Catarina’s Garden
Travel (Miscellaneous) August 27th, 2008
I make my way through the underbrush keeping count of the dead and the living. Over the fence, Rome streams past. Not far beyond, I was told by the priest, lies the Mediterranean Sea. Five, no six, weeks in countries with beaches, and not even a lick of swimming. I laugh at myself as I shuffle along. Some things are only for dreams.
The edge of my nightgown collects barbed seeds; a few sneak their way through the toes of my shoes, seeking soil in my feet. I have resolved that each day I will find one more living thing. Today’s has yet to reveal itself to me. It is the afternoon of Day Six.
I think of Catarina alone in our room, laughing. She takes endless IV bottles into which the nurses inject thick fluid, cloudy white. She has rough yellow fingers and fine orange hair. It took three days to realize that no one else can understand her, either.
Changes have taken place in the yard since only yesterday. For three days on the sidewalk between the women’s ward and the trees, I have watched a bird, desiccating. Yesterday’s viscera no longer remains. Today even feathers are blowing away.
On one hand I count palmettos, thistles, butterflies. On the other, yellow grass, a carapace. Chips of bark, which from one angle appear whole, but from the side reveal themselves to be no more than rust-colored layers. My heart aches for the things which once were part of something living.
Points of confusion arise in the trees. Here, a cascade of needles sag against the ground, hiding pine cones of waxy green. The bough has broken but is not yet dried. You could mistake it for living. Ten yards away, another waits: withered, but still standing. How shall I count them? If neither will grow, then are they both dead? I stand sideways in the shade, half to think, half to hide.
You should be careful what you ask for, my conscience says to me. A shadow moves in a patch of grass, and stretches its paws at me. The lines of his form blend seamlessly into the background of moss and leaves. I hear Ibtisam’s voice in my head. All living creatures give thanks to Allah, and they do so endlessly. Don’t step on the ant, it’s making dua. I look the cat in the eyes. Is it true? Do you want to join me?
I go back to looking for the right place to pray.
Catarina squeals and tells the world I’m Chinese when I try to pray in front of her. Nieces and nephews crowd her bed in the evenings. The new ones try for a while to talk, before they begin repeating. How are you, Zia? How?
On Monday, the guests and I had a screaming fight over the state of our room’s door. “Everyone who walks by stares into our room.” I choked. “As if we were animals. They are…” I tried to remember the word. Is “malediti” a swear? “I have a need of some privacy,” I stared at the newspaper on my bed.
In the end, the door stayed open, and Catarina’s guests crowded around her bed. I went for a walk until they left, slowly up the hallways, past the chapel, to the bar to buy blood orange juice. When I came back to the room, Catarina looked at me and shrieked. “You are always eating.”
“No, you’re always eating,” I answered her crossly. She moved her hand in a drunken circle, laughing. Her lips folded down where her teeth should have been. “Are you hungry, Catarina?” She looked without focusing her eyes at me. “Bo.” “Catarina!” I tried to hear her husband’s accent in my head. “Are you hungry, bella?” Her forehead split into rays. “Gah!”
I took two plastic cups from her nightstand, and poured half of the juice into each. “Do you want some orange juice?” I tried to think of the word for cool. “E fresco.” She extended her movable hand toward me. I passed her one of the cups. Orange juice for old ladies. Alone in the yard, I allow myself to remember my Grandmother, drinking.
There are pine cones everywhere. Some, piled up at the bases of trees, make me wonder who has come this way before me. Have there been other women, terminally bored, who passed through these grounds, neatening? Some of the cones have been bleached light gray by sun or rain; under the pressure of my right foot, these crumble like daisies. Others are brown, their bract scales open; I feel between these for seeds.
There is a pine cone here for every possible fate. I am jealous of the beautiful ones, perfectly preserved, which sit just so at the edge of the trees. I am frightened of the broken ones, bright green, behind me. Dear God, say I’m going to last for longer than that.
