The Boy on the Beach

by Tima Kurdi

  “I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you later,” he said, and hung up. His tone revealed nothing, but I had a sinking feeling that something terrible had happened to my mom. I had the urge to burst into tears. But I needed to keep it together and get to work. I was short-tempered with Alan as I rushed to get him ready for school.

  I had back-to-back appointments at work and I could not afford to take even a ten-minute break until that afternoon. I went to the private area at the back of the salon and the waterworks began. When my boss and my co-worker asked what was wrong, I confessed. “Something is wrong with Mama. I just can’t work.” They were understanding and let me call my uncle Mahmoud again.

  “Uncle, be honest, what’s wrong with my mother?” I cried.

  “We are all in God’s hands,” he responded.

  “What do you mean? Is my mom dead?”

  “Allah yerhamha,” he responded, meaning, “May God rest her soul in peace.”

  I sunk to the floor and started to bawl. “Don’t bury her yet,” I begged. “I want to come. I want to hold her hand and kiss her cheek one last time. I want to say goodbye.”

  “That’s not possible, Fatima,” Mahmoud said gently. “Come at the one-year anniversary.”

  I immediately left work and went straight home. Once I arrived, I called my family in Sham. Baba answered. I could hear the Koran being recited in the background. I don’t remember if we said anything. I think we just cried. Eventually, my baba passed the phone to Abdullah.

  “How am I going to continue my life? I feel so lost,” said Abdullah. I was trying to comfort him when the phone card ran out of money and the connection between us broke.

  We have an expression in Syria that Allah will put a wall between the deceased and the living, which grows thicker over time, so that the family can move on with their lives. But this is easier to say than to do. After Mama died, Abdullah sunk into a depression. For my father’s sake, he tried to put a good face on it, and my other siblings did their best to spend time with my baba. Mohammad’s family was right upstairs, and Hivron and Shireen brought their families to the house every Friday to spend the day with him. But my siblings had busy lives of their own. It must have been a very lonely and difficult time for Abdullah and my father, two solitary men rattling around in that house, trying to remain brave around each other but privately mourning their favourite lady.

  The summer after my mom’s death, I returned to Sham to visit her grave and honour her life. Even with the house filled with family for my visit, it was empty without her, a huge hole in the middle of our lives. My dad had a large photograph of her framed and placed on the wall, so that he and Abdullah could eat every single meal with her. “Try the kibbeh,” Abdullah would say to her. “It’s not as good as yours.”

  In Islamic cultures, when a loved one dies, the mourners are expected to perform an act of charity to someone in need, on behalf of the deceased. When I returned to Sham, I ordered a hundred chickens from the local butcher. The next day, I sent the kids to knock on doors. When the inhabitants answered the door, the kids said, “Our auntie sent us to give you this chicken on behalf of my grandmother’s soul.” The recipients would humbly accept the offering, and respond, “Allah yerhamha, May your grandmother’s soul rest in peace.”

  I also visited our family’s olive grove in Kobani, which my dad and my brothers had planted on our land a few years before my mom died. Baba said, “Olive trees can live and thrive for hundreds of years, and they’re hardy and drought-resistant. If we grow olives, everyone can live off the proceeds for a year.” Of course, it takes at least five years for olive trees to grow up and bear fruit, but my father is a very patient man when he wants to be.

  Throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, I returned home at least every second summer. Damascus grew a little bit more on every visit, but from my rooftop perch at the top of the mountain, time seemed to stand still. The call to prayer greeted me each morning, and each day, after getting my Arabic qahwah—coffee—I ran to the window to hear the calls of the vendors as the city shook off its sleep. During my summer visits in 2005, I woke up every day to the sound of my cellphone ringing. On the line was a man named Rocco, an Italian-Canadian I had met the previous year. Over the past few months, we had gotten to know each other. My co-workers had weekly volleyball games at Kits Beach every Sunday, and Rocco had begun to show up for those games. Like me, he wasn’t much of a volleyball player, but Rocco and my son, Alan, bonded right away. Alan was only twelve years old, but he was wise beyond his years, and he had a knack for assessing people’s characters. It was a good sign that he liked Rocco. When Rocco asked me out on a date before I was about to go back to Sham, it was tempting. But my family had been pressuring me to find a nice Syrian man; my sisters had a few suitors in mind that they wanted me to meet. I told Rocco that I might no longer be single by the time I returned from Sham, but he didn’t give up.

