by Alia Mamdouh
What are these qatharat that fill your head? What are these impurities? As long as he was at home, the prohibitions doubled from one day to the next, for when I was in front of him I appeared stupid and a failure and would have always been so even had I been top of my class and my school. Later, and in a whisper, Suhaila commented, Nader, you are strange, and I am afraid that your fate will be like his. Like him.
Like whom? I did not understand exactly—my uncle, my mother’s brother, or my father? Ayy, Nader, your uncle who fled and immigrated, leaving everything behind.
But my uncle was not my ideal nor was my father. I loved them, of course, but in some way that I could not make sense of. When Diya escaped I was very unhappy. I felt that there existed some sort of competition between him and my father, but surely the issue was nothing more than a story in the air or some mistake that someone had made. No one in the family said anything about the real reasons for my uncle’s flight. In the beginning, right after it happened, I persisted in trying to find out what had gone on. But I failed. Later I would tell myself that possibly my uncle had not believed strongly enough in the revolution—but was my father really any more of a believer? To this day I have not found the answer to this question.
Sitting here, I see a cockroach on the wall, a reddish blotch that has completely stopped moving. His moustaches are lean and wary as he falls under my gaze, into my hands.
What, I wondered, should I do now? I stirred, slowly, and got to my feet. I walked out to the bathroom. I had the feeling that the cockroach was freer than I was.
II
I was trying to avoid encountering Suhaila in every object that surrounded me here, but the little things pursued me wherever I turned. Although I was very thirsty, I didn’t make for the tiny kitchen and its fridge. I didn’t stick my head into the other room, my room which Suhaila had transformed into a sitting room where she could welcome friends. I stood in the miniscule bathroom. I turned on the spigots full blast and listened to the gurgling sound of the water in the faucet as I took off my clothes. The plumbing still took its time. Nothing had changed here; and I wanted a more forceful gush of water. I wanted it to clobber my head, my knees, my chest, all of the hidden places in my body. I was gripping the cold water hose and pouring the icy water over my head, passing it across my face and shooting it into my eyes. I was wishing I could sleep here, right here inside of the clean pink bath.
Everything—you require everything in such a hurry, Nader. Food, a bath, lessons. Even as you are consulting with the university doctors, you evade them and leave hurriedly as if everything is your doing and you are afraid that someone is following you. We are here, my dear, and no one is going to reach out and take you prisoner. Linger for a bit, be patient—why, why do you stint on water and food and likewise on emotions? Hmm? Why?
She would find a label for every sign she saw in my face. She would follow me with her eyes and it would irritate her when I didn’t answer. In Brighton she would go into the bathroom and talk to the water; her glances as she closed the door unnerved me. I knew that she would climb into the large white bathtub that was sized generously for her small body. And when she would stay there, I would start worrying and would soon be at my wit’s end about what to do, as if she had gone in there for the express purpose of committing suicide. I couldn’t hear her voice or any sound of her, as if she were concealing it deliberately to torment me as much as she possibly could. How strange she is. I would knock on the door after a time, gently at first, then hard.
Mother! Mother, are you all right?
She would not answer. Just like that, to upset and anger me. Only she could shatter me like this, breaking my resistance. Only she could cut in on my sealed-off self. And so my anger and my craziness would erupt; and then finally she would answer, in a voice full of affection, Don’t worry, dearest, you know how I like to stay in the water.
Why won’t you say anything to me? Why don’t you answer when I call you?
She would bathe more than necessary, and I still do not understand the reason for it. I suppressed my words, bit my tongue, and cursed her under my breath, on that evening and many nights to follow, due to this and for many other reasons. This relationship had to end, I thought—let her go somewhere and not tell me where she is. I am an extremely high-strung person. The things we would fight over might be silly, but it all would pulverize me, and she deserved my anger. I wanted her to share everything with me; it seemed enough for her to realize that the love between us could endure some gullibility and silliness, even some sneakiness and cunning. It didn’t seem too much to ask. She ought to be aware of that.
