From Doaa Ibrahim’s ‘A Cloud Above My Head’

In this novel, Egyptian author Doaa Ibrahim interrogates mothers and motherhood through the lens of a violently fraught relationship. Those who don’t mind a few spoilers can read a capsule review in Al Majalla.

 

A Cloud Above My Head

By Doaa Ibrahim

Translated by Alaa Alqaisi

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I did not see a white angel with wings of light appear to tell me, with deepest sorrow, that my mother would die tonight, exactly tonight. It was not a vision that singled me out from all others. I woke to the beak of a bird boring into my head in the night. The vision dissolved in the darkness, and sound became an instrument, as if the whole universe had contracted into a single sentence telling me my mother would die tonight. This heavy truth settled on my shoulders, exhausting perhaps because it was the first time. In spite of everything, I tried to make things ordinary. I slipped off my clothes and let myself fall onto the bed.

Today, a strong urge had seized me to try on one of her hidden garments, tucked away among the piles of ordinary, everyday clothes: a crimson nightgown. For whom had she last worn it? And was it necessary for her to change her underclothes with the changing of husbands? Or not at all?

Who would ever know the last person you wore it for, Mother, except for me? And in the end, I would never tell.

I was the child who watched you with small eyes through a tiny opening that looked onto the living room, catching your face and your nearly bare body as you moved between the bathroom and the bedroom. I was alone, just as you are alone now, beneath a heavy quilt that smothers your breath. Back then, too, something was pressing the air from my lungs; perhaps it was the throat-clearing of the husband who told me he was like my father, or the sound of the key meshing in the lock—that dreadful click. I never understood why the many fathers frightened me so, especially when they turned the apartment’s door handle without permission, owning the place and its people.

I stood before the mirror in your crimson clothes, breathing in the stale scent of your sweat woven into the satin, mixed with a spray of cheap perfume under the arms. I imagined you spraying it there in this very spot, while two gleaming eyes fixed on you. Or let’s say they rested languidly on this bed.

I shifted slightly after giving a last glance to the lines of my pale body wrapped in your old color, ready to sleep in your place but without a man waiting for me, yearning for me. Should I have giggled coquettishly in that moment to be exactly like you? Or should I simply remember what happened moments ago and smile, in order to fix in my mind the picture of you now, afraid in your room, only three meters from my closed door? Three meters, yet it feels as though we stand on the edges of two different worlds—with all the disasters that have happened, and will happen, stretching between us—from when the universe was a mere drop to this very moment. At an eternity’s distance, and three meters, I left you waiting for the angina pill that would never come.

Foolish, to think that a daughter like me would save you. I could have done it yesterday, or this morning, or just a little while ago, like any obedient nurse. But now, after I saw him, it became impossible.

When I saw him, I whispered a bismallah in the dark, thinking the devils would scatter that way, and all of it would end. But she did not fall silent, did not stop gnawing at my head with her words, leading me through the darkness toward your room. I stared at the nightstand beside my bed; it seemed darker than before. Perhaps, I thought, in this exact spot, a black bird sat on a large blue egg. Thinking of the sound as a warning, that was how I imagined it. It was the wrong picture, in any case, since afterward I saw him clearly and memorized the way he said it: calmly, without any worry or alarm. With a deadly calm, he said: “She will die today.” And I thought: If the mourners came, they would find the house dirty. It needed tidying.

Was this a dream or a nightmare? Or pure reality, like a white thread in the blackness of night guiding me step by step? I am still crawling, even as I near thirty. The steps of cleaning, and his words, led me to my mother’s room, where I heard her moaning in the grip of angina. I knew what she needed, by virtue of my work as a nurse, and from the repetition and familiarity of the scene. She has long suffered from bouts of angina that do not kill her, usually subsiding with one pill, or two, beneath the tongue. When I slowly opened the door and peered in, my mother looked sicker than I had ever seen her. She shouted in a muffled voice at her nurse, the one who worked without pay, pointing toward the box of pills. Her cry was less a call for help than an order, a right claimed solely because she was my mother.

I walked quietly toward the pill that would peacefully end the attack. I imagined myself in her crimson nightgown, swaying with hesitating softness. For the first time, I realized that, in such moments, hesitation had its own special power. I decided I would wear it after everything was over. I held a pill between my fingers, tasted it with the tip of my tongue, and saw his shadow behind me. He was terrifying just then, watching me from behind, finishing me off with his rabid words, his voice capable of compelling me. Then he fell silent, as if he had not been there a moment before, only to return again, this time with a whisper: “She will die today.”

I remembered her many husbands, none of them left to save her, while I remained. I, the nurse always abandoned for their sake, left to serve, to wipe up the vomit and the filth. “She will die today,” I repeated after him, breathless. “She will die today. She will die today… She will die today…”

***

I shaped the words in a calm, steady voice, as if speaking to her about some casual piece of gossip.

“You know, Mama—you’re going to die today.”

She received that quiet sentence instead of the pill I had hidden in my clenched fist. Her features tightened, her gaze wandering around the room, searching for white angels who would gently draw out her soul. But she found nothing. My mother murmured, “I’ll be fine if you put a pill under my tongue.”

“It tastes bitter.”

“…”

“The box is empty.”

Her expression settled into fear, whether from the certainty of her death or because she saw him as clearly as I had, without the slightest doubt, his beak gripping her tongue, devouring it slowly, with relish.

“Sleep. Tomorrow, you’ll be better.”

I left the room, leaving her breathless under a heavy quilt. I dropped the pill into the sink and left the water running until it dissolved. Just as I told you, Mama—it’s gone now. I finished the cleaning so the mourners would find a tidy home. But unfortunately, she did not die that day.

