She let me take in the life in her – the real private one and the one she propped to share – hoping that when it’s fully inside my spirit, I’d magically change it from flour to dough to bread. Toasted bread. And then feed her bits of it dipped in tea thickened with cooked milk. Crispy bread softened again with Karak tea for a wholesome comfort that is her.
“Here”, I wanted to tell her as I broke this bread apart, “Have this. It’s the bread of us, scorched. It is crusty on the outside, soft on the inside. It coats your stomach and perhaps converts into the sugar you cannot eat, but back in the day it was the food of love. Not of diabetes. Enjoy it for now.”
I stayed there in her theatre, watching her on a projector screen. No high definition, no 3-D glasses or anything technical to define her more than necessary. I watched her as she unreeled herself in front of me without a word, just body language that communicated a role now in pause, an interval.
“Figure me out”, I heard her say in words she quietly didn’t say.
“I have you all figured out”, I responded in a voice she took pride in owning to be an extension of hers.
But I don’t have her figured out. No one has goddesses or queens figured out. They are obscured by layers of kaleidoscopic secrets that remain in history and beyond. You hear them echo forever.
I just like to list the things that come up on the surface of her pretending I have her figured out. Things that aren’t designated to a time. Parallel universes of her, interspersing constantly.
Beisan A. AlShafei
Written on December 25, 2021
This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote inspired by my mother, who passed away on April 29, 2022. It is a burble full of complicated mother-daughter feelings that make me smile and feel grateful for the friendship I had, and still have, with her. She is always in my present tense.
Beisan's Burble 