All I have is you.
Omar—
Whatchu look like?
I’m asking because when I take you to where we’re going, I want to recognize you. I don’t know if I’ll meet you alone or if you’ll be in a crowd, and this might sound mean but I don’t know if I’d really KNOW it was you. Even with all of what’s been happening to us. Like, you think that with this thing we got, we’d know each other instantly, but, like, I have no picture of you. I ain’t never seen you before. And before that first letter, I had no idea you even existed.
But now sometimes when I close my eyes, I try to picture you. I try to put your face together. At first, it’s kinda like a Mr. Potato Head thing where the lips are too big and the nose is way too big and the eyes are kinda googly, but then it starts to come together, you know?
Here’s what I picture, and you can tell me if I’m wrong.
I never met a Middle Eastern person before and I don’t think I know any Palestinians, except DJ Khaled. He’s a Palestinian, right?
But I picture you having this straight nose that juts forward a little bit with tiny down-facing nostrils. And your bottom lip is a little plump, but you got your lips pursed together in this straight line. And your eyebrows are bushy and curve sharp-like towards the ends. And your eyes are shaped like almonds. Like the kind Mama was always eating. And your skin is dark but not dark-dark like mine. More like when water wash up on the shore but the sand ain’t dry yet. Like, dark but not dark-dark. It’s the type of brown that’s nice to look at. And you got this sloping jawline. It’s smooth and curved. I think you’re my age so you don’t got no baby fat left. Maybe you hit your growth spurt. Some of the cats who play basketball around the way call it your Mango Season. Maybe that has somethin to do with the South, I don’t know. But maybe you’re tall. And maybe you could hoop too. When you get out, you should think about playing ball.
You ain’t gotta say what you think I look like or nothin. Ur a good writer but my face too pretty for words. Haha, I’m just kiddin. I’m just a regular nigga. Regular-degular. Nothin special.
But I think that’s what you might look like. It’s what I think a hero might look like.
Quincy—
Do your hands have long fingers? Like those of a piano player?
I imagine you with strong hands. Your grip isn’t bony, it’s iron. You hold tightly to what is dear. I imagine your skin dark as seabed on the backs of your hands and your palms are the color of milky coffee, and I can now imagine every line, every crease, every crevice. Once upon a time, your knuckles were cracked, and I think they have bled often. You have broken the skin of them on many things, trying to survive. But what has grown over that broken skin is rough and safe and secure. That’s what I imagine when I imagine your knuckles on my cheek. Security.
It is more difficult to see your face. I think that my sight is failing me. It took me a long time to read your last letter. The words themselves were slipping away right before my eyes. I cough now and when I cough, I can feel the blood moving in my chest. If I cough into my hands, they come back red. They have started trying to force feed us, but I have remained resilient, and I find the occasional message of support and congratulations waiting for me in my cell. I can barely lift my arms, and I have stopped trying to walk the length of my cell for exercise. My legs no longer support me. Sometimes, I feel nothing at all. I don’t feel my bed beneath me, nor do I feel the heat of this cage on my forehead. Sounds come as though from far away. I sometimes hear screams, but I tell myself I am only dreaming them. If it is a lie, then let it be mine.
When I try to imagine you, I imagine your hands, but I also imagine your arms. They are thin and sinewy. Strong but light. Running is easy for you. And your legs are the same, and I can see them kicking behind you as you dive into the water. You are an arrow fired into it.
We are just off the shore, swimming into the Mediterranean. The sun is shining so bright it turns the rippling waves into a bed of diamonds. And I see you swimming and swimming.
I hope you get this letter. My stomach has stopped working. I don’t know if I can pass anything through it anymore. I think I’m dying.
I am sorry if my writing is messy. My tears are falling on the page, and I can’t stop them. You told me that crying helps, so I am trying it now.
Habibi, come to Gaza some time when you are able. You will find me.
Now that you know what I look like.
Omar—
Bro, I’m not gonna lie. Your last letter had me shook. Your eyes aren’t getting bad. It’s just these new pencils they’re making us use. They’re all made out of rubber and they don’t have any led in them so that we can’t hurt ourselves. You’re good. You gotta you gotta stay. I can’t
The other day, I was waiting. Trying to see if I just needed to take a shit and get another letter from you but nothin was comin and I just kept tryin and tryin and nothin was happenin and I got so mad I couldn’t eat and when they tried to bring me more food I took the tray and threw my food everywhere and started bangin the tray on the doors and on the walls and I couldn’t stop. I knew what I was doing. I saw myself doing it, but I couldn’t stop. It was like my old self took over. My out-there self.
That Quincy was always angry. Even when I was laughing and havin fun and all of us was hangin out at that abandoned house on Pico and one time we locked the homie in a shed and he was poundin on it for like hours and we finally let him out and we was laughing our asses off, even at that time I was angry. Then there’s the Quincy that did everything he could to take care of his mama. Maybe I go to school but that don’t work so maybe I slang on the corner and that don’t work so you just fall into the gangbangin and everybody already go into that angry so it ain’t nothin to pop somebody or to give them the whoop-dee-whoop. Then there’s the Quincy that loves reading and kinda likes writing and is tryin to get good at it but they make it so hard for a nigga to learn in here, and it’s like there are all these Quincys inside me and they all tired. They all tired. And the only time they all feel glued together is when I’m readin your letters.
I don’t know that I can stick it out in here if I ain’t got your letters. You’re saving my life, man. You can’t go. I’m beggin you. Please.
I been trying to see if I can do that trick again. Where I see a place I ain’t never been to before. But I haven’t been able to do it since that one time. Sometimes I wonder if it was really real. Like I musta dreamt it. But it was the realest dream ever. And it wasn’t no part of Cali I’d ever been to before. That’s the thing. It was a new place. So I been tryin. Like, I tried it with the Rimal place you told me about. And I could almost get there but not quite. It still felt like there was this fence between me and that spot.