Gilt letters ran across the door in a double arch, Thanatoulos Bakery/Hours: but no one—except the Indians—had ever posted hours. It was open when it was open, which meant that Fatima had gone to this place many times during the usual business day only to find it padlocked. This tradition had begun with the Greek owners who found it necessary to close for baptisms, weddings, confirmations, first communions, last rites, and other occasional sacraments. Fatima had heard they even closed up to help the children pick out prom clothes.
Sometimes, returning from a protracted church function or a late-night fight with friends and relatives, Fatima drove by and the store would be blazing with light at two A.M. In the summer, with the car windows rolled down, Fatima had caught shreds of Greek, Albanian, or Lithuanian drinking songs as she drove past. If the air was mild with predawn moisture, she would tilt back her head and listen. More often than not, she had Zaeed pull over while she ran in for a bag of butter cookies with chocolate jimmies.
THE DOOR SWUNG open under her hand and Fatima swept into the floury air. She drew herself up to her full five foot three and noted with satisfaction that despite the changing families, the women behind the counters stayed a fairly constant five foot two, though the children seemed to be getting taller with each new owner. All the women were “Mrs. Thanatoulos,” in Fatima’s mind, no matter the skin color or eye shape.
The present owners had introduced an innovation that had not appeared in any of the previous generations: they frosted their goods. Not just the cakes and cookies, either, but everything, the muffins, the rolls, even the breads were shiny, lacquered with a crust of sugar, as if dressed up in party clothes, tinted with cherry reds, berry blues, and sea greens. There was something irresistible about these colors, like eating the ornaments off a Christmas tree. These confections were given names like Big Chief cookies, Smokin’ Joes, and Extraterrestrials. Before such innovations the goods had always been called the kind with sprinkles, the kind with raisins, the kind with nuts, and so on.
Fatima was pleased. She’d been crowned a queen that day, her scepter, the church stationery invitation, tucked in her bra. There were to be no more frivolous decisions in her life, no more pettinesses, no more mistakes of any kind. She was leaving the past behind. She went to the counter where Mrs. Thanatoulos was standing between the take-a-ticket dispenser and the spindle of striped string.
“There,” Fatima said, pointing one regal finger at the case, Cleopatra herself.
Mrs. Thanatoulos brought the cake to the counter. It was three-tiered, covered in pink frosting and hairy with sprinkles. On the top layer was a yellow smiley face and the words in blue gel, Have an X-tra Nice Day!!!
“This here our King Creole Fuzzy Wah-Wah Cake,” Mrs. Thanatoulos said. “Angel food and seven different kinds of marmalade fillings—it’s so good, baby!”
Fatima closed her eyes, Cleopatra. She raised a hand. “Yes, these is the one just right.”
Chapter 39
THAT SUNDAY MORNING, Jem opened her eyes and heard singing. As if still dreaming, she remembered a wooden crib, with tiny, colorful sailboats dangling above her head, a hint of ocean air coming through the open window in the summer, and her mother walking from room to room in her dressing gown, singing “Daisy.”
Jem sat up. There was no salt air, but the day was fresh and clear as a sheet. The singing filled her with purpose and she hurried from bed, pulling on her robe. When she grabbed the basement door her hand was trembling. An odd, inarticulate thought flashed in her: her mother’s death was all a dream. Who really knew whose face it had been under her aunt’s hand? Dreams, dreams! She ran down the stairs, through the voice that rushed up at her, notes tumbling around.
Her father, Jesse, Owen, and Fergyl were standing in a group, surrounding Ricky Ellis, and Ricky was singing in a vibrant tenor, “Tell me you love me, do.”
Melvina joined Jem from the stairs. Melvie put her arms around Jem’s waist and laid her face against her neck. Jem released her breath, a current of grief. “So sweet,” Melvie said.
When the song was over, Matussem clapped loudly, then turned to his daughters and pointed to Fergyl. “These guy says there’s a dude at the garage who can sing. So I go and he is there under a car, singing beautiful about hound dogs. My new discovery, Ricardo Ramoudette!”
Melvie walked to Ricky and shook his hand. “Congratulations on your rehabilitation, Ricardo,” she said. She started up the stairs. At the top she turned and said, “Your voice is a gift from the universe.”
