When Hell Smiled

The hours pass as though the hands of time were glaring at me with arrows tipped in spite, wagering, in all their arrogance, that sooner or later they will break my resistance. Time and I have been locked in a blood feud for as long as I can remember. Since childhood, I have dared the years to carve themselves into my face, to trespass upon my body.

Whenever I stood before a mirror, I would raise a finger in defiance, as though warning time itself: no age will break my femininity, no frailty will fracture my beauty.

I was seven years old, and in my mother's fading eyes I was the most beautiful creature alive, the most captivating in the eyes of men.

Small as I was, slight and slender, beauty had already clothed my features in pride and armed me with a stubbornness that bordered on arrogance.

Yet beauty itself never occupied me as much as the preservation of my figure. Nor did femininity enchant me. If anything, I neglected its worth until it became almost a curse, something I imagined standing between me and the success I longed to reach.

I leaned too heavily on intelligence and too little on effort, like someone throwing a ball against a wall: if it returned, I caught it; if it escaped into another's hands, I simply turned toward the next.

My childhood drifted past like a cloud that never rained, carrying within it memories, wishes, and drops of saltwater that refused to fall. Tears never came easily to me, whatever the reason.

I know now that my father is a page among my torn and weathered sheets.

My mother is another.

My son Muhammad may be two pages, perhaps more.

But Ali

Ali is the index that stands against them all.