Against the Loveless World

by Susan Abulhawa

  “I’ll bet my friends are going to ask you to make their dresses for them too,” the woman said. “But no matter what, please don’t tell them what I paid. If they want you to make a dress, I suggest you charge them at least four times what you charged me.”

  “If you think it’s worth it, why don’t you just pay that much for your own dress?” I said, but Mama’s look told me to mind my own business. She smiled at the woman, who pretended not to hear me, and I left them to answer the phone in the hallway.

  “Um Buraq! Yis’ed soutik. Hello, my friend,” I said as soon as I heard her voice.

  “Darling, listen. My phones are probably bugged so I’m calling from a public phone and don’t have much time,” she said, sounding out of breath.

  “Kheir … ?”

  “You-know-who called me a few days ago. He thinks you stole his bank card and withdrew money from his account. I told him you would never do such a thing,” she said, pausing to take a breath. “He tried to make me give him your address in Amman, but I told him I had no idea where you were. I don’t want to know. You need to watch your back. He said he will destroy you if it’s the last thing he ever does.”

  “He can have at it, the whore son of a whore. Fuck his mother’s pussy,” I said. Um Buraq brought out the vulgarity in me, and I liked the way it sounded on my tongue.

  “I’ll call you later. There are people waiting for the phone. He reminded me that he still has those pictures and I’m worried he’ll do something stupid. I’ll see what I can do here. God be with you,” she said, and hung up.

  I wasn’t concerned about the photos. There was no one to show them to, because my family had all left the country. I was more worried about money. I still hadn’t been able to find a job and what I’d withdrawn from Abu Moathe’s account was spent on a down payment for a car. I had tried to use his card in Amman, but it didn’t work. Now I knew why.

  A week later, Mama was making final adjustments on the bride’s wedding dress.

  “Mama, I’m sorry I was rude to that bride. I didn’t mean to interfere in your work. It’s just that she has unlimited money and she is still happy to cheat you. The dress is fit for royalty.” My words weren’t nearly adequate to express the love and torment I felt.

  “You have to let me do this my way. I’m just trying to keep the rent paid and lights on,” she said, squeezing my hand lovingly. I knew she didn’t say that to remind me that I needed to get a job, but I felt it nonetheless. I had been the breadwinner and caretaker of the family. That was my identity. But there was nothing for me in Amman. Mama had a unique skill, but administrators and beauticians were a dime a dozen.

  I looked at Mama’s face, that thing in my chest squeezing again, and it occurred to me that she had been around my age when she was forced out of her home in Palestine. She had come to Amman then too, before journeying on to Kuwait with my father. It seemed to me that fate was inherited, like eye color. I wondered if she had felt the same disorientation that now ruled my days. Had it been all she could think about—the incomprehensibility of forced, permanent displacement?

  I threw my arms around her and buried my face in her neck. “I was stupid before not to appreciate your tatreez, Mama. I promise I am going to find work. I want you to rest.”

  “Darling, I don’t mind tatreez. It gives me something to do. Makes me feel useful. Maybe it also reminds me of when I was a girl,” she said, stroking my hair. “Don’t worry. I know you’ll find the right job soon. In the meantime, you deserve some rest. You’re the one who has been carrying this family for years. If it hadn’t been for your hard work and smart investments, we would never have made it out. You’re the one who managed to earn enough to send your brother to college. He’d still be there if it wasn’t for Saddam, son of a bitch. But alhamdulillah, my daughter. Everything will be fine. We take what God gives us, good and bad, and trust in His wisdom.”

  I sobbed harder on her chest. I had told so many lies and kept secrets that stood between us, a darkness where images lurked of who I really was. I felt dirty in my mother’s arms, wishing I could be the strong, resourceful woman she thought I was. She held me, stroking my face with one hand and wiping my tears with the other. “I am going to make you the most beautiful dress I’ve ever embroidered for your wedding, because you will find the right man to love and marry,” she said.

