You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat

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killed in a helicopter crash. We’d hire a taxi and ride along the airport road, past Bedouin tents and the occasional herd of goats, to Teta’s home in the Shmeisani neighborhood of Amman. Just like Karim and me, my cousin Reema and her sisters were hauled to Amman at the end of every school year. Reema had light brown hair and green eyes, and was five years older than me. She lived in Paris during the year and spoke with a French accent, which I and Karim both deemed to be exaggerated. One particular summer, her parents got two suites at the InterContinental, one for themselves and the other for Reema and her sisters. We spent all of June at the hotel pool; me, Reema, and our other cousin, Nour, occasionally allowing Karim to hang out with us. Everything I did was designed to win Reema’s approval. I drove the bumper car out of the ring and around the lobby at the hotel’s fun fair, until the manager dragged me back in by my ear. I knocked on room doors on every floor and ran away. When one door that I kept knocking on opened and a woman’s hand emerged, promptly smacking me across the face, the game ended. I tortured the pool staff; Reema bought itching powder and I was tasked with slipping it down the lifeguard’s shirt, which angered him so much that he beat me with a flip-flop. That time I cried and threatened to call child services, to which Nour, who lived in Amman year-round and was my main competitor for Reema’s attention, smirked and said, “Do you really think we have such things here?”

      Every summer I was forced to see my father’s side of the family—his sisters, brothers and their kids. I’d pout all morning as I packed my bag and during the car ride to their neighborhood, which was far busier, noisier, and dirtier than Teta’s. They’d take me to the community pool, and I usually enjoyed it, but not that year—not compared to the hotel pool. I hesitated to get in the water, which was full of undiapered street kids, something that had never bothered me before. My paternal cousins and I weren’t allowed to order poolside entrees and Pepsis like at the InterContinental. Instead, we had to wait until we got back home to eat. As we scarfed down hummus and pita sandwiches, I sat there wondering what my mother’s cousins were doing. How much fun were they having that I was missing out on?

      Finally, one of my dad’s bearded brothers drove me back to my grandmother’s apartment. I leaped from the car, entirely forgetting to say thank you or even goodbye, and rang the bell. The haris let me in. I rushed upstairs to the apartment, where the red and yellow lights above the hot water switches were both lit. My grandmother told me to hurry up and get in the tub: my mother had requested to see me at the hotel. I quickly peeled off my swimsuit and bathed, washing off the filth of the day. Afterward, Teta combed my hair as I chose an outfit. The sun was setting just as we arrived at the hotel’s terrace, where my mother and her aunts sat sipping rosé, a tray of sliced mangoes and melons in front of them, a waiter refreshing the coals in their shisha, which sent off little flecks of red embers. “Hi, mama!” my mother called out to me in the traditional, self-referential way Arab parents refer to their children: as mama and baba. My walk became a run as I dived toward the table and attempted to kiss her. But she wouldn’t stop talking long enough to let me, everyone laughing at the story she was telling, which I couldn’t understand: she was speaking too fast in Arabic, a language I was still struggling to grasp. For the majority of my childhood, I only ever understood a third of what anyone was saying. “Come,” one of my great-aunts said, waving me over after noting my disappointment. I wandered to her and received conciliatory affection before I was patted on the behind and sent off to play by myself.

      At the time I didn’t realize what it was that separated the two sides of my family: that my paternal cousins did not live in the noisy neighborhood, go to the community pool, and wait to eat hummus sandwiches at home by choice.

       5

      IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ONE MORNING, AFTER MY ALARM had been ringing for twenty-seven minutes, my father blasted into my bedroom, grabbed the clock off the nightstand, opened the window, and hurled it into our front yard. This occurred after numerous attempts to wake me up by song; he’d float into my room in his flannel pajamas, singing “Ya madrassa, ya madrassa,” which means, “School, O school” in Arabic, or, depending on which dictionary you consult, “terrorist training camp.”

      Though as an adult waking up hasn’t gotten much easier, on my first morning at the Ledge I was wide awake and at the main lodge in time for coffee. I wanted to get as much caffeine as I could. At seven thirty exactly the kitchen door opened and a bald man with bright eyes and a warm smile emerged, carrying three carafes. He put them down and then checked to make sure the sugar tray was full. I pawed through the pile of mismatched mugs, chose the tallest, and pumped the carafe until my cup was full to the brim, sitting down carefully so I wouldn’t spill.

      The night before, I had stayed up late chatting with my roommate, Molly. “I’m not sure I belong here,” she’d said.

      Molly was a love addict, too. Tucked into bed, her makeup still thick on her face, she told me about the meth lab she and her boyfriend ran out of their kitchen in Chattanooga. Her instincts were screaming at her to get out of the marriage and the meth, but she couldn’t bear to leave him. The thought of disappointing him was just too much. He couldn’t bear it either, and when she once attempted to leave, he threw himself in front of her moving car, breaking both of his legs and relegating her to be his caretaker. “It’s how I was raised,” she told me. “To please others. You know?”

      I did know. “I think you’re in the right place,” I’d said before drifting off to sleep.

      As I sat in the lodge lapping up coffee, I looked around at the posters on the walls. There was one with a gnome walking down a long fairy-tale trail. Beneath him was a quote by Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

      Something about it unsettled me. I figured it was supposed to make us feel better about being in Bowling Green, Kentucky, rather than elsewhere. I was thinking of the other places I could be when Greg walked into the living room carrying Why Men Love Bitches, a contraband item, as we were only supposed to be reading self-help literature that Nancy had sanctioned. His blond hair was slicked back, making it hard to tell where his forehead ended and his hairline began. He was wearing white patent-leather loafers and a T-shirt that said, “Your Village Called, They Want Their Idiot Back!” After he poured himself a cup of coffee, he sat down beside me and snapped his book against my thigh. “Hey, baby girl!” he said. “How you doin’ this morning, you sleep well?”

      He smiled a big game-show-host grin. Was this an attempt to flirt? I raised an eyebrow and sneered in return. “Yo, Miami Vice,” said a guy with a lip ring, tapping his foot against Greg’s, “are those your dancin’ shoes?”

      “These bad boys?” Greg said, pointing down. “They better do more than that, I paid three hundred bucks for ’em!”

      The guy with the lip ring shook his head and laughed. Greg laughed along earnestly, unaware that he was being mocked. I gazed at the pine trees outside, and as the sun rose, streams of light poured in through the windows and illuminated the dust in the room. Greg looked at me and smiled again. “It’s your Higher Power saying ‘good morning,’” he said.

      “Yeah, right.” I smirked. He seemed momentarily deflated. I realized I had mistaken his earnestness for sarcasm, and I immediately regretted mine.

      I had breakfast; a glass of water and half a grapefruit. Afterward, I was about to step outside when I heard a cowbell ringing. Then someone called out, “Phase Two in the big room, Phase One in the small!”

      Phase One. The newbies, lumped together in one group with our various addictions and afflictions. There were four of us: Greg; my roommate, Molly; another guy, named Alex; and me. I appeared to be the youngest. Following the three of them, I made my way upstairs to the small room. Richard stood in the doorway, waving us in. I chose a seat against the back wall. As Richard shut the door and walked toward the whiteboard at the front, I felt as if the room

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