I paid attention to the chicken coop, anxious that a mouse might scurry by and ruin my morning, despite Mama Hissa assuring me that mice wouldn’t dare approach the chicken coop unless one of the eggs was broken, and a hen would never abandon her eggs to a mouse unless she could see the insides spilling out. I interrupted her song by pecking her forehead. “Sabbahich Allah bil khair, Mama Hissa,” I greeted her before sitting on the ground next to her.
Her henna-tattooed hand combed through the rice. “Morning to you, too,” she responded. “How’s Ms. Principal doing?” She didn’t wait long for my response, picking up where she had left off in her song for her husband. “How could I not miss him, O sidra tree of lovers?” I didn’t know if Mama Hissa was taunting her or praising her profession when she called my mom “Ms. Principal.”
What I do know is that I’d always respond, “Mom is good.” Mama Hissa had been upset with my mom going on a year because one time she’d publicly chastised Aisha, who was teaching at the same school. Mama Hissa said that when Ms. Principal saw Aisha laughing with one of the other teachers in the hallway, my mom barked at her, “You! What are you laughing at?” Pointing to the teachers’ lounge, she’d ordered, “Get back to work!”
Mama Hissa considered what my mom had done to her daughter-in-law as a betrayal of their friendship. Once she started about my mom, I couldn’t stop her no matter how hard I tried. Mom had boycotted the Al Bin Ya’qub family house since Mama Hissa had yelled at her, pillorying her for being so strict with Aisha in school. “Ms. Principal didn’t like what I had to say and still holds it against me, even though I’ve gone to and come back from God’s house. She can’t even be bothered to visit me and greet me like the rest of the neighbors!”
My imagination drifted, picturing a plane heading for God’s house. “You went to God’s house?”
She removed her hand from the rice. She wiggled three fingers in front of my face. “Three times,” she replied.
“And you saw God?” My voice rose.
She left the brass dish on her lap and raised her arms to rest them on her head. “What a fool you are! You’re going to bring the sky down on our heads.”
I hugged the leg of her wooden chair. I shielded myself with my arms, scared of the sky falling. I quickly washed my hands of my question. “But you’re the one who said you’ve been to God’s house.”
“God’s house meaning the Kaaba, you idiot! Istaghfir!” She yanked my ear until I thought it would fall off. I mumbled prayers of forgiveness and clasped my earlobes to show just how sorry I was.
From the neighbor’s courtyard, the voice of Nazem Al Ghazali blared. The brass dish still rested in Mama Hissa’s lap. She interlaced her fingers and cracked them Iraqi-style. Raising her voice, she inquired, “Playing music on a Friday, Old Lady Shatt?”
“God has more than enough space, you troublemaker!” Mama Zaynab chortled. “All morning, I’ve heard you singing, ‘O sidra oflovers’—it’s halal for you but haram for me?”
The two grannies doubled up in unison. The question my mom and Fawzia hadn’t answered roiled around in my head.
“Mama Hissa!”
She fished out a beetle from the rice and threw it to the wind. “What?”
I hesitated before posing my question about the zoo. She looked intently at my face. The gap between her eyes and her eyebrows grew. She pursed her lips, forming a straight line as she swatted away the question. A gray pigeon landed on the boundary wall. Mama Hissa got up and made her way toward the pigeon. She scattered some rice grains on the grass, urging it to come closer. “Ta’! Ta’!” The pigeon responded by alighting on the ground. “Now, don’t scare it off,” she warned me.
I whispered my question to her again. “You didn’t give me your answer. Where is the zoo?” She turned away to look at her chickens crowded around the plastic water bowl, sipping the water before craning their necks, beaks to the sky, gargling, eyes closed.
Mama Hissa nodded her head, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she beamed. “Praise be to God.” She extended her outstretched finger in the direction of the coop. “Look!” She urged me to look at the chickens acknowledging their God above, praising Him for their drink. Her face suddenly clouded over. “Even the chickens know God . . . if only Abu Sami’s wife could see the same.”
I ignored her words. “The zoo, Mama Hissa. Where is it?”
