The Boy on the Beach

by Tima Kurdi

  We also loved the Christian holidays. On Christmas Eve, after we had put on our pyjamas, my uncle Mahmoud would pile all us kids into his car and drive us to , the lively Christian district of Bab Tuma, to look at all the festive lights. Eventually, we’d come upon a , Santa Claus, or Baba Noel, standing on a corner in his red suit, and we’d call out, “Stop the car! We want to go say hi to Baba Noel!” We’d get out of the car and surround that poor street Santa. Little Hivron would fix her big eyes on his long white beard and get right up on her tiptoes to try to touch it. On the ride home, I tried hard to stay awake to drink in the lights with my thirsty eyes, but I could rarely fight off sleep.

  My family began to travel more often after my parents bought their first car when I was about ten years old. We often visited Hama, my dad’s birthplace, which was a three-hour drive away on the Damascus–Aleppo Highway, and every summer, we spent our vacations with relatives in Kobani. It was an idyllic place where we could roam the countryside with my uncle Khalid’s sheep; feed the chickens; milk the goats; make , feta cheese, from scratch—eating it while it was still warm—and pick beautiful ripe olives from the region’s orchards. I’ll never forget the taste of the water from that old-fashioned well in Kobani. It was so sweet and cold, like nothing I’ve tasted before or since.

  The popular swimming spot was , the Mighty Euphrates, though the river was relatively calm as it passed through Kobani. Mohammad and Abdullah learned to swim in that river, but I never had the guts; I’ve always been afraid of the water. My dad would laugh and shake his head and say, “You’re a Pisces, a water baby just like your brother Abdullah, but you’re scared of water.”

  I preferred to sit on the banks of the Euphrates and watch my brothers swim, while the family enjoyed a picnic. From that spot, we could see Turkey in the distance.

  “Someday, I’m going to go there to visit Istanbul,” I told my brothers and sisters.

  “I like it here,” Abdullah would always say. He loved the country life most of all. From an early age, Kobani had a special place in his heart.

  In my teen years, we holidayed in Latakia, Banivas, and Tartous, all wonderful tourist beach towns on Syria’s Mediterranean. I always attempted to swim in the sea, but as soon as the water touched my knees, I felt as if I were drowning. It didn’t help that Abdullah always horsed around, grabbing my leg and pulling me in.

  The thing that stands out most about those years is that our house was constantly filled with people, music, and laughter. And not just because of my dad’s open-door policy. My mom’s kitchen was a hub for the neighbourhood women, who would pop in for , a cup of coffee, before going to the markets to shop.

  Traditional Arabic qahwah is made by boiling the coffee grinds in water on the stovetop. Often, cardamom is added to the brew. My parents liked cardamom, and when we went to the market to buy coffee we would ask the vendor, “Could you add extra cardamom?” He would respond, “Of course, ,” an expression that means “From this eye to the other, it is a pleasure and an honour.”

  In my mom’s kitchen, while they waited for the coffee to brew, the women would talk about their goings-on, including their dreams. That’s typical in Syria and much of the Middle East: dreams have great significance and are believed to be predictive of many things—the impending weather, the political climate, and many personal issues, from potential jobs to marriages, births, and deaths. Syrians love to “read” coffee grounds, much like Westerners read their horoscopes.

  Whatever the occasion, whether it was a gathering of women in my mother’s kitchen, a religious holiday, or a family get-together, in our house there was always talking, singing, dancing, music, and most important, laughter. Everyone in my family had a great sense of humour, and I learned the ability to laugh, especially at myself. In general, whenever Syrians get together, we tell lots and lots of jokes, which can be difficult to translate for other cultures. But I think laughter is a universal language that can bridge any culture, and it rarely gets lost in translation when the intention is in the right place.

