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<\/a><\/p>\nPerhaps my name remains somewhere on a clean piece of animal skin buried deep beneath \u200ethe earth, which seems so crowded, so strewn, and so littered it gives me perpetual nausea. Or perhaps \u200eit is written on a grain of sand, one among many, moving across some vast and empty desert. \u200ePerhaps it is frozen into the heart of this small iceberg melting in my \u201cdrink of the day\u201d as I sit at \u200ethis freezing bar, perspiring, and furiously stirring the ice cube around, and, in this vertiginous \u200estate, trying to remember my name. \u200e<\/p>\n
And I don\u2019t. No matter how much I stir my drink with this drinking straw\u2014 which looks \u200elike a hollowed umbilical cord and continuously clicks in the same rhythm my temples pound. \u200eThis click-click aggravates my nausea and echoes in my head as the ice hits the glass bouncing \u200earound its foamy mouth. \u200e<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the purpose of this stirring anyways? I am all wasted\u2014I\u2019ve stirred everything I could think \u200eof\u2014for long and for nothing. Stop stirring now, and forever, and forget about your name, I \u200ecommand myself. \u200e<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t stop. And I think through this sensation of whirling and getting strewn that perhaps if only I could \u200eget my hands to my mind, literally, and stir it, something would come up. I need to rummage \u200ethrough my mind, through this scattered-ness.<\/p>\n
No, rummaging doesn\u2019t help. What I need to do is to \u200eexcavate my mind. That\u2019s the thing: to dig deep under my \u200emind-full-of-namelessness. But where can I find my buried mindfulness? Under the earth of my mind? Which \u200eis perhaps buried under another earth? So dispersed, crowded, and littered that nothing could be found \u200ein it\u2014even something as familiar as my name. \u200e<\/p>\n
Perhaps I should search inside my navel for my name. Search inside this entangled poor \u200elost thing that keeps me together. No, it doesn\u2019t \u2014this virtual connection. That\u2019s the reason I am \u200eso strewn, so drowning like grain of sand in the drops of water in this straw in this glass filled \u200ewith ice cubes and the drink of the day, which I am sucking. Perhaps I could be grafted again to \u200emy navel, to its puckered mouth. But the length of the umbilical cord has long lost its grasp. \u200eSomeone has severed the cord and thrown it out in the dirt as if it was something superfluous\u2014\u200esomething I can survive without. And I can\u2019t\u2014without my name.\u200e<\/p>\n
That is why I dig into the contact list on my Facebook\u2014confused\u2014because I am well aware of the fact that my Facebook name is a pseudo name I chose for myself in order to befriend people in this country I immigrated to. None of my friends names\u2014Jennifer, \u200eFatima, Mina, Sharon, Rhea, and\u2014and\u2014and\u2014tells something, however, about who I am. No \u201cFace\u201d stirs a sense in me. Then I search the Internet, \u200ewhich somehow reminds me of my navel, because when you wake up one ordinary day with a \u200eperpetual nausea you suddenly find yourself absorbed in digging crap from a little hole with its \u200emany tunnels where so much dirt has gathered that it is enough for you to spend all your life, all \u200eyour ordinary days of scattered-ness\u2014digging and digging and digging nonstop. \u200e<\/p>\n
But none of the names-attached-to-the faces I dig out stirs a sense in me. Only my name does, which has \u200edropped off by itself, just like the dried umbilical cord, which drops off a few days after birth, \u200eleaving the navel\u2014a little entanglement with no distinguishing mark except for its tedious folds \u200ewhere dirt gathers. \u200e<\/p>\n
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\nSo I dig so much on this ordinary day that I fall asleep, with my head bent over my iPhone which sits idly besides the drink of the day. Moments later, however, I wake up again, this time looking down at my navel, instead of the Facebook, and the dirt that has gathered in its folds for what \u200ecould be centuries, which I have forgotten about. Soon I get absorbed in digging my nail into my navel \u200eand pulling out the dirt, but soon I realize I need something sharper and more pointed than my own nail. I separate a piece of pineapple attached to a small umbrella securely stationed on the edge of my glass, throw the pineapple into my drink of the day to drown, and use the sharp end of the umbrella\u2019s handle to dig the dirt from my navel.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I \u200econtinuously interrogate myself about my identity. Who was it? I ask. That girl who went on \u200ehunger strike for three days to resist revealing the name of their neighbor\u2019s teenage boy who \u200edropped love letter into their backyard? The woman who changed her last name to her maiden \u200ename when she divorced her husband? The other woman who changed her name when she \u200emoved to this country? Or this woman who is digging deep into her navel? I want to know her \u200ename. I need to know who the doer behind the deed of digging is.\u200e<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t know\u2014perhaps because it is an ordinary day, so ordinary that no one wants to associate her name with it. And as long as the digger continues refusing to reveal her real identity, my act of digging cannot \u200ebe grafted to me as the actor. Nevertheless, I continue questioning this nameless woman in my scattered mind until my mouth, as \u200efrothy as this drink of the day, is shaped up, like my navel\u2014until the digger is lost in the web of holes, until the questioner who wanted to know who she is in this country is buried under this alien ground, until the woman waking up this morning with the full knowledge of the world except her own name is drawn in this \u200evirtual day and cannot seek this last piece of information so as to identify herself in this littered world as a strewn, ordinary person.<\/p>\n