Hanan Mothershed El-Dessouky

If You Knew

Ellen Bass

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

What we see on the surface of a life is never all there is to be known. We often find out details about someone when it is too late to converse with, and pry from them, a little bit more. Such is life which always culminates in death. For Hanan, her life is only now beginning. She shall now have a bit more time with her mother, her brother and her late husband; all the time in the world as they say, and Miss Mary, her sister, is now the last one standing. 

Hanan was a whirlwind. She was complex, a raconteur, a master orator, a social trollop, a deep reader of literature, she was both country and sophisticated, she was a great listener as well, never forgetting what you told her. She was both interesting and interested, going through life ready for all encounters and masticating well whatever came her way. 

She was also exasperating. She arrived to Merida, a recent widow, and seemingly, within minutes, everyone knew who she was. I re-met her one evening because I had noticed a trail of pistachios on the ground, which I followed, and eventually they re-led me to her. 

If you entered her home, you may not get out for hours. She talked endlessly to me about people here assuming I knew them. I had to constantly remind her and say: Hanan, I am a curmudgeon and I am happiest when eschewing social circles. Hanan was social in a way that defied gravity. Possibly three times a week she FaceTimed me to talk. I would have to say: I have ten minutes in me or twenty. Sometimes, though rarely, I had a hour of jaw wag in me. Every outing done with her resulted in a small adventure whether it be for groceries, a movie, driving home, breakfast, dinner, or a small dinner party. Everyone, knew who she was. It both perplexed and fascinated me at times and I would often ask her how in the world she found the time to know everyone in Merida? I sometimes caught her out of the corner of my eye talking to someone at a party whom I least expected her to be engrossed with. But engrossed she was because Hanan went through life devouring everything that came her way.  She was enthusiastic, curious, and ALWAYS had the notion she was wonderful. What a great notion to have! But there was a vulnerability about her that was heartbreaking. When you are that shiny and bright and the world around you demands a constant explanation for your existence, something eventually has to give. 

Hanan was one of the last great orators who was able to recite long passages from memory.  She often regaled my dinner parties with poems by great African American poets reciting them in the vernacular in which they were written. She was a master of this long-ago forgotten skill. She was an exquisite raconteur reciting jokes that made small crowds groan.  Me? I can remember only one joke from my entire life so it always awed me that her memory was so sharp. She came from a long line of African American innovators and scholars; history changers and path-breakers.  Her mother, Lillian, was the first Black principal to have taken over a predominately white school, transitioning from segregated to integrated. A building, I think a library or school, will soon be named after her mother in recognition of her life’s work. Her first cousin, on her father’s side, was Thelma Mothershed one of the Little Rock Nine who in 1957, under military escort, and vitriolic hate historically integrated Little Rock Central High school in Arkansas. She was my elder and an elder stateswoman. She is a member of the African American elite. She was a world traveller, multi-lingual and didn’t tolerate a lot of bullshit. She could be a diva. If you asked her to listen to you, she listened. She remembered things you forgot and she forgot things easily that may have burdened her heart. She is unforgettable because she was one of a kind.  

I will miss her presence here in Merida and in my life. I will miss everyday simple things like the annoyance in her voice when she failed to reach me by phone. How she showed off her most recent handbag, to me, a woman with the same handbag toted for years. And when I failed to ooh and ahh as she expected she demanded I get with the program and ooh and ahh for her benefit. Mostly I will miss her smile because when it appeared and when her laugh took over, you smiled and you laughed too. 

Sence You Went Away

BY JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

Seems lak to me de stars don't shine so bright,   

Seems lak to me de sun done loss his light,   

Seems lak to me der's nothin' goin' right,

      Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me de sky ain't half so blue,   

Seems lak to me dat eve'ything wants you,   

Seems lak to me I don't know what to do,

      Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me dat eve'ything is wrong,   

Seems lak to me de day's jes twice ez long,   

Seems lak to me de bird's forgot his song,

      Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me I jes can't he’p but sigh,   

Seems lak to me ma th’oat keeps gittin’ dry,   

Seems lak to me a tear stays in ma eye,

      Sence you went away.

God Speed Hanan. God Speed.