  Friday in Muslim cultures is like Saturday in Western cultures, so the weekend would start on Thursday night, and we always had parties at my family home, which started as soon as we got home from school. The women relatives and friends would arrive with their kids and we’d play traditional Middle Eastern, Kurdish, and Bedouin music. Soon enough, the women and kids would be up on their feet, dancing. Syrian women can really let loose, mixing the traditional Arabic styles, like belly dancing and dabke, folk dancing (where you stand in a circle or a line, linked by your pinky fingers), with modern Western dance moves.

  Abdullah was always at the centre of the party. He loved to act out roles, and he could imitate anyone in our family. He’d also pretend to be all sorts of characters, like a grumpy, hunched old shepherd who leaned on his shepherd’s crook and stumbled into our dance circle. But as soon as he’d hook his pinky to the next person’s, he’d suddenly transform into a young folk-dancing acrobat, doing Russian-style squats. Abdullah could make us laugh so hard that we would be doubled over, clutching our bellies and calling out, “Abdullah, stop! We can’t take it anymore!”

  He was also accident-prone all through his youth. When he was a boy, he stuck beans up his nose and had to be rushed to the hospital to have them dislodged. Later, when he was older and was sent on errands, he’d often move faster than his feet could carry him. Once, he fell down the steep stairs outside our house and hit his head on the concrete. He had to be rushed to the hospital for stitches. During a visit to Kobani, he backed into a kerosene lantern that shattered under his weight. That time, he needed twelve stitches. Whenever Abdullah got injured, my mom would say, “All these accidents, but he always survives. This boy is protected by mala‘ekah,” which means “protected by angels.” My mother, with her gift of sight, seemed to see even then what we could not.

  Chapter 2

  Ghorbah

  Homesick

  As our family grew up, our house got bigger. My parents added another floor and a rooftop deck that gave us an even better bird’s-eye view of the whole city; it was a great place to play games and socialize, and in the summer, when the house became too hot or was filled with relatives, we often slept on that rooftop under the dome of stars. In the mornings, as we hung our clothes and sheets to dry, and beat the carpets of dust, the radio station typically played the Lebanese chanteuse Fairouz. In the evenings, it was the Egyptian songstress Umm Kulthum.

  The primary purpose of those two additional floors was to house Mohammad and Abdullah, and their families after they got married, which is a common practice in Syria and the Middle East; when daughters get married, they are typically expected to move into their husbands’ family homes, and sons, when they marry, are usually responsible for providing the housing, often with the help of their parents.

  In Muslim families, arranged marriages are still typical. A mullah will only agree to marry a woman who gives her consent. But marriages are often arranged for girls as young as fourteen. That’s the age when Syrian students graduate from grade nine and write their certification exams. I did not attract the attention of suitors. The truth is that I was the ugly duckling in my family because I was the darkest among my sisters. Two of my sisters had blond hair and light skin and hazel or greenish-coloured eyes—all the coveted attributes in the Middle East. The teenage years are hard enough in any culture, but added to that for me was the humiliation of being the ugly one. I was teased mercilessly by some of my relatives, who tended to be much more traditional than my parents and other progressive Damascenes.

  As a teen, I idolized Western celebrities like Madonna and Princess Diana. And much closer to home, I looked up to a glamorous flight attendant who lived in my neighbourhood. She was in her mid-twenties, single and independent. She would tell amazing stories of her global travels to exotic locales. She also brought back trendy Western gifts for me, like a pair of blue jeans.

  Syria’s government is a secular one, and it was very
rare at that time to see women wearing a niqab to veil the face, and an abaya, a loose-fitting robe that covers the entire body. In smaller towns, some women dressed more conservatively. Many of my friends in Sham didn’t have to wear the hijab at all. But after I hit puberty, some neighbours would ask Baba, “Why isn’t your daughter wearing the hijab?”

  “It’s time for you to start wearing it,” he finally told me.

  I rushed to my Mama to complain. “I’m still young!” I argued. “None of my friends have to wear it. Why do I have to go out in this thing? Isn’t it enough to be a good person on the inside?”

  Mama was a liberal woman. “If you don’t want to wear it,” she said, “don’t.”