  She kissed my forehead and wiped my tears, then picked up an embroidering spool. “Right now, I have to get back to this. I’ve got another small job before I finish the wedding dress.”

  “I can help if you want,” I offered.

  Mama set me up next to her with some thread and a chest piece that would be sewn to a thobe once it was embroidered. I followed her instructions for the cypress tree and pasha’s tent motifs and managed to accomplish about four centimeters of stitching before I realized it was all wrong. I unraveled the mess and started over, already bored and frustrated. But I pushed through, wanting to prove something—I don’t know what. Mama would look over at me occasionally and smile, making small talk about things she wanted to buy for the apartment, people we needed to visit soon to pay respects for a death or offer congratulations on a birth, upcoming wedding invitations. “And Ramadan is just around the corner,” she added.

  “Is this right, Mama?” I showed her my second attempt. She leaned over my work, then looked at me. We both knew I was useless at anything requiring patience, but we pretended anyway, and now faced the inevitable. We held each other with our eyes. She grinned. I did the same, and irrepressible laughter rose in us both.

  “You actually lasted longer than I expected,” Mama finally said. “Why don’t you go make us some tea while I do this.”

  “Tea coming up. And I have an even better idea. Wait.” I went to the kitchen to start the kettle, then filled a small plastic tub with warm water and heaps of black salt. I gathered a few towels, a bottle of nail polish, two small volcanic rocks from the bathroom, and a jar of body butter I had made the day before from olive oil, coconut butter, rosewater, eucalyptus leaves, and thyme.

  I returned with the tray of tea glasses and fetched the tub and cream. “Close your eyes and don’t open them until I tell you,” I instructed. “And just lift your dishdasha to your knees.”

  She did as I said, exposing her lower legs. I lifted her feet one by one and gently placed them into the warm black-salt water. She let out a long, satisfied sigh as she opened her eyes. “This feels wonderful, my daughter. God bless you and bring you love and happiness.”

  “Keep the prayers going. There’s more. Get ready for my specialty pedicure!” I said.

  I rubbed Mama’s feet in the salt water, scrubbing off the dead skin with the volcanic rocks. She put her embroidery aside to enjoy the pampering. I wrapped her feet in hot towels, cut away the cuticles on her toes, cleaned the nails, buffed and painted them red, then massaged my special butter into her feet and calves. It pleased me to watch her relax—tension and aches dissolving in my hands.

  “I don’t know why you don’t just open your own salon. You’ve always been so good at these things. I don’t know anyone who knows more about beauty and health. You do everything. Eyebrows, waxing, haircuts, blowouts, nails, feet, makeup, skin care. Everything! And you’re the only person I know who makes natural cosmetics. People would pay a lot of money to feel as good as you’re making me feel right now,” she said.

  “You really think that could work?” I was daring in many things, but not with what little money we had.

  “Of course! When have you ever known me not to tell the truth?”

  Sitti Wasfiyeh, who had just returned from a visit with her daughters, was hobbling through the door on her cane as Mama spoke. “You lie all the time,” she said casually. “What did you two make to eat today? I hope it’s good.”

  Mama and I laughed quietly, and she called out, “Welcome back, Hajjeh! We missed you all day. I made mlookhiya, soupy, the way you like it.”

  And I added, “Didn’t my aunts feed
you?”

  We waited to hear the lie and complaints we knew were coming.

  “Oh. That’s nice. But I wanted msakhan today, and you know my daughters’ cooking is shit since they moved in with their in-laws. They’re not allowed to cook the way I taught them,” she said, rekindling our laughter, which made Sitti Wasfiyeh even grumpier.

  “She’s going to make me do her feet now too, isn’t she?” I whispered to Mama.

  “You may as well get it all ready or else we won’t hear the end of how terrible her feet look and feel,” Mama said.

  As I got up to carry the dirty water away, Mama remembered to ask me, “Oh, by the way, have you heard from Um Buraq?”

  “No. She called me last week, but I haven’t been able to get an answer on the phone since. Why?”

