Muddy People

by Sara El Sayed

  ‘I asked her,’ my father said, ‘very clearly. I said, “You have two options. Do you want the law, or do you want the Sharia?”’ Sharia is the Arabic word for law. Sharia is the law as set out in the Qur’an. ‘And she wanted to take the best of each.’

  Under Australian law, assets are pooled and then split. Under Sharia, it’s different: everyone keeps their own. Mama agreed to buy Baba out of the Victoria Woods house. The house she always hated. She decided to keep it. This wasn’t expected, but it’s what she wanted. The house was Australian law.

  Then there were the overseas assets. The enigmatic assets. Inheritance, perhaps, or inheritance to come. There were things I didn’t know about, and I knew she would never talk about. She wanted those dealt with the Sharia way, meaning they were all hers.

  My father thought it was unfair that my mother picked and chose in this way. He believed that the settlement should follow one law and one law only. Either Australian or Sharia. But to my mother, it wasn’t that simple.

  They worked their way through their assets, deciding whether to split them or keep them on a case-by-case basis. My father went along with it. ‘I agreed to do it this way not because I thought it was right, but because I didn’t want your mother to be able to use anything as an excuse against me,’ he said. ‘I went along with what she wanted because I didn’t want a bad word said about me later. I played it all by her rules so she wouldn’t have a word to say.’

  They left till last the biggest negotiation: their future. In Australia, only one petitioner is needed to initiate a divorce. But in Egypt, you are married under Sharia until both parties give their consent to dissolve the marriage. Mama wanted his signature. Even though my mother never intended to travel to Egypt again, she didn’t want to still be married to my father in the eyes of the law there. She wanted to be severed from him, everywhere and entirely.

  When my mother told me what my father asked her over that table with the lawyers, I didn’t believe her. I knew Baba had his faults, but he wasn’t a blackmailer. ‘He told me he would only sign the Egyptian divorce paper if I gave him money,’ Mama said. ‘A lot of money. Thousands of dollars. “Either you give me money or I won’t let you go.”’

  When I brought this up to my father, he didn’t deny it. But his version was different. ‘There are two ways to get divorced in Sharia,’ he said. ‘The first way, the man will divorce the lady. He has the right. He has the upper hand. He will divorce the lady because he does not want to be her husband anymore, for whatever reason, and that’s it. He will give her her rights, of course, but that’s it. But if the woman wants to divorce, this is different. If the woman is forcing a man into a divorce that he does not want, that’s something else. They call it khula.’

  Khula. Removing a part. Taking a piece of a whole.

  ‘Your mother wanted to take herself out – akhlaa, it is called,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want any of this. It was her choice.’

  There’s a hadith in the Qur’an about a woman named Jamilah. She was unhappy in her marriage. She went to the Prophet Muhammad and told him that she wanted to leave her husband. The Prophet said okay, but give him back your mahr – the dowry he gave when you got married. Give it back, then you can get divorced. This is what Baba said he wanted. ‘I paid your mother gold and bracelets and money. In the religion, she has to pay them back if she wants to apply for divorce in Sharia. She will tell you oh, he’s asking for money for divorce, but this is part of the Sharia. She’s forcing the end of the relationship. That was her desire to destroy the family, not mine. So, to get out, she has to pay me everything back. I didn’t ask for anything other than what was rightfully mine for return.’

  My mother interpreted the hadith differently. ‘In Sharia, you only give back the dowry if the marriage hasn’t been …’ – she hesitated – ‘… consummated. So I think after twenty years and three children, I don’t have to give back a bracelet. But I did. I paid him that money just to get that signature. Just to get myself away from him.’

