8.01 The Name Caller
Transcript:
He returned. Mahmoud is back. It's been thirteen years since he took out on that fishing boat, and we all assumed he was dead. Boats like this never make it to their destination. He had arranged everything already and just had to confront our mother. He sold our land. The fields that my grandfather worked in, planting and cultivating cotton for the Pasha that owned it. The fields that my father then owned and planted with wheat after Nasser's agricultural reform. He sold it against my mother's will and told me that he'd send me my part of the inheritance once he settled over there.
I didn't care about the money, it wasn't the end of the world. I worried more about him. Mahmoud didn't have the same opportunities I had growing up after my father passed away. While I was in university, he had to step up and take care of the field and of our mother. He came back at the end of a hot, humid summer day; one that had me busy treating ill stricken folk. My ten-year-old son came running to the clinic, telling me that his uncle, the uncle he had never seen, had returned.
I didn't know what to make of that news. For years now, I had assumed that Mahmoud died, even if my mother never stopped believing he's out there. I thought that the small fishing boat he was on capsized somewhere in the Mediterranean, or that he was shot by some Greek coast guard while trying to disembark on the coast of an island. Best case scenario, I assumed he was in prison somewhere, either here or there, rotting.
We quickly took the car back home. During the fifteen-minute drive, I could only think of the day he left us. On a similar humid summer, I accompanied him to the shores of Burullus Lake. We went together to the bus stop that isn't really for buses, looking for a 7-seater Peugeot 504 station from the 60s, or a 14 passenger van heading towards the lake. At that time of day, our options were limited. We had to wait for an hour before the 7-seater we were in had filled up with 6 passengers, and not wanting to miss the boat Mahmoud told the driver that we'll pay for 3 passengers instead of 2 if he'd just go.
He had nothing with him, following the commands of the middleman that set up the operation. He left all his belongings, only taking a backpack with a couple of shirts and an extra pair of pants. For months afterwards, I would catch mother sleeping in his room and sniffing the clothes that he left.
The two-hour drive was excruciating. I had a lot of things to say, but it just didn't come out. I wanted to tell him that I'll miss him, that he doesn't have to do this, that in a year or so I'll finish university and return back to the village and share the responsibilities there with him. But I knew it wouldn't matter. He had already made up his mind years ago, it was just a matter of time. Besides, we shouldn't discuss the reason for us going towards the lake that late in the small tin can we were riding anyways. The decaying car dropped us off fifteen minutes after we passed the Kafr ElSheikh Fish Stock exchange, where the road passes over a small, nameless canal that drains into the Burullus Lake. We barely made it in time. The middleman, a middle-aged obese guy with a growing bald spot and a prayer bump on his forehead, arrived a few minutes later in a white pick up truck loaded with other men in the back. He parked, got out of his car and shouted at Mahmoud that he brought someone with him. Mahmoud apologised, saying that I'm just his brother, that I refused to let him come alone. The man grunted and asked for his money. Mahmoud reached out in his backpack, took out a fat envelope, and handed it to the man. The man cursed and told him to hop on quickly. He went back behind his steering wheel and started counting the money.
This was our goodbye. I had nothing to say. For years afterwards, whenever I would go to bed I would lay there, insomniac, for maybe an hour sometimes, just thinking of things that I could've said before Mahmoud jumped in the back of that truck. I reached a point where to push down my thoughts, I would force myself to do trivial things for hours so that I'm too tired to think when I actually go to bed. But at the time, I had nothing to say.
Mahmoud understood. He also didn't say anything. We hugged for so long. I grew to think that it was better that way, it was better to let the hugs and tears carry us through the moment. A moment that was interrupted by the middleman shouting again for Mahmoud to hop on. One thing that I regret about that moment is that I should've punched that man right in his prayer bump, that ugly callus that supposedly grew from his frequent prayers. I should've hit him, but maybe also tell him that he should probably go check it out as the hyperpigmentation might be a sign of insulin resistance from type 2 diabetes.
Mahmoud hopped on the back of the truck, and while it started to move, he reached out, handed me an envelope and shouted: "Give this to mother if you don't hear back from me". I never did hear back from him. I never gave the envelope to our mother. I read it on the way back to the village that day, and I've read it a thousand times since then. It was more of a suicide note than a farewell letter. I couldn't make mother go through this.
But now he's back. Now I'm on my way home to see Mahmoud. I'm sure that this is Mother's happiest day ever. She's probably preparing a large homely meal for Mahmoud now like she always said she'd do if he returned; when he returned. We parked the car in the courtyard of the house, and I could already smell the duck being cooked in the kitchen. I sprinted, probably without even turning off the engine, and went through the door. Mahmoud was there. He was really there, sitting on the couch wrapped in my mother's arms. Of course, now that her son came home, she would cuddle him not stand in the kitchen to cook. That's her daughter-in-law's job now. I ran to him to hug him, but before I could reach him, I fell on the ground, weeping.
