Write about someone who left.

Las Brisas Rose Garden
Laguna Beach, California
April 2003

The Story of Two Lovers

I awoke thinking about Christmas.  Not the Christmas I had spent alone just a couple of weeks earlier, but the Christmas I’d spent with Azim in California in 2003, his first Christmas.  I’d decided that even though he was Muslim, Azim should have a stocking for Santa to fill.  He wouldn’t have some store-bought stocking.  No way!  I would needlepoint him a stocking, an expensive and time-consuming venture, but one that represented my commitment to our relationship, my optimism about the future, and my belief that we would spend the rest of our lives together.  Now, five years later, on January 13, 2008, I was jarred from my sleep, the whereabouts of the Christmas stocking weighing heavily on my mind.

A major nor’easter was brewing in the Atlantic Ocean.  Heavy snows were forecast to arrive in southern New York by evening.  Temperatures hovered just below freezing.  It was a perfect day to say inside and avoid the frightful weather.  I was now living in New York, the warm winters of California a fading memory.  I threw on my blue flannel robe and fur-lined leather slippers, and headed out in search of the Christmas stocking. 

Where was it?  Why am I thinking about it now? 

I dug through drawers of yarn and pattern books, wooden needlework rollers and hoops, of myriad unfinished projects, until I saw the half-stitched baby blue background of the stocking.  I pulled it out and smiled at my old friend.  I examined the handwork I had so painstakingly stitched five years earlier.  I ran my hands over the silk yarns and admired the evenness of my handwork.  I looked at Santa’s face, his blue eyes and his rosy cheeks, at his red mittens, red coat and metallic white fur lining. 

I remembered the hours I had put into the project, and thought about the hours I would need to finish it.  18 stitches to the inch – oh, my eyes were going to pay a high price!   I remembered showing Azim the unfinished project and promising to have it ready for Christmas 2004.  He’d held the stocking in his gentle hands, his physician’s hands, hands that had brought new life into the world, hands that had examined the bodies of souls that had already left.  He admired the delicate stitching. 

“It’s beautiful,” he’d told me.  “I can’t wait until it’s finished.”

I dug deeper into the drawer and found the silk yarns that went with the project.  “What the heck,” I thought to myself, “I’m gonna work on this right now.”  I took the stocking and the yarn to my living room, popped in a DVD and plopped myself down on the sofa.  I picked up the blue yarn, measured out a suitable length, cut it, threaded the needle and began stitching the first row.  I counted as I stitched across the hand-painted canvas.  55 stitches.  I began the next row – counted one, two, three.  As I put the needle down into the next stitch, my phone rang.  I looked at the caller I.D.  It was a call from Egypt. 

“Fuck,” I said out loud to no one there, “I don't want to deal with this shit right now.” 

I’d been self-righteously avoiding Azim’s calls since Thanksgiving.  I ignored this one, too, and let it go to voicemail.

Several seconds later I heard the beep, beep, beep that announced I had a message.  I laid down the stocking, picked up the phone and hit “send”. 

It wasn’t Azim’s voice I heard; it was his daughter asking me to call her.  Call her?  Why?  It had been more than three years since I’d spoken with her, called her house.  Did I even still have her number?  Her presumptiveness annoyed me, as did the inconvenience of having to locate her number.  As I prepared to get up from the sofa, the phone rang again.  This time I answered the call from Egypt.

His oldest daughter, Shama, the one whose meddling fractured our relationship and sent us spinning into separate, empty existences for the previous three years, was the one who called me that cold Sunday morning in January to deliver the news in her droll, deceptively innocent voice.

“I’m sorry to tell you that my father has died.”

In a café in Cairo, near the Khan el Khalili plaza, in the shadow of the Al Hussein mosque where the head of Prophet Muhammed’s grandson is entombed in a crypt surrounded by a glowing green light, there, on my first trip to Egypt, between sips of mint tea and drags on a sheesha packed with apple tobacco, Azim told me the story of two lovers.  The man became terminally ill.  He loved his lover so much that he went away without a word and died alone, thus sparing her the responsibility of tending to him and the agony of watching him die.  His lover would have a broken heart, he reasoned, but her heart would mend and she would be able to find love again. 

Azim spoke solemly, passionately as he related the story with his euphonious Arabic accent.  I looked at his glowing face and was horrified. 

“Promise me,” I pleaded, “that you will never do that to me.” 

