Guernica Magazine

Politics

Ik kijk van bovenaf op de vage vormen van een menselijke figuur, Odilon Redon, 1896

I died six months after turning ninety years old. Of meningoencephalitis. In a Military Hospital close to the old quarter, one kilometer from the Zoo and the Casino Campestre park. I left behind a wife, three children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Later on, more great-grandchildren will be born, my wife will die, my children will grow old. Everything at its own pace. In natural and chronological order. 

Everyone thought it was a cold, with all the fevers and shaking, but it was meningo. They saw my wracking shivers and they were scared, but that’s the way colds always are. The body shuts down, the head aches, the temperature rises, the jaw and hands start to shake. 

Since I’m dead I don’t feel a thing; free of sensation, I enjoy the show. My wife, an elderly woman not five feet tall, is sitting at the table when my daughter comes to give her the news that I’ve passed on. My favorite granddaughters, the ones my wife and I raised, are laughing in the spare room. It’s nervous laughter. Laughter that means I can’t believe it. The dogs know I’m here, sitting in the same place as always.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Guernica Magazine

Guernica Magazine9 min read
Stewart Sinclair: Moving Objects, Moving People
Stewart Lawrence Sinclair, author of Juggling, imagines what’s possible when we make room for things that don’t necessarily have a point.
Guernica Magazine5 min read
Al-Qahira
Growing up, your teachers always told you: “Al-Qahira taqharu’l I’ida.” Cairo vanquishes her enemies.
Guernica Magazine11 min read
The Smoke of the Land Went Up
We were the three of us in bed together, the Palm Tree Wholesaler and the Division-I High Jumper and me. The High Jumper slept in the middle and on his side, his back facing me and his left leg thrown over the legs of the Palm Tree Wholesaler, who re

Related Books & Audiobooks