Finally I will be taken seriously

The notion of two sharply distinguished groups also applied to other kinds of difference, and everyone knew which was the centre and which the periphery. Which group do you belong to? Which School of Islamic Law do you follow? Of what sect are you a member? And what region do you come from? If someone scrutinized our lecture halls really closely, that person would see the section to the right as belonging to our group and the other section to the other groups (or maybe the other way around). Naturally, to say our group and the other group is more graceful than calling us by the warring cartoon characters, Shanakil and Sanafir. Shi’is and Sunnis!

Rarely did anyone take up the opportunity of being in one place for four school years as a chance to foster a relationship less governed than usual by these criteria of belonging, less restricted by borders, less marked by divisions. This was the state of things when we arrived, and it was extremely difficult for us even to attempt to change it. Change is a frightening act, and in an official site such as this it might well set off a harmful reaction with a likely adverse impact on someone’s future. Always there was a concealed, furtive feeling that being here, and staying here, were dependent on several conditions, though they were never made explicit. We must remain totally mute, for even a single slanderous rumour about one of us – that she was participating in sectarian mayhem, perhaps – was enough to cause her admissions file to be thrown in her face and for her to be expelled without any possibility of readmission. The very fact that we were accepted here was considered by some people as a handout to an undeserving recipient, too much generosity to those who were closest to being misguided and astray: those who were the object of God’s wrath.

Because we were the minority – and in truth we were never a minority in the college, only in the nation – the possibility of someone else, someone from the other side, being admitted to any of our groups, organized or not, small or large, was an alien idea regarded with utter suspicion. By the very nature of the fear we had imbibed, and on the strength of the preconceived and ready-made ideas with which we had all been injected, both we and the others tended to be on our guard, always self-protective and defensive. It was always possible that any attempt to enter our territory might well be trespassing for its own sake, with no good faith behind it. Our chances of entering into their groups were greater, given the protection of their numbers and the indisputable fact that any one of us would always be the weaker element in any comparison. But I had not witnessed any effective attempts at this, and this was my fourth year. Such things most often happened when the person trying to enter the group had already been isolated from her difference, and so could be more easily incorporated as one of the many look-alike postage stamps, emptying this new candidate of her content not to mention peeling off the distinguishing outer shell. And so there was no real coexistence nor assimilation that you could count on, not even a preliminary and primitive acceptance from one toward the other, no recognition of the naturalness of difference or of the varying things we had to offer by virtue of who we were.

Another ten minutes passed and Dai still had not come. I found my own justification for her lateness in my certainty that it was an instant punishment for my own tardiness. I called her phone, punching five on my quick dial numbers, and the recorded voice staggered me. The number you have requested is not available right now. I headed for the spot where she customarily left her abaya bag, ready for when she would leave the grounds and have to pull her abaya over her clothes. But I did not find her nor did I see any of the familiar faces that I usually saw in her company. I left the croissant in her bag as proof that I had been there. I began to worry. Basically, I am a person who does not need huge and convincing reasons in order to start worrying. Anxiety is a fact of existence for me, a true characteristic of my self, a sharp-edged and vicious presence that keeps me from being able to successfully apply any of the instructions found in Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Or perhaps it is not so much a fact as it is a counter-fact, nothing more than my reaction in light of limited and circumscribed choices.

My anxiety mutated into a particular kind of tenseness, mixed with a sharp feeling of irritation. It was the sort of irritation that leaves you unable to engage with anyone about anything. No exchange of words, not even a passing question about what time it is; this tension leaves you annoyed even by things that have nothing at all to do with you and which would not in themselves annoy you at any other time: a girl slipping her hand around the waist of another, one wearing grey lenses, the sound of a naughty and boisterous laugh, the vending machine you’re standing next to that sells hot chocolate and is out of order so that every time someone comes by and puts her money in, she asks you, So, it’s not working, right? And you answer her with some stupid line like, How would I know, ya anisa, whether it is working or not? Have all four thousand students in this place disappeared so that you have to come and direct this question only to me? And by the way, this friendly smile of yours is really irritating, so you might as well keep it just for yourself!

Forty minutes had passed since the time we had agreed on, and nothing had come of our arrangement to meet. This futile waiting was laying a trap for me, in an open area where more and more people were pushing in, not just because the prayer space was here but also because of the rain which since yesterday had not let up its ferocious and ubiquitous drenching. I retraced my steps to my locker. When I saw an edge of paper lodged carefully into the slit, I was suddenly happy. It was as though there had been no logical or rational reasons for our appointment to fall from Dai’s agenda by error or oversight, and now the very existence of the paper, even though I had not retrieved or opened it yet, was a summary of all the reasons that might exist for it.

I drew it out carefully from its cage. I sniffed Dai’s fragrance on it, a deep and earthy scent: a potent batter of soil and sugar. How can you describe a person’s fragrance? How can you release it? Preserve it in a secure vault in the memory? Hide it away, protected from decay and forgetting and desire for the fullness of others? Dai’s fragrance is a story in itself. I always took care when kissing her to breathe in the odour of her throat, the place where I sense the concentrated essence of her fragrance to be located, deeply embedded within her and pure, uncontaminated by any admixture of other essences. The very air is incapable of altering the fragrance of Dai. Like me, the air can only breathe her in and feel deliriously stimulated.

I pried open her letter with shaking fingers. My heart always trembles, always when it is facing first things and first times, when it is in front of their freshness, when they move in to occupy their proper expanse of memory and mind, rather than being pushed back into second place, never mind sinking into oblivion. I love the sensation that something is forming; that what surrounds me is going through each stage of its genesis and growing, proliferating. I am seized by a maternal love for these things I have, and with that, nothing else concerns me. In my relationship with Dai, I am always on the alert, my gaze steady and my mind welcoming the possibility of being dazzled with the very simplicity of what is happening and how small and slight it all is, with scenes as they are just beginning to take shape. I love the way that every encounter takes on the nature of the specific and fundamental difference between two people – like in hetero couples – to make them able in all of their difference for one to wrap itself around the other.

My eyes breezed across the words rapidly without taking in their meaning for a second or two. With its many flourishes, the slanted script captivated me. The full stops between her words were large, ripe circles, the way they always were in Arabic before typefaces, while the word edges were soft and yielding, without any ragged breaks, slants following slants, the forming of words that are exactly what they are and no other, as if they say, Turn to me. With difficulty, I stole my eye away from her first words and went on reading.
My love …

You are reading this letter from me because I was not able to come. I am writing in a hurry. I am sorry, I left you waiting. I was afraid I would change my mind and relent. It is hard to look directly at you and tell you what I intend to say. Forget me. As if nothing ever happened. I am not worth it. Forgive me. I am very sorry.

Goodbye,

Your Dai.

I retained the letter in my grip, pressing on it unconsciously, nothing alerting me to this except the slight pain caused by my fingernails digging into the flesh of my hand. I went outside.

I need to breathe, and I need to not throw up. At this time of day the bathrooms are crowded. I have half an hour in the bus ahead of me.

The bus was late, and I did not find an empty seat. A group of the girls who would fill the bus to bursting stood in front of the door waiting for the official in charge of transport, aiming to get him to provide another bus for them. I was so not in need of getting through the usual clamour: We’ve tried such and such a bus, no… that bus, then… try such and such a bus…. I stayed squashed just inside the bus, on the first step, and I tried to sit down. The rain whipped the doors violently. It was such a hard rain that it did not even slide down the huge glass window in front but pinged back instantaneously, as if it were intent on continually assaulting my memory by means of its presence, angry at my ability to ignore it.