I’d conjectured often about what the flower shop owner would look like; his appearance, his dress code, his personality. My predictions had begun to unravel after hearing an Arab song. Although there were still many possibilities, I decided against opening the conversation with a demanding question like that – after all, she or he, no matter who, would be human

I stood at the door of the shop and said in a clear voice: “Hello?”

An angelic voice replied, “Good morning, hello!”

The voice was, somehow, familiar… But how was this possible?

The Tenth Hour

Stop calculating time by your watches,

Add a new time zone to the seconds and hours:

A timer for your dreams

H e could still remember the day one of his professors came to him, crystal clear.

“I can’t thank you enough for this,” the professor had said, shaking his hand. “It’s as if I’d been blind and now I can see! Everything is easy, everything’s insignificant – I can make up my losses on the stock market in record time… They used to just fall and rise, but now I see the logic in the patterns. It’s as if my IQ has doubled, and even my memory is stronger! I could tell you what any stock closed at – go on, ask me.”

He was already bored. “Yes, thank you, that’s very nice.”

“I’m even starting to think about leaving my job here at the university! I can make a fortune off of the stock market… Maybe I can even go international…”

He decided to jolt him out from his reverie. “You know this is all because of the drug, right?”

“Yes! That’s why you’re so brilliant, my boy!”

“Thanks, but have you considered what would happen if I decided not to sell it anymore? And what if I died, what would you do then?”

The professor blinked, as though the jump in IQ had not accompanied a jump in his abilities of logical prediction. “I’m – well – I’m sure you wouldn’t abandon us so abruptly, after everything you’ve done… You couldn’t…”

“Just don’t leave your job, all right?”

He left the professor standing there, still open-mouthed and dumbfounded. Later, with a curl of his lip, he thought – why didn’t he just let the stupid man do whatever he wanted? He’d have deserved to reap the benefits of his idiocy, with his selective so-called ‘intelligence’. How strange! Watching idiots turn into accidental geniuses had been an eye-opener. Every time he remembered the man’s fish-eyed gaze he had to suppress his laughter. Even more so when he started to think of them as mutants, like the X-Men, with him of course playing to role of Professor X. The only question was, who would be Magneto?

Speaking of idiots, one of the students he’d helped was the stupidest person he’d ever met. He still couldn’t understand how this moron, who couldn’t even solve a high school-level equation, had made it into university; his father was probably someone with connections. Connections could supersede the brilliance of the mind any time of day – at least when it came to getting into university. Once he was in, he couldn’t pass a single one of the first-round tests. But once he started taking his Enhancer, a week before the final exams, he was invincible, the miracle student. He’d passed every one of his subjects, even the most challenging, with excellent grades. Some in the university had been surprised. But even the illogical had become logical, thanks to him. He felt so powerful, and proud – he, who had created all of this from nothing…

“What happened after that?”

“Suddenly, everything changed. At first I thought it was a mistake on my part. I still remember it was the 31st round of preparation – and I did everything as usual. I changed nothing. I even used the same containers as I was making it, the same ones I’d been using since the very first time. I used the same ingredients with the same proportions, froze it all and then took the temperature up 370 degrees… It was the same every time. But ever since then, the miracle drug I was making became – as you saw – an extremely effective method of torture. Taking the drug became a shortcut to hell. I had been warning people since the very beginning – this is how it is with chemicals. You’re either going to go on a roadtrip to heaven or sink to the bowels of hell. But when everyone started getting stuck in hell… That’s when I realized there was a problem.”

“What was it?”

“Everyone on that pill started having extreme hallucinations – that the earth was swallowing them up, like the Angel of Death was threatening to take their lives away then and there… It’s different for everyone, that’s the beauty of it – the brain reacts in such diverse ways. That’s what they found out the Enhancer did, all over the world. After Round 31 I started keeping up with the news – they tried to keep it under the table, but it got out anyway… the hallucinations started happening to people everywhere. So that’s why everyone started turning on me. Everyone who was buying the drug from me – and remember, I had half the university depending on me by then.”

“Did they threaten you?”

“They did, but they couldn’t try to hurt me. They wouldn’t dare – they needed me too much. Once they were off the drug, they went back to just how they were, just as stupid as they had been before I intervened to save the day for them. Some people thought that the drug had made their cognitive abilities even worse, which just shows the level of denial they were in. They had forgotten how stupid they really were, and tried to take it out on me. Can you believe it? After everything I had done for them…”

“Well, they did think you were setting them up.”

“I honestly had no idea what was happening, but no one believed me. Everyone thought I was playing around with the dosage so that I could raise the price of the drug. As if I would toy with people’s sanity like that! They threatened to rat me out to the police, but left off as soon as I reminded them that they would be just as implicated for taking illegal drugs. So they left me with the next best thing – kicking me out of university with grades that guaranteed I wouldn’t be able to work anywhere else. My professor had finally gotten rid of me. He thought I’d been ruining his reputation. He didn’t know what else I could ruin… but God took revenge for me.”

“How?”

“I hadn’t realized that he’d stolen the preparation method from me before I left, and then tried to do it himself. When he took some of his own pills – and he’s such an idiot, I’m sure he took more than one – the hallucinations started hitting him. His suicide note said that all the evils of the world were ganging up on him. He’d seen the devil come to him so he could drive him crazy, make him disbelieve in God, and throw him into hell… so he threw himself off his balcony.”

“None of that makes any sense…”

“Do your dreams, your nightmares make sense? That’s what hallucinations are like – they just happen when you’re awake. They’re so strong that you can’t distinguish between them and reality. If you took that pill and started seeing two of me, you wouldn’t able to tell which one of us was real and which was a figment of your imagination. Or maybe both were – or you could convince yourself neither of us was real, so you’d try to kill me and then yourself. And you can’t steel yourself against it. You can try to keep telling yourself that it’s all not real, but knowing something on a cognitive level is different from actually realizing it when you’re in the heat of the fire. You saw how it was for me. Taking that pill is like getting medically induced schizophrenia.”

“Damn…”

“You’d see people who aren’t there, talk to them and interact with them, move with or to them, just as if they existed – but they don’t. They’re just in your head. Things start to lose their features, logic becomes lost everywhere, you start hearing voices whispering things that don’t make sense… You’d live in a world that’s parallel to, but not quite the same as the real one. You start to lose the ability to interact with everyone whose existence isn’t just in your head. Everyone starts to think you’re crazy – but there’s worse.”

