Dead Fish
BY NUR TURKMANI
I’m not quite sure what it is I feel when I unlock the door and step into my apartment. Everything looks the same: the musty smell and droopy plants and yellow lights greet me. I place my keys above the shoe cabinet, kick my slippers off, plop onto the couch. I’ve been the sole inhabitant of this place for over twenty years, so familiar I can close my eyes and draw out its cobweb corners.
From where I lay, I can hear the mechanical whirrs of my fridge and Hamra’s generators. Otherwise it is very quiet. Whatever the feeling, it is very strange. Perhaps even ethereal. As though over the course of an afternoon and into the night, I’ve gazed into a borehole–a deep, dark, spiralling one–and found something ancient gazing back.
I know I’m paraphrasing Nietzsche but there’s no other way to describe it.
Listen, I’ll be as detailed as possible. The day had started like any other: I woke up stiff, I prepared my coffee, I read the news about Gaza, I spied on my young and attractive neighbour from the kitchen balcony. Suddenly, it was almost five o’clock in the afternoon and I still hadn’t commenced with my urgent tasks. I once told my friend, another English Language instructor with me at university, that time was a dead fish on the counter. She wasn’t impressed but I’ve always thought she lacked imagination. In any case, I ate two bananas with a spoonful of honey then walked myself toward a cafe in Manara—the run-down one that overlooked the sea—in hopes of regaining my long-lost discipline.
It was a lovely, warm afternoon in June. The sun was low and bright, and the clouds moved at a charming pace. Even the sea was still. I sat where I usually sit, that is, on the table diagonal to the sea, far from argeeli smokers and rowdy tarneeb players. My neck ached. I had many papers to grade. If my colleague lacked imagination, my students had too much of it. Each year their essays got more desperate. Whereas ten years ago, they argued about abortion and sectarianism, today they focused on the occupation of Mars. For instance, this one student began her English 204 essay with: ‘The world as we know it is coming to an end, and A Digital Order Is Taking Over.’
The conditions were thus very ripe for voyeurism when a young man and woman, seemingly in their early thirties, dragged two plastic chairs from the table and turned them to face the sea directly.
‘Do you come here often?’ the woman asked the man. They sat perpendicular to me so I could see their profiles though they couldn’t make much of me.
‘Oh, not always. It’s a nice place though, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Not pretentious at all.’
The woman had bouncy hair and a silver nose piercing. Her breasts were lean, she seemed like one of those worldly young women who paid a lot for Pilates. The man was lanky and in simple clothes. Khaki shorts, running shoes. You know the type. He wasn’t particularly handsome but his presence with such a woman elevated him from nerdy and mouse-like to avant-garde.
Carla, as the woman’s name turned out to be, was going on about her flight from London to Beirut, the terrible turbulence–worst she’s ever experienced–and how, for some unknown reason, it was the voice of Melhem Barakat replaying obnoxiously in her head.
‘Everyone around me was saying the shahada out loud, and I kept hearing awawawa,’ she laughed, in that self-assured manner of a woman who knows she’s being listened to by a man. I’ll admit it was funny but I swallowed my facial expressions in fear of them realising what perfect access I had to their anecdotes.
‘How long are you here for this time?’ he asked.
‘A week.’
‘Your sister’s giving birth, isn’t she?’
‘It’s crazy!’
He smiled.
I’m usually not an eavesdropper but I listened to Carla and Ahmad with great interest. I graded one more essay about violence and video games (75%, though I was being generous). I poured two sugar sticks into my black tea. Carla and Ahmad spoke about common friends and Netanyahu, and somehow even managed to touch upon old practices of urban planning in Beirut (Ahmad was a conscientious architect). There was not a moment of silence between them, conversation flowed like rivers. Carla was very expressive, with the sort of face that creases and contorts. Ahmad, on the other hand, had a calm temperament. Cool as a cucumber, as they say, though I did get a sense they’d had some sort of past together. Something about the way they spoke indicated a restrained intimacy.
It’s true I am a middle-aged spinster but I still understand the architecture of youthful desire–the way heads tilt in attempt to evoke memories, crooked smiles, glances, etc., etc. It is a shame because each year my students seem less hopeful about love. Only a week ago, on the last day of classes before summer break, a student raised her hand to say, ‘Dr. (I wasn’t a doctor, but who was I to correct her?), what’s the point of arguing if no one ever wins?’ This student was trying to be ironic, of course her question wasn’t about essayistic persuasion as much as it was about the modern state of lovelessness. I am a romantic at heart. Even with a genocide unfolding, I did believe love to be the one thing that saves us.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The point is to archive Ahmad’s story.
