ع

I meet his eyes, my own stinging—in anticipation, maybe, or foreboding, or simply because I cried yesterday when I realized I couldn’t read the credits scrolling down the screen. The black cloud of a chair forces me to slouch so my feet reach the ground. In my black jeans and black sweater, I fade into faux leather.

Myopia, unfortunately, the optometrist tells me. He shifts in his seat, and I can hear the rub of his shoes against the linoleum floor.

Myopia?, I ask, eyes wide. I am still—still in the existence where I have twenty-twenty vision. Before, when my mother discerned the whir of a mosquito, she would shut the door in whatever room she was in and call for me. I’d sit on the floor, sticky sweat pressed to stone tile, and lie in wait for the intruder—a flicker of wing, a moment of dark agitation against the honey-hued closet door.

I was the huntress. Now, in this too-big chair, I feel suddenly as the mosquito feels, smothered by the shadow of a hand moments before being crushed to the cream wall. My eyes are suddenly too long. The rays that used to rest perfectly on my retinas fall short. Now, the light cannot tell me about the world.

▴ ▴ ▴

The first letter of ﻋﻨﺎﯾﺔ is not one most who share this language can pronounce. ع does not fit in all throats, so my parents spelled my name anaya. I grew used to uh-nye-uh, to the three As in their dissonance, to the weight under my tongue. Now, when I hear someone calling my name—my real name—there is a chasm. Sometimes, there are moments where I don’t realize, never realize, that they are calling me. Sometimes, I don’t know who I want to be.

▴ ▴ ▴

Myopia, I repeat, and the word has lost the question mark. The optometrist’s face is suddenly hazy. I can’t decide if it’s in my head or if putting a name to the unnoticeable decline of my vision has revealed it.

Do any members of your family wear glasses? I shake my head no. Likely not genetic, then. We’re noticing more people being diagnosed now. The glasses-less green-eyed girl on the cover of a brochure smiles out at the wall behind me. When I was younger, I wanted green eyes. (Truth: I wanted anything but brown.) At least they work, though, was my elementary-school self’s attempt at consolation. At least I can see on my own. I don’t know what the brochure promises. From this distance, the text might as well not be there.

When your eyes aren’t allowed to look far away, sometimes, you’ll find they no longer can. I translate his bland doctor-speak: You did this to yourself. You ran your eyes to destruction in quarantine, all-nighters and the bluish glow of a screen the closest you got to the sky. What else did you expect when you can’t remember when you last saw the horizon? What else did you expect when you can’t remember? What else did you expect?

▴ ▴ ▴

ع spoken aloud is ﻋﯿﻦ .ﻋﯿﻦ means eye. Without ع, you might say, you are blind.

▴ ▴ ▴

Do you think the world is more likely to end because of aliens, a nuclear bomb, or a virus?

I don’t know, is my honest response as I trace the telephone lines that blur into pink. I guess it depends on how bad each one is. Like the virus: are we talking COVID or something like the Flare?

I can see my ten-year-old brother nod, but my aching eyes are fixed on the wind-whipped fabric pinned to rooftop clotheslines that cut into the expanse of sky. My glasses are pressed against my hair. I have learned that the more sunlight there is, the more I can pretend my diagnosis happened to another me as the world quakes into some semblance of clarity. As we near dusk, though, there is no hiding: the street collapses, lines vanish, cacophony of colors.

I guess a virus doesn’t mean the end of the world, he agrees. But neither does a nuclear bomb, right? It’s not the end of the whole world.

I have to concede. Not the end of the whole world, maybe, but the end of someone’s world. Many worlds.

▴ ▴ ▴

ﻋﯿﻨﯿﺔ is a word built off of ﻋﯿﻦ. It can mean identity, as in: identity is what can be seen. Shine a light on it and watch it flicker into clarity.

▴ ▴ ▴

So? Which one is more likely?, my brother presses. I don’t know, I say, turning the conversation back on him. Why are we talking about the end of the world, anyway?

My brother thinks about it, but I never hear what he might have said. Instead, he grabs my left arm, tugging at the black fabric as he forces me across the road. Dog, he explains. It’s not on a leash. I take his word for it. I can’t make out anything but the shifting shadows as leaves the white of sky decide to join the conversation.

▴ ▴ ▴

ﻣﻦ وﯾﻦ أﻧﺖ؟

Where are you from? On the land that still remembers the weight of my ancestors, this usually means, Why don’t you speak your language?