“Worse than that?”

“Ah, yes…”

The stupid people who had been taught a lesson at university would probably remember that lesson: don’t tell your secrets to strangers. Keep your motivations hidden, for that’s the only way you’ll ever gain leverage. But the man himself had forgotten this lesson – and remembered it only when it was too late…

*

Her mind had run away with her. Sitting in that room, the voice in her head nagged insistently, too loud for her to ignore.

Is it possible that one day we’d meet, like strangers in a long line at the supermarket who strike up a conversation out of boredom, talking about high prices and the weather, and then part as though nothing had happened? Left only with the vaguest memories of each other… The trace of a name, the color of a shirt – is that what’s going to happen to us? And if it is… Why, why did I get myself into all of this – why did he get me into this? Of all the men on earth, he’s never once let a confession of love slip, not even accidentally. He was so generous, and yet he never brought a letter or even a flower along with the morning coffee… How miserly of him. Disappearing after sharing half his life with me, leaving the rest of it filled with questions, and chaos!

Her snooping had continued unabated, this time not into his belongings but into the musings of his mind. She’d Googled Cancer From a General’s Point of View and had sat reading through his blog posts.

The one she was reading now said:

How ignorant I was! I used to hate chaos, like everyone else. Then I realized that chaos was only a new opportunity. Just as randomly flying objects can hit your head, you can duck – and then snatch them out of the air. They’re just an arm’s length away from you. I’ve started to enjoy noise, as well. All the voices coming together from outside your head forces your brain to shut all of them out – and then, you can listen calmly to the one voice coming from your heart… I admit: where once I used to flee from them, now, I welcome the fortunate coming together of noise and chaos.”

She feared for her heart. Please don’t drag my heart along into your chaos, she wanted to tell him. It’s enough that he had left her heart with a thousand and one unanswered questions, without having answered even one of them so far. Why didn’t you just talk to me? Why didn’t you reply to my messages, knowing all along that across an ocean my heart was burning for you? Now, questions about the stories he had told were starting to creep into her mind, bit by bit, leaving her with still more questions to add to her thousand and one. More questions – more chaos.

Dareen knew that we live our lives trying to answer the questions we encounter, the ones set by those who are cleverer than we are. It’s been said that sometimes, asking the right question is more important than finding the right answer. Ask the right question, and you won’t waste a second trying to find the answer to it – even if your search for the answer takes your entire life…

*

I stand here less than two meters away from you feeling further away than ever. I don’t pretend to have known you. For one, I knew you for too little a time, and someone like you wouldn’t deign to ever be entirely known by anyone. Someone with your wisdom; your spirit; all the contradictions you bring together. You even intimidated death, in round after round that you would always win. You didn’t die then because you weren’t scared of death, and I think you aren’t scared even now. Death didn’t know what quite to make of you, and I’m sure you made him doubt his abilities… just like I didn’t know what to make of you, at first.

Everyone here is sitting at the edge of a precipice, choosing between having to wait until the ledge gives way from under their feet, and teeters them into the abyss. Waiting for death is worse than death itself! But you didn’t have to wait… You chose. You chose when to push yourself off the edge, when no other choices seemed viable for you – and, mid-fall, you realized that you had a parachute on your back, and you could waft gently all the way down. Then you called up for everyone up there to hear, not to be afraid – and death was confused again…

What I heard at your funeral today was not what I would have imagined about you. Were you ever just an ordinary man? Unbelievable! How sad I am that ‘annoying Jimmy’, as I used to think about you, was really only born on the day your wife died. You, the one who would never admit his own faults, had stood up on the day of her funeral and shouted: “I killed her! I killed her with my carelessness!” This didn’t make any sense, since she had died in a fire that had broke out at your house while you were at work… but it made sense to you, and you changed the way you lived after she had left. You stopped seeing anyone you knew, and even stopped going to work as though in vengeance for her – or as a way to punish yourself. Still, if she had ever come back to life I don’t think you would have apologized straight out. You would let your actions speak for you, not your words – that was how you mourned her.

Everyone is mourning for you today, my friend. You, who turned your back on death, and gifted life to us all. You taught everyone you knew that death is the only real drive of life, and that enjoying what you have is a gift. Most importantly, you taught us to have moments of real enjoyment, to last us through the void. None of us here fears death anymore; this is our mourning. As long as I am still alive, I can laugh, I can dance, and pull aside the curtain to reveal dreams I didn’t even know I had. Let the dead do as they will. Like every day, I’ll think of you, and tell you what I feel without having the strength to speak, and you will answer. The only difference is that today, we are two meters apart from each other – two meters of the ground…

Amy handed me your will; I had thought you were joking, that day when you told me you wanted to me to be its executor. I couldn’t believe that you had actually asked her to give me that envelope once you were gone – and you knew you were going soon. But you were never very predictable. Your will proves that. You demanded to be buried right away, without bothering to spread the news – since you said no one would come from outside the hospital, anyway.

I know myself better than any of you ever knew me, the final paragraph said, and I would never cry for myself. Don’t cry over someone who knows he’s undeserving of your tears, your praise, or even your anger. If you think your tears or red noses are of any use to me, well – they certainly help me laugh at you from where I am. You’ve made yourselves clowns, ladies and gentlemen.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, reading that. At least your will is as original and crazy as you are.

I left my real will with the flower seller… Implement it before I’ve been gone for a week.

I love only her.

That was the end of it. I assumed the last sentence was a sendoff instead of ‘with my love’ or ‘sincerely’… and took ‘her’ to be in reference to his wife, who had died and left him, never to be the same again.

Once I felt that it was time, I headed to the small flower shop. As I entered, I felt at peace. There she was, her back to me, standing amongst the red roses, her brown hair undulating off her shoulders like dew on the petals. I didn’t know anymore whether the roses decorated her, or whether she decorated the roses. It wasn’t her beauty that captured my feeling towards her – really, I wasn’t sure exactly what I felt towards her. It wasn’t the same way I felt about Dareen. It was only that she had somehow made her way into my soul. She seemed to remind me of someone… but who?