  “It must be true, then,” Mama said. “I heard she’s in jail.”

  “What?” I almost dropped the tub of dirty water.

  “I don’t know the details. I heard that someone, maybe her driver, turned her in to the authorities for collaborating with the Iraqis.” Then Mama whispered, “Actually, they apparently said that she was having an affair with an Iraqi officer. It’s hard to believe, though. A woman of her age …”

  “Are you talking about Ajay? He went back to India, him and Deepa, his wife, when we were still in Kuwait. This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Nothing in the world makes sense. I’m just telling you what I heard. It’s in the newspaper, but I didn’t read it yet. I could never figure out that woman. She was too crass for my taste, but she was always so kind and generous. Regardless, she doesn’t deserve to be in prison,” Mama said, adding, “You never know who you can really trust in this world. Look what her driver did to her after she kept them in her house all those years.”

  Buried in the Arab World section of the newspaper, below an article about new word processors with Arabic script, I found an article about an electronic web called “the Internet,” which would soon connect the world through machines and television-like monitors. It sounded like science fiction to me, so I thought the article next to it, about a Kuwaiti woman collaborator, might also be some kind of fiction, particularly because it didn’t mention her name.

  I called around to our old crew, some mutual friends in Kuwait, and some of the ladies from our makeshift salon during Iraq’s occupation. The story that emerged was that Um Buraq had indeed been arrested and put in jail, along with another woman, on charges of treason.

  Sometime after Deepa and Ajay left for India, Um Buraq’s neighbor demanded payment from her, claiming Ajay had gotten her housekeeper pregnant. The neighbor insisted that, as Ajay’s employer, Um Buraq was responsible for the financial loss incurred from having to send the housekeeper back to Sri Lanka. Of course, Um Buraq did not pay. She made it known that Ajay was impotent. An argument ensued, and Um Buraq didn’t hold back. “Do a blood test. You might find out your husband is the father,” she told her neighbor.

  A few short months later, police broke down Um Buraq’s door, arresting her in the middle of the night. At her trial, the prosecution produced sworn witness statements that she had collaborated with the Iraqi occupation and had violated various virtue and decency laws. The neighbor woman and her husband testified that they had seen Iraqi officials coming and going from her home late at night. They said she and a Palestinian friend were both collaborators. I guessed they meant me, so I made sure to hide the paper from Mama.

  The prosecution was also able to obtain a corroborating statement from Ajay. He testified at the Kuwaiti embassy in India that he personally drove her to and from an Iraqi military center, where she informed on a Kuwaiti member of the resistance. Ajay had found a way to take revenge on Um Buraq for withholding half his wages for years and, in the end, turning the money over to Deepa.

  Everything Ajay told them was true. Um Buraq had indeed informed on a Kuwaiti, but it was to save the man’s wife, whom he had beaten so severely she was unrecognizable. The woman had been a regular customer at our salon. When she didn’t show up for a week, we found her in the hospital, recovering from three broken ribs, a punctured lung, a busted jaw, a broken nose, black eyes, and various cuts and bruises. Not long after the woman was released from the hospital, Iraqi forces arrested her husband. He died under Iraqi torture, and now both his wife and Um Buraq were facing life sentences for his death.

  Geopolitical news was a staple in local conversations, especially among the two hundred fifty thousand Palestinians who were kicked out of Kuwait. Even the least informed knew the headlines, and I was no different: “US Secretary of State James Baker Asserts ‘New World Order’ ”; “Madrid Conference: Is This the Beginning of Peace?”

  Under the new American president, Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat signed a treaty with Israel called the Oslo Accords. There was mass euphoria, but Jehad said, “It’s a disaster.” He also saw it as an opportunity. “It might help us restore our hawiyyas,” he said. “We had our residency cards through Baba when we were little, but Israel revoked them since we couldn’t afford to go back to renew after he died. I have a connection in the PLO who said he can get them reinstated for us.”

