Fall Break (Down)

All three smoke alarms were going off at once. I didn’t know I *had* three smoke alarms. I’d cranked up the oven to bake biscuits, which need high heat to rise properly, and the heat must have been too much. Every time I fanned one off, another would start up until I was sure my head might burst. The cats were hiding, but couldn’t escape the sound no matter where they went. In the cacophony, the only choice was to take them all down. Then, blessed silence, but for the ringing in my ears, which eventually faded.

I had meant to stop being so maudlin on this forum. All this melancholy, melodramatic obsessive shit–I tire of it. I tire of myself, when I can’t shake it off and move on. I just want to be happy. I really do, but there’s the smoke alarms, the crazy parents, the unrelenting feeling of displacement, the loneliness. All these things combine to be more than me–shoving and pushing until I’m back where I started, talking endlessly about my feelings. I brood. I huff. I cry. I rant. I drown myself out, even as I try to stop speaking.

My mother called me. She wants to know about my brother’s sex life. These are things I deliberately don’t talk to my brother about. In fact, I avoid talking to my brother about many things, because I am constantly being mined for information. My mother calls me, 3 out of 4 times, to see if I know something she doesn’t. It’s awful, playing double agent between your brother and parents. They think he’s lost, and want to forcibly show him out of the forest. I sympathize, but I hate making him feel watched. I hate treating him like a child who can’t make his own mind, who needs to prodded into what’s “best” for him. They hate his girlfriend, and they want him to leave her. He works 70-90 hours a week, sends her money so she doesn’t have to work. I’m not crazy about the situation either, but I won’t make him choose between me and her. They will. They do. It breaks me. And even as I promise I will never make my love for him conditional, I know I’m guilty by association to both parties. My mother sees it as taking sides. If I take his, I’ll be out, too. If I take hers, I lose him. In some ways I already have, our closeness precariously wavering as we both avoid saying or doing something that can be traced, exploited. My baby brother. My beautiful brother. I think I failed him.

Whenever someone hurts me, I find a way to make their failure mine. It’s part narcissism, part control freak. If I had set the proper parameters, if I had done something better, smarter, differently–I wouldn’t feel hurt. If I control the source, I control the feeling. I can walk it off. I’ve been trying to make my way around my hurt feelings for two weeks. It hasn’t worked yet. The tenderness around my heart? It’s still there. Squeezing in my chest as I do the most mundane or elaborate tasks. What should have been something brief, beautiful and easy cut me deeper than I want to acknowledge. I don’t want to believe I let myself be so stupid, so open again. So I replay the moment over in my head, I replay the fallout every time I’m home, and I want to run screaming. Out of the house, out of the bar, out of the city. It follows me across county lines, and I bring the despair home, where I am already more isolated than I care to be.

I have friends, amazing, kind and supportive friends. I have sisters, smart and strong and loyal. I have so much, it feels greedy to want more. But I do–guilty even as I type it–erasing lines that sound too sad, too needy. I want so much my heart feels cavernous–my voice echoing so loud it’s a fire alarm, a siren’s song. I’ll swim until I drown. She’ll sing until I go down.

Sun, Salt, and the Sea

I have been practicing my floating. As a non-swimmer, the feeling of my body weightless and at the whim of the water is unsettling. I am much more comfortable in control, my feet firmly planted on the basin. I began experimenting in the kiddie pool of our resort in Punta Cana, when we visited in February. A mere two feet deep, I could easily find solid ground again when it became too scary. Drowning is my earliest memory; my mother taking swimming lessons at the Y with her daughter, her hands under my belly. I am before years but I recall the emptiness when she withdrew her support, my small shape sinking into the blue of the pool. I went under twice since then, once at my Aunt’s pool when I played too close to the edge, and fell in. No one heard the splash but my cousin, who came to my aid as I bobbed uselessly. Again a couple years later coming down a slide at a beach in Michigan. I had studied the other riders carefully, watched as they came off the slide, fell into the water, and buoyed up seconds later. When I went down, I didn’t come up, and they sent a lifeguard when it became clear I wouldn’t find the way back on my own.

