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Until one experiences a life or death crisis, one never knows how they will respond, whether they will fight, flee, freeze, or fawn. Some people worry about such hypotheticals, what they would do if they or a loved one were in danger, whether they would be able to handle the situation, or crumble under the pressure—others deny the fact that they will ever have to worry about such a thing, too scared to even admit to themselves that they feel fear. Angela knows herself well, and knows that she would likely be in the latter group, in denial, were it not for the fact that she has often been in life or death scenarios, encountered one first as a child. She fights, she knows this, and it provides her some measure of comfort, that fact. In a crisis, she is decisive, is the best possible sort of person to have at one’s side, will be well-equipped to protect the people whom she loves, if it ever comes to that. Angela is good in a crisis, is great, even. Under pressure, she becomes calm, is most able to focus on what needs to be done, and to set aside all her anxieties, all her distractions, and to do what she must. That is a good thing, and she is proud of it.
What she is far less proud of, will never admit out loud, is that she is terrible in non-crisis situations. For all her competence at the most important of times, when the stakes are low, Angela finds that she flounders. Given the time to worry, she will, given the luxury of space to panic, she will, given the space to be alone with herself, she will crumble, at least for a little while, and will only very slowly put herself back together. Things going too well frighten Angela, in a way that crises do not, given her upbringing during the Crisis, and she finds herself quite at a loss when there is nothing she needs to do. Triage, she understands, because there are clear priorities, and when she is saving someone’s life, there is not time to hesitate, is obviously a problem to solve. In those sorts of situations, she feels at home. But this? This happy domestic situation she finds herself in with Fareeha? It terrifies her.
It has ben a very long time since Angela truly felt she had something to lose, and now that she does—now that she does, she is certain that it must happen, at some point, that something must go wrong, because she is not used to things going right in her life. All she has loved, she has lost, and no matter how often Fareeha reassures her, takes Angela’s face in her hands and insists that I’m not going anywhere, I promise, some part of Angela is always going to have a hard time believing that to be true.
(Fareeha will not leave her, this much Angela is fairly confident of, just as she is relatively certain, now, that she will not be leaving Fareeha, or Overwatch. In the beginning, that was not a given, because both of them considered their jobs to be the primary relationship in their lives, and now—now, that might still be true, but they have found that their personal, professional, and ethical boundaries are well enough in alignment that if one of them feels it necessary to leave this new Overwatch, it is likely that the other would be leaving, too, and so that would not be an end to them like it might have been, once, would only be a transformation. Fareeha will not leave Angela, and Angela will not leave Fareeha, but that does not mean, at the end of the day, that Angela does not fear losing Fareeha, somehow, because she has always, more than anything, feared losing Fareeha to death, and not a breakup. If their relationship were to end, Angela could survive that, could tell herself that at least Fareeha is well, but in their line of work… Angela worries. Angela worries, and nothing can stop that, and Fareeha, who would say nearly anything to quiet Angela’s fears, has never promised that she will not die, can only promise to do her best to get home safe.)
So Angela worries, she worries about what it means to love Fareeha, what it might mean to lose her, she worries about the ways in which this, being in a relationship, worrying first about someone else, and not her work, her goals, herself, has changed her, she worries, and she thinks she might be a better person for it.
After all, all this worrying is only because she is so happy with Fareeha, is only because the risk she is accepting, in loving Fareeha, in potentially losing Fareeha, is far outweighed by the time they spend laughing together, by the time they spend holding each other, by the time they spend in silence, together, knowing that even separate, they are not alone. Being with Fareeha is worth risking pain, later, because for the first time in a long time, Angela is truly living her life, and not simply existing. For the first time, she feels fully a person, and not a means to an end, not just someone put on the Earth to fulfill a goal.
It is a strange reimagining of herself, as the sort of person who falls in love, the sort of person who takes days off, in order to be with another person, even knowing that there are people in the world she is uniquely qualified to save. At first, the guilt of that followed her, the knowledge that she could be working on some miracle cure, could be in the field, could be doing anything to help others, in the time she spends now not working, when normally she might be pulling an extra shift, or reading up on a new clinical trial with promising results, or doing anything else, but over time, that feeling has faded. What she is doing here, making a life worth living for herself, and not only for the sake of saving others’ lives, is not such a terrible thing. What she wants for her patients, after all, is for them to have a second chance at life, for them to be able to not just survive, but to be happy, in the rest of their lives.
