1001 Nights Cast

She spent the evening giving birth.

Well, she spent the evening and more. She spent it well and deep into the night. Let’s be honest: birth is not a sudden thing. It may be many things, but sudden is not one of them. And so, she gave birth all across the night and onto the very threshold of the morning.

Tick Tock tells the Clock.
Across the Heavens Rolls the Moon.
Hours Come and Hours Went.
Some were Later. Some are Soon.

Telling time, when giving birth, is about as meaningless as aspirin. Ask anyone—they’ll tell you. Time has little effect in an extreme condition: it doesn’t register in normal ways. Like a road map in a war zone, always just ahead or just behind disaster. There’s no telling it. It’s out of joint. Lame. Mute. A minute can be an hour. An hour can be a century. A century is a freckle. A freckle spans the globe. An entire planet rides between your eyelids like hot, insistent liquid. Look! There! It’s what we’re not allowed to see: Someone’s son or daughter dead. Someone’s parent. Someone’s lover. Someone’s one night, across the whole night, stand. But standing up or lying down: Registers of measurement come undone in such extreme conditions.

Like giving birth.

She had been giving birth throughout the night when suddenly she stopped, momentarily, to appreciate the sky.

We should note here that birth is many things, but one thing that it does not lend itself to easily is stopping. One can’t, it seems, just pull one’s body out of the effort after so much time has passed, much blood has spilled, and details like fecal matter, hair, mucous, torn flesh, rent guts, heavy breath, loud screams and ugly pleading cries have been uttered, have taken place, have been touched, clutched, smelled, heard or otherwise encountered. Birth can’t just be halted. It can’t just be arrested like so many bodies suspended in states of exception, denied civil liberties, stripped of identity and basic human rights. That just can’t happen. It just isn’t done that way.

Still, and strange to tell, it is the case that she’d been giving birth for some Time, when, suddenly, she stopped in order to appreciate the sky.

This was an odd interlude in an otherwise by-the-book birth. There are births, after all, every night. Blood breaks out. Beings pass across thresholds from life to life, some head first, some butt first, some poking little toes out to test the big wide world. So what? Big deal. But this stopping in the middle of the process was somewhat different. What was she doing? And was this doing, or not doing, even possible?

To her, stopping, even if for a moment—well…it just seemed the thing to do. It seemed like one thing that one might do, this stopping mid extremity to take a look, to try to see, to attempt to notice. To be reflective and aware. To become careful. To consider things. To think twice. To look out. To take ten. It seemed the least that one could do, she thought: at least the most that one could do was try. Try and get a reading. Try to take a bearing. Try to get a clue, develop a sense or some kind of orientation to What Is Going On. Who’s Here and Who’s Not. What’s Up and What’s Down. Draw a map. A plan. A chart. Ask What’s Happening…and…What Can be Done About It. (“Dear God,’ she half prayed, ‘What can be done about it?’)

Tick Tock tells the Clock.
Across the Heavens Rolls the Moon.
Hours Went and Hours Came.
Some were Different. Some the Same.

Indeed, she had been giving birth for some Time, when suddenly she stopped in an attempt, of sorts, to appreciate the sky.

This stopping to appreciate the sky, odd though it may have been, was made easier by the fact that most of the Time she was giving birth she was, in fact, flat on her back. And so the panoply of heaven was conveniently given her to view. It stretched generously above her like there was no tomorrow. It spread and spread and spread and spread, she thought, thinking this while straddled there beneath it, legs akimbo, smell of placenta and the dirtiness of detail. Reeking as she was there on the ground. Above the ruckus that was her bloody mess she could not help but notice that the sky was spread so neatly, and just so. It spread, she thought, like religion. It spread, she thought, like the way wide face of Yaweh, or a look in Allah’s eyes, or, without doubt, like Yashoda, shocked and awesome at the open mouth of Krishna.

But also, she thought, the sky spread simply and in one piece, like some memories might. Like her mother’s hot iron across her father’s white shirt. Like her father’s ‘Our Father’ in his prayer for world peace before a meal. Like the dead bird they would cut and eat. Like rice. Like peas. Like rice. Like peas. Like peas. Like peas. Hard to hear. Terribly far. Desperately cold. Faint. Fainter. Taunting even. Twinkling.

Still, it’s not so poetic. And, please, we shouldn’t let it be. It’s simply that there, beneath the sky, and giving birth, she took a moment to reflect on the careful spread of stars. It’s not a complicated story really. She was giving birth. She stopped to consider the sky. She saw the stars she lay beneath. She saw the stars and almost heard them. She almost heard a song they sang, as if they could. With the somewhat rhyming-ness of verse, they carried on a tune for her. Or so it seemed so at the time, mid extremis, in the center of what seemed impossible they sang:

Tick Tock tells the Clock.
Across the Heavens Rolls the Moon.
We’ll All Lie ’Neath Far Happier Stars
When War is Venus, Peace is Mars