Muddy People

by Sara El Sayed

  ‘Have you been talking to your dad?’ I ask her.

  ‘How do you know?’ she says.

  ‘You’ve been emailing him.’

  ‘He emails me.’

  ‘And I saw you got a text from “Pa”.’

  ‘Why are you looking at my phone?’

  ‘Do you reply?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  She stirs sweetener into her cup. The kitchen in the home we live in now is not the same as it used to be. There are things that she waited until Baba left to change. She has replaced the countertop – what was once a sweaty brown cork is now white marble. There is a new fridge that dispenses water, and the gaps in the stairs have been boarded up, the empty space beneath them made into a walk-in pantry.

  We sit at the dining table. Her laptop is open – she is looking at houses on a real estate website. She does this a lot.

  ‘I hate this house,’ she says. ‘I always did.’

  In this house, we’ve been robbed three times. The first time, they cut a hole in the front-window flyscreen, reached through and took my mother’s handbag, which was sitting on the table nearby. Later that evening a girl, drunk, and her friend, drunker, came to the door. They’d found a wallet – licence, various cards and a small photograph of my grandfather strewn down the footpath. The drunk girl gingerly offered the stuff back to my mother. The cash and credit cards were missing.

  The second time, they stole Mohamed’s bike. He parked it in the afternoon, and it was gone in the morning. We suspected the neighbours. They kept odd things in their yard, like rusty chains and what looked like the bench from the dog park.

  The third time, someone jumped into our backyard, unscrewed the flyscreen from the bedroom window, took it off the frame and stole my mother’s handbag off her bed. In the morning we found the empty bag, which had been flung into the hedge outside our house. This was all when that bedroom was still my parents’ and not just my mother’s.

  She called the police after the first theft, but not for the second two. She thinks police only waste time.

  She shows me the shortlist of houses, none of which she will ever buy. She’s trying to please everyone. Aisha will need to be near her school – she is in Grade Nine and won’t get her licence for another couple of years, at least. Mohamed will need a room big enough for his drum kit. Nana would like a place right on the beach, like at home, in Agami; she wants a replica of the house she stays in when she goes back to Egypt each year.

  Nana is missing her house even though she’s only just got back from her annual trip. Each time she returns to Egypt, she makes sure to visit our old flat in Alexandria, which is only thirty minutes by cab from Agami. She brings pieces of our former lives from our flat – drawings from our bedroom walls, photographs we have forgotten. Once, she brought a stack of letters in my mother’s handwriting. She gave them to me to read while my mother was at work. There were four letters addressed to Pa, all marked returned to sender. The first, when she got engaged, was an invitation to the wedding. She describes her fiancé as someone he would like: a Muslim man with strong values. The second was sent when Mohamed was born. You have a grandson now, she wrote. The third when I was born, a granddaughter, and the fourth, Meet Aisha.

  You can hate me. I don’t blame you. But please meet your grandchildren. They are your grandchildren. Nothing to do with me.

  My grandfather began contacting my mother after the death of his wife – the woman he married after Nana left him. He sent chain mail, mostly, or news clippings about the Egyptian president. He mentioned coming to Melbourne, to visit the mosque he designed when he lived here. He said he had a Corvette, or maybe it was a Lamborghini – something worth a mint. He wanted to know if he could send it to Australia for safekeeping. My mother told him that she didn’t have room for the car, but he was welcome to visit. He just had to let her know when, so she could make sure Nana was out of the house.

  ‘I want him to come and see you kids,’ said my mother to me. I was not sure I shared her enthusiasm. She told me he would come on three conditions. ‘The first,’ she announced, ‘is that I prove I’m a good Muslim.’

  She said this as if it were reasonable. As though she might record herself praying five times a day. Skype him at fajr, zuhr, asr, maghrib and isha. Or do a medical test. Surely the Good Muslim gene was detectable in her blood. Hereditary, maybe.