(There is a point, as a surgeon, when she has to stop working, when she has to respect the wishes of her patients not to undergo certain procedures, because they think that their quality of life would be too reduced, even if they did survive, to continue. It is a difficult thing for her to do, because Angela is the sort of person who does not like to admit defeat, but some people believe, strongly, that they would best be helped by being allowed less time with greater joy, less suffering. She accepts that, understands it, even, despite the fact that it hurts her, to not be able to save everyone, because she knows, in the end, that life should feel worth living. She would not put anyone through the pain of a long, slow death for the sake of her own feelings, her own need to think that she can cheat death.)
Angela cannot guarantee that anyone’s life will be a good one, one that brings them joy, or even satisfaction, but she can at the very least grant people the chance at that, the chance at something more than whatever they are facing, when she treats them, and she can do that on their terms. Why should she not, then, grant herself that same chance?
So she is trying, these days, to do better by herself, to be done with work at a more reasonable time, to spend her extra hours away from work, and with Fareeha, with their friends, with things that make her happy. It is a monumental change, and it scares her, it does, because she has spent far more hours at work than she has on leisure, has never focused on what brings her pleasure, rather than a sense of accomplishment, has not asked herself what would make her feel happy.
(It should be enough, she long thought, to be happy with saving others, should be enough to know that one has done right by another person. What sort of doctor would not be satisfied with that, what sort of human being? But she has learned, now, that there is more to life than just satisfaction, than just doing enough. Fulfillment in her career is good, is important, but she is not just a doctor, is a woman, too, is one who loves, and who wants, and who needs other things. Too long, she has ignored that part of herself, and now, she is going to do better, she has to. Knowing that more is possible, she cannot go back, now, to the kind of life she lived before.)
Fareeha has taught her that it is possible to love her career and to love, too, her life, her friends, her partner, that it is possible to want more, and to have it. This is not to say that the balance is easy for Fareeha, being a member of Overwatch and a woman, a friend, a lover, but Fareeha manages it, most of the time, manages to be happy, and to be enough for the people in her life, for herself. Even when she does not succeed, she tries, is unwilling to accept that she must set aside all else in order to have the career which she always dreamed of—because Fareeha never just dreamed of the career, always wanted more, too.
Although Fareeha has never pressured Angela to shift her priorities, has never demanded, or begged, or wheedled, she has asked that Angela spend more time on the two of them, that Angela come back to their quarters just a little bit earlier, so that they can spend time together before their late dinner, can have an hour or two, every day, to themselves, with no other responsibilities, and at first, Angela resisted, because she thought of her work as too important but now she is trying, because she is realizing, slowly, that what seemed at first so easy for Fareeha, balancing all this, is in fact the result of Fareeha trying quite hard to manage everything in her life, putting a concerted effort into not abandoning her partner, her friends, her responsibilities, in favor of one another. Fareeha does not have a better way of doing things, is not lucky, or inherently able to do this, she is trying, too.
Of course, Fareeha never says that she is doing so, because she is skittish about pushing Angela away, is afraid—not unfairly, Angela thinks—that pushing too hard, talking about the ways in which this is difficult, will scare Angela away. It would have, a few months ago, when they were first adjusting to this, to life as a couple, would have terrified Angela to know that this will always involve work, from the two of them. No one wants relationships to take work, because not knowing how good they could be, how much joy the results of this work could bring her, Angela does not think she would have considered the effort to be worthwhile, might have decided that no, she could not handle this, could not handle the fear of losing Fareeha, the stress of shifting her priorities, the work of being vulnerable, and learning to rely on another person, sometimes.
A few months ago, a year ago, Angela would have run. She would have. She would not have wanted to, would have been very apologetic about it, would have in some way regretted it, likely for a very long time, but she would have believed herself unable of doing all of that, of committing in the way Fareeha deserves from another person, and would not have been able to handle it.
Now, though?
Now, she does not want to imagine her life without Fareeha, cannot put herself back in the place she was, before, when she shut herself off to her own wants and needs, her own very human desire to be loved. Now, she knows that Fareeha is worth putting in work for, and knows, too, that she is capable of being the person Fareeha needs her to be, even if it is not always easy for her, not second-nature to be vulnerable, yet, or to be romantic, at least in the way Fareeha likes. Angela is not the sort of person who can express the sentiments found in Fareeha’s books of poetry, and she does not know that she ever will be, but she is, at least, the sort of person who is learning to try to do the work of loving, or showing in all the ways she can just how much Fareeha means to her. She cooks for the two of them, nearly every night, because it is something she can make for Fareeha, a way of taking care of her that does not seem to assert that Fareeha needs to be taken care of, and she knows what all of Fareeha’s silences mean, knows when Fareeha wants to speak about something, to be held, or just to be left alone, for a time. It is not the same, she knows, as being good at romance, at spontaneity, but she is, she thinks, at least learning to be good at love.
