Thirteen Months of Sunrise Read online

*

  I was his favourite child, he loved me so much. Whenever he saw me sitting quietly by myself, not chatting with the rest of the family late into the evening, he would come up to me and ask, ‘What’s the matter? Why are you sitting here alone?’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter… I’m just sitting here.’

  ‘Go on, go sit and chat with your siblings, I don’t like to see you sitting by yourself like this.’

  He brought treats just for me: candy, spare change, sugar cane juice, peanuts, snacks. He showered me with affection, sat me next to him, everything, and when my siblings protested, he told them I was the ‘last grape in the bunch’, the baby of the family.

  When I came home from school and asked Mother about lunch, he was the one who would tell me, ‘Go to the kitchen, don’t be shy. It’s your house, go get yourself something to eat.’

  He announced his highest hopes for me – this daughter of mine, I want her to be a doctor. He called me Miss Doctor and I loved it. But after all his tenderness, I couldn’t give him what he wanted.

  *

  Waiting for the doctor, I sit by his head as he lies on the bed. I notice droplets of sweat on his brow and bald head. I wipe them away with my hand, without a tissue. His forehead grows damp again, I wipe it again. It keeps growing damp, and I keep wiping it with my bare hand.

  When the doctor arrives he finds us gathered around him, Mother rubbing his feet as they spasm, my sister on the other side of the bed holding his hand, my brother standing nearby, and me by his head, wiping his forehead again and again. The doctor examines him closely. Mother follows Father’s gaze. Maybe she realises what’s happening. She begins to repeat the shahada and the doctor does not ask her to be quiet. He takes Father’s blood pressure and opens his eyes and takes his pulse. I see my father’s eyelids flutter, and he repeats the shahada after my mother, in a voice so low it can barely be heard. Then his voice fades and his eyelids’ fluttering slows.

  In a decisive moment, his forehead is drenched in sweat. His lips stop moving and the doctor looks up with regret.

  In my ignorance, I didn’t realise until right then that I was wiping traces of sweat from the spirit’s parting; I didn’t even know it was gone. Perhaps it passed right next to me. Perhaps it brushed against me as it left. Perhaps it bade me farewell, waved or smiled, but even though I was so close, I did not see it at all.

  Edges

  To Shazza… I miss you.

  I had waited for him for so many years. For him to come mend my cracks and fissures.

  He came to dismantle, disperse, and then assemble me, to rearrange my parts and pieces, to shape me anew. He came to make the desires I hid from even my friends come true: I wanted a love that would rip through me like a spear.

  ‘Have you really been ripped through by a spear? Has it moved you so much, and brought you enough pain to fill your writing?’

  ‘I write to recount my tragedies.’

  ‘No, you write to keep them inside you, and give them new life with each story.’

  ‘Maybe… shouldn’t you leave and let me finish this?’

  ‘You know I can’t leave you.’

  ‘Then quiet down and forget about my writing. I’m almost done.’

  ‘I see you’ve changed the beginning. I don’t like seeing her with a spirit so crushed, so defeated.’

  ‘Is that how you read it? Well, I’ll change it, just promise you won’t keep interrupting me.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Try.’

  Our relationship is strange, surprising, crazy, untamable, fierce. No words can describe it: it rebels against language, snubs and ignores it. It’s the kind of thing you feel but cannot describe. A thrumming deep in my veins, which seeps out between words and the pauses between them, like plumes of smoke so hard to grasp. Trying to pin it down is a waste of time and energy, any attempt makes you lose the feeling, the moment.

  She’s always here, close to me. Sometimes I get annoyed by how she forces herself into my most hidden corners. I pick fights with her, I get angry, I gather my secrets and toss them beyond consciousness. I hide them seven earths deep inside me and then rejoice, thinking that I’ve set her on the wrong path, that she’ll lose her way, only to realise that the one who is lost is me.

  She’s a good reader; she can read me no matter how poor my handwriting, no matter how vague my words. She enters me through my eyes, staring into them for so long that it begins to hurt. ‘The eyes are the window to the soul,’ she often says, and is really convinced of that.

  *

  As soon as he arrived, I loved him like I shouldn’t have; so much I felt like I could hardly breathe. It suffused me.

  ‘That was your mistake,’ she said to me.

  ‘Was it wrong of me to love someone?’

  ‘What was wrong was loving the wrong person.’

  She always seems to know so much, to know everything about me, the minutia of my daily life, the depths of my interior, how my nails grow inconsolably long, and my feet are cracked and dirty. She knows about the little razor cut on my left index finger from sharpening a pencil, and my ill will towards my neighbour. She knows everything about me. That’s why I trusted her, and why I changed my story: because she didn’t like the beginning. Or rather, because it didn’t please her.

  She partakes in every word I write, every idea I pursue and every train of thought I follow. She reads all of my words, and also what’s hidden in them. Sometimes it’s buried in my subconscious and she extracts it, explains it, cleans it, shines it, then shows it to me.

  When I first started seeing him, we often disagreed. She wanted me to be sensible and love him bit by bit, and I refused.

