New Short Fiction: ‘Denial Likes Small Activities’

Denial Likes Small Activities

By Hussein al-Abri

Translated by Hassan Herzallah

I can’t find a way to describe what her words did to me. The words themselves were not harsh, nor did she deliver them in a raised voice. They didn’t carry any trace of hostility, either. On the contrary, they had been covered in a thin layer of care, like laying a white handkerchief over broken glass. I heard her words the way you hear something being said in the next room, suddenly realizing it is about you.

A short, forced laugh burst out of me before I could decide whether it suited the moment; my body had beaten me to it, trying to protect me from a situation that had become difficult to read. I adjusted my position on the plush sofa and tried to look casual, like someone who didn’t care. My laugh and my posture issued a certificate of acceptance on my behalf: “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

We were at Al Inaya Café in Al Azaiba. It was fairly elegant, but it wasn’t one of those excessively elegant cafés that make you feel as though you’ve walked into a place you shouldn’t be in, where every movement you make might cause some unintended damage. It was the kind of elegance that left you with the illusion of comfort: wide sofas, dark-wood tables, soft light that didn’t expose the contours of your face, plus low music you could never quite grasp, though it filled the spaces between words. I usually came to this café alone every morning, to catch my stray thoughts and soften my edges, in what amounted to a dose of a sedative I took before stepping out into the world: I knew where to sit, which corner kept my back protected, and which table allowed me to think without feeling watched.

I came today because I had promised her we would meet. I no longer remember exactly how we’d arranged it, but I imagine it went something like this: a short message from her, a delayed reply from me, then a line from me trying to sound casual: “If you’re free this week…” Her reply came after a measured delay, not long enough to turn into an apology, not short enough to suggest an enthusiasm that wasn’t there. Something in between, as always.

I ordered black coffee; she added milk to hers. The Filipino waiter affected politeness, smiling without the smile meaning anything. He took our order, then disappeared at once with a practiced movement, as though he were part of the décor. As he moved away, he left behind a brief moment of silence, a moment in which nothing was said, yet which seemed to foreshadow the tension to come.

She did not begin with what she really wanted to say. That only made it hit harder. She started instead with a preamble of details that seemed unrelated: the pressure of the days, a scattered mind. “I feel as though I’m running and yet never moving from the spot,” she said, then leaned forward slightly, staring at the table as though searching its polished surface for the right words.

She said, slowly, with something close to hesitation, that she was tired of having so many people in her life. She said it as though she were apologizing, then, before I could show my surprise, she added: “There aren’t many of them, but they’re more than enough for me.”

I looked up at her with a childish question on the tip of my tongue: Am I one of the many? I wanted to say what was on my mind, but I didn’t. I did not want to look like someone searching for his place on a map that did not exist in the first place. I stayed silent and let her continue.

At times, she looked at the table; at others, at a spot behind me, as though her words needed empty space in order to come out. She said she could not meet the demands people made on her, could not keep in touch, meet up, or remain “loaded down” with all such a burden. She said the word “burden,” then paused for a moment, perhaps to make sure she had not hurt me. When she looked up at me, there was something in her eyes I did not know what to call: perhaps pity, or caution, or an attempt to keep things peaceful.

In that moment, I felt as though I were sitting in a seat that was not mine; as though the whole café were listening in on us even though no one was looking our way. As though my smile—if it was there at all—had frozen somewhere around my mouth.

And because I did not know what one was supposed to do when told something like that, I laughed and said, trying to dress my words in a lightly ironic tone:

“What you’re saying sounds like something straight out of a film, some kind of dark comedy. I don’t think it’s true. And even if it is, perhaps even you don’t know what you’re saying.”

I think I said “film” because I wanted to make the whole thing unreal. I wanted any kind of distance between me and her words, a distance in which I could breathe, however small.

She did not laugh. She gave a brief smile that mirrored my forced one, though hers was not defensive. She looked as though she had heard the line before, or as though she had been expecting this kind of response.

She said something else, I don’t remember exactly what, about the cruelty she saw in life, the suffocating fullness of her days, her need for some space. She chose soft words, placing them carefully, like someone arranging fragile things in a box. And yet, beneath all that circling around the point, I heard one clear conclusion: what was between us was over.

As she spoke, I suddenly remembered something she had once told me about another man named Nasser. He could be considered a side story, one of those people who pass through our lives like subheadings. She had told me that she had blocked him on social media, that he had called her, puzzled, and that she had said something strange to him: “I can’t deal with someone who carries so much happiness.” At the time, I laughed to myself and put what she had said down to her way of speaking, her exaggerations, her temperament.

But now, listening to this new sentence wrapped in gentleness, I understood that it was not merely a manner of speaking, but something closer to a way of life, or perhaps a means of survival.

The waiter returned with the coffee and set it down in front of us as though he were setting down something that had nothing to do with us. I lifted my cup, breathed in the smell, then put it back down without drinking. I had to do something with my hands so that she would not notice, and no one else would notice, how unsettled I was inside.

I said something to her that I do not remember. Perhaps I said, “I understand,” or “As you like,” or something drawn from the vocabulary of a person who does not want to look hurt: words said to cover things over without explaining or going into detail.

