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Was it worth the price for giving up the place that my mother’s soul visits every day and keeping my only brother in memory of every inch?
I used to spend eleven months in Kuwait to come back on a one-month annual leave, and I hardly knew anything about our life, it’s bittersweet, nothing. Spaced phone calls are not enough for you to realize what a mother with her two children can experience in West Beirut during the liberation war, especially if she resides in the Abdou building in Bashoura, meters from one of the headquarters of one of the parties to the conflict.
I begged him to change his decision, but to no avail. Neither my pleas nor my hot tears, which lasted for days and nights, did not help to discourage him. I felt my soul almost leave my body in sadness and agony, and my father was unaffected.
The truth is that he was forced, and the motive was not material at all. My mother died in the fall of 1993 with anguish and great sorrow for them. He and Yamna, his neighbor and closest friend who stole her husband’s heart, and the last thing my father asked not to marry a girl after his death, they told him in a state of laughter and tears. His grave would kill them if he did! He had no choice but to flee to another residence outside this area and not far from our school, and his new place of work, which a friend of his helped him to obtain after his return from Kuwait, and the curse of death and destruction had happened to him.
The day before my 12th birthday, my mother died after failing to cope with the illness that people fear she will be named after. I was alone with her in her room in her last moments, her head resting in my hands. I went out with my father and my aunt to the living room to tell them about it, and the fright kept me from crying. Days later, I heard my aunt ask her to see a psychiatrist, perhaps helping me erase the painful scene from my memory and avoid its bad effects, so she didn’t care. I warned her of the nightmares that would haunt me if she didn’t, so she told her that she intended to move to another house soon and that that would be enough.
Our new home in Mina Al Hosn was more beautiful and spacious. They each had their own room with a small balcony and a separate bathroom, but all of this meant nothing to me. I loved my mother, who was on the eighth floor of the Abdo Building. I wanted one of her brown hair that I, after her departure, found daily in every corner of the house, the soil of which I rinsed yesterday, leaving no trace of dust!
After leaving Bachoura’s apartment, I never went back, but I didn’t stop visiting in dreams. They were not dreams, but a dream that was repeated each time with small modifications. I entered the neighborhood through its only entrance that had never changed. Vegetable and grocery stores are intact. I get to the building and call the elevator to the eighth floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of my mother’s ghost in a furtive glance through the peephole. But the elevator didn’t take me to the eighth floor once. Every time it shook heavily, then it would stop once on the 10th floor and once on the 6th, so I had to use the stairs to go up two floors, or down two floors, and my heart rose and fell in horror at the impact of the old man. lift.
I reach the eighth grade and my fear does not leave me. I knock on the door so that no one will open it. I peeked out of his peephole, surprising my mother with two strange children, whom I don’t know. I return disappointed, with a dream that will not come true. A dream about my mother’s embrace for once, inhaling the characteristic scent of her neck and choking on her warm breath.
The dream kept repeating itself until I memorized it, so I began to predict what the surprises would be, and I would face them with greater courage, so I did not decide to use the stairs, for example, despite my prior knowledge of what I had. would find inside the elevator.
Suddenly the dream stopped visiting me, so I was confused about the truth of my feelings about it, and couldn’t confirm if I was happy to get rid of the pain it causes me, or if I missed that woman on the eighth floor and he only allowed me to see her through the peephole.
After a year and a half, the dream came back again, but there have been many changes in its details. The vegetable and grocery stores that looked at me at the entrance to the neighborhood had disappeared. Abu Abdullah’s restaurant also disappeared, along with the large electric “grill” that used to have the sweet smell that emanated from it reaching the neighboring streets. The Arab hair and medicine salon is still there, but there is someone other than Uncle Abu Adnan inside. I arrive at the Abdo Building and find its outer walls painted in sky blue, and Abi Rowad’s store is on the ground floor, the ownership and management of it are transferred to the son who inherited his father. Pioneers grew up to be a young man who could make a size decision to move the Coca-Cola refrigerator to the opposite corner from its previous location! The chocolate shop whose owner played with me as a child moved from left to right across the street. Everyone abandons the left in the era of development and reconstruction: intellectuals and chocolate shops! I look at these contrasts with great amazement and am not happy to discover and count them as in the game of the five differences.
I got to the entrance of the building and found that the floor and walls were different and had been painted with brown porcelain, and the elevator was also replaced with a modern one. I was glad to replace the dilapidated elevator and said that this time I would go up without fear. The fear had been greatly reduced by the repetition of the dream, but this time it dissipated and disappeared completely. The new elevator delivered me without shaking, and I was surprised that the door to our eighth-floor apartment was open. I entered without permission and, despite searching all the rooms, I did not find anyone. I sat at the door of the apartment until morning waiting for my mother, maybe she would come, so it would darken my eyes when I saw her and greet her and hug her as I had always dreamed, but morning had come and she did not come, so I cried a lot, and at the wake up my tears were still wet on my cheek.
After the last dream, I decided to face the matter with courage and visit Bachoura’s apartment, to find out if what was in my previous dreams or in the last dream was real. I asked my husband to take me there, claiming that I wanted to relive the memories of my childhood and my first visit to school, so he didn’t care. When we arrived, the surprise was that the changes I saw in the last dream were in accordance with reality!
I asked my husband and daughter to stay in the car and promised not to be late. I offered to accompany me, but I declined, arguing that I would enjoy the experience more if I was alone. I walked across the street and found the building in front of me in its light blue color, and I was glad that the pioneers had already taken over the management of their father’s store, and that its shape was exactly as I saw it in a sleepy, and that was the location of a refrigerator. Coca-Cola has changed too! I entered the building and saw the brown porcelain and the modern elevator. I stepped into the elevator and examined my confusion closely in its large glass mirror. I took a selfie in an attempt to add fun to my strange mission and to overcome my stress, I reminded myself that the modern elevator did not disappoint me in a dream and quietly took me to my mother’s house. All that’s left is to find my mother at home, and everything I’ve been through since her presumed death is one big lie.
As soon as I pressed number 8, the elevator went up smoothly, but when it reached the sixth floor, it did not stop, but shook hard, and it seemed that it was not like the vibrations of the old elevator in previous dreams, but it was clear that it was on the way to falling this time, I dropped my eyes to make sure if it was another dream, so I realized that this time I was in the heart of reality. The last thing I remembered before the fall was Salwa’s words!
I had told my recurring dream to Salwa, my friend who is very versed in interpreting dreams, and she said in a dark and sober tone that she wanted: “The elevator that takes you to the dead is nothing more than death itself.” I smiled and sarcastically asked him to bring calm and depression for other situations, because if that happened, I would be happy to see my mother, but the elevator only vibrates in a dream and does not fall, so where are the death signs in that? Salwa only replied with a mysterious smile.
* Tire / Lebanon
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