Larry Fasco—in Matussem’s words, mysterious as the moon and stars—linked his arm through Matussem’s and they went up the stairs next, Matussem saying, “I make the coffee,” the Ramoudettes trailing behind. Jem overheard Larry saying the words “love” and “marry.” Matussem was laughing, his voice more distinct, surprised, saying, “Oh, my friend, oh, my poor, poor, crazy friend!” and then, more faintly, “But first tell to me, why you are calling your ex-wife the Psychokiller?” A moment later, Matussem reappeared in the doorway. “Fatima is stand here like Bride of Frankishstein and wants to know who wants cake. Okay, I’ll tell her nobody.”
Jem stayed in the basement with Ricky. They were silent; there was a sound like dust sifting, easing from floor to ceiling, quiet as a distant bell.
“I miss you,” Ricky said, not looking at her.
“Me, too.”
They were quiet.
“It’s been a while,” she said. “What have you been up to?”
“Working. And hiding,” he said.
“From?”
He smiled and shrugged. “Just trying to figure things out, I guess. Like about us.” He ran a hand back through his hair. “Me and this Arab girl who dates her cousins.”
“I see.”
“Hell, I don’t care about that.” He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing to clear light. “I just want you to tell me what’s going on, Jem. I want to know.”
Jem dropped her eyes. She noticed suddenly that his feet were bare.
“I heard you were going away to some school.”
She shrugged, then nodded. “In California.”
“California.”
“Stanford.”
“Okay.” He pressed his palms together, blew out. “Okay. I know I’m a risky person. I work at a gas station. Although Larry Fasco has talked about me coming on as a partner at the Key West. Of course, Larry…well, you know him.” There was a long pause, then he said, “I don’t know. Maybe we could get married. I wouldn’t say that I’d exactly been planning for it. Hell, it might be fun, marriage. We could get a big cake.”
He looked at Jem. She put one hand to the well of her throat, stopped herself from saying yes.
“You don’t want to get married,” he said; his voice scored the air.
She took a breath. “I guess I don’t. No. I really don’t.”
“I knew it,” he said.
She stared at him, thinking of the panpipes and the faun, the impossible music, sounds that haunted the forest and enchanted animals. He turned his marine eyes to her, pale as water; she saw him on the cement steps of the O-G as she had tilted her head forward, looking through the glass. “Wait,” she said.
She went upstairs and returned a minute later with Fatima’s bakery box. She undid the blue and white striped cord, folded back the placket of cardboard, and revealed the King Creole Fuzzy Wah-Wah Cake. “Have some,” she said, offering Fatima’s special cake knife. She brought her lips to his ear. “Wedding cake,” she whispered, smiling.
UPSTAIRS, FATIMA AND Melvina had already started fighting again, as if it were a conversation that never ended, like a chess game played from opposite ends of the earth, the players perpetually plotting moves in their heads.
Fatima was shouting, “What do you know about anything?”
Melvie answered, “Nothing! I obviously don’t know anything about anything at all.”
“Oho, Miss Smarty Pants with no respect!”
Ricky was looking a
t Jem. He ignored her knife, dipped into the box, and scooped out five fingers of cake. Jem covered her mouth, trying not to laugh, and said, “Fatima is going to kill, with her own two hands, I’m telling you—”
Ricky looked back at Jem with his clear gaze, the blue teal of his irises sharp. He reached over and fed her a bite of the spongy cake.
“Would you like me to sing for you again?” he said. “How ’bout ‘Blue Suede Shoes’?”
She pushed the rest of his handful of cake back and shook her head. Ricky finished it and reached into the box for more. There were sprinkles and pink frosting on his lips; his breath was sweet as jelly.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t want any more, but you eat. Sing later.” In a gesture that she recognized as her mother’s, she brushed the hair from his eyes. “You look hungry, eat up.”
LARRY, ZAEED, JESSE, Owen, Fergyl, and Matussem came back down the steps into the rec room, each holding a demitasse of black, Arabic coffee. “Jazz time,” Matussem said. “Want to hear some terrific vibes?” he asked Jem and Ricky.
Fergyl put an Artie Shaw record on the stereo and turned it up. The music was rich and clear, and the men set down their cups, moving around and clapping. “Oh, yeah!” Larry shouted. Ricky took Jem’s hand and they tried a few steps. Then Fatima screamed through the living-room floor, “Turn that down, you are DRIVING ME CRAZY!”
