Fazil was lucky enough to be allowed to complete school – both primary and secondary! I was restless with curiosity and would plead with him to tell me what he was learning. An enthusiastic narrator, he told animated stories of explorers and inventors, great thinkers and brave leaders. My little sister Nabila and I hung on his every word, and the three of us grew to be close friends. I think he was proud to be treated like a scholar, and not just an errand boy. I suppose he was being charitable, too, since we would never be able to read for ourselves. But in his company, we were mindless of any limitation.

Nabila especially liked it when Fazil read poetry to us. Not only the patriotic odes that he had to memorize for school, but also more soulful poems from soft old volumes he had purchased at a shop in the city. He even recited extravagant love poems from time to time just for the pleasure of embarrassing us. Nabila would giggle and squirm, and her laughter was amplified in my frame.

Most captivating to me were the wonders of science and nature. In the earliest years, Fazil told us about the animals of the world, so varied and peculiar. Wings and tails, fur and spines…Sometimes the creatures became jumbled in my memory. To this day, I’m sure that I must conjure the wrong combinations of attributes when I think of the strange inhabitants of distant oceans and jungles. But I guess they’re no stranger than the members of our own family, all broken and missing parts, from one generation to the next.

As Fazil progressed in his studies, he told us things that I was surprised to learn were knowable at all – how rocks and mountains were formed, and the universe itself! During his fifth year at school, Fazil told us about the planets and the stars. He told us about gravity - how objects pull each other toward themselves and can hold each other in orbit. It sounded like pure magic, and yet our daily experience seemed to confirm it: the force of Father’s authority keeping all seven children from tumbling out into the wider world, and the pull that Nabila and I exerted on each other’s slight bodies that kept us circling each other in joyous motion.

Fazil explained night and day to us in terms of the earth and sun. Unaware of darkness and light, we had always perceived the hours of the day to be equivalent. Night was simply that portion of time lovingly reserved for us girls, precious hours with no chores to perform, no beckoning calls to answer. Nabila was never quite sure that the rest of the family slept through the night; perhaps they just had agreed amongst themselves to keep quiet for a while, to reward our dutiful labors with a measure of freedom.  

During the day, it was easy to tell time through the pattern of activities that enveloped us: the tending of animals and the preparation of meals, hours marked off by the creaking wheels of a little wooden cart as our legless brother Samer pushed himself out to the well and back and with water. At night, we tracked the hours through a more subtle sequence of aromas – the fading oil and garlic of the evening meal, and the men’s tobacco. Then the clearing air as the dust that had been kicked up during the day would settle. And next came the gathering musk of everyone’s bodies and melding breath as the hours wore on in our crowded little home.

Nabila and I would often awaken during the freshest pre-dawn hour. We would sneak outside, barefoot. I remember the feel of the dirt beneath my feet – still warm from the long day’s sun. And the stones -- each one an admonition, a jealous reminder of the family honor that I was in no danger of sullying. I felt their contours with my toes as if considering them for just a split second before pushing off and venturing on. With so few sounds to use as landmarks, the relative quiet of the night made the landscape around us seem so much more vast. We tried to imagine how large the world might be. We held each other’s hands and spun until we fell over dizzy, trying not to laugh and wake the chickens.

When I was about fifteen, I began to hope and expect that my parents would arrange for me to marry Fazil. My father and mother are cousins, as with most couples in the village, so it seemed to be practically my birth right. I was confident that we would even grow to love one another. After all, if it were possible to memorize the words of beautiful, ancient love poems, why couldn’t we learn their meaning, contemplating them together in our growing maturity?

But Fazil’s parents determined that I am not suitable for him – just poor little blind girls, my sister and me. Never mind that so many unsighted family members over the years have proven to be devoted and industrious spouses! I had been raised to believe that family loyalty was paramount, but apparently that only goes so far.

I am promised now to Ahmad, one of my father’s suppliers. He is older and not in good health. I will be his second wife. Everyone says that Ahmad’s first wife, Mounah, is a decent person who simply needs the help. She bore three children rather late in life, and caring for both them and Ahmad is growing difficult. I can appreciate the family’s plight, but I wish that Ahmad would just pay me for my assistance and let me remain at my own home. Maybe in the city it could have been so, but not here. I think Ahmad takes comfort in the thought that although I am so much younger, I cannot look at another man. And Mounah’s consolation is that the privacy of her marriage is less compromised than it might have been since I will never gaze upon her husband or even her household.

I think Nabila will remain at home for some time -  maybe for good, if Mother has her way. Frankly, I am relieved for her. But I dread the thought of being separated from my dear sister.  Any grace that I have attained so far in life has been in the context of our unique synchronicity…our sensory universe, our private jokes, and a rather efficient choreography. How will I live, how will I move without her?

Years ago, Fazil told us about space flight. He said that when you leave the earth, you float, weightless in an airless void. How long can I hold my breath?

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usually scavenging for scrap metal while not running the greenbelt center for the arts,
nicole dewald wrote this story and designed interactive sculptural pages based on old opthamology and astronomy texts.