The Remains

This is the heart breaking, Leyla thinks, watching the Cairo skyline before her as Mohamed talks.
She sits dangling her feet on the wall facing the Nile, as the lights of the imposing towers glitter on the river surface.

The dusk air is chilly.

She hears his voice vaguely droning on about how their friendship is too valuable, and how he loves her too much to love her back, while all she can think about is-

-It shouldn't be called heartbreak. There is no breaking sound. It isn't sudden. It's a slow and gradual disintegration of the heart, dissolved into a hole somewhere between the lungs. This fire I carry in me all day long leaves me sleepless, wakes me up covered in sweat and crying at the memory of his scent on my skin, and I have been undone without appetite or a will to move my feet ever since he called my name-

Leyla listens and smokes her cigarette, as Mohamed attempts to explain that although he does want her and he does find her attractive, something about their union makes him uneasy.

She had tried to quit smoking, but the moment he walked in and engulfed her in his familiar hug, her knees had started shaking and she knew she would need a lot more nicotine to get through this day, a lot more patience to listen to him list the many reasons why they should not be together.

She has to smile when he describes their lovemaking as uncomfortable, because really, what else can she do?

This man is her friend of many years, the boy she'd grown up with chasing frogs on a quiet farm in the Cairo suburb of Marioteya, the boy who'd shoved her into a muddy roadside ditch once but then beat up the first man to break her heart eight years later.
And now here he is, doing the same, only much more brutal, uncalled for.

She exhales smoke into the air, watches his hands fidget and thinks-

-You don't expect your friend to hurt you this savagely, certainly not someone who said he'd loved you all these years.

Mohamed is broken; she can tell that now in the way he refuses to look her in the eye, how he shifts in his seat on the wall when he talks about his guilt issues, about not sleeping at night because of her.

She can tell he is not over his ex, she can tell he is scared he will sabotage their friendship if he lets her in. She can also tell he is a heartless, misogynist bastard to make this conclusion after seducing her into his bed over and over again this past month.

Perhaps it was the escapism of it all, the refuge they had taken in their quiet little vacation together that made the evolution of their friendship into an affair seem so seamless.

He had spontaneously bought two airline tickets to Beirut, and a few hours later they were tumbling into the freshly pressed hotel sheets, leaving behind the guilt/ history of heartache/ bruises/falls into the ditch to focus on the fact that this man and this woman made magic together.
The kind that lit fires strong enough to last decades.

They had spent the last hours of the December sunset on the Mediterranean Sea, arguing with a German tourist about the virtues of Islam. She sat shivering on the beach with his towel around her shoulders, watching him defend with passion and eloquence a religion that still mystified him.

She knew the moment he said: "I'm not a good Muslim and I am very ignorant, but I'm willing to learn," that she was in love with him.
It was a strange line, a peculiar moment to be defined as the point where her heart walls caved a little, but there was something about his courage and vulnerability, his acceptance of the tourist's ignorance that made her realize- this one is for me.

Yet now he stammers a half-hearted explanation of why he is breaking something that had been twenty years in the making. He is unable to match her expression of fierce intensity as her marble black eyes will him to say it, beg him to admit that he doesn't love her back. At least then she could make a clean break, find redemption and shut him out of her life.

Instead he says something silly about "Who knows what the future will bring? Maybe some time when we're both ready..."

She longs to slap the paper coffee cup out of his trembling hands, slap his foolish face and wake him out of his self-possessed stupor.

She wants to yell-

-You don't do this to me, you selfish asshole, not after years of telling me you can make me happier than anyone I've every loved. You want what's best for me. You are what's best for me-

He had reached for her hand as they walked through a busy market in Downtown Beirut, the tiny alleyways filled with red flower necklaces, incense sticks, tiny plastic statues and fried fruit.
Above their heads, the lonely chimes of a Church bell rang loud as a crowd of church-goers pushed past. Fearing that they might get separated, he had reached for her hand and laced her fingers through his.
He'd held on through the scents of jasmine and fresh tangerine, even when there was no longer a chance of getting lost, all the way home in the taxi, in the hotel elevator, into their bed. In his sleep, he still wouldn’t let go.

Now Mohamed sits before her, half the man he was that day, trying to find a way to explain but Leyla already knows.
She knew the moment she found that she made love while he had sex that he had become less of fiction and more of a typical Egyptian boy who had spent years wanting what he cannot have, and now no longer wanted it.

She waits for the pain in her chest to subside before realizing it's a different kind of heartburn, one that will last long after he returns to the rock that he climbed out of, long after he replaces her with a new face that’s uncomplicated and unlikely to make him ‘uncomfortable’.

She summons the remains of her courage, pulls her thick cardigan around her shoulders and says:
"I want you. I want to be with you. You make me happy. And I know you don't want me back."

It’s a matter of self-preservation, the moment when what’s left of her heart snaps into action, and survival instincts set in.
For some reason, those vulnerable words of admission help Leyla acknowledge that this is rejection at its rawest, no matter how he tries to sugar-coat it.

Now she can start to distance herself, un-befriend him, talk to God again, regain her appetite, go for walks alone, and surround herself with friends who won’t try to sleep with her.

She decides to hate his big ears, the careless way he spills his cigarette ash over his shoes and how he cusses like a sailor.
She decides that she no longer misses the weight of his chest against hers. She doesn’t want him to linger over her lower lip, she no longer wants to spread her hands out over his back like a map. She needs a new compass, a new direction home.

"This won’t change anything between us,” he stammers, as he flicks his cigarette stub into the muddy river below them, “We will still be friends, won't we?”

Leyla looks over his shoulder at the couples dotted along the wall, each huddled in a shady spot. Some are holding hands, others whispering sweet nothings into each others’ ears.
She wonders how many of them are happy in this very moment. Most of the girls are veiled, most of the boys young enough to be in school, all of them seeking this quiet hangout as their only refuge to be alone.

She wonders how many of them are sleeping together; how many have had sex as good as theirs.

Her mother had always said, “Sex before marriage is haram, Leyla, because God must bless the union of the bodies. And if it isn’t blessed by God, then you cannot trust the man. He will break your heart.”

From the moment Mohamed pulled her towards his bed with little resistance or guilt from her part, she had been so sure that this was something so genuine, so precious. She was wrong.

She looks back at Mohamed waiting nervously for her answer, so she lies with every fiber in her body and says, “Of course we will.”