Arabian Jazz

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  Jem looked at Nassir’s hands, now lying between his knees. “I think I know,” she said, “how important a place is, and the need for a particular land, a location, for anyone to live, to have that land to call home. I know that’s what I want.”

  Nassir smiled at her, his big head tipping up. “Good, very good. A quick study, as they say. How many people know, after all, what it is to really live in a particular place, as you say. To have your past and the past of your past tied up in a patch of land, to walk on the bones of your buried dead and hear your name in every particle of dirt, to know all this, all your life, and see it washed away under the wheels of tanks and trucks as if under the force of the ocean. Who can know it who hasn’t lived it? This is what our family has lived. We spring from exiles and refugees, Jemorah, you and I. We go on, to be sure, but the place of our origins is swept away. Forgive me, if I take liberties in saying this. Perhaps I say it because I sometimes feel the same as you. But I think, maybe, you believe that because she died overseas that there’s still some part of your mother, perhaps her soul, remaining in Jordan, waiting for you to come back again. Perhaps the home you’re thinking of is in your mother’s arms.”

  Jem rose, walked to the kitchen door, and tipped her forehead lightly to the screen. The air through the screen was cool and black, coming, it seemed, from great distances, the flesh of night shifting, great and lovely and empty.

  “Because, dear, if that’s what you feel, I have to tell you, I don’t think you’ll find her there,” he said.

  “No,” Jem said. “Of course not.”

  NASSIR HAD TO leave the next day. Since he had flown to the United States directly from Oxford he had little family news for the girls. He’d heard legends of an American man—a friend of Jem’s?—named Gilbert Open-Sesame, a camel-back cowboy who wore a Stetson and bedouin robes and seemed to have power over the hearts of women, last seen headed for the Sahara driving a stretch limo with Cousin Milad, Uncle Fouad, and four waitresses from town in back. There were rumors that this Gilbert Open-Sesame would soon be elected village mayor. The same grapevine, Nassir told them, had probably also produced several children from Jem and Nassir’s union.

  Nassir took Melvina’s hands at the door. “My dear, righteous, regulatory cousin, I remember even when you were a baby the village men would talk about kidnapping you to watch their sheep. Even then, they could all see what a good shepherd you would make.”

  “A profession not unlike nursing,” she said.

  He held Jem a moment. “Here’s a proposition for you,” he said releasing her. “Suppose we make it a lengthy engagement? If we string the time out long enough the family may even forget we’re not married. And if you ever change your mind, dear cous, if you panic and need someone to marry you pronto, you may always call upon sweet old Nassir. I haven’t forgotten our friendship, and strangers can learn to love each other. Call me anytime, day or night. Call my name into the wind as your Lois Lane summons Superman, or use the phone, if you prefer.”

  Jem smiled and nodded. “Where are you going now?”

  “Now? Well, now, betrothed, I’m off to the hallowed halls of Cambridge, Mass. I wasn’t kidding before—a juicy post-doc awaits me. After that, who knows? Archaeological digs in Tunis? Linguistic studies in Niger? I’m a professional nomad.”

  “A family trait,” Melvie said.

  “But never fear, my dears, as long as there are great-aunts in Jordan, there will be people who know how to reach me.”

  He said good-bye and, waving his cupped hand like the Pope, walked out to the airport taxi that had pulled up.

  Chapter 36

  SOON IT WAS going to be winter again; ice would creep up the river valleys and over the flat lands so they gleamed like sheets of marble. Soon there would be crusts of snow at curbsides, black with car exhaust. Soon, the wind-tears and the cold that froze tears to lashes, lashes to skin. The rains were starting that would strip the canopies of leaves from the trees. Soon the short days, barely enough to wake the world before it slumped back into slumber, the nights without end, upstate winter.

  In California, Jem thought, there might be no difference among the seasons, or just the hint of a softening. She imagined winter there as just a nuance, an afterthought. In Jordan, the winter sky would open and the clear rains spill out. Nowhere but upstate, she thought, would the sky have that aggrieved expression, furrowing like a brow against the earth.

  She remembered wandering as a child, snow-blind between the seamless white of earth and sky, as if she could walk forever without the whiteness ever coming to an end.