  ‘The second,’ she continued, ‘is that my children be good Muslims.’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘And the third,’ she said, ‘is, because I am a single woman now’ – she had told him about the divorce – ‘I need to give him control of my finances.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off!’ shouted Nana from the living room. She could hear very well when she wanted to.

  When Pa dies, he is alone, his wife gone, none of his family in his life. His death is from cancer, in his colon, his liver and his lungs. He had told my mother a couple months earlier, over text, that he was going to have an operation to cut it out.

  ‘I asked him if he wanted me to go and see him, but he said no, he was fine, and that it wasn’t a big deal,’ she says.

  Nana is in Egypt when he dies, and various people at the hospital funnel information to her. The day before he dies, he is feeling fine and looks like he is improving, according to the people. My mother says this is common when someone is about to go – they perk up and look better than they have in weeks. It’s a cruel trick of nature. Nana never went to see him, because she hates his guts, but she cries for two days when she hears he is dead. I don’t see my mother cry once. When I ask her if she is okay, she says she lost her father thirty years ago, when he stopped speaking to her. She never uses the word ‘disowned’.

  When she finds out that he was refusing chemotherapy because he thought it would give him hepatitis, she is furious. ‘If I had known how bad it was, I would have ignored him, and I would have gone to Alexandria.’

  Nana visits his flat in Alexandria. She tells us it is full of empty water bottles, yoghurt containers and reams of unused paper. Nana thinks about donating the paper to the university. They probably don’t need it, texts my mother, they use computers now. There are twenty jars of minced garlic in the fridge. That’s what he thought was keeping him alive.

  His late wife’s sister is at the flat, too. She knows of a safe hidden in one of the walls. It holds her sister’s jewellery, which my grandfather inherited. She believes it rightfully hers. She is looking for it, knocking on the walls to check if they are hollow. In the meantime, Nana wades through the rubbish, which is overwhelming. The only clean space in the house is his desk. On it, Nana says she is surprised to find a picture of my teen-aged mother when she was in boarding school, with big teeth and frizzy hair. She takes a photo of the desk and texts it to us.

  Later, she hears the sister of the late wife had gone back to the house alone. The next picture Nana sends is of a massive hole in a wall, and an empty safe.

  RULE #3

  ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH

  I was eight when Nana taught me to lie. Not big lies, just white lies. Little ones, which no one would ever discover. It began when she gave me a diary and told me to write in it every day.

  Today I went shopping with Mama.

  Today Mohamed bugged me.

  Today Aisha did a big poo in her Pampers. It was too big for the Pampers and went up her back.

  One particularly hot day, when the grass was sharp and the sun would not let up, Nana told the three of us kids to get outside. We went into the front yard and began squirting each other with the hose. Aisha was running around in my school hat. Mohamed was shooting water into the back of his throat, making himself gag, on repeat.

  Newly bloomed jasmine hung in the air. A butterfly hovered around us and flew right up to me – right near my face. Close enough for me to see the veins of blue-grey in its delicate little wings. I told Nana about it.

  ‘Write that in your diary,’ she said.

  And so I did. At the end of the d
ay I opened up my diary to a crisp new page and wrote: Today I was playing outside and a butterfly flew right near my face. I showed Nana.

  ‘That’s not what happened,’ she said.

  I looked up at my grandmother. ‘Yes, it is,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a bit boring, isn’t it? Write something better.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting,’ she said, ‘if the butterfly flew up to you and kissed your cheek?’

  ‘Butterflies don’t kiss.’

  ‘Of course they do. Go on. Write that.’

  And so I did.

  Today a butterfly flew right near my face and then kissed my cheek.

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘Now when you’re older and you pick up your diary and read that page, you’ll think, “Wow, what an interesting day I had. What a full life I’ve lived.”’

  ✾

  After my first few weeks at Morningside Primary, I began to grow. First, a tummy. Mama had warned me about this. We were all destined to be fat – it was in our genes. Then I grew arm hair. Also in our genes. And, finally, something Mama hadn’t warned me about: I developed a crush on a white boy.

