Still, I gravitate to the bed in the corner of my room and find no peace until I can lie on my side facing the wall. I assure Mama again that I am not depressed, that “yes, I know you are proud of me, and yes, I know you think I am a hero, and yes, I know you don’t think I am that other word.” But I tell her that I am not a hero either, that language is absurd, life is absurd, this theater of visitors is absurd, and the hum of the goddamned refrigerator is grating my bones, and “please trust me that I need solitude. I’m not bothering anyone, just please give me some peace, some quiet.”

Weeks Four & Five

WEEKS FOUR & FIVE

MAMA INSTALLS PADDING around the window and door of my room to dampen the noise. Visitors stop coming.

Mama knocks gently on my door, walks in. She sits at the edge of the bed and lays her hand on my shin. “Darling, there’s someone here to see you.”

Before I beg her to make them leave, she says, “It’s Um Buraq,” and leaves the room.

I turn around to chase a memory. A crazy car ride away from Kuwait for the last time. Laughter and sorrow colliding. Sitti Wasfiyeh making us pull over so she can get in the backseat. My brother’s silence. Words from another life scramble and hit against my body from the inside, and I hear a whisper in my mind: Whatever happens in this ungenerous world, we will meet again, my sister.

I sit up, looking at a small, thin woman in a black abaya leaning forward on a cane. She smiles. There is no mistaking that massive, gap-toothed smile. I get up, walk to her, slip my arms quietly around her. She wraps her free arm around me, lets out a sigh, and the decades we have crossed wrap around us both.

She smells like an old woman. I can feel the bones of her ribs beneath the loose abaya.

“Waleh, ma ajmal shooftitsh,” she says. Gurl! How beautiful the sight of you. “Now help me sit down,” she demands.

For the first time in many years, an irrepressible smile takes me over. I am grateful not to be handled delicately. I thought I would never see Um Buraq again. But here we are, the frayed strings of our lives closing a circle. I can see that life has trampled her too. But fate feels generous in this moment, and something in me is restored. I feel color and texture transform what is dull and desic-cated.

“Looks like you got old too,” she says, that enormous tooth gap pumping sunshine through me.

Weeks Six, Seven, Eight & Nine

WEEKS SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT & NINE