I wouldn’t be able to describe her, believe me, even if I tried; even if I had to speak for the same amount of time I’ve spoken so far. Whenever I try to talk to her I hesitate, forgetting that I ever spoke to a crowd; I forget words, I stutter, and all I can think is who does she remind me of?

She turned and noticed me standing there, and said in her iridescent voice: “Hello, how are you today?”

“I’m good, how are you?”

“Good.” She smiled. “A rose for Jimmy, as usual?”

This time my loss for words had nothing to do with my own feelings towards her.

I hesitated for a moment before I said, “Jimmy died this morning…”

There was silence, as even the air stopped its movement, the roses forgetting to bend ever-so-slowly this way and that. Nothing changed but the flower seller’s leaning against her lone white chair, and I could see the tears begin to gather in her lovely eyes. I didn’t know what to say; my brain did not have the words to say in such a situation, for what had happened today – much less what to say to her.

Once she had wiped away her tears and gathered herself together, she said, “I’m so sorry, Hisham – I didn’t know.”

“It’s all right… I’m sorry too.”

We stood there a few moments, not knowing what to say to each other.

Then I remembered what I was here for. “He wrote to me that I would find his real will with the flower seller – I’m so sorry, I don’t even know your name.”

She smiled. “My name is Yasmine.”

“Nice to meet you,” and I laughed at myself, shaking her hand formally for the first time. “I’m Hisham.”

“I know,” she said amusedly. “I’ve asked Amy about you. I can see your room from here. Before I knew your name, I knew what time you’d get up from when you opened the curtains, and what time of day you like to open your window for some fresh air to watch people walking around down here, and even which park bench you prefer.”

My face must have conveyed my astonishment, so she continued in her same light, good-humored tone: “Don’t be afraid, I’m not stalking you. You and Jimmy are alike in that you would both sit out here in the garden by yourselves whenever the other patients had visitors… You were both easy to notice. And Jimmy’s way of dealing with his loneliness always went through me.”

“How?”

“Jimmy and I became good friends because he would come by here regularly to buy the same thing every time: one yellow rose. He’d change his clothes before he came so I wouldn’t think he was crazy, and I used to wonder who he was buying the rose for. I only found out later that they were all for himself. So what about you?”

“What?”

“How do you deal with your loneliness?”

“Me? Oh… I write.”

“In a black leather notebook, right?”

“Yes, before I type it into the computer – how did you know?”

“I’ve seen you writing in it before, after you’d talk to Jimmy. I told you,” she smiled again, “I’m pretty observant.”

I remembered what I had written the first day after I’d spoken to him:

Once you allow yourself to think you’ve met all kinds of people, you’ll be proven wrong the next minute. Life is the twin of surprises; when its surprises are over, we die.

“Come tomorrow at 5 in the afternoon,” she said finally. “I’ll bring his will.”

“Thank you so much.”

I turned to go, content to wait until tomorrow to have this last mystery of Jimmy’s cleared up. I stepped out of that place that I was convinced was as close to God’s heaven on earth as you could get, where there was rest without any more suffering…

From behind me, I heard her voice, hesitant: “Hisham?”

“Yes?”

I could see her hesitate once more, as though deciding against saying whatever it was she’d wanted to. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Only God knows how that day passed, and half the day after it. Sixteen hours finally elapsed. I sprayed my perfume on, had a bout of sneezing, and refreshed my perfume again. I had no patience to wait for the elevator, and took the stairs instead, almost at a run. I decided to slow down as I came closer and emerged into the garden.

Something was different about that garden today. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I saw a barbecue grill, and realized that it was the source of the delicious scent that had been filling my lungs. I turned the corner to where I could see the flower shop, and saw that there was a table next to it with juices, and decorations all over the garden – like the barbecue parties I’d seen before in films. It looked like the party was about to start.

I came closer to where the flower seller – Yasmine – was standing, individually wrapping an enormous mound of yellow roses. She passed me a paper, giving me a quick smile; I unrolled it, to find:

You are invited to Jimmy’s party…

I realized it with a shock of surprise: so this was Jimmy’s will!

At exactly 7 PM that evening, I had completely forgotten that I was just outside a hospital. The garden was completely transformed. Yasmine had organized one hell of a party. Somehow she had hired waiters, to distribute the juices and operate the grills, which emitted delicious smells to ensure my appetite was in full force. People I had only known as patients, whom I’d never seen before except in their rooms an hour ago to give them the invitations, were now here, milling around with smiles as though they didn’t have a care in the world. And everyone had a yellow rose.

So many people were here: not just patients, but also doctors and nurses off their shifts. Even the hospital’s manager came by. We were all talking and laughing together – I forgot I was sick, having thought of myself as nothing more than a hospital patient for so long. We all forgot that some of us would be joining Jimmy soon… In fact, had we thought of that then, we probably would’ve welcomed the thought of being reunited with him. How had I thought of him as a secluded, lonely, selfish person? I could hardly believe that this was meant to be a ‘goodbye’ to him. We were all so happy. Everyone here thought of him as a dear friend, and even his final act in this world had been one of generous giving…

I sidled off to the side to be with myself for just a little while. I sat down at my favorite bench to observe the festivities from afar, and enjoy the quiet happiness that pervaded the whole place. Suddenly I wished Dareen was there. I wanted to tell her something – what, exactly, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was, I wanted my farewell to her to be something like this.

Suddenly, Yasmine was at my side. “He said he’d never had the chance to make someone truly happy during his own lifetime – and that he wanted the people who deserved it most to have that chance, even after he was gone. He’d tell me, ‘I don’t know why any of you would be sad to see me go… I’ll be happy to have moved on, and sad for you to still be here. So I’ll see if I can pass some of that happiness onto you, too.’”

The Eleventh Hour

Let’s take our days back to where they belong

Climb up some stairs to the sky

I’ll reach it somehow…

S omewhere near the famous Briman prison, the man signed a paper he wasn’t given the chance to read. He was patted down, and his phone was taken away from him. He didn’t know what was going to happen now.

Earlier, the interrogator had talked to someone on the phone. Once again, he had left the room so that the prisoner wouldn’t hear. He hadn’t pressed him further to tell him more of the story… and now the man was growing wary. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so open with him – after all, that was what the interrogator had wanted, wasn’t it? But he had been bursting to tell someone, anyone. He hadn’t even realized it before, and only when he’d started did it feel like a dam that had been broken… and he couldn’t stop himself, the words tumbling over each other. It felt good to finally confess the truth.

