On the Weave of the Sun by Abdallah Altaiyeb

Author:Abdallah Altaiyeb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.

Less Than a Goodbye

Written by:

Hoida Saleh

Her sister’s voice came as if she had just lost a heavy burden she had been carrying for a long time, despite her feeble attempt to sound completely unbiased,

“Your mother died.”

A stony silence seized her for a moment. Her sister on the other end of the line thought she was crying, so she echoed her allegedly unbiased voice again,

“She is finally resting in peace. No one suffered like she did.”

Quietly, she put down the telephone. Her husband, who was busy combing their little girl’s hair, glanced inquisitively at her. She collapsed next to him on the sofa, her hands hiding the pain in her face, but working out the last details of the shock on it. The little girl broke away from the stronghold of her father’s hands, to hold her mother’s hand. When she heard the girl cry, she looked at her and hugged her, and lost herself in the void of emptiness.

Sitting confused, her husband was at a complete loss for words to comfort her. She had just arrived few hours before after spending eight days with her mother. She hesitantly told her father, standing shyly before him, that she was going home to extend her vacation and come back. Now, one question was haunting her: Couldn’t her mother stay alive for just a few more hours, so she could look into her eyes one last time, or hold her hand?

She tucked some clothes for herself and her husband in a small bag. She decided to leave the little girl with her aunt, and walked amid the stunned neighbors who showed their compassion for her, but could not help gossiping about her!

“Poor girl. Looks like she is in denial.”

“My God, her mother was a saint.”

“Oh God, they will have a rough time travelling in the middle of the night; transportation is a bitch in the countryside.”

Her husband did not haggle much with the aged cab driver. He simply agreed to pay him the overly exaggerated fare, choosing to comfort himself in the back seat of the ramshackle car, reciting the Quran and whispering prayers, with her rapped in his arm. Every now and then, he would glance at her, to find her still awake, and continue humming. She was staring at the extended darkness wickedly tortured by the low beam of the car’s headlights. The silhouettes of the trees on the sides were swaying and swinging. All she was thinking of at that moment was her mother’s rapidly vanishing face. How could those features fade away so quickly? She tried to think of their moments together, but the memories were far and pale, and the pictures were like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle in a dark night.

Her mother was a fragile and vulnerable woman, and their relationship had always been different and non-traditional. The image of her mother standing up for her when her father was about to slap her was all of a sudden brilliantly etched against the night, and her soft voice, trying to convince him not to force her to marry his nephew, was ringing in her ears.

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