While once it would have frightened her, to think of love as a kind of work, Angela is learning to find comfort in that idea, because if loving someone is a skill, and not a talent, then it is something Angela can get better at, something she can improve, for Fareeha. To think she can do that makes her worry just a little less, feel a little less lost in all of this, this comfortable domesticity, a thing Angela never had any sort of plan for. Therefore she is in the right state of mind for it, when she is cleaning up their quarters one evening and finds a planner Fareeha has accidentally left out, everything carefully scheduled in, all the little things Angela thought were Fareeha being spontaneous, being somehow better at managing a relationship than Angela, penciled neatly in, down to the hour:
Friday, 4:45 – Candles, because Fareeha knows, by now, that Angela is often later than she would like, and needs help in ensuring the Shabbos candles are lit in a timely manner.
And, the next week:
Tuesday, 11:00 – Lunch date, one that Angela had thought was spontaneous, at the time, and just happened to coincide with a relatively light schedule that day.
Most embarrassing, penciled in on every Thursday evening:
Thursday 21:00 – Quality time, which Angela is nearly certain is a euphemism, when she thinks about how they have spent the past several Thursday evenings. There is a clear pattern, now that she is aware of it, and a part of her does wonder how she possibly overlooked that.
(Angela does not quite know how to feel, just yet, about the fact that that is not so spontaneous as she had previously assumed. Most of the rest, she knows she is pleased by, because it is clear that she matters to Fareeha, matters enough that Fareeha goes to all this trouble, puts in all this work to ensure that they stay happy, that they stay engaged with one another, but this—this part, she will want to have a conversation about, eventually, just to be sure Fareeha does not feel like she is fulfilling some obligation. It can wait, however, until she is done thanking Fareeha for the rest, has expressed how deeply it moves her to know that she is this loved, that their relationship is this important to Fareeha.)
Of course, Angela is not the only person in Fareeha’s planner, there is time scheduled to speak with her mother, to write to her father, to spend time with their friends. It is a window into Fareeha’s mind that Angela has never had before, one she is glad for. Always, she has known her partner to be loving, to be kind, to be devoted to others, but this shows Angela another side to Fareeha, that loving people well does not come so easily as she makes it seem, that for her, it also requires a good deal of work.
That gives Angela hope, because these things do not come naturally to her, either, but if Fareeha can find a way to make this work, then so, too, can Angela. She will. Already, she was working at it, was learning to love, properly, but knowing that she is not the only one who has to work at this, to learn, that Fareeha too feels she needs a plan, sometimes—that is reassuring. Angela might have preferred to have learned more about the business of love before she came to love Fareeha, but she is not, at least, so behind as she felt before.
Because it is not so easy to break out of old habits, to unlearn old feelings, it still terrifies Angela, on some level, the effort it takes to love someone well, to not only have feelings for them but to support them, meaningfully, be open and honest with them, but knowing that Fareeha, too, works at this is helpful for her. What would have seemed too much for Angela, a year ago, seems worthwhile, now, seems like the right amount of effort to put in, for a woman like Fareeha, for a relationship like they have enjoyed up to this point.
Now, she is not afraid of how much effort Fareeha puts into loving her, is only moved by it, because she knows that she, too, is able to put in the work to do the same, knows that she is capable of loving, and loving well, of caring for Fareeha in the way she deserves.
What remains, now, is only to keep putting in practice what it is she has learned. She starts with what is easiest for her: cooking. It is something Fareeha likes, when Angela does it for her, and is something which Angela is good at, too. So on a Thursday afternoon, Angela leaves the lab early, for once, gets into her car, and drives into the city. On this Thursday, there is nothing special happening, but Angela thinks that if Fareeha can plan to do nice things for her just because, then she, too, can do the same, and she will start with this: a special dinner, one which takes more time to make than usual.
