Track Changes by Sayed Kashua

Track Changes by Sayed Kashua

Author:Sayed Kashua [Kashua, Sayed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802147905
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2019-07-14T16:00:00+00:00


6

Dad.

What?

Should we record, Dad?

You say “dad” a lot.

It’s weird for me to address you aloud.

You’ve addressed me in silence?

Every day.

Do I respond?

Sometimes, yes.

I always respond.

I’m recording, okay?

Your tape recorder is on. You’re already recording.

Okay. When you get tired, let me know, okay, Dad?

I slept all day, maybe two days straight, strange that I’m passing the last days I have in sleep.

Don’t say that.

Actually, what could be better than sleep.

Right, let’s start. So, what’s your first memory, Dad?

Not being able to remember.

Do you want me to stop?

No. My first memory is of not being able to remember. I wake up, not from sleep but from daydreaming, and I know that something awful has happened, but I can’t remember what, and your grandmother tells me: ‘Asem Allah alik, ya habibi, asem Allah alik.’ And she asks, ‘What’s the matter, ya habibi. What’s bothering you?’ And I can’t tell of the terrible thing I’ve forgotten, and I tell my mother that I can’t remember and am filled with pain.

How old were you?

Don’t know. Maybe four or five. To this day I don’t really know how old I am. It’s always been one year this way or that. Bring me some more water.

Sure. Sip it slowly. Are you tired, Dad?

I don’t know. I want a cigarette. Do you have one?

No.

Are you still lying?

What do you mean a cigarette? After a heart attack? Come on, Dad.

What will they do to me if I smoke in the room? What could they possibly do to me? It’s too late for me anyway.

Don’t say that.

You’re right. I won’t say it, and it isn’t true, either. It isn’t the heart that nearly killed me.

Dad!

I’m tired.

Okay, don’t worry. I’ll stop.

Keep recording. Maybe I’ll listen and you’ll tell me.

What? A bedtime story?

Make it a story with a happy end, okay?

What do you want me to tell you, Dad?

What is permitted and what is forbidden to tell a sick father.

May I say that I am a bit jealous of you, would like to be in your place, in your sickbed? May I beg my father to stay alive, because without him I’ll be more afraid and will have a harder time going to sleep? May I tell him that I need him, because despite the distance I still console myself with the fact that I can always run back to him if the situation worsens? May I tell him that I’m almost forty and that all I want is to sit in his lap in the driver’s seat, holding the wheel as we drive along the paths of the orchards that no longer exist? What can I tell him? That ever since I left I dream only of returning, that I need his approval, that I need him to promise me that everything will be okay if I go back to Tira, that it’s safe, like it once was—or like I want to remember it having been? Is it permissible to tell a sick father that I’m still scared at nights and



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