Those; those weren't the tears of yearning for someone. I cried because I thought he was dead. Because I had lost hope years ago. He leant over, took me by my arms and helped me stand up. And I hugged him; like it was the day he left; like I'll never hug him again.
I spent the next few hours talking to Mahmoud, telling him all the stories he had missed. Telling him how I ended up marrying the girl I loved when I was a teenager, and how when we had a son, we named him Mahmoud. Mother just kept pampering and cuddling him, probably trying to give him all the affection he missed in the past years. We finally sat down for dinner; for the royal meal that was prepared. Mahmoud didn't speak at all, or very little, during the whole evening.
"How was your trip there?" - "Difficult."
"How long did it take you to find work?" - "Some time."
"What did you do for work?" - "A bit of this and that."
"Did you meet some girl there?" - "I was mostly working."
"How's life in Europe, The Promised Land?" - "Tough."
"Did you earn enough?" - "Enough."
"Are you staying for good?" - "Not sure."
"Did you bring me anything with you, uncle?" - "My luggage hasn't arrived."
"Let him be, the boy is tired", Mother shouted at us. "Tomorrow he'll tell you everything". Mahmoud smiled at her peacefully.
After dinner, mother took Mahmoud to his old room, the one where my Mahmoud sleeps in now. She gave him some of my clothes and left him to sleep off the tiring journey. The whole house followed suit, and I was left alone.
I tended to my nightly routine of doing random trivial things to push down my thoughts. That day I was reading a silly pocket novel that one of my teenage patients forgot in my office, the second of a newly published novel series by a young doctor my age that attended university with me. I was laughing about how a man from a big city like him was able to portray a small village, just like ours, without ever setting foot in one.
Mahmoud came out of his room. I thought I had woke him up, but he told me that he wasn't getting any sleep anyway. He sat next to me, and I set the small book aside. "You've changed", I said. "You look exactly the same, but you've changed".
"Yes. I know. It wasn't easy. I tried not to, but it's more powerful than me. The loneliness, the longing, being a stranger in a place where you don't belong. It takes a toll on you. I barely made it in the first place."
"After I left you, the truck took me for a short drive. We stopped somewhere on the shore of the lake. The driver dropped me with the seven other men and told us to go between the reeds that line the shores of the lake. Once we did that, he just left. We waited there for an hour, between the mosquitos and the stench of the lake, until we saw a small fishing boat with faint lights approaching in the darkness. We swam for a few metres, and a man helped us onto the boat. He told us to climb down into the tanks where they store the fish. There, drenched, I found ten other men hiding. I settled into an empty corner and started praying. They did two other stops, and two groups joined us into the storage tanks. We were around twenty-five people on that boat from all ages, from teenagers with sad moustaches that just started growing, to middle-aged men with grey hair. One of the fishermen came down and told us to hold our breath and left. We then heard a distant conversation and a lot more footsteps on the deck. The boat was passing through the mouth of the lake into open waters and was being checked by the coast guard. I'm not sure if they bribed someone, or if they the coast guard knew them well, but no one checked the storage tanks."
"We spent the next two days cramped up together, with orders not to go on deck. On the second day, sometime after midnight, one of the fishermen came shouting at us to grab all of our belongings and follow him. They pushed us all on deck. Everything around us was blue, just blue water with a tiny dot approaching; a bigger ship. It came closer and closer then dropped a rope ladder onto our boat. They hurried us onto the ladder like sheep being led into their pen. We embarked onto the bigger ship, just to be led again into another storage tank. This time, having twice as many people."
"They kept us into the larger tanks for four days, picking up another batch of people. The second ship had no Egyptian crew on it, all Greeks. And the cargo, the people, were from a multitude of nationalities. Iraqis, Palestinians, Sudanese, Ethiopian. And those were the only ones I could understand. Every day a crew member would open the hatch, throw us a box of dry food and a few jerrycans of freshwater. By the dawn of the fifth day, when the stench of urine and faeces had become the new normal, the hatch was opened, and we were signalled to come on deck."
"The crew kept yelling at us, they gestured towards the sea where land was barely visible. They kept yelling, and no one understood. They kept pointing at the sea, and the voices just kept rising and rising as if that would make the other person understand your language. The crew started pushing us, chaos broke, until one of the other Egyptians that were with me on the truck went overboard. At that point, everyone understood what the crew meant and started getting ready to swim."
"I think land was at least 10 kilometres away. People started jumping, voluntarily this time. Some seemed to know exactly what they're doing, making makeshift floaters out of plastic bags that held their belongings. I followed suit, wrapping my backpack into a black garbage bag that I found on the first boat. I was one of the last to jump, seeing the ones that jumped before me struggling against the waves in the faint lights of dawn."
