‘Yes, I remember,’ I say. ‘I was crying because no one came to help me.’
‘No, you were crying because you hit your head on the tap.’
‘We’d better get going.’
‘Okay. Let me sulli.’ He lays the prayer mat in front of the dining chair and sits to pray. He closes his eyes and raises his hands to his head. Then he stops. He opens one eye and looks at me. I look back. He gestures for me to move out of the way. I forgot – I am sitting to his east, obstructing his prayer to Mecca.
I go to the bathroom to pass the time. There are three toothbrushes in a cup. Toothbrushes are meant to be thrown out after three months. That’s what they say on the packaging, which is still sitting in the bin next to the sink. These have been here much longer than that. Surely the three-month rule only applies if they’re in use, though. I wet my face.
Baba’s house is clean. He keeps it nice. He vacuums, and he mops, and he washes, all for himself. My father was never a slob, but I see him scrub at surfaces more now that he is in this house, where there is no one to impress with his cleanliness.
We get to the hospital and take a number. There are people here I have seen before. Some have deteriorated faster than others. My father is still plump compared to a woman in a purple crocheted hat, who started wearing the hat not when she lost her hair but when she lost her body fat. My father’s number is called.
‘It seems as though none of the nurses wants to work with you,’ the doctor says, when we are seated in his office. He sounds almost delighted, as if scaring nurses away is an endearing quirk.
‘Who said?’ asks my father. He doesn’t see it that way. He holds out his arms. There is some bruising. ‘They use me like a cushion for pins. How would you feel? If someone does this to you?’
The doctor’s grin disappears. ‘They said you were being difficult.’
‘All of them?’
‘Yes, all of them.’
‘What about the tattoo nurse?’
‘Rita,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ says my father, ‘lovely Rita who found my vein. You don’t believe me? Go and find her and ask her. She will tell you the other nurses were so bad. So bad.’
The doctor grimaces.
‘Rita will tell you the truth. Just like she said – all it takes is a little warmth and a little time. But no one here has this for me.’
‘Okay,’ says the doctor. ‘Give me a moment. I’ll call for Rita.’ He leaves the room.
My father turns to me, a smile on his face. ‘Another funny story,’ he says. ‘When you were small baby, your mother dropped you on your head on the stairs at the train station! That’s why she doesn’t wear skirts anymore, because she tripped on her skirt and dropped you down the stairs.’ He laughs. ‘Does she still not wear skirts?’
‘Yeah.’
He laughs, and I laugh too.
RULE #6
NEVER LOCK YOUR DOOR
There is nothing worse than being stuck. By 2004, we were starting to outgrow the house at Morningside. Mama and Baba had saved enough for the bank to finally let them take out a loan.
The loan was the easy part. Mama liked that about Australia. ‘In Egypt,’ she said, ‘you’d be in your grave by the time they looked at your application. Then they will take their lunch break.’
Finding a place to live was not quick. Mama’s idea of nice was Baba’s idea of hideous. Baba’s full-of-potential was Mama’s full-of-shit. My parents spent the winter looking, warmed by hot tempers and scorching arguments.
Meanwhile, just as my siblings and I were trapped in a hothouse of our parents’ discontent, I became trapped in a literal sense. The Morningside Flyers swim team moved training to the weekends, to the indoor pool complex a couple of blocks away from the school.
It was a particularly stuffy day in the complex. The steam from the pool made the windows fog and slathered condensation on skin and walls alike. Several squads of different age levels were training at the same time, so it was hard to tell which whistle belonged to which instructor, which squeal to which child. It was loud, what with kids kicking in the water, adults shouting at kids, and the ubiquitous buzz of the thermoelectric generator.
