Lightness of Being…

“So tell me what brought you here?” 

“I don’t know…I was raving I think, on the streets…someone might have called the cops…I don’t know” 

“Yes, you were brought in stark naked, aside from the trench coat the cop placed on you…do you remember that?” 

“I was naked?” Reem’s forehead furrowed in concentration. “I remember taking off my clothes…” 

“Do you remember why you did so?” 

She took a deep breath. 

“I wanted God to take me. I wanted to go back pure like the day I was born” 

“hmmm…” Dr. Gupta nodded and made a small note in his pad. 

She hated it when he wrote. She was so sure he was just tallying how many ways she was insane.

“It was a long and dark night. I spoke to so many people; I saw things that others could not see. I understood everything so clearly for the first time in my life. I wanted to depart before the world could corrupt me again and sully my soul. I wanted to go, run, and fly back into His arms, back into darkness, nothingness, non-existence.” 

“You wanted to die?” 

Reem shrugged. She didn’t want to die. Not the death that she understood with huge scary Angels torturing her putrefied soul out, being taken up to the heavens in a pungent cloth, vile names being shouted: “Fornicator, you liar, Hypocrite…” 

She couldn’t wrap her brain around God’s Face turning from her. Or fathom the pain of her soul being thrown from the depths of the Heavens, plunged deep into the grave. Where the grave would proceed to tighten, snakes coiling around her ribs, scorpions feasting on her flesh. She didn’t want to deal with the agony and torture of an eternal hell, voraciously consuming her, regurgitating her and devouring her once more, forever and ever. 

The horror of not having God to call onto, when all the bets were off, and she had no other straws to clutch on, was more terrifying to her than languishing for a thousand eternities in the depths of hell.  

That she would be considered a candidate for Paradise never crossed her mind once. Heaven was meant for the gentle of character, pure of spirit, and chastely of being. Nah, heaven could never have been created with the likes of her in mind. Her very entrance into Jannah would somehow cheapen the place; make it a little more common, defiled even.  

“What did you see? You said you saw things that no one else saw?” Dr. Gupta prompted her to continue attempting to cross the threshold of silence lying between them. 

“Jinns” Reem replied watching Dr. Gupta for signs of recognition. 

“I am sorry?” 

“Jinns are invisible beings, created of fire, they exist in their own space/time dimension parallel to ours, but they do cross and connect with humans from time to time.” 

Dr. Gupta raised his eyebrow in interest, his face impassive. 

“You have never heard of them?” Reem was stunned, India was teeming with Jinns. 

“I have heard equivalent myths of other beings…what did they say to you?” Dr. Gupta was an expert at nipping tangents in the bud. 

“Many things…I honestly don’t remember…It was weird encounters, like one showed me his artwork. It was so gut wrenching. Many women, of different colors and bearings, wearing gorgeous ancient outfits, they were so beautiful, so graceful. Yet each one of them was miserable. It was like their faces spoke of a million woes; each one a prisoner of untold agonies. I asked him, why? Why do women always have to be so desolate?” 

“What did he say?” Dr. Gupta was enthralled despite himself. 

“He shrugged; like it was something outside of his realm of control…like that’s how things were supposed to be. I laughed and laughed on the spot. To make him understand that happiness, laughter and women can co-exist. I laughed so hard and I knew it was irritating him, so I kept laughing until tears streamed forth, laughing until a crowd formed around me…” Reem continued forcing herself to keep talking despite the sick realization that she sounded crazier by the minute “I kept laughing until someone shouted “She’s crazy yo! you better step back…” And when I asked the people around if they could see him and his paintings, when I attempted to relay the joke to them…they simply looked at me bewildered… there was no one there. I knew then it was a Jinn.” Reem concluded in a whisper, head bowed, staring at her chipped finger nails. 

“Were you ever molested as a child?” Dr. Gupta asked with a suddenness that forced her to raise her startled eyes to his.  

“How did you get molesting from my Jinn encounter?” 

“I am sorry, it’s totally unrelated. It just occurred to me to check…you were sexually active before that night right?” 

Reem nodded. Twice.  

“It has nothing to do with anything that later happened in my life” 

“It wasn’t your fault” Dr. Gupta delivered the solace cushioned with an uncharacteristic softness of voice. 

“It was.” Reem through clenched teeth. That was the whole point, the reason why none of these doctors could ever “heal” her (if healing was what they were trying to do). She wasn’t about to hide behind a million excuses for her inexcusable behavior. She was molested yes, and certainly didn’t ask for it, not the first time at least. She could have yelled though, she could have told her mom, or brothers. But she didn’t. And later on in life, she sought sexual relationships with men, consciously, knowing how wrong it was. But she did. With a daring of spirit, an ingenuity of flirtatiousness, an abandon of will, that no one could get blamed for; not even the men; not her distant mom; absentee dad; or hypocritical culture; no one was to blame but herself.  

“It wasn’t your fault” Dr. Gupta repeated a little louder for emphasis. 

Reem shot him a look of derision. These modern psychologists know nothing. 

“It wasn’t your fault” Dr. Gupta asserted more firmly. 

Reem suddenly felt like laughing. Ok, he sounds retarded now. 

“Reem, look at me” Dr. Gupta commanded “It wasn’t your fault” 

Reem nodded “yeah, sure.” 

