Black Book of Arabia (11 page)

My group of friends grew smaller as I could no longer participate in their lively social gatherings. I could hear their pity and their exaggerated descriptions of what was going on. At first, I tried to stay engaged, but I no longer could enjoy movies, coffee shops, or restaurants. I could not participate in discussions about their Photoshopped pictures, before and after; the poetry and jokes they would send via WhatsApp; the shopping for dresses, jewelry, and accessories; and all of the details of the things I used to thrive on. I was blind, and that was that. I could not see what they were describing, and the extra effort required for me to understand seemed, after a time, as encumbering on me to hear as it was on them to explain.

I felt myself withering away. Everyone slowly distanced themselves from me except for my two closest friends and my sister. All I had was them and my mother, who stood by me more than she needed to and kept me strong. She was heartbroken and would often cry, but she understood me best. She always held my hand gently and would tell me where to set foot, should there be
an unstable way or staircase. She would explain things succinctly enough for me to understand the silence in a gathering or a loud noise in the crowd: “Laila is joking”; “Spectacular fireworks”; “Lovely children, come say hello to me and Aunty.” She was my only solace. She made me feel normal. She would encourage me by reading stories about successful blind people to me. She even taught me how to read in Braille.

She would invite my friends over once a month, which was enough excitement for me and not too much trouble for them. They would call more often than visit, as my hearing was fine and they knew that talking on the phone was something I could really enjoy. I also began to enjoy the Turkish television series as I learned to recognize the voices. My ears became my new eyes, and I was grateful for the savior. I was afraid of leaving my home because I had tripped and hurt myself so many times. I tried hard to climb out of the hole that I was in, but it was too deep, even for someone as hardheaded as I am. I began to listen to audiobooks, which entertained me and became a hobby that I enjoyed immensely. It helped both to compensate for lost reading time and to help me heal.

Despite these gains, it still hurt when cruel and heartless people pitied my husband for being married to a blind woman. As my hearing developed, I regularly heard whispers of “poor bloke,” “she can't see anything,” and “I wonder if her kids will be born blind.” I would bristle every time. You never get used to cruelty, especially when
it makes you feel like you are an injustice to the people you love.

My husband felt cheated and decided that he had come up short someplace. Several times I asked for a divorce, but he refused. He spoke from an emotional and religious standpoint, stating that he loved me and swearing to stand by me. Divorcing me would indicate dissatisfaction with God's gift to him, be it favorable or unfavorable in its outcome. He was God fearing, and I had hope that just as God had given me sight, and had taken it, that He would give it back one day soon.

I could not dress as fashionably and daring as I liked. I could not see my face so I resigned myself to wearing minimal makeup. Even then, there was no way to tell if I was wearing a blue blusher or a coral eye shadow by mistake. I could still wear my matte Chanel lipstick; do my basic eye makeup of an eye pencil lining my eyes, the simple tapping of the YSL mascara wand against my lashes, and the patting of my Guerlain face powder on my combination, T-zone skin. I refused to look pale and plain. I would always ask several people to give me their opinions of my makeup. Simple and clean, the chances of messing it up were almost zero.

Eventually, I began to tire of the simple look, but the holy ritual of applying red lipstick after maroon lip liner, slightly tipping over your natural Cupid's bow and lower lip to give the illusion of bee-stung lips, was no longer natural to me. The art of pampering myself, applying facemasks and tweezing my eyebrows, were complex tasks
that required a makeup artist to help me with, so I began requesting home service. I may have been blind, but my military-like discipline prevented me from allowing myself to have a disheveled appearance.

I still insisted on wearing jewelry and perfume, however basic or inexpensive, but pearls were my favorite. I was a lady, and I always liked to look prim and proper. In my former presentation, I derived the confidence of a peacock from my assurance that I was the fittest, most finely dressed, and best educated woman in my batch—the unbeatable perfection that I always had been.