  “Can I call you while you’re there?” he asked. I said he could. Rocco worked in sales, and with those daily phone calls to me in Sham, it became clear that he was an expert at his trade.

  We were married in 2006, in Rocco’s home city of Toronto. It was a big Italian wedding, and my family was unable to travel all the way to Canada for it. Alan walked me down the aisle, and my dear friend Iris was my maid of honour; I even hired a belly dancer to bring a touch of Al Sham to the party. I missed my family terribly, but I got something of a taste of home when we honeymooned in Montreal. It was the first place in North America that reminded me of Sham—the old buildings and narrow medieval-looking alleyways, the active, outdoor social lifestyle, the cafes and bars and wonderful restaurants that served so much delicious Middle Eastern cuisine.

  Back in Vancouver, we moved into a nice backsplit-style house in Coquitlam, with a backyard deck off the kitchen and a yard that was large enough for me to have a vegetable patch to grow cucumbers and juicy, organic tomatoes. I added another touch of the Sham life to the yard, growing grapes on a big cedar trellis so that I could sit in the sun-dappled shade, drinking coffee and socializing with friends.

  Rocco and I wanted to have more children, and we even did IVF treatments, which ultimately failed. It was devastating not to be able to have more children, but I had to accept it.

  Rocco’s job in sales involved travelling extensively, first in Canada and later in the Far East. In 2011, I left my job at the salon so that Rocco and I could move to Shanghai, where we lived until 2013. During that time, I had a flexible schedule and the freedom to travel with Rocco to exotic places around the globe, including the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok.

  Before I moved to Shanghai, I visited Syria every summer, or every second summer, sometimes with Alan and Rocco, and a few times on my own. I would spend four to six weeks at a time back in Syria. In between visits, I talked to my family at least once a week on the phone; later, when Internet and video calling became available, my uncle Mahmoud was the first to start using it, so my family would call me when they went to his house to visit.

  Each year that I returned to Sham, I found myself in a city that was a little more Western, a little more modern. Amusement parks and Internet cafes opened up, sushi restaurants became popular, and many people started carrying around cellphones. Yet I could still go back to the Ancient City and get lost in its labyrinth of wonderful treasures; the places I loved most in Sham hadn’t changed. And the jasmine still grew wild everywhere, cascading from balconies and courtyards, spilling out of pots, pouring over the ancient stone walls, and sprouting through the cobblestones.

  For my family members—most of them self-employed with small businesses—it was a time of stability, growth, and increased prosperity, much as it had been for my mom and dad’s generation. Mohammad’s salon was doing well, and he and Ghouson had two more children. Shireen now had three boys in total. Maha was still living in Kobani, and she had a whopping eight kids. Hivron had five kids, and she was still living with her in-laws, but they h
ad also built a summer house of their own, near Yarmouk, a suburb of Sham. My teenaged nieces and nephews in Sham had summertime jobs that earned them enough money to buy cellphones and running shoes.

  Abdullah was still living with my baba in Sham. Abdullah was thirty-three years old, and he didn’t have his eyes on anyone. Whenever one of us suggested a woman to him, she wasn’t his cup of tea; he didn’t much care for any of the women that we suggested. He wanted to make the decision for himself. He didn’t want to be rushed and prodded by his loving but very bossy sisters into making the choice.

