Читать книгу Tales of Yusuf Tadros - Adel Esmat - Страница 8

Yusuf Tadrus says:

Mary Labib, the art teacher, was my first love. I hope you’re not shocked by love stories. Your brother Yusuf loved and was loved everywhere he landed. It’s my fate. Mary looked like the movie star Maryam Fakhr al-Din. Her hair fell on her shoulders with a slight flip at the end. I was young. Even so, I declared my love to her and asked her to marry me. At my uncle Subhi’s apartment, in the old house, they all laughed. I was serious, crying.

“Yusuf’s really in love,” my mother said, puzzled. “His eyes are red.”

The word red appealed to me. I headed to the bathroom mirror and looked at my face. My eyes weren’t red, but they were dull. That person looked at me angrily in the tilted mirror and told me something inscrutable. I immediately understood that I had to guard my secrets. I knew matters of love and emotion had to be guarded like jewels. A simple moment in front of the mirror, but it was a brief insight from the questioning voices I hear at times to this day.

One day Mary gave me a sketchbook and a box of crayons. Mary Labib Dimyan. I’ll never forget her name. I’ll keep remembering the full name, its edges fringed by a clear scent, the primary-school balcony, the sun illuminating the sand-covered schoolyard, Mary exiting the art room, trailing a scent I’ll never be able to pinpoint. She’ll remain a living portrait: a translucent smile, a striped dress fitted at the waist, butter-colored shoes with stiletto heels, a click on the tiles whose melody I’d never mistake, not even once. She’ll remain alive in my depths, saying, “Paint what you wish. Don’t be afraid, paint.”

Maybe I’ve associated painting with a lack of fear ever since. Over the years, the phrase was translated into “painting delivers you from fear.” I’ll keep painting whenever I’m afraid. I’ll keep painting as long as I live to rid myself of fear, which gets thicker and darker the older I get. Even after the worries began to lift—after Michel went to America and Fadi went to work in the jewelers’ district, and it was just me and Janette, face to face, after a tempestuous journey—the fear was there flickering behind the scenes, unshakable, like the lining of the human heart.

Painting does not rid a person of fear, but it makes fears trivial, tolerable. From the moment Mary said “Paint what you wish. Don’t be afraid,” painting has been the good thing in my life. Even though I’ve abandoned it for long spells, I never for a moment stopped thinking about it, as if Mary’s words were secretly guiding me. How can a child’s love for his teacher stay alive all these years? Humans are as wondrous as life.

I’ll never stop contemplating the sight of her. Of course, I won’t paint it—if I paint her, she’ll die. I only paint fears so they’ll die. But Mary—her, I will not paint. If I did, she would fade into a picture. I’ll leave her there, alive in my consciousness, like a candle in the window of Our Lady the Virgin. I’ll keep her alive as long as I am.

I was sitting on a chair next to the window, drawing. A teacher named Talla Farag passed by and looked at the paper.

“What’s this, Mary?” she said, pointing to the figure I’d drawn. “Is all of that a person?”

“Shush. Be quiet,” Mary said. Smiling at me, she said, “Go on, finish it.” She lowered her face kindly, with an understanding smile. I’ve looked for this feeling everywhere—a friendly smile that tells you to keep going; whatever happens, finish what’s in your hand. There are no standards there. There’s nothing but finishing. Finish what’s in your hand and you’ll make it.

Mary knew. Those coal-black, keen, encouraging eyes look down on me whenever I sit down to paint. From behind they encourage me: Keep going, don’t be afraid. I’ll never voluntarily paint her. However great my longing for her, I won’t paint her.

In middle school, I hated drawing because of a supercilious teacher who used to curse our families. He made us clean up the art room and line up the paints and colors, everything brought to meticulous order. At the end of school, the art room had to be neatly arranged, ready for the inspector’s visit.

But my desire to make my fears concrete in images continued to mutate and found other paths. After I returned from the collection errand, I occupied myself with drawing carpets and fashioning wooden boxes. From plaster I made guns and other things that fulfilled my desire to produce figures. That period of not drawing was difficult. I remember it as an unending summer. Tedium and hollering and a sense that there was nothing to do but give yourself over to the life of the alley.