Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah

Author:Dimitri Nasrallah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Véhicule Press

Ya Allah there are moments when I want tenderness, warmth, another’s breathing beside me as I sleep. Tonight, after my shower, in the fog of all that steam crowded into the tiny bathroom, I take Halim by the hand, and I smile in a way that beckons you can’t say no, and I whisper, “Yallah, come to bed,” and then I open the door, and as all the steam flushes out into the hall and disappears, I dash the five steps into my open sofa bed and bury us both under the pile of old duvets. I disappear under the blankets. In a ball, my body sags the sofa bed in the middle. Why would my head dare look out on this last night of January, as the wind outside rages against the windows with its pellets of ice and the temperature drops down to minus thirty-six degrees?

“This is my mistake,” I say, nuzzling into the bristles along Halim’s cheek. “I shouldn’t have fallen in love with you all those years ago in the mountains. Kfar Mechki was a village built on our desires. Nothing there was real.”

“Love creates too many wants.”

“It’s dangerous to want so much.”

I don’t want much anymore. Just a touch of that fantasy I once had when I was seventeen. I’ve made it through this first month of 1987 with my desires eaten down to the whiteness of their bones. I am barely a skeleton of what I once wanted. Only through starving myself of these urges can I begin to see the ghosts of my life as friends, as confidants. Be stoic, I say to myself. Want nothing. Exist only in the service of others. Breathe new life into memories. Reverse-engineer absence. Smallah, I can make Halim. I can make him kiss my forehead. But if I close my eyes and try to kiss his neck, I’ll kiss only the lumpy corner of my pillow. In the eternal darkness of winter, I fall asleep this way to calm my anxiety, a wet pillow between my lips.

The next morning, I get out of bed and start all over again. I put on coffee, I wake up Omar, we brush our teeth, I comb his hair, he picks the lint from my sweater, I pull his hand out the door, we kiss in front of the school, and then I stagger down the street against a wall of wind, and I don’t look up until I’m safely into the underground city. I shiver, shake off my coat, swear. I walk past movie posters for upcoming screenings at theatres whose marquees I’ve passed downtown – the Imperial or Loew’s or Cinéma de Paris – lit up in bright lights at eight in the morning like they’re ready for a Hollywood premiere. I know about these things because I sometimes watch Entertainment Tonight while making dinner to practise my English and also because I’m curious about famous people, especially movie stars. I’ve always loved movies, even before I was able to watch them in bed.

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