by Amal Awad
He was still analysing the page, but here’s the amazing thing: he looked genuinely impressed and pleased. Meanwhile I was blushing furiously, wondering where on earth I’d left my self-respect.
“Zahra,” I said. “Is this the kind of thing you have in mind?”
I’d managed to fix a box so that it looked fairly similar to the one she’d pointed out in the magazine earlier.
“Yeah, great, Samira. Thanks,” she said carelessly before laughing with Malek again about God knows what.
They looked silly. Or maybe I just felt silly. Look, there was a lot of silliness.
“I saw you the other day,” said Menem as he closed the magazine.
“You did?” I began sorting out things in front of me. I wasn’t actually doing anything, to be honest, but I needed to look busy.
“Yeah, I saw you at Metcentre with your workmate.” I wasn’t sure why it was so remarkable. He saw me just about every Monday afternoon. We knew each other’s routines by now.
“Ah yes, caffeine breaks. A daily essential.”
“You’re a big coffee drinker,” he said.
“I think I’m medium-sized actually.”
Menem smiled and nodded. “Good one.”
“I average one cup a day, unless things are really bad. My boss can be a bit demanding, so sometimes I just need to get out of the office,” I explained, no longer fiddling with things.
“I know the feeling,” he said.
“Do you enjoy your work?” I asked. By now, of course, the poor bonbonnieres had been completely abandoned.
“Yeah, I do. I love it in fact. It’s the one thing I can make sense of,” he said.
“Just the one?”
“Well, it’s not as complicated as other life … matters.” He smiled.
“Right.”
Dangerous, choppy waters. Could get flirty and/or suggestive. For example, I could say, “Such as?” Then Menem would say, “Well, love”. Then I would blush and feign innocence, pretending that I hadn’t seen that response coming from five football fields away.
“You know, I don’t think you’ve ever told me what you do for a living,” I said.
Please don’t let it be something completely lame, I prayed. Not that it should make an ounce of difference to me, of course.
“Sure. I’m in IT.”
He caught my expression. “I know, it’s clichéd.” Menem laughed and shrugged.
“No, I’m sorry, I wasn’t judging you!” I really needed to work on the facial responses, I thought shamefully. What had I been hoping for? Investigative journalist? Cancer cure researcher? Explorer?
“It’s all right. I know what you’re thinking. Arabs are always either engineers or in IT. Right?” asked Menem.
I didn’t realise it at first but my mouth was hanging open a touch.
“Well, I’m not really in a position to pass judgment. I’m but a lowly assistant,” I eventually responded.
“Nothing lowly about it. You have your name in print, and it’s definitely not clichéd,” Menem assured me.
I laughed. “Right. I might consider that as a comeback the next time I’m questioned about my career choice,” I said. “I’ll just say, ‘Well, do you have your name in print? Exactly’.”
“You should.” He gave me a look that made my stomach jolt unexpectedly. I looked away, pulling a box towards me.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m here tonight. I’ve been summoned because Zahra has computer issues apparently,” he told me.
I bit my tongue. She has issues, all right.
“Ah, okay,” I said. “I’m sure that happens a lot. You’re in IT, so everyone comes to you for help, right?” I smiled.
Menem nodded. “Yeah, a lot. I don’t mind though.”
Still, it was a Friday night. Surely he had something better to do. And he didn’t seem to be in a rush to fix Zahra’s computer issues.
“What about you?” said Menem.
“What?”
“Work. You like your job?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Pardon?”
“You said ‘no’, as in you don’t like what you do?”
“No.”
“No you do?” Menem asked puzzled.
“Um, okay. Sorry, can you please repeat the question?” I said, flustered.
“Do you enjoy what you do?” he repeated.
“Sometimes,” I replied.
“Okay, well, that’s not good enough. Find something you enjoy at least most of the time,” he advised.
“Yes,” I responded weakly.
Hopeless. I was embarrassed by my own silliness. In my defence though, Zahra and Malek were still laughing and acting silly too at the other end of the table. Now that they’d done their Islamic marriage ceremony, they were all chummy and playful. Which would be totally fine if I wasn’t in the room, forced to witness it.
“So when you’re not working the bridal scene, what do you like to do?” asked Menem.
“The usual. You know, reading, movies. I’m thinking about taking a photography course,” I said, surprising myself. I didn’t even own a digital SLR yet.
“That’s great,” he replied.
“Actually, I’m a bit of a hermit sometimes,” I confessed.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m bored?”
“Maybe you’re bored because you’re a hermit.”
“No, that can’t be right,” I pondered. “What about you? What are your hobbies? Besides sporty things?”
“Well, when I’m not working on computers, I’m either working on computers or fishing,” he said, lifting one leg onto his seat and relaxing his arm on the back of the chair.
“Fishing?”
“Yeah,” he said, a little embarrassed. “A bit of an oldies thing, I know.”
“Not really. It’s just an interesting hobby. Do you set the fish free after you catch them?”
“It depends. Generally, no.”
“Do you like reading?”
“Not so much. I don’t have the patience for it, to be honest.”
Then he asked me what my favourite book is.
