‘Ghostly Faces’

Ghostly Faces

By Alaa Abdulwahab 

Translated by Ranya Abdelrahman

“This face. It’s from there, from the other side,” the woman on Instagram says, drawing quick lines with both hands.

The random scribbles turn into a squiggly face. Above it, the medium stamps today’s date onto the page and voila! Her drawing is suddenly legit. Then, in bigger letters, details flash across the screen, about the spirit or their living relatives, clues for recognizing the dearly departed.

“That’s my mom! My dad! My uncle!”

The comments are full of exclamations like these. My eyes whirl through them. I sit up. Spread my middle and index fingers apart on the screen. Inspect every inch of the hazy portrait. Nimbly scroll through post after post: perhaps I’ll find Mama’s face.

My brain makes fun of me: So, assuming this nonsense is true, where is Mama? I mean, where’s her body? Her being? And where does it say this medium is? Out somewhere in the Californian desert!

Like a mind reader, the woman slyly answers my question while describing one of the portraits. “Physical boundaries don’t exist on the other side.” Hmm. So the spirits over there know that this medium exists in our world. They tell each other about her, and, because they’re always around us—I mean, around the living people they love—they can see whether we check this woman’s account. As soon as we do, they rush to get in touch with her.

It’s obvious why the dead reach out to us. They want to reassure us they’re okay, let us know they’ll always be with us, and tell us our relationship doesn’t end with death, as we thought.

A presence hovers around me in the empty room: these persistent hints and nudges are starting to work on me. I stuff my phone under my pillow and consider deleting my Instagram account.

It would mean sacrificing all the wonderful pictures of my cat and dog, the epic legacy I would otherwise have left for the world, but I might just do it, because I’m afraid it’s true. Afraid that Mama will realize I’m following the medium, and then a vision of her face will come to me via Instagram. I love Mama. But I definitely do not love her ghost.

I’m not crazy or naïve. Okay, maybe I am, just a little. All the faces in the posts look the same to me. And I know there’s some kind of trick involved. The woman feeds on people’s grief, and she’s a pro at it. Drawing spirit-faces is how she makes her living. She does private readings, too, for desperate clients who can’t bear to wait for their loved ones’ faces to show up on their phones. I’ve got nothing but respect for visions, mediums, and ghosts, but my mind boggles trying to square those otherworldly lives with the laws of physics. I’m not sure they exist. But even so, thinking about them—about ghosts, I mean, even if they are an illusion—makes me anxious.

I jump out of bed to turn on the nightlight. I hope I can stop my brain from telling me the cluttered clothes rack is a giant creature, strutting around the room.

Funnily enough, my unbelief in ghosts has strengthened my fear of them. I know it doesn’t seem logical, but, unlike the ghosts, here in the real world, my feelings have the right to exist.

The ghosts around me are crestfallen, but they nod in understanding.

In times of grief, people are miserable. They’ll throw themselves into anything that might ease the pain of being separated from their loved ones and give their hearts some temporary peace, even if they don’t really believe in it. Oddly, thirteen years after her death, it was a vision of Mama’s face that crossed my mind, even though my cat Shushu is the one who died just a few weeks ago.

In seven years, I’d become closer to Shushu than I had been to Mama over the twenty years of our relationship. As I grieved for him, it wasn’t Mama’s face I looked for among the dead—it was a meaning or a reason for Shushu’s passing. I was trying to make sense of death in any context, be it human or animal. The dead are legion, you see, and the grieving are even more: I’m not alone in being suffocated by the death of loved ones.

Sharing a tragedy brings comfort—although not much. I had always turned to strangers, not to relatives who shared my pain. I wanted those strangers’ feelings to reassure me that my grief was justified, that it made sense.

I found solace with many people, especially my therapist. Still, her kind nature didn’t stop her from casually telling me that grief is normal. It peaks at six months, and, after that, our preoccupation with the pain gradually subsides until, within a year, it’s gone. This was four months after Mama’s death, at the beginning of the journey. So, I won’t be ashamed of searching for faces right now. I’m grieving: I can be as sad as I want. Perhaps, in my grief over Shushu, I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Like the medium’s other followers, I, too, am a sad woman who’s trying to break free from her sorrow.

A waterfall of sorrow rains down on me, pushing me under the surface.