In the Dead Sea, floating is easy. Lot’s Wife, that unnamed rebel, carries me, her body turned to such salt that it kills all the water’s inhabitants, cakes the rocks with her essence. The Dead Sea is riotous when we visit. The waves crashing against the rocks, which despite years of sanding, remain sharp under my feet. I lay in the water, moving my limbs in ways I can’t against gravity, and feel the same discomfort, nestled as it always is on my lower back. The water splashes into my eyes and I make my way clumsily back to the shore, eyes closed, blinded. A lifeguard comes to my aid with fresh water, pouring it over my face, demanding I open the eyes, wash out the burn. It’s like a baptism and I see anew; he pulls me up out of the water with one arm, hauls me back safely to the dock. I go in again later, careful to keep my head up. The Sea is luxurious, slippery over my skin. I feel wounds healing, my scars tickle. I paint myself twice with the mud from the water’s depths, letting it cake dry on my skin before heading back to the water to rinse.

The resort attached to this hunk of beach is beautiful. We tried a different place first, but their beach was closed, so we move on to the Movenpick, a Swedish import. In Amman, the shore is bought up by mostly foreign corporations that turn their chunk of land into a rich haven: upscale, expensive dining; top notch liquor; brown bodies in uniforms, fulfilling needy guests’ every whim. I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy the space, but I hate that my experience is filtered through this. Despite their best efforts, though, the sea remains as is. I am glad I haven’t gone back to the shore in Palestine, for I know that the size of the Sea is shrinking rapidly there, drained for use. The resort is a series of infinity pools leading up to the waterfront, and we watch the sun set. From afar, the Sea is as any other, but we know better. We have felt her secrets on our skin, tasted her brine, slathered in her silt.

From the Dead Sea we visit Hammamat Ma’in, or the Baths of Ma’in. They are not baths, really, but a series of hot springs cascading over the mountains. The waterfalls are fiery, and like the Sea, said to have high mineral contents, with healing properties. I had wanted to come here for those reasons, because my body still aches from my surgery. The first day at the resort, we try to visit the biggest, most beautiful of the Falls. It remains the property of Jordan, and is thus public access. When we arrive, there are no women in the water. They sit on the sidelines, many of them in full hijab, while the men run around in shorts and speedos, enjoying the hot, cascading water. My mother is upset; if we go in, we will be gakwed at, made uncomfortable. We could, and I say to hell with what they think, but even I know how unpleasant the experience will become.

We go next to the “family” fall, where a brood of women, also in full hijab sit on the sidelines still. There are only women here, and this cascade is pitiful in comparison to the last one. My mother is disgusted, still, and won’t even try the water. She returns to the hotel while Rachel and I stay, strip to our suits. The women are gaping at us. They are speaking Arabic, shocked at our attire, our desire to enter the water. I smile sweetly, say “Marhaba”, so they know I understand. We try to go into the water, but it’s scaldingly hot, and we can’t bear it. Still our presence has enervated the women, and a couple join our feeble attempts. I can tell they are amused by our presence, a spectacle. When Rachel and I decide to leave, they suggest we come back. Since I am not above being petty when they are so clearly mocking us, I tell them to enjoy the water, the heat.

We return to the hotel, and try to coax my Mother out of the room. She is going on about the disparity, how backwards she finds the behavior at the falls. Not much of a feminist, my mother’s stance surprises me: what bothers her most is how cruel this is to the women, how unfair. I am impartial on their behalf since I am more than accustomed to being stared at and judged by complete strangers at this point in my trip, but it’s a new feeling for her. We take to the resort’s Spa, which also has segregated waterfalls, also disparaging sizes. We flout the rules and hang out at the men’s, but I can tell she’s still unhappy. This fall is nowhere near the size, beauty or comfort of the main one. We end the day in the pool, where I try floating again. My ears submerged, my face just above, eyes closed, willing my body up, up.