  “First of all, what the hell are we going to do in Palestine? We don’t know anyone! Second, how do you have a PLO connection?” I asked.

  “We still have a lot of family there,” he said, ignoring the second part of my question.

  “That we barely know!”

  “Trust me, Nahr. We should really try to get residency cards. We are unwanted in the world. It couldn’t hurt for us to have another option, even if we don’t use it. How long do you think we’ve got before something happens here and Jordan kicks us out to God knows where? Anyway, you don’t have to do anything. I’ll take care of the applications. It has to be done now, because they’re only allowing a few people back and just ones who had residency cards in the past, or rich people who can help the economy.”

  “Fine. Tell me how to help,” I said, though I still didn’t see the point.

  But then he added, “Besides, Mama wants you to get a divorce. The only way to do that is in Palestine, since Mhammad will not come here.” Everyone in my life who knew my situation had been urging me to get a divorce. The assumption was that the only decent life I could have would be through a second marriage, and the only way to achieve that was to officially end the first one.

  “You too? Why is everyone in my business?” I said.

  “Nanu, Mama is right. You might want to get married one of these days.”

  “Listen, little brother. I appreciate your concern, but you should concentrate on yourself. Do you even like girls anymore?”

  “We’re not talking about me. And yes, I do. But I don’t want to get married now.”

  “Neither do I.”

  He laughed. “I should know better than to argue with you.”

  I laughed too, kissed him, and made us a bite to eat. It was one of the few lighthearted moments Jehad and I had shared since we came to Amman. His time in Kuwaiti jail had changed him forever. Jehad had become a man of compressed, dense quiet. He refused to speak of what had happened to him, left his story embedded in the scars on his body, in the blinded left eye and lame right hand. I respected his choice, especially as I saw how gentle a life he created. Jehad did not become the surgeon he’d dreamed of being, but an artist, a talented and sought-after gardener in Jordan, landscaping some of the most beautiful homes in Amman.

  Although I made some attempts to find steady work, I was mostly relishing the sweetness of grief and self-pity. The seduction of sleep was potent, but I managed to crawl my way through each day, busying myself as much as I could. I earned some money here and there threading eyebrows and doing henna designs, but that work was sporadic. Being idle in such a miserable city cleared space in my head for a theater of memory, like choppy movie clips replaying over and over behind my eyes. They had begun to feel less like memories and more like talons ripping at my entrails. The endless work with which I’d populate
d my time in Kuwait to keep thoughts at bay was gone. Now Abu Moathe in his office at the bank, the men panting and laughing around me like hyenas the night Saddam rolled his army into Kuwait, Abu Nasser the panty sniffer, the filthy abortion clinic in Cairo, the thick bloodied pads between my legs, clawed at me whether awake or sleeping.

  Mama’s embroidery and Jehad’s landscaping work kept a roof over our heads and food on the table. The housekeeping tasks naturally fell to me. I did the cooking, cleaning, and shopping. And I took over caring for Sitti Wasfiyeh. I hadn’t realized how much Mama had done for her over the years. She could not, or rather would not, bathe herself. As a child, Sitti Wasfiyeh had bathed her own grandmother, and expected the same from us. She’d grown up in a time when one had to heat bathing water over a flame, and she could not conceive of doing it differently, despite having hot water from the tap. “I don’t trust it,” she would say.

  As Mama used to do, I had to heat large vats over the stove and carry the water to the bathroom, mix it with cooler water, then scoop and pour it over her as she scrubbed herself with olive-oil soap, the only kind she trusted.

  Sometime in late December of 1993, Jehad came home early from work.

  “I got them!” he said, excitedly brandishing a folder. He had been successful in getting our hawiyyas reinstated, which would enable us to return to Palestine. Only Jehad and I could get them, since we’d had them as children. Mama and Sitti Wasfiyeh would have to get visitor visas if they wanted to go back. None of it made sense to me, and I wasn’t particularly eager to go to Palestine. But Jehad was.