Other Lives by Iman Humaydan Read Free Book Online Page A

weather. They know the times of the high and low tides. They choose six hours when the water is low, far from the coast, and then send their goods down on quickly made ropes that are tied to short poles haphazardly planted in the white sand. There they hang their brightly dyed cloth and small wooden crafts, which are both simple and harsh, like their lives. Some of them stand, holding the colored cloth and soft handmade straw and leather shoes they’re selling. They set out displays of suitcases and hats. Rarely do they ask for money in exchange for these things. Instead they prefer gym shoes and T-shirts with advertising slogans for soft drinks printed on them. They trade their handcrafts for things made in China with pictures of Coca-Cola and Pepsi cans, or of people smiling while devouring Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s. Sometimes they ask for alcohol and tobacco.
    In Kenya, I spend my time filling my head with things I’ve received from Lebanon: recently published novels and poetry collections and magazines and short stories and newspapers and studies about the war and the post-war and the Ta’if Agreement and the devastation of 1982 and the Sabra and Shatila trials and the Oslo Accords and the Iran–Iraq War and the siege of Iraq. I don’t leave Mombasa much—from time to time I fly to Nairobi just to pick up parcels and packages from Lebanon. In the beginning, I waited in Mombasa for them, for my things to be flown from Nairobi to Mombasa. But things would go missing, especially things like araq and rose water and some of the cassette tapes with Arabic songs and music, or other things Olga sent me.
    In Kenya I live every day as if there were no tomorrow, or as if the future right in front of me is still waiting on something from the past. I remember all this now, Olga’s question stuck in my mind, the one she repeats on the phone, “What’s new? Have you found happiness or are you remembering it, or are you waiting for it… or are you living it?” She asks this knowing full well that happiness is something we only remember and never live: it’s pointless to ask someone whether she’s happy.
    Trees die in Kenya. No, they don’t die. People die long before them. The average lifespan here is 40. As soon as I arrived I should have tried to get used to this place, to free myself of the clinging feeling of being a tourist. I carry a transistor radio around with me and go out into the garden in the early hours of morning. At this time of day, I can listen to news from Lebanon on the medium-wave broadcasts. I walk on the damp sand, carrying my radio with me. The news of the war in Lebanon reaches me as if it were a daily destiny. I listen to the news from Beirut as if it could put happiness on pause, like a stop sign. One news report after another with happiness hanging between them… the news of misery that I know too well and from which I have yet to emerge. Misery clings to my skin and my soul, inescapable and viscous. The water recedes far out into the depths of the ocean. The sudden distance of the water frightens me as much as it excites me. An ocean without water is frightening; it’s like a desert, stars in the sky lighting up its sands. I see myself, a barefoot woman, hands empty except for a small battery-powered box that brings me news from Lebanon. I walk on the white sand while the water is still out deep in the ocean. My naked feet sink into the moist sand. A warm dampness spreads from my feet to my lower back and I shudder. I’m afraid of myself and my deep desire to enter the labyrinth of the desert and the sea. But I carry on walking. I walk far from the depths of the ocean that appears as white as a face that’s deathly ill, or a guest preparing to leave. But all of a sudden the water returns, surprising me. Without warning, I discover that I’m far from the shore and I find myself right in the water, my wet nightgown