  Late in the summer of 2010, just after I had returned to Canada from one of my summer visits, Abdullah went to Kobani with my dad and Mohammad to tend to our family’s olive orchard, which had begun to produce nice, ripe olives—not too many, but it was a start, and those first few harvests made our family a little money. Abdullah was working at the orchard when he saw a dark-haired young woman. Her name was . In Arabic, Rehan is the name of the aromatic herb basil, and her family called her that. But other Arabic people called her Rehanna. She was twenty-two and very shy, but Abdullah soon discovered that she was our second cousin. In Syria, it’s quite common to marry second cousins, and Abdullah fell hard for Rehanna.

  That September, I got a call from Abdullah saying, “Rehanna and I are going to buy our rings today.”

  I cried with joy. “Mabrouk! Congratulations! Mama will be very happy,” I said. I looked up to the sky and said to my mama in heaven, “I honoured your wish.”

  I couldn’t make it back to Syria for Abdullah’s engagement party, but I called him during the celebration. I had to yell to be heard over the Kurdish and Bedouin music blasting in the background; it sounded like the whole town of Kobani was there to celebrate.

  One month later, the happy couple returned to Sham, where my family hosted a small, casual wedding at our home. My siblings sent me an endless stream of photos of Abdullah and his beautiful bride. When I saw the way they looked at each other, I knew that Abdullah had found his soulmate.

  A month later, Abdullah called me.

  “Rehanna is pregnant. But nine months is too long to wait,” he said. “I’m so happy. I can’t believe I’m going to be a father!”

  Chapter 4

  Ghalib

  Ghalib

  I got to meet Rehanna for the first time on my next visit to Damascus, the following April of 2011. I loved her immediately. She was a bit shy with me at first, but she was always smiling, and, like Abdullah, she had a great sense of humour, and he loved to make her laugh. At that time, Rehanna was seven months pregnant. I was so excited for them that I brought them all the necessities for their baby—clothes, shoes, blankets, bibs, rattles, soothers. I had bought so many things for that baby that I needed to pack an extra suitcase. I was there with Abdullah and Rehanna for her ultrasound, which revealed that they were having a boy. Abdullah was over the moon. When we got back home, we rushed to Baba, and Abdullah told him the good news, saying, “, Alf mabrouk. Congratulations! You’re going to have a grandson, and I’m going to name him Ghalib after you.”

  That night, the whole family came to our house to celebrate. As always, Abdullah cracked us up the entire time.

  “Stop it! You’re going to bring the baby early,” cried Rehanna.

  The only difference between those family parties and the parties of our youth was that my nieces and nephews were now doing hip-hop and breakdancing, having learned the steps from satellite TV and the Internet. Life on the streets of Damascus seemed just as it always had, even though there had been protests against the government. In Daraa, a group of teenagers were imprisoned for spray-painting anti-regime messages. There were reports that some police officers and protesters had been killed. By the time I arrived in Sham in April, the protests had spread to Latakia, Homs, and Hama. Initial calls for democracy and freedom were soon replaced by calls to overthrow the government.

  On TV, we watched coverage of these protests.

  “What do the people want?” I asked my dad.

  “, Baddon al-hurriya.They say they want freedom, but I’m not sure what they mean by that.”

  As with so much else during those early days, and ever since, it was hard to know who to believe. Information from the many news sources varied so much, it was like reading the coffee grounds: the analysis depended on the viewpoint. Some protesters wanted economic reform. Others wanted political reform and democratic elections. Maybe another factor was the growing number of university-educated young adults who craved the freedoms of the West, and all this fervor was stoked by the Arab Spring that had swept Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011.

  We were shocked when the protests erupted into greater violence so quickly, and they spread like a sandstorm. Had citizens suddenly turned against each other? Or was this the fault of a small number of extremists on both sides of the growing divide? Foreign instigators? And what part did international powers play in these early days and months of the uprising? When my family discussed the political climate, the consensus was that nobody wanted our peaceful country to dissolve into sectarian violence. We all worried that such violence would turn back the clock of progress.

  Before I left for Sham, Rocco had registered me with the Canadian embassy. I thought he was just being unduly cautious, so it was a surprise when the embassy called in the midst of my trip and advised me to leave. With the streets of Sham so peaceful, it was hard to take their warning seriously.

