While each of this series can be read individually as there's no specific order of events. I do implore everyone reading to read The Prologue ahead of reading any specific part.
I have moved houses a lot since my mother died. Maybe it was due to the war beginning in Iraq and different zones being dangerous at different points in time, maybe we kept getting better deals, or maybe God so wanted it to serve as a metaphor for how unsettled we all were after and by our mother's death.
People process grief through different means. Lara started pulling out the hair my mother used to brush every night. Farah's school performance dropped. My father took to travel to UAE and just sent us money from there. I took to isolating myself, compartmentalizing, and complete disassociation. My older brother, Anmar, well, he took to beating the self out of me.
In Falastin Street, opposite Al-Mustansiriyah University, third left from Al-Mawal Intersection, second house to the right, lies a house with 2 floors, 2 bathrooms, 2 toilets, 4 bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a guest reception room. It's the house we stayed at the longest, a total of two years. That house isn't normal. That house is frozen in time.
It's not the location that makes access to the house difficult, it's the time. At which point in time would you want to enter a house?
The house is frozen in time. There are six access points in time to that house as the house is stuck in a time loop.
There's 11:43 AM, the day we moved out. Everyone was wearing black. It was a little bit less than 2 weeks after Anmar's suicide. I have never seen a funeral like that before or since. No crying, no screaming, just people staring into thin air.
Anmar's death was shocking, to say the least. It's not that suicide is a foreign concept, it's just you're never not shocked by suicide. There are questions like "What could I have done differently?", "Could I have prevented it?" I know I had those questions upon Jake's suicide. Never at Anmar's though.
You know, it's funny. As a family, we lived at that house the longest since my mother's death. Yet, individually, I have lived in it the least.
The house is frozen in time. There are six access points in time to that house as the house is stuck in a time loop.
Three weeks after we moved into the house, Anmar walked in drunk midday, grieving the death of Salah, his friend. No one was able to relate to how sad he was. It seemed odd, as it wasn't the first time he had lost a friend, but his grief this time was not normal by the standards he had set for previous loss. It took me a while to know why he felt that way, not that I cared. It was just a little "Oh, I see" kind of moment.
Salah was murdered by bearded men for "acting in a way not fit for Muslims and is offensive to Islam."
The house is frozen in time. There are six access points in time to that house as the house is stuck in a time loop.
It was the day I returned home, nine months after I had disappeared. On the 1st day of July, my sister left me alone in the house to go buy something. I was gone by the time she returned.
I never responded to my own name unless directly confronted. It was after that that I started my habit of talking to myself while walking. You know, the funny part is whenever I remember myself during that period, my memories are never from my own point of view. It's always like I am watching myself from afar. It's like that one time my friends confronted me when I was 20 after I had lost my grasp of reality. I don't remember myself watching them leave as much as I remember looking at myself sitting from their perspective.
I never said a thing about where I was. It was frustrating to watch. But we quickly moved on as everyone was so impressed with me keeping up with school so fast. It felt like I attended every class we had in our classroom. I ended that school year top of the class in the finals. Ironic, considering that I had failed the one task I was supposed to accomplish in those 9 months.
The house is frozen in time. There are six access points in time to that house as the house is stuck in a time loop.
A month prior to Anmar's death, my family woke up one day to his room set on fire. He barely made it out with a burnt hand. All I remember from that night is him getting treated with a first aid kit and his perspective of me just staring angrily at him from a distance.
The house is frozen in time. There are six access points in time to that house as the house is stuck in a time loop.
It was three in the morning. We had just moved into the house. Despite moving so many times, I am never able to sleep properly in a new place. It always took me a week or two. But that's why I went to the roof and just started staring around. Right below, on the green garden within the house under the moonlight, I could clearly see my brother in what I figured out later to be kissing and having sex with Salah.
The house is frozen in time. There are six access points in time to that house as the house is stuck in a time loop.
I had just returned home, a month before Anmar's room was set ablaze. I had spent three days in my aunt's house. My oldest sister figured to let me play with my cousins there in hopes of me being happy again, as she described it. "I just want Ameer to be Ameer again," she said. But she wanted Ameer 1, and I was Ameer 2.
I was able to sense that something was wrong, and as soon as I returned I found out that my younger brother, Rami, had disappeared as well. I wish I hadn't left. I wish I was told earlier. The moment I learned, I knew where to take them to find him, in the school basement, right below my classroom.
We all went and found him there, tied, bruised, and naked. Some time passed, and Rami was laughing and running again. But I could tell how he felt. I could tell who he was. He wasn't Rami 1 anymore, not even Rami 2, just Rami 404 — and I am the only one who knew.