An Emotion of Great Delight

by Tahereh Mafi

  I turned on the television, was not rewarded.

  Flashing banners across the bottom of the screen read BREAKING NEWS, a scrolling marquee neatly summarizing the storms I would weather at school for the next six weeks. Right now the news anchors were discussing the possibility of other undercover Al Qaeda members living here, in America, new data suggesting that they’d slipped into the country around the same time as the 9/11 hijackers. We were currently searching for them.

  I turned off the television.

  The FBI had been cold-calling members of our congregation recently, interrogating them over the phone and terrifying them witless. So many people had been assigned an agent that, for some people, it had become kind of a running joke.

  I didn’t find it funny.

  The random interrogations were creating division, causing people to question and distrust each other. The Muslim community had never been perfect—we’d always had our weirdos and our disagreements and a spiny generation of racist, sexist elders far too attached to culture and tradition to see things clearly—

  But we had so much more than that, too.

  We fed the poor, volunteered endlessly, organized peace dialogues, took in refugees. Nearly all the kids at the mosque had been born to parents who’d fled war in another country, or else came here to find better and safer opportunities for their families. We’d built a sanctuary together, a safe house for the otherwise marginalized. I loved our mosque. Loved gathering there for prayers and holidays and holy months.

  But things were changing.

  The FBI wasn’t just interrogating people—they were also looking for recruits within the congregation. They were offering large sums of money to anyone willing to spy on their friends and family. We knew this because people shared their horror stories after prayers, stood near the exit wearing only one shoe, gesticulating wildly with the other. What we didn’t know, of course, was who had turned. We didn’t know who among us had accepted the paycheck, and as a result, we were poised to devour ourselves alive.

  The thought made me hungry.

  I made myself a bowl of cereal, sat under dim light at the kitchen table. There was once a time when my parents kept the kitchen fully stocked, when meals were a gathering time, when food was the great smoother of troubles, delicious and plentiful. These days when I opened the fridge I found milk and wrinkled cucumbers and a carton of eggs. In the pantry we had little but canned tomato paste, a box of cereal, dried herbs, and Top Ramen—a perfect recipe for our electric stove that was only any good at boiling water.

  I listened to the lights hum.

  I took another bite of cold cereal, shivering as I tried again to remember where I’d left my phone. It had been easier than I’d expected to go so long without it; I’d little use for it without Zahra in my life. Other than her, my brother was the only one who ever contacted me. My heart leaped at that thought, tried to wrench loose my emotional control, but I forced down another spoonful of Cheerios and compelled myself to think, instead, about not choking. And perhaps about homework. I had endless amounts of homework.

  I had been unwilling to look too closely at my recent failures.

  Failure number one: I missed my multivariable calculus class last night, which meant that even perfect scores across the board would get me no more than a B. This seemed an unbelievable, riotous injustice, and though it occurred to me that I could probably explain to the teacher that my mother had been in the hospital, the slim chance that he might not believe me—or worse, ask for proof of my mother’s mental breakdown—was motivation enough for me to remain silent.

  Failure number two: I’d failed my AP Art History exam today. I didn’t need to wait for the results to know this truth. I’d turned in a blank exam; I was going to fail it. Still, there was a chance it might not weigh as heavily, in the end. My teacher was the kind who liked to make the final exam worth half our grade, and as we’d just entered the second week of December, my last chance was right around the corner. In fact, in a couple of weeks I’d have to survive a deluge of examinations, and I had no idea how I’d catch up. There was still so much more looming—college applications, for example.

  College applications.

  I inhaled so suddenly I coughed, milk and half a Cheerio having gone down the wrong pipe. What was I thinking? I wasn’t going away for college. My eyes teared and I wiped at them with my sleeve, covering my mouth as I continued to cough.

  Was I going away for college?

  Could I abandon my mother here? All this time I’d been waiting for my father to die, I’d also been considering my future. Shayda was well on her way to transferring elsewhere, to getting married. With three of the five of us gone, I didn’t think I’d have the heart to leave my mother behind.

