Against the Loveless World

by Susan Abulhawa

Abandoning the imposition of a calendar helped me understand that time isn’t real; it has no logic in the absence of hope or anticipation.

“Abu Moathe is shit. Every man is shit. The sooner you accept this truth, the easier your life will be.

Amen

I find that reporters and writers who come here don’t actually want to listen to me or hear my thoughts, except where I might validate what they already believe.

I thanked Abu Moathe as if he had not just raped me. He told me I was welcome as if he had not just raped me.

“Sounds like you skipped right over the first twenty years of marriage and went straight to old married couple love,” she said. “Surely you’re going back?”

Bilal, Jumana, Samer, Wadee and Faisal, other friends, Hajjeh Um Mhammad and her sisters, neighbors, and more family. This was where I belonged, but so much of me was still scattered elsewhere.

“You are everything, Nahr.”

“I respect and accept your wishes, Nahr. You already told me and don’t have to tell me twice. What I wanted to say then is that only we will determine how our relationship should be. We can be whatever we want to each other. We don’t have to make love now, and maybe never, as long as it’s what we desire. All I ask is honesty. I will give you the same, and I will always work to earn and keep your love, respect, and loyalty,” he said.

“Here you were: to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world.”

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.”

My period was three weeks late.

Oh no

Time here moves along a calendar, and I calculate having been in the Cube for sixteen years.

Wow

Whatever happens in this ungenerous world, we will meet again, my sister.

“Do you think it means anything that we both ended up imprisoned?” Um Buraq asks. “It means fate lacks imagination,” I say, but I sit with the question. “Or maybe it just proves the state will always find a way to imprison those who are truly free, who do not accept social, economic, or political chains.”

“You don’t need my forgiveness, but if you want it, consider it granted.”

I don’t know when and how I will see Bilal, though I know we can’t ever be together openly. I may never find a place in this world, but for now, in this moment, I feel the purest, most perfect joy.

Finally, I want to thank you, dear reader. I am not a writer without you and a novel cannot fully become, or find its place in the world, without your thoughts and interpretations of it.