تكرار

She tipped her neck making her way into the walk-in closet, unattaching her right earring and hopping to kick off one of her heels. She caught her reflection in the mirror under the dimmed lighting, and stared hard at the beautiful but angry woman. For the third time in under six minutes, she took out her mobile phone to check if her husband has called. But he didn't. Making it officially the sixth month she has not been in contact with her so-called husband for. Her thoughts halted when she heard the cry of her three month old baby coming from the bedroom.

She held up her tiny little boy and rubbed his back as she rocked him gently on her shoulder. Sitting down on the side of her bed, she drifted in thought to seven months ago. Her body heated up, and she felt a need for a gush of fresh air, but instead she rocked her neck to move her long hair to one side and rested her son in a way she could smell him. The boy was silent again, and she told herself that he knew she too was one who needed to be taken care of. She knew that no matter what happened, her son would never grow up to be like a certain him.

"Why don't you go fuck yourself you ignorant son of a bitch", she heard herself scream in her head eight months ago. She wasn't exactly sure at the time if she was insulted, or if she was hurt. But for her husband to tell her that she should be grateful that he "made it possible that a Kuwaiti citizenship be issued" for her just because he did not want his son to have a "Palestinian" mother was something she never thought could be said, let alone it being said, then again let alone being directed to her. It dawned on her that very moment, she now remembered, that the man she once loved could see her and indeed saw her as everything but a wife. Her body tensed up and she felt trapped inside her skin, trapped in her mind since there has not been much 'lately' she could even begin to think about without making her feel she was about to kill somebody. Until she looked at her beautiful tiny boy, or 'heard' him sleep.

Their, or better yet, her son's birth, she thought, would change everything. At the hospital, she would tell herself that any second now her husband would barge in and apologize, tell her how he never meant anything hurtful he said; and how she would instantly forgive him because she too believed in her heart that he never could have meant to hurt her. Unfortunately, it didn't exactly play out like that.

Having spent two nights at her mother's without any news of the newly decorated "Bo Jasim", she found no other solution but to speak to her "Kuwaiti" uncles, since she insisted that her younger brother be not involved in any way that could make him "be" in trouble for doing this or saying that 'to a Kuwaiti' man. But to no avail. She felt as if her so-called husband did nothing but fuck her, not so literally and literally alike.

She rocked her son some more, and the more she trapped her son into her lock of arm and chest, the more she realized that she was not trapped in her skin nor her mind. She was just trapped. Period.