In the Country of Men

25

It is December and the Central Bus Station in Alexandria is as busy as Mecca during the days of hajj. I sit in my car for a moment to collect my courage. I consider the option of not looking for her, of waiting here until she finds me. Then I open my door and stand beside the car.

I am twenty-four and still living in Cairo, the city she sent me to, like a faithful dog still waiting, confident that his owner will come to reclaim him. And she is finally coming. Because of the air embargo she is travelling by road. With the border controls the journey probably took twenty-four hours. She'll be tired. She'll have to stay for at least a month. One month! I wonder how it'll pass. I can't even remember her face. What if I don't recognize her?

I look down at my legs, my grown-up legs in their grown-up trousers, dark wool for the winter, ironed with a crease in the middle. You're a man, I tell myself. And she's coming to see you, to see what has become of her darling boy, her only son. How will she be? Looking old, no doubt. Veiled, too. What will she think of me?

Several buses are driving in and out of the station. I have no idea which one she's on. I remain beside my car. Then I see her. She is standing next to her suitcase like a girl in the city for the first time. Not veiled. Not a grey hair on her head. I suddenly realize how young my mother is. She was twenty-four when I was sent away, the same age as I am now; fifteen when she had me, the same number of years I have spent away from her. In the end all that remains are numbers, the measurement of distances, the quantity of things. Thirty-nine. She's only thirty-nine. What is she hoping for from life now, I wonder. How fitting to see her like this in Alexandria, in the city of fallen grace. I begin to walk towards her. She hasn't seen me yet. The mother who tried to never have me, the mother who never chose it, the mother who resisted in all the ways she knew how. I wave my hand above my head, thinking of calling her, but I can't utter the word. Then suddenly it comes. 'Mama,' I say and say it again and again until she sees me. 'Mama! Mama!' When I reach her she kisses my hands, my forehead, my cheeks, combs my hair with her fingers, straightens my collar.

The Sidi Mahrez poem is taken from a book entitled Libya: The Lost Cities of the Roman Empire by Robert Polidori, Antonino Di Vita, Ginette Di Vita-Evrard and Lidiano Bacchielli, published by Konemann Verlags-gesellschaft mbH, Bonner Str. 126., D-50968 Cologne, 1999-

The quotation from the Quran is taken from a translation by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall entitled The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an, published by Dar Al-Kitab Allubnani, P.O. Box 3176, Beirut, Lebanon.

The first three quotations of Salah Abd al-Sabur are taken from his poem Night and Day; the fourth from the poem Tale of the Sad Minstrel. All have been translated from the Arabic by the author.