the waiting room

in the words of Fiona Apple, days like this, I don't know what to do with myself, all day and all night.

When I was 8, I accidentally locked myself in the guest bathroom. We had people over, and my kid brain thought maybe the adults would all collectively barge in for an important congregation while I embarrassingly sat horrified on the toilet. So, I decided to lock the door for the first time, even though I’ve lived in that house since I was starting to develop kneecaps, and never in my life did I think it was necessary to lock the bathroom door, and yet on that day, I did. Immediately upon turning the lock, I realized what a grave mistake I had made, because it was impossible to turn it back. My feeble fingers couldn’t budge the rusty lock, and I forgot all about peeing and started calling for help. Suddenly, the bathroom walls began closing in on me, and time went by in hours. I started to think about how I’d have to spend the night there, terrified that the people behind the door would disappear, and I’d be in this bathroom, alone and unsupervised with the bathroom jinn looming over me.

According to my Mother, I spent 30 minutes there, maximum. Not being able to tell time, it felt like two and half hours of my life were spent just standing in front of that door watching the lock twitch as one of our guests removed it with a screwdriver. Behind the door, my Mother’s voice tried to soothe me. She reminded me of the story she had conveniently told me the night before of Ashab al-Kahf, or The Companions of the Cave. The group of people who were trapped in a cave and slept for hundreds of years to be resurrected by the grace of God. All I could think of at that moment was, “I’m not sleeping in this bathroom, I’ll get possessed. And do I have to wait 300 hundred years to get out?” Safe to say, it didn’t bring me solace. I only froze and stared at the lock till it disappeared and I could see the faces of all the guests, finally entering the bathroom for the congregation of Saving Me.

Constantinople. 985. Miniature Minology Vasily II. Vatican Library. Rome.

My Mother taught me a lot about patience. I underestimated the great willpower it takes to surrender to time—you either unbearably feel it or dare to run with it. My Mother never sat around while waiting, she was always in motion, trying to run alongside time. When I was younger, I never understood the hurry she was always in, but now I realize that the moment you stop, it is grueling to get back up after the inertia knocks you down. On the inverse, it’s also become clear to me that you can only run for so long before you’re out of breath and forced to stop running before you run out of life.

I often think of my Mother as a manifestation of Penelope, staying up for hours at night talking to my Father who was always traveling abroad for work through the relic of MSN Messenger. She was always adjusting the chord of the headphones so her voice could come through properly when they discussed their lives that were not so shared. Sometimes my sister and I lingered around to say hello, share our school achievements, ask him when he was coming back, and say goodnight. Other times, we were ordered to stay out of the living room while they [she] quietly talked. When I think of my Mother during that period of our lives, I only remember her as the busiest woman in the world. I would barely see her, as she also worked a full-time job, sacrificing half of her day’s worth in commute, to support us. When she was finally home, she would doze off from how exhausted she was, or stay up most nights from a persistent insomnia spell. I always slept in her bed, and when I awoke to her stirring, I would see her staring at the wall, and then she would smile at me, willing me to go back to sleep.

Penelope, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, 107x81cm, oil on canvas.

As my Mother’s daughter, I had to inherit her waiting, but I’d hate to think of life as this destined continuous cycle of waiting for the undeserving Odysseus. What if Odysseus never showed up and decided to stay on that island with Circe? What if the cave people had just died in that cave, never discovered, never resurrected after 300 years? Those are the stories we hear every day— of abandoned wives, of people dying, their patience forgotten, their waiting in vain. Yet, we hold on to stories with exceptions, hoping the same miracle will happen to us, too.

And a miracle did happen to me— I found the love of my life. The only thing lying between us is two thousand miles, and because of that, I’m still in the waiting room willing those miles to disappear. The waiting doesn’t stop, and sometimes I find myself awake in the middle of the night, stiff with the suspense of crossing an invisible threshold that would disappear for another to materialize. As my years on this Earth continue, my goals no longer end in academic semesters, but in years or even lifetimes. I don’t know what it would take for the relationship between me and myself, or even between me and my Mother to mend, but I do know it won’t happen next week, and the weight of it crushes me.

In the summer of 2023, I picked up Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk after I’d been gifted a copy by one of my dearest friends. I had just discovered Levy earlier that year through her Living Autobiography trilogy, through which I’ve fallen head over heels for her sincere and modern prose. Without reading the synopsis, I decided Hot Milk would make the perfect summer read. I would find out that she had encapsulated such intimate details of my life into those 218 pages. Sofia takes her mother, Rose, who suffers from a puzzling nerve illness to a small village on the coast of Spain to look after her with the help of a controversial Dr. Gomez. The mother-daughter relationship, often intimate yet tense, unexplainable yet perspicious, left me contemplating my own. Without giving too much away, this quote tells you all you need to know about this dynamic:

“I have been waiting on her all my life. I was the waitress. Waiting on her and waiting for her. What was I waiting for? Waiting for her to step into her self or step out of her invalid self. Waiting for her to take the voyage out of her gloom, to buy a ticket to a vital life.”

―Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

My Mother and I have been going through a rough patch the past couple of years, which was only exacerbated by a looming illness befalling her and my inevitable maturity and subsequent pursuit of independence. I imagine this as a rite of passage for any Arab Muslim woman living under her mother’s roof, but the events we’ve undergone together did leave some marks that prove impossible to mend. At this point, it feels like both of us are waiting for the other person to transform magically into someone else. It’s not like learning a new skill and waiting to get better at it, but rather coming home every day and finding that your language is no longer spoken so you become bilingual. That has created a deep chasm between our drifting continents, making it harder to get to the other side.

I’m not going to expand on the details of my relationship with my Mother, but I know that when I started writing this piece I would inevitably end up here. I feel like I’ve been stuck in this waiting room forever without knowing my way out. Maybe I shouldn’t wait on her, but wouldn’t that be abandonment? And what would the outcome of all this waiting get me, anyway?

It’s simply torment. I can’t just sit and wait for my Mother to come around. So, in true Motherly fashion, I get up and run in a continuous race with time that pulls me further away from her. Is this the way to move on? Should I be running (away) headfirst into a routine, blurring my surroundings with speed, or should I stop altogether to linger at the rosebushes? The real question is: will I know I’ve successfully decentred my parents from my life when our relationship flourishes or corrodes? Whenever I spiral about the future to my partner, he subdues me with his favorite line— “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there”, which has also become mine. I know that holding out in this waiting room might cost me the rest of my life, but it is borne of hope that one day my Mother and I will find each other on the same page. I’m still that 8-year-old girl, frozen in the guest bathroom waiting to recognize my Mother’s face. But will that ever happen? And will I be able to cross that bridge when I get there?