1.

Backgammon is, as far as we know, the oldest board game in the world. It was first made and played by the Mesopotamians – my ancestors. Or at least, I like to think of them as such. In a world where you are diminished for carrying a different story, you might as well turn to one far-off from yourself to add a little to yours.

To be part of that part of the world is not my favorite part of my world. But whether I truly do is yet another story. I am told that I do not. And I am told far more often than I am ever asked. I am never asked. Always told.

I am told I am a pearl that could only have come from the open sea, never from the mud.

I am told I am an angel, meant for heaven and never for hell.

I am told I am an untouched piece of nature, unstained by human hands.

I do not know whether backgammon and I share the same past. But I do know that I have many stories tied to it. So, come and take a stroll with me.

2.

My father existed only in my memory, resting in the depths of my mind, visiting me only in fragmented moments, like a hallucination or a dream just before sunset. He exists only in those moments when I wonder why I feel like a butterfly. Then I remember that I lost him so early in my life, and I have my answer.

I remember him playing backgammon with his best friend – who was also his cousin, and later, after my father’s death, our molester. They would play for hours, round after round, drinking hot, sweet black tea. An average game takes twenty minutes. “This game is great!” my father would shout. But if he lost a couple of games in a row, he would lose his mind. He would beat my mother for making his tea a little too sweet, or not sweet enough.

Lying in her bed like Frida Kahlo after the bus crash, she would call on Allah with his ninety-nine names and wish death upon my father – which, eventually, came to pass. After he died, for many years my mother prayed for her own death instead.

“Amen,” I would say.

Everyone wanted it to happen. My brother wanted it to happen. My sisters wanted it to happen. But I… I was craving her death. Yet, she was clinging to life like a tick to a dog, sucking blood out of the miserable life she and her children shared.

3.

I now play backgammon with my boyfriend, proudly upholding the traditional way of playing it: two men against each other. The only exception is that we fuck each other once the game is over – or sometimes midway we put away the dice and do the devil’s dance.

I love doing it with him. It turns me into a stunning sea jelly, all body, no brain. A creature drifting through nowhere, suspended only by the feeling of his skin against mine. For what feels like an eternal twenty minutes, I feel nothing else. Nothing at all. Well, for those twenty minutes, I do not hate myself. That is a feeling.

And then, just as a sea jelly dissolves when it washes ashore, my love for myself breaks apart. I repulse myself again. And just as a sea jelly stings its prey, my mind strikes back.

“You just slept with a man”.

“You filthy,” it says.

4.

To understand backgammon, one must first understand what it is not. It is not chess, where strategy alone can carry you to victory. Nor is it Snakes and Ladders, where luck alone decides your fate. Backgammon is a careful balance of both. Every move asks something different of you. Sometimes you must think several turns ahead. Other times, all you can do is throw the dice and hope they are kinder to you than they were the round before.

I think of my life very much like the game, I do wholeheartedly believe that in a world where we eat each other, I somehow survived by luck. I was lucky. Lucky to have escaped from my people. Lucky to still be alive. Or maybe not. And yet, I never trusted luck alone. For it comes and goes without warning – the same way my mother’s slaps would strike me out of nowhere. I would feel a sharp ringing fill my ear, and a tear or two might fall, or maybe not, as I was used to them.

This game consistently reminds me to trust my mind without forgetting the whims of fate, for even on its own, fate can change everything. But again – don’t rely solely on it.

5.

After my father passed away, what was once his backgammon became everyone’s. We all touched it, held it, rolled the dice on it countless times, for no reason other than knowing we no longer had a father who got angry for touching his belongings. I enjoyed touching it the most – the same way his kinsmen would touch my peach, with affection and care. I would slowly caress it, trace its softness with my fingertips, and feel it as a sin.

In 2008, two years after my father’s death, my mother exchanged his backgammon for a bag of flour so she could bake bread for us. It marked the last day my father ever provided for us, and the day my mother became a man.

I hated my mother’s manliness for I always felt it was misplaced. I hated how loud she became, how rough, how harsh, how she was always out, she was everything but a mom.

Whether that backgammon now sits on a shelf in someone’s home, was burned as firewood, or simply broke apart and disappeared, it still lives within me. Every backgammon I see reminds me of a father I barely remember, of a mother who was not a mother, and of a past I, with all of my heart, want to disown.