MANICHAEAN
12-31-2010, 12:22 PM
The Awakening of Fatima.
Her husband Ahmad had worked very hard, till nothing lived in him except for his eyes. And Fatima, as if drugged, followed him like a shadow, serving, echoing. Since arriving as refugees in the UK, darkness had come over Fatima’s mind. She walked always mute, passive, with a strange, deep terror having hold of her.
They were almost beggars having lost everything material when they fled Iraq. But he kept still his great ideas of himself, he seemed to live in his own fantasy, where he always figured vivid and with a proudness of presence that did not go down well locally.
Then he fell ill, eaten up from within by that which he nurtured in his essence. She watched him dying, nursed him, nursed the baby, but really took no notice of anything. Remorse lay on her like a remembering of the dark, savage, mystic ride of dread, and of death in the country she had left.
When her husband died, she was relieved for his suffering had been long and painful.
England was perhaps adept at fitting her mood with its perceived aloofness and foreignness. She was like one walking where the shades intermix, but have no connection. She felt the English people as a potent, cold, slightly hostile host amongst whom she moved isolated.
The English people themselves were actually almost deferential to her once her circumstances were known. But she walked without direction, like the touch of a breeze that comes from nowhere and caresses a cheek, and she was tormented into moments of love by the child that was hers. Her dying husband with his staring eyes encompassing the pain that was within him was now a vision to her, not a reality. In a vision he was buried and put away. Then the vision ceased, and time went on grey and dusty, like the long roads outside Baghdad where the desert stretched into the distance and into the receptacles of the bedouin soul.
Otherwise she did not think of Iraq, nor of that life to which she had belonged. In the superficial activity of her life, she was all English. But her long blanks and darkness of abstraction were Arab and more essentially, of the tribes of Babylon. It hurt her and hurt her. Yet it forced upon her as something living, it roused some potency of her childhood in her.
All the day long now as she sat at the upper window, the light came off the sea, constantly, constantly, without refusal, till it seemed to bear her away, and the noise of the sea created a drowsiness in her, a relaxation like sleep. Her consciousness weakened a little, she had a poignant, momentary awareness of her living child, that hurt her unspeakably and her soul roused itself to attention. She sat alone and she looked, and the constant glitter of the sea unsheathed itself in a new heaven and she saw in the nook of the hill where warm and sweet was the graveyard of Ahmad catching the sunshine. A cupful of warm sunshine.
Flowers glowing like a presence, among the trees and her fingers moved over the clasped fingers of the child that came to her. Almost savagely she turned again to life, demanding her life back again, demanding that it should be as it had been when she was a girl. And savagely her desire rose in her again, demanding that this was Iraq, her youth, that all was her own again.
It did not come to her immediately, the life of her youth, it did not come back. There was an agony of struggle, then a relapse into the darkness, where Satan and the devils raged round the walls, and Allah, (Peace and Blessings Be upon Him) was unseen but present. Ah hum de lei la. She was impassive and indifferent. Yet she was outside the enclosure of darkness.
In her resistance, she knew she was beaten, and from fear of darkness she turned to fear of light. But she knew it was fragile, and she dreaded it. The night came, with brilliant stars that she knew of old, from her girlhood. And they flashed so bright, she knew they were victors. She could neither wake nor sleep. As if crushed between the past and the future, like a flower that comes above ground to find a great stone lying above it, she was helpless.
She thought “Why didn’t I die out there, why am I brought here?’
She lapsed periodically into the old unconsciousness and indifference and there came a will in her to save herself from living any more. But she was too alive with the stirrings of her Arab youth and she would wake in the morning and feel her blood running, feel herself lying open like a flower, unsheathed in the sun, insistent and potent with demand.
Her husband Ahmad had worked very hard, till nothing lived in him except for his eyes. And Fatima, as if drugged, followed him like a shadow, serving, echoing. Since arriving as refugees in the UK, darkness had come over Fatima’s mind. She walked always mute, passive, with a strange, deep terror having hold of her.
They were almost beggars having lost everything material when they fled Iraq. But he kept still his great ideas of himself, he seemed to live in his own fantasy, where he always figured vivid and with a proudness of presence that did not go down well locally.
Then he fell ill, eaten up from within by that which he nurtured in his essence. She watched him dying, nursed him, nursed the baby, but really took no notice of anything. Remorse lay on her like a remembering of the dark, savage, mystic ride of dread, and of death in the country she had left.
When her husband died, she was relieved for his suffering had been long and painful.
England was perhaps adept at fitting her mood with its perceived aloofness and foreignness. She was like one walking where the shades intermix, but have no connection. She felt the English people as a potent, cold, slightly hostile host amongst whom she moved isolated.
The English people themselves were actually almost deferential to her once her circumstances were known. But she walked without direction, like the touch of a breeze that comes from nowhere and caresses a cheek, and she was tormented into moments of love by the child that was hers. Her dying husband with his staring eyes encompassing the pain that was within him was now a vision to her, not a reality. In a vision he was buried and put away. Then the vision ceased, and time went on grey and dusty, like the long roads outside Baghdad where the desert stretched into the distance and into the receptacles of the bedouin soul.
Otherwise she did not think of Iraq, nor of that life to which she had belonged. In the superficial activity of her life, she was all English. But her long blanks and darkness of abstraction were Arab and more essentially, of the tribes of Babylon. It hurt her and hurt her. Yet it forced upon her as something living, it roused some potency of her childhood in her.
All the day long now as she sat at the upper window, the light came off the sea, constantly, constantly, without refusal, till it seemed to bear her away, and the noise of the sea created a drowsiness in her, a relaxation like sleep. Her consciousness weakened a little, she had a poignant, momentary awareness of her living child, that hurt her unspeakably and her soul roused itself to attention. She sat alone and she looked, and the constant glitter of the sea unsheathed itself in a new heaven and she saw in the nook of the hill where warm and sweet was the graveyard of Ahmad catching the sunshine. A cupful of warm sunshine.
Flowers glowing like a presence, among the trees and her fingers moved over the clasped fingers of the child that came to her. Almost savagely she turned again to life, demanding her life back again, demanding that it should be as it had been when she was a girl. And savagely her desire rose in her again, demanding that this was Iraq, her youth, that all was her own again.
It did not come to her immediately, the life of her youth, it did not come back. There was an agony of struggle, then a relapse into the darkness, where Satan and the devils raged round the walls, and Allah, (Peace and Blessings Be upon Him) was unseen but present. Ah hum de lei la. She was impassive and indifferent. Yet she was outside the enclosure of darkness.
In her resistance, she knew she was beaten, and from fear of darkness she turned to fear of light. But she knew it was fragile, and she dreaded it. The night came, with brilliant stars that she knew of old, from her girlhood. And they flashed so bright, she knew they were victors. She could neither wake nor sleep. As if crushed between the past and the future, like a flower that comes above ground to find a great stone lying above it, she was helpless.
She thought “Why didn’t I die out there, why am I brought here?’
She lapsed periodically into the old unconsciousness and indifference and there came a will in her to save herself from living any more. But she was too alive with the stirrings of her Arab youth and she would wake in the morning and feel her blood running, feel herself lying open like a flower, unsheathed in the sun, insistent and potent with demand.