The sun was in the process of descent, the entire cafe enveloped in heavy golden light. Some stubborn mosquitos flew between my table and Ahmad and Carla’s heads. Carla had taken off her sandals, which I thought was in character with the sort of modern woman she was. Ahmad spoke and sipped on watermelon juice; his eyes preoccupied with the sea.
You need to understand–he wasn’t like most men. His voice was steady and had a sedative effect on me, I lost Carla’s train of thought sometimes but never Ahmad’s. Also, he had really large hands and used them emotively as he spoke. I imagined that in a different life, Ahmad and I would’ve gotten along.
Anyways, here goes our miserable story.
A couple years ago, in the spring of 2020, Ahmad matched with this girl Tatiana on a dating application. Tinder, or so. If you remember, this was at the beginning of the pandemic. Tatiana was studying graphic design at some second-rate university. She’d also lost her job as a bartender in Geitawi because of the lockdown. In general, it seemed as though Tatiana wasn’t in the best of places. But they still chatted quite a bit online.
The first time Ahmad met Tatiana they went on a very long car ride (because there was nowhere open, really, and it was too much pressure to meet at either of their apartments).
‘I don’t know if it’s the effect of being in a car, or the fact that we were so deprived of human connection, but it really felt special,’ Ahmad said. ‘We listened to music, we laughed, we even had those electric moments of silence that don’t often happen on first dates.’
‘Did you kiss?’ Carla asked.
‘The funny thing was we never did,’ Ahmad said. Picture Ahmad’s eyes with me: hazel and wistful, blinking. He continued, ‘I remember this glance she gave me when she got out of the car–it was so potent. It seemed to be communicating something along the lines of: we have a lot of time to kiss and hold hands and do all the things people who meet one another and fall in love get to do.’
There was a pause. He looked at Carla. Then he said, ‘But maybe I’m imagining this glance. Maybe I’m making it up in retrospect. Who knows, really?’
The second time Ahmad saw Tatiana was a month later. It was early summer and they went for a walk at the waterfront. Something was different; they wore itchy masks, and whatever connection they’d had in the car felt misplaced. Ahmad tried to carry the conversation. He asked Tatiana some profound questions but her responses were monotonous. She wasn’t doing well; her mother was sick, and Tatiana could barely cover the costs of her tuition fees let alone her mother’s medications.
‘She seemed very bored,’ Ahmad said. ‘So I didn’t message her afterwards. I felt insecure, like maybe she was no longer interested.’
‘And she didn’t reach out either?’ Carla asked.
‘No,’ Ahmad said. ‘She didn’t.’
Of course, these were some of Beirut’s worst months: futile roadblocks, lira plummeting, hospitals running out of electricity. No one was well, not really.
But, yes, Ahmad continued, they’d sort of flaked on each other and he was quite upset about it, but life went on as it does. Apparently he even hooked up again with Lama (whom, I assumed based on Carla’s disapproving nod, was an ex-girlfriend of sorts).
‘For some reason though,’ Ahmad said, ‘I thought of Tatiana often. She had this incredible smile, I swear. Ginger hair. This is embarrassing to say, but I had a feeling we would find each other again. Surely you must have one of those people in your lives?’
Carla nodded. I sensed that for her, Ahmad was one of those people.
‘It’s bizarre, isn’t it? The fantasies we have about people we don’t really know.’
Carla took a knowing breath and rubbed his shoulders. You know when a thick curtain of sadness hangs over a conversation? Ahmad coughed and swallowed, then ordered another glass of watermelon juice.
‘How did you find out?’ Carla asked.
‘This was the strangest thing,’ Ahmad said. ‘I didn’t know she’d died until a week after August 4. I was going through one of those social media posts honouring the lives of those who’d passed in the explosion. I didn’t even recognise her name at first–I scrolled past it. It was only when I got toward the end of the list that my heart dropped. I scrolled back up and of course, it was Tatiana’s name and face. They labelled her, and the 200 others who’d died, as martyrs.’
‘Fuck,’ Carla said softly. ‘Fuck.’
Carla’s chin was placed over her crouched legs. She gazed intently at Ahmad. It was a gaze full of human compassion.
