Behind You Is the Sea

by Susan Muaddi Darraj

Comfortable means pain-free, which also means he’s already dead to me.

I wasn’t allowed just to learn the dialect we spoke . . . I had to study the fus-ha Arabic, the hardcore, classical Arabic that they use only in fancy speeches and news talk shows.

“It is but a child of air / That lingers in the garden there.”

I don’t want to be haunted by a child of air. My mother is already made of air. My father is basically gone.

America has shocked him at last, and freezes there. It’s like he finally understood he was never meant to win here.

Americans like to talk about everything, I know. They like to share their feelings, like purging old clothing or dumping clutter. But when you’re like us, you purge nothing. You recycle or repurpose every damn thing. Nothing is clutter.

All we know about high class is the basic formula: more money means better quality.

“You’re our rock,” everyone told her, but that reputation didn’t feel like a compliment anymore. It felt like neglect.

Rania hoped she hadn’t always looked that sad in her short life.

That was a division, but there was also a blurring, a softness in the crossing over.

I wonder if she doesn’t want a shitty Buick to be seen in front of her house. As long as she pays me what I quoted, I’ll park wherever the fuck she wants.

“Behind you is the sea. Before you, the enemy.” I glance at him then continue. “You have left now only the hope of your courage and your constancy.”

Arabs are ridiculous; even if they live a dream life, they want to star in some tragedy. If there is no tragedy, they imagine one.

“The song said Arabia is a land ‘where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face,’”

“It’s not just the lines . . .” I start to say. But he’s going on about being inclusive and how we have to listen to everyone’s voice, except he’s just ignored mine.

“Look,” she says, “sometimes people just have to take your word for it. It’s like someone stepping on your toes and not moving off. Do you really have to explain how the pressure is causing you pain?”

“You know, this cultural appropriation stuff wears me out.”

YOU wear me Out!

Drama is not like science, where there’s a right and a wrong. The test shows positive or negative. The experiment works or it fails. Either the thing spins or it doesn’t. This is different and murky and I’m not feeling very good.

It had been quite a lesson—hurt could be neutralized with focus, with determination. Eyes on the prize, she reminded herself that night. One day, they will know what they have done to you.

Dealing with the Israeli authorities was like dealing with an angry, suspicious girlfriend.

The Arabs were a people that knew life could be horrifically unjust and unfair—and yet they cherished it.

The building stands slightly askew (since even in the happiest of homes, things are never perfect) with flowers inexplicably growing out of the top. The visual of flowers growing through a crack in the concrete—constantly striving and reaching for the sun even in tenuous conditions—is a common sight if you live in a city, but it never fails to move me.