Habibty

I opened my tired eyes. Fixed to the gloomy old ceiling underpinned with pegs of wood, they were literally burning. Venous and crimson, they forgot tenderness, soothing warmth of tears. My neck was in unbearable discomfort. My blood pulsed my veins in an intense tide motion. Cadaverous, my body became, waited for its last breath. I turned my head to the left side of my cold itching hay bed positioned in one of the corners of four yellowish somber walls framing the room. My eyes met the obscurity. White audacious light sprung from my phone, had been ringing for a while to wake me up from nightmares, to pierce the dark opaque atmosphere I slept in, tried to sleep in.

- Shhhhhhhut !

“Do not wake me up.” I whispered. My eyes lost the taste of comfort. Insomnia had been the symphony of my nights since that day, that end.

Its candle light, as a weakened metamorphosed pocket flashlight, targeted my bloody retina. Few letters and numbers escaped from the glass surface of my phone to meet my vision, to overwhelm my exhausted conscience. Thursday, October 19th, 2008, 5:30 in the morning. Date and time, barren and meaningless, refreshed my memory to forgotten circumstances. They removed the dust griming my mind that did not expect, did not want to recall the breathless sceneries. They evoked undesirable nostalgia despite the intentional refusal.

My brain stopped its metabolic duties. It stopped. Two months of emptiness resulted. Sixty days, lying on a lifeless hospital bed connected to generous machines carrying my destiny on. I lost hope. I lost every single emotion of happiness had shaped me.

The white light attacked my entity as a whole. It turned my sensations upside down. I did not want to wake up. I knew my nightmares had a meaning, more than those, real, I had lived five years before. I felt each moment of suffering, hurt and each drop of her love perfume abandoning my body. I felt death.

Five years sharp before that morning, her, my all, passed away in a dramatic chaos. The flower blossoming my life left me. She left her beloved alone with a small wonders box, my refuge after all.

Unbelievable! Unforeseen! Bus driver recklessness was the reason behind my lifelong suffering. Witnesses said she was on the sidewalk having her daily jogging minutes to find herself killed, trapped underneath a school bus frame. Not a single drop of blood left her body as if the blood itself could not abandon her, could not imagine it would stop the flow. She died immediately.

Two days before the incident, Mama, Ma Chérie told me about a dream she saw, a wooden coffin sailing along a river shined a vivid white light. She talked about her defunct parents, aunts and uncles and recalled her childhood as a life story moving along her sight. She was happy, wistful and grateful. She thanked her dearest, my grandma, for the womb journey, for the life she gave her. My little fresh mind could not grasp the overwhelming words. Yet, I knew, I still do not know how and why, she was close, very close to the end. The grave was calling her. She did not expect that moment when the present and the future she planned for the little warm family evaporated in a blink of eye.

Everyone was present that day. Old wrinkled faces I had not seen for years crammed the living room. Our house was an old medina bus shelter. My father, perplexed, shook hands with the crowd and tried to respond to questions, intonations and words of solace. He could not speak a word. Only facial gestures answered. His face was bloodless. His arms were shaking, shivering from the unexpected. I, sitting on a worn catering chair covered with an off-white shabby cloth, felt unwelcome. Was I really invited? Was I the guest or the host? I could not realize what was happening actually. Semi-conscious, eyes brimmed in silent tears, vision scrambled, I was alone, lost in the crowd, in the massive space between the ornamented painted ceiling and the bright marble floor. Cries, moans and sobs reduced the dimensions of the place. I could not bear anymore the sad picture dominating the atmosphere and the drone murmuring sound my hearing endured. In the other corner of the room, experienced old men wearing white Jellabas sat in a neat order, one next to the other, and recited in a rhythmic symphonic tone verses from the sacred Quran, those I pricked up my ears to once, if my memory served me, in one of my departed dad’s friends funeral ceremonies. Definitely stunning and mesmerizing, four bodies hold on their shoulders a wooden dull box enclosed around her, around the body of a beautiful happy young loving woman, of what was, and will never be again. They entered the room. I took the way toward them with feet soaked in sweat. The coffin was semi-opened. Her eyes rested in her pure face. Her lips were formed into a slight genuine smile, which made the image much moving. I knew, then, she would be buried in few minutes.

I felt a hand stroking my soft hair recently washed, and turned my head to see my aunt draining tears of love. Her mouth came next to my ear and whispered few words that I could not hear, as if I were lying on the bottom of a deep well. I tried to seize her words, love, God, light… I could not. Maybe, I puzzled them out. I cannot remember. I relived, then, a sequence of a movie I had watched years before, where my memory caught the words of a loving had lost his life-light too. “We all loved her. God takes those who give love and light to the world”(Pigem Colls). Moved by the words I recalled and tired from the pain consuming my inside, I lost consciousness and fainted.

Two months later, I opened my eyes. My back was dropped in aches. My arms, my neck and my legs were blocked and could not move properly. A white ceiling above and a large window closed at my right. No one was there. I was alone, as she left me. Little by little, I came to my senses and remembered what happened, yet I did not understand why I was lying there on that lifeless bed connected to plastic tubes providing me with oxygen. I could smell the toxic in my nose and my throat. My mouth and my tongue were as dry as Chihuahuan Desert. A drop of water had not met the smooth of my tongue for weeks. Later, I realized I was in a hospital. The itching smell of the sharp rubbing alcoholic detergents encroached upon my nose and informed me of the place. Doctors, nurses, and then, my father entered the room. Surprised, my father thanked God for seeing me awake.

- Al Hamdoulah YaRebbi !

Days, months, and years elapsed. Minds and memories erased the past. They forgot her death. Yes, they did. After my recovery, my father tried to make me stand on my feet again. We had travelled for a five months trip abroad, cruises in Brazil sea-coast, hikes in Pico Da Neblina Mountains… He thought I could surmount the pain living inside me and forget her face traits easily. My family, my father, and my friends were present to help me overcome her lost. I am thankful guys! Yet, my mother’s smile, voice and gaze could not leave me. Funeral fragrance, camphor, benzoin, and orange flower water still invaded my nostrils. My nights were series of images of my mother. Each corner of the house remembered her. Each inch reflected her meticulousness and delicacy. The melody of her voice and her laughs pierced the rancid garlic olive oil of the deserted kitchen. She liked garlic olive oil.

Mama, my beloved, I will never ever forget you. You were and are the breath that signs my life. I love you Habibty!