Three days sitting on this street had given my car a coat of sticky dust and grime. But at least there was a vacant space in front of it which meant I wouldn’t have to inch it forward and backward again and again in order to edge it out into the street. Once I was settled inside, resting my hands on the steering wheel, my nephew—still standing at my driver’s-side car door—asked if I had anything in the car that he could use to remove the filth smeared across the front windshield. The blotch looked oily: thick and impenetrable, like it was affixed permanently to the glass. I peered into the dark corners of the car looking for the box of tissues I thought would be there, but I found it hard to care whether or not I could locate it. When I stopped twisting around to look, dropping back against the headrest to relieve my aching head and neck, my nephew stuck his hand between me and the wheel, groping for the button that would spray water across the windshield. All that came out of the two needle-sized holes was that familiar dry sound, something between a rattle and a gurgle. Without looking at me or saying a word, my nephew turned on his heels and headed for the line of shops on the other side of the road. By the time he was back, the box of tissues in his hand was already open. He pulled out a handful and began rubbing at the oily stain, but it seemed immune to his efforts, having baked itself into the glass. He had to go back to the shop and fetch a bottle of water. Before he turned completely away to go there again, I waved at him to climb in, even though I knew that for the entire journey the blotch would be there, inescapable, disgusting me and straining my eyes as I tried to look beyond it.
The eighty kilometers that separated me from the house would not make my fatigue any worse. It might even restore me somewhat, at least if the road we had to take wasn’t too choked with traffic. Anyway, it wasn’t the kind of tiredness that would make me drowsy. That woman who had come from Venezuela to live with us used to always answer my father, whenever he asked her if she was feeling better, with just one word. Sleep . . . sleep. That is all she ever said, in the hoarse metallic voice that issued from the steel plate covering the holes in her throat. When we were there at home, it was clear that she didn’t sleep, because the raspy panting sounds she made just trying to breathe never stopped and we constantly heard her opening her suitcases and then walking from her bedroom to the kitchen at the other end of the house. She didn’t sleep last night either, my mother would say in the morning to whoever woke up next. She kept her voice low because she didn’t want this woman—who might be anywhere in the house—to hear her. She might even be right behind my mother as she spoke, or near the open door to the bathroom as I washed my face and ears, or in the corridor between the rooms, standing there even though there was nothing in the corridor to keep anyone occupied. My mother didn’t grumble or complain or say to my father, Who else but us would let a woman they don’t know live in their house, a woman who came here from Venezuela because she didn’t want to die there?
And she—that woman—accomplished what she had come here to do. In our home she managed it. One day my father went into the room where she was lying flat on her back, and said immediately to my mother who was standing just outside, She has died. Just like that he said it, without even pushing up her eyelid to check the pupil of her eye, or taking her hand to see whether she still had a pulse. She has died, he said. Then he turned to leave the room as if nothing further needed to be done about it.
Sleep. For myself, now, I could sense already how remote it was, and how hard it would be to capture and hold onto, even if I were so exhausted that I could not handle a dog darting out into the road in front of me. And then, I couldn’t shake off my memory of that woman standing at the doorway into the kitchen, the rough sounds of her breathing and her croaky attempts at speech, gruff and hollow at the same time as they issued from the tube puncturing her body. I was nine or ten years old at the time. I was just learning about the illness and how to name it. How to think about the thing and its label, crammed together bewilderingly into that little patch of bare, open skin at the hollow just below her neck. The disease of cancer. That’s what my mother called it as she spoke to her visitors in a near whisper. It has gotten her, my mother would tell her visitors. She whispered the words but she named the thing and its definition. The disease of cancer. The illness and the name it bore, as if to let them in on something they weren’t familiar with. The disease of cancer! they echoed back, at once frightened and pitying. They did know it, this word cancer, but only as something that had to do with someone very far away, someone who had died of it in one of those remote villages, only the news of it reaching them.
When we reached the autostrade I stopped the car. I told my nephew Bilal to get out and get rid of it—that splotch I knew I couldn’t help staring at for as long as it sat there just waiting for my eyes to latch onto it. He couldn’t find anything to use on it except a key he fished out of his pocket. He began scratching at the glass, making a dry whine. He gave me a look, wanting to know if he should stop making that sound which might also scratch the glass and harm it. I didn’t respond right away, mostly because I felt so listless. It won’t come off, he said to me as he returned to his seat. Not unless we use gasoline. His words brought me out of my torpor momentarily. I asked myself how this nephew of mine—he was still such a young boy, after all—could be wise enough to know what drivers do to get rid of messes that stick to the windshields of their cars.
So, do you know how to drive the car? I asked him. I realized that, to my surprise, thinking about my nephew and his knowledge of gasoline could take me away, if only for that one brief moment, from my obsession with my sickness.
Bilal knew or at least sensed the condition I was in. He waited for me to ask my question again. When it didn’t come, he simply turned to look at me and then shifted his gaze forward to look again at the autostrade stretching ahead of us.
Should I take you home? Or do you want to come with me to our place?
I had driven almost the whole way back without saying anything, and I could tell that my silence was upsetting him. It made him uneasy. And of course he would not want to be with me at that moment when my wife was standing there at the door wordless, surreptitiously trying to look into my face at the same time she was avoiding meeting my eyes.
My mother’s alone in the house, he said. She’s been alone for three days.
His mother in her home: the image of it came to me. She was standing three or four steps away from where I always sat, in that large armchair. As exhausted as I was, now I held onto that image of her as though I were testing myself. As though I wanted to see whether my memory of her would give me some comfort. On my visits—I made them once a month—we always sat far apart, me at one end of the long sofa and her at the other. I never allowed myself to sit comfortably or to look relaxed, by for instance turning my face and body slightly in her direction. This is from my father, I would say as I put out my hand toward hers. Without saying a word she would reach her hand nearer to mine in order to take the money which was tucked into a folded piece of paper so that the bills could not be seen. It never happened that her hand touched mine. That hand. I never more than glanced at that hand even when it was close enough to me. I will make coffee, Sayyid, she would say. And I, wanting to make it look like my every movement was subject to strict time constraints, and that was what determined whether I would go or stay, always looked at my watch, studying it as though I was counting the minutes in my head before I said, Why not, coffee. Yes, all right. But no sugar.
I wouldn’t keep my eyes on her form and the way she walked for very long, as she turned to go into the kitchen. Not more than an instant, perhaps even less. Then I would turn my head forward again. Face and body composed and aligned, as I perched on the edge of my seat.
But she doesn’t get home until late in the afternoon, I said. I wanted to remind him that she was not spending all of her time alone. But I also wanted to learn from him that she was still going to her work just as before.
To support my attempt to reassure him that she hadn’t been all alone, he said, turning to look at me, The teachers sometimes come home with