April 2001

There's a fire dying in the fireplace, as another rages on in my heart. A fire of new hope.
But first, I spent two days in bed. The phone rang but I did not answer. On the second afternoon I heard my grandmother's voice on the answering machine, "What's the matter my son? Tell us your troubles. You can't just stay in bed all day and not eat. Everything will be all right." Pause. Then, "Broon kelba." (Son of dog.) And a chuckle.
Jackie and I caught the flu. We stayed home for a few days and drank lots of tea, made a big pot of chicken soup, all of which we ate. I removed nail polish from her hands as she was too listless to do it herself.
A certain Palestinian sighs in my heart and his shadow melts on my tongue before my whispers can capture him. Night howls.
Again I'm reminded that I can love them from a private place without their consent, in their absence- my father, Tariq, Iran.
And where would we be without my grandmother? It is her home we live in, her business at which mom works. Through sheer determination and hard work she has built a life for herself. A life that sustains all of us.
Her strength and discipline, her work ethic and persistence are a tower I cannot touch. There aren't many Assyrian women like her- divorced, older, self-sufficient, a true entrepreneur!
Hell in my head.
Shammi talks me out of taking antidepressants, asserting that antidepressants merely muffle the voices without healing the person, that they are only numbing agents. She says she worries that my creativity will be dulled by medication, adding that she will support me whatever I decide. She is passionate and vehement.
A church on a corner.
Sidewalks.
Insatiable California sky.
Mouth wide.
Mom-Suzie jokingly threatens to beat me up when I say I am not hungry. She thinks I am too thin now and scrutinizes me with profound disapproval. Then she becomes serious, asks if I am sick. I wonder what exactly she means by "sick". Does she mean AIDS?
Jackie's been looking spent. We stay up late, talking well into the early morning hours, and as soon as she has admitted a fear, a particular private regret or loss, a disenchantment too severe to recover, she waves the fresh phrase away as if it's a plume of smoke between us. In subtle ways I encourage her during these times to talk to me, burden me, watching her all the while with photographic eyes, making certain the image, so dear and so vulnerable, is burned permanently in my mind. I listen, but I rarely touch her. She looks so fragile and distant. But it is a mistake to respect this supposed distance, because after all, she loves to wrestle and horseplay!
Didn't she reach over twice and pinch my cheek while we played cards with Mom-Suzie this afternoon, like she would when I was little, herself just a child then?
Suicide is out of the question because it would actually be murder- a murder of her spirit, what's left of it.
Truth is... I have a lot of growing up to do. It's simple. Extremely simple. As simple as light that comes and goes with the clouds and the rain. Now the moon is flamboyant and pompous, dancing deliberately, seductively across a blue-velvet sky, throwing rays of silver to the trees that wait, flowers that sleep, and young Assyrian men who happen to be keeping a child's diary. It's simple. Brutally simple.
From here, beneath the moon, adjacent to possibility- running through the hills, the horses, the grazing cows, blooming wildflowers- it's easy to dream of stability, a well-lit future, a life that's profound and free of guilt and anguish.
I don't want to admit this, but I am Tariq.
A bridge.
A leap.
A need to forget and return.
I starve myself.
My mind is not good enough. My body. My past. The future.
Sometimes, when we're not laughing, Jackie and I pause and just look at each other and say nothing. Our brown eyes communicate something big, deep, and dark- stating the obvious.
Art was a lie, my escape from life, a desire for something better, an ideal. I'm not an artist, but a creative escapist. The artist is gone now and what's left behind is just me, a man. No one. Nothing.
All we can do is let life's crinkled pages be turned by the windy hands of fate. Turning like colors, like carnival rides, like dancing figures on a stage.