The Call (short story by: Nasser Aljasem)

The Call

short story by: Nasser Aljasem

The front of The Gynecology and Obstetrics Hospital, and the palm pollen spread in place, spreading the sensitivity in the breasts, awakening the desire for my blood, and calling me to do a trivial things that are despicable, it is the morning slaughtered with moisture and heat, and who will remember me ?!
I dipped my third cigar, which ended in the concrete sand container, and I thought in the evening, and those falling breasts from the small buses and private cars that were rising as they got out of the cars, and as they entered the hospital gate, poking me from behind her prison and behind the blackness. I wondered as the smoke of the fourth cigarette began to run out my mouth:
Is it possible to die as in my memory, there is nothing but my mother's and my sister's face?

How many chests have been going up the stairs since the morning?
The sight of the chests as they ascended the stairs, pushed me to shout, began to count the chests that climbed the entry stairs, and the love of a married woman made me stop the count, remove the pager from my lower pocket, read the messages in the display, I still obsess about myself as she called me, and that the towers let me down and let her down.

 The front of the hospital did not stop showing exhilarating and exciting things. Two colorful displays make love in public , two planes, and they also practiced them, landing in front of the public, their envy of freedom of action, freedom of love, and I wished to be an airplane bug in many colors or one color, Of male insects, of male birds, or of any other male, since what concerns me this morning is that I do what I want freely, and that I am a male not disabled.

When I saw the nurse white dress, on the slabs of the staircase, the entrance gate from under the blackness, I remembered what the psychiatrist said to me: Prison of lust is a prison of mind and spirit, release your desire so that your mind and spirit get free.
I decided to release my desire. My foot led me to the men's bathroom inside the hospital. I entered the bathroom. I tried my disabled male, the anxiety of waiting for the ringing to come, the arrival of the message through the pager and the appearance of the married woman's phone number displayed, even when I was in the bathroom. My clothes were full of sweat, and I wondered: what sorrow that holds the water of my body all day and prevents it from coming out from me easily?!

I looked at the mirror after I felt comfortable, smiled, and said to myself: I still have some good appearance enough to attract any ugly woman, if the married woman does not call me through the machine!

The bathroom was close to the men's lounge waiting for the patients with their wives and daughters. After wiping my sweat ,setting up my clothes, and checking to make sure that the device was on and not out of service, I went out to sit with the visitors in the waiting room and rest from standing in the bathroom, I felt then that the men in the lounge all knew what I have done, and they look at me with disgust, I shook my head in shame, and I looked at the position of my feet, I wondered and I was struck:
Will someone else go there and do what I have done?
Is there among the reviewers who did so at his home and came here relaxed?
Will a girl on the other side of the hospital go to the women's bathroom and do something similar?

When I asked myself the last question, I felt scared, I do not know of whom? But I was afraid. When I was sure that my feet were able to walk and that they had returned to normal, I went to stand at the front of the hospital, so that the reception of the pager would be better, and I would stand up again, counting the chests again without being able to see anything behind the prison, its blackness, but the married woman's -whom I love- chest. I have stood for an hour or two, I do not know, thinking about the evening dreams!

The calls from my lower pocket came strongly. The phone rang out quickly. I pressed the display indicator. The call was coming from my mother. The calls came again, and the third and fourth. I saw nothing but the face of my mother and my sister on the numbers display.... 

22/ 11/ 1998