The steam rose as far as the gray metallic shelves that sat to the left of the bath. Atop the shelves were lined up bottles of rose water, tubes of face crème, and hand lotion. There were smaller bottles of various colors that looked like thimbles—on the shelves there in Brighton and here as well. I had merely to pour a few drops into the tub for the room to be suffused in ocean spray carrying the fragrance of equatorial rain forests. Fine, fresh odors, as if they were hers. I had only to enter the bathroom in her wake to forgive her everything.
Barefoot, I stood in front of the fridge, my mouth hanging open with thirst. It was packed with various French and Arab cheeses, butter, and both strawberry preserves and apricot jam. I saw tomatoes, watermelon, cherries, honeydew melons, cans of beer, apple and orange juices, Lebanese bread, and a baguette in a paper sack.
Caroline, as a woman of the West who has a relationship with us, with the East, seems like us, my mother mused. Like Blanche, Narjis, Wajd, and Asma. She sits on the floor and she and Blanche have a competition going when it comes to smoking the narghileh. When one of them blows the smoke high, the other chuckles and says, No good—mine’s highest. Sometimes she eats with her hand when she sees us doing so, especially tharid al-bamya and dry beans. She’s like a child when she sees the dining table—yum! she says, and she begins taking off her jacket to get ready for what she is about to confront, the Indian spices and hot pepper blends that Diya kept sending from Africa and the combinations that I come up with according to my mood. She goes with me to the Arab souqs—Moroccan, Tunisian, Lebanese—every Wednesday in the popular market. I buy and she licks her lips imagining what I will cook. She puts herself in the proper frame of mind for it. She even prefers leftovers as we do—these dishes are always better the next day.
Caroline had also stocked the kitchen for me with all sorts of imperishables: canned peas, green beans, and corn; bags of brown sugar cubes; varieties of tea—jasmine, mint, and lemon. Suhaila used to wake me at six o’clock in the morning with a whispering in my ear. Yallah, Nader, hurry up—breakfast is ready. Toast, eggs like lynx eyes, tea. . . . She didn’t like anything labeled express or fast; she would fret, standing in front of me, as if giving a speech. An illusion, Nader, ayy w-Allahi, it’s a cosmic illusion. And then she would laugh before finishing her sermon. Everything express will crumble to nothing. It’s as much of a trial to bear as any other humiliation.
She was enamored of making tea; she loved the process and put as much energy into it as if she were beginning to write a book or play a role on stage: boiling the water until the steam rose to coat the kitchen window and, a pretty sparkle in her eyes, opening a small green velvety chest. That’s where she kept the tea, loose, free, not in bags. Even dried herbs won’t stand for being imprisoned, she would say.
Scooping up a small fistful, she would put it in a glass teapot sitting next to the one on the flame and cover it with a tea cozy—a cap with ears. Leave it there to rest until we are absolutely frantic for it; until its aroma drives us insane. This is the way your father likes it best, too, tea with cardamom. My mother taught me this way. She would open the cardamom pods slightly and place them in the teapot. Your father always made fun of the English and their anemic, sickly tea.
Then Suhaila swings around and turns her gaze on me. Everything has its own proper time, Nader. This is the value of things. Sometimes I see
you as a wayfarer who stares only at the highway ahead, who doesn’t stop on the road to look and think properly about his changing surroundings. Other times you astound me with your ability to observe and appreciate, as when you’re going into the kitchen with me where we’ll prepare the dishes you love. You truly confuse me!
Here and now, directly in front of me, the water was boiling. I found a cup and slipped a teabag inside. I watched it, observing how the hue of the water changes gradually into a fiery color. The color of my face. I closed my ears to Suhaila’s instructions. I drink fast; that’s the way I eat and study, too. I tore off a piece of Lebanese bread and put a cube of cheese in the middle. I didn’t feel that I had really had enough to eat but I wasn’t hungry, either. I swallowed the rest of the tea and went back into her room. I pulled off my clothes and let them fall to the floor. I picked up her nightgown again, folded it offhandedly and stuffed it onto the chair in front of me. I raised the duvet and stretched out beneath it like a stiff corpse.