  ‘You mean I should love him in installments?’ I asked sarcastically.

  ‘Fine. Have it your way,’ she replied angrily. ‘But remember, I see things you don’t.’

  We argued and then she disappeared for a time, and all the while I could feel birds of paradise fluttering in my heart.

  *

  ‘Remember?’

  I remember the evening the damp sandbar lay between us and the Blue Nile, when he reached out and said, ‘Give me your hand.’

  I lived a lifetime in the space and time between when I lifted my hand – it moved through the air, reached its apex, began its descent – and when it settled in his palm. I experienced a whole lifetime, parallel to my own, in those moments.

  When the current took hold of me completely, I felt it in my very core, with every atom of my being. It was so clear, powerful, and moving, that just thinking of him brought me back to that moment, with its potent energy and emotion.

  That evening I went to her, called out to her, made amends with her. I confessed to her that I wasn’t happy – I was happiness itself.

  Out of kindness of heart, she didn’t spoil my moment. She shared it with me, and we celebrated together; we danced, sang, called out, and slept deeply. She wasn’t cross with me afterwards, but she still treated my nascent love with clear caution and apprehension.

  *

  I was consumed by love’s sweetness, freshness and tenderness. Even so, I missed her immensely when she was gone. At night I would think of my lover, but wind up thinking of her. Instead of dreaming of him, she was the one who came to me.

  She visited me at work too. Whenever I focused on something other than her, she always became resentful and accused me of ignoring her, so I would put everything else aside.

  She chose specific times for us to go to the cafeteria together, for a cup of tea or coffee or whatever we were in the mood for. The cafeteria workers stared at me quizzically; which I figured, at the time, was because we were the only two people in the cafeteria instead of the office. She’d stay with me until the end of my shift, and then we’d buy nuts and cross the road to the bus together, chatting and laughing, having fun cracking the shells in the street, so different from the stillness of eating them at home.

  She came up with an idea that day: we should walk
every street in the city, indulging our love for long walks. I hesitated.

  ‘That’s crazy, let’s take a taxi,’ I said.

  ‘If we do that, we’ll never have walked every inch of the city we love. So what if we get tired and our feet swell? We’ll soak them in salt water. We’ll have spent hours and hours walking, and will have proved our love for this city, that we belong to it and appreciate all of it.’

  ‘Prove our love with how tired we are?’

  ‘No, with our knowledge… in knowing that our dear city is filled with love.’

  We walked and walked for three days. We walked without sleep or food, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, alleyway to alleyway, street to street. For a week after that I didn’t leave the house, I couldn’t place my feet on the ground. She would visit me and laugh.

  ‘See how fragile you are?’ she said.

  The words rang in my ears for a long time. The weight of her words landed in that barren space within me and took root. Yes, I had become fragile. After I lost him, anything could break me. There was a vast emptiness inside me waiting for him. I’d become as hollow as a reed, or flute, unable to hold a note.

  If a pin dropped on the ground, the whole universe and everything inside it would be able to hear the echo. It’s so cruel to live life alongside a void.

  ‘That last sentence isn’t accurate.’

  ‘What is it with you, sticking your nose in, between my pen and paper? What I wrote is precisely how I feel.’

  ‘Yes I know, but where am I in all of this? You should say, “It’s so cruel to live life alongside a void, and her.”’

  I laughed.

  ‘But life isn’t cruel when we’re together,’ I told her. ‘I don’t even know how I’d get by without you. What good would it do to imagine that?’

  ‘We have on this earth what makes life worth living, as Darwish said.’ A tearful smile appeared on her face. ‘What good am I if you miss him so much, if it hurts this bad? I should leave you.’

  ‘You know I can’t survive without you. You’re like a cloud, bringing rain to the parched earth.’

  *

  In one of her strange attempts to be certain of our love for each other, we spent seventy-five hours without leaving one another’s side, not even for a moment. We didn’t sleep, or read, or write, or eat. Nothing. We were simply together, in the truest sense of the word.

  At the time, I didn’t try to contradict her or disagree with her or rationalise her strange and wild tendencies. I gave myself to her completely, and she led me to places of happiness that I had never known. She took me to heavenly places where people were dressed in white and green, and were floating above the ground as if swimming in air. Their hands fluttered like wings, their faces were smiling, content and happy. The sight of them was magnificent to behold, and it delighted her.

  ‘Are those angels?’ I asked her, astonished.

  She smiled and shook her head.

  ‘They’re people just like you, only they’re happy.’

  She took me to places where the air was pure and the fields were verdant green; places with flowing rivers, where the mountains and clouds shielded your skin from the sun.

  ‘This is our secret, don’t write about it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’ll think it exists in your mind.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what they think. They don’t matter to me anymore, not my family, nor my neighbours. Not even the cafeteria staff.’

  She looked at me for a long time, perhaps trying to decide how much she believed me despite what she knew. Or maybe she wanted to enjoy what I’d said. Then she smiled, and I glimpsed contentment on her face.

  She hugged me gleefully.