But now…

Outside, the interrogator was speaking to a superior. After listening to the other end, he asked: “Do you need him to run more tests, or to run more tests on him?”

Either way, he would be a useful asset.

Back inside the cell, he motioned to the guards to stand on either side of the man and march him out. After he was blindfolded, of course.

The street outside was quiet and empty; not just because it was past 3 AM, but because it was part of a neighborhood that had been abandoned after the floods.

“You’re lucky to be required by the administration. That’s the only reason I’m not handing you in straight to the drugs police.”

“What am I ‘required’ for?”

“You’re going on a long… visit.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“It doesn’t matter. You just signed the release form.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance to read it!”

“Well, the law doesn’t protect idiots…”

“I’m not an idiot… I was forced!”

The man in the white thobe merely chuckled as they walked.

The prisoner fought a rising sense of panic. Was there any way he could run? Experimentally, he shoved against the guards on either side; they only tightened their grip, moving in further.

“Don’t try that again,” one growled, and he gulped.

The hated voice said, “I’d listen to him, if I were you.”

Taking deep breaths, the prisoner tried to calm himself down – but it was all for nothing when the interrogator said next:

“How’s your wife?”

“You bastard” – the guards tightened their grip on him again, forcing him to a halt when he lunged towards the voice. “If you lay a hand on her I’m going to kill you!”

“If you ever let the thought of running cross your mind, we won’t have to ask your permission.”

Oh God, it was too late… He wanted to beg him to explain what was happening, but knew it would be useless now. Whatever they were planning for him, it wasn’t going to be good. Berating himself over his confession was just as useless. They would’ve tortured it all out of him anyway. He’d gotten himself into this mess from the moment he’d concocted that accursed drug. But there was one more thing he needed to do…

Tonelessly, he said the only thing he could. “I’d like to make a phone call.”

“This isn’t an American TV show. You don’t get to call your lawyer. You’ll be calling your wife soon to let her know you’ll be going on a long trip… But that’s it.”

“Please – just… let me explain. Please.”

-

Thousands of miles away, a phone clicked onto voicemail. A voice said:

“Hisham – this is Tariq. I don’t know how much time I have… but I’m calling because I want to explain your situation. It’s all because of me. I caused everything you’re going through now. All the hallucinations you’re having, and don’t know why – that was me. All the devils you see, the buildings crashing down over your head, the dead that drag you towards them… that’s my doing. But you deserved it, and let me tell you why.

“The world loves a lucky idiot. They’re treated well, given every opportunity, for no reason at all but what they were born with. I’ve been cursed with bad luck. I did everything I had to. I got good grades, went to a top-ranked university. I was going to be a scientist. I was going to make things better in the world. Then it all went downhill…

“They kicked me out of university and made sure I couldn’t get a job anywhere else. Why? Because – for my wife, for the sake of my son, so they wouldn’t starve – I created a miracle drug. One that starts out making you brilliant, and then makes you insane… The one that’s been making you insane for months now, the one whose effects you could give lectures on better than anyone. I stopped selling the drug once I found out what it really did – but then I got desperate…

“I worked for a magician – yes, a magician, can you believe it? He gave me all the equipment I needed to start making the pills again. I sold them to him so people could use them to torture people they wanted to hurt. What was I supposed to do? It was for my family, all for their sake… I kept looking for work, for another job, but I always got passed up for people who were less talented, less smart, less able than I was – lucky idiots, like I said. And luck was the only edge they had on me.

“But then I got the job being your assistant at the company. At first I was relieved – finally I could earn my living in a good way. I quit my job with the magician, and started working for you. I liked you at first, really I did. It shocked me when I found out that you hadn’t even finished your studies. That you could boss me around, make me do what you wanted; and all the while you weren’t even my equal, much less my superior. The world had put me under the thumb of an undeserving boss yet again – don’t worry, I won’t call you a lucky idiot. You’re not an idiot, I’ll give you that much… you’re certainly not better than me, though. But the world didn’t realize that.

“Wouldn’t you hate the world, too?

“I realized at that point that I couldn’t control what the world did with lucky idiots, but I could certainly control what happened to those who stood in my way… I still had pills I hadn’t sold to the magician, whole stocks of them. I got the perfect chance to make a move, once you started complaining about your lack of sleep. The pill would send you to sleep anyway – you’d never suspect a thing, and neither would your doctor. The enhancing effects of the drug are very hard to trace. You have to admit – I’m a genius!

“At first it started because all I really wanted to do was punish you for taking away what would have been mine – what would have been mine, if things were really fair. But then I thought that, really, what would make things fair would be if I took my right, by force. I started planning for what was going to happen once you became incapacitated by the drug. I was going to take your place at the company; I certainly deserve it. I became obsessed with it… everything I did was to work towards it.

“There’s no better excuse to depose anyone from their job than a mental disorder, is there? Once you started exhibiting the symptoms – don’t you think I noticed all the times you started fading out in the middle of a meeting, hardly able to control it? – I was only biding my time until you became full-on crazy. But God loves you, I suppose. That cancer diagnosis was the only thing that saved you from being labeled as a mental case. It didn’t stop me, of course – in fact, I used it to get me to where I wanted even faster. I spread countless rumors about your degenerating condition, and in the end it all paid off.

“You left, and nothing stood in my way. I kept your dignity and maintained the façade of your sanity for you just as I took your place, and for a while I was happy. I discovered soon enough that it wasn’t really your place that I wanted – I just wanted a decent life, the life I should’ve had all these years but was always taken away from me, no matter how much I deserved it.

“I was careless once, and I got caught. The idiots won again, their dogs attacked me, they forced me to talk, and now they’re dragging me somewhere to work with them, or work for them… or something else, I don’t really know.

“You know, I should tell you something – the effects of the drug may never go away. You’ve been taking those pills longer than anyone else I’ve seen, and the damage to your brain might be permanent. It’s not just the hallucinations I’m talking about, it’s also your memories. Your head might be stuck in the past for hours, sometimes days – you’ll mix up between what’s really happened, and what hasn’t. There’s nothing you can do about it now. Well, I guess you could try therapy.