  It was a challenge to read the pulse of Syrians during those early days of the uprising, and ever since, in part because Syrians are intensely private people. I grew up in a culture that had always opened its doors to people of all stripes and shades, surrounded by people who had always gone out of their way to make others feel welcome. I’m not a political person, or at least I wasn’t at that time. I was like most those around the world. As long as my family and my close friends and colleagues were happy, healthy, and safe, I was happy too. And no matter the specific traditions of religion or sect, my impression was, and still is, that Syrians have always bonded over the things that stitch together the fabric of daily life—love, marriage, births, deaths, jobs, weather, cultural trends, food, drink, music, dance, sorrow, and laughter.

  Abdullah and Rehanna were thinking only of their future son. Rehanna’s clothes were tight, so I said, “Let’s go shopping for some new clothes at Souq Al-Hamidiyah,” the beating heart of the Old City. We went with my sisters to the market, where we strolled beneath its huge iron vault, like a long rib cage, filled with shops. Rehanna bought a few lightweight summer dresses, and then we strolled through the souq, which flows into Umayyad Mosque, where we sat in the giant mosaic-tiled courtyard among the laughing doves.

  “I’m going to go in and pray for an easy birth,” Rehanna said.

  “Pray for us too,” Abdullah said.

  When Rehanna came out, she was hungry. “You can’t be hungry, we just ate,” said Abdullah. “It must be my boy who needs the food.”

  “Let’s go to Beit Jeddi, My Grandfather’s House,” I said. It was a famous restaurant.

  We got to that beautiful old converted mansion, and Rehanna started to laugh, her swollen belly shaking; she always covered her mouth when she laughed.

  “I thought you were taking me to your grandfather’s house,” she said.

  We sat at a table in the courtyard, beneath the dangling curtains of rose and jasmine blossoms, eating our fill of mashawi (mixed grilled meats) and foul mudammas, a spicy fava bean dish. I ordered too much food and Abdullah said, “We’re all eating for two, tonight.”

  The evening had been so peaceful that I was surprised when someone from the Canadian embassy called me again. It was only ten days before I was scheduled to fly back to Vancouver.

  “We’re instructing Canadian citizens to leave,” the woman from the embassy said.

  “Are the embassy and the airport closing?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Then I’m staying.”

  I receiv
ed a final shock when my uncle Waleed drove me to the airport in the early hours of May 14, 2011. We were confronted en route by a number of military checkpoints, and at each one we had to present our ID.

  “What’s going on?” Uncle Waleed asked each officer.

  “Just a routine check” was the response.

  “, Inshallah, the situation will calm down soon enough, Fatima,” my uncle said.

  We believed everything would be fine.

  In July 2011, just a few weeks before Rehanna’s due date, she and Abdullah left Sham for Kobani. The decision was only partly based on “the situation” in Syria. Rehanna was a small-town girl at heart, and she was the eldest of eight kids; she was very close with her father, who relied on her to help with all the family decision-making. And like so many people, she wanted to share her newborn son with her big family. It was an added bonus that Kobani remained so peaceful, as many other parts of the country grew increasingly unstable.

  As her due date drew closer, Rehanna was told she’d need a C-section. Abdullah wanted Rehanna to have the best possible care, so they travelled to Manbij (an hour’s drive southwest of Kobani) with my sister Maha and Rehanna’s parents. I sent the money to pay for the operation. The delivery was complicated, but everything turned out fine, and on July 8, Abdullah and Rehanna’s eldest son, , Ghalib, was born.

  I called my brother the following morning.

  “Alhamdulillah. Thank God, Rehanna and the baby are in good health. This baby is so small. Ana sirt ab. I’m a father now. Maha says he looks like me.”

  I was startled by my little brother’s tone. It was so deep and resonant but so calm at the same time, carrying all the many privileges and responsibilities of fatherhood.

  “, a thousand congratulations,” I said. “I’ll call Baba with the good news.”