Someone has commented on one of the medium’s posts, a kind voice of reason: “This stuff makes sense if it helps grieving people find comfort. Just let them deal with things in their own way.” I adopt this theory until I finish both grieving and writing this text.

Behind me, the ghosts nod in agreement.

 

1

Children wonder, or anyhow I, as a child, wondered: Who does Death think it is? I won’t let it take my loved ones away from me! It makes no sense for your beloved to sail off into the unknown, just because they’ve stopped breathing. It’s absurd. A betrayal. If someone I love had died— you know, like Mama, or my cat, or Baba—I’d just hide them under the bed. I wouldn’t tell anyone they were dead. Having them there with me, even as a cold, stiff body, would make me feel safe.

Around me, the ghosts’ eyes widen with worry.

No, I haven’t lost my mind just yet. That was a long time ago. Back then, I used to think that when God saw how sad we were at being apart, He’d take pity on us, and He’d bring the dead body back to life right then (I snap my fingers) or even a few days later. It’s easy for the devout to believe such a miracle might happen. Abrahamic religions are full of stories like “The People of the Cave” in the Quran, the raising of Lazarus in the New Testament, and the resurrection of the Zarephath widow’s son in the Old Testament.

We wouldn’t have to worry about decomposition. God would bring my loved one back quickly. And, just to be safe, in case their body was denied resurrection, I’d channel my ancient ancestors and mummify my beloved in a box. I’d build a small pyramid on top, at the bottom of the wardrobe. Or perhaps beside it.

When I was a little girl, I was overwhelmed by a fear of death. Was it just me? Or are all children like that? I don’t know. Perhaps it was because, for years, before she fell ill herself, Mama kept us immersed in her grief for her father and the minutiae of his illness. Or maybe humans are naturally disposed to fear death at every stage of their lives, from the cradle to the grave.

Anyway, one second after your loved one dies, you realize that what you used to think is impossible.

Behind me, the ghosts sigh in relief. 

From time to time, in the newspaper’s “Crime and Accidents” pages, we read that someone has actually gone through with this catastrophic act. We pray that God gives them the strength of endurance, and that their grief hasn’t completely rotted their brain. We forget that the same idea crossed our own young minds. The main difference between us and them is that, in their moment of sorrow, their brain accepted the idea, acted on it, and tried to ease their pain, no matter how. It simply made sure they didn’t look at the dead eyes in front of them, eyes that seemed suddenly unfamiliar.

After I hugged and kissed Mama and Shushu, I was frightened by their glassy eyes. I wanted to get through the formalities as quickly as possible. Even so, I double- and triple-checked their bodies, to avoid making a disastrous mistake: What if they were in a deep sleep? Or in a coma? I didn’t trust Mama’s doctor or Shushu’s vet. What if they had missed their heartbeats? And they were buried alive?

As is the custom, we went back to visit Mama’s grave three days after she was buried. In Egypt, we like to make a show of our grief. It’s a deep-rooted Egyptian tradition—ancient Egyptian, I think— to make sure the deceased has been held to account for their deeds and has crossed over to the other side to walk in fields of golden grain. Or perhaps it’s a Coptic tradition, in the spirit of the three days before Christ’s resurrection?

In any case, we found a crack in the tomb’s back wall, on the side closer to Mama’s head. Let’s say the crack was near her hand.

Behind me, the ghosts strike their palms together, washing their hands of me and my delusions. 

Members of our extended family swore that the crack had been there for two decades: the contractor had been in a rush to deliver the tomb and hadn’t given the concrete enough time to dry. They also said that grief had scrambled my brain. Others, unsure whether the crack was there before Mama was buried, played along with my fears. “She was a sick woman,” they said. “Do you really think those weak fists of hers could break through cement?”

Thinking about this both terrified me and gave me hope. Could she be alive? Had someone rescued her? Was she living far away, having lost her memory from shock, just like in the movies?

Mama—I mean her body—had spent the night with us before she was buried. We would have noticed if she was alive. I know now that all my deluded thoughts were far from the truth.

Cats, like people, do not come back from the dead. Except . . . a cat that looks like Shushu has moved into the abandoned house in front of ours. Every day, we look at each other from the balcony. Biss biss biss, I call, summoning him, but he turns his face away. Is he punishing me? Don’t I deserve a cat in my home again?

