Free Other Lives by Iman Humaydan

disappointment he’s trying to summon the patience to tame. When the results of his research in the laboratory are unsatisfactory, he tries to suggest that his work has deteriorated because he worries about me too much and can’t sleep. I’m always the reason for any setback that he or his work suffers. When we were newly married, I would believe everything he said. I felt hugely guilty and gave all of my time to him. This meant that I was at home most afternoons, spending my time reading and writing—writing things no one but Olga ever read. While Chris was out working and earning money, I would spend my morning hours teaching English in courses designed to wipe out illiteracy in Mombasa, as well as giving private Arabic lessons. After years of this, I’ve become convinced that he invests all his energy into his work. The very moment he leaves home, he forgets the place he’s just been, forgets who’s in it, forgets me. I’m convinced that the unsatisfactory results of his work are because of him alone and have no connection whatsoever to me. Yet whenever the issue of his work is raised with his friends or colleagues, he mentions my perpetual sadness.
    Chris counts the number of people infected with malaria and tries to save them, while I’m infected by the malady of mute rage, compounded by fear. He won’t be able to save me. My illness requires playfulness and Chris isn’t good at playing. He doesn’t know how to play. He doesn’t even play with the puppy, which he began to fight with the moment I brought it back from South Africa. As if he knew who I got it from and desperately wants to get rid of it. Play is humankind’s most important invention, Samuel says, rubbing his face on the dog Yufu’s head, and it’s not only human, he continues, watch! See how animals love to play! Samuel tells me, raising his voice as though he’s learned that I only listen to him when he changes the tone of his voice, shaking me out of my deep thoughts and forcing me to pay attention. Chris doesn’t play… He has his habits. Here’s a day of his habits: going to the laboratory at seven thirty, coming back at one, sleeping after lunch, going back to the laboratory from three thirty until seven.
    No doubt malaria is on the rise because of these habits, because it has gotten used to his habits!
    As for me, I’m not sure of anything. I can accept and refuse something with equal ease. The more years I live in Mombasa, the more difficult I find it to have habits. But what does is it mean to be a woman without habits, not even drinking coffee in bed? He comes to me, sure that the hand he rests on my shoulder has the magic of the serums that he spends his whole day with in the lab. He loses his patience after a few minutes and leaves after I say for the thousandth time that I miss playing, that play is ageless and that I’m slowly dying here. He leaves me and goes out. I walk over and turn on the tape recorder so that Asmahan’s voice will rise out of it, reverberating in revenge. I go back to the book that I had in my hand before Chris entered. I read, “Nietzsche was right when he said that original sin pushed us toward a perpetual feeling of hatred, and that ‘god’ is a lethal invention—it’s difficult to believe in a god who doesn’t dance.”
    I narrated my Beirut and Australia lives to Eva, my neighbor in Mombasa. Now that I’ve returned to Beirut, it’s easy to narrate my Kenya tales to Olga, whom I missed and who missed me. But why do I remember all this now, when it’s behind me? Is it because the past remains forever part of our future and never goes away? I narrate my life in Kenya to Olga, thinking of Nour and what’s happened between us. Meeting him has been something strange. As though I left Kenya and came back specifically to find him—not to reclaim the house that I’d lost. I’ve