“To be honest, I don’t know if I feel sorry for you or not. I don’t know if I really regret what I’ve done. If you think I was wrong to do this, ask yourself – who wronged me in the first place? Show me one person who’s had to bear the burden I have and I’ll apologize – just one person. You won’t be able to. You can’t even imagine what I’ve been through, the kind of life I had. Having to wake up every single morning knowing my father was no more than a lowly janitor in some grandiose company filled with lucky idiots. Having to take his place as general dogsbody to the man who used to order my own father around. No… You’d never understand. Maybe now you do – but only through the suffering I caused you. That’s the only way you’d ever have gained enlightenment.

“In the end I guess all that really matters is that I finally got my revenge on the world through you. I admit, it’s a bit childish, the way this call is a bit childish, too – if I didn’t tell you now, you’d die without ever knowing what I really done to you, and what’s the fun of victory if you can’t relish it? If your victim isn’t even aware of the tangled webs that have been spun around him with such dedication? You know, spiders drug the flies they catch before they start spinning them into oblivion… I may compare myself to a spider, but that takes all the fun out of it, really.

“Have a nice life, Hisham – well, whatever’s left of it. Close your eyes and look through my own for a second. You’re taking me to my own end a happy man. We ended up in this together, just like we did so many other things, eh? Partners until the end. Partners – equals. Like we always should have been.

“When you die, close your eyes and remember my father’s place. He should’ve been where you are, dying in some cushy hospital a million miles away after spending half a fortune stretching his lifespan a couple of useless months. Instead he died in a watery grave. Cosmic justice, eh?

“I guess the world does give us what we deserve, after all…”

*

Still alone in the room, she pressed ‘play’ on the final video with trembling fingers.

*

My name is Hisham Al-Sayid, in the middle of my third decade of life. At this point, I think you’ve come to know me – at least a little.

I’m an ambitious man, and I thought I knew the kind of life I wanted to lead. Now, that life is on teetering on the brink of some yawning chasm. I’ve discovered that the only things that ever distinguished me from anyone else were first, my ambition to stand every day with a message to convey and a story to tell, and second, my love for Dareen, who I can quite honestly say is the love of my life.

In short, these are exactly the things I’m about to lose tomorrow, the day I’m finally going to have my surgery. I knew no meaning for life except what I gained through standing up and speaking to an audience. I’m about to lose that tomorrow, when my face becomes that of a monster, and my words become garbled and incomprehensible.

Today is the day I wrote and recorded all those memories for, so they’d give me the strength to continue past a point of no return.

My story, as complicated as it may seem, is the same as many others’ stories. Maybe you know someone who went through or is still going through a tragedy that’s similar to mine – a disease, a disaster. Maybe you’ve met someone like me, or even passed by me without knowing, some background extra in the ongoing cinematic production of your life. You’ve come across people like me before, whether you realize it now or not. One day you might even be in my place, at a crossroads, about to lose the things you value most; about to lose everything. For me, my dream and Dareen are everything…

Oh, Dareen, I used to think that I was perfect. Like many people, I thought that bad things happen only to people who deserve them, and that being put to the test by God could only be a punishment. That was why, when I first found out about what I had been struck with, I asked Him, “Why me?” How wrong I was! Then I fled from two kinds of people. I ran from those who thought – like me – that I deserved whatever I got because I was guilty. I also ran from those who tortured me with their gazes of pity. I fled here, and on this journey I’ve learned so much.

For one, whoever said that we only really appreciate things when they leave us didn’t complete his train of thought. He forgot to add that although we miss what we’ve lost, we discover new blessings that we’d been blinded to by what we had before. When we lose what we have, we’re forced to look for substitutes that we hadn’t realized existed in the first place.

Now what? Goodbye, dear jaw. You’ve given me a face that has never scared off passersby or been ridiculed by children. Goodbye, dear tongue; with you, I was able to reason well, and with you I’d hoped to achieve my dream. I say goodbye not to mere organs, but to friends who have served me well, and faithfully.

Here I am, with my perfume for special occasions that I haven’t used in a long time. In my room, I search for some papers I’d jotted down some points so I wouldn’t forget anything. I wouldn’t be using a presentation today; today, I would only speak using my voice, in front of the mirror. I prepared for about an hour, and spent about three hours on the presentation itself.

As the time passed by, I grew more and more aware that the time was ticking past the few hours I had left whole, as an intact human being. I found myself sitting, speaking about anything and everything, as part of a ceremony, a farewell ceremony – for my voice.

Then what? When does all the suffering end? I think it ends once we stop framing it to ourselves as ‘suffering’, when we give it another name and cast off the shroud of pessimism that surrounds it. Then, the suffering stops. I’d heard this quote before, but I’d never quite understood it: “Pain is destined; suffering is a choice.” My choice now was to end this period of suffering. I had no other choice left to me but to enjoy, or at least by teaching it.

My long-standing struggle was never a struggle with my disease, as I’d thought, but with life. My journey had never been to fight death, but rather to find what made me cling onto life. Everything I’ve felt, everything and everyone I’ve known on this journey has given me whatever I need to learn this lesson, the hard way – and learning things the hard way is the only way things really stick in our head, isn’t it?

I think that I’ve learned a lot, and that it’s time to end this journey. As fearful as I am about what may be coming next, I don’t think that the best that can happen to me is the possibility of reaching tomorrow. Time is the master at revealing the unknown at the opportune moment; not a minute before, not a minute after. Quite simply, that’s the belief in fate – the conviction that everything happens at its proper time, whether we understand that or not. Whoever knows, knows, and whoever is ignorant, stays that way until he chooses to wrest himself out of his ignorance – and God shall determine a matter that was already decided, a long time ago…

After the operation, what then? I don’t know the details, and I’d rather not lay out plans that will only inevitably change… Certainly, my life will look very different from how it looks now, no matter what the outcome is. When I started to bear the idea of imagining myself with the identity and the face that I knew was coming, I discovered paths and new ways of thinking and communicating that I’d had no idea existed.