She has a favorite spice store, in Gibraltar, a small family-owned place from which she can get the specific cinnamon varietal she wants, but because it is out of the way, she does not go as often as she would like. Today, she has made time to make the trip, and to be back at their quarters early enough to make stew, which is important, because this particular shop is also the only one she knows of which carries ras el-hanout that Fareeha considers to be more than simply passable. It is not necessary for the stew, not like getting the right cinnamon, but it is something she knows Fareeha will like to have added to the dish, and today, that would be reason enough to make the trip.
The errand itself is quick enough, no more than ten minute in and out, including the time it takes for the ras el-hanout to be mixed for her, and for her to pay, and normally she would not drive so far for so little, but she finds she feels good about having done this, about having gone out of her way to get the best ingredients for this dinner. Somehow, when she is doing it for Fareeha, it feels much less of an inconvenience.
In fact, she is in a good enough mood afterwards that she pops into the bookstore next door, the one Fareeha usually browses through when the two of them come down here together, Angela buying spices for some holiday dish or another. Fareeha likes this store—it was Fareeha going here which introduced Angela to the spice shop, and not the other way around—and so Angela thinks that it should be easy to find what she is looking for, another book of poetry, one which says beautifully the things Angela can hardly say at all. It is not a substitute, Angela knows, for learning to put into words the depths of her feelings for Fareeha, but it can at least be a complement to her attempts.
One day, Angela will find the right words for what it is Fareeha means to her, for how much her life has been changed by Fareeha’s presence in her life, but for now, she can buy the newest book of Samar el-Gazzeh’s poetry, the one she knows Fareeha does not yet have, but wants, and let el-Gazzeh’s words substitute for her own.
(Of course, Angela knows she will never be able to say anything so beautifully as the poet herself can. Angela is, in truth, about as far from a poet as one can be. She does not understand the appeal of poetry, never has, knows only that Fareeha likes it, and that this store carries untranslated copies, and so Fareeha can read something beautiful in her own tongue, with a fluidity and fluency which Angela herself lacks, and can have those words for herself to describe the experience of love. Although poetry itself is of no interest to Angela, Fareeha’s happiness is, and she knows that this book will grant that.)
Content with her purchases, Angela returns home, and begins the process of preparing the beef stew. Done quickly, it can be made in an hour, but Angela finished work early specifically so that she would have enough time to do things the right way, taking her time to cook the beef to the perfect tenderness, even if it takes three or four hours to complete the dish that way. She has time, yet.
First, she seasons the tagine Fareeha owns, but never uses, lays down a base layer of onions, adds the oil. Then, she browns the meat, the onions, the garlic, the spices, before putting them down on top of the onions, protected by the bottom layer from burning. Last, she adds the water, the herbs, and waits for everything to come to a simmer. It is not a particularly work-intensive dish, not like some of the other things she has made for Fareeha in the past, but done properly, in a tagine, it takes time, time the two of them rarely have, and she knows Fareeha likes the idea of using her tagine more than the reality of it.
So this, she thinks, will be nice. Now she has but to wait—wait for the broth to simmer, then wait for the meat to cook, and for Fareeha to be home.
In the meantime, she cracks open the book she just bought Fareeha. It is not easy for her, reading Arabic, but she can do it if she puts her mind to it, particularly if she says the words aloud as she goes. Her accent is not great, she knows—she tries, of course, but even after decades, her English is noticeably accented, and so she does not hold out hope for her Arabic sounding any better—but she learned enough, when working with the MSF and living in Egypt that she could be understood, and she has gotten better since then, has been trying very seriously to become as fluent as she is able, now that she and Fareeha are a couple.
(Fareeha says it does not matter, but she seems to appreciate the effort nonetheless, and Angela likes it when Fareeha tries her best to use Swiss German words and phrases. Even if Fareeha would not ask her to learn the language, Angela can still try. One day, she might meet the rest of Fareeha’s maternal family, or they might decide to raise a child together, and she wants to be ready, just in case.)
Even if Angela does not understand poetry, as an art form, and understands it even less in her fifth language, she understands, she thinks, why Fareeha likes this poet in particular. There is an emphasis on color, and on form, the work of emotions given over to the senses, in a way that creates a mood more than anything else—or, if Angela is not misreading, she thinks that is what is happening. It makes sense that Fareeha would like something like this, something which gives shape to the intangible. Likely it does not hurt, either, that you is always written in the feminine form. It matters to Fareeha that things like this are written by and for women, in a way that it has never mattered to Angela.