The next day, my parents wake early, visit the main fall before it opens to the public, and my mother returns blissful, radiant. She says we have to go back again, at night when it closes to the public, or in the morning the next day. I promise her we will, though I am over the whole thing. With my departure date so close, I am childishly longing for home. I just want to go back to my life, my things, my time. Still, there is whole two more days to be spent in Jordan, and one more at the resort. We spend the day at the pool, where I continue to float cautiously, no more than a few inches from the wall. Rachel and I compete to see how long we can hold our breath without pinching our noses, and I try opening my eyes under water. It’s blurry, familiar, oddly soothing. Like most adolescents, my niece is bored easily, so the day of lounging has her frustrated, but I am content with our laziness. Later, we watch the football game in the lounge, become depressed about Brazil. We try the main fall again, but because it’s Friday, the public hours are later, and we return, thwarted again, to our rooms. I promise my mother I will wake early, go in the morning. I can tell she wants this for me, doesn’t want me to leave disappointed, because she hopes these small gifts will pull me back, like waves, more often.

Meanwhile, I drift in the water, unfettered by my usual neuroses. Weightless and light, just this once.

Mourning and Melancholy

It’s been my experience that Palestinians (at least, Sawahrah, people from Beit Sahour) take weddings and funerals very seriously. Wedding preparations go on for months. There can be up to 6 different wedding-related celebrations per one couple. In short, my people throw down. Unfortunately, there are no weddings during my visit. Instead, much worse, there is a funeral.  My Ammo Anise (precise relationship is confusing) was 86 years old. He married 3 times, fathered 13 children. His body crossed the jisr midday, and was buried in a family plot in the evening. He was shorter than my grandfather, but with the same wily eyes I associate with the Shomali clan.

Since receiving the news of his passing, the family has been caught up in the obligations of the dead. Like weddings, funerals are events unto themselves, with elaborate stages of mourning. Before the burial, mourners spend all day at the deceased’s home, women in one space and men in the other. Though now this tradition is observed because homes are seldom large enough to house all the grievers at once, I think it originated because of some standard gender assumptions: namely, that women’s grief would be huge and crazy, while men, more reserved, would be uncomfortable with these displays of emotion.

During this vigil, mourners bring nonperishable goods to the family’s home, and the family (extended, at this point) serves coffee, tea, cacao with milk, and a soft sweet bread to the visitors. I’ve been to two of these vigils, both held in my parent’s home here in Palestine. For both of these, the women mourned indoors, and the men set up chairs under the dahlias in our front yard. First, for my grandfather, Seedo Farid when I was 10. Seedo Farid was a tall, graceful man who built houses and farmed olive and fackoose fields (cucumber’s more chill cousin). I can’t say I know much about his personality; I only spent time with him thrice before my family moved to Palestine, and by then his health had deteriorated significantly alongside his mental acuity. I remember he favored my cousins, because they lived here. I remember he called me “Kendu” instead of “Mejdu.” I remember trying to catch his lanky frame once, when he attempted to walk from his bed to the Veranda without aid, and was betrayed by those limbs. I couldn’t stop him from falling, but I was tall enough to hold his torso up after he dropped to his knees, my arms under his until someone came to help.

My father came from America from the funeral, and though I knew I needed to be sad, I was ecstatic for my father’s arrival. We had just moved home, and I missed him fiercely. I’ve always been sweet on him, I guess. My father cried as he walked the dirt road from the taxi to my Uncle’s house; he wept openly in the arms of his brothers, my mother. As it has done ever since that day, my father’s tears undid me. He’s gentle, sentimental perhaps to a fault. Selfishly, I want him to be less so, because I can’t bear how distraught he becomes, because I can’t bear how often I’ve been responsible for that sadness.

We sat through a second vigil for my Ammo Fouad, my father’s oldest brother, when I was 13.  For the second, my sister Lemma and I worked kitchen duty, washing Turkish coffee cups only to see them sent out again within minutes. In the corner of the room sat bags of rice, coffee, and sugar. On top of them sat Tony, my sister’s then boyfriend, ignoring the gender separation. He was there, ostensibly, to help and he did, by lightening the mood, mockingly washing out coffee cups with a flick of his thumb.

