LITMIR.BIZ

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I heard her argue with me. Just please don’t let it snow today, I thought, for my wife has no qualms about driving the kids around even when it’s snowing. She doesn’t know about black ice, and she isn’t willing to hear a word about how quickly people die because of it. “Everyone’s driving,” I can hear her say as I walk toward the block of elevators at the entry level, asserting vehemently that were it up to me, the entire state would be shut down at the first sign of snow.

      Seven in the evening is when the stores on the ground floor close. A young saleswoman from the gift store was bringing in a metal wagon on which there were balloons that read “Mazel Tov” and “Get Well Soon.” The grate in front of the bookstore was being shut, too, and only the café across the way, a franchise of a larger chain, was still open. It dawned on me that I should have brought my father a present. After all I hadn’t seen him in fourteen years.

      “The Cardiology Institute?” a tired woman in her fifties in a pair of green scrubs asked as she came out of the elevator. She looked like a nurse, but I wasn’t sure I was able to categorize hospital employees by their garb. When I was little I thought that in a hospital only doctors wore scrubs, but little by little I realized that even the floor cleaners, who sometimes greeted us in Arabic, or the guy with the limp pushing the empty wagons, wore some sort of scrubs.

      “Cardiology’s on the fourth floor.”

       5

      My father is small. My father is pale. My father’s eyes are sunken deep in their sockets. I look at him and try to follow his inhalations, tracing the rise and fall of his chest as the respirator pumps air in and out, recognizing the exact moment when his lungs fill up and empty, watching for movement, however slight, beneath the thin, Star of David–patterned sheet that covers him. That’s what I did with each of my kids when they were babies, what I still do with my youngest son before I leave his bedside every night, even though he’s nearly five. When I can’t see visible signs of respiration, I bring my ear to his mouth and listen, eyes shut. And if I don’t hear anything, I draw even closer, to feel his warm breath against my right cheek.

      I’d like to feel my father’s breath on my cheek, but the oxygen mask prevents me from doing so.

      I have been so scared of this moment, so preoccupied with it. Ever since I can remember starting to remember, my father’s death is what I’ve feared most. In all of the dark scenarios I conjured, it was always his heart that gave out, even before I understood the danger of the cigarettes he smoked.

      “Heart attack,” I’d hear people say in my youth, when speaking of a sudden death. “Heart attack,” back then meant certain death. When I was little I didn’t even know it was possible to live after one. “Sakta qalbiya,” they would say, and to me the phrase sounded like the falling of the heart: “Sakta qalbiya,” and how can you go on living after the heart has fallen out.

      “What happened to me?” my father asked in a soft voice once he’d pulled down his oxygen mask. “You had a heart attack, Dad,” I answered softly, and I could see in his eyes he started to remember.

      “Is that you? When did you get here?” He tried to smile.

      “I came in the evening. You were asleep.”

      “What time is it?”

      “Two.”

      “In the morning?”

      “Yes.”

      “How’re your wife and your kids?”

      “They send regards.”

      “They’re in Tira?”

      “No. I came alone.”

      “Have you been to the house?”

      “Not yet.”

      “Can you get me some water?” he said with a dry throat as he tried to wet his lips with his tongue. There was a bottle of water on his bedside table. I brought the bottle to his lips. He was able to raise his head, and he opened his mouth with difficulty. I could see no way of offering him a drink without pouring some into his mouth.

      “What are you doing?” a nurse scolded me in a Russian accent as she walked into the room. “Are you trying to kill him?”

      She flung open a drawer and pulled out a black straw. “Here, slowly, put this in his mouth and he can drink. Slowly.”

      I did as she instructed and Dad gently pursed his lips and sucked up some water.

      “No,” I told the nurse in a whisper, trying to control my voice so that the rage pulsing in my temples would not be exposed.

      “No, what?” the nurse asked.

      “No, ma’am, I am not trying to kill my father.”

      “What?” she snapped impatiently. She had no idea what I was talking about. “When he’s done drinking put the oxygen mask back in place, okay?”

      “You’ve already killed me anyway,” I imagined his whisper.

      My father fell back asleep. Was it the same sleep that he once treasured? The same sleep that he would announce the commencement of on Saturday afternoons and that we would have to respect, keeping quiet, refraining from running around the house, slamming doors, bouncing balls out in the yard. The sleep the violation of which, we knew, might well bring punishment? Is the sleep of one who’s dazed by medicine akin to the sleep of one who sleeps in his bed? Is the sleep of one who prepares ceremoniously for it, showering, brushing teeth, urinating, and putting on pajamas, or perhaps remaining in his underwear, akin to an imposed sleep? Are the dreams of those in the hospital identical to the dreams of those in their beds?

      “What do you think about when you get into bed?” was one of the standard questions that I asked my clients. Generally, people said they thought about the things they were supposed to find truly important: their kids, their grandkids, their wives, their countries. That was why I asked them. I never expected them to say anything except what they would like to be remembered for after their deaths.

      The written memory must be made beautiful, and if I felt that the material I was given during an interview might tarnish the image of the protagonist of the memoir in the eyes of his or her readers, I edited their dreams, erased and added sentences, and even, as necessary, invented new dreams and new thoughts to accompany them in bed. I inserted into their life stories memories and dreams that they had never dreamt or recalled and, generally, when I sent them a draft for approval and correction, they liked the reflections they saw and were convinced the words were faithful renditions of the truth as they had experienced it, accurate depictions of the way they drifted into sleep.

      One of the first people to hire me to write his life story told me that ever since he’d moved into an old-age home his technique for summoning sleep was to conjure every woman he had ever desired. Those memories, he said, are his most beautiful ones and they bring him a sense of joy even though they are often memories of unrequited lust. Every night he starts at the beginning, from first crushes in grade school, and moves forward chronologically until he loses the thread or falls asleep, whatever comes first. I transcribed the memory word for word from the recording, and then I highlighted and erased it. Although I did not put it in his memoir, which was full of stories of valor from the many battles in which he had fought, it’s the only story of his that my memory has saved.

       6

      What do I think about before I fall asleep?

      Back in the day, when I’d have trouble getting to sleep, I’d imagine myself as a soldier, even though I’ve never been in an army and have never held a gun that isn’t a toy. I was clad in army green but didn’t know in whose ranks I was fighting. During those presleep, imaginary war games I manned a defensive position, usually guarding the house. The war always took place in the vicinity of the house,

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