In the evenings we used to do some theater exercises. Your grandfather called me the General of the Modern Iraqi Theater, just so, to spite your father who had begun to be annoyed by my regular late-evening work—and I didn’t know whom to obey or what to listen to: the instructions and admonitions of the impresario or the commands of the military husband? It’s possible, Nader, that the headaches and illness began around that time, once I was convinced that my talent would be converted into mere scrap iron. I was in a pitiable state. It seemed to me that death was taking up position, lying in wait for me, ready to attack if I were not to act and dance. I would leave you in my mother’s care and when I came back for you in the morning my mother would pursue me with incessant scolding and blame. Suhaila, Nader would not stop crying. He was afraid you weren’t going to come back. But the minute I put your old nightgown in his hands he would start sniffing at it like a little animal. He would choke on his tears and start to hiccup, and finally he would quiet down and fall fast asleep.
Thirteen
I
I woke up in a state of exhaustion. All of those women, her friends, were in my mind. I had an image of them chasing me, running after me to grab me because of a sentence I had forgotten and then abandoned; a sentence I would not divulge. My mother is a wondrous woman and she is the one who has given me the occasional appearance of a beggar. Did she know this? She is a mother-tragedy and I no longer understand her; I don’t know her. I wonder who does know his own mother?
The apartment closes in on me: the shelves are crammed full of books, recordings, piles of newspapers, dictionaries, and mute pictures. My photographs are above, all appearing to my eyes as if they are not me. There they are, as they were: the little boy, the growing boy, the adolescent. These portraits of me sketched the stages of my life, step by step, by moments and by years, in rows one after another on the wall. She used to study me, to review me as if I were a sequence of lessons, as I crawled, and walked, and fell, and stumbled among the pupils, on that island—Umm al-Khanazir, “Mother of the Pigs”—riding my bicycle, my hair flying and my trousers muddy. In the morning or at night; among the palm trees with my mouth wide open; on my bed clutching the guitar; at a small party in the apartment of her friend Wijdan in London; at the head of the stairs, playing songs; standing beneath the Eiffel Tower; in all seasons and in front of my green Volkswagen, looking guileless; or uncomfortable at the little stupidities of my unctuous English friend Elizabeth. And there was Layal, who is so akin to my birthplace—the place where my head first crowned to emerge from my mother’s body—just as she is akin to the crowning question among all of those puzzles for which, to this day, I have failed to find solutions. I focus my gaze now on this one and now on that one, just as my lost and ruined father would have done. I chase every female on whom my gaze falls. Confused and caught up in it all, I seek amusement and I place no trust in fidelity—in the faithfulness of the girls into whose path I fall; and then I can no longer bear them, just as I can no longer stand myself. Standing before these walls, I rage, Pictures, pictures! Nothing but pictures of me. There is not a single photograph from my wedding, and there are no photos of Sonia or of my son. Why do you believe the photographs and yet you do not believe the one whom they portray? Why do you do that, Mother?
After covering the dark brown desk chair with a bright colored African shawl to hide its worn interior, I swiveled it round with a touch of my hand. I sat down. Lines of poetry by the Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, by the Greek poet Cavafy, and by Abu Nuwas, that fun-loving and naughty medieval Arab poet, covered the wall in front of me, pinned up with tacks. Instead of reviving me, they dulled my senses. Lines of poetry on the ephemerality of existence, on the homeland, on unattainable love. I read while scooting the chair around within the few meters of what was a very small room. The curtains were of two different colors and types; the translucent ones were yellow. She had put these up first, wanting to let the light in. It was her intention that the second ones be of dark, olive-colored velvet, elegant and expensive, and that the hems be worked in green and yellow threads. She wrote to me about what happened.