  My father was not ashamed because he felt he did everything by the book. His book. ‘You mother had the intention to divorce me ever since she went to Hervey Bay. She said that to me. She said she’d stayed with me all those years because she needed me financially. When she realised she could be on her own, then that was it, she was prepared to get rid of me. So easy.’ I could see him getting upset. ‘You know what she said to me? When I was sitting there at that table with all her lawyers during the settlement? She pointed at me and she shouted, “Issra kamaan ya harami! Issra kamaan! Steal more, you thief.” And I said, “More? What have I ever stolen from you?” And she kept shouting, “Issra kamaan!”’

  My mother says, ‘If there is one thing in life I have learned, something I will never lose faith in, it’s this: if it weren’t for money, marriage wouldn’t exist. If women had money, there would be no need for husbands. They would be on their own. And they would be happy. And that is a fact.’

  BABA

  It is hard to process the idea of a family member dying. To contemplate the tragedy, even if it’s just a possibility. It’s three am and I am awake, in bed, at home. Mama told me not to come to the hospital until she gives the word. That’s what she said when she left, almost five hours ago. She’s not answering her phone, and I don’t know what to do. So I continue to wait.

  I am not good in these situations. Where there’s a possibility of death. When we were kids, Aisha and I were jumping between our two beds when she slipped. She hit her head against the metal frame. It bounced off, her neck like a noodle. There was blood on the frame and spattered on the carpet. I thought she was dead, until she lifted her head. A massive gash ran across her forehead, dripping red. She didn’t scream until I started. Nana put a Band-Aid on her, and she sat watching TV in a blanket for the rest of the afternoon. I asked her if she needed anything. She said, ‘Can you make me some lunch?’ Superstitiously, I thought that if I did, it would be her last supper, so I didn’t. I ignored her request, and she turned out fine.

  When we were packing up our house in Egypt, a rolled-up carpet was leaned against a table, with a glass-faced clock sitting on the floor beneath. Mohamed was running up the carpet, then jumping off the table, thumping onto the thin floors. I was watching, partly in admiration and partly in fear, thinking he might put a hole in the floorboards. He went up and down and up and down, and eventually he slipped. He fell off the table and onto his back, onto the clock. It shattered under his fat little body. Blood was everywhere. My parents ran over, screaming, scooped him up and took him to the hospital. It all happened so fast; I didn’t get a chance to ask if I could come. Mohamed still has a thick, banana-shaped scar on his back.

  ✾

  Just because Baba is no longer in the house doesn’t mean he doesn’t make his presence known. He calls at least once a day to check if I am breathing. I don’t often ring him. I don’t need to, because he beats me to it. So, when I do, he answers in a panic, because he knows something is wrong.

  I call him at seven am after the long night. It is early February. The mosquitoes are already out, flying into the house because Nana has left the flyscreen open. She thinks it brings in more air this way. I have been scripting the conversation in my head all night.

  I can hear the alarm in his voice as soon as he picks up. ‘Kheer?’ he says. ‘What’s happening?’

  I immediately forget what I practised, and my voice goes wobbly. ‘Aisha is fine,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ His voice cracks. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you. She is fine, but last night she was driving home —’

  ‘Where is she?’ he shouted. As though I am keeping him from her. ‘I need to see her.’

  ‘— and a wallaby jumped in front of her car. She’s back from the hospital. She’s asleep. I’ll FaceTime you when she wakes up.’

  ‘No. I’m leaving. I’m coming now.’

  ‘You don’t need to come. She is fine. But the car has been written off
.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It rolled.’

  Baba says something quickly in Arabic that I do not understand, but I know he’s asking Allah for something. I never considered my little sister dying before me. I’m glad she hasn’t. In the last six months, two people have died in accidents on the same road.

  When Aisha wakes up, she looks like shit. The cut on her leg is deeper in daylight. She got it when she crawled out the broken driver’s side window. It’s burgundy and blue, and runs half the length of her thigh. She’s covered in mosquito bites – she says she could feel the mosquitoes as she waited for the ambulance. She hears a buzzing in her ear, but other than that, she is fine.

  The car had landed on its roof. In the roll, it took down a nearby electrical pole. It’s a miracle that she’s alive. She never wants to drive again. Baba says it is lucky she was in a Toyota. In any other car, she would be dead.