There was no shared changing room, which was a relief – only individual bathroom cubicles with doors that slid shut and left no crack. I shuffled into a cubicle with my bag of clothes and pulled the door shut behind me. A satisfying click came from the lock, as the hook slid into its strike. I pulled my wet costume off, feeling like a sausage bursting from its intestinal casing in a hot pan. I squeezed into the bralette Mama had recently bought me. I hadn’t felt comfortable wearing it until the day I felt uncomfortable without it. Three sprigs of hair had appeared on my chest, now flattened and wet. I didn’t want to imagine what someone like Lilly might say about chest hair on a girl. Nipples were at least somewhat expected. I put a dry t-shirt on, hoping no one had noticed them in the pool, and some shorts.
I was dressed and covered. No one could see my body anymore. Mama would be waiting for me outside by now.
I pinched the lock, trying to wiggle it open, but the humidity made it too slippery to manoeuvre. I shook the door, but it wouldn’t budge, swollen shut in the heat.
The bathroom of the indoor swimming pool was a coffin. No one could hear me scream. When I called, my voice was sucked up by the high ceiling and out through the tiny window that I had no chance of reaching. I could hear the kids outside, splashing in the water. I imagined their wrinkled fingertips and chlorine-soaked faces, their hairless legs and flat bellies moving them through the water like slimy eels. I imagined pulling the plug on the pool and their bodies being sucked down in a whirl without being caught, without a snag. I tugged on the door until my arms were tired, the tips of my fingers sore from trying to grip the wood. I pulled down my shorts, because the toilet was the only place to sit and the seat was cool. I began to cry.
✾
I am not the only one with a memory of being stuck in a bathroom. Baba has one too. He got trapped in the Morningside house while having a shower. The moist air swelling the door could have done it, as it did in my case. Or it could have been a faulty lock. Or perhaps the door just got jammed, as doors do from time to time. Afterwards, there were many theories.
The door wouldn’t budge. The landlord eventually had to send a locksmith. He undid the lock with a screwdriver, jiggled the door a bit, and Baba was free. He emerged with fury. He’d missed his appointment, he yelled. A very important work meeting. All because of a stupid lock. Locked! In his own house. The locksmith gave him a sympathetic laugh, but there was nothing funny to Baba about being an angry Arab man in a towel. When the locksmith left, Baba went back into the bathroom to have another shower – the stress had made him perspire too much.
Mama was the only one home when Baba got stuck. She said she didn’t hear him calling for at least the first hour. ‘It’s hard to hear when you’re in the kitchen.’ She was defensive. ‘All the pots and pans. And your father takes long showers. How was I supposed to know he was stuck? He could have called out louder.’
✾
Twenty minutes after swimming training had finished, Mama knocked on the cubicle. She asked if I was in there and I yelled out yes. She jiggled the door and it came free.
‘Why didn’t anyone look for me?’ I cried.
‘You could have opened the door.’
‘It was stuck.’
‘It wasn’t stuck.’
‘It was. Why did you wait so long to come and find me?’
‘That’s enough, Soos.’ People were looking at us. ‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’
‘I was trapped, and no one cares. No one ever cares.’
‘No, no one cares. Yalla, get in the car.’
We sat in silence for a while, the heat cranked up. We slowed to a traffic light.
‘What do you expect me to do?’ Mama said. I didn’t look at her. ‘Do you want me to stick to you twenty-four-seven in case you get stuck in the toilet? Am I me
ant to quit my job to follow you around all day because you might do something stupid? Am I meant to drop everything and come to your rescue every time you do something dumb? I am your mother, not your minder. I came eventually, didn’t I? You are the one who got yourself stuck. Don’t blame me for issues you cause yourself.’
‘You don’t care that I was stuck,’ I said.
‘It opened perfectly for me.’
✾
While Mama was in the kitchen, not hearing Baba, she noticed the flower of mould on the edge of the sink had started to re-form, even though she’d sprayed it with bleach a week earlier. The house had a way of making problems reappear, no matter how hard she tried to solve them. One of the blinds had fallen off the rod. Baba had promised to fix it, but he hadn’t. The plasterboard was cracking after a long spell of no rain. The dry, lifeless soil had caused the foundations of the house to move. Broken walls and jammed bathroom doors were what eventually led Baba to say, ‘That’s enough.’ He let the landlord know he would not be renewing our lease.