The numbers show it all: today, my blog has received two hundred thousand readers from all over the Arab world, after having written about thirty posts. My social media pages have a following that makes me somewhat ‘influential’. Losing my job was no longer a nightmare. Let’s give credit where it’s due; this disease had opened new horizons for me. There aren’t many online lectures on issues like this. I could start a subscription service, and use my former renown to help earn me a living. I could even use my story as a way to inspire others: how I’d gotten here, where I hoped to be going, and – if this was the end for me – how others could use my story as a springboard to their own new beginning…

So many questions I still don’t have answers to… will any of these recordings reach Dareen, and then the rest of the world? I want her to know that I love her – yes, I love her, even if it’s far too late for me to say so. She is the only one who deserves to watch me tell my story before she reads it, before the whole world does. I hope that they will reach Yasmine someday, too; somehow, I feel that she already understands me, but I want her to understand this about me, too. She was one of the brightest lights during my hospital stay, and I’ll never forget her for what she did for Jimmy.

Always, the undercurrent of my thoughts flows with a single question: is this the last time? Will I ever get back to recording, to speaking, to reading and writing? Or is this the last time I will ever do any of those?

What do people who are about to die think of? They think of life, like others who are alive. They think of all the letters they didn’t have time to write, the people they weren’t able to cast a last glance upon to hold in their hearts’ memory… They think of all the moments that passed them by without enjoying life. They think of what they are about to lose – but what about everything they are about to gain? The truths whose capacity we couldn’t even begin to comprehend… discoverable just beyond that intimidating door.

If you’re in my position, then listen to me carefully. Wherever you are, whatever you’re about to lose, I hope you can consider me as your friend. I no longer believe that the only way to communicate is for people to be in the same place, talking with each other face-to-face. My posts, my stories might be able to connect us as friends in a way that we never would have guessed otherwise.

Even if you don’t know my features, my height, or my favorite color, you know what I’ve been through. You share – at least in spirit – some of what I’ve been through. You might know me, or at least you know people like me. Maybe I am you, and the only difference between us is that I have written my my story, and you have yet to put pen to paper (or fingers to laptop).

I left the ending of my story open. What’s going to happen to me? Will I still live, or will I not? What’s going to happen to my dream, my job, the beautiful Dareen who had so entranced me…? But that’s not important in the end, really. What’s important in my story is that life, at the same time that we think has closed its doors on us, has really opened new ones – and all we need to do is see them, have the courage to step through them. Then we gain our right to choose, our right to enjoy, in spite of everything that might hinder us: poverty, death, disease, and depression.

There’s a famous holy saying in the Arab world: people live their lives asleep, and when they die, they wake up. I suppose, in the end, that what I’m really trying to say is that our duty is to bring about that wake-up call for ourselves. To shake ourselves out of oblivion, and to bring about our own true awakening. Because when we open our eyes and look around, anything is possible. We can step into the light without fear, knowing that our final rest will never be within ourselves… But, rather, with God.

The Final Hour

We create our dreams to fly alongside us,

But we can only fly with them once we give them wings

T ariq was right when he talked about how sometimes, I’d get stuck in my memories for hours, the most difficult memories of my life. Even after I’d stopped taking those pills for a long time, my brain still wallowed in remembrances.

I had no idea how long I’d been sitting here, just letting myself travel through time… I checked the clock: 4 PM. Goodness, I’d been here for hours! And for what? It was all over now. I’d had the operation, my suffering was done – at least, any physical suffering. And yet I still went back, relentlessly revisiting anything I could wrap my head around.

What was I looking for – the disease itself, or the people that my disease had brought into my life? The memories crowd together, jostling for space in my mind and my attention. Some I’d forgotten, some that refuse to be ignored – is this the medicine, the aftereffects of the experience, or both?

Sometimes, all I could remember were bits and pieces of faces, events, conversations; some definitive endings, other doors that refused to be closed. People who, even as their bodies left, insisted on defying any physical boundaries to snipe at me. I’d learned lessons that couldn’t be accessed from any educational institution, from an entire lifetime I’d lived and re-lived…

I looked around to reorient myself. I was in my office (back in my office!). Open on the desk in front of me was my laptop. Apparently, when I’d ‘checked out’ (which, I remembered anew, was what I called these little memory episodes) I’d been on the website of the Texas hospital where I’d been treated.

I browsed through the pages as though I was roaming through the hospital buildings on foot, reliving all the memories that dogged me so insistently. I went through ‘Hospital Map’ to ‘Hospital Services’ to ‘Our Service Providers’… I stopped when I reached a familiar face, and smiled as if she could see me from here. Amy, my favorite nurse.

Something wasn’t quite right, though. They’d put her under the wrong department. I rolled my eyes – so incompetent, these website administrators. I typed in my own name, and the ID number I’d memorized when I was there, to see what dastardly result would pop up.

Just as I expected, the same result – just like Amy’s. Really, this was unacceptable. Website administrators or not, they should at least be able to get the department where I had been treated right. Although I was probably the only person in the world that cared, I decided that this simply would not do – for Amy’s sake as well.

I checked the time difference. It wasn’t too bad. If I called now, I’d still catch their business hours. I took down the number from off the top of their page and dialed.

“MD Anderson International Medical Center, how may I help you?”

“Hello, yes, good morning. I was just wondering at a mistake on your website. You see, there’s a nurse who’s listed as being under the wrong department. The same result is coming up for me too, when I search for my name and ID number under the patient list.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. We’ll fix that right away. Could you give me your full name and ID number, please?”

“Hisham Jasem Al-Sayid,” and I spelled it for her quickly. “ID number 1228907.”

“And the nurse’s name?”

“Amy Williams.”

“All right, sir, one moment please…”

I tapped my foot in impatience, hearing her type busily at the other line.

“OK sir, I have Amy Williams and your file both listed as under the Mental Health department. Can you tell me what the issue is?”

“Yes, that’s exactly the issue. I was never in the mental health department, I came to you to be treated for cancer of the tongue,” I explained patiently, “which would be the oncology department.”

At the other end, the receptionist sounded nonplussed. “All right… Could you tell me the name of the doctor who treated you, please?”

“Sure. Dr. Steven Johnson.”

A few keystrokes. “He’s listed under the mental health department as well; with a specialty in schizophrenia, in fact.”

My heartbeat began to rise; I could hear it thumping in my ears. “There has to be some mistake. I tell you I was never there for schizophrenia or any other mental disease, I was there to be treated for cancer! I got the treatment and I was released, and now” –

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to lower your voice.”