Each soul stays on earth for as long as is its duty. I remember Serra in Turkey, holding my hand, as we walked through the alleys of Fatih. I asked her if Istanbul’s history of earthquakes worried her, if she was scared that she might die in one of these. “I believe that when it is my time to die,” she said, calmly, “nothing will save me.”
I think about coming and going, about those who have gone from me. The pain of remembering is always the same. Grasses swim, leaves grow bright. Tiny rainbows form around every source of light. Their souls were done, I tell my heart. You must stop resisting.
My scalp prickles with sweat and grime. Six days in the same underscarf, six days without washing. Six days of sleeping in hijab. Six days of Roman waiting.
The next time Catarina’s husband came to visit, I stood up and smiled at him. “Look, over here,” I led him to the window. “We have an air-conditioner in our room,” I said. “It is nice and cool, if you want to feel it with your hand.” He trailed his fingers in the sunshine, smiling. “They actually don’t have an air-conditioner out in the hallway,” I tried. “So it is cooler in here if we keep the door closed.” I adjusted the folded sheet I’ve been using as a sajada. And maybe I can say my prayers, when it’s just you guys looking at me.
He unwrapped the cardboard boxes on her meal tray. A lump of soft white cheese. Unsalted broth with tiny, gummable stars. Country bread, encased in a thin plastic packet. A bottle of apple pulp for a sweet. Catarina waved her left arm, shaking. “Mangia, bella. Va be’, mangia. Look, they’ve brought you stracchino. How lovely. Come on, Catarina. Eat.”
Ahead, in the sunshine, five stumps wait, cut off at the height of my knees. They are crowned with amber droplets, each fragrant, each unique. I crouch down at the first of these. Ants thin as the whites of my fingernails run along its face. I pick up a scrap of bark from the ground, and balance it in an age ring.
If you were my son, I tell the tree, I would call you Hamzah. My eyes travel around the circle, imagining. Hamzah, Talhah, Salman… Is it wrong to name children for the companions? Two more stumps remain. I think of bravery, of wit and redemption. Of Al-Hubab and Omar.
On Day Five at lunch, when Catarina’s husband came, he was changed. When the nurse came in to change her bottle, he backed out into the hallway. When he came back, his face was red. Silently, he folded himself into the seat at the end of our room.
He crossed his arms in his lap, and stared at the wall over Catarina’s bed. How did the two of them come to occupy such different places? I wondered then, watching. They must have been matched once. They must have been healthy and young, and in love, and carefree, once upon a time.
Tears made their way morosely down my roommate’s husband’s face. “How long have you been married?” I could not stop from asking. He looked up at me blankly. “How long…?” I tried again, uniting my fingers. “How long together?” Subtlety belongs to the mother tongue. His eyes opened up. “Thirty years.” He took a breath. “We were already old when we married.” He was not as sad, saying this, as I expected, listening.
I cannot dissuade the ants from entering the puddles of amber. Please, little ants, that way is your death. They were already old when they married. I wonder who is back in our room now, if Catarina is again alone. I think of her husband, bending to kiss her, without her dentures in. Is this what awaits me, when I get married? Will I ever have it so good?
August 30th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
As-salam alaykum wa rahmatullah.
“There is a pine cone here for every possible fate. I am jealous of the beautiful ones, perfectly preserved, which sit just so at the edge of the trees. I am frightened of the broken ones, bright green, behind me. Dear God, say I’m going to last for longer than that.”
I read these lines and was reminded of last week’s Friday sermon here at my favorite mosque in Karachi. The best life, the imam said, is a long one spent in the service of God. Not a long one, nor a short one spent in God’s service–except, of course, when a dying youth has gathered up so much good in a short span that it outshines a long life of worship.
May God grant you a long and beautiful life in His service, ya Anna.
August 31st, 2008 at 11:36 pm
ramadan mubarak!!!
September 1st, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Assalamu-alaikum Anna! Wanted to email you but your address isn’t listed. Ramadhan Mubarak, Anna. Wish you a blessed and blissful Ramadhan and enough time to pen some more of these.
December 30th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Hi i read your site frequently and wanted to wish you all the best for the New Year!