The vigil persists until the viewing, and picks up again after the burial, for three more days. This third day, il thalith, engenders a church service. You are surrounded, in some cases, for a week, as nearly every person in the city comes to express their grief. On the seventh day, il saba3, a memorial is held. When my granfather and uncle died, we held both these separately. Now, for Ammo Anise, they are being condensed into a day. Both out of a lax of custom, and because of his advanced age and full life. There is one final memorial service, al arbi3een, 40 days after the death. I found out recently that you can decrease the number of days until this service, and therefore break the family’s public mourning period. You simply subtract the number of children the person has had from 40. So for Ammo Anise, the 40 becomes 27. I had a full on laughing fit when I heard about this. It’s so bizarre.

Even if the events are over, the mourning period demands a certain deference. When Ammo Fouad died, we didn’t turn on the TV or radio for 40 days. We didn’t go to celebrations of any sort: weddings, birthdays, baptisms, for a year. At Christmas we didn’t decorate. Mostly, these extreme measures are ignored today. But when someone dies young, you’ll find the traditions resurrected. When Ammo died, we were all so bereft we did it willingly. Well, as willingly as a young girl can when she is informed her birthday party is off.

Ammo Fouad’s death shocked us. We all wept. Hugely, to befit the size of his character, his heart. He was a UN representative who worked in the Congo at the time of his death. He was loud and vulgar, but charmingly so. He knew just how far to push a joke, a person. He smoked Rothman’s, at least a pack a day. Drank whiskey on the rocks hours before his death. My aunt says he knew it was coming and insisted he go out doing what he loved. Every death in my life since then has been shadowed by Ammo Fouad’s. Each new death rekindling an older grief.

Here and now, in the wake of so many lost loved ones, my father’s sadness cloaks the house again. He will not observe the mourning traditions as he did for his brother, but he will carry the added heaviness daily. And for him, we’ll carry it as well. Here and now, in the land my father wishes to buried, we all step a little more softly.

Arrival and Affect in Amman

Sitting on the plane as it descends into Amman, I can’t believe I’m so close. In the monitor nested in the back of the seat before me, I am watching a small digital rendition of the plane making it’s voyage, but somewhere the connection is faulty because my plane hovers an inch to the West of Amman, even as we are taxiing on the runway. The visual suggestion of the stalled trip is so convincing it anchors my disbelief. Passengers bolt up before we barely touch the ground. Their impatience comforts me; this is how Arabs do. We’re not going to take the pilot’s admonition or the fasten seat belts sign very seriously. What could possibly happen now that the wheels are on the ground? I peer out the window to find grapevines climbing their way up the sides of plane garages. I smile. I am beginning to believe.

The triggers are little. The chaos of the baggage check as you leave Queen Alia’s airport. The black and yellow checked curbs barely containing drivers who treat the roads as a competition, aggressively cutting across lanes—how many are there? Used to the regimented lines of the States, I couldn’t tell you. I look for more familiarity in the crowd, and my heart jerks a little when I realize for the first time in any memory, I won’t see my Ammo Manawail at the airport, waving vigorously. He is fine, just away at the moment, but the dissonance of my arrival mirrors my feelings. Everything is familiar. Everything is not.

My third uncle, Ammo Afif, picks me up in his red Toyota instead, which he bought the same year I was born. The car is spacious, and has held up exceedingly well over the years. I find myself thinking it’s aging more gracefully than I have. But then, I’ve become overly sentimental sometime between the stone facades of buildings and the rickety fruit stands scattered on the side of the road and am thinking everything here ages better. A fine mist of dust travels with us, and it functions like rose colored lenses. Everything here is beautiful. Everything is grand.