  It was easy enough to believe that it was possible for him to like me back. That despite how uncomfortable I was becoming in my own body, it would be temporary. That there would be a time when I would shed the fat and the hair. How I hoped to Allah there was a beautiful butterfly in there somewhere.

  His name was Isaac. He was outgoing, more so than the other boys in our class, which is why we got to know each other. He was the only one who talked to me.

  He didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know why, exactly. He didn’t have the same interests as the other boys – they spent their lunchtimes playing basketball, while Isaac preferred skipping rope or colouring in. It was a shame, I thought, because he was one of the tallest boys in our grade, so would probably be great at basketball. He found it hard to get along with the girls in class too. Perhaps because he was too loud. But I liked him, because he talked to me.

  We became friends quickly, Isaac and me. He always chose me when we had group activities in class. Mr R didn’t seem to mind at all that Isaac and I were a boy and a girl sitting together. Becoming friends.

  At 11 am each day the bell would ring, and kids would stream from their classrooms and into the sun for a break. One day I had money and so did Isaac. We made our way across the bitumen, which was wet and hot from summer rain. Droplets of water spotted my culottes, which were already too small for me. Isaac peered over my shoulder in the tuckshop line. I shrugged my shirt higher so my collar would cover the soft hairs that were growing on the back of my neck. He asked me what I was buying as he rubbed his fifty-cent coins together between his fingers. He said he was getting a cheese-and-bacon scroll, and I should get one too because they were the best thing here. Isaac knew what was good and what wasn’t. He had been at the school a year longer than me, which equated to a lot more tuckshop days.

  It would have been too much effort to explain why I couldn’t get a cheese-and-bacon scroll.

  Bacon is pig. Pig is haram, I would say.

  What is haram? he would say.

  Things Muslims can’t eat, I would say.

  What is a Muslim? he would say.

  I am a Muslim.

  I wasn’t ready for that conversation.

  So I told Isaac maybe. I placed my order, and the tuckshop lady turned and filled a bag of hot wedges with a gloved hand.

  I waited for Isaac as he fumbled for more change in his pockets. His shorts rose midway up his thigh. The tuckshop lady tapped the counter impatiently. He traded the coins for a meat-speckled bun.

  He only noticed that I hadn’t got a scroll as he bit into his. I lied and said I couldn’t afford one. So he reached into his pocket, gave me his change and said I should buy one tomorrow.

  That was all it took.

  That afternoon, I went home and drew Isaac in my diary. I drew his dark widow’s peak, his long legs extending out of short shorts, and his lips, in an exaggerated pout. I dotted freckles all around his cheeks. On the other side of the page I drew myself. Same pouted lips, stretching out to touch his. Me and Isaac, I wrote, and circled our bodies in a love heart. I tucked my diary beneath my mattress.

  The next day, Isaac was behind me in the tuckshop line again. He asked if I was going to get a scroll. The tuckshop lady waited for my answer as I deliberated in a quiet panic.

  I looked at Isaac, peering at me in hope. Yes, I said, resolutely, and she handed me the greasy bun.

  We sat down in the shadow of the sport shed that allowed just enough shade for two.

  ‘I have an idea for a game,’ I said. ‘It’s called Who Do You Like? You have to whisper who you like to the other person.’

  Isaac looked suspicious. ‘Err. That’s not really a game,’ he said.

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘I’ll only play if the rule is you’re not allowed to tell.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Anyone.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You go first.’

  ‘No. You go first. That’s the other rule.’

  ‘Okay.’ He leant over and whispered in my ear. ‘Lilly.’

  I couldn’t tell if he meant it. I had seen his interactions with Lilly. She was nasty to him – not letting him touch her colouring pencils in class, making fun of the way he jumped rope. Then he leant back and bit into the scroll. ‘Okay,’ he said, mouth still full, ‘your turn.’

  ‘No one,’ I lied.

  ✾

  Mama was at university again. She was doing her masters so that she could practise as a doctor in Australia, or that’s what she told me. The technicalities confused me – it seemed as though she had to start from scratch, even though she was already a doctor in Egypt.