  Once when she was very young, Jem decided to go looking for squirrels in the snow. It was a game she used to play with the older children next door; they would go on walks through the thick bramble and tangle of branches behind their house in Syracuse. On this day, though, it was so cold that no one wanted to come out. So she walked alone through tall fields of snow, through a falling powder suspended around her, melting on her lashes and mittens and hair. And it was cold—cold enough for her breath to smoke, enough to coil her fingers up in ice-crusted mittens.

  In those days, she could dawdle endlessly, lose the time in a search through fields for four-leaf clovers or fossils or berries, or in lying on her back reading clouds. This was the way of her first six years, the hazy time before her mother brought Melvie through the door and, with one ferocious, sweeping baby gaze of house, father, and Jem, Melvie claimed them all. On that bitter February day, less than a year before Melvina, the black twigs in her bedroom window had called Jem outside. She remembered the trees, their dark profiles, their secret lives, tucked away in branch and bark and knotholes. She walked deeper and deeper in, until she stopped among the glaring white banks and, growing drowsy, lay down and fell asleep in the snow.

  The rest came to her in pieces, mostly told to her: their mother frantic, searching the neighborhood and friends’ houses for her daughter who liked to wander down the street, neck arched back to the sky. Their father calling the police, the fire department, anyone who might help. Then her mother remembered Jem’s squirrel hunts through the fields. She followed the traces of her child’s footsteps disappearing as the snow fell, through a patch of trees and briar nearly impassable for an adult—unless she could bend down and creep like a child. She found Jem, sinking, already covered, barely an outline etched in blue on the sparkling surface of white, under the stuff that cleaned and muffled the world. Jem’s image was fading under the surface in blue hollows like the memory of a child.

  She scooped her daughter out of the snow and carried her back. Jem was so stiff with cold she seemed dead, but her life had only retreated inward to a stiller place, and it returned as she warmed. Jem had visited a pale place just before death, and while she could not remember the sleep or the rescue, she never quite lost the memory of that retreat. She had known, always, that her mother would be able to find her.

  SHE LOOKED OUT the window; the clouds and spirits of mist called her away. She was unanchored, and, she realized, vaguely lonely.

  It had been weeks since she’d last seen Ricky Ellis, and on this early morning when she’d risen to see the sky turning in a scowl of rain and clouds, she’d remembered her dream of him, Ricky running through a field like a wild pony, running against a pearly sky. Even when she woke, it seemed he was still there, his movement an echo through the room.

  In two weeks she would be thirty. Something had changed; it was as if the world had made a distinct quarter turn overnight. She could hear the season’s first pale lash of rain across her windows. She was still alone in the bed that she’d slept in since sixth grade, still listening to the traffic out on Route 31. She wondered what would happen to the house if her father never came back again from the Old Country. She imagined the sheriff coming and putting her clothes out on the street. She might wander the junkyards and sewers of Euclid and beg for food from the neighbors. Perhaps dogs would follow her, and her hair would fill with twigs and dirt, and she would tur
n as wild as Peachy Otts had been, sleeping anywhere and going off with anyone. Jem already felt a kind of nostalgia for the life she would leave behind. Then she realized that Melvie would never let her do any such thing.

  The phone began to ring and when Jem answered, a woman’s voice said, “Hey hey hey, it’s your daddy’s lady friend, trucker-bunny Train! And guess what? He’s back.”

  “He’s…What? Who do you mean? Who’s back?”

  “Big Daddy Ramoud, of course, Big Daddy of the Ramoudettes—I don’t think there’s more than one. Yeah, he’s on his way home.”

  Jem switched the receiver from left to right ear. “Have you seen him?” she asked.

  “No, have you?”

  “Well, no. As a matter of fact, the last time he called it didn’t sound like he was ever coming back.”

  A laugh pealed from Train’s end of the line. “A woman who doesn’t know her own drawing power,” she said. “I like that. You must drive men ape-shit. Listen, peach-fuzz, I seen some pappys in my day and yours is one stand-out, sterling character. He’s devoted to you girls like A&P is devoted to selling groceries, like Mack Truck is devoted to big. And I say this from knowing him a mere day and a night.”

  Jem looked around the room, the furniture light-dappled, a black-and-white snapshot of her parents framed on the nightstand. “Even so, how do you know he’s back?”

  “Easy. Psychic c.b.”

  “What?”

