Grieving Ahmed
Words by Brit Keech
Photograph by Jo Kassis
Content warning
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“Hello? Can I turn on the light?”
The fluorescent light flickers before it spreads evenly across the windowless room. A musty, should-be-white yellowness is exposed. She closes the door and it suddenly feels too quiet compared to the unending machine-beeps and sneaker-squeaks of the corridors. Bleach battles to disguise more sinister smells. Over-cooked cabbage gone cold. Slimy sunflower stems forgotten in a vase. Saliva, sweat, blood, bile, phlegm.
An oddly placed air mattress bears a body that looks almost like him. A clumsy clay model version of him. Mannerisms just off. Shadows in the wrong places. She knows from her time as a nurse in Lebanon that an air mattress on the floor means things are bad. Skin so thin it dissipates from the pressure of bones on bed. Bones so brittle a fall from any height could be fatal.
Blind to his frailty, she sees him tenacious still. She sees stoicism in the vacancy they’ve misdiagnosed as dementia. She knows his silence is a tactic they’ve mislabelled ‘incapacity’.
She reaches for the only other piece of furniture in the room. A heavy-duty, metal-framed chair with a maroon leather cover that is torn, exposing the firm foam cushion inside. She imagined sitting close to him, holding his hand and leaning her head towards his. But she drags the chair only slightly closer to the mattress. She takes a hesitant seat, smoothes her skirt over her knees and tucks one ankle behind the other like she was taught. She looks as out of place as she feels. In the blouse made of silk she thought he might touch and remember. The vibrant green he once said made her eyes sparkle.
“Do you still live with your son, Ahmed?”
A pause so long, she’s not sure he’ll ever answer.
“No. He lives with me.”
There it is. The pride she knows too well. It’s what attracted her so intensely all those years ago. It’s why secrets couldn’t be beaten from him. It’s what got them out of Beirut. Got their children their education. Their entitlement. It’s why he couldn’t bear to watch as his beloved home, once fresh with the scent of citrus and jasmine, succumbed to war and violence. It’s that pride that destroyed their marriage and kept him from her for eight years. And now it’s rendered him bed bound. Who’s a doctor to tell him what to do? He who answers only to Allah.
He tries and he fails to stand. She glimpses familiar scars on a body otherwise unrecognisable. Silvery skin and sinew folded into the shape of an almost-man in a nappy. More beard than body. Fingernails longer than the time he has left. It’s hard to imagine she was once frightened by his size. That he valued dignity above all else. That whether it was terror or bliss, she always felt most alive in his presence.
“Do you want me to go?”
His silence makes it easy to pretend that he does. But his eyes glaze and she almost sees the grief and regret his pride will never let him speak out loud.
She’s got things to do. Dinner with the daughter who’s changed her name and the grandchildren he’s never met. She sighs and stands. Tries to see the monster he could be, not the ghost he’s become. Reminds herself that she grieved for him long ago. Missing him isn’t new. But the old wound festers and stings anew. Her voice cracks as she speaks futile well-wishes absurd to them both.
Soon he will starve. Of pride, connection, purpose and food. He’ll emaciate his body like trauma and time emaciated his mind. He won’t accept any help for his body. They won’t offer any help for his mind. His willingness to pass is passive. Nobody panics. His secrets will be kept. His son will be unreachable. He’ll be disposed of and forgotten by all but the one woman who knew him, who will grieve him all over again although her pride won’t let it show.
Image Description: Aerial photograph of hundreds of buildings in Beirut, backdropped by a moody black sky.