I go back to worrying that I buried Shushu too soon. To be honest, with Shushu, I didn’t take the time to reassure myself that he really was dead. Just a few hours after his shallow breaths stopped, I buried him. Every time I remember this, I get angry.

The ghost to my left grumbles. He signals to his friends around the room and holds a hand up near his face. Moving his thumb and fingers, he silently mouths: “She never shuts up. Such a windbag.” 

 

2

When Mama died, I was angry. But with Shushu’s death, a sense of bewilderment shoved my anger aside. I feel as if all the cats in our world are immortal, and it’s only mine whose life has ended. As if I should have the right to decide who lives and who dies. So many others, in my opinion, could have died instead of my loved ones and left the world a better place. I don’t see death as a punishment—it’s just that they don’t deserve to live.

All lives are meant to be sacred—for starters, I’ve always been against the death sentence. But even so, I desperately want to know why? Why Mama and not Teita? Is it normal for a daughter to die before her mother? Had Mama prayed, like I did, that she’d be the first to go? Why did God answer her prayer but not mine? Why did Shushu die and not some other wicked creature? A cat, say, who bullies the other cats?

Mama’s death left me angry with God and the heavens. The world felt like a godforsaken, heavenless place.

My anger at death leaked into my feelings toward the people around me. I was angry because—when I waved at my siblings from the balcony as they left for school, just like Mama used to do—they didn’t look up or wave back. They didn’t know I was standing there. To be honest, I hadn’t told them. But I was angry that they didn’t notice themselves. And I was angry with myself. Angry that I had taken on this overbearing role I was no good at, that no one had asked me to play.

My anger built up, and I tried to banish it by cooking, aiming to make each meal a feast in a house where no one wanted to eat. I was hoping to bring Mama’s spirit back through food that tasted like hers. When I failed, I got angry. The pasta stuck together, so I threw it away and got angry. The za’atar and cheese pastries fell to pieces, so I got angry. I burnt the rice. I got angrier and angrier and angrier. In hindsight, I’m proud of myself: by making dishes I knew would fail, I could hide the real reason for my anger. My brain managed my anger well, making it erupt, reach its peak, and then subside.

But now, my cat’s death has changed me. Shushu, with his little pink-padded paws, brushed my anger at his death out of my heart. Still—I was angry with the people I met on the way to our last visit to the vet.

I was angry with the taxi driver who didn’t have the common decency or compassion to say “hope he gets better soon” when he saw the winsome creature passed out on my chest.

Instead, he looked at us, pursing his lips. It was a look of pure envy. He watched me pat my little friend’s head and decided to ask how much it cost to visit the vet here in Egypt. No, it wasn’t envy, it was greed and disapproval. It was his way of showing he despised me. To be precise, he despised my frivolity in spending money on something that was, in his opinion, unworthy. Even worse, he was convinced he had the right to feel that way.

I was angry, too, with a friend who downplayed my worry about Shushu’s illness and my sorrow over his death. “Thank God he didn’t die of a virus,” she said. “It might’ve taken them both.” I looked at my little dog, Tutu, and kissed the back and front of my hand in gratitude, like a taxi driver who’s been handed his fare. But in my head, I turned her into an ex-friend. I imagined myself pulling her hair and giving her a shake to teach her some manners. She needs to think about what she’s saying to comfort people before throwing her words, like stones, at their faces.

Bored of my stories, the ghost who complained about my constant chattering pretends to be asleep. Et tu, ghost? Anyway, Mr. Wiseguy, ghosts don’t sleep.

 

3

My anger peaks and is followed by a false calm. I try to settle things with my brain so it doesn’t invite the anger or anxiety back in. Come on, brain: let’s find some better reason why my heart and my home feel so empty. We know why, of course, but what if it could have been avoided? What if, the night she died, I had peeled two pomegranates for Mama instead of one?

One of the ghosts makes a face. Seems like pomegranates lose their appeal when you’re dead. Obviously, they’re no use to ghosts because, according to Teita, pomegranates make you live longer. And, for the first time, it turns out one of my grandmother’s theories is actually backed by science, because pomegranates fight inflammation. Would Mama have lived longer if she’d had more pomegranate seeds in her body?