"The water was freezing. It was the middle of the summer, and the water was freezing cold. Swimming was an ordeal. It was the first time I swam in the sea. The waves came crashing from everywhere, and I could barely keep my head on top of the water. After the initial shock, I was able to gather my powers a bit and started swimming towards land. Of course, I couldn't see land. I could only see the stream of people that were swimming ahead of me, and assumed they were heading towards land."
"After some time, it felt at least hours, I lost track of others. I couldn't see the swimmers, I couldn't see land, just waves after waves thrashing at me. The bag I had made into a floater started leaking water inside and was dragging me down. I saw a head floating in the distance. I gathered all my strengths and swam towards it. I approached the floating head, just to discover it's another makeshift floater. I couldn't find the man that used to hold it, and assumed he had already sunk."
"I held onto the new floater I found, drifting in and out of consciousness from being tired. All the while, hearing the same voice I heard on the shores of Lake Burullus. I listened to the same voice, soft and gentle, calling my name. Promising me safe passage and a good life. An angelic voice, a delicate melody. I completely blacked out."
"I opened my eyes to her face. I was lying on a pebbly beach, face up. She was leaning on top of me, trying to resuscitate me. I convulsed, not knowing where am I or how I got there. She held me back with my shoulders and pushed me back to the ground with a calming voice. I blacked out again."
"Pontoporeia, her name. Over the next few days, she nursed me back to health. Every time I woke up in the middle of the night feverish and hallucinating, she was there for me. Ever time I was vomiting and unable to hold my back up, she was holding me. I fell in love. I couldn't not fall in love. She represents everything beautiful and kind in this world. I owed her my life and my heart. And she, for some reason, also fell in love with me."
"In the beginning, the weeks became months and the months years. I was happy. I lived with her the best days of my life on a heavenly island. Her parents and sisters also lived close by. They accepted me in as one of their own. But I was never one of their own. I longed for you, I longed for mother. I yearned for everything that I left behind., even things that made me leave in the first place. I had to come back and see you."
"Did you give Mother the letter?" Mahmoud asked. I answered that I haven't. And, now that he's back, no need to give it to her.
"Right. Yes, of course", he replied.
Mahmoud finished his words, took my palm between his hands, and gave me a calm smile. He left me in my shock of the story he had just told and went to sleep. I had so many questions. But, I didn't want to put him through the agony of all the details at once. I went into my room, tiptoeing not to wake up my wife. I reached into my nightstand and took out the crumbling papers that Mahmoud had given me the day he left. I went back outside and started reading it for the thousandth time.
"Dear Mother, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that the boat sank before I made it there; that I wouldn't be able to repay you and my brother the money I took to pay for this failed trip. I'm sorry that I had to sell our land in the first place; the land that my forefathers had worked for thousands of years. I'm sorry that I drowned and they couldn't find my body; that you wouldn't be able to bury me alongside Father in the dirt I should've been buried in. But, at this point, finding my body would only give you the hassle of paying for transportation, burial, and funeral."
"I'm not sorry that I left, I shouldn't be. They are the ones that should apologise for not leaving me with a reason to stay. They robbed us of the promise of a good life, of a place where our dreams can come true. They took our livelihood, put it into building another pyramid, and forced us to build it for them. They are the ones that made me wager my life for a good living and a safe refuge. And, when the opportunity presented itself, I never thought about it twice."
"A month ago I went to visit a friend who's working in Lake Burullus. And, just before dawn, I was standing in the narrow strip separating the lake from the sea. It was a new moon night. I could barely see my own fingers. To the north, the vast dark carpet of the sea was dotted by faint distant lights of ships. And to the south, the dark carpet of the lake looked precisely the same. The only way I could distinguish them is by the sound of the waves breaking on the beach of the sea."
"Between the sound of the waves crashing, I heard a voice. Soft and gentle, calling my name. Then she came out of the sea, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, crowned with branches of red coral and dressed in white silk robes trimmed with gold. She was far away, 50 metres maybe, but I heard her voice as if it was in my head. An angelic voice, a delicate melody, promising me a safe passage and a good life. Then she vanished. As fast as she appeared."
"That moment I decided to leave. Whatever that was, a hallucination my subconscious invented as a reason to leave, or El Nadaha calling my name to lure me into the depth of darkness, it must be better."
"I'm sorry, Mother. I'm sorry that I had no power to change anything."
I finished reading the letter and went to check on my brother. He was sound asleep, with a childish smile on his face. I had so many questions for him, I had so many things to say that, again, I had no chance to tell him. In the morning, when I went to wake him up, he had the same smile on his face.
But he never woke up.
Music:
She’ Men Be’id Nadany (Something from Afar Called Me) - Mohamed Mounir
