My grandmother is dying and Ma is so sad. Everything here is so tense. Trouble thinking, trouble resting, and trouble making your bones relax and sink into pillows and routine. Old age before youth is in full bloom, says my mother’s voice in the back of my mind. Worn out before anything has really started. You are nothing without your virginity. Lost in somewhere you grew up in, with a language you have taken, with a world that you want, but which is behind that clear steel curtain. Watch it. Watch it all you want, but it will never be yours.

My school counselor would say it was Uncle Haydar’s fault. If she knew, she would talk about sexual abuse. But she doesn’t know, and she’d be wrong anyhow. I choose what I do. I have always chosen what I do. We are in America now, so maybe Haydar could give me freedom, could get me to a life I can control.

Hala was given what she didn’t ask for. Her bad luck is her good luck too, because it gave her freedom, gave her the chance to choose her own life.

One year away for me is a wedding, and then one little baby after another to change everything and cement it to impossibility. (No use complaining, they will be yours one day.)

Pain no one wants to know about hidden under the sink with all the dangerous cleaning fluids I must use just right, though I would rather wrap them up in a sandwich and eat them for lunch today. Fight not to accidentally give them to someone else, fight to tuck these feelings away out of sight.

I don’t want a husband who walks under clouds, that is not my freedom. How can God mean this for anyone, a struggle that can never be won, a debt that can never be repaid. I sit silently and wait and pretend it does not exist, pretend there is no after-anything, that all there is, is now and I have to eat it up, devour what I can because there is no take-out service here.

Who would think I would want to go back, just to watch my grandmother watching the day that sits slow and fat like a watermelon, watch the sky watching us, beg for the sun to cover us quietly. And that will never happen now because she is dying and Ma can’t leave the store.

No matter what, I won’t let that noise make me forget. It will not be the one to steal my youth and spit my soul into the gutter.

Music loud, loud, loud, to drown it all and make my escape plan. ...

31 KHADIJA Long Distance

31KHADIJALong Distance