After Mama died, I imagined I’d been through the entire gamut of grief and every twisted what-if scenario. But now, I’m going through all of it again.

My grief over Shushu has brought back a fresh sense of guilt because a new what-if has wormed its way into my soul. I’m kicking myself for giving up the career I’d studied for. Why had I walked away from the lab? From my knowledge of illnesses? My basic experience with medicine? Maybe I could have remembered something that would have saved Shushu. I’d have had contacts who could rush test results, get a quicker diagnosis, lead me faster to better vets. I’d have known right away that the prescription didn’t make sense: crucial meds were missing and disastrous items added in. I’d have ditched the rotten vet’s medicine, and Shushu would be alive right now, sleeping on my lap while I type.

What if sticking to that career could have saved Shushu?

But I quickly remember that I was that person in another life, not so long ago. Back then, I was still at university, and I’d finished my training in blood and immunological diseases. I could follow both what was said and what was written in cryptic scribbles on prescriptions. I had the confidence that stems from knowledge, the proud lift of a chin, and I nodded along in understanding. And yet, Mama still died in my arms.

This what-if scenario opens a door and lets madness in. So, to get through this episode of reckless denial, I decide to put it to good use. I make a plan to descend on the evil clinic and kick up a holy fuss: I’ll grab the vet by the collar, tell him he’s stupid, unworthy of his profession, and that he didn’t deserve to touch a hair on Shushu’s head. Shushu, who was my heart walking outside my body. I plan to drag that vet through the courts, take away his license . . . Just thinking about all of it exhausts me. I break down and cry.

 

4

To cry, during grief, doesn’t mean suffering. It’s the beginning of relief. Which stage, then, is the darkest?

Parting is terrifying. But certain moments before death are the worst, the peak of the mountain. When your gut tells you it’s time to say goodbye and that these are the last moments you’ll ever share with a loved one. In the future, when you look back, you’ll describe it as a miserable time. You’ll say that yes, you felt the end was near, but you were too much of a coward to do something about it. You kept your farewells and final confessions bottled up inside you. And you hoped it was just anxiety: perhaps the pill you’d taken that day had skipped over your worries and forgotten to do its job.

Between my honest instincts and fickle fears, heartache lies.

Let’s take a picture together because I feel our time is running out. I was afraid if I did that, it really would’ve been the end, so I held back: I didn’t want to jinx Shushu’s chances. The dormant believer in me woke up, the one I thought was dead. She whispered the Tiyarah Prayer in my ear, to chase away my superstitions. I spoke the prayer with conviction. But Shushu died in spite of everything, and I remembered why I’d shuttered my devout self a long time ago.

Without taking any photos, I held Shushu in my arms, and we pottered around the house. I had a feeling that this was a farewell tour.

We wandered around his favorite places. I opened the fridge door with his precious paw. Brought his nose up to the shelves he loved to sniff at on his fearless raids of the kitchen.

I took him out on the balcony, to the far end, the side closest to the neighbors whose children were Shushu’s great and loyal fans.

We visited all his usual haunts: the bathroom, in front of the TV, on top of the wardrobe, on Baba’s pillow, on my bed, and on my chest.

But my anxiety won, so I gave in to my fears and stopped shy of fully embracing the farewell rituals.

In another scenario, I would have followed my instincts all the way. We would’ve taken lots of silly pictures and listened to “This is My Night,” swapping looks and secret giggles at a private joke we shared about this song.

Speaking of Umm Kulthum, I noticed a weird connection between her and Shushu. On four of our seven visits to the vet during the last week of his life, the taxi drivers were either listening to Souma when we got in, or one of her songs would be next on the radio. If I’d listened to one last Umm Kulthum song with Shushu, would it have cooled my burning rage even just a little?

The cheeky ghost makes fun of me, waving his hand around as if he’s clutching a handkerchief à la Umm Kulthum.

I didn’t have the courage to listen to anything while Shushu drew his last breaths in my arms.

Perhaps it was because a naïve hope had stayed alive in me, even though I’d been through this before. Death throes in cats are no different from death throes in humans. The death rattle comes again and again, tricking you so you don’t know which is really the last. I lay Shushu on my chest, his eyes gazing into mine, one of my hands on his head, the other on his cheek. I cried a little. I told him things he already knew, things I wanted to say again. A wave of drowsiness came over me, and, in spite of myself, my eyelids drooped. I woke to the sound of his rasping breaths. I stroked his fur. I talked to him. Then my eyes closed again. Did Shushu make that sound to wake me so he could spend his last moments gazing into my eyes?