✾
By spring, my parents had found a house that Mama hated but Baba loved, so they bought it. It was in Victoria Woods, named after a queen in the hope that she would visit the area, in the Redlands, named after the clay red earth that existed before any English queen and her colony.
As we drove into the city, we were welcomed by a long mural trailing along the main road, featuring the faces of various children. Some had crooked smiles and dark eyes. Some were bald, with heads disproportionate to their bodies. One girl had alien-like wideset eyes and an ushanka hat. She was wearing a thick black coat despite being, like all the others, set against a beach background. One small toddler sported a Hitler moustache, a recent graffitied addition. I would later find out that locals referred to this artwork as the scary baby faces mural. Some thought it a disastrous reflection of the city it represented. Others thought it was perfect.
Our new house was built of brick patterned with black spots, as though it had suffered a million cigarette burns. Its yellow roof had a large, inexplicable red stain on it, and sloped down dramatically, reminding me of a Neanderthal’s forehead. It stood out on the road; not a single house looked like it. In the front yard was a wattle tree full of lorikeets that I would find would swoop across the main road low enough to be hit by traffic every now and again. The mailbox was shaped to look like the house.
The place was badly insulated, and excessively hot, even in spring. Baba promised to install air conditioning. It was two storeys – the first time we had stairs – but the stairs had gaps that a foot could slip right through. Baba said he would board those up. Every wall in the house was a sickly blush pink. Baba said he would paint it. ‘Something nice,’ he said. ‘Maybe nice modern neutral.’
Mama and Baba had their own bathroom. It had an ugly mirror that looked like someone had accidentally smashed it and tried to reconstruct it there on the wall. If someone looked into it, their face would be distorted, broken into pieces. That bathroom had no door – it led straight into their bedroom. A touch of romance in the parents’ retreat, the real estate agent had said. The first thing my parents did was put in a bathroom door. The lock on it worked just fine.
Whenever we ran errands back in the city, my father took the time to drive around and point out all the houses he had inspected with Mama.
‘That one was nice. Very nice, but a bit dark,’ he says pointing to a two-storey in Holland Park. ‘Natural light is very important. You need natural light in a house. Of course, your mother couldn’t see that. Add windows, she said, as if it is easy.’
Each represented a different possibility, posed a different timeline. What would have happened to my parents if we moved into the house in Mount Gravatt – the one with the beautiful kitchen benchtops but the shoddy garage? Or the house in Coorparoo that had all the natural light one could ask for, but sagging wooden floors that creaked with every step?
But they picked Victoria Woods. And that is where it all came apart.
BABA
Rita places a hypoallergenic blanket over my father. He is sweating but cold. The powder-blue shade makes him look like a swaddled baby. He pins it down with his heavy chin. He is happy today, telling Rita about me.
‘She is a writer,’ he says, although I’ve never been paid to write a word.
‘I want to be. I’m not yet,’ I say.
‘Yes, but you will be, inshallah.’
Rita smiles. ‘You must be very proud of her,’ she says.
‘Yes, I am. Very proud of my daughter. Inshallah, she will write stories about her father! But not about cancer.’ We’ve spoken about this before.
‘No,’ I say, ‘I wouldn’t write about cancer because everyone writes about cancer.’
‘Do they?’ says Rita.
‘Yes. Cancer is boring now. That’s what my lecturer said.’
‘Cancer is very boring,’ says my father. ‘Look at us, Rita. This is so boring.’ He rubs his hands together underneath the blanket. ‘I have an idea for a book. It’s about a man who works at a construction site doing risk assessment, but he is bad at it. The book is called “Risk Ass”. Like risk assessment. But he is an ass. A dumbass.’ He laughs.
I ignore him. ‘The best thing to write about is characters with inner conflicts. The ones who contradict themselves, and say things they don’t mean, or do things they don’t say. That’s what we’re taught.’
‘Well,’ says Rita, ‘that sounds very good. I will leave you two and be back to check on you soon.’
