In winter, shopkeepers usually opened their shops late in the morning and closed early in the evening. They went home to roast some seasonal chestnuts as they gathered with their families and ate lots of food. The best kind of chestnuts I had ever eaten was one my grandmother used to make on the brazier while the whole family gathered outside on the patio during cold nights. We did not do it often because winter nights were rainy and very cold; and when it snowed, we stayed indoors. Other times we stopped roasting chestnuts, but our gatherings became the inevitable destiny.
I woke up one December morning, and the tips of my toes were chilly. As we learned the first time we entered the school, we had all kinds of different weather, I only felt one kind. It was Hebron cold. Teachers said we were located at the heart of the world, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, which I only saw on the old yellow-papered maps in the history and geography classes. The teacher would point to the map and say, “This is Palestine, the heart of the world.” Those were the only times I saw it.
I held on to my bed sheet trying to warm myself up, but all my trials were in vain. So, I decided to get up. I prepared my usual hot Nescafe, poured it into my own cup. I quickly grabbed it to warm my frozen hands in this glacial weather. I opened the red curtains of my room and stood behind the window next to my desk where I spent the nights with papers having my own conversations. As soon as I finished sipping from my cup, I zipped up my gray winter jacket on my skinny body, painted my eyes with black to look like a model, and wore my red sophisticated shoes that I could barely walk in. Then I headed out for a walk. A walk then, after all these years, was not like any other walks. When I looked up, I saw the sky looking the same — clear, big and blue — but when I looked down, faces of people around me were tired and weary.
I kept walking around, trying to remember something left of my childhood somewhere. Every spot seemed to remind me of an incident, an action, a memory or maybe nothing. I walked and walked, and when I reached the old city, I turned around, changing my direction. The moment I did, clouds gathered in the sky. It was no longer blue nor big but very close to the ground. It started raining on my gray winter jacket while the sudden wind was pulling me back.
I stood there in the middle of the town attacked by memories that had gone long ago. I felt as if a reckless storm had just invaded my heart. I looked for a place to sit. I sat, then I stood, I looked right and left, then I sat again. But the storm in my heart did not calm. I felt its ache. I headed back to my small apartment. In my apartment, everything was neat and beautiful. The bed, the cup, the small radio and the red curtains were all in silence. They were all ready to sleep along with me. Every step I made toward the curtains to heave them down to hide the winter sunlight coming through the window, their red color was getting darker. The smell of the curtains captured all my senses. It was a mixed smell of everything I had ever seen, eaten or known. My hands bizarrely and strongly caught the curtain and allowed it through my fingers slowly. I smelled it. This breathtaking smell lived inside me at that moment. My whole body smelled it. Even my heart saw it as an arresting woman and started dancing with it while I was standing silently with my eyes shut feeling the beat. I swallowed the smell one sip after another until my heart asked me to stop, until my heart loaded with a thick layer of ice. Inside my heart, the beat was still alive.
I was wondering why my day was going against what I had planned. Today I decided I would write. I would not cry nor would I sleep at daytime. I would write. I needed to gather my life on paper. I needed to write my story and I needed to write to fulfill my promise. Instead, I sat at the edge of my bed and cried uncontrollably. I needed to weep to dissolve what felt like a hard stone blocking my throat. My screams were not let out. Each time I wanted to screech, my voice disappeared into tears. Crying is a short-term remedy for all kinds of things. It gives a balance to the soul. Try it. Each time thoughts flow into your head, kill them with tears. Make thousands of promises that they will not flow again, even though they will for eternity. But tears were not enough to cure my pique because they were soundless.
I woke up before the middle of the night. I washed my face and stood with my whole body shaking. My bones were so fragile. I felt like they had swallowed all my misery but then I felt them; they could not take it anymore. I held on with my hands to the basin, and wanted to throw up what I had not eaten. My eyes could see nothing but the blur of things. I blinked slowly trying to find my way back to bed. But things remained blurred until my body dropped, like a piece of heavy meat, on the floor. Until my body dropped, like my “one shot” grandfather when he fell on the soil. I did not feel anything anymore. My eyes were closed but I was not asleep. How beautiful life is when you can stop feeling the heavy pain put on you without having to spend life sleeping. The only thing I could see through the window then with my body on the floor were the white snowflakes swaying in the sky, dancing together in vertical lines. How peaceful, I thought to myself. How happy they were flying in the open space until they rested in peace on the ground, the frozen windows, the walking heads, the dirty roads, the street lights, on me.