An invisible hand was clamping my eyelids together. From a bottle by my bed, I splashed water onto my face to chase away the sleep.

I looked into Shushu’s eyes and sang him the first song I’d made up for him. His song. The one he loved.

The rattle suddenly stopped. He was still alive, and he’d begun to purr.

I was delighted. He looked happy. I thought he was getting better. I told myself we’d made it through another difficult night, that we’d always remember it, that it would keep us strong in tough times ahead.

We sat there, our eyes locked, my hand on his soft cheek. The purring reassured me, so I picked up my phone to search for “Ten ways to comfort your ‘sick’ cat.” As I scrolled, I found “dying” cats mentioned too, but in further denial, I ignored the bits about “dying” and decided it was enough to focus on illness.

I kept looking back and forth between Shushu and my phone, feeling calm, like this was a perfectly peaceful, ordinary morning.

The next time I looked into Shushu’s eyes, his pupils were focused on something behind me, or rather beyond me and beyond my reach.

The stupid ghost wipes a tear from his cheek. It’s true what they say: talk of dying can melt hearts of stone.

I don’t want to say I’ve experienced motherhood with Shushu, except this blistered heart is not like any sorrow I’ve felt before. I was not and will not be a mother. Is this how a mother mourns her child? Perhaps. In her grief over Shushu, my dog Tutu developed a phantom pregnancy. Her mammary glands secreted milk, and she sat alone in the dark, refusing to eat, looking at me in such despair, it felt like I was being stabbed. In animals, grieving can cause false motherhood. But their feelings are genuine: that was how Tutu expressed distress. For her, the worst possible anguish was that of a mother who had lost her child. Perhaps she passed some of that sorrow on to me.

I remembered how my grief for Mama felt different, and how our relationship changed—on my side—years after she died. Certain truths became clear to me only after the fog of grief had lifted.

As much as I miss Mama, I’m angry with her. After a while, the dregs of these conflicting feelings build up inside me. They pile onto my grief, shattering it, and I begin to grieve for her again, as if she’d just died yesterday. Our relationship goes back to the way it used to be: healthy, honest, and peaceful, but lacking maturity, understanding, and survival skills.

Survival? Have I survived losing Mama? Or Shushu? Has Tutu survived being separated from her mother? Or the pain of Shushu’s death? Has Tutu made it through all the stages of her grief?

 

5

I’m not sure when the grieving process ends, but it happens without us realizing it.

It ends at eight a.m. . . . No, really, there isn’t a set time of day when the grieving process ends. Forgive me, but during sad times, or when I’m looking back on them like this, my awkward sense of humor takes over—anyway, that’s another story.

I turn to look at the foolish ghost. How could he have wasted this perfect chance to make fun of me? Idiot!

Let’s go back to eight a.m. A few hours after Shushu died, I left Tutu by herself. I had a depressing errand to run: I was meeting Baba’s doctor. I walked around the fence outside the hospital, alone, crying for Shushu, for Baba, for my loneliness at that moment, for my fear of the future. My fear that nearly all the world around me would change, the world that I knew.

A white butterfly suddenly appeared near my face and stayed there, hovering beside me.

The ghosts around me smile serenely. They seem to sense what I’m about to say. 

I know. It’s such a cliché. But that’s what happened. I’ve already said I’m not the sort who believes in the supernatural. But when the storms of life hit me and a tender hand reaches out, I’ll gratefully accept any comforting pats, even if the hand is an illusion.

I remember reading an essay by David Sedaris where he talked about his sister coming back as a butterfly. He doubted it was her, but in the end, I think he accepted the idea because of his guilt over their long estrangement.

She had suffered from depression, and their relationship had always been difficult. She’d tried to meet him after one of his shows, while he was signing books for his fans, but he refused. He shut the door in her face.

Later, he heard of her suicide. There had been no final farewell.