Too many to pinpoint one, I apologised.
Then he tried to help me to break down my list of favourites by playing the desert island game. “If you could only take one book with you – aside from one on religion – what would it be?”
I still couldn’t answer. But we talked about the desert island game and how logistically and in all other ways it made very little sense.
We continued with some small talk. The weather. The annoying lifts in our respective buildings that never seemed to operate well. Whether or not there was a significant difference between lattes and flat whites. As I was a cappuccino drinker, I’d no idea. Then we compared coffee bars, which was something I did have some idea about.
“So do you do any sports?” he continued, after we realised there was little disagreement on the subject.
“Um, no, it’s a bit hard now. I used to, I was a pretty good runner,” I said, looking up. That was a long time ago, so I wasn’t even sure it deserved mention.
He seemed impressed. “Short or distance?”
I nodded once. “Distance. But it was ages ago. Like adolescence.”
I focused on the box I was constructing, carefully folding the edges down to make them even and neat. I didn’t want him to see the way my face had coloured.
“So why’d you stop?”
“I just got older, I guess.”
“Okay. But what does that have to with anything?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d find it impossible to believe he came from an Arab Muslim family sometimes. Granted they didn’t seem like the stuffy type, but Menem seemed completely and sincerely confused by my response.
“It’s a little bit hard when you wear a headscarf,” I explained.
“But you can wear long pants and one of those scarves that doesn’t fly off,” he said, looking mystified.
“I guess I wouldn’t feel comfortable,” I said.
Menem was about to say something, but we were interrupted when our mothers walked into the room. Mum was looking at us with an expression of amusement.
“Are you finished, Samira?” she said in Arabic.
We’d barely achieved anything. Not all my fault though.
“I think so,” I lied. “Zahra?”
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, less giggly now that the mothers were here.
I got up and we all said our farewells. Menem stood up as well and as we left I caught him studying me with a serious look on his face. I felt a slight rumble in my stomach again, a agonising jet of fear, the same feeling I got the one (and only) time I rode on a rollercoaster. I recognised it, because I’d experienced it a couple of times.
I was expecting Mum to say something about me chatting to Menem on the way home. I thought she might be annoyed that the four of us had been in the room by ourselves. Not that I thought there was anything wrong with it. But well, Mum could get a bit funny about these things. Or maybe I was just uber paranoid because of how Menem had looked at me as we were saying goodbye. And then there was that whole agonising jet of fear thingamy.
In any case, I was antsy, throwing an occasional sideways glance at Mum, waiting for an onslaught of Guilt to come and bury me as I drove along the quiet streets of South Sydney. Amazingly, she didn’t say a word.
“Mum,” I eventually said. “Do you know that family at all?”
“Which family?” replied Mum.
“Malek’s family.”
“No. We didn’t know them until now,” said Mum. “Why?”
“No reason.”
“They’re Lebanese as well, so we never saw them at Palestinian events,” said Mum in Arabic.
I stopped at a red light.
“Right. What do you think of them?” I prodded.
“They seem nice,” said Mum, smiling. Then Mum gave me a look, but not the The Look. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure I recognised this one, which was a little disturbing.
“Mum, is everything okay?” A sinking feeling began to set up shop in my stomach. The nerves began stretching, gearing up for an entrance.
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay, so why are you looking at me like that?”
This was completely unlike my mother. If she had something to say, she would simply come out and do so. Instead she seemed unsure as we waited at the intersection.
Mum considered for a moment. “Im Malek asked if you were engaged.”
I was quiet for a moment. “And what did you tell her?”
“Well, you’re not, so I told her that,” said Mum.
“Why would she do that?” I asked, stupidly.
“She has another son. You were speaking to him. What do you think of him?”
“Mum!” I said, affronted, although I’d no need to be. “Does her son know about this? I’m not sure he’ll appreciate his mum asking for me when he’s not interested.”
“She didn’t ask for you yet,” said Mum, but she gave me her new Look again.
Well, almost as good as, I thought, and Mum knew it. I was about to point out that Menem had never mentioned anything to me, but I realised that would involve explanation as to how Menem could have mentioned anything to me. He wouldn’t have done so at Zahra’s place, which only left other opportunities. Unmentionables.
Although our parents all knew we communicated and that they’d lost the Battle of the Internet long ago, we had an undeclared pact not to discuss it. See no evil, hear no evil and so on and so forth. It actually worked rather well most of the time.
“It’s good that you helped your cousin,” complimented Mum.
“Yeah. I hope I don’t have to do everything with her.”
I rolled my eyes.
Mum sighed. “Why don’t you two get along? It’s such a shame. You’re family.”
“Blame her.”
“Blame yourself.”
“Mum!”
“I expect more from you.”
Story of my bloody life.
18
The next week passed by uneventfully. No major dramas unfolded in any area of my life. In fact, everything was quiet, comparatively speaking. Meaning no emails were sent to the incorrect recipients. Lara wasn’t pestering Hakeem on Facebook then sending me the conversations and declaring victory. This all made for a pleasant change of pace.