She looked suspiciously at me. “Why do you want to know?”
I grew embarrassed. A familiar voice shot out, interrupting us. A croaky voice that was synonymous with Friday mornings. “Khaaam! Khaaam!” The pigeon flitted off, leaving behind the rice grains on the soil. It was the Yemeni fabric salesman, as usual. His voice would ring out from the top of the street, reaching a crescendo as he approached our homes. Three sounds struck terror in my heart when I was a boy: the cries of the Yemeni fabric salesman, the clamor of the trial warning sirens that became commonplace during the first Gulf War, and Abu Sami’s unleashed saluki yapping in his courtyard. Abu Sami’s house, or “the house with the American wife” as the neighborhood women had dubbed it, was across from Sadiq’s. On the other hand, there was only one voice that would melt away all the nerve-racking sounds of our street, a voice equally loved by all the neighborhood children: that of Abu Sameh, the middle-aged Palestinian ice-cream seller. Every afternoon, he’d pass by with his trusty cart and red umbrella, calling out, “Ice cream! Ice cream!” Sometimes he’d park his cart at the end of our street, rest his chin on his palm, and repeat his favorite Palestinian ditty in a weary voice: “Fill the Jug Up for Me.” He’d stay there, serenading his beloved cart that had allowed him to enroll all three of his sons in college.
Mama Hissa’s ears pricked up at the sound of the fabric seller’s calls. Grinning, she shared that Tina had been waiting for him for a week. She handed the brass dish to me and instructed, “Hold this.” She suggested I try doing what housewives do. She stood up, short in stature, dusting off the remnants of unclean rice from her thawb. The fabric seller drew near. “Khaaam! Khaaam!” I sat on her chair, balancing the brass dish on my knees. Mama Hissa quickened her pace, making her way into the house as she called out for Tina.
She disappeared behind the sheets on the drying line. A few seconds later, Tina, the hindiyya of ’Am Saleh’s house, came out trailing her. “The Indian” was actually Sri Lankan, wearing a loose house dara’a. Most of the house help in our country was from India, so the word Indian—male or female—in our shared consciousness could only mean a servant, whether the Filipino hindiyya from Abu Sami’s household or the Bengali hindiy from the Al Awaidel household. Out of jealousy for her mother-in-law’s exaggerated good treatment of Tina, a mere servant, an illiterate Sri Lankan girl who had fled her country’s civil war between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, Khala Aisha bitingly referred to her as “Mama Hissa’s daughter.” I wouldn’t have known that Tina couldn’t read if it hadn’t been for her holing herself up in her room at the end of each month to record voice messages for her family on tape rather than writing to them. She spent many years in ’Am Saleh’s house like she was one of the family. She’d eat with them on the floor every day, and she took however much time she wanted to watch the Bollywood films shown every Friday afternoon. “Tina, come quick! It’s an Amitabh Bachchan movie,” Mama Hissa’s voice would loudly summon her whenever it was time. We’d sit alongside Tina, all of us engrossed, despite the over-the-top scenes that were the hallmark of his sensational films. No one would dare give Tina something to do during a movie. That in itself was uncommon, something I wouldn’t have witnessed if it hadn’t been for the matriarch of the household, Mama Hissa.
Mama Hissa wrapped her milfah around her head and fastened it before Tina opened the iron door for the fabric seller, inviting him in. The man positioned himself on the ground near the iron door, undoing the ties on his blue bundle, patched up with fabrics of different colors. He rolled his bundle out on the tiles as Tina walked toward where I sat under the sidra, her hair slicked
with coconut oil. She scolded me, ordering me to give her “Big Mama’s” chair. “Right away, Khala!” I replied as I gave it up for her, nodding my head obediently. There was no harm in her being an aunt because she was just about at the right age, in any case. She carried the chair hastily over to the seller for Mama Hissa. I sat on the dusty ground. I was about to rest my back against the sidra’s trunk. I hesitated. I tilted my head back, looking up at the branches through the gaps in the palm roof. Mama Hissa noticed and reassured me, “Don’t be scared now. The jinn live higher up, there, in the branches.” I let my back sink into the trunk while I undertook the role of a housewife for the first time in my life. Torn between needing to be on the lookout for any movement from the jinn, my fear of the sharp-voiced and sullen-faced fabric vendor, and my worry over the probable appearance of a hungry mouse, I kept turning to the chicken coop. I breathed cautiously—a semblance of an inhalation, exhaling before it filled my lungs, in fear of the plague that Mom had warned me about, the one that could transfer from mice to humans. Mama Hissa had also told me what it was like before, about ten years before that day, when there were television public service announcements about the danger mice posed and the importance of eradicating them. “I saw with my own two eyes some mice taking on a couple of cats!” she claimed.
