Untitled
Published in issue 1 of Opal Magazine.
It was always a treat to bathe in the second bathroom at Safta’s flat. She’d had the bathtub installed especially for me and my brother. It was built into the far corner of the room, small and square, its smooth, off-white enamel cooling our sun-flushed backs, still warm to the touch from spending too long on the roof.
My favourite part of the bathtub was a small ledge intended for conveniently arranging shampoos, conditioners, lotions and things, although it more often served as a throne, or a stage on which my dolls would enact their latest performance to the soundtrack of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. When no one was watching, it was a slide from which I’d slip gleefully into a haven of soap bubbles, well-bitten-at foam letters and bright plastic toys until most of the water had spilled over the edges. I’d climb out reluctantly, raisins for fingers, leaving behind a trail of small wet footprints and a sandy souvenir from a trip to the beach around the rim of the drain.
Now, I use the shower briefly to rinse off the sweat and the spell of heat with a splash of cool water. I can’t remember when I last lay in that bath. It feels like everything that has happened between those days and these is fictitious. The passing of time is only evidenced by the lowering of the bathroom mirror to my eye-level, the shrinking of the tub which now only accommodates the lower half of my body. Not that I’ve tried to used it, out of avoidance of a harsh reminder from the surfaces that will surely push back against me, cold and indifferent.
How strange that memories remain preserved in such faraway spaces, in a song from the CD that was played before bed, or the sensation of the skin when it breaks into goosebumps from the Mediterranean August heat’s ferocity. In the scent of expired Rimmel perfume and Marlboro Gold that, combined, somehow smelled like honey. Stranger still is how, even in her absence, one woman continues to live within another, through the same roundness of cheeks and curve of the spine. Through each sweet synchronicity of our bad habits, sense of humour, aspirations. Perhaps dreams are genetic. Gradually, I get closer to understanding you, and to understanding myself through you. Though I’ll never understand how it felt when you heard the news: cancer in the lungs and in the brain.
The brilliance and flourishing of summer were exceeded by death that year, impending both from outside as the missiles landed, loud and destructive from beyond the Gaza Strip border, and from within, waiting and spreading in silence.