uniQue Magazine

When I slip into the hotel, I don’t ask anyone about Jordan
Paxton’s room number. I follow his scent from the staircase
and wait by his room. Jordan had been so shocked about my father’s
friendship with Luis that he forgot his gun at our house. I intended
to return it. Yet the way he thought of me made my skin crawl. Why
does he liken me to my father so much? Why does my …disposition…
appear as a curse?.
To be honest, I do not know what my disposition is. I keep asking
myself, “Why me?” Why not Ali, or Hussein, or Hamza, or Zahra?
And this is the first time I hear about hereditary shape-shifting. If
there really is a “lycanthrope” gene, why are werewolves represented
viciously biting and mutilating humans in literature?
Darkness. A transparent ambience. Hues of purple blend with orange
and red. A silhouette of a man looms large in its midst. He speaks
and the echo reverberates against an enclosed space, “Fati!” A weaker
echo follows, uttered by a little girl, “Papa!” The large man swoops
down and embraces the little girl. He pats her head. Chocolate brown
hair with ochre highlights, gathered and held by a golden hair bobble.
One pat. Two pats. Three… She doesn’t feel the third. She looks up.
“Papa?” The echo is somber. “Papa?” The silhouette is gone. A tear
drop slides down a forlorn face. It slides down the chin and falls into
the abyss.
I shake my head. Paxton is downstairs in the lobby. I suddenly sense
his awareness. I wet my lips and concentrate. I feel my way through
crevasses, one step at a time, until I find a cerebral blockade. This
is not a static barricade. This blockade is violently vibrant. It is a
hurricane composed of images, scenes, floating phrases and broken
memories, like the flotsam and jetsam of a wreckage, swirling in the
eye of a cyclone, preventing my entry. Should I persist? What am I
risking? Is it merely submersion? Or is it death as well? He is aware.
He is aware and he avoids me. I sigh and slip out.
I weigh the gun on my palm. It is the first gun I ever touched. Even
during the invasion I never touched any weapons. An overpowering
gray. The polluted clouds form the phrase “menace” in the sky
before it breaks. Every letter falls to the ground with a loud thud!Screams crackle in the distance and rival the thunder. A stout woman
is huddled in the corner of the house hugging an adolescent to her
bosom. “Don’t go.” “I have to.” “Don’t go.” “I’ll be right back.” “Don’t
go.” “I think I saw someone.” The phrases collide, merging and mixing
with one another. A third woman heads to the door, her abaya
flapping behind her. She stretches her arm; her fingers grope the door
handle. Click.
I blink the memory away. My chest rises heavily. I rest the back of my
head against the wall and try with Paxton again. This time, I catch
him unawares. He’s perturbed. He’s on the phone with a woman. His
mental vessel is wide open. I wade through effortlessly, glancing left
and right, where images and thoughts are rooted, ripe and ready for
easy picking. At least this is what I think I am doing until I notice the
moving current. It is not I who chooses willingly what to examine, but
the current that carries me from one place to another.
When he mentions my father I snap my teeth inadvertently. A heavy
rain of memories washes over me. I do not lose myself in a memory
for their succession is rapid. One replaces the other like droplets in
the rain. But every one of them touches me and leaves me wet. My
body ripples with anger. Paxton. I think the name with loathing. I
always knew that my father had been pursued by a Paxton. This is
why he left us in 1983. I had been ten. My mother grew desolate.
My sister… The loud wail of a siren blasts through the air and the
sky turns black. The nothingness is so palpable. It oozes like tar. It
suffocates. I fumble for my sister. Zahra!
No! I snap out of the memory. Not now. Not now! I hear the elevator
door and I act without thinking. I level the gun and aim at the sliding
door. I cock the gun, my heart races. I will not let this Paxton get
away. Not this time! Not after everything that has happened! I might
have growled. The doors slide apart.
I swallow. My index finger quivers on the trigger. Had I seen
fear, maybe I would have let the bullet rip into the air. Fear is
not the expression that coats the American’s face. Paxton stands
dumbfounded, not afraid. He takes one step forward and stops when
I snarl. The fool smiles and I get the urge to rip his lips apart.
“Fatma?” He says with his awkward tongue.
“Shut up or I’ll kill you!”
“So why don’t you?”
I apply more pressure on the trigger. I narrow my eyes. I expose my
teeth. And I chicken out.
He chuckles under his breath and takes regular steps in my direction.
He has linked with me.
Let’s talk inside.
Never.
Why are you always like that?
Like what?
He slips his key in the keyhole and unlocks the door. “After you.”
“Over my dead body,” I say.
His genuine smile touches his eyes and he enters before me. I dawdle
in the hallway for a couple of moments before following suit.
My emotions are a yoyo. One second they rage like a storm in an
ocean, and the next they become placid, calm and still. This in turn
frustrates me. I have always been able to control my emotions. When
my father left us, I didn’t cry. I hopped into my mother’s shoes as
she regressed to a solitary lifestyle. I mothered my younger sister,
tended to my older brothers’ needs and befriended my twin brother.
The invasion had been shocking. It made me determined rather than
depressed. I worked with my siblings in their orchestrated resistance.
I didn’t even cry when Zahra was taken as a prisoner of war.
“Fatma,” begins Jordan when I finally enter his hotel room. “New rule.”