For some reason, I didn’t hate Sedaris when he confessed to rejecting his sister. Does that mean I’ve grown up? Matured? The man had been protecting himself. If I’d been in his place, I would have hugged my sister tight; we would’ve sunk to the bottom and either lived or died together. I would have ruined my book signing myself. But he did what I would want the people I love to do for themselves. Perhaps that’s why I don’t despise him.

Right now, though, I reckon I’m more like the sister in his story. That’s why I’m trying to heal. To survive. To come to terms with Shushu’s death and to separate my grief for him from my grief for Mama. To protect the people who love me, so I don’t sap what’s left of their energy, or force them to make difficult choices. So we don’t end up being destroyed together, because I’m sure they’d never leave me alone behind a closed door.

Basically, like Sedaris, I realized that the butterfly was Shushu’s spirit, and that gave me peace. It was the same peace my sister and I felt after we held a spur-of-the-moment farewell ritual for Shushu. We shooed Tutu out of the room and washed Shushu’s body, more or less the way Muslims cleanse their dead.

Where have all the ghosts gone? The thing is, Shushu died in early June, and—joking aside—I know there’s nothing more common than butterflies in spring. I can tell what the cheeky ghost was planning to say, even though I can’t see him or his friends. Have they gone and died again, a second death on top of their first one? All because of my overlapping stories?

We rubbed Shushu’s body with coconut-scented dry shampoo and combed it through his fur. The powder got into his eyes and turned them grey. I used eye drops to flush them, but it only made things worse. We tried, and failed, to close his eyes. My sister and I counted out Shushu’s wonderful qualities as we washed him. We were calm and confident, as thorough as professionals, as if we did this all the time, as if this was a career we’d inherited from our mothers and grandmothers. We actually did have some experience: Years ago, we’d done the same for Mama, and since then, the ritual had often been on our minds and in our conversations.

We sang Shushu’s favorite song. Talked to him. Kissed him. Made a fuss over him. We wrote him farewell letters. Folded the pages then stuffed them, along with his toy, into a small bag of tissues. We slipped the bag under his armpit, to be buried with him. I imagined he would read the letters in his solitude, that they would make him cry and that he’d find the tissues and use them to dry his tears.

We didn’t want Shushu to die and be buried like an ordinary cat.

Shushu was loved. Shushu was loving. Shushu was a rescue cat who, out of everyone in the street, chose me and my sister to be his family. Shushu was a part of me, and I was a part of him. I like to believe he could sense all this. That it made him happy. That he was proud of his funeral rituals and the contents of his grave. That he boasted about them to the other liminal cats.

It was a wonderful memorial. But to give him a full send off, we should have drunk a toast to Shushu—with milk or water from his fountain.

*

At three a.m., darkness fills the sleeping house. I pace around the kitchen. I make a coffee to help me stay up through the rest of the night. I look down and see Shushu’s spirit, right between my feet. His tail is puffed up and held high, as usual. He arches his back and rubs against my leg. I’m afraid I’ll step on his paw, so I take a quick step back, just like the old days. His powerful presence doesn’t scare me, nor does the touch of his soft fur. I don’t need the medium to see my loved ones. I’m no longer afraid of her Instagram account or her faces.

I’m now familiar with ghosts.

This essay is from the Spring 2025 GRIEF issue of ArabLit Quarterly, available now at Gumroad, ArabLit.org/Shop, select bookshops, and elsewhere.

Alaa Abdulwahab is an Egyptian writer and screenwriter who has published texts in several Arab print and online publications, such as Mada Masr, Al-Manassa, Noqta, ArabLit, and Kitab Sawti. In 2020, she won the Best Screenplay Award in the “Conflict: Stories from the Heart of the Box” category from the Samandal Comics Foundation for her “Saheroun,” a graphic novel that was illustrated by Lebanese artist Karen Keyrouz. In 2022, she received support from Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy to work on her first novel.

Ranya Abdelrahman is a translator of Arabic literature into English. After working for more than 16 years in the information technology industry, she changed careers to pursue her interest in books, promoting reading and translation. Abdelrahman has published translations in ArabLit Quarterly, The Markaz Review, Words Without Borders, and The Common. She is the translator of the Palestine Book Award-shortlisted Out of Time, a short story collection by Samira Azzam, and her co-translation, with Sawad Hussain, of Bothayna Al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library was shortlisted for the National Book Awards.