Douae Arrad

Douae Arrad

Jawhara

The room smells like honey, pain, and the salt from the sea I live a few miles from.

The windows are sealed with thick wood. Only the soft beam of the feeble predawn sunlight of a spring Sunday is sneaking through a tiny crevice.

I can hear the wave‘s crash against the cliffs in a passionate embrace and feel the chaos of foam and water as I lie still, staring blankly at the immaculate white of the ceiling. The dark circles under my eyes slowly start vertiginously spiraling, dragging me into the vicious Capernaum of my thoughts.

―-In a few weeks, you will be wrapped in the soft fabric of your wedding Abaya, watching your life slowly fall apart. What is your darkest nightmare will look like a utopic philarmony. In the backyard of the house that witnessed your first breath and watched grow through 16 springs; people will be dancing to Dabke music, laughing at Jeddo‘s jokes, stuffing their stomachs with baklava and kunefe, hugging each other. The screams of the kids running barefoot in the green grass, the harmony of Fairuz‘s songs and the melody of the women‘s voices humming along, the bellowing laughs of the army of your uncles will form an utterly beautiful symphony floating in the tridimension of that sunny day. The sweet smell of pastries and the warm feeling of May‘s sunshine on your bare skin will make the atmosphere even more dreamy and delightful. This day would have been the epitome of your definition of happiness if the man who will be standing at the corner of the garden, sipping his bitter dark coffee while vehemently blowing on a cigarette –which will probably be his sixth in a rowwasn‘t a 38 year old freak who insisted on marrying you to ―save your purity‖, assuring he had the right educational background, financial prospects, and good manners to qualify as the rightest husband for you... In ―The Bachelorette‖, hewouldn‘t even have gotten to the second round. Your father will keep teasing him and telling him to take care of you, while fervently tapping on his shoulder. ―I will take care of her like a jewel‖, Amad will respond with his slytherish voice, his jaw clenched in pain.

But you‘re not a jewel. You‘re not a jewel; you don‘t want nor need to be protected. You don‘t want to be another victim of these corrupt society rules, you don‘t to be another male‘s phantasm, you don‘t want to be another Jasmine. You are not a jewel: you are an inexhaustible flame, you are a tangled jungle with gold treasured within you, you are a chaotic

storm and a dancing star at the same time, and you are a bird flying high despite the bullet holes in your wings. You hold thousands of galaxies constantly exploding inside of you. You are wild but magic, there‘s no lie in you fire. You can build your own story with your strong shape-shifting abilities and be your own savior from this tenebrous and effrenated destiny. You can be a Sitt-Al-Mulk, an Asma bint-Shihab or a Cleopatra. You can be cradled in your own arms.‖

I stand up and suddenly realize I‘d love to see widespread colored fabrics in every corner of this room. I grab a hammer and bring down the wood obstructing my window.

My eyes observe the horizon. The ocean is now calm, the soft sun rays reflecting all over the abyssal blue shades of the water. It‘s a beautiful day. 2

2 Author’s note:

I tried to use the sad empty room as a metaphor of the miserable destiny some young Arab girls think is their only option. Taking of the wood from the window illustrates them taking control over their lives and realizing that their Arab identity is actually a power and making them want to follow other effigies of Arab females‘ power. Jawhara means ―jewel‖ in Arabic. Ironically, it‘s the name I gave to the character.