  “My c.b., my radio, peach-buns, lifeline to the world and beyond, only mine is psychic—I didn’t buy it like that, it just happened, a cosmic connection between me, the truck, and waves in the air.”

  “Waves?”

  “Sure, yeah, you know people give ’em off, everything does, trees, rocks, and then they show up over the c.b.—”

  “You hear trees?”

  “Whoa, sweetie, you’re getting ahead of me. We can discuss that part of the theory another time. What I’m talking about now is brain waves, ghost waves, all kinds of static that comes in over the line.”

  “Huh. What does that sound like?”

  “Hard to say. Sometimes it just seems to bypass the ears and lands straight in my mind. Like I’m just a way station for other people’s thoughts and fates. Other times it’s mixed into the static when I can’t get no clear human voices on the other channels, and then I can pick and piece messages out of what-all I’m hearing. Other times it’s like there’s some ghost radar out there, picking up and broadcasting thought messages off every soul driving on the highway. That’s when things get real confusing.”

  “Jeeze. How did you hear my father was back?”

  “A little of everything told me, that’s what made it so out-loud clear to me. First thing yesterday morning, snap on the citizen’s band and all a sudden I hear your daddy in my head think how he hates to fly. Next, round lunchtime, I hear something ’bout Doc, Grumpy, Bambi, and pink flamingos in the static.”

  “Those’re his lawn ornaments,” Jem said. “He likes to hose them down in the fall.”

  “Whatever. I knew anything that weird had to be my friend Mattoo. Then, this morning, the clincher. I put on the hailing frequency, try to snag me a conversation out there, anywhere, and the c.b. ghost comes on and tells me ‘breaker-breaker, he’s back.’”

  “‘He’s back’?”

  “Loud and clear. So I’m headed out of Salt Lake now, and I want you to give him a smacker for me and tell him his love biscuit is on her way.”

  WHEN JEM CAME home that evening she opened the door to Dizzy Gillespie, the familiar music falling through her like a pulse. She ran down the stairs and found Melvie and Larry Fasco; Jesse, Owen, and Fergyl sitting on the two hideabeds; and Matussem installed in his recliner.

  “Hey, Dad!”

  Matussem tried to unfold himself from the recliner, then gave up and held open his arms. They hugged, kissing on both cheeks, then Jem stepped back for a better look. The seven-piece suit he had left in was gone; in its place he wore seersucker Bermuda shorts, a shirt printed with red gardenias, several gold chains and gold rings, and the largest wristwatch she’d ever seen. He was tan, steeped in lemon cologne, and his hair was waxy and far blacker than when he left. “Jemmy, what sights you are!”

  “So are you,” Jem said.

  Matussem looked down at himself, then held up a jeweled hand. “You should see my sunglasses,” he said. “They ones crazy swingers, those dudes in Old Country. Here, come back now here.” He unlooped a thick gold chain from his neck and draped it over Jem; it was heavy as chain mail. “For you. I also brought for rest of this dudes. Melvie, of course, don’t wear hers.”

  Jem looked around and saw that over their garage coveralls Jesse, Owen, and Fergyl each wore a gold chain. Larry Fasco’s peeked out under a shirt that was open to an inch above the navel. Melvina, as ever, was in unadorned nurse’s white. “Tasteless overconsumption,” she said. “I, for one, am not seduced by such wastefulness, nor will I ever be a handmaid to filthy lucre.”

  “These rest,” Matussem said, counting through the chains left on his neck, and rings on his fingers, “I get for Fatima, for my trucker-bunny, for gals at work, and for Wally Otts.”

  “The newspaper boy?” Jem asked.

  “He good kid. He get gold necklace. But so then I runs out of money the first day in Jordan because these gold place is first thing we go to. So Fouad has to put for me back right away what he owes me on all his old bills so his brother-in-law doesn’t make him look bad. It work perfecto! Then coming back to America, I even figured out to wear all the jewelry so customs won’t catch me if they checked the luggage. Of course, fifty thousand necklaces, it got heavy—”

  “What if they’d just looked at your neck?” Melvie said.

  Matussem thought a moment. “Then they would caught me,” he said at last.

  “We’ll discuss this later,” Melvie said.

  “Well, well, well, here we are, one big happy family again,” Larry Fasco said, putting an arm over Melvie’s shoulders.

  “I beg your pardon,” Melvie said. “To the best of my knowledge, my father never adopted any full-grown sons.”