“Of course. My apologies. Please excuse me.” I steadied myself; this was no doubt a problem in the system, no need to take it out on this poor lady.

“Could you check again, please? I was in Room 804 on the eighth floor, Building 3.”

“Sir,” the woman’s voice sounded testy, “I don’t know if you’re trying to pull some kind of prank, but if you are it’s not very amusing. The seventh and eighth floors on Building 3 make up our mental health department.”

“But – but there must be some mistake… I never…”

“Hisham!”

My office door opened on its own accord; in strode Dareen. She went straight for my desk and stretched out her hand. “Give me the receiver.”

“No! They won’t” –

She didn’t bother arguing with me. As though she was used to doing this, she pressed the speakerphone button. On the other line, the woman was saying crossly, “… if there are no further queries I’m going to have to end the call.”

“Yes, we have no more questions. Thank you,” Dareen said quickly, pressing the ‘mute’ button too swiftly for me to muster any protest, for the woman on the other line to hear. I looked at her, outraged, as the dial tone sounded thickly in the air between us.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving you from getting embarrassed. Again.” She glanced towards the phone. “Although I think I may have been a bit too late this time.”

“What do you mean, embarrassed? I was asking a legitimate question!”

“You were asking a question you can’t remember the answer to yet.”

“What do you mean, can’t remember?” I really had to stop repeating her words… “I can remember perfectly well! That website is wrong, and they should change it! I was in the oncology to treat my cancer, along with Nurse Amy and Dr. Steve. What is this nonsense about the mental health department? It’s entirely unreasonable, total and complete lies. That website should not be trusted!”

“That website should give you the biggest hint of all: to stop trusting your own brain.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. She held my gaze calmly in the silence.

“Do you remember now, Hisham?”

My head hurt, pounding with the thick blood of confusion. “I… I don’t know what I remember…”

“Listen to me. Sit down.” I’d half-stood in the heat of talking to that receptionist on the phone. “Take a deep breath. And listen.”

Hesitantly, I sat. She waited until my breath had calmed down before she started.

“Although many of your memories are false, some are also true. For one, you were being treated at MD Anderson. Now tell me why.”

“Cancer of the tongue…”

“No! What’s the treatment for tongue cancer? What was Dr. Steve going to do to you?”

I recited it like a litany. “Removal of the jaw, lymph nodes, and half the tongue.”

“So you had that operation, right?”

I nodded.

“Not true.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Dr. Steve wheeled me into that operating room himself! I remember that day, I remember being put under anaesthesia…”

“Hisham, you’re conflating your memories of something real with a conclusion your own brain introduced. You did undergo treatment with Dr. Steve, a very special treatment – but it wasn’t an operation for any of the things you mentioned.”

At my open expression of disbelief, she got up. “You don’t need to take my word for it, you know. Come with me.”

She tugged at the side of my chair, turning it towards her. Reluctantly, I got up and followed her to the office bathroom.

“Now look at yourself!” She forced me in front of the mirror, and I met my astonished eyes – and the sight of my own unblemished face. My mouth, blessedly whole – my jaw, complete as ever. Now my mouth was open, in utter shock and surprise.

“Does anything look removed to you?”

Slowly, I shook my head. She stood there, arms folded in triumph, watching me in the mirror.

“But… how?”

She led me back into the office; instead of my desk and the chair across from it, we sat on the more comfortable couch where she could speak to me directly.

“Do you remember Tariq?”

I chuckled. “Of course I remember Tariq, he’s the one who caused…”

She nodded fiercely. “The one who caused everything. Right. The one who caused everything you’re going through. All the false memories, the hallucinations – everything. You’re even suffering from a unique form of chemically-induced schizophrenia, thanks to those damn pills he forced down your gullet for almost an entire year. Damn him. I’m glad the police can’t find him, actually, I’m sure whoever’s got him is treating him in a far more satisfying way than the police would by just locking him up.”

The smile on her face was absolutely devilish. I could certainly sympathize with it – wishing the worst for this man who’d put me through hell – but then I remembered the justifications he’d given me in that voice message of his.

“But we – we should help his family…”

Her eyes softened. “You’ve already said that before. We are helping them. His wife is receiving vocational training and monetary support, and we’re putting his kid through school. More than he deserves,” she muttered to herself.

I frowned. “I’ve already said that before?”

“You come in and out of these realizations,” she sighed. “It’s been months since the last one, I guess I should be grateful for that… But yes. You function normally for quite a while, then you have one of your memory bouts and you lose everything again. Although you always do come back to me in the end.”

She reached out her hand fondly to stroke my face; I flinched as suddenly as though she’d struck me, although it was only from surprise, both from the touch and from the fact that she was wearing a ring – one that matched mine.

“Oh, right,” she added hastily, taking her hand back as though it’d been burned. “I should probably tell you…”

“We’re married,” I breathed.

She smiled, almost apologetically. “Yes, we are. That’s a little detail you tend to forget, too. It’s a bit more than forgetting anniversaries… But I knew what I was signing up for when I married you.”

Her brave little smile broke my heart. I shook my head to myself, marveling.

“How many years has it been?”

“Two.”

My eyes widened in shock. “I’ve been out of treatment for two years?”

“Yes, it’s been two years since you flew off to Dallas on your own and I followed you. You’d been telling me about your hallucinations, all that confusion… but I had no idea you’d be diagnosed with schizophrenia by the doctors you’d been to. You’d been telling me that you were considering MD Anderson. Then all of a sudden, you left on your own without warning. You went on sick leave with one day’s warning. It was so strange – I came in one day, and you were gone.”

“I’d heard of the special treatment…”

“Yes, and it would have cured you entirely. But Dr. Steve could only treat you with more conventional methods. They did pay off to a certain extent.”

“Did you actually end up following me?”

She laughed at herself. “I did. I was afraid for you. I knew you were in no condition to travel; it was a miracle you even made it to the center. And what can I say? I’m insane. But I ended up getting you in the end, anyway… so I guess it was all worth it.”

It was sinking in now, ever-so-slowly…

“And you knew I had schizophrenia when you married me?”