  A few days later, Aisha says she’s still having ear trouble. She can’t hear out of her right side. Sometimes, I forget and talk to her while standing to her right, and she struggles, not wanting to admit it.

  Mohamed deals with stress differently. He doesn’t talk to Aisha for two weeks. He doesn’t ask her about what happened or if she is okay. He just acts like nothing happened. In a way, I can understand where he is coming from. Sometimes if you pretend, you can get on as normal. Baba says Mohamed acts this way because he’s been the only man in the house for too long. He doesn’t have a role model. The man is meant to protect his family, Baba says. To protect them from any harm that might come their way.

  RULE #20

  NO SHOES IN THE HOUSE

  My I Heart BJ t-shirt was my favourite souvenir from China. It was everyone in our group’s pet purchase. Ms H said that if she saw anyone buying them, they would have a week’s detention when we got back to Australia. But that did not stop us.

  Over time it had become worn. The red of the heart had turned pinkish. It had become my gym shirt.

  I had joined the gym optimistically when it was offered as an alternative to organised sport at school. The owners were savvy: what to the undiscerning eye was a bunch of rowdy kids in on a Wednesday afternoon was to someone else a captive market of teens with budding body dysmorphia. After I graduated, I kept up the membership.

  I avoided going on the floor on Wednesdays. It was hard to compete with boys hopped up on steroids. The only body I felt comfortable looking at was Aaron’s – the boy I had interviewed for captaincy – because it wasn’t covered in uncomfortably large and bulging veins. He wore long sleeves under a t-shirt when he worked out.

  I used the group fitness room. It was an oasis of sorts. A room full of old white women and pop music.

  ‘Okay, ladies,’ the trainer announced through her headset microphone, with a certain pep in her voice that sounded terminal, ‘are we ready to Sh’Bam?’ She hit play. ‘Eye of the Tiger’ pumped through the sound system. The women formed lines facing the front and started bopping from side to side, mirroring the trainer. I stood in the middle row. I wasn’t confident enough to be in the front, but also felt those in the back could benefit from my superior sense of rhythm. I bopped with them as we made our way through the various tracks, each with their own dance style. Some involved a lot of jumping around.

  ‘Yeah! Rock it out!’ shouted the trainer at the room of seniors playing air guitar.

  Next was a remix of an R. Kelly song. This was ‘the hip-hop track’.

  ‘Bounce the basketball,’ said the trainer. The ladies mirrored her movement of bouncing an invisible ball with two hands to the side of her body. ‘And throw the basketball.’ She moved her hands above her head, sweeping to the other side of her body, in a repeated motion in time with the beat. In Sh’Bam, hip-hop and basketball were the same thing.

  We went through a couple of jazz and musical theatre tracks. The steps weren’t difficult, but the repetition made me sweat. I’d watch the trainer pull it off with ease while speaking into the microphone, not passing a single heavy breath. You could tell she was a trained dancer. I wondered if she felt like a failure for having to teach us. She probably went home at night and cried into her fluoro tank top.

  We eventually reached the cool-down track. The trainer took us through each stretch, making it obvious how much more flexible than us she was. I caught my breath as I hung down, trying to touch my toes.

  I got home and kicked my shoes off outside the front door. I threw my sweaty t-shirt in the wash basket.

  ‘Can you do your own washing from now on?’ said Aisha.

  ‘I never asked you to do my washing,’ I said.

  ‘But you leave it for so long, and then I have to do it.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Yep, I do.’

  Mohamed wanted to take us out for lunch. This was out of character, as Mohamed never offered to do anything, let alone spend money on us. Baba was invited, along with me and Aisha.

  Baba had gotten a job in Katherine. When he visited, he did not stay in the house. So Mohamed suggested we meet him at Café Arabica.

  Aisha and I arrived in my car. I offered to pick Baba up, but he refused, still holding a grudge against the Getz. He got a rental, and we waited for Mohamed to show.