Nevertheless, there were more requests from Zahra, one of which included a cake-tasting session that, admittedly, almost made the life of wedding servitude worthwhile. I’d never realised just how much one can do with flour and water. Nor had I ever considered marzipan to be edible until she dragged me along to that fancy cake shop.
We went to Paddington after work on Wednesday. I’d no idea why she requested my assistance given she didn’t need my car and I doubted that anyone had forced her to bring me. I’d almost venture that she actually wanted my opinion.
Despite my surprise and slight discomfort at my beefed up role as wedding assistant, I didn’t mind tagging along. There was no getting out of any of it now anyway. It was like quicksand: the more I struggled, the deeper I sunk into Zahra’s Wedding Vacuum.
With a minimum of fuss, Zahra very quickly settled on a design and cake – fruit cake, but no word of a lie, it was scrumptious. Nothing like those soggy Christmas puddings you’d get as an end-of-year gift from your boss. It was a beautiful three-tiered cake with white marzipan icing. Each tier was square-shaped and marked with a different pattern, like quilted boxes.
Menem emailed me during the week. Hardly noteworthy, I know. But I still felt a thrill of excitement whenever his name popped up in my inbox.
Subject: Books
How can you not know what book you’d take with you?
What if we categorise them?
Menem
By Friday, Menem conceded that I, in fact, did not have a favourite book. He further acknowledged that I wasn’t simply being difficult, although I could understand how he might have thought I was being playful or flirty or something.
On Sunday evening, Mum announced that we were having a family dinner plus guests.
By 6.30, it was Grand Central at our house. I wondered if perhaps some neighbours had wandered in when they’d seen the guests converge, possibly hoping to blend in and have a free feed. A party is a party.
I was with Mum in the kitchen, sorting out the food she and Dad had bought for dinner. Mum wasn’t cooking tonight, but the menu was still very appetising: three boxes of spinach pies, small meat as well as zaatar pizzas; four stuffed chickens; two tubs of creamy baked potato; something liquidy. And a partridge in a pear tree.
Mum gave me instructions: I was put in charge of salads. Well, salad (singular). After a few minutes, she came over to examine my cutting and used her knife to turn over the tomatoes.
“Make them even, Samira,” she said.
So much for taking a creative approach to the salad. Artistic vision was crushed in this family, I thought bitterly. I began to cut them evenly, but I wasn’t happy about it.
“Who’s coming tonight?” I asked.
“Abu Ibrahim and Hakeem,” said Mum. “And your aunt Kareema’s family.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me we’re having a big dinner?”
“We did tell you,” said Mum.
“No you didn’t.”
“Well now you know.”
“So evi- Zahra isn’t coming?” I said, hopefully.
I’d had fun cake-tasting. There was no denying it. As shameless as it may seem, I felt I deserved some joy in all of the wedding planning. But yesterday I had to drive out to a factory in a suburb I’d never heard of so that I could collect the materials for Zahra’s bonbonnieres.
“Buying in bulk, Samira,” explained Zahra. “Don’t you understand that it saves me a fortune if we assemble them ourselves? So what if I have to drive an hour out of Sydney to get them?”
Not a problem at
all, except that I was the one driving an hour out of Sydney.
“They’re not coming tonight,” confirmed Mum.
Admittedly, I was feeling edgy about seeing Hakeem. I still hadn’t spoken to him properly since the email incident, which was unsettling and weird and completely unlike us.
I had a birthday gift for him. I was feeling rather nervy about it, to be honest, and then of course I was annoyed that I was so nervous. It was a horrible, vicious spiral. To top it off, I knew he’d be annoyed at me for buying a birthday gift because he didn’t like celebrating that kind of thing.
Every year I’d buy him something, and every year he’d lecture me on why I shouldn’t. But he’d still accept the gift. Then we’d argue again. He’d always buy me one too, but usually around the time of my birthday. Then we’d argue, but generally not in relation to the birthday present.
Just as I’d finished with the evenly cut tomatoes, the doorbell rang. The feeling of dread in my stomach deepened.
It was silly really. I had nothing to be nervous about. I had done nothing wrong. Hakeem and I were on good terms. Everything is peachy, I thought. Still, the sick feeling in my stomach lingered, like an agonising tease. The nerves were stood by smugly. “You know you need us here,” they boasted.
Dad answered the door, and I heard him welcoming Abu Ibrahim and Hakeem in his typically hospitable manner, beckoning them in to our lounge room. My mother swooped into the kitchen a moment later and examined the trays.
“Yallah, Samira.”
“Okay, Mum, I’m doing it.”
“Go and get changed,” she ordered.
I left the kitchen and went to my room to get dressed into something more appropriate than my PJ bottoms and shirt. When I re-emerged, I could hear laughing from the sitting room. I grabbed the plates and cutlery then made my way to the dining room.
As the dining and sitting rooms had no wall between them, I couldn’t avoid our guests. I put down the plates and sent my greetings from the dinner table. Abu Ibrahim acknowledged me back. Hakeem nodded, but his smile was tight. At least he came, I thought.
We’d brought out the extra table for the evening. I didn’t know any other family who had to buy two identical dining tables from Ikea and push them together whenever they had family dinners.
