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najat el hachmi
T
here was a hoar-frost
early this morning.
The dew froze over
the slurry-scented fields as
I tossed and turned on my
squeaky spring bed that was
so ridiculously short and
narrow in my dingy bedroom
in the old part of town. My
mother sleeps very lightly, has
such good hearing she must
have heard. I thought about
her whenever I turned and
the bobbly sheets rucked up.
I was sure that all the sounds
reaching her from my room
meant she always knew my
every movement, every twist
and turn of my body, even
when I hardly moved, the way
I breathed, even my insides
rumbling. In bed, clutching
my pillow with tensed fingers,
to remind myself that I
shouldn’t think about her, I
kept repeating that this was
the most difficult part of the
day just beginning, of my life
that was just beginning, that,
however hard, I had to do it. If
I let her enter my thoughts, if
only surreptitiously, it would
be like lookingbackand turning
into a pillar of salt. I whiffed
the damp, stale air, and if I
smelled it awhile I could trace
the breath I’d been exhaling
over the last few hours, the
emanations from my own
body. I tried to distract myself
analysing the making and
breaking of everything that
had come out of me and was
now stone dead. Driven by
insomnia, I was swept along
by a spiral of fleeting thoughts
that took me from one place
to another, to another and
then another. And so on to
infinity. The way my brain
works, a brain that’s restless
and volatile, comes to the
rescue, now and then. Diverts
me, makes the hours not drag