Taxes or Paperwork

Published in Minneapolis, Mizna is a literary magazine that showcases diverse Arab, Southwest Asian and North African voices. This story is a couple of years old now, but I’m afraid it feels as relevant as ever, painting an intimate portrait of the terrible guilt, anxiety and helplessness felt by those in the diaspora when their home is plunged into war. It’s powerful stuff, and I’m really pleased that we’re able to share it here.

The war breaks out two days before her final. She wakes up after an all-nighter. There are three calls on her phone, all from her mother. The WhatsApp groups are silent. The first sign that something was wrong. She finds out in pieces through the day, glimpses here and there from social media and Al Jazeera. The tears don’t come.

She is an ocean and a continent away, has been for three years now, and yet she finds herself here every single year. And for one brief second she is not scared, or angry, or beside herself with worry. She is tired.

It has happened often enough that she has a plan now. She calls her father first. He's the only one actually in Khartoum. Her mother is in Egypt, traveling with her grandmother to visit a specialist. They had left only a week before. He doesn't answer. She calls four more times before he picks up. The internet is weak, she can hear rumbling over the phone. He says that he’s fine. His voice betrays nothing and she tries to make hers do the same.

She calls her mother next, messaging her old friends and cousins while the phone rings. Some messages are replied to immediately, others are left straining, hanging.

Her mother has been busy all day. Calling, messaging, trying to keep track of everyone. There isn't just her father to think of. There are aunts and cousins, uncles in different parts of the country. People stranded at the airport as the planes on the tarmac are set ablaze. Her father messages asking about her exam.

He cracks jokes. He tells her that he is fine. He reminds her that she needs to submit the work permit application as soon as her grades are released. She hums, she knows that she will revisit this conversation at a later time. She thinks about translating the old adage about how death and paperwork are the only two constants in life. Wonders if it would be in poor taste when there are planes carrying bombs flying over him.

Is it paperwork? Or taxes? Aren’t taxes technically paperwork?

She finds herself here again.

She now has no home to return to. She will soon find out that this requires a lot of paperwork. There are visa applications and permits to fill out, fees to pay and specialists to consult. Staying is not just a matter of mobility anymore, there is no alternative.

There are a lot of emails to send. She goes to her final, she turns her phone off hours after her father has supposedly gotten on a bus to the Egyptian border. She wants to walk out, she wants to clutch her phone and call and call and call.

She watches the clock, waiting for the halfway point when she can finally submit her paper and collect her bag and turn on her phone. Her phone, she misses the weight of it, she can feel it, just out of reach. She hears a sniffle, then a choked sob. For a second she is mortified. Is it her? Is that her?

Her professor walks over, she’s walking toward her. She must be crying, she can’t feel anything, her eyes are moving between her professor’s face, her bag at the front of the room, and the giant countdown projected on the wall. Twenty minutes to go.

Her professor stops and turns to the front of the room, and she is finally able to rip her eyes away from the wall and the backpack and to the person sitting to her right. They’re crying – fat, glistening tears making trails down splotchy cheeks. They're having trouble breathing, their words coming out in gasps. The professor walks them out of the room. She wonders if anyone in the giant hall knows that she is screaming. If any of the two hundred people with her in this class have been watching the news. If they know anything about Sudan.

The twenty minutes are over. She hands in her paper. She grabs her bag, she turns on her phone. She calls her mother because she knows that if anyone would know where her father is it would be her. He had warned them to not call, they search phones sometimes, the internet and service are spotty along the road. He had assured them that he would update their mother and that she would update them in turn.

She hasn’t talked to her siblings for more than two minutes since the news broke out. They know as much as she does. Her mother tells her that they have all been glued to their phones and to the TV for news. The house is silent.

Her mother tells her that she hasn’t heard anything from him in hours. She gets on the bus home and collapses on the bed.

One of her friends files a petition on her behalf to allow her to retake the final. It's granted, and, on the day of the retake, she arrives in the designated classroom where she finds a couple of other students. One of them is the person who sat to her right during the original exam, the one who had the panic attack.