I attempt to work on my assignment from the plastic chair next to my father, while he blasts the Qur’an from his phone. The other patients are either too polite or too hard of hearing to say anything.
Have we not made the earth as a bed, and the mountains as pegs? the phone sings in Arabic. I had read the lines in the Qur’an when I was a child, back when Arabic was more than squiggles on a page. My father reminds me of the lyricism of the illiterate Prophet.
‘That’s a nice image,’ I say. ‘It’s a nice metaphor.’
‘You should put that in a story,’ he says. ‘The Qur’an is full of beautiful things like this. You need to read it. It is full of this.’ He closes his eyes for a moment. When he doesn’t open them, I think he might be trying to sleep, but he smiles.
‘Imagine, Soosy, “Risk Ass”. It could be a movie. Like Jackass. You need to write this.’
RULE #7
COVER YOUR EYES
There was a period of time when Baba didn’t let us watch The Simpsons. It came after an episode where Marge was naked, exposing her chest to Homer, although all we could see were her bare shoulders. When things he deemed inappropriate would happen on TV, he would yell ‘ghuti wishik ya bit!’ – cover your eyes, girl! – or he’d cover my eyes with his own hand until the sinning was over. But the cartoon semi-nudity was too much. Baba turned off the TV, and we were not to watch The Simpsons again.
After that, we had to wait until six-thirty to turn the TV on. At six-thirty-five, on Neighbours, there was a scene that involved two people kissing. He turned the TV off again. His children would not be exposed to gratuitous displays of affection between people living on the same street. We couldn’t watch TV until seven.
This was a shame, because I learned a lot from TV. Our family was The Simpsons: a bald dad, a fuzzy-haired mum and three kids. I was Lisa Simpson to a tee: middle child, a girl, the smartest sibling – and I even had plans to play the saxophone in the school band. Dr Karl on Neighbours was a doctor like Mama and could cure anything, from a blocked nose to cancer, with a stethoscope. He knew everything even remotely related to the practice of medicine, even if he did serially cheat on his wife, Susan.
One day Ms C, my music teacher, held band auditions in the lunch break. As many of the aspirants had never played an instrument before, auditions weren’t so much auditions as allocations. Ms C would test various instruments on a child, to see what fit best. As the brown, three-dimensional incarnation of Li
sa Simpson, I was sure I would get the saxophone.
The students were called to the music block one by one, in alphabetical order. Because no one could ever fully understand how my name worked, lists either had me near the top, E, or near the bottom, S; it was hard to tell when I would be called. That day was an S day, so I was one of the last kids. I headed over to the music block to find Ms C in the storage room.
‘Hello,’ she said. She blew upwards, as if to keep her artificially red fringe out of her eyes, even though it was nowhere near her eyes, but cropped close to her hairline. She looked a little sweaty as she lugged big, black instrument cases from the back cupboard and onto the floor. ‘Are you ready to audition?’
‘Yes.’
Ms C smiled and pulled a piece of paper from a folder. ‘Your permission form says you’ll be on the levy scheme.’
I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I knew it had something to do with my parents not being able to afford a saxophone. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Okay. Let’s get started.’ She unclipped a case – the smallest of the three on the floor, which held a trumpet. ‘There aren’t a lot of choices left, but we will find you something.’
Ms C was a divorcee. I knew this because she had mentioned an ex-husband once, who was also a music teacher, working at a rival school. She never mentioned kids.
She held the trumpet mouthpiece to my face. ‘Blow,’ she said.
A sputtering, flatulent sound came out.
‘Purse your lips.’
I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to take hold of the mouthpiece myself. She pressed it hard against my face. It smelled of the mouths of a thousand children, mixed with a faint whiff of Dettol. ‘Harder,’ she said. ‘Now blow. Sharper. Purse your lips harder. Don’t puff your cheeks out so much. Just purse.’
She dropped her hand, which was flecked with spittle. ‘Okay. Let’s try the next one.’ She unclipped a bigger case and picked up the mouthpiece. A baritone, a mini tuba. It was not the vision I had.
Muddy People Page 7
