Way Out of the Garden of Despair

The mother gasped lightly. Omar turned round slowly and looked at her and their eyes were locked for a while in the stillness of the moment and the shared grief.

"He is not to blame", she whispered to herself while still looking at him, "he is not to blame for her death. It could have happened with any husband. It is not his fault, not his at all. He loved my daughter and still does. He would have done anything to keep her alive, anything at all. Rasha loved him as well. Salma!" she reminded herself, "don't forget that. She really loved him more than anything else. You mustn't forget that not just for Rasha's sake but for her son's as well".

"We are still waiting", Salma's husband called from his place at the head of the dinning table.

The mother stood and turned to her husband. She took two steps but stopped suddenly and returned to Ali, knelt over him sideways and kissed his right cheek.

She nodded approvingly and smiled softly and encouragingly. There were no words but what she wanted to say was clear to him: She is satisfied now and she thinks well of him. Her soft smile uttered her words and to those she added spoken ones until her eyes were filled with tears again and she walked away.

"It's so, then" Omar said to himself looking around the sitting room of his flat. He never imagined himself alone in the flat without Rasha, yet again. He never imagined to bear being alone in the flat without Rasha. Maybe he won't. He can't tell now. If he can't he will take his son to another place. Rasha will find her way to them again. If there is anything alive in her, anything at all, she will find her way to them again.

He looked in his heart and saw the garden of despair. It was the garden he knows well but only when viewed from above. Why? He did not exactly know but maybe because he remembers it so and his heart wouldn't want to see it any other way. Maybe there is another reason he doesn't know or aware of, maybe there are other things. What he does know is that if he descends to the garden and looks around he will find it changed. The surrounding wall still shoots up but it doesn't reach the sky. For some reason it doesn't look solid as he knows it. Occasionally a strong breeze blows towards it and then he sees it swaying as if made of light mist and almost translucent. It doesn't shield other voices- neither Rasha's nor her mother nor his son's nor any other voice of all those around him now.

"Why?" he asked himself in amazement as he moved his eyes and looked at the sea in the horizon, "Why wouldn't the garden of despair return to the shape he knows? Why did it change suddenly and how"?

He could pour acid on the grounds of the garden until it bears nothing alive but then the dew he sees now didn't come by itself, and not because he wished it to come. It came because Rasha doesn't like the acid; doesn't like loneliness; doesn't like despair.

This is why the garden of despair will never be the one he knew. And why? Because he is not looking at the garden alone any more. She is there somewhere looking at it with him.

Rasha doesn't like to live in despair. She will never return to despair again even in her death. If she didn't want to live with despair in the life that he knew, she wouldn't want to be with him in the other life he doesn't know if he remains in the garden of despair. He can build another garden of despair- darker and deadlier than the one he knows but what's the point? Rasha wouldn't come to him whatever he does so why should he put this burning coal in his heart once more and build another garden of despair once more? What's the use of any place Rasha doesn't want to enter? The heart as well- yes, the heart as well?

"Carry her in your heart and carry her son with her and return to her and him and to all of us," Rasha's brother Walid said to him before he joined the others at the dinning table, "Let's turn a new page in the book of life. We can't think of the garden of despair while we are in the garden of life", he said to him, "Rasha never knew despair in her life and she won't know despair in her death. Her son will never know it unless we push him into it but you are not going to push him there because you've come to love him now but there is another reason: We wouldn't let you do it. This is Sammy, your son", Walid said pointing at the little child in his father's lap, "but he's Rasha's also. I will not leave my sister or her son in the garden of despair even if you choose to be there".

Omar thought again of Walid's words and then of Rasha and life. Walid was a doctor and Omar wanted him to explain to him what is life all about, and what is the purpose of it all. He was going to bide his time and wait for a chance and another and another but at the end he was going to ask him the question, but this was no longer necessary because he thinks he has found the answer.

Life has created itself so all living things can live it. It created all so they can enjoy its gift. What other reason there may be and what for what other purpose if not that? He must live it. All others must live it and all those who will descend upon life in the generations to come until life cease to be alive. Life is born like all her children, and one day she must perish like all her children. She may become in the far future much better than the life we know now. Maybe this is the reason that inches human beings forward and try again and again and again. If life doesn't become better in the future-it's all right. Life would have tried; man would have tried. Knowledge has made all ancient discoveries possible but the attempt to understand this time may be greater than anything we have known.

If he doesn't know in life the purpose of life then he may know afterwards or further down this mysterious road people call death. But he will not wait for death, and he will not need to think of life when his son is around as he is now. No need. There is no need to pressure the mind in order to provide a definition. All what he has to do is look at his son and then he will know what life exactly is.

He will look at life thus from now on. He will clear from his mind the piles of knowledge that led him nowhere and he will instead look at life from the binoculars of life- from two small and bright eyes like his son's. Only then he will know. If his son should ask him one day what is the purpose of life he will give the same answer: "Son, mine and Rasha's son", he will say, "the purpose of life is the perpetuation of life. No other reason is necessary."

He will perpetuate life like all others before him and for the same reasons they know and for those they don't. He will do that but before he does he must do something important- he must despair.

He will be sad, and he will cry, and he will feel the pain, and he will remember Rasha always, always, always. But before life can become bearable again, or even possible, he must do this last thing-he must despair. He must never again believe that Rasha will come back to him, ever.

This time only, this time and no more- ever, the way to despair will be the way out of the garden of despair.

Gardens of Despair, Chapter 18, pp 355-358