The Book Of Life

As I sat down, miles and miles away from home, trotting through my memoir and trudging from shore to shore, hoping to find one of the muses that I adore to face my darkest fear: that of filling a page and not to bore, I found an old scribble I wrote during the peaceful days of yore a decade before the war.

The memory itself had almost vanished, or rather I had probably banished it along with most of the memories that I deplore. I thought then to abort the mission for who would choose to leave heaven towards hell to explore? Yet the staring empty page brought me more terror than I could endure. So, I embarked on my journey, and through the hellish rabbit hole I jumped as I have never done before, and so I began to read.

I visited my grandfather today, a stern man who lived for a better half of a century. But contrary to men of his age, though, he is stubbornly erect and sure-footed like one of these rare and ancient evergreen oaks. He seems to have hacked through life and ageing, relying on cold showers, audacity, and mild cynicism.

My grandfather lives in a house full of contradictions but surprisingly suitable for its current dweller. The house was built more than 600 hundred years ago. One has only to glance at this monstrosity to understand the entire history of the region where I live. It has been built during the Byzantine era next to an ancient ruin that people claim to have been an edifice of Jupiter, the Roman god. Later in the house journey, the Byzantine Christian mosaic that adorned the living room had been stripped down of its icons and re-embellished to satisfy its new Turkish suiters. Then, centuries later, it was stripped down again and remodelled to serve its new pragmatic English masters. Its English journey did not last long though, and the property has been sold, for a very generous amount I have been told, to an Ashkenazic merchant, whom, with haste and after a very brief occupation, had sold the house to my grandfather 60 years ago costing him everything he had.

My grandfather’s presence amidst this historical symphony added to its complexity. He fought in two great wars on two different sides: not because of his lack of fidelity but because of the treacherous pendulum of fate and the greedy iron fist of his masters. His career as a fighter did not stop there though, when empires collapsed, he sought independence and earned his freedom with blood, eye, and hammer. But the worst enemy of all was lurking in the back yard, and the freedom that my grandfather sought and achieved was yet again stolen by civil war.

In the lull between wars, he marched towards new frontiers. He studied in English schools and earned a degree in journalism, and with that, he fought injustice and won, then earned a generous time in prison. And amidst all the struggle imposed by fellow men, he still had to wrestle with life and hunger, so he worked on society’s fringes, smuggling weapons to revolutionaries nurturing in return both his family and ideology.

Like my grandfather’s life, his house experienced a lot of transformations. New rooms had been annexed, demolished, rebuilt, and repurposed multiple times. Its central room had colonnades, mosaic, Arabic scripture, English furniture, a mezuzah, and, perhaps the most noticeable of all lying majestically in the middle of the room, is a simple old straw chair held together by ribbons of tattered cloth.

My grandfather called the tattered chair his throne and was reserved for him all the time, in fact, nobody dared to sit on the chair not only because we knew that it was reserved for him but of fear of breaking it apart.

Today, my grandfather’s fight with life has ended. And as I stood in his empty throne room, I could not but notice the ironic meaning of this absurd inheritance. I will never be able to know for sure though. His journey was as rich and as chaotic as the ancient house, but he perhaps felt as simple and fragile as his straw wooden chair.

All is lost now but for the woe, yet here I sit again but now with awe, and with hope renewed that my past would show me the way and help the words flow.

I was born and raised in the desert, in a small tribe, where the rituals of antiquity were still cherished. 

I still remember our so-called rite of passage that all children had to go through to become tribesmen and women. A reminiscence of the ritual can still be found in every corner of my memory. How can I forget it? After all, becoming a tribesman was the only thing that I wanted or rather knew.

The ritual, my dear reader, was about proving yourself, about earning your place, about overcoming oneself and purging the desire for companionship, which, upon completion, allowed our elders to bestow upon the participant the title of a khan which allowed the tribe members to honorably wear the rings left for them by their ancestors.

The significance of the ritual can easily be understood when we see the seven great tribes renouncing their hatreds and rivalry for three full moons.

During the festive event of the rituals, tigers were sacrificed in the names of our fallen warriors, and a great feast was held in the name of the almighty.

The grandness of the ritual was only matched by my fear of failure. My fear was the sort of cage that trickery and subtlety, which I had none, were needed to break from. Believe me when I tell you, my dear reader, that aboard that cage hope seemed lost and the future looked dim. I then knew that in order to become a tribe member a significant appliance of courage is needed, of which, again, I had none.

The drums and the hums of the elders were getting louder the higher the moon rose in the sky.

The louder the sounds rose the more scared I felt. The people feasted and danced, sang and drank, but their escalated ecstasy and mayhem only escalated my fears and insecurities, but the sudden halt followed that festive explosion announced the commencement of the ritual.

The Crow, our tribe leader, with carrot-colored skin, painted especially for this occasion, summoned the participants to him.

He said, “times are changing, and so is our tribe, and this filthy ritual is to be abolished”, and so it was.

I remember that from the garage window, I saw her smiling and running up the stairs picking up the chocolate pieces that I had left her. From the bedroom window, which was the destination of my chocolate trail, I saw her for the last time.

“Is this the only thing that you remember?” Inquired my roommate with a sly smirk. I ignored him, like I always did, sinking deeper into my thoughts. ‘I also remember waking up surrounded by strangers listening to the TV reporter saying:

 “Baghdad in ruins. It has been three days since the bombardment. It has been three days since the Americans invaded us. It has been three days since we started fighting back. The stakes are high but we will never submit.”

I remember fainting, and waking, and fainting, again and again.

I remember the first words I was able to utter addressing, who I thought is the Dr, before blacking out for, god knows how long, ‘am I going to make it?’’

I made it, but so did my roommate whom I have been living with for 13 long years but have still not been able to look him in the eye without averting mine in fear. Time didn’t help soften his war inflicted deformities, his one leg, one eye, and half-burned face. 

“What else do you remember? Asked the one-eyed fiend.

‘I remember ….’

“Look at me” He Interrupted saying.

‘I remember …’ I stuttered

“LOOK AT ME”

I saw his deformed countenance transform. He shrieked and wried then looked me directly in the mirror and said “I remember my dead family”