Chapter Nine\\\\\Abstraction

In her apartment, Anna sat next to the window and looked at the street, lights, trees, clouds, and outline of the horizon. As cloud moved, she noticed their formation changed. They became animals, humans, lights, trees, and gradually it was darkness, an absolute darkness.
*
All that formed in Anna on the justification of the past was no longer in harmonious completeness with that structure. Her mission, her value, her significant, her massage, and her intention did not depend on those anymore.
Joseph's speech did not glide like a river, as it did before; therefore, it could not take her along. Only when the darkness fell, should she understood that he survived one more day. The doctors' predictions of six months to one year were wrong. It was passed a year since he had been diagnosed with cancer. He was still breathing, but only breathing. He was not able anymore to do the occasional walking or ardent talking. His doctors wanted him in hospital or nursing home; and Anna's insistence for taking care of him at home was agonizing and irritating to all his doctors. Being a nurse, she could understand Jopseph's point of view and she could not in any way go against what her beloved husband's wish was; to stay home.
She brought the doctor's opinion to his attention; but he, even in his absolute weakness would suddenly find a last strand of energy to disagree with the doctors.
"No, I want to be here. Ask them if they can save me, then I go to hospital. If their answer is no, tell them to go to hell."
Anna told his doctor the exact words of Joseph. Dr. T. said:
"He is not in a position to make decision for himself. It is up to you. How can you live with yourself for keeping him at home?"
"He hasn't lost his mind. It is up to him not mine. However I understand your point. That is what he wants. I can not and will not go against his wish. Would you want to die in hospital or home, Dr.T.? Answer me."
Dr. T. had nothing to say. His silence gave her courage to bring up another shocking issue:
"Dr. T., can you speed up his death? I hate to see him suffer so much." She did not tell the doctor that this was actually Joseph's last wish. The doctor looked shocked. With total amazement he said:
"You're quite a woman; but you know I can't. You've been in medical world yourself. You know I can't. It's against law. I wish I could."
Anna's face wreathed in a bitter smile.
"I understand. But thanks for your empathy anyway."
Nothing is inevitable but death, but is it? Anna's thoughts no more occupied by her own emotions. She tried very hard to be Joseph, to feel what he felt, and to suffer his pain. What she discovered was unbearable. She suffered the greatest pain of all by that discovery. The grand myth that thought always changes, the game that humans life is forced for change, the symbols like tears, laughter, joy, that Aristotelian hysteria of awe and beatitude, as dreams are essential to humans, were not any longer her philosophical viewpoint.
There was a simple issue, a very simple issue that all human in all walks of life had faced, as historians said, as scientists said- a death, a dying; but this one was close to her, to her soul, to everything she believed. She saw his suffering, his melting away, his disappearance. She wanted to comply with his wish to end that suffering sooner than the appointed time, but could she? What about the law of nature, law of the God, if there was one? Could she speed up the unavoidable and end the affliction of a man she loved and admired? Could she? What would those laws do to her then? Nonetheless this was what he wanted and she believed it was the right thing to do. She thought aloud:
"I don't care what happens to me afterwards. I perhaps learn how to cry, my very own first cry."

To be continued

Chapter Nine____Abstraction

Sitting by the window, looking into the cold outside, Anna tried to feel what Aria felt; betrayal from a woman he loved, rejection from his father he respected . But would those rejections stop her from achieving her goal? She was not sure. She did not know what path she would take if she was in her brother's situation.
She waited in Aria's apartment for him. She assumed he would be home from work not later than twelve midnight. But it was not until four in the morning that he opened the door of his apartment and rushed in as drunk as he could be. In dark, he did not notice his sister was sitting by the living room window which was facing the parking. He threw himself on the sofa and a minute later Anna could hear his drunken snoring.
She thought anxiously as she was glued on her chair , in the midst of that brutal commotion of her soul, of the unjust way that life had treated Aria. She felt a great empathy for him. An unjust pain overshadowed her last thread of energy and she finally fell asleep.
"What are you doing here?" Aria was shaking her to wake up.
She rubbed her eyes while did not remember why she was in her brother's home. It was a bright day. She sat there for a minute mystified. Then slowly she recalled.
"I was waiting for you. I guess I fell asleep."
"Why? Are you spying on me?"
"No, but..."
"But what? I want my key back. You just can't barge in my place when I'm not home."
Anna's pride was injured. She looked at him. He had lost all the expression of a human face. He had become someone else.
"I need to talk to you. What are you doing to yourself? What is going on? Have you quited school?"
"Yes, I have. I don't have the desire and drive for school anymore. Schools are not for everyone."
"But that is not right. You're so smart. You were accepted in Medical School. Not everyone can do that. Does a woman like Rosy worth all these?"
"You wash your mouth and don't talk about her, understood!" His voice had lost its tenderness but what was left of it showed that it had once been a gentle one.
"I'm trying to help you. I am your sister, remember!"
"I don't have to remember. I know. But you're becoming a nuisance in my life. Leave me alone."
"You're killing yourself, all these drinking. What is happening to you? Talk to me."
"Just leave me alone. Go to your own home. I call you if I need you. Just leave me."
What does happen when one feels no solution for a dilemma? Anna's brain was drained of energy. When she left her brother's apartment, she did not know what her next step would be to save her brother or prevent a catastrophe. Her thoughts were shifting from one darkness to another. She closed her eyes not to see but her awareness was disturbed. While people her age were celebrating their youth, she was mourning for being young with not much experience. She felt a shattering sadness that was not her own. She realized that there was no joy in the reality that existed, and there was no rapture in demanding it but letting it go by.
Up to that day, there was something in her everyday life that she was able to take it with her to the night; nonetheless, now she did not want to carry those thoughts into the night. How could she free herself from that chaotic heritage within the actual limit of the beginning and the end, birth and death? She could no longer feel her irony will or her ability for evaluation, or her salvation for redemption. Many evil thoughts captured her and she noticed the absence of all her good visions. Her life, at that moment, was dry and dull.