When we arrive at Ammo’s house, it’s the scent that clinches it. As soon as I open the car door, I smell Jasmine. I didn’t know I missed it. I didn’t know I loved it. It carries me into the house, mingles with the scent of stuffed grape leaves. It’s not long before other family members begin to arrive, kissing both my cheeks, thanking god for my safe arrival, asking about the welfare of the people I left behind. The greetings roll off my tongues deceptively easily, as later I will coax out casual language slowly, my mouth and brain stubbornly refusing to recall the right words, place them in the correct order. I’m forced to choose my sentences carefully, and alter meaning according to capability. The stiltedness of my speech makes me feel less like myself, and I spend the evening hugging my own shoulders, crossing my arms against my chest. I’m sure my posture speaks my discomfort, but my relatives here are unfailingly kind, and if they are thinking cruel thoughts, they’ve chosen not to voice them. I see messages in their eyes, glances to each other, but that language is something else I’m not fluent in. Better and fair, I suppose. I share these same intimacies with my sisters and close friends, and can’t wait until I see Lubnah again to begin exchanging them.

The evening winds on. Some of my relatives play cards at the square table while others chat over tea, then coffee, then chocolates. The thing I want the most, a cigarette, eludes me. I can’t bring myself to smoke in front of these folks, because I know it’s not done by women in public, and I know it’ll get back to my Dad. 27 and still put in my place by custom. It’s not like he doesn’t know. It’s just a courtesy, I suppose. When everyone heads home, I return to my room. The bed is hard, and the screen on the window won’t budge. I’ll have my cigarette tomorrow. I hope.

Suspending Disbelief

When I was a wee lass, my parents took us to Catholic church services every Sunday. On Christmas Eve, we went to the Midnight Mass, held, conveniently, at midnight. This was and is my favorite mass. In fact, it is the only service I attend at all anymore. Every December 24th, I head over to my family’s church, even if my parents have chosen to attend another mass. Every year, I remember why I don’t attend services except for the one time.

I guess when I was little, Midnight Mass was special because we were allowed to open one present when we got home from church. So, while Sundays were trials with no real payoff (except, I suppose, everlasting life), Christmas Mass meant presents. And really, when I was very young, I could even take a little nap during service and my parents still applauded our effort.

When we all got older, and when we were too dignified to chomp at the present bit, our Christmas tradition changed a little. We still went to Midnight Mass, but after, we would head over to the home of my oldest sister, and have breakfast at 2am. Then she would give us her presents, and we would head home, full of bacon and cheer.

Now, my oldest sister doesn’t live in the same country, let alone the same city, and our traditions have shifted yet again. Now, I go to midnight mass, sometimes alone. During services, I bite my tongue at what I hear the priest suggest. I play a game where I change all the pronouns in the reading from male to female. I scope out the pews to see if anyone I know is still attending. Really, it’s almost disrespectful, my presence, but I do it for three moments. Two are incredibly precise: first,  the moment at the beginning of mass where they light the room from the back. The light travels up the aisle as the organ reaches its crescendo and I feel…something. The vibrations in the air? My pupils contract? The spirit of something greater than I can imagine? Maybe it’s just the collective effervescence of so many people in one room, experiencing the subtle and effective metaphor.

The second precise moment is after the Lord’s prayer, when everyone is still holding hands. The priest does a little spiel, and the congregation responds with “For the kingdom, and the power and the glory are Yours, now and forever” as we raise our linked hands slightly higher, at about the level of our hearts. I suppose I never realized how tyrannical that phrase is until I wrote it out just now. It’s almost absurd: I can recite every moment of Mass with frightening clarity; years and years of attendance have made the creeds and the refrains a kind of muscle memory. I only need to be in the proximity of a wooden pew, the smell of incense in the air and it rolls off my tongue like I’m still a believer. Perhaps that too is a kind of grace.

The third thing I go for is less of a moment. I love when people sing together. Lots of people, easy songs. Even if there isn’t a beautiful singer in the bunch, something about all those voices working collectively gets to me. And maybe it was in church that I learned how to lead a call and response at a rally, or get a roomful of people to chant Cunt over and over again.

After mass, I come home to wherever I’m living, and have a quiet evening with my pets. In the morning, I visit my third sister for breakfast and presents. Later, we go to my parents house for dinner, and at around nine, weary from over exposure, I gather my bounty and head home. I get to my quiet apartment, and almost weep with gratitude. There are no children crying. There are no rude brothers in law. There are no awkward uncles, or snooty aunts. There is just me, my cats, my thoughts.