Her face turned serious. “I didn’t put all the pieces together until I arrived in Dallas and saw your videos, and then talked to Dr. Steve. And we didn’t get married until we’d come back, and I introduced you to my family. But Hisham, you have to realize this – you don’t have schizophrenia. You have a temporarily, chemically induced form of schizophrenia. Dr. Steve is convinced of that – and he’s convinced that with the right treatment, we can fix it. Since we don’t have access to the pill that caused this to happen, we can only follow its trail – like detectives – and try to fix the damage it leaves behind. He has you on a special round of medicines, and so far it’s been working. I told you that it’s been months since the last episode, longer than any break you’ve ever had before. I was starting to hope…”

Her voice trailed off, but she mustered that brave smile again. “After this, I have every confidence that the next bout will be even further away. And the one after that, and after that – until finally there are no more bouts, and it’s just you in here.” She tapped my forehead. “Just my Hisham.”

We sat there looking fondly at one another for a minute.

“I’ve got more questions,” I said.

“Tell me.”

“Why tongue cancer?”

“Dr. Steve thinks you created this narrative to try and convince yourself that nothing was wrong with your head. You’d seen pictures somewhere of the way tongue cancer patients look after their surgeries, so you researched it further, a lot further… and somehow it got conflated with your own condition.”

“What about my blog, is any of that real?”

“You have an entire blog written as the General, tongue cancer fighter. There are a lot of insights on there that I think would apply to any condition, though, including your own. I discovered it only afterwards, and people really are inspired by what you’ve written there. You’ve helped a lot of people, Hisham.”

“Helped them with nothing but lies? That blog should be taken off – deleted, forever!”

She sighed. “We’d considered that. We’ve talked about this before, you know. We came to the conclusion that since you’re helping more people than you’re harming – a lot of blogs actually took off after you provided the first step – that we should keep it up. But we went over it to make sure there weren’t any details that might disclose your identity. As long as you’re anonymous on there, we’re safe. But just in case, we put in your biography on there that ‘tongue cancer’ can be seen as a metaphor, synonymous with many other forms of disease. So that makes us safe from any lawyers.”

I shook my head, upset, momentarily overwhelmed. “My memory is so warped…”

“Your memory is only confused. Momentarily. You’ll bring it back.”

I sighed. “What about… what about the people I met over there? Yasmine, Jimmy…?”

“Figments of your imagination – to a certain extent. They are both based on people you really knew, but it took me a while to figure out who you were talking about. Look through that,” and she motioned to a photo album on the desk. “I think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

I reached for it.

“Wait until I leave,” Dareen said. “This memory is for you alone… and I have to go make dinner, anyway.”

“Hold on,” I said, confused. “We’re not at the office?”

She shook her head. “We work from home, Hisham. Both of us. You decorated this room to look just like your old office – but if you ask me, home is a much more enjoyable workplace.”

It was like a kick in the gut. “I work from home… like a hobo?”

Dareen narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be silly! You’re not a hobo. You’re fulfilling your dream!”

She pressed a business card into my hand; I turned it around to read what was typed on it.

Hisham J. Al-Sayid

Public Speaking Trainer and Consultant

“You’re working on your own terms, Hisham,” she said tenderly. “No more slaving away for someone else. And I’m your favorite employee.” She brushed a lock of hair off my forehead; it still sent shivers up my back when she touched me. “Well, I am your only employee,” she conceded with a mischievous laugh.

Playful, boisterous; just like the Dareen I loved. I couldn’t resist any longer – I swept her up into a hug, and she laughed and laughed. I stroked her hair, marveling that this creature of my wildest daydreams didn’t dissipate beneath my fingertips.

Finally Dareen grasped my wrist, and looked into my eyes. “Listen to me, Hisham. I know it’s overwhelming, and you’ve been so brave… But don’t be afraid. We’ll get through this together, I know it. I have faith in you.”

I shook my head, at a loss for words. “I don’t know how to thank you, Dareen.”

She gave me another tender smile, and squeezed me in a tighter hug one more time. “You don’t have to.”

We stayed like that a few seconds, then she shifted in my arms again. “Well… on second thought, you can start by letting me go make dinner!”

It was my turn to laugh. I didn’t want to let her go, but I did eventually. I watched her until she stepped out of the door, closing it behind her.

I was alone again.

Turning over the photo album in my hands, at first I hesitated.

I think you’ll find what you’re looking for, she’d said.

But what was I looking for? The identity of two figments of my imagination? What could a photo album tell me about any of the twists and turns of the insanity in my own mind?

I opened it feverishly, my mind whirling…

It was a picture of myself, as a young child.

Confused, I turned to the next page, and the next – there I was with my mother, one with my father, and one with all of us together. Pictures I’d looked over a thousand times, from happier days, before my father had left us.

What was Dareen saying? What did these pictures have to do with…?

Then I focused, concentrating my gaze; I brought the picture closer to my eyes. The pictures were grainy and old, but like an optical illusion that you have to reorient your gaze to see, suddenly it was all clear…

‘Yasmine’: a name that I had no doubt connected to this identity of a flower seller, was the younger version of my mother, in the early days right when she’d had me. There she was, her face beaming with happiness. No wonder I had felt so comfortable with her, so content in my conviction that, somehow, she understood me utterly without my saying a word. That was how it had always been with my mother.

And ‘Jimmy’, for ‘Jasem’: the aged version of a father I had never truly known. My brain had constructed for me the kind of relationship that, deep down, I yearned to have with my own father. No matter how much I tried to deny it to myself, or to anyone else…

I flipped through the rest of the pictures, quiet as the wheels of my head started spinning. It seemed so strange – although my ‘memories’ of cancer were growing flimsier in my head now, as I started to remember the reality of how things truly were, the way I remembered them was just as clear as anything else I’d ever lived through.

Were those comforting words I heard from Yasmine really what my mother would have said? Or what Jimmy had put me through, helpless annoyance followed by amazed gratitude, really what my father would have done, if he had encountered me a sick man? How could I have known – or had I just made it all up?

It was as though I had somehow managed to pay a visit to heaven, received messages from angels and spirits living there – and had now come back! Was this another side to insanity? Something rational people were barred from perceiving? If seeing my mother and father as they were was truly insane, I didn’t really want to be cured!

But then again, it wasn’t just about me anymore… I had someone else to attend to.

Straightening up, I closed the photo album, and started downstairs for the brightest awakening of all.

Note

All characters in this story are fictional, but the medical details are accurate.

[1] inshaa Allah: means By God’s will