  A little while later, Mohamed’s car pulled into the parking lot. We didn’t need to see it because we could hear it. He didn’t take care of the engine. When he walked in, he wasn’t alone. He introduced the girl with him as Emma. She had brownish-reddish hair, the same shade as Carly’s. Probably from the same box. She wore thick eyeliner. She was white and her hair was dead straight. She was pretty. This was his girlfriend.

  I watched Baba speak to her, his smile never leaving his face. Asking her questions, like he was so interested in her life. He laughed pre-emptively whenever she said something, to make her feel funny, even if he didn’t fully understand what she was saying. He even paid for her lunch. Since when, I thought, was this okay?

  ‘Did you know about this?’ I asked Baba in the carpark, once Emma and Mohamed had left.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I asked for it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked to see her. Aisha told me she thought Mohamed was talking to a girl. So I asked him and he said yes.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Boys can marry non-Muslim girls,’ Baba reminded me.

  ‘I know. But they’re not getting married. They’re boyfriend and girlfriend. You said no boyfriend–girlfriend.’

  ‘Boys are different from girls,’ he said. ‘It’s important to meet her. It’s important to bring these things to the light, not leave them in the dark.’

  ✾

  When Emma came over to the house for the first time, to meet Mama, she was wearing a tank top and sneakers, as though she and Mohamed had just been to the gym. She wore the sneakers in the house.

  She ended up having a shower at our place, because she and Mohamed were going out for dinner. Her clothes went into the wash with my things. Once they dried, I hid them in my cupboard. I did this every time I found something of hers in the wash. Slowly she would have nothing left to wear, I figured, or if she was smart, she would realise she was not wanted and stop coming around.

  It wasn’t Emma herself I resented. I was happy that Mohamed had someone who would put up with his annoying habits, like chewing with his mouth open and breathing too loudly. I was bothered by what she represented – change for him, but not for me. She was an outsider. She was white. And she was acceptable. I had had dreams of bringing a white boy home to my father, and in those dreams my father disowned me. But for Mohamed it was so easy, and he didn’t even see it. His privilege was invisible to him. And all I had were stolen clothes.

  MAMA

  There is a pile of hard drives on the living-room couch. They’re copies of all the files her father had on his computer, my mother says. She is sifting through them, connecting them to her laptop one by one, trying to find an inheritance I’m not sure even exists. She
has found copies of certificates from banks confirming transfers and receipts, but they are all typed in Comic Sans and have grammatical errors peppered throughout, presumably written by the fraudsters who convinced my grandfather to hand over his money. I believe that whatever he had to leave was all scammed from him, but my mother doesn’t think so. She has spent three days on her computer, trying to convince herself that he must have left her something.

  Her bedroom floor is strewn with papers, a lot of them bruised with stamps. On her bed is an open passport and two death certificates, one in Arabic, another in English. The one in English says my grandfather died of a tumour in his colon. My mother said he had a lot of other tumours too, so it’s a technicality that this was the one that killed him. The passport has a picture of him. It’s the first time I have seen him in old age. The only images I have seen are from his wedding to Nana, when he was twenty-five, and the small one in my mother’s wallet. His grey hair is a reminder that we lost a lot of time. The passport expires in four years. It is strange to think that we can expire before our documents.

  She never speaks of the circumstances that led to her becoming estranged from her father, but Nana talks about it, of course. She likes to talk about it.

  ‘The last time she saw her father was in a courtroom,’ says Nana. ‘She was twenty-one years old.’ It was about a house. All of this was about a house.

  ‘Your mother was living with her father in a unit that was owned by his father – her grandfather. She wasn’t living there by choice, mind you. No. Her father forced her to stay with him. He said, and I swear he said this, that if she ever spoke to me again, he would kill her. She was terrified of him. Absolutely terrified. Imagine, stopping your daughter from seeing her own mother.’