The yellow curtains were Blanche’s gift, do you remember her, Nader, or not? My father, Blanche once explained to me, gave me the nickname Kashaniya after a type of expensive Persian carpet. My mother gave me the name Blanche. If you want the truth, Nader, she really is like Kashan Persian carpets. But I prefer the name Blanche: white of heart and soul and like a mountain of joy: every time you try to climb it and you think you’ve gotten up it, you find it still there in front of you, waiting for you. She—Blanche, this joy-mountain—reaches out a hand and pulls you higher. Like Narjis and the others, she tries to hide your failure, your stupidities, and your hesitation, because she believes you and she believes the women. Not right away, perhaps; it may be that you want to believe this more than anything. Those women have a certain immunity, a natural auto-protection against envy and spite. Don’t laugh at me, Nader, and say that my friends are angels. No one is an angel, and in the first place, I do not like this sort of characterization. Really, though, when we are together, I do feel the worth of things, of thoughts and ideas, friendship, the world, poetry, drinking, and other things that I don’t know how to explain or label. Ah, if only you knew what they have done for me. Amazing—haven’t I told you that before? If you come to Paris one day and stand in this room of mine, and if you try to pull these green curtains, there is no help for it; you will find yourself repeating, Thank you, thank you, Caroline. This was her gift to commemorate my fifty-third birthday. Go on, push apart those curtains and let the light come into the room. Don’t grumble as I did when I saw Caroline carrying an enormous heavy-plastic bag. It startled me when she said so gently, so quietly, Here, open it, Suhaila.
I averted my eyes from her, Nader. The sight had a reverse effect on me. In a tone far from joking, I answered her. If only you had brought me a head of cauliflower, Caroline, and an eggplant of the little, fresh sort, to make pickles and makdus, if you had brought French cheeses to die for and a bottle of cognac Napoleon (after his exile, of course), to digest the hours and the years. But I don’t like velvet. I do not particularly like curtains in the first place.
Caroline laughed at first, sweetly. She didn’t know, ya ayni, how to answer me. So I spoke again.
Look at me, my dear, daughter of the elegant and civilized North. From now on, I really prefer things to eat over other things. Extravagant belongings like this. I don’t even know how to use these. From now on and until. . . . when you’re coming here, bring produce, all sorts, smoked fish, chicken, eggs from fields that are organically fertilized. Lots of fruit. Simplicity: shamam is better than shamaadanat! Yes, indeed, melon is lovelier than candelabras. No, not flowers—don’t bring flowers. They are luxuries and I can’t stand them anyway—they give me a chronic cough and an awful allergic reaction. Ya, Caroline? Now don’t forget these instructions. Please.
My poor, dear Caroline! I did feel for her. On that early sprin
g afternoon she went into a gloom I had never before seen expressed in her eyes quite like that. The curtains were spread out on the bed as if they were a sort of shroud. In no more than an hour, though, the storm passed. I was ashamed of myself, of how I had treated her, so I pulled down the old curtains, the brown and white weave. I climbed the stepladder and began to hang the ones she had brought.
Look, look, now, Suhaila, please, and do be serious. The room really is royal now. Isn’t it?
The tone of her voice was utterly civil but I didn’t thank her. I wasn’t nice to her at all. And who said I prefer royals as you do? I snapped.
She knew a lot about us and about our homeland, my mother’s letter went on. I did wince, Nader, seeing that her marble-pale face was now a flaming red. I came down off the stepladder. I pulled the curtains together so that the room was very dark, and it stirred up a host of feelings in me that left me seeing the room as if it were not mine. It is not my room and it is no longer a place of safety, a security zone. Drapes like this do not console anyone. This kind of fabric weaves one into captivity. When I touched the posh, heavy lining, I felt even more afraid. The room had somehow become permanent and unchangeable, and I felt it threatening me with something I couldn’t know. I felt repelled, alienated, by it and by myself. Finally, I said to Caroline, We have to leave here right now. We’ll celebrate my blessed birthday at your apartment. We’ll invite our friends. I will do the cooking.
