Inner Voice - Short Story - Chapter 4

Inner Voice - Short Story

    Wrapped in my blanket, I tossed and turned in bed, anxiety devouring me, testosterone flowing from my veins onto the pillow, pushing me to take a look at the Blue Website. It would always be my favorite, no matter what people said about there being better ones. I adored women in their forties, especially the one with the circular tattoo around her thigh, and the video where she slept with a teenager my age, or slightly older, while wearing a too seductive blue dress. Do moments of sex resemble moments of masturbation? I felt exactly as Ahmed Mourad described it: neither consciousness nor unconsciousness, only me and the Blue Deer Website. Yet the pleasure of masturbation was far too weak to be described as a volcano. There came the shiver and the numbness; the fluid burst forth and my vision weakened, accompanied by the feeling that my brain cells were retreating backward, drugged, relaxed, a relaxation almost turning into regret over what had happened, fear of what was coming, and disgust at what I had been watching!

    Then, all those feelings transformed into a massive energy, driving me to spend the rest of the day and the next day praying fifty obligatory prayers, cleaning the entire house, and drifting into fantasies where I spoke fluently, answered every question the teacher asked, received his praise and the admiration in my classmates’ eyes, and most importantly the eyes of Habiba, who looked at me with admiration that Ali noticed and pointed out to me. My mother returned from work and cut off my daydreaming. She placed the bags she carried on the dining table, removed her headscarf (The Hijab), and sat down to catch her breath. She praised me for cleaning the house, then began saying:

- I swear to God, I woke up at dawn, washed the dishes, gathered the laundry, and even bought a bag of laundry detergent for five pounds… every day there’s a mountain of laundry.

If Seif had been there, she would never have spoken to me that way. Most likely he would have rushed out of the room and asked her for something, as though to distract her from talking to me and draw her attention toward himself. Strangely enough, if she noticed him, she would pretend as though she had never been speaking to me at all!

    My phone vibrated with a new message. It was a reply from Ali after I had texted him saying I would join them today. “Welcome, man… I missed you.” I spoke to him again about the novel Season of the Deer Hunting, and offered to bring it for him to read, even though I had not finished it myself yet. But he considered it “a filthy novel,” while Seif thought novels were nothing but fantasy and nonsense, and Dad said the theory of souls moving from one body to another bordered on disbelief! He also said that novels, films, TV series, and songs were all made for ignoble purposes. And yet Dad claimed he had once been a devoted reader, and he always praised my love of reading and culture, though in truth I had never actually read a full book or novel. Only when I finished reading Season of the Deer Hunting, could I count myself a reader. How I wished I could find someone to share my fascination with this novel besides Youssab. Couldn’t it be Habiba?! I glanced at her Facebook account, and the latest post she had shared said: “I’ll wrap my brother up as a gift and give him to Mom on Mother’s Day, because he’s the thing she loves most.” Like most of her posts, she complained that her family loved her brother more than they loved her.

    For the first time, I wished Dad would stay late at work or not return at all. When I was young, I used to long for him to come home. I would stand by the window and recite the Qur’an passages I had memorized, so that God might hasten his arrival. But his coming home early today condemned me to going to the class and facing all my fears, alone, without God’s care after I had disobeyed Him. Me, the past, and a volcano of fear. And he did return at three in the afternoon. He gave me the money, and I wore my favorite dark-blue shirt despite the cold weather during the latest storm of this winter, because I did not have a jacket. When we had gone shopping for clothes, I felt I had already burdened Dad financially, so I did not mention that I needed one, deciding instead to rely on wearing several layers of undershirts.

When Dad entered the house, his clothes were soaked by the rain. He said:

- Today’s the heaviest day of the storm.

And I received his words with another meaning entirely: all my hope resting on Mrs Hanaa’s help.