Mama Hissa installed herself on her chair, holding out a fold of her milfah, screening herself from the seller’s gaze, who out of respect hadn’t even raised his head from his bundle of fabrics. She rested her other palm on her hip whenever she bent over to examine the swathes of cloth before Tina settled on what she wanted. I was trying to avoid looking at the man’s face, but I failed. I stole a glance at him as I overturned rice grains in my small palm; he was a short man who, if I didn’t dislike him so much, I would have said looked like one of Snow White’s beloved seven dwarves. A Yemeni turban circled his head. Deep crevices were etched across his surly olive face. His spiky beard sprouted white, but then lower down bled into red henna. Under his heavy coat, he had wrapped an izar, its colors crisscrossing around his lower half. I corralled a bunch of beetles from the rotten rice grains into my palm and squeezed the life out of them. I waited for Mama Hissa to turn my way so I could remind her of my question. She chatted away with the man while she inspected his wares. She grabbed a piece of cloth and asked him the price. Before he even managed to string his words together, she said, “Too much!”
The man laughed. She asked him to lower the price. He gently refused. She started to flatter him, praising his country. “Yemen is the cradle for all Arabs,” and for that he should be more forgiving with his pricing. Chuckling, he eventually gave in to her demands. He folded up his bundle after Mama Hissa had paid him for the fabrics that Tina had chosen for her saris, to be sewn by Salim the tailor in Al Anbaiie Mall. He turned in my direction and flashed me a winning smile that I never imagined could have graced his face. He left, resuming his call, “Khaaam! Khaaam!” until it fell out of earshot as he made his way to the end of the street. I made room for Tina to put the wooden chair back in its place. After dropping her milfah to her shoulders, Mama Hissa sat down with her hands outstretched toward me so that I’d hand back the dish of rice.
She looked up at the tree branches above her through the cracks in the palm shelter. “Assalamu alaikum.” The jinn didn’t return her greeting. “May you be happy in your home,” she added. I gulped as I handed over the dish. I unfolded my fist to show her the outcome of the role that I’d played. She looked at the bloodbath in my palm. She shook her head, reprimanding me. “Aren’t you scared of God?”
What Mama Hissa didn’t know is that I actually was scared of Al Shaytan, with his two horns, pointed tail, and trident. At a time when God represented goodness for me in all His ways, I had a whole spectrum of feelings toward Him, but fear wasn’t one of them. She slipped her fingers in, sifting through the grains. “This is a life,” she murmured as she clutched between her fingers a beetle plucked out from among the grains. She intentionally set it down on the earth to roam free.
“He’s as good as dead anyways,” I said confidently.
“God doesn’t forget His creatures.”
I looked over at the mousetraps, emblazoned with the health ministry logo, scattered around the chicken coop. I asked her about the mice: “Don’t they have a god?” She casually draped her milfah on her head before she stood with her brass dish. Dragging her feet to the kitchen overlooking the courtyard, she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in my question. She slipped through the sheets on the drying line. “Kids today, such big mouths,” I heard her fume. I trailed behind her to the kitchen, where a scrawny brown cat crouched by the door, wagging what was left of its stump tail. I looked at it. “Hey, look, it’s Fahd waiting for his lunch!” She laughed at the cat that somewhat resembled her grandson before shooing him away. “Tet! Tet!” I got to the kitchen door before her, insisting, “Mama Hissa! Mama Hissa!”
“What?” came her irate response. She did not turn around once she’d gone past.