  But now—

  A shoot of hope pushed up through my rotting ribs. The one fringe benefit of my father not dying: I might be able to go away.

  Start over somewhere else.

  When the phone rang I startled so badly I spilled cereal all over myself. I stood up, felt scattered, reached for a towel. I mopped myself up as best I could, sighed over the state of my blanket, glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight, far too late for friendly calls.

  Fear shot through me as I lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?” I said.

  A beat.

  “Hello?” I tried again.

  “Babajoon, toh ee?”

  My already erratic heart rate spiked. Babajoon was a term of endearment—it literally meant Father’s dear—and hearing it without warning, hearing it in my father’s unexpectedly tender voice—

  I lost my composure.

  I took a deep breath, forced a smile on my face.

  “Salam, Baba,” I said. “Khoobeen shoma?” So formal. I always used formal pronouns and conjugations with my father, even to say Are you well?

  “Alhamdullilah. Alhamdullilah.”

  He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say he was fine. He said, Thank God, thank God, which could mean any number of things.

  “What are you doing awake so late?” he said in Farsi. “Don’t you have school tomorrow? I can’t remember what day it is.”

  I held steady as my heart sustained a hairline fracture.

  How long had he been in the hospital, drugged and dissected, that he couldn’t remember what day it was?

  “Yes,” I said. “I do have school tomorrow. I just couldn’t sleep.”

  He laughed. The fracture deepened.

  “Me neither,” he said softly. Sighed. “I miss you all so much.”

  I clenched the phone desperately. “Maman said you’re coming home tomorrow. She said you’re doing better.”

  He went quiet.

  “Mamanet khabeedeh?” Is your mother asleep?

  “Yes,” I said, my eyes burning, threatening. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Hichi, azizam. Hichi.” Nothing, my love. Nothing.

  He was lying.

  “Baba?” I was holding the phone with two hands now. “Are you coming home tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” he said in English. “I don’t know.”

  “But—”

  “Babajoonam, could you wake your mother for me?” Back to Farsi.

  “Yes,” I said quickly. “Yes, of course. I’ll—”

  “It’s so good to hear your voice,” he said, sounding suddenly faraway. Tired. “I haven’t seen you lately. You’ve been busy? How’s Zahra?”

  My eyes were filling with tears, my traitorous heart tearing apart. My father was dying. My father was dying and I had not been to visit him, had not wanted to talk to him, had delighted in planning his funeral. I suddenly hated myself with a violence I could not articulate, with a passion that nearly took my breath away.

  “Yes,” I said shakily. “Zahra’s good. She—”

  “Khaylee dooset daram, Shadi joon. Midooni? Khaylee ziad. Mikhastam faghat bedooni.” I love you, Shadi dear. Did you know? Very much. I just wanted you to know.

  Tears spille
d down my cheeks and I held the phone to my chest, gasped back a sudden sob, pressed my fist to my mouth.

  My father did not talk like this. He never talked like this. I’d never doubted that he loved me, but he’d never said it out loud. Never, not once in my entire life.

  “Shadi? Rafti?” Did you leave?

  I heard his voice, small and staticky, the speaker muffled against my shirt. I brought the phone back to my ear, took a breath, then another.

  “I love you, too, Baba.”

  “Geryeh nakon, azizam. Geryeh nakon.” Don’t cry, my love. Don’t cry. “Everything will be okay.”

  “I’ll go get Maman,” I said, eyes welling, hands trembling. I no longer trusted myself, no longer understood my mercurial heart. “I’ll be right back.”

  Eighteen

  At dawn, I broke down my mother’s door.

  I’d never gone back to sleep. I’d run up the stairs with the cordless phone, woken my mom as gently as possible, and, once I’d pressed the receiver into her hands, tiptoed back outside to wait. I stood in the shadows, held my breath. I was waiting for her to emerge, waiting for news about my father.