My mother would cry sometimes; I could hear her voice break when she would see beautiful things, like every time my babies were born, or, as the years passed, when they would draw hearts and happy faces with “I Love You Mummy.” My ears began to detect all of the emotional notes in a person's voice. I could tell when they were lying, smiling, hesitant, scared, doubtful, hateful, or envious. My mother said that what had happened to me was an evil eye that was envious of how perfect I was. I was not perfect anymore, so I presumed I would carry on like this until my dying day. She explained that living in gratitude causes good things to happen and it acts as a tourniquet to staunch the calamities that befall us.

Of all the sounds I heard, the most joyous came on the day I heard my first-born cry. I snuggled him and I instantly loved him. After he was bathed and cleaned, they brought him to me to feed, and I had a reason to live again. I was so full of emotion and hope; I wanted to “see” him live to be
the best there was in life. I felt like the rising sun. After they told me his sight was fine, I did not care that I was blind. The terror of childbirth was multiplied in my situation, because I could not help myself or my baby. He could be bleeding and hurting, and I would not know. I had all my next children by Caesarian section because during normal childbirth the adrenaline rose so much in my blood it distressed the baby.

This new object of my affection was so precious and filled me with so much happiness, a feeling that I had lost and missed very much. It rekindled my life with my husband, as he was very supportive of me throughout my ordeal. I fell in love with him all over again because he was my hero. You never really know a man until you become handicapped and completely dependent upon him; that is the true test of a man to see whether or not he is someone you would want to grow old with.

However, this only added to the pressure I felt to be good enough. If only my sight were to come back, I could perform my day-to-day activities more normally. I recognized my son's smell and his calls, and I tried to do as many things on my own with him as I could, because he was my new obsession. My husband would tell me it was not fair that the child looked exactly like me, and I would smile at how supportive he was.

Jassim, always solid, at times would lose patience with my moping attitude. I would dive into an abyss of depression whenever I got hormonal in my pregnancy. I had nightmares that were too real, dreaming that the
baby would be born with sealed sockets where its eyes should be.

I missed the wasted time talking nonsense to myself in the mirror, imagining scenarios with the people I loved talking to and admiring me and the people I hated eyeing me, and what I would say preposterously in response. Men do not have these minutes of escape we women do. This is our therapy, our reward for looking good: to first feast our own eyes on the accomplishment we have done to ourselves.

I resented how people always asked me if I had found a solution to my sight loss. I woke up every day with that loss, how could I ever lose
sight
of it? I fought and I tried, if only to be the shadow of the person that I once was. I wanted to be happy for my Jassim and my four angels. I could hear my mother's voice crack when she talked about my amazing accomplishments and then slowly trail away and choke as she quietly wiped her tears. It was interesting how I could foretell situations from how they started, how people concocted conversations to reach a point where it was only logical to ask me invasive personal questions. And I, in turn, always rose to the occasion, answering them quickly and abruptly, or simply leaving the sly crowd. These times invested with the social groups benefited my family. I became more forgiving, measured, and grateful for the enjoyment of normalcy I once had.

When God takes something from you, He usually gives you something else in return. We never found out
what happened to my eyes, but I learned to be grateful for the many beautiful things that I had in life. I bore Jassim four children. We did not travel the first two or three years, but after I had my children back-to-back and they were older, we began to travel to the English countryside. The children loved it, and I did not have to worry about the traffic for my own safety or the children running off into a busy street. My husband and I relaxed and enjoyed our time together.

We would sometimes attempt to see a doctor or two. I visited Mecca every year and washed my face with Zamzam holy water, hoping it would return my sight to me. I attempted Chinese medicine. Needles were inserted into my skull, neck, and back, but to no avail. I accepted my blindness, but I never stopped trying to recover my sight. How could I? I wanted to see the faces of my children. I wanted to see how badly they had cut themselves when they would come to me crying from a fall. I wanted to see if they were dressed properly and eating what they had on their plates. I wanted to read to them and see their faces light up, or watch them fall asleep as I told them stories from memory.