(They are not in agreement on all things, and the importance of sexual identity is one of those places where they diverge. For Fareeha, lesbian existence—brown lesbian existence—is central to her identity, and she experiences most things through that lens. Angela, meanwhile, considers her attraction to women, and men for that matter, to be very much irrelevant to most of her experiences; she is herself, first and always, and then she is a doctor, is Jewish, is a Crisis survivor, a woman, with all other aspects of her identity very distantly following that. She does not, however, need to share Fareeha’s values to understand them, to recognize them, to read the poetry of a woman whose work Fareeha enjoys and understand that the author’s attraction to women would be something Fareeha considers important, something which makes her feel more connected to the work. She reads it, and she understands just that little bit, and she is happy for Fareeha, that there are things she can read and see herself in.)
Poetry itself may be a mystery to Angela, but this she can understand why Fareeha enjoys these particular poems above all others, and she wonders, as she reads about the dawn coming through the window and breaking over a woman’s body, if this is how Fareeha sees her, in the quiet hours when neither of them are speaking, and she glances over to find Fareeha just looking at her, love in her eyes. She wonders if Fareeha sees the sea and the stars and the mountains and the deserts in her, and for just a moment, she almost understands what it is to love poetry.
Almost.
But what she takes away, instead, is this: an overwhelming love for the woman who could read something as lovely as this and see something of what they have together in this. It is beautiful, is grand, as if what they have is not the stuff of everyday love, is something greater, something fated, is a love worth telling tales of.
(It is not, of course, it is an ordinary sort of love—the best kind, where both people work hard at it, yes, but do not resent that sometimes, it takes work to love, and to be loved, and eventually learn to find peace and comfort and home in one another—and that is the sort of love Angela wants, really, the sort she believes in. However, it is nice to imagine that that other kind of love, the kind Fareeha reads about, could be real, and could be theirs, if only for a moment. She thinks she prefers this, a love they choose, continuously, to fate, but still, it can be nice, to imagine being perfect for someone, being so alike that one wonders, for a moment, if God created you in kind.)
Fareeha has told her, before, that the poems she has read by el-Gazzeh remind her of Angela, or of the two of them, and Angela, who does not understand a love of poetry, has always dismissed the thought, but now, having some idea of what the poems are like, although Angela still does not love poetry itself, does not feel particularly moved by it in any language, she feels moved by the fact that Fareeha, who loves her, thinks of their love in such grand terms as the poems use, reads things comparing the small moments of their lives to the beauty of a sunrise over the mountains. Fareeha thinks of them—and her—as being something more than they are, than they will ever be, and that, more than the words themselves, makes Angela feel so, so loved.
So absorbed is she in these thoughts, however, in realizing the ways in which Fareeha sees them, that she does not notice that Fareeha, too, has returned to their quarters early.
“Is that Kurighrafiyyah?”
“Fareeha!” Angela, not expecting her partner to be home so early, jumps a bit, and slams closed the book in the process. “You startled me,” says she, as she straightens her posture, takes a moment to settle, sets the book behind her on the counter. “Why are you back so early?”
“I was going to surprise you,” Fareeha tells her, “But I guess I already have?”
“More than enough for one night, yes,” Angela’s heartrate is still a little high as she leans in to give Fareeha a quick kiss, “I appreciate the thought.”
Gesturing towards the tagine, Fareeha says, “It seems you had the same thought. What’s the occasion?”
“There isn’t one,” Angela finds the question amusing, considering that, “You never seem to need an occasion.”
“Fair enough,” Fareeha says, before looking past Angela and towards the book. “And you still haven’t said—is that Kurighrafiyyah?”
“Oh,” says Angela, picking it up and handing it to Fareeha, “Yes, it is.”
“I thought you didn’t like poetry?” Despite the question, Fareeha takes the book without hesitation.
“I don’t understand it,” Angela corrects.
There is amusement in Fareeha’s voice, then, as she says, “Alright, you don’t understand it. You seemed to be very engrossed despite that.”
“You don’t need to understand something to love it,” Angela says, and it is not the poetry to which she is referring.
She will never be good at this—at domestic bliss, will never feel at home in it, and she will never understand how others can find so much beauty in it, can accept that maybe, things will always be this good. So, too, will she never understand Fareeha, not perfectly, will never see eye to eye with her on everything, will never know what it is to see their relationship through Fareeha’s eyes, not fully. As a scientist, she wants to understand things, she does, but she has learned that love is something one cannot fully understand, and she is learning to be okay with that, to relax into it, as best she is able.
Angela is great in a crisis, but maybe, in time, she can learn to be good at this.