  She never came out.

  Instead, my mother had been crying for hours, the muted, muffled sounds no more easily ignored than a piercing scream. I felt close to vomiting as I sat in the hall outside her bedroom, sat in the dark like a dead spider, arms wrapped around legs crossed and bent at the knees. I held myself as I shivered, shivered as I waited, waited for it to stop, for her to stop crying, to go back to bed. I waited so long I heard the whine of a hinge, a soft close. I felt Shayda move down the hall, felt her warmth as she sat next to me. Our shoulders touched. She didn’t flinch.

  We didn’t speak.

  I’d knocked on my mother’s door a hundred times, rattled the handle to no response. I stood again and pounded on it now, shouted for her to open the door. Only once, weakly, did she respond.

  “Please, azizam,” she said. “I just want to be alone.”

  The sun was coming up over the horizon, splintering the world in blinding strokes of color, painting the white walls of our house with a terrible, morbid beauty.

  I left.

  I ran down the stairs, ignoring Shayda’s sharp, relentless questions. I slammed open the connecting door to the garage, rifled through my father’s toolbox, retrieved a hammer, and charged back up the stairs, recognizing my mania only in Shayda’s horrified face. I didn’t care. I couldn’t take it anymore, not now that I knew, not now that I knew what my mother was doing, why she was hiding.

  I couldn’t just stand here and let it happen.

  Shayda looked at me like I was crazy, tried to yank the hammer out of my hand. She insisted that our mother deserved her privacy.

  “She’s upset,” Shayda said, more gently than I knew her capable. “She’d gotten her hopes up about Baba. She’ll be okay in the morning.”

  “Shayda,” I said, flexing my fingers around the hilt. “It is morning.”

  “This is wrong. Maman has the right to be left alone. Sometimes it’s good to cry—maybe it’ll make her feel better.”

  I looked her in the eye. “You don’t understand.”

  “Shadi, stop—”

  “Go back to bed,” I barked at my older sister.

  Her eyes widened. “Oh my God. You really have lost your mind.”

  I swung the hammer.

  Shayda screamed. I swung it again, three more times, shattered the cheap metal knob, splintered the thin wood. I kicked the door, slammed it open with my shoulder.

  I tossed the tool to the carpet, found my mother in her bathroom.

  She was sitting on the cold tile in a robe, her bare legs stretched out in front of her. She was staring at the ground like a broken doll, her neck limp, a pair of open cuticle scissors clenched in one hand.

  I saw the marks on her shins, the cuts that scored the skin but had not yet split. She was not bleeding.

  “Maman,” I breathed.

  When she looked up, she looked no older than me. Terrified, shame-faced. Alone. Tears had stained her cheeks, her clothes.

  “I couldn’t do it,” she said in Farsi, her voice breaking. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.”

  I dropped to my knees in front of her. Took her hand. Pried the cuticle scissors from her fingers, tossed them aside.

  “I kept thinking of you, and your sister,” she was saying, tears falling fast down her face. “I couldn’t do it.”

  I lifted her up, braced her head against my chest as she shattered in my arms. Her cries were desperate, ragged, gut-wrenching sobs. She clung to me like a child, wept like a baby.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”

  I felt, but did not hear, a soundless movement. I turned my head carefully, slowly so my mother wouldn’t notice. Shayda was standing in the broken doorway, staring at the scene in a state of paralyzing disbelief. I felt true love for her in that moment, felt our souls solder together, knew our lives would be forever forged by a similar pain.

  We locked eyes.

  She covered her mouth with her hands, shook her head. She was gone before her tears made a sound.

  My mother went to work an hour later. Shayda and I went to our respective schools. For all the world we were your garden variety of incomprehensible Muslim, one-note and easily caricatured. We articulated limbs, moved our lips to make sounds, smiled at customers, said hello to teachers.

  The world continued to spin, taking with it, my mind.