His face showed his surprise at my reaction.  “Don’t you see how much he loved her?” he asked. 

“Don’t you see how he never gave her the chance to say ‘good bye’?” I countered. 

His face softened, and I read the mind behind the eyes as he processed my challenge, “How can an American woman ever completely understand the heart of an Egyptian man?” He leaned across the small wooden table between us, took my face in his hands. “I promise, habibty,” he said as he softly kissed my lips, “I promise to die in your arms.” 

I looked into the dark golden eyes filled with love and searched for the slightest evidence that he was lying.  Even having found none, I did not believe him for one second.  “But what did a silly story matter?” I thought to console myself.  We’re still young.  Neither of us is going to die anytime soon.

“Okay, habiby,” I smiled.  I returned his kiss, squeezed his hand in a way that said I loved him and was appeased, and went back to enjoying my tea and sheesha.

It wasn’t until after the call from Egypt that I remembered the story of the two lovers.  Had I remembered when Azim told me in July of 2007 that hepatitis had shown up in his blood, I would have handled things differently.  When he assured me he had medicine and that he was doing well, I would have contacted his best friend, Joe.  When I begged him, pleaded with him a dozen times to return to the United States to get treatment and he continued to refuse, I would have contacted his youngest daughter, Nesma, the one he loved best, the one who knew all about me.  Instead, I did nothing.

That October, the last time we spoke, we argued.  I was never able to reach him again.  He stopped using his e-mail.  He no longer answered his phone, even when we had a phone date.  When he called me, I missed his calls.  I became angry and began to withdraw.  Eventually, I stopped trying to reach him.  It was easier than dealing with the dread I felt.  Consternation crept into my heart and suffocated all reason.

I became bitter and frightened, too wrapped up in my own pain and fear to consider his.  The dreaded holidays were upon me, that time of year that cripples me emotionally and sentences me to an interminable black hole of loneliness and isolation. My best Christmasses had been in Egypt with Azim – Christmasses filled with love and laughter – Christmasses in Aswan, Luxor, Sharm el Sheik, Dahab, Alexandria, Cairo.  We were now separated.  I missed Egypt as much as I missed him.

When he called to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving, I ignored him. When he called on my birthday a couple of days later, I ignored him again.  When he called three times Christmas morning, I didn’t pick up, couldn’t bring myself to listen to his messages.

Inbetween Christmas and the new year I decided to write him a letter, to spill out my frustrations, to beg him one more time to return to the United States.  I worked on the letter for a week, but no matter how many times I edited my writing, I could not find words to express my feelings.  I decided to put the letter away for a few days.  I still had plenty of time to mail it to reach him in time for his January 18^th birthday.

Abdelazim Mohammed Ali Elsiedy died, the exact time unknown, alone in his apartment in Cairo, sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning.  He had eaten dinner, vomited it up in the bathroom sink, collapsed on the floor and died.  Unable to reach him by phone, his worried children and their mother arrived that afternoon, broke down the door and found his body, a trickle of dried blood in the corner of his mouth.  On the floor.  Alone.  Eleven days from his 53rd birthday.

Abdelazim Mohammed Ali Elsiedy, 19^th child of Mohammed and Shama, was buried on Monday, January 7, 2008, the same day his remains were discovered. 

A mourning tent was erected in the street near the family’s house and the men gathered inside.  Prayers were offered for his soul.  Surahs from the Qua’aran were recited.  The women of the village wailed the family’s grief. 

His body was ceremoniously washed, wrapped in clean linens, and carried in a community coffin to the family crypt in Ossium, the little village 30 miles outside of Cairo, where he was born, grew up, and raised his own family.  Waiting for him were loved ones who had gone before him -- aunts, uncles, and cousins too numerous to count and 16 of his siblings.  There, too, was the father he had made peace with before he was bedridden with a stroke and then killed himself by pouring gasoline on his bed and lighting it on fire.  In front of all the others was his beloved mother who died in her 40’s after birthing 23 children . . . his mother who once came to him in a dream, told him how she thanked Allah that he had met me, and that he should marry me and never let me go. 

In accordance with the traditions of Islam, his shrouded, unembalmed body was removed from the coffin, placed in the ground on its right side, facing east towards Mecca, and covered with the ancient earth of Egypt before the sun set at 5:10 p.m.

Wahashteeny, habiby (I miss you, my love)

Ya nour el ain (light of my eyes)

Hayaty (my life)