“You never answered. The zoo—”
“Like they say, the idiot keeps on with the same story,” she cut me off, chortling. That she called me an idiot irked me because at that time, according to my mom, I was the brightest kid on the block. I stood at the threshold of the kitchen. Tina was scaling three frozen fish. A swarm of flies clustered around them. “Kish! Kish!” Mama Hissa chased them away. She handed Tina the brass dish as if I wasn’t even there. She said that I wanted a story and that she didn’t have time for stories. She knew I was impatient, waiting for the answer. As usual, my inquisitiveness amused her. “You answer me first. Why are you asking?”
“I’ll only tell you if you answer me first!” I said in the hope of getting her to answer quicker by piquing her curiosity.
“Am I your playmate now?”
Frustrated, I answered, “So I can go to the zoo.”
She nodded her head, feigning interest.
“And why are you going there?” she queried after focusing her gaze directly on me.
I felt that this whole thing was already going on for longer than it should, and my need to hear her answer got the better of me. I ached to hear the name of the area, one way or the other, from her lips. In order for the question to die as soon as the answer was born, I responded, stifling my irritation, “So I can see the monkeys.”
Her wrinkled face smirked. “Ah . . . I see . . . family obligation calls!”
12:43 p.m.
Present Day
I turn on the engine, leaving our old neighborhood. ’Am Saleh’s house recedes behind me. I head for our headquarters in Jabriya; maybe I’ll find Fahd and Sadiq there. I take Ali Bin Abi Talib Street toward the Jabriya Bridge. It was the only street in Kuwait named after him until other streets with the same name cropped up. Ali Bin Abi Talib Street, the one over in Surra, has his name on the street sign itself, followed by a MAY GOD BE PLEASED WITH HIM. It’s not an entirely different story in other areas: Rumaithiya, Dasma, Al Qurain—but the same name on each of those signs is followed by a PEACE BE UPON HIM. Each phrase distinctive to each sect, claiming this companion of the Prophet. We no longer know the names for a bunch of neighborhoods since they’ve been renamed by their residents, as if the names were exclusively for them. It didn’t stop at Ali. Some started renaming streets, taking turns at ticking off others: Yazid Bin Mu’awiya Street, Ibn Taymiyyah Street, and Abu Lu’luah Street.
I take the bridge between Surra and Jabriya. It runs over the Bayn River, which is actually a road that runs under the bridge and was so named after it started overflowing with a deluge of sewage a few years ago. Bayn—between two places. Filth has collected in it, floating to the surface and emanating a nauseating stench that clogs the nose. The corpse-catcher lands on its bank and drinks from its flow. It’s said that since the outbreak of our civil war, all those who have disappeared or been swept away have settled at the bottom of the Bayn River. Noticing traffic at the head of the bridge, I slow down. It must
be an accident or a security checkpoint—that’s what they call it, even though it makes you feel apprehensive rather than safe. As I get closer, I realize that there hasn’t been an accident. My stomach churns. Have they reinstated the ban on crossing the bridge? What about the two-day-old cease-fire? Closer now, I see the black flag raised among masked men brandishing rifles, confirming my suspicions. They lean on sandbags, their rifles merging into an iron barricade obstructing the street. On either side are two tire fires, spewing black smoke. The stench becomes more pronounced the closer I get to the bridge. It’s weird that whenever I complain about the fetid water smell, my friends respond, “What smell?” From Fuada’s Kids, only Ayub finds it as off-putting as I do. I muzzle my nose and mouth with my palm as I continue driving. From under the seat, I take out a piece of paper tied with a string that I save for moments like this. The image of a red heart with the name of Aisha, one of the Prophet’s wives, is emblazoned in the middle of it. Beneath the heart is an inscription: “Mother of the believers, despite what the haters say.” I lift the string up, planning to hang it from the rearview mirror before I remember that I smashed out the entire windshield with a rock earlier. I stuff the paper back under my seat and take out a bundle of prayer pamphlets, which have written on them,
“Abu Bakr is in heaven, and Umar is in heaven
Mama Hissa's Mice Page 5