“No. repeat after me. It-wasn’t-my-fault” 

Reem rolled her eyes, but something in his tone made her obey. “It wasn’t my fault” 

“Again” 

“It wasn’t my fault” She mustered all the dullness within her to color that phrase.  

“Again” 

“Okay. Dr. this is really…” 

“Again” 

“It wasn’t my fault” She puffed.

“Again”

“It-wasn’t-my-fault” thoroughly annoyed now.

“Again”

“Oh MY GOD. Khallas! How many more times?!”

“Again” his tone had the air of one who had all the time in the world.

“It wasn’t my fault” She was getting agitated.

“Again”

“IT WASN’T MY FAULT”

“Again”

“FINE. IT WASN’T OKAY. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANNA HEAR? IT WASN’T! IT WASN’T! IT WASN’T MY FAULT! IT NEVER WAS! IT WASN’T….” 

She broke down weeping, wracked with sobs, “It wasn’t” hiccupped between them. She still didn’t believe it, the words mocked her, tortured her already agonized soul, they stabbed her, pinched her, kicked her, and poked her…”It wasn’t my fault”…what a joke. 

Dr. Gupta left her to mull over that concept. 

“I am sorry Reem but time is up. Why don’t you go reflect on it and more precisely why you are intent on blaming yourself and we can touch on that next time I see you okay?” His eyes were full of concern, but Reem wondered if he was already mentally prepping for his next patient.  

{-} 

“Do you like it?” His hot breath caressed her face. A stale stench forced its way into her little nostrils, making her eyes water, and her tiny stomach contract in disgust. She tried to shake her head but something beyond fear froze her frame in place.  

He stuck a thick calloused finger inside her pink cotton panties and stroked her softly. A confusing pang of pleasure and pain shot through her body, she shivered despite herself. 

“Do you like it?” He repeated watching her. She shook her head and nodded at the same time, confused, and petrified, and frozen. Her big eyes were fixed on the leer curling his upper lip.  

“It’s okay” he murmured “Just relax…you will like it…here why don’t we lay down?” 

Reem’s heart felt like it would explode out of her rib cage.  

She shook her head vigorously; her eyes oddly dry despite the silent combination of guilt, terror and shame lodged in her throat. 

He kissed her mouth, a big huge tongue unfurled and sticky spit spattered all over her face. 

He splotched her throat with more messy kisses, proceeding down her flat chest, and kept going lower. 

She whimpered her little body convulsing and frozen at the same time. 

A door slammed shut in the distant corner of the house.  

In one graceful movement he was up on his feet, his shirt back on, and out the door. Not before he tugged her dress back in place, patted her awkwardly and promised “better next time.” 

Reem still stood on the spot transfixed. She felt complicit in the shameful way she allowed him to touch her. Guilty at the jolt of pleasure that opened her eyes in a way she couldn’t describe.

Her older cousin opened the door and found her standing stupidly in the middle of the room.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing” too hastily, she felt a hysterical nervousness rise in her body.

“Oh…okay why don’t you come eat; it’s lunch time. Stop looking at me all stupid. Stupid”

“You are stupid!” Reem stuck out her tongue forcing lightness into the equation.

She walked into the kitchen and took her place on the floor with the other kids; sharing a big round plate (called sinia) of rice and beef. Everyone dug in heartily, arguing over the scarce pieces of beef, and telling on each other’s messiness.

Reem pretended to eat and laughed a little too shrilly at the lame jokes her cousins told. She suddenly felt apart from them. Older, more knowing, and a little dirtier than the rest of the squabbling pack. Her underwear felt sticky and uncomfortable and she prayed that no one would smell his stinky breath on her cheek.

Later, she peeled her underwear out in the bathroom and stuck it in a plastic bag. She wanted to burn it, but decided to bury it instead, since she was scared of starting a huge fire. She was trembling as she stepped onto the tub, and poured alternatively hot and cold water onto her body. She scrubbed and scrubbed her self, clutching the big bar of soap like a giant eraser, and when she was done she wiped and wiped every single drop of water on her being.

She stood in front of her reflection and stared at the stranger looking back.

Her face still looked the same. She puzzled over her eyes and whether anyone would be able to tell what she had done; her cheeks and whether his imprint was still there (she felt it, hot and sticking and persistent, and no amount of water could get it off); and her little nipples and whether they were always so round, deep brown and gross looking!

She inspected her small frame, twirling around slowly. She avoided looking below her navel. She didn’t want anything to do with that. She just wished she could get it cut off and not have to worry about sticky squirmy things anymore.  

“I didn’t like it” she tried to tell her reflection; but she was sure a smirk had flickered on her face before it flitted into the appropriate somberness warranted for the occasion. 

She felt like a splotched mirror, muddied white carpet, like a three legged Barbie, or a  slimy glass of water with flaky backwash floating around in it.

She later came to identify that moment as the birth of the freakish slimy creature that slid into a deep corner of her being and slowly proceeded to decompose all of her insides.

Someone banged on the bathroom door startling her out of her morbid trance “HOW MUCH TIME DOES A SEVEN YEAR OLD NEED IN THE BATHROOM? GET OUT I GOTTA GO SOMEWHERE” Her older brother bellowed.

She gasped, got dressed quickly and left the bathroom before any more questions could be asked.

{-}