In the Middle

“When do you feel the most vulnerable?” I am asking Ahmed while gently playing with his dark brown curls, wrapping them around my finger.

“Well, that is a tough question I have to say,” he answers, biting his lip.

I can not stop looking at the fine definition of his face. The framework of his appearance is so gentle and calming, elegant in a way that he has a very serious, straight forward look in his facial expression but always with a little smile showing not only from the corner of his mouth but the little wrinkles around his eyes.

“Should I make coffee?” he asks. I am lying on top of him, partly cuddled by his right arm, lying in the armpit, partly squeezing his toes with mine.

“Mhm” I am slowly moving to one side, trying to let go of the perfect corner I found, squeezed between his arm on my back and leaned to his torso with mine. He gets up and goes into our kitchen. Ahmed is a big fan of my mother’s paintings. They are all over our flat which makes it easier to feel her presence, even if she lives in Agadir again. Together with her older brother, they renovated the family home to then either live in it or rent it. I don’t miss her too much but since we’re not seeing each other so often anymore, we get along way better because it seems we enjoy our time together way more and in a much more genuine authenticity. We also have a lot of fights or discussions, depending on the topic. It makes me proud to be able to say that since we were never really able to let anger be part of our relationship and somehow this made us either unable to interact or to be easygoing in generally unconcerned times because one could always expect a sudden crash. To see her paintings in my flat makes me so happy.

“Nein, sorg dich nicht um mich. Du weißt ich liieeeeebe das leeeeeeben.(...)” I hear him singing along with the radio while crumbling some cardamom into the coffee.

“Were you intimidated by my question or are you still thinking about an answer?” I ask him.

He leans into the kitchen door frame, looking visually unfocused into the living room, biting his lip again. “I think it depends on what level of vulnerability you’re referring to. Physically I might feel the most vulnerable at the barber shop I have to say— they might be generally trustworthy but still— having a very sharp blade gently sliding over my throat and fortunately just cutting down the hair of my beard and not my throat open is somehow amazing, somehow intimidating. Speaking of trust.”

“And what are the other levels then?”

“Well the emotional part is a bit complicated to specify,” he says, starting to look more focused and into my face. I immediately start to smile. Less elegant and more cheeky in the expression I think.

“... because you don’t trust me or…” He turns away and pulls the coffee maker from the stove. I roll on my back and stare up the wall. Our new sofa is very comfortable. It still smells a bit of another person but it was relatively cheap and fits the room incredibly well, matching the colours of the paintings with. I sink into the soft green leather.

We just moved in together a few months ago and had our one hundredth fight last week. Normally this is an integral part of our relationship which makes possible that we somehow negotiate the shared space of our emotional attachment and spiritual affinity as we are relatively opposed characters. Usually this makes our fights a very constructive process in our relationship but this time it was a bit as if some integral part of our togetherness got lost within the process of the conversation.

This short story was written during the workshop Stories Born from Songs facilitated by the author Chimeka Garricks in October 2022.