The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem

Author:Ibtisam Azem
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780815654834
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2019-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

22

Alaa

I sit on the coffee-brown sofa in the living room of my apartment on Rothschild Boulevard. The one you slept on once when you visited me. You were tired because we had walked so much that day. Do you remember how you said, “Oh, sweetheart. Why do you have a painting of a man with his face covered hanging on your wall? Why not roses, or Jaffa . . . or maybe a pretty girl . . . and why is everything in the background red as if he’s bleeding . . . poor boy . . . Why do you hang such depressing paintings? Put one of a beautiful woman, not a man whose face is covered and is surrounded with blood.” I laughed a lot and didn’t say anything. I don’t know why this painting bothers a lot of people. When I came back to the room after making coffee for both of us, you’d fallen asleep. I went out and drank the whole pot by myself on the balcony.

My handwriting is annoying today because am lying down on the sofa as I write. Maybe it’s better to sit at the sewing machine I converted into a table. I love it and know very well that it carried your pain and loneliness and still remembers them. You used to tell me, “You couldn’t imagine how lonely we felt in our country that year when everyone left and we stayed . . . we were like orphans. We were orphaned. The most difficult thing is to be orphaned in one’s own home, and then people from abroad arrive and become the home owners . . . Enough, sweetheart, enough!”

Maybe we are still like that. Maybe we are still orphans.

I took your sewing machine from mother and converted it to a small table. The sewing machine you worked on for decades making wedding gowns. The machine that exhausted your feet and wore them down, but saved you and allowed mother to enter the Teachers’ College and get married. Do you remember it? You must, since you used to boast about it all the time. You were afraid that mother would throw it away. “Your mother is crazy and only leaves rags around her, but throws away all good things.” As I mentioned once before, mother took out all your clothes after you left and gave them to the poor. She didn’t keep a single piece. She should have. I was angry and fought with her and made her cry. She said they had your scent, and whenever she passed by them she smelled it and thought you’d enter the house any minute. She used to sit and cry for you. The house is empty. Mother is afraid that they would demolish it if they knew that no one was living in it. She said that I should go back and live there. But it’s a tiny house and I don’t think they would grant us the permit to repair it. It’s so chilly there, but, I’m thinking seriously about going back.

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