Issue No. 613
Living
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21 - 27 November 2002 Issue No. 613 Living |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | |||
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Mood Swings: Sunset balcony
Teta would sit on the balcony of my room at dusk wearing her housedress, some dark shades of grey and black. She would wear black all the time, if we would let her, but she'd agreed to lighten things up a bit, just for us. In her heart she never stopped mourning the death of her husband some 40 years earlier.
You wouldn't know it when you'd see her buzzing around the house to take care of every little detail in our life. Water for tea would start boiling in the kitchen the minute she hears the bed squeaks in my parents' room. By the time we get out of the bathroom, our beds are made and breakfast ready. By one thirty or two when we come home from school, we would find her there, both hands loaded with dishes, as if suspended in motion, somewhere between the kitchen and the dining room. She would take a quick visual inventory, and when she sees that we were all there, she would point to the dining room with her head, and mumble yallah, it is all ready now!
Teta didn't get out of the house much, except of course, to attend funerals... She would say something like I really have to go to this one, because they came to my husband's or brother's funeral. I always thought that Teta attended more funerals than any undertaker in Cairo. And when I was old enough, I would accompany her, but never on the first day of mourning.
As for weddings, she almost always stayed behind, as we all left the house all dressed up. Her main role in this aspect was to determine the exact amount of money that last came to us from the bride's and groom's families, so we could reciprocate accordingly. On one particular occasion, she went over the family tree on her fingers, almost in disbelief, ran to her room, consulted some suitcase underneath the bed, and emerged back with a confident look on her face and said, "No, I am positive it was 50 piasters!" we almost missed the wedding laughing hysterically.
By the end of most days though, she would get one of those cane chairs, put it out on the balcony, and sit staring at the world. The locomotive is at rest. She would sit still, flushed against the back wall with her arm resting on the railing, her head resting on her hand. I think she waited purposefully until all the pinkish red had gone from the sky before stepping out on the balcony, so that it, like her dress, is left with no colours of life or joy. Yet, there would still be some light left for her to stare over the church's steeple, and get lost in deep thoughts. How much life has changed for her? What has become of her? All of course is due to the great betrayal of her husband who left to heaven without her.
Many times I would come out on the balcony and find her in tears. And when I would ask her why she is crying, or what is wrong, she would say something like, "I am cursing him who left me behind to this misery." I would take her hand, and press on the veins on its back with my little fingers, I was amazed at how the veins followed my fingers up like piano keys when you press them down gently and release before they make a sound. Of course I would say something to comfort her like you have us, and we love you. I would rest my head on her lap, and she would pat, and caress my forehead. That was a small consolation, but it was not the same. I did not know that then. My vocabulary did not include such words as loneliness, aloneness, loss, longing, or depression. Teta lived with us, but her heart, mind, and soul dwelled at the edge of that western horizon she stared at, waiting for that imaginary line that separated her from her lover to vanish.
Many times when I am looking out of my window here, in New York, or walking around at that same time of day, I think of her. Now, I understand, having been divorced for several years, I too mourn the loss of companionship, togetherness and, the power of two. And, no matter how I arrange or rearrange the house, or fill it with things, it always seems empty, lifeless, cold, like the skies Teta stared at endlessly. My personal vocabulary has expanded now to include the words I did not know then.
I do get out of course, I date, and dance, and dine out with friends, I take long walks in the evenings and, I live in the city. I crack jokes at meetings to lighten things up and, clown around with friends. Yet at sunset, or early evening, I hear her silent conversations, as if they all passed into my head from her fingertips back on that balcony.
This week's contributor is an Egyptian expatriate living in New York.
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