and make fun of them.
Laughter and sex were our two weapons of survival. In the past writing had been my primary reason to persevere.But when silence was imposed on me we found that sex was a form of speech, indeed, a form of shouting in the face of the silence. When I had just emerged from the security branch I would be in a state of exhaustion or a condition that was more like an amalgamation of feelings: tiredness plus impudence, anger and emptiness. Therefore, I used to rush to the first taxi I could find, searching my feelings as I wished the driver would just take off instead of waiting for the light at the junction to turn green. I used to wish that Lama’s place was closer to the
mukhabarat
branch instead of being two miles away. On more than one occasion she accompanied me to the interrogation. She would wait outside because, as she put it, she could no longer bear to just stay home waiting for me to return. When I finally came out to find her standing in the shadows on the opposite sidewalk I would grab hold of her and gesture frantically at the first taxi I saw so that we could rush back to her flat. At first she found my hastiness odd and assumed I was running away from something but by the third time she understood the secret: I was in a rush for us to be alone together in bed, so that I could restore my own balance by making love to her.
She also told me about how she used to feel while she was waiting for me to get out of interrogation, how in those times she used to cry and wish for me to come back so she could hold me close until she spoke out loud, calling for me to come at once because she so desperately hungered for me. When we entered the flat we would do exactly the same thing we had done on those occasions when she hadn’t come with me. We would stand behind the door, each one tightlyand warmly holding the other until the time for hugging had passed, at which point I would lead her or she would lead me to the bedroom. As if time were assaulting us, we would hurriedly and inelegantly get undressed, chucking our clothes in all directions before lying down on the bed to make love urgently and violently, as if we had just been reunited after a long separation, despite the fact that usually we had made love the night before.
When I returned from interrogation our faces would reject any disguise, whether out of modesty or embarrassment. The desire for life and for confrontation refused any disguise, no matter what kind it was. Our bodies would collide as if the two were one person: sheandI.
Our post-interrogation habits differed from those that took place in ordinary times, when I wouldn’t dare to try some things or might ask for something new; in these unusual times we would be in such a state of desire that we no longer wanted to keep score. The artificiality that a man imposes upon himself or a woman imposes upon herself for reasons of preserving the impression the other has of him or her breaks down. The woman asks herself,
What will he think of me if I do this or ask him to do that?
In that situation, we got past those questions and kicked the problem of impressions out of bed.
Was it obscenity? Sure, but the obscenity of the innocent that appears without any design or planning, the obscenity that satisfies both parties, although neither one of them would talk about it afterward. I began to head off for questioning braver and more capable of withstanding it. Throughout the session, I would be calmer and moreself-assured, to the point that I even started mocking what was happening, laughing and cracking jokes, making fun of Fuck-Gate even as it preoccupied the security services and the Party, concerning even the president of the writers’ union himself, who proceeded to enlist writer Comrades to attack me and pitch slogans against me, making fun of me or otherwise messing with me. I yearned for my visit to HQ to end so I could go back to Lama afterward, knowing that we would wash away those
Laughter and sex were our two weapons of survival. In the past writing had been my primary reason to persevere.But when silence was imposed on me we found that sex was a form of speech, indeed, a form of shouting in the face of the silence. When I had just emerged from the security branch I would be in a state of exhaustion or a condition that was more like an amalgamation of feelings: tiredness plus impudence, anger and emptiness. Therefore, I used to rush to the first taxi I could find, searching my feelings as I wished the driver would just take off instead of waiting for the light at the junction to turn green. I used to wish that Lama’s place was closer to the
mukhabarat
branch instead of being two miles away. On more than one occasion she accompanied me to the interrogation. She would wait outside because, as she put it, she could no longer bear to just stay home waiting for me to return. When I finally came out to find her standing in the shadows on the opposite sidewalk I would grab hold of her and gesture frantically at the first taxi I saw so that we could rush back to her flat. At first she found my hastiness odd and assumed I was running away from something but by the third time she understood the secret: I was in a rush for us to be alone together in bed, so that I could restore my own balance by making love to her.
She also told me about how she used to feel while she was waiting for me to get out of interrogation, how in those times she used to cry and wish for me to come back so she could hold me close until she spoke out loud, calling for me to come at once because she so desperately hungered for me. When we entered the flat we would do exactly the same thing we had done on those occasions when she hadn’t come with me. We would stand behind the door, each one tightlyand warmly holding the other until the time for hugging had passed, at which point I would lead her or she would lead me to the bedroom. As if time were assaulting us, we would hurriedly and inelegantly get undressed, chucking our clothes in all directions before lying down on the bed to make love urgently and violently, as if we had just been reunited after a long separation, despite the fact that usually we had made love the night before.
When I returned from interrogation our faces would reject any disguise, whether out of modesty or embarrassment. The desire for life and for confrontation refused any disguise, no matter what kind it was. Our bodies would collide as if the two were one person: sheandI.
Our post-interrogation habits differed from those that took place in ordinary times, when I wouldn’t dare to try some things or might ask for something new; in these unusual times we would be in such a state of desire that we no longer wanted to keep score. The artificiality that a man imposes upon himself or a woman imposes upon herself for reasons of preserving the impression the other has of him or her breaks down. The woman asks herself,
What will he think of me if I do this or ask him to do that?
In that situation, we got past those questions and kicked the problem of impressions out of bed.
Was it obscenity? Sure, but the obscenity of the innocent that appears without any design or planning, the obscenity that satisfies both parties, although neither one of them would talk about it afterward. I began to head off for questioning braver and more capable of withstanding it. Throughout the session, I would be calmer and moreself-assured, to the point that I even started mocking what was happening, laughing and cracking jokes, making fun of Fuck-Gate even as it preoccupied the security services and the Party, concerning even the president of the writers’ union himself, who proceeded to enlist writer Comrades to attack me and pitch slogans against me, making fun of me or otherwise messing with me. I yearned for my visit to HQ to end so I could go back to Lama afterward, knowing that we would wash away those
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