***

I cannot precisely remember the first time I became aware of his presence, though I suspect the “pill” incident was the first. Over time, strange things become ordinary, until we are embarrassed to ask, When did that happen? as we feel the question has no meaning.

I know he exists—perhaps he always has—circling in the room’s sky, hovering cautiously between the chandelier and the light bulbs, like night descending to earth in an intimate confusion. I sense him in the hospital, making a noise like an ambulance’s siren, biding his time so that he wakes me when my body is worn out and inert. The evening shifts descend on me like death, always coming after a long, exhausting day. I leave the house with a tightness in my chest, as though the weight of the earth were pressing down on me, and yet I still leap into the first car to take me to the hospital, wishing it would lose its way or tumble from a high bridge. A child is crying in the back; his mother soothes him with indistinct murmurs. He does not deserve to die for my sake. How selfish I have become!

Midnight in winter carries sorrow, sweeping the streets clear of people until the world is empty but for the passing blare of a car horn as the vehicle speeds away. In the streets surrounding the hospital, my steps move slowly, heavy with disappointment, wishing they could turn back as if I were in a military march. I did not know I would be moving according to set steps, drawn to a single beat.

People spread blankets on the pavement outside the hospital’s front door, sleeping in the street so their loved ones won’t be alone inside. Others sleep in cars parked beside the curb, the driver’s seat pushed all the way back. My footsteps intrude on their fragile dwellings. The streets are the homes of those without homes; they can neither travel back to their far-off villages nor afford the price of a cheap hotel. The cold is bitter, gnawing at my heart and at their bones as they clutch the asphalt in resignation. I marvel at the human capacity to adapt; we are like a gelatinous creature that, when placed in a smaller container, cuts away a part of itself and throws it aside in order to live, without weeping over the many severed pieces. This creature feels the narrow new space with a kind of eager relief: that it is still alive, and more than that, still capable of living.

The gate guard spots me and raises his voice to scatter the vagrants clustered around the entrance. They are always there, passing along news from inside for a bit of money, and sometimes slipping in for five minutes, checking on their loved ones from afar before returning to the pavement, where waiting is never without a few shared prayers and murmured sympathy. Whenever one of them feels his burden is lighter than another’s, he withdraws to a corner and falls silent. I don’t know the secret of this silence; perhaps it’s fear of envy, or perhaps relief that his misfortune is smaller.

“Good evening, Miss,” the guard says, wrapping the words in a broad smile and welcoming gestures, as though someone important were about to pass, not a nurse of no apparent worth. He parts the crowd, clearing the entrance for me. Faces turn toward me, eyes sharp with resentment. I chew over my good evening and let it out as a muffled murmur, but it’s enough to make him smile wider as he says, “The hospital is brighter with you here.” His is a smile I know well, and despise.

I lift my eyes to the sky, hearing his distant voice, three caws…two…one. I see him above the tallest shadow I know: the hospital’s main building. At night, it looks like an abandoned place beneath a giant shade. The scene—despite its drama—is perfect, a moment for the voice of death, poised at the building’s highest point. Yesterday, I was honored as Employee of the Month. They said I had noticed many cases in their final moments, as they were dying, and had tried to pull them back to life. Their recognition gave me a brief flutter of pleasure; I had waited for this moment, but when it came, the heroism felt as hollow as the other words life throws around. I rejoice for a moment, then sink into a state worse than before—perhaps because, deep down, I know the honor belongs to him, with his relentless cawing.

***

In the morning, my grandmother was surprised by the cleanliness of the house, though she said nothing about it, perhaps forgetting it when she found her daughter, who had slept in unusually late, was dying. My grandmother cried out, her voice hoarse, calling for me to save her daughter—to save my mother from death. There was no time to think about last night’s nightmare. I moved quickly before my grandmother could notice any change in me, called for an ambulance, and stood frozen before my mother, who watched me in astonishment, or perhaps in anger. I hid behind my grandmother, away from her eyes and the threat they carried. The space between us seemed infinite, as long as the lifetime we had lived together. My eyes were emptied of all meaning, like two hollow holes pulling everything toward them: the dust hanging in the air, my grandmother’s moans that composed a mournful symphony, the late-night gatherings that lasted until dawn, the cakes we baked for the holiday, the high-school exam results, the scent of my mother’s perfumed clothes, the rustle she made climbing the stairs—I could sense her coming before she opened the door and stepped inside—the prayers she said for me, the laughter that rang out, and the tears that nearly fell.

Everything in the room seemed drawn to me in particular, clinging to my pale face. I saw his shadow on everything. I could not catch him and scold him: “You lied to me!” Yet he offered no reassurance, as if mocking me, saying, “Who told you to believe a crow sitting on a wooden nightstand in the small hours of the night?”

I made my way to the hospital this time as the companion of a critical case, without losing the distinction I held among the wanderers sleeping on the asphalt. If I were to share my burden with them, they would say, “At least you rode with her in the ambulance, and you can move freely through the hospital.” But their envy would shrink and turn into sincere prayers if they knew that she had already died, at least in my mind. Do the dead return and insist on entering the ICU?

Doaa Ibrahim is an Egyptian storyteller and novelist. She has published two collections of short stories: Inscriptions on a Mural and Second Funeral for a Lonely Man, both shortlisted for the Sawiris Cultural Award. In addition to this novel, she has also published the novels A Pea Sprouts in my Palm and Six Lives are Enough for Fun.

Alaa Alqaisi is a Palestinian translator, writer, and researcher from Gaza, deeply passionate about literature, language, and the power of storytelling to bridge cultures and bear witness to lived realities.