  “Melvina, you heartpicker,” Matussem said. “You girls and this guys my family. Why you think I’m coming back here in two seconds? I can’t stay away; I am going crazy there.”

  “You always said the big happy family was in Jordan,” Jem said.

  “Big mistake! Big misery family,” Matussem said. “All they do all day, the women go to the gold store, the men eat, drink, eat, drink, eat, drink. Gas bags. I get fifty thousand pounds fat. On top of it, they gossip, fight politics, gossip, fight politics. Okay, for while I like it, but it worn me out. How much fun you can have twenty-four hours day? Besides I am afraid you getting crazy and go marry someone like Nassir.”

  “You mean like you arranged for me to?” Jem said.

  “Olé,” Melvie said, folding her arms over her chest. “Well done, Ms. Ramoud.”

  Matussem shrugged. “It’s truth, I get enthusiastic. Is hard to help it. Everyone so enthusiastics over there. Like crazy.”

  “Oh, never mind,” Melvina said, rising. “We sent the groom packing. And I now guess you expect us to kill the fatted calf for you, the prodigal father. Well, you can forget it. Make your own hamburgers,” she said, marching from the room.

  “Wait! Honeysuckle!” Larry Fasco called after her. “I was gonna propose. Hey! Wanna get married?”

  “I’d rather swing from a vine,” Melvie said back through the doorway and kept going.

  “She likes you,” Matussem said, patting his friend’s knee. “Crazy about you. She’s just mad because you didn’t give her ‘advance notice.’ That’s what Melvie likes, ‘advance notice.’ I didn’t give her advance notice, either.”

  Larry shrugged, sinking back in his chair. Jem noticed he was looking more than usually transparent, the color of eggshell, his eyes blue wells. “Melvina hot tamale,” Larry murmured.

  “Train knew you were coming,” J
em told Matussem. “From her c.b.”

  “She did? She called here? Does she miss me?” he said, sitting up. “What is c.b.?”

  “She said to say your love cookie’s coming back—something like that.”

  “Ach du liebe, Augustin, achtung!” Matussem said, rolling out of his chair. “Let’s play music, dudes.”

  They were a band more in spirit than substance, but they had spirit. Jesse, Owen, and Fergyl concentrated on playing until their eyes went sharp and bright. Matussem held sway over it all like a shaman transforming, wings unfolding from his back, lifting straight into the sky, overlooking towns and counties, neighborhoods, and private lives through the roofs. He could see it all when he was playing. He was home, at last truly home.

  Even Melvina couldn’t resist the music, and she returned to stand near Jem and listen. She watched Larry Fasco conduct; lost in the bright music, he looked as if he might evaporate at any moment. Melvie crouched and whispered to Jem, “I won’t marry him, but we may be stuck with him for quite some time. I never drop a patient.”

  “I like him,” Jem said.

  “Oh, he’ll do,” Melvie said.

  MATUSSEM BROUGHT BACK several souvenirs from his time in Jordan, including a habit of exclaiming “hang loose!” and tipping his extended forefinger and pinkie back and forth (from some Hawaiian tourists vacationing in the Middle East); thirty-five Hawaiian-style shirts, courtesy of Fouad; a trove of thick gold jewelry; a bumper sticker that said Eat at Ishmael’s Shish K.B./B.B.Q.

  He also returned with a theory about drumming, that it tapped into the heart and broke the spirit free, all the colors and the flavors of the life a person had lived. There were things hidden in the core of a person, feelings and memories so deep, that with the right music the spirits of people could be liberated, new life conceived, and the dead given rest. He evolved this theory while lying awake on the Castro convertible in his sister Rima’s rumpus room, surrounded in a valley of her grandchildren’s toys. His body had ached for the feel of the sticks, the drumheads answering his every move. And the ache for the instrument was like the ache for his lover’s body. In the light of the Old Country, place of his wife’s death, he saw things clearly, fresh, for the first time in years. For so long he had felt that yearning for his wife; now he knew her memory had laid down and rested easy in him, a warmth that would never go away, at ease under his desire for his new lover. In this theory of night and day, of toys and shadows, his thoughts of drumming had become complicated, suffused with smoke. His memories had run too sweet; they needed the bitterness of earth to temper them, and the clarity of the present, of music, to bring out new life.