  ‘You’re my soul,’ she told me.

  ‘You’re my angel.’

  ‘I’ll let you finish your writing without interruption.’

  ‘Good. You look tired. Perhaps you should get some rest.’

  ‘I really am tired,’ she said. ‘I’ll lay down next to you.’

  Within a few moments, she was fast asleep.

  I studied her closely. It was the first time she had gone to bed before me, and the first time I was truly seeing her. Usually I looked at her the way people look at everyone who has gone through difficult times with them: quickly, without thought, barely registering them. But this moment offered itself up to real sight.

  Beautiful, faithful, loving and beloved. I saw her before me in flesh and blood. I touched her. Everyone said she lived in my mind alone, some of them swore I was living in a fantasy, others thought I was imagining things, and others accused me of being crazy.

  I don’t know how I found her, or when. I didn’t know anything about her. I wasn’t sure of anything any more.

  I don’t know if our relationship had a starting point. Perhaps she had been born alongside me, an invisible twin. Or perhaps she emerged from me at a time I can’t recall. Perhaps she was me. Or perhaps it was like she said: that she was born from a story. If that was the case, I still don’t know if she emerged from someone else’s story or one of my own.

  I had no interest in finding out or knowing for sure, her presence itself was enough for me. Beginnings and endings didn’t really matter, nor did learning the real answer.

  They say I can no longer distinguish between reality and fantasy, a polite way of saying that I’m delusional. They take me to doctors and sheikhs and therapists, they make me take medicine and waft smoke over me from the sheikh’s incense papers.

  They insist they don’t see her, but I see her as vividly as I see them. I see her sharing my solitude, making me laugh, quarrelling with me, interrupting my train of thought, messing up my writing. She’s there in every moment, helping me overcome my disappointments in love, commiserating with me over my losses and sharing her strange, crazy self.

  Who’s right, them or me?

  I’d never wondered whether she was really there, despite everyone around me saying she wasn’t real.

  To me, she seems quite normal. She eats like me, sleeps like me, laughs like me, walks on the ground like me. But she doesn’t cry like me, she’s the one who wipes away my tears. Is that why they want her to leave? Don’t they know my life is bound to her, that we cannot be separated?

  She turns over onto her left side and has her back to me now. The blanket slips off, and I draw it back over her. I kiss her forehead. My eyes don’t leave her. I smile because she makes me so happy, because of how much I love her. My partner, my other self, the sweetest hour of my days.

  In her untroubled sleep, I find an opportunity to write without interruption about all the things spinning inside of me. I organise my papers, pour myself a cup of tea, turn the page, and begin writing anew.

  A Week of Love

  Day One

  We met up as people do. He didn’t make an impression.

  Day Two

  We sat side by side, he edged closer. I felt his gaze engulf me. I smiled to myself. He had beautiful eyes.

  Day Three

  He asked me whether I was seeing anyone.

  I responded with silence. Maybe silence was malice on my part.

  Day Four

  He told me: ‘I love you, I’ve never had feelings like this before.’ And I felt myself falling for him; in my heart I accepted his love.

  Day Five

  When I arrived he was waiting for me. He was early. I’d grown used to him.

  Day Six

  I felt my ribcage expand with him. He was late, he hadn’t arrived yet even though he’d promised. I waited, and waited, and waited even longer, but he didn’t show up. My temperature climbed higher. I called him and when he picked up his voice sounded cold, vacant, dead.

  Day Seven

  I texted him: ‘This is hard for me. Going back is hard. Going forward is hard. And standing here is torture. Please, be a friend to me.’

  In the Muck of the Soul

  Wide shot

  A woman bends down to pick up a stone and
launches it towards the dogs barking at her. The hour is past midnight. Huge pickups and freight trucks pass her as she walks along the uneven ground that rises and falls. Behind her is a pack of dogs, and the darkness that makes it even harder to go on.

  Ruff ruff ruff.

  Grrrrgrrrr.

  She continues throwing stones until she runs out, and then bends down to pick up more.

  Grrrgrrrgrrrr.

  She tries to reach the pavement where there is more light, maybe just enough to see with.

  A military patrol drives the dogs away with a gunshot, which plunges through the calm and quiet night, sending ripples across its surface.

  Shot of two people

  A deep brusque voice:

  ‘Where you walking to tonight, ma’am? What kind of person goes out at this hour?’

  ‘Would I have left home if I didn’t have good reason? I’m going to Khartoum.’

  ‘That’s not safe for you. What’s waiting for you in Khartoum?’

  ‘There’s… never mind.’

  Flashback

  The woman moves restlessly through a cramped room, looking for something to ease his pain; she picks up a packet of pills, sees that it’s empty, throws it away, notices a bottle of medication, prays to God, tosses it aside, rummages in a bag on the desk near the bed; the bag is filled with prescriptions, flyers for medications, used syringes and empty blister packs.

  She looks at him, still squirming in pain, and helps him to sit up. His scream fills her head; she runs outside and stops in the narrow courtyard lined with straw, where some of the green clay walls are still unfinished.