  I felt true delirium as I moved, exhaustion unlike any I’d ever known. I couldn’t even fathom how I was still upright; I felt like I was hearing everything from far away, felt like my body was not my own. My mind had the processing speed of molasses, my eyes blurring constantly. I needed to find a way to focus, needed to remember how to pay attention. I had failed, once again, to complete any of the homework due today, and I felt shame as I watched other students turn in their essays and worksheets, raise their hands to answer questions in clear and focused sentences. This month was suddenly more critical than ever and I was drowning, drowning when I needed, desperately, to keep my head above water.

  As long as my father stayed alive, I planned on going away to college. I didn’t want to stay here, spend two years at the community college, transfer eventually. I wanted to leave as soon as possible. I wanted to leave and maybe never, ever come back. And I wanted to get into a good school.

  I nearly screamed at the sound of a gunshot.

  I sat up suddenly, hyperventilating, heart racing in my chest. I heard a roar of laughter, looked up, looked around, realized I’d fallen asleep. My seat was in the far right corner of this class, but it was in the first row, and my AP Chemistry teacher, Mr. Mathis, was standing in front of my desk now, arms crossed, shaking his head. At his feet was a massive textbook—a textbook, I realized, he’d dropped on purpose.

  It was a cruel joke.

  I felt my face flush, heat jolting through my body. People were still laughing. I sat up in my seat, kept my eyes on my desk. I wanted to turn my skin inside out.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  “You want to stay out late? That’s not my problem,” Mr. Mathis said sharply. “Get your sleep at home. Not in my class.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  He shot me a dark look. Carried on with his lecture. I spent the rest of the period staring at the textbook at my feet, feeling as though all the blood had drained from my body, pooled onto the floor.

  My father was not coming home today.

  He was not dying just yet, but he was also not coming home today, and that was all I really understood at the moment. My mom hadn’t talked much, hadn’t explained more than was absolutely necessary, and flatly refused my suggestion that she go to a support group for grieving parents. She’d audibly gasped when I proposed she see a therapist. She’d looked so outraged I actually panicked; I thought for a moment she might never speak to me again. But th
en she ate the eggs I made her for breakfast.

  Something had changed between us that morning, and I still didn’t know what it was, had not yet figured out how to define it. But I could tell, just by looking into her eyes, that my mother had unclenched an iota. She seemed relieved—relieved, perhaps, to no longer be living with such a crushing secret.

  “I’ll be okay,” she kept saying. “I’ll be fine.”

  I did not believe her.

  I spent my lunch period sleeping at a table in the library, head bowed over my folded arms. I felt like I’d only just closed my eyes when someone shook my shoulder, rattled my skeleton back to life. I awoke suddenly, my nerves fraying in an instant.

  When I looked up, I saw a blur of color. Eyes. Mouth.

  “Noah.”

  “Hey,” he said, but he was frowning. “Are you okay? The bell just rang.”

  “Oh.” I tried to stand, but the action proved harder to accomplish than I’d expected. “What—what are you doing here?”

  “We were supposed to have lunch together, remember?” He suddenly smiled. “I brought a newspaper and everything. But your friend Yumiko told me you’d bailed on her for the library.”

  I frowned. Dimly, I remembered running into her, telling her I’d be in the library for lunch. That conversation felt like it’d happened a lifetime ago. “You brought a newspaper?”

  Noah smiled wider. “Yeah.”

  I laughed, collected my things in a daze, moved through the room with a pronounced slowness. I wanted to say, That’s so nice, but it seemed like too much work.

  “Hey—what’s wrong? Are you sick?” I heard his voice, heard it like it was coming from the stars.

  I shook my head, the single motion disorienting me. I tried to say I’m just tired, but I wasn’t sure it went through. My feet moved even more stupidly than my mind and I suddenly tripped over my own shoes, caught myself against a research table, the sharp edge slamming into my gut. I gasped as I steadied myself, caught my breath.

  I looked up, stared at the exit, wondered why the end always seemed so far away.