Digital Rabbit Hole

                                          Drawing by Gino 2007

Preface: This is a story, a book I began writing in 2007 in Jordan. I decided to not continue out of respect for the characters (both living and dead) It is a true story, my story and I will share it with you in a total of 6 chapters during this month of Ramadan.  I hope you will take the time to read each installment. This is as far as I got. Many of you know now about Umahmad from my poetry.
This is how it all began.

Chapter One

I seem to be thinking of you a lot when I go to the movies, I thought of you again in the movie theater because we were such a magically unconventional love, even in those times of glorious unbridled unconventional loves, and we were a movie. If any true love story should be shared on the big screen it was ours. Is this arrogant of me or totally foolish of me to think this way?

I have written almost 30 poems for you, ..
actually restarted writing again because of you,
your love and the effect it had upon my soul, upon my very being.

By Allah. this story is not about me; it is about you, Umahmad, about your effect on this soul…so this soul must be sketched in, if only in italics, in a third person’s name, at least from time to time, because this is a love story, and every love story has more than one person to share it with. Then of course there also exists
the incredible pain and the “maktoob” of your coming into my life.

In the Arabic culture we believe that much of our lives is destined, it is written “maktoob” or meant to be “naseeb” Like our parents that we cannot choose, there are places and people too that come into our lives and therefore are maktoob, and they always come for something, even if we are slightly unaware about Life and our place in it, these moments are usually perceived and contemplated by all who experience the arrival of a gift destined for them and them alone.
Umahmad was my gift and I knew it the first time I set eyes on her.

She was about to be my domestic that day, and I was so irritated at my husband, for sleeping through the morning unable to fill his necessary position of translator between us.
She spoke only Arabic and I only Spanish and English. There she was, poised in the doorway of our apartment in Karak, a provincial Crusader castle town in the south of Jordan that chilly fall day of 2001.
She came in with an “Asalaam Alaykum”(peace be unto you) and I politely answered
“Wa alaykum salaam”(and also to you)

We quickly checked each other out as women have a tendency to do, even subconsciously I suspect. We both made a quick eye sweep up and down, and then I said “please come in” gesturing to enter .
I had no idea who this woman would be to me, not even a faint intuition that she and I could actually become friends of the deepest kind, but in my fast scan of her face I saw beauty not usually found in domestic employees. She had an almost movie star quality with an aquiline profile, which made me think of a proud black- maned knight on the chessboard..

She was robed in a long ebony abaya a sheer light weight over-garment cooler than it looked and made for hot weather. It protected her body shape as well as it could from the eyes of strangers, and strange men in particular, and it protected her virgin skin from the merciless desert sun. She was maybe 5’ 6’’ with a strong symmetrical build and her skin was shockingly white and without blemish.

Her large black eyes, long straight nose and naturally full lips gave her the appearance of many different stars all seen on the big screen, but mixed and combined so it was impossible to say,
“Oh she looks just like so and so.” She looked a lot like many cinematic goddesses, and when she walked through my front door, I was given a living example of another way for human transport.

She did not walk, she floated, glided over the carpet like a smooth graceful hovercraft. To the last day I watched her glide away, I was never sure how she could do that, how effortlessly she made it seem, like she was always in an invisible bubble of zero gravity, and it was all she could do to keep from floating away out of sight.

I led Umahmad into my small kitchen, with big sliding glass windows that looked down the hill at similar Lego-style apartments that were so common in Jordan . Even though they all were cut in the same style, the stone siding and the balconies and imaginative window framing, made them not unpleasing to the eye. The second floor room was cool and there was a crisp fall breeze that shook the panes, as we sat across from each other at my square white plastic breakfast table. Then there was a long pause as I studied her face in repose and realized there was no way on earth I was going to make her understand what I wanted her to do, to clean my apartment that day.

She was my Iraqi refugee domestic helper (this was all I knew about her) and I wasn’t even sure how to say “clean, dishes, bed,vacuum, dust” the basic vocabulary necessary, so we remained a bit too long just staring at each other until the impossibility of communicating anything with her or she with me struck me so funny, I smirked involuntarily.

She saw it and half-smiled back. My eyes twinkled, I felt the rise of hysteria because of the ludicrousness of it all. Lack of communication can get you killed or it can make you die laughing depending upon who you do it with. Her eyes told me she was seeing the same humorous side of our predicament and her eyes just bubbled. I saw them overflow and the outer corners crinkled, and I burst out laughing, almost spitting on the table. She followed suit. It looked like her cheeks were filling from the inside with helium until they finally just bwaaah, burst and she popped out in a broad spontaneous laugh.
I laughed harder and tears on both our cheeks ran down our faces respectively in that fabulous hysteria of spirit that bonded without words, telling us instinctively we were like souls who had “light blood”(dem hafeef) the Arabic expression for good sense of humor, jovial personalities.

I said something in English and it made her laugh even harder. She answered me in Arabic and I held my stomach in. I couldn’t control it now, I went right over the top of normal silliness into the realm of total hysterical combustion. She was right there with me, didn’t miss a beat. We grabbed on to each other’s forearms like two drowning raucous victims laughing and crying and at least for me, we bonded as two kindred souls for all eternity right there in my kitchen. I will never forget that day. I will never forget the first 15 or 20 minutes of shared humor. I drew pictures on the back of an envelope to try and explain myself, I sketched stick figures washing dishes and she laughed even harder. We tried charades, pointing and pantomiming chore movements.. I fell in love with her that destined morning. I knew instinctively, she would be so much more than my domestic employee, and I was totally correct in my assessment. Two years later I laughed again with her like that, but in the wide open pink sand spaces of Wadi Rum.
Three years later, after a love lived like few others, fate turned again and she was gone.

To Be Continued….