[Thursday, April 16, 2015]: Happy Birthday.
My father has always recounted the time I was born. Whenever I would come to him with scowled brows and folded arms, he’d sit me next to him and exhale “I remember it as clear as day. It had been a normal week and a routine average morning. It was a Friday, and I was driving home from work in my trusty Nissan.”
On the evening of April 16, 1999, my mother went into labour at the hospital of Damascus. Her grunts would signal the arrival of her first-born with a man she didn’t love. However, the anticipation of holding her baby would erase all her worries. Situated on a narrow bed with stained sheets, she looked up to God and asked for a smooth delivery. At that time, a lanky figure would enter the surgery room with hesitant steps.
“God’s not going to do anything for you, I told you take the epidural,” he lurked at the door, hands tucked in his pockets.
My father kept his distance from my mother, and as the silence escalated between them, he confessed something which would put her into shock. After a rushed marriage and months of planning, he abruptly exclaimed, “I don’t want kids.” The wrinkles on my mother’s forehead grew older with every second my father spent with her. She squeezed her bloated stomach and asked for my father to share the news with family and friends. With a weary head nod, he left her.
The irony of life would cause my mother and I to have a bumpy relation. However, my father, the man who had announced his reluctance to evolve into a father, would become one of the closest people in my existence.
I was born on a Friday afternoon around 5:00. Although my mother wasn’t in labour for long, she did take her time getting to the hospital to give birth. I was born on April 16, 1999, the day before the Syrian Independence Day, as an Aries.
My father stood there in amazement. A tingle surged throughout his whole body. It was a rush of excitement he had never felt before in his life. When his eyes hit my angelic little body, they froze, and he couldn’t think or acknowledge anything else around him. The world seemed to stop, hold its place in time, just for that perfect moment.
His hands quivered as he slowly reached down to touch my little fingers and feel the softness of my skin. He ran the tips of his fingers very gently across my smooth face, and right away, he fell in love. Then my mother said, “I can wake her up so you can hold her.” He was ecstatic, he was finally going to meet his soul mate.
“As I held you, I stared into your gorgeous brown eyes and knew instantly that I would love and cherish you forever with all my heart.”
In the candlelit room stood family and friends, each ready to make a pledge to how they would help this baby girl. She was a precious gift of the Creator’s light, a pure soul. When she cried, they shed tears too, her cries were to be expected. This child was freshly arrived from heaven; being further away from the Creator wasn’t easy. It was their job to fill her with so much love that she could be happy on Earth. She would feel safe and content in the knowledge that not only her parents, but her entire extended family loved her and watched over her. The baby was passed from person to person, each holding her, cuddling her, before carefully placing her into the arms of a trusted others. The ceremony was beautiful beyond measure, not in expensive flowers or fancy food, but in the sharing of genuine heartfelt emotion.
On my first birthday, my father gave me a golden necklace which he had been working on for a while. It was shaped like a letter; one side had my name on it and the other had my nickname. He would tell me that he specifically chose the name “Yara” because he could sense greatness in the tiny body he had held at the hospital. He would foolishly brag about the fluidity of the name; easy for Arabic tongue and for the Western one. He would tell me that I’m bigger than the city in which I took my first steps.
My dad used to brag about me to everyone. I saw proud in his eyes when he looked at me. And I think all this love and encouragement from him are the reasons why I became so powerful. He used to tell me that I will become a magnificent woman that can change the world. And I believed him. I still believe him.
Today would mark my 16th birthday, the first birthday without my father’s presence. I recall my father promising me to have an important conversation on my 16th birthday. Whenever I would ask about God and this world’s creations, he would ask me to be patient. Whenever I cried over the complicity of friendships, he would give me an assuring pat on the back.
Today also marks four months since my father’s departure. I haven’t spoken to him in four months. I often wake up in a terrorized state as I had seen my father’s lifeless body floating the sea.
As I’m writing and editing, I can’t help my tear up at a sentence I had scribbled years ago:
I wanted my life that the war had taken from me back.
The war had taken my home and my childhood. It took my father. It took my happiness. My birth, my sign, and my name, all relate to the way I live and act today. Many people may not see this connection for themselves, but it takes a little bit of research and thinking to come to realize why people are the way they are. Every day and every action that a child experiences can influence their actions as an adult.
My mother would tell me that I was a sad child, that I used to cry often. She would take me to several child psychologists in hopes that I would act “normal.”
“She sits by herself in recess.”
“She doesn’t communicate with the other kids.”
“I caught her talking to herself.”
“Why does she cry so often?”
My poor mother will spend her life wondering if I’ll lead a normal life, a happy one. She still worries to this day, but what can I do? What can I say to calm her racing heart? If my mother knew how my life would turn out, would she have proceeded? How did my father know that pain would follow me, and why didn’t my mother listen to his demands?
Every detail about my birth would shape my life. Every conversation my mother and father had. The yelling, the arguments about my existence. My name, the “Syrian” stamped on my birth certificate. My grandmother’s softness, my uncle’s brash touch. My aunt’s envious eyes, my cousin’s predatory gaze. Every “cheer.” The pink blankets my mother wrapped me in, my father’s selectness to hold me. Every cry, every prayer.
But that doesn’t matter anymore. Not now, not here.
Anxious Thoughts 
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