She looked at me and nodded, as though thanking me for understanding, while at the same time strengthening her resolve. In that moment, I felt I had no right to object. I did not fully understand her point of view—at least not then—but objecting would have made me look as though I needed her, and appearing to need her would have created an image of myself I did not want her to see.

The meeting limped along after that on a crutch, with talk of small things: work, traffic, the last film she had seen. Everything seemed disturbingly normal, as though we were covering a hole in the ground with a beautiful rug, then sitting on it and drinking coffee.

When we got up, our goodbye was polite and light: no promise of another meeting, no “Let’s keep in touch,” perhaps something like “Take care” or “All the best”: words you could not hold on to.

I left the café carrying something I had not named at the time. I was not sad in the loud, emotional sense. I was in a state of coherent denial, as though my brain had decided to classify what had happened as an unreal verbal incident.

There was nothing between us that could be called communication, in the sense people usually mean by the word. There were no late-night calls, no long messages, no romantic dates. Everything happened in a middle ground, a place that neither allowed you to say you were close nor granted you the right to claim you were distant. A comfortable place for someone who wanted to remain present without commitment, and a confusing one for anyone who took too long to understand the rules.

We exchanged messages, though that is a broad term. Here, it meant this: a short message sent and then left to go cold. Sometimes I wrote with a hint of enthusiasm, the kind that would not embarrass me if it was not met in kind: “What do you think about meeting this week?” or “Today I passed by the place we talked about.” I made sure my messages seemed easy to ignore without causing any awkwardness

She did reply, just not quickly. Her reply would come hours later, sometimes after a full day, and sometimes not at all. At first, I explained it to myself as her being busy. That explanation comforted me because it gave me a reason outside myself, one that had nothing to do with me.

I never confronted her about it. I was not one of those people who asked, “Why did you take so long to reply?” The question itself carried a complaint, and a complaint would weaken me. I told myself that relationships were not measured by how quickly someone replied, and that people differed in their rhythms.

But the truth was that I had begun, without realizing it, to change my behavior in step with hers. I started sending fewer messages, waiting longer, reviewing a message before sending it as though I were reviewing a formal application. Sometimes I would write a few words and then delete them, and sometimes I would tell myself, “Not now,” because I did not want to put myself in a position to wait.

There were small moments that revealed everything, like the time I suggested we meet two days later, and she replied a day after that: “We’ll see.” A short, open-ended phrase, neither promising nor refusing. The words hung in my mind like a picture that had not been properly nailed to the wall; it remained tilted without falling. Two days passed, then four, and nothing happened. No apology, no reminder. The days simply went by. I told myself: perhaps she had forgotten, perhaps she had not taken it seriously, and perhaps, though the thought came late, she had never wanted to meet in the first place.

There had been no disagreement between us, and that was what made it all the more confusing. A disagreement gives you a clear story, a reason, a scene you can replay in your head. Here, though, everything had been more or less fine.

I also noticed that she never initiated things; I was usually the one who sent the first message. When she did initiate, the message would be light, asking for nothing: “Hi,” “I thought of you today,” and then she would disappear again. I was happier about these small gestures than I should have been, and I hid that happiness from her the way one hides something beneath one’s dignity.

Once, I deliberately took a long time to reply to her. It was an experiment. I wanted to know what it felt like from the other side. I left the message for hours, then for a full day. I felt a strange heaviness. I did not miss her, but the delay itself did not feel like me. When I finally replied, she did not seem angry.

It was not cruelty on her part, but simply her nature, or so I wanted to believe. As though this kind of relationship were her default setting. There was no need for explanation or reconsideration. There was no reason for resentment or irritation.

I told myself that this suited me, too: no commitments, no demands. But the comfort here was the kind that numbed you; you felt fine because you were not in pain.

When I look back on that period now, I see it as a slow preparation. The relationship had been practicing disappearing from the beginning, and I had been taking part in these practices without knowing it; every time I said, “It’s fine,” was another step toward what happened in the café.

Her sentence did not come as a thunderbolt, because she had simply said aloud what had been happening silently for ages. All she had done was reach the end of the line, and she had to put a period there.

A few days before our final meeting, I wrote her an ordinary message. I do not remember exactly what it said, but I remember how I felt afterward. I sent it, then put my phone aside.

After an hour, after two hours, after half a day, no reply. That evening, I picked up my phone for no obvious reason, just to look at the screen. That was when I felt something like a mild anxiety, but it was not enough for me to admit it to myself. I told myself: tomorrow she’ll reply.

The next day, the reply came. Two pleasant lines, no questions, as though the message were an obligation fulfilled at the last minute. I thanked her inwardly and told myself once again: that’s how she is. I did not know that “that’s how she is” was a prelude to the ending that was coming.

Hussein al-Abri is an acclaimed Omani writer, translator, and psychiatrist based in Muscat. He has been writing for more than two decades and has won a number of prestigious awards, including the Sultan Qaboos Medal for Literature and Arts and Hay Festival’s “Beirut39,” a cadre of 39 great Arab writers under 40. His Time Slips Away in the Corner (2026) is a collection of six compelling short stories.

Hassan Herzallah is a Gaza-based translator, writer and storyteller.