My fingers would run along their profiles and faces; this was my face shot of them. My hands measured when it was time to cut their hair and if their clothes were thick enough for the weather outside. It was humiliating, but I was strong for them. Not for me, not for my husband, not for my family, but for my children. It was all for them. I
loved them so much. They made me feel so strong and so weak at the same time, but I fought for them.

One day, I woke up in a room filled with bright light and color. My eyesight was back, just as suddenly as it had disappeared. Of course, I did not recognize my surroundings. I began looking at everything in the house, running (something I had not done in years) and calling after everyone in the house.

I called my mother with the joyous news, but she did not answer. I called my mother every day, or she would call me, to check on each other. I knew from my voice clock that it was noon, and, knowing she was an early riser, I began to worry. But I was so excited that I put aside my fears.

Everything looked different. There was so much color and light. I swam through it like a fish in water. I could not close my eyes. I called my brother, laughing hysterically, and told him I could see. I could see everything: the chair, the phone, and the pictures of these beautiful children who must be mine! I was too busy describing the things around me to hear his response. I was a volcano of energy that needed attention, and I wanted the whole world to know about this blessing. My brother said he was happy for me, but I detected something serious in his tone of voice. I had spoken so fast that he could not interrupt to explain why Mother had not been answering.

“Ameera,” he said at last, “Mother is dead.”

I stopped jumping and sat down.

My sister had just pulled into the driveway. She walked in on me and hugged me. “He giveth and He taketh away,” she whispered.

Speechless. Numb. Mixed emotions. Confused. Where was I? What was going on on this Earth? Mother would be so disappointed to have left this world thinking she left behind a blind daughter. She deserved to know that I was okay. I was angry that she had passed without forewarning. How ridiculously selfish of me, but this is life, a play that makes us both laugh and cry.

Jassim was on a business trip to Washington DC. I did not know how to send a text message, as it had been a good few years and I needed to be updated and shown how to write again. Braille never got to mobiles, so I asked my sister to text him for me.

My grandmother and sister insisted that I visit the doctors, religious folks, and psychiatrists immediately. The doctors were more confused than I was. The very same doctors I recognized from their shuffling footsteps, perfume, breath, and tone of voice now seemed so magnified with sight. I could hear the hesitation in their voices, and all they would say was “Thank Goodness” and smile nervously.

I next went to the religious folks, and they began to recite holy verses and bless me. Then they asked about my circumstances and what had changed. I told them of my mother's death, and a sad silence descended. They explained that sometimes too much love and pride in your possessions could actually hurt that very thing you hold so dear. I needed to hear it from three or four different pious, saintly,
God-fearing people to fully understand it. My mother had loved me very much, so much so that I could feel and sense every meaning of the word. She did not know that her doting pride in me, multiplied with admiration, was to be my undoing. I was her Achilles heel of self-worth, self-image, and self-regard, but I was not she; I was someone else. The master's creation had surpassed the master, and she unknowingly envied it.

I sat with the psychiatrist for an hour-long session of lamenting my loss of sight for years, grieving my mother, and complaining how my whole world had come undone. I left weeping, and a nurse was sent home to take care of me and monitor my stability. I was given an injection to calm me down at the insistence of my sister, who terrified me with the thought that if I did not cooperate, my brain would pop. I conceded, but I was trembling. I was feeling guilty and sad at how happy I was, and I bemoaned the loss of my mother. She had been my walking stick, my eyes, my patient senses throughout these years. I missed her. She left a canyon of grief so deep and gaping that not even my regained sight could bridge it.

The carnival that was going on in my life was enough to give a grown elephant a heart attack, so I sat down and wept. The day I got my sight back, I cried more than I had cried on any day in my life. There was so much to capture, and I treasured everything. I almost did not recognize myself in the mirror. The recollection of who I had been and the need to accept who this new woman was overwhelmed me. I had to use drops to lubricate my
eyes because I could not stop staring. I was excited by the realization that I was capable of seeing my own hands, the next step I would take in confidence and safety. I was overwhelmed with beautiful feelings and gratitude, and I lost myself in prayer.