“Ho boy,” Matussem said. “Let’s switch.” He pulled out a battered copy of Giant Steps and went to his drums. When “Naima” came on he swirled the brush around his drumhead and gently, sweetly, began tapping. In the swish of the drum, in the high register of the sax’s voice, she came to him again, dancing like the original mystery of her language, its jinni’s tongue. Her image turned, bent to him, the world in her gesture, the mystery of her love, releasing him. “Coal-train,” he said. “We’re pulling out.”
Melvie came downstairs. “Fatima would like you to please reduce the volume. She’s also looking for her cake.” She went to the table, picked up the box with one hand and scooped out some cake with the other. “Jemorah, you have sprinkles in your hair.” Tucking Fatima’s cake knife under her arm, she climbed the stairs and shut the door behind her.
“WHAT AM I going to do?” Ricky said, his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to miss you so.”
Jem moved closer, placing her head against his chest. They moved, ever so slightly, together, and it felt to Jem like they had begun wending their way along a path of music, finding their way. She could hear the sound of the drums through the movement of Ricky’s chest, jazz and trills of Arabic music, bright as comet tails, and through this, the pulse of the world. All around her, through the thin, high basement windows, the maple trees shook; she watched them, their leaves turning desert red and gold.
* * *
ARABIAN JAZZ
Diana Abu-Jaber
READING GROUP GUIDE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
When Diana Abu-Jaber started writing Arabian Jazz, she hadn’t intended to write a humorous novel, but by the time she finished the first couple of chapters, she realized that it had turned out to be funny on its own. There is a grand tradition of “ethnic humor” in the United States. What are its positives and its negatives? Is there something about different ethnicities or culture clashes that is naturally humorous? Do you find that the immigrant Arab community is treated more lightly than the local one? If so, why? Does humor help us somehow to “survive” the dissonance of being between two cultures?
Jemorah lives in two very separate worlds: her Jordanian family and the born-and-bred Americans she went to school with. How do the lifestyles, relationships, families, and destinies of the members of these two communities differ? What is their common ground?
Melvina, though she is the younger sister, is very mothering to Jemorah; to her lover, Larry Fasco; and, at times, even to her own father and to Aunt Fatima. Aunt Fatima, who has no children of her own and was forced to bury her parents’ unwanted babies, claims to be acting as a substitute mother for her nieces. Dolores Otts, mother of an uncertain number of children, kills herself by trying to have an abortion when she is not pregnant, and her only worry on her deathbed is the future of her younger sister, Peachy. How do the different characters experience parenthood? How do they experience brother/sisterhood?
Aunt Fatima is one of the most colorful characters in the book. She is sentimental, loud, irrational, and melodramatic. Is she just a cartoon or do you know people like her? If we all have “Aunt Fatimas” in our lives, can we ever explain or cope with them?
Compare the men who are offered to the girls in marriage to the ones they find for themselves in the neighborhood. On the one hand we have the Arabs—balding professorial types and the girls’ wild Jordanian cousins; on the other are Gil Sesame, Larry Fasco, and Ricky Ellis. Who, among these men, would you want your daughter to marry? Why?
What does Melvina’s secret relationship with Larry Fasco reveal about her character? Though members of her family must somehow be aware of this relationship (Jemorah sees them dancing together in the garden one night), they seem to ignore it. Why?
During a 3:00 A.M. phone call with her father in Jordan, Jemorah agrees to marry her cousin and childhood friend, Nassir. What were the factors that finally led her to say yes? Were you pleasantly surprised or disappointed with her answer? When we meet Nassir a couple of chapters later, did you change your mind?
Diana Abu-Jaber was first inspired to write this story when she was out running. She started thinking about the town where she grew up, Euclid, and all the strange characters who lived there. Suddenly she ran into a public building, pulled some advertisements off a bulletin board and wrote almost ten pages, sitting there all sweaty. Do you think this sudden, intense inspiration can be detected in her writing style?
The book ends with Jemorah hearing Arabian jazz through Ricky’s chest as they dance to her father’s music. What do you see in this final image? Do you think she will find a way to reconcile the two worlds she belongs to? If so, how?
One reviewer referred to the book’s “chiaroscuro” quality of mixing light and dark elements, yet felt the book’s comedy was too boisterous to support its more serious themes. Do you agree? Would you rather the story were more strictly serious, or more simply comical? If so, why? What would be gained or lost by shifting the balance?
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Arabian Jazz Page 29