To be continued

Chapter Nine---Abstraction

That monstrous evil, that unjust fear, the dying,
That daring love, more fearless and bolder than a reason!
Pouring rain frightens the earth, oh, that crying!
But stone delightfully smiles in that rainy season.

Why can't we find the stars at night?
Why only a seaman can see where they lead?
For us, stars are beauty and delight.
To them, is study, a life and deed.

In daybreak the sun brings tears with its fire.
It carries an honorable, glowing redness on its wing.
At dark-fall our souls long a desire
When the stars smile like a king.

Each person's life comes with poison and benediction.
I can drink the poison, if the person is a friend;
And I only taste sweetness, abstraction,
A clear taste of sun and stars to the end.
*
For New Year's eve, Anna's eighteen birthday, she accepted her brother's invitation to go out and have fun; to see how Americans celebrate the New Year, so she could compare it with the celebration of the New Year (Nourouz) in Iran on the first day of spring. Marianna and her boyfriend were invited, too, and they joined them.
They had dinner at the restaurant Aria worked. Aria insisted that his sister drink wine, so she did. It was the first time. Before the dinner was over, Aria was drunk. He had started with wine and switched to vodka. Anna did not like what she saw. She had never seen her brother this way. She did not know how to stop him. He acted silly and talked nonsense with a lot of gesticulating with his body and hands.
In the lady's room, she broke into a sob. Her friend, Marianna, was there, too.
"I know why you're crying! It's for the way your brother acting, isn't it?"
Anna looked at Marianna through the mist of her rainy eyes. "I can't recognize him tonight."
"I don't think he is over Rosy yet." Her friend offered.
"You think that is why he is drinking like this?"
"Yes, sure. What else can it be?" Marianna suggested.
"God dammed Rosy. See what she had done to Aria?"
"Don't blame her. Your brother fell for her. There are many girls like Rosy out there. They can be very charming!"
"You're right. What am I going to do?" Anna babbled.
"You can't do anything. He is an adult."
"I wonder if he drinks at home, too!"
"You have the key to his apartment. Why don't you find out?" Marianna's suggestion seemed logical.
"I'm scared to find out. I have a feeling..." Anna could not continue.
"Listen Anna, it is New Year and your birthday. Try to enjoy yourself tonight. We think of something."
"How can I enjoy myself? Oh Marianna, what am I going to do?"
"Just pray and hope!" Marianna's response seemed shallow.
"Pray! Pray to what? I don't believe in praying." Anna was not sure about her belief.
" If you did you would be much more at ease and peace."
"But I don't."
"I understand. Lets go back to our table. We talk more tomorrow."
A few days later, it was a day of reckoning. Anna's recent confusion for her own life had stopped her temporary to watch her brother. In his apartment not only she found full and empty bottles of vodka, she also came across many signs of women that perhaps had been with his brother. His place was so untidy that she did not know how to start cleaning. Dirty and clean clothes were piled up all over his place. But none of those broke her resilience more than discovering that there were no books or sign of a student living there. How could she be so naive, so ignorant, and so involved in her own world that did not even realized that her brother had quited school? What was happening to him, to that motivated, intelligent young man, who wanted to become a medical doctor, who had gotten scholarship?

To be continued