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| 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 18th
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, 19th 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)