But you see, the difference between Carla and me was that it seemed as though she had known aspects of the story but was being told the entirety of it that evening. I, on the other hand, was receiving it for the first time. I closed my eyes. I had goosebumps across my chest and back.
‘I hate that they still call them martyrs,’ Carla continued, filling in the blank spaces between life and death. ‘They’re victims. They’re victims!’
‘Yeah,’ Ahmad shrugged.
‘She must’ve been in her late twenties?’
‘25-years-old.’
‘Fuck, Ahmad. Why didn’t you tell anyone at first?’
‘It’s not that I actively didn’t want to tell people. I just… I didn’t know what to say… I felt mute. I barely knew Tatiana. Was my deep sense of loss justified? We’d only gone on two dates. I knew she liked Bojack Horseman and Bon Iver, and that she had a dying mother she was close to, but really, that was it. Is it stupid? I wish I spoke to her after our second date. I wish we kissed. Or maybe not, I don’t know. Yeah,’ he said. ‘I feel stuck.’
The sky had turned navy and my face was dry like a desert. I was so thirsty but I didn’t order water or tea. It felt as though we were the only three people in the world, and I didn’t want to interrupt this sensation with the reality of a waiter.
What I wanted was for Carla to ask Ahmad if he’d ever reached out to Tatiana’s mother. I wanted Carla to ask Ahmad if he’d maybe gone to Tatiana’s funeral. It felt very important for me to know if Ahmad had found some sort of justice.
But soon after they paid their bill. They could no longer see the sea, it was too dark, and they were sick of stubborn mosquitoes. Carla mumbled something incoherent as they got up and me, I was left, alone, with these garbage essays. I’d have liked to throw all my students’ words into the sea. Instead I reorganised the papers, placed them in a file inside my bag, and walked home.
I’m still plopped onto the couch, thinking of death. It feels very vulnerable to admit this, but Ahmad’s story reminded me of mine. And it’s stupid. It really is. It was so many years ago.
I was sixteen years old when Wassim was killed. He was the secret love of my life. He’d promised to wait until I turned eighteen before asking for my hand. This was in 1982. Nearly 40 years ago, bullet to the neck. The civil war and such things happened, Wassim was barely twenty years old.
How to describe the village? It was in deep mourning. Wassim was young and intelligent. He wasn’t a fighter, didn’t really belong to any of the parties or mafias. He’d had an opportunity to travel to Houston and study engineering but he stayed behind. For me, of course, though no one knew of this fact.
At his funeral all I’d wanted was to sit in the front row, right next to his wailing mother and father and sister. Only they would understand my pain. Only they would understand what it was like to lose a limb you never knew existed. Oh for months I wailed and wailed in the bathroom and could tell no one that the love of my life had died. I swore at God, I used the vilest words you could ever imagine. I chewed my hair. I ate nothing.
Do you see? This is our country. A thieving bastard.
I have no photos of Wassim, no letters from him, only the memory of his eyes, hazel like Ahmad’s, believe it or not, as a reminder of those afternoons we’d spent after school, walking back to our neighbourhood, talking about a future together and how many children we’d have.
For years on end, I told no one. I bruised and peeled, until I’d shed all of me.
Ahmad asked Carla, was my deep sense of loss justified? It was such a simple question, but it shifted something inside me. It made me look back and remember: I was little and bright and infinite once upon a time.
And then it hits me, this sudden memory—I once played a fish at a school play! I can’t recall any other details of the play, just that I was in a tight body suit with plastic pieces attached to my waist. The pieces were meant to mimic scales. It was a fabulous costume; my mother had even padded the back of my costume into a flowing tail.
Wassim had been in the audience. Had he? I’m not sure, but I swear I can see him seated in the small dingy classroom that we’d converted into a theatre. Our teachers came up with many strange things during the war.
Time is a dead fish on the counter. Is this what they call an epiphany?
As I drift off, still on the couch, still dying of thirst, I imagine a world with Wassim still in it. He’d be in his early sixties. Which makes me remember my age, a fact I often forget. Then for some reason I imagine Ahmad and Carla fucking, and it doesn’t make me particularly jealous or sad. After all, they are young and attractive and have many decades ahead of them.
Believe it or not, I dream of nothing at night. I’m so relaxed. My head is black like the sea and I sleep until my bones unstiff.