  When I was growing up in the 1980s, many teenagers didn’t go on to secondary school, which was not compulsory in Syria. A grade-nine education could get you many good jobs in Damascus. Because of that, the grade-nine exams were a national exam, and they were a big deal. Families rarely socialized during the month-long study period; all the attention was on making sure that the grade-niner in the family was studying. But with so many people coming and leaving my house, I didn’t get much studying done. I’d have the book in my lap, but the words and the ideas didn’t take root. I was too busy daydreaming about becoming an independent woman roaming the globe.

  I failed that grade nine exam and had to repeat the year. That was tough because middle school was even stricter than grade school and I found it stifling, with its high concrete wall that made it impossible for us to see what was happening in the real world. The next year, I failed the exam again and had to repeat grade nine a third time. My parents were very disappointed, but it didn’t seem important to me at the time. My mother started to worry that I would never attract a suitor. But, I reasoned, Mohammad had stopped school after grade eight to start working as a barber, and later he began travelling to Dubai and Saudi Arabia to work at salons in the Gulf region, where there appeared to be an endless supply of good money to be made, which my frugal brother was very good at saving. Why couldn’t I do the same, or at least something similarly exciting? I bugged my parents a lot, and with the help of Uncle Mahmoud, I convinced them to let me get my hairdressing certificate and work at a neighbour’s salon part-time.

  It was a fantastic experience. I learned how to curl my hair with rollers, and I started to wear my hair in the trendy feathered hairstyle; it was worth the pain of sleeping in rollers to get those sausage curls. On my sixteenth birthday, in March, I had a big party at my house. I wore a silk blouse that changed colours in the light, a multi-coloured peasant skirt, and a thick yellow belt exactly like the one worn by Wonder Woman. In the afternoon, my six best friends came over and we put our favourite cassette tapes on the stereo, blasted music, and danced around the living room. My favourite song was “Rasputin” by Boney M. That song was released in 1978, but it took years for popular music to reach us, so it was brand new to me and my friends. We loved that it mixed disco and folky Arabic beats, and it had such a hook for a chorus. We must have played that song over and over, until our voices were hoarse from shouting out, “Rah rah rah . . .” even though we had no clue what we were shouting.

  I felt so good to be sixteen and already working at a salon. Soon afterward, I started to work with my good friend Lina at her salon, which we called Sandra—Lina’s favourite Western name. Our salon was actually a tiny, street-level room in her family’s house. We put a chair in there and installed a mirror, but we didn’t have a special salon sink, just a regular one, so when you washed a client’s hair, it made a big mess.

  I still have a vivid memory of one of our first guinea pigs—I mean clients. A woman came in wanting lots of light-blond highlights in her very long, dark hair. “Yes, ma’am, we can do that,” we said, even though we didn’t have an exact recipe for the bleaching agent. We whipped up a bleaching concoction, put a cap on her head, and set to work painting those strands. While we waited for the dye to activate, we steeped mateh, a drink made from yerba maté and sugar, and we whiled away the time drinking and talking with our client. The conversation must have been good, because we didn’t pay much attention to her hair. When we eventually guided her to the sink and removed the cap, the bleached strands came off with the cap. We were shocked and mortified. The client looked in the mirror and asked, “Where’s the blond?”

  “Our bleach was probably too weak,” we said. “Let’s try again.” On the second attempt, we put much less bleach in our concoction, kept our eyes on the timer, and her highlights came out perfect. It’s a good thing she had lots of thick hair. That woman left the salon a happy customer, and as soon as she was out of range, Lina and I burst out laughing, releasing our bottled anxiety.

  Even though I had found a job I loved, this did not stop my family from keeping close tabs on me, especially my busybody sister Hivron, who was the family spy. One afternoon I was at Lina’s salon, the two of us engaging in our recently acquired habit of smoking cigarettes, which tasted so thrilling because we were doing it in secret. It was very hot in the salon that day and as I got up to open the front door, I saw Hivron lurking in the shadows outside, her eyes big as binocular lenses. She wagged her finger at me and said, “I caught you smoking! I’m telling Mom.” And she bolted up the street.

