Other Lives Read Online Free PDF Page B

I leave the bedroom on my tiptoes, open the door that faces the Indian Ocean in Mombasa and go out into the garden. I sit on the white sand that reflects the moonlight with incandescent, silvery colors. Silver stretches out over the surface of the sand and together they enter the depths of the water in the distance. The water mingles with the nighttime light from a distance like an incomplete rainbow. The sounds of the waves recur in a rhythm like sex between two lovers who never get bored. I am quickly overcome and fall asleep on the sand, only to wake up with water flowing around me on all sides. Nothing eases my severe headaches except the play of the sea, its ebb and flow, its humidity and saltiness. The sea is absorbed by the sand and submerges me like an act of total love. The most beautiful thing I experienced living in Mombasa was my discovery of the sea’s playful ebb and flow. This calms my anxiety as though taming it. Ebb and flow, like the play between dreams and nightmares, my life here and my life there, the silence of my mother and the madness of my father. Ebb and flow… past and present. Whenever I think I have forgotten the past, it forces itself on me again in all my dreams.
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    There’s no distance at all between ebb and flow in my psychoanalyst Seetajeet’s clinic in Mombasa. They mix and mingle completely and I can no longer distinguish between them. This is not what exhausts me, though. What exhausts me is speaking in a language that is not my own about things that pain me, that make me cry. I must to talk to a British doctor of Indian origin in a language that is not my own. In these moments I feel like someone digging an enormous hole with only one soft, weak hand. I want him to understand and to help me understand myself, what’s happening to me. I want him to help me be delivered from sins I have not committed: the sin of my brother’s death, the sin of my mother’s silence, the sin of my father’s madness… the sin of being forced to abort my baby, the baby that I’m not yet able to conceive with Chris, as though I am being punished. But for three years I haven’t been sure if my psychoanalyst understands me. Sometimes he comments on what I’ve said at moments when I really want him to stay silent. I don’t know how to speak another language and cry at the same time. But I don’t stop seeing him, either. I start speaking English with an Indian accent to be sure that what I’m saying is clear and understandable. Sometimes I find myself speaking Arabic inadvertently. When I notice, I suddenly fall silent, as if I’ve lost my voice. There is a painful quality to this silence. It takes some time to get back to my second or third language. Languages collide in my head and prevent words from escaping from my mouth. The Arabic language no longer emerges clearly; it’s weepy and convulsive. I raise my head from the pillow on the couch and look at him suddenly, only to find his eyes closed, as though he’s been taken by a passing distraction. Or perhaps he didn’t notice what was happening, didn’t notice my words in Arabic, words he can’t understand.
    Look at me , I say to him choking on my tears, Look at me! You are not with me…!
    He doesn’t respond. He opens his eyes, looking straight ahead, far away from me, and not meeting my gaze.
    â€œI got rid of my baby like a little bug. Now I want to get pregnant and I can’t…!” I whisper in a voice emerging from deep inside me, trying to stand up at the end of the session and forgetting that the person in front of me doesn’t understand the language of my skin.
    I collapse on the chair and drown in a torrent of tears.
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    Before the plane takes off, Chris and I have a coffee together for the last time in the small building that is the Nairobi airport. The coffee is thick and I feel nauseated. The airport looks like debris from the surrounding