An Elusive Face
There he was sitting under the shade of the tree before his house, his right hand on his front as if he were trying to remember a very important name that could be the password to a tremendous treasure. He lifts his head to the sky to see the beams of the sun thriving through the boughs of the tree, how light could be harmful to the eyes when it’s so bright, but without light life would be a big and continuous night, he thinks. There she is in his mind again, he couldn’t imagine that one day they would be far away from each other. What made her leave the man she was telling she wouldn’t imagine a life without him. Maybe something buried deep in her past didn’t go into ashes. The horizon before him looks foggy, it looks like the future of his relationship with the woman who devoted his whole life for. Many thoughts attack him simultaneously, but some are stronger than others, he resists the ones which could put her in the spot of a cheater, he feels like a lawyer, trying to improve the innocence of a thief who robbed before the eyes of people in daylight.
No! Why should he follow a track that deepens his feeling of lowliness, if only she were here to ask her these tormenting questions. He can imagine her speaking eloquently and unstoppably explaining how things could be misunderstood and misinterpreted when the past events lose the ground of time and context. He would sit down next to her open-mouthed as usual, holding her hand and touching gently their ring marriage. He had asked her not to take it off so that he can remember that day when destiny announced them a wife and a husband. Now his life has gone dark, like a room which lost the spirit of a candle light in midnight, the morning is still ahead and the moon has disappeared in the cloudy sky and the windows are shut, as such was his case, he supposes. Zeina is the light and the room is his life, and the sky is the whole life. But what for, if he spends his entire life trying to fish for answers in the dark waters of his ambiguous situation. His life experiences had taught him not to lower his gun half-battle so as to cling to the slightest spotlight of hope; the hope of winning and living a better day, but here he fights what or whom.
He used to give a piece of his mind, if necessary, to the ones who seek for advice and never hesitated to enlighten those who come to consult him in the matters of life in general. He is known by being a wise person, a man older than his age, as if his eyes saw more than thirty five years, his looks are sharp and give a true support to his words. When he is asked to give his opinion about a certain issue, believing that what he would say is true and valid, he looks as if he had spent a long time for his hilarious speech. He was called the wise man among his fellows; however, now he doesn’t know what to do, confused and lost in the forest of his thoughts.
He didn’t realize how long he stayed there, under that tree. Now the sun has become weak waiting to sink behind Akkach mountain. When he was a kid he used to hear from his parents that the mountain doesn’t really exist, and if someone tries to reach it he would find nothing but small rocks on the ground, fog and smoke beside other legendary beings. As a kid, he used to believe somehow what his parents were telling him, though he wondered sometimes, how a giant mountain like this can’t be real, how can it be erased from existence and be replace by a fusion of smoke and fog in his little mind. Now he is sure that the mountain is real, but what for. He used to enjoy a lot the stories his mother Radia was narrating to him in his bed just before he sleeps. He found them sweeter than the pieces of sugar he used to take secretly, and when his mom sees that he exaggerated in taking much sugar, she would say “Imran I think it’s better not to take too much sugar since it’s unhealthy” He would say “it’s not me mom, maybe it’s ghoul which came over at night while we were sleeping to take some to his little kids”. The mother only smiles as usual on how he could find quick answers to the questions he was asked. “Very clever, May God protect you my dear son” She used to say.
Though he knew that some events in the stories can’t be real, he listened carefully and unquestionably eager to know what comes next and hear more of them. He longs for those beautiful days when his life had only the color of innocence. Now that he stayed a great deal under the tree he wants to relax himself from the thoughts that overwhelm him. He got into the sitting room chasing the shade of Zeina, as if he were waiting for her to scream her feelings out “I can’t live without you”. Now that she’s away, everything has gone different so much so that he feels like a stranger visiting this lovely place for the first time, where a fusion of curiosity and fear dominates. He fetched a glass of water hoping to reduce the blazing feelings stirring in his heart and agonizing his poor soul. He feels that his body could accept nothing but water, his throat grows tighter when he wants to eat something only to survive.
It’s the second day, he hasn’t found anything that counts for her absence. He couldn’t go to inform the police about his wife’s unexpected absence, he doesn’t want to be mocked once again like the first time, when she turned out to be absent to visit a sick aunty, as she claimed. Now her cell phone was put on the table in front of him, he looked at it for quite a long time, as if he were begging it to tell him with whom she had talked, and what she had said. His eyes concentrate even more on it, he remembers that she bought it as a souvenir when they visited France. The past doesn’t only and simply pass, it keeps itself alive the through people and things, it never completely dies since its sediments are still somewhere only to thrive again.
Now he wanted to restore some of his previous routine by watching the news. When he grabbed remote control, he realized there was a folded piece of paper beneath. His heart is filled with fear and doubt, he unfolded it, moving his hands sluggishly unsure of it may say. Once he opened it, he unmistakably recognized the script which inscribed the whole page long with words that almost blasted his tired soul. “Thanks for being superbly nice with me all this time, but I am sorry Imran, my heart is out of prison now. Please it’s better not to try to know my whereabouts”. He instantly fell down on his knees to the ground, holding tightly on the paper whose letters have already mixed with his warm tears. Now he heard a noise like people talking and shouting, but couldn’t precise the source of the noise; whether outside the house, or inside his head.
Story Teller: Tarik El Kassimi