Jasmine: A tale through generations of broken love and what it means to heal

Words by Jana Amin.

“Marriage is like a besieged castle; those who are on the outside wish to get in; and those who are on the inside wish to get out.” — Arabic Proverb

“And there is a city in my heart where you are its only population.” — Arabic Quote

I fall in love with Cairo first: the dust dancing at dawn, minarets soaring above the pink-ish brown horizon, my grandfather’s sheesha puffing out cloud after cloud of smoke.

Trailing my grandmother on her Friday errands, I first discover my home, amidst traffic jams and street harassment. At 8, maybe 9, I walk into a tree of jasmine, a cascade of ivory petals falling by my side. A man makes eye contact with me, shouts “amara,” “beautiful.” I assume he is referring to the jasmine, but when my grandmother tugs me closer to her, I realise he is talking to me. We are helpless, the quickening of her, our pace gives us away.

I start thinking about love.

I am with my grandmother again, designing my wedding dress, when I first witness one of her arguments with my grandfather. Their screams seep into every corner of the apartment.

I realise: their love is the longest love I know.

I pick up my pencil and scribble over the outline of my wedding dress. All I’m left with is a white piece of paper. My dream marriage is already being erased.

I slip that paper under my Dora coloring books and mental math worksheets. It is a reminder of my confusion: if long-lasting love is broken, why does everyone so desperately seem to want it?

* * * *

My mother is spinning me around, my sequin-adored dress keeping up with every twirl, twist, turn. I don’t know it, but this birthday, my tenth birthday, is the last I will celebrate in Egypt.

Travel-themed cupcakes line the table, fake passports stacked beside them. Signs pointing to Japan, Germany, Argentina, Peru decorate every wall.

I ask my mother if love looks different in those countries, and she smiles, whirling me in circles until we reach the door, where my international school friends await. “Do you love any of them differently?” she asks. I never respond, just open the door, my birthday girl sash greeting everyone. My friends and I hum along to Amr Diab and Justin Bieber. I forget all about love, while we sing along to declarations of it.

But love does seem to be different in the US, where couples stroll down the streets hand-in-hand, kiss each other at the mall, embrace at the doorway of my 5th grade classroom.

I am scandalized, or at least, I know I should be. In a few years, my aunts will force me to leave the room for a sex scene, and I’ll pretend not to know some of my friends are having it.

But for now, I’ll sleepover at my best friend’s house and realize I’ve never seen members of my family romantically kiss, hug, hold hands. The exception: the stacks and stacks of photos from weddings and honeymoons of generations past and present.

It is at that sleepover where I first hear the concept of date-night. We are lounging on the couch, exchanging secrets, when her parents come into the living room, explain their date-night is awaiting, and kiss in front of us. My friend rolls her eyes, unfazed. “They do this all the time,” she remarks, her tone one of teenage embarrassment and apathy.

I feel I’ve fallen into one of the Hollywood rom coms my mother turns to on the anniversary of my parents’ divorce. My best friend’s parents have never felt more foreign, different, American.

Maybe, I think, that is what American love looks like, and maybe, I am simply not American enough to buy into it.

* * * *

The BMW glides into the wedding ceremony, 600 people with arms outstretched lining its path. Inside, I imagine he tells her he loves her, squeezes her hand, maybe, asks if her halter-neck lace-trimmed gown needs fixing. They love each other--that, both mother-in-laws can agree on.

When the car reaches the end of its red carpet, my grandfather receives my mum, slowly, carefully. I imagine her wobbling slightly, the layers and layers of tulle making it hard to stand, let alone walk, her arm holding on to my grandfather out of pure necessity.

In the DVD of their wedding that my family watches altogether when I am around 8, I see my to-be parents whisper to each other, and laugh, again and again, the wedding reception seemingly revolving around their love. I wonder if they still love each other like that, but I don’t ask. Perhaps I already know the answer. They get divorced just a few years later.

My father remarries twice. The first, I learn, is a broken woman, whom he tries desperately to fix. She does not, cannot, trust him, the ghosts of men in her past overshadowing their every interaction. I see my dad ache for her, searching for an instruction manual to put her back together, like the computers he revives from the dead every weekend. But there is no manual for love.

I learn of their divorce one Tuesday, or Wednesday, while in Spanish class. But broken love no longer surprises me. I know of little else.

* * * *

The loveseat swing rocks back and forth, upsetting piles of jasmine in its wake. I am curled up to the right, watching white petals sway like ballet-dancers. I follow one to the ground, where it rests, unmoving.

Inside, where prayers, tears, and condolences create a soft hum of sadness, my family remembers my great-grandmother, her death so recent my father repeatedly refers to her in the present tense.

I know very little about her: that she got married at fifteen, had thirteen children, spent evenings threading necklaces of jasmine.

It’s the way I’ll remember her always, feel her presence on the jasmine-scented white granite counters in our home in Boston, wonder if she’s watching me blunder through more men than she’d ever had the opportunity to talk to, ask myself if my life could be more different than hers.

We are three generations apart. This I know from my inability to make the necklaces she so loved, silently serve on Egyptian men fully capable of helping themselves.

I pick at the swing, my severely bitten nails sending shards of painted wood flying. I don’t know what I expect to find underneath decades of paint, but I suspect I want her to help restore my faith in love, in marriage, in relationships.

She does not. Instead, the pool is glowing white, fallen petals lit up by LED lights, when I realize I’ve destroyed one half of the loveseat swing. It is time to go inside.

* * * *

Years later, I’ll turn to myself to answer my own questions about love. A scene will come to mind.

I hold on to him as we walk, my block-heeled boots no match for Boston black ice.

I don’t have to will generations of worries away, memories of my parent’s divorce and my grandparents’ fights finally frozen in the past.

Together, we create a mosaic of hob and amor, plane rides and weddings, divorces and disagreements. He helps me stitch together fragments of broken love.

White petals of jasmine line the aisle on our wedding day. Tulle converts me into a wobbling bride worse than my mother. Today, I am proud to be called “amar,” beautiful.

I let him clutch my hands and uncurl my ring finger.

We waltz our way through the night. I am still thinking about love.