The Thread My Body Remembers

Reconnecting with the Self takes different forms.

Memories visit you unexpectedly, yet when you most need them.

Like everything in life, they require time and space to grow.

Only a tiny crack in the wall is enough for an avalanche of forgotten life to invade you. Surrendered to the nothingness and everything.

Reconnecting with the Self means embracing other dearest selves, as your skin, your eyelashes, your heartbeat. You release them like your breath, only to hold them back again. Sometimes, cooking a dish, wearing a scarf, repeating a specific phrase, using an idiom, spraying a perfume, recalling a scent, watering a flower, writing a poem, or re-creating a photo, is your way of keeping the conversation flowing between you and them.

Every communication needs a medium. You don’t determine its nature solely.  

In fact, you merely figure it in reliance of the receiver, the Other. Who they are, what they like, what keeps them alive? Answers you spent their lifetime, attempting to reveal them, are essential in directing you towards the way, if not the only way, to carry them with you. Sometimes it takes more than their lifetime to solve the riddle.

Attempting the answers carries on to another life. Every attempt is one step closer to the answer, whether you uncover only a fragment or the whole.

Your intention matters. You must be willing to keep inviting them to the world. Your desire to continue introducing them to your world, even after they are gone, is powerful. Nevertheless, the command is in their hands to grant your wishes. They decide how they want to be present in your life, in the Absence.

Holding a needle and thread has always been you. I knew it as the untarnished, forgotten truth.

Oh, the time and care you poured into treating a piece of fabric! A circle and endless geometric shapes of imagination you would draw around, wondering about the harmony of colours, switching between buttons, trying to find the best size, the most fitting, as if it is part of the fabric, this one up, the other one down, checking where they could make the statement better.

It is immeasurable.

When you used to occupy the living room floor and spread down the fabric on a clean surface, no cutting table was big enough to encompass the vast imagination, and that meant it is only the beginning of an evening that will be devoted entirely for the satisfaction of your desire.

I have always wished that I knew how to cut and sew like you, to design and create from scratch, and to tailor as the creative person you are. You didn’t teach me, but I contemplated you closely, day and night. I observed you when I accompanied you to the haberdashery. I listened carefully to your conversations with the sellers about current trends, your willingness to incorporate them within the classic forms, fascinated by your willingness to keep a dress or tailleur on hold until specific extra garments, ornaments, or embroidery were shipped to the store, or patiently waiting for the “truce” to allow shipments to cross the city of Beirut.

It is a rare privilege, given to anyone, to observe from a close distance, the process of creation, the journey of contemplating the piece, thinking, and imagining the lines and cuts. To witness the moment of frustration when committing mistakes, and celebrating glorious moments when finding creative solutions, how not to waste a piece of garment, because of a last-minute change, with little garment left.

Surfing in my mind, from my sofa to wonderful places until I feel bored of my own imagination, I suddenly find myself jumping with excitement, despite drowsiness and lack of sleep in these summer nights, when I see you unfolding your kit under the faint light of the lamp running on battery. … To my young self, that is something worth staying up to watch. The older me would jump, too.

I cannot tell what was fascinating more: watching the steps of the art and craft, or studying the woman in front of me, your beauty, passion, delicacy, perfectionism, flexibility and resilience, patience, and calmness. Above all, the love and joy of the journey itself, and the playful thought, when every piece is standing alone, looks unfinished, with waste papers and chalk marks on the edges, pins on the other. Yet the smile on your face, after a few steps, stamped with the wink of your hazel eyes, tells the story of the not yet finished piece. With a nod, confirming to me: wait, and you will see.

I have never let you go. So, I cannot claim that it was difficult to reconnect with you.

At all times, at all places and corners, and in my kitchen, you have been there, we have been there, together. Yet, for me to hold the thread and the needle, and finally embark on this journey that has been long time delayed, makes my heart tremble.

I am not afraid of finding answers about you, nor about me.

It is the longing.

I am comfortable conversing with you. Isn’t that what we have been doing for years? Even after speech was no longer our medium, and when recognition was lost except through touch. Even after no physical presence at all.

Here I am, laughing out loud, with my glasses askew on my nose, as I struggle to slip the thread through the tiny hole of the needle. I was your extra pair of eyes when your glasses failed you. I caught myself lowering it down onto my lap, like you did, for a moment I thought of calling you Mum, is that your thumb? But then I realised it was mine.

Not only my mind remembers you, not only you live through stories I tell and write about you. But my body remembers you.

You incarnated my body.