  I was tied up in knots for the rest of the afternoon, worried that if my mom heard the news, she would forbid me from working at Lina’s salon. I could have killed Hivron!

  When I got home, my mom called me into the kitchen. “Are you smoking?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” I responded, my knees shaking.

  “, Leish ’am tikzibi, Why are you lying?” I’m not sure why I lied.

  She handed me a cigarette from Baba’s pack and said, “Light it.”

  I responded nervously. “I don’t smoke!”

  “You’re smoking, and I don’t want you to hide it from me so that I have to hear it from Hivron or the neighbours. I don’t want you doing anything behind my back that you can’t do in front of me.”

  So I came clean and confessed. From then on, I no longer hid my smoking from her.

  After my sixteenth birthday, my home life changed dramatically. My younger sister Maha had attracted the attention of a suitor. She accepted his marriage proposal and moved to Kobani, which was a two-day trip from Al Sham. Soon after, she became pregnant. She only returned home for occasional visits. I missed Maha terribly. We had shared a room and a bed for her entire life. Now that bed seemed far too big. My situation was so confusing. On the one hand, I dreamed of becoming an independent woman with a fantastic career as a hairdresser, but on the other hand, I also wanted to fall in love, get married, and have children some day. By the age of about seventeen, I had a foot in two worlds. I started working part-time in a very fancy hair salon for women, strategically located on the ground floor of an apartment building that was home to many Syrian TV and soap stars. I listened carefully to their talk of travel to exotic places. The world seemed to belong to them, and I wanted that too.

  My opportunity arrived at the age of twenty. I was working at Lina’s hair salon when a young woman arrived and looked me up and down ten times. “Are you the daughter of Abu Mohammad Kurdi?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I live in your neighbourhood,” she said. “My sister knows an Iraqi Kurd who now lives in Canada. His name is , Sirwan. He’s here for a month to find a Kurdish bride, and he wants to visit your parents.”

  That was code for “He wants to ask for your hand in marriage.” I was very shy but also intrigued by this mystery man living halfway around the world. We set up a date for a visit with Sirwan. I was overwhelmed by excitement. “This is my dream, to move to the West,” I thought.

  A few days later came the knock at the door. The events that unfolded followed the traditional Muslim protocols, starting with the requirement that the prospective bride does not appear until after the suitor and other guests have settled into the living room with her parents, and that she appears only t
o serve Arabic coffee.

  I entered the room with a silver tray of coffee and glasses of water, hoping that my shaking hands didn’t betray my nerves, and trying to take in as much as possible, eyeballing Sirwan as quickly and subtly as possible before I left the room. He was much older than me. (He was in fact eleven years older.) After exiting the living room, I stood at the door trying to eavesdrop on the conversation, but it was hard to hear with my heart pounding so hard. Luckily, Hivron was working as a spy for me that afternoon, and she kept going in and out of the living room, providing me with intelligence reports. My baba’s interrogation of Sirwan went something like this:

  “What kind of education do you have?”

  “I studied law in Iraq, but I couldn’t finish before we had to leave for Canada.”

  “How will you take care of my first daughter?”

  “Right now I’m a cook at a restaurant. But I rent a nice apartment. I can provide her a good life in Canada.”

  To tell you the truth, I didn’t really care much about the financial arrangements or whether the groom made my knees shake with love. I felt as if my dreams of living in the West were about to come true. One special provision that my father insisted upon was that we hold the marriage ceremony in Damascus and only after all the immigration paperwork was complete. That’s because stories were circulating about men living in other countries coming to Syria to marry Syrian girls, only to turn around and divorce them right after the wedding and before the woman had officially gained citizenship, so that the woman was shipped back to her parents like a box of shattered dishes. My father was determined to protect me from such a fate.

  Once Sirwan left, my mom sat down beside me, grabbed my hand, and said, “He seems like a good guy. What do you think about going to Canada?”