And here’s what I think. I lost something crucial at some point in the last few years. Aside from the obvious, I lost the ability to take my family in whole, to like them unconditionally. I’ve grown more solitary, perhaps more selfish or self involved. I’ve lost the joy in just being together with them. The comfort of my father’s hand on mine at church, the grace of my sisters as the kneel during services. More cynical, more short-tempered; the easy acceptance of a child in exchange for the blithe rejection of adulthood.

Now, when I get home at the end of Christmas day, I find myself nostalgic for a time where we all still liked each other (mostly), a time where I didn’t feel guilty and angry at my parents, disappointed in my siblings, hurt by emotional and physical absences that color all our interactions. And I wonder, sitting here in my lovely quiet apartment, on a real bed and not the couch or air mattress, will I have the opportunity to miss this moment? Or will I simply grow to resent the isolation I crave? I wonder, can I get back to the place we inhabited as children? Can we love each other in those pure generous ways? Do we want to?

if you agree to the conditions

since i was a wee girl, my parents have reiterated, more time than you can possibly imagine, how important my palestinian heritage, culture and traditions are to them, and thus must be to me. and they are. monumentally hugely important. my family and falasteen are the core of my being, whatever that means. i derive a lot of who i am and what i am from that very strong base. for my parents though, saying i value the culture (and displaying that in numerous ways) is mere lip service unelss it’s followed by one end-all, be-all act of disassimilation. that act is marriage to an arab man.

my dilemma. arab–not opposed. man–not opposed. however, the likelihood of this super feminist, fairly queer lady settling down in the manner my parents imagine is, well, unlikely. and it’s not a light-hearted matter, though i’m apt to say i don’t care or it doesn’t phase me. my mother can and will disown me. she has already threatened to do so with my brother, who is currently living with his “american” girlfriend and her son. the reason it hasn’t happened yet is for the sake of my father, and because my brother is a boy. the only boy of five children. the child they kept wishing for until he happened. he cannot be discarded so easily as the fourth girl after three dutiful daughters.

it’s a lot of pressure, this marriage thing. first, i’m not really a big fan of the whole marriage bit. second, i’m not entirely opposed to not-male people as life partners. in fact, truth be told, i’d prefer a non-bio kinda boi. and i can’t imagine this going over well. ever. and thus it often seems i have a choice: my family or my hypothetical partner. sometimes i wonder if i’ve sabotaged relationships to avoid this very choice. sometimes i wonder if i’ll be in a relationship again, knowing the stakes.

sometimes i am incredibly angry at my parents. for giving up so much to bring us to the US. for taking care of us so well. for letting me know what it felt like to be loved so thoroughly. and then to realise that love is ultimately conditional. i can’t imagine a world where i don’t call my mom or help her stuff a chicken. i can’t imagine a world where my dad doesn’t tell lewd jokes at dinner, and putter around in the mikthaa in the evenings.

mostly, i am sad. sad that i disappoint them daily. sad that the decisions that bring me joy bring them pain. sad to think i might not find a lover who gets it, sad to know i have parents who refuse to. and i can sympathise with both sides. who wants to come into a family where the family will never accept you? and as for my parents, how can they not be crushed at what seems to them not just a rejection of culture, but a straight-up rejection of their hard work over the years? it’s as though i’ve taken everything they’ve given me and packed it in a box, set it on the doorstep. thanks but no thanks. it’s not how i feel, but they can’t read it any other way.

this is on my mind because i recently had a phone conversation with my mother, who, btw is in palestine. she wanted to talk about my brother. as she is so adept at doing, she goaded me into a lose-lose conversation in which she basically claimed that if i cared about my parents, or understood them at all, i wouldn’t have done the terrible thing i did. the thing, in case you’re curious, was moving back to the state they reside in without moving back into their home. that’s right. i’m an unmarried arab girl who lives in the same city as her parents, but not in the same house. it’s as though i slaughtered a small animal for sport, or shot a man in vegas, just to watch him die. it’s that kind of sin, people.

but i digress and have forgotten where i was going with this post. i guess i’ll end by saying these are my guilts and my struggles as a queer arab feminist. this is my life. it ain’t easy.