Before I lost my baby teeth, I puzzled together a list of excuses to pluck from as the occasion calls for. Sometimes, I add: But I’m trying to learn. I shape my mouth around explanation in three languages—if nothing else, I’ve become adept at apologizing in the words that should have been mine.

Don’t say any of that, a friend of my mother’s eventually advises. Only Americans reveal their life stories. Just tell people you’re an American of Arab-Latina descent. Syntax expands the space between body and blood.

▴ ▴ ▴

Spine held stiff as I tilt my head into position, I stare into what I can only compare to a microscope on its side, eyelashes brushing glass. Keep your eyes as wide as possible, the optometrist advises, voice behind my head. Before me is a scene featuring a miniature house—dirty blue sky, red brick roof, monotone green field. There is no sun.

I am moved from station to station. I do not have the words for this new world, for the bits of glass he fits to my face, for Is it still blurry? or Is it clear yet?, for the strips of blue that are jammed behind my eyelids to see if I can produce enough tears.

▴ ▴ ▴

ﻋﯿﻨﯿﺔ is also the lens that corrects vision. Read instead: that which reveals what could not be seen before. Read instead: the light that pierces retina is just another word for home.

▴ ▴ ▴

ف I guess it’s ﻋﺸﺎن I wasn’t expecting it, ﺑﺲ ﯾﻌﻨﻲ still—

I don’t know if I’m speaking English and tossing in slivers of Arabic to prove I am or speaking in Arabic and watching English slink its way back under my tongue. I have the phone pressed to my ear as I pace from window to window—all closed. I know the light will soon burst above power lines, but my eyes like to forget.

My grandmother’s English is tinged with the echo of the land that once knew her by another face. In her memories, the word for girl is the same as the word for daughter.

She listens as I swallow around the cartography of my mouth. I want to shut my lungs against the reality of the unfamiliarity. Instead, I press my lips together until I no longer know these borders, these chunks of bone. Where my grandmother is in the world, it is dark. Streetlights flicker their way into constellations we don’t have the names for.

I yearn for the day when I can speak my tongues—no disclaimers, no footnotes, no scratch as the cassette spools out. Just desert light.

ﻓﻲﻋﯿﻦ اﻟﻤﻜﺎن—at the center of the place—at the heart of the place—at the eye. I haven’t yet found it, but three continents claim me. Or: I claim three continents. Maybe the heart is before my unfocused gaze. Maybe every window is just another shade of blue.

▴ ▴ ▴

I have forgotten my glasses. The LED lighting cuts the boys on the court into pieces, but my eyes are fixed to the smudge I know is my brother. The basketball bleeds into his palms. If I look away—if I blink—I run the risk of no longer being able to pick him out.

ﯾﺎ ﻋﯿﻨﻲ sounds from somewhere in the fire-engine-red bleachers on the other side of the court. ﯾﺎ ﻋﯿﻨﻲ can mean darling—literally, Oh my eye. It is also an exclamation of delight. Or shock. Or sorrow. When something is dear, it is the lens that frames the world. It is the origin of sight itself.

I flicker my gaze between my brother and the ebbing mass, searching out the speaker. ﯾﺎ ﻋﯿﻨﻲ, I whisper as I force my eyes open, letting them water—the salt sometimes brings things to focus. ﯾﺎ ﻋﯿﻨﻲ.

The ball arcs, spirals, slips through the net. My brother turns to me, fists high. I find myself on my feet, mirroring him, even though I can’t make out his face.

▴ ▴ ▴

I am in the car, passenger seat, by which I mean: I don’t trust my eyes to interpret the night. As the lines painted on the faded concrete stretch away from the headlights, they vanish, until we are driving in a frenzy of gray. I bring the camera before my face; for a few moments, I can force the world clear. Outside the open window, the dark promise of a mountain looms, superimposed on a bleached sky. Between them is a strip of fire that I don’t have an explanation for. When I bring the working lens down and let my eyes translate light, it’s no longer there.

ﻋﯿﻨﯿﺔ is also that which is real. Read also: that which can be touched with the gaze. Read also: even the trees cast versions of themselves somewhere ahead, wandering, like the ghosts they are. Lamplight yearning toward the surety of mo(u)rning.

I turn, eyelids oscillating into horizons. At the corner of my eye: a blur, flickering. A smear of something masquerading as green.