  That afternoon, she had an exam and couldn’t pick us up from school. From my classroom, I could hear Baba’s van idling outside the gate. It was off-white, with brown doors and seats that smelled like the old men who had owned it before.

  The scroll was stowed in my bag; I’d pretended I was full. When Isaac left, I threw it in the bin.

  Baba was wearing his hi-vis vest and reflective sunglasses, so all I could see in his eyes was a warped reflection of my face. I jumped in the front passenger side. The remnants of bacon stench hovered in my bag, so I kicked it under the seat. I was starving. I checked Baba’s lunch esky while we waited for Mohamed. It was empty.

  ‘I need to talk to you when we get home,’ he said.

  I pretended to be still searching the esky. ‘About what?’ I said. I could tell from his tone that it was not good news.

  Mohamed opened the passenger door. ‘Hey!’ he shouted at me. ‘I bagsed front seat this morning!’ He slammed it in my face.

  ‘About what?’ I said to Baba.

  ‘When we get home,’ he said.

  Baba didn’t often come into my room, which I shared with Mohamed. When he did, it was to ask where I had put the television remote. But that day he came in and stood at the end of my bed. The mattress sank deeply when he sat. He looked uncomfortable. His sleeves were rolled up, his mangrove arm hair exposed. ‘I need to talk to you about something important.’ He had taken off his sunglasses, and he was looking me right in the eye. ‘Are you making friends at school?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Girl friends? Do you play with girls?’

  ‘I do, sometimes. But they don’t always want to play with me. Lilly hates me.’

  ‘Try to be more friends with them.’ He shuffled awkwardly on the bed. The edge of my diary was still hidden under the mattress.

  I was quiet.

  ‘Because it’s not good,’ he continued, ‘to play with boys.’

  I felt as though someone had stuffed a hot rag in my mouth. I always had a feeling my father was omniscient. It was as if he had hired a satellite in the sky to track me. Making sure I didn’t break the rules.

  ‘And absolutely no kissin
g boys.’

  My parents had never discussed it with me before, but I knew the rule as if it had been branded on my skin at birth. No boys. At all. Kissing is haram, unless it is your husband.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said. I couldn’t swallow. ‘It was a lie I wrote just for fun in my diary. So I could look back and remember an interesting thing.’

  ‘No more friends with boys. No more talking to boys. Okay? That’s it.’ And he left my room.

  He had found my diary. I didn’t know how. I doubted Nana had told him about it. She had her own collection of white lies tucked under the mattress. Her own stories. She understood, I thought. He must have found it when he was looking for the remote. Or smelled the bacon in the car. Or seen Isaac say goodbye when he arrived to pick me up. But it didn’t really matter how he knew. Just that he did.

  I waited until Mohamed was playing Xbox in our room, and Nana was feeding Aisha in the kitchen, to find Baba in the living room.

  ‘What if I marry him,’ I said. He was watching the Egyptian news channel, and I hoped he wouldn’t turn around. He didn’t.

  ‘What?’ said Baba, over his shoulder. ‘Marry who?’

  ‘The boy at school. If I marry him, then I can kiss him?’

  ‘No, you cannot marry him,’ he said with a laugh.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You are too young.’

  ‘Not now. Later. When I’m old enough.’

  ‘No, habib, you will marry someone like you. You are a Muslim girl, and Muslim girls marry Muslim boys.’

  ‘But I don’t know any Muslim boys. I only know Mohamed.’

  The sound of Halo penetrated the walls.

  He laughed again. ‘You cannot marry your brother, either.’

  ‘Who can I marry?’

  ‘A good Muslim boy. Someone you meet at the mosque.’ He turned the TV up.

  I returned to my room and pulled my diary out from under the mattress. I was embarrassed, now, that I had ever thought this was a good hiding spot. That I had thought there was such a thing as a good hiding spot in this family. I flicked through the pages, too afraid to read what I had written. How many times had he looked in it? How many lies had he seen? And how many had he mistaken as true? They were all stories, nothing but stories.