Mama Hissa's Mice

by Saud Alsanousi

  The sudden ringing of my phone startles me. Ayub’s name flashes on the screen. “Hello!” I hear when I answer.

  “Any news?”

  He hesitates before responding. “You’re not going to like what I know.”

  After throwing my weight down on a nearby chair, I ask, “Sadiq or Fahd?” He calms me down only to raise my blood pressure once more.

  “Neither of them, actually . . . Forget about the cease-fire. Clashes in Mansuriya have forced the internal security forces to step in and break things up”—I feel reassured that the internal security forces still have enough numbers to get a grip on the situation in the country, but the reassurance doesn’t last long when he finishes his sentence—“using lethal force.”

  I don’t say a thing.

  “There’s word about men dying both from the security forces and the warring factions.”

  The song on the transmitter is still playing: “Thank God for His abundant grace . . . that has shielded us from the darkness of ignorance.”

  “The Tahrir detention center is packed with men who are suspected of being involved in the whole fiasco. The interior ministry has set aside a sum of $10,000 for whoever fingers the killers. Over 3,000 Kuwaiti dinars—now that’s not to be sniffed at!” Ignoring my silence, he asks me about Sadiq and Fahd. I tell him that we were up until dawn this morning. I keep quiet about how things ended up in the dirt square in Rawda. His voice takes on a grave tone, urging me to continue. I promise that I will fill him in later. I’m still unable to disclose and relive what happened at dawn.

  He guesses that Fahd and Sadiq argued as usual, so I respond, “Pretty much.”

  Spurred on by my near silence on the line, he starts to reassure me despite his own anxiety. “Don’t worry. You know Sadiq. Whenever he gets pissed off, he turns off his phone and makes himself scarce.”

  “And what about Fahd?” I know that Ayub’s worry drains him, but he remains calm and collected, making light of the situation to make it bearable.

  He forces a brittle laugh that pricks me. “He’s like a cat with nine lives, remember? What’s going to hurt him? You’ll see. You’ll find him in a café carping about his marriage.”

  I think of Fahd, the “stray cat” as Mama Hissa would say, with his childish face. I explode, swearing at them all. I curse myself. I curse Sadiq and Fahd, our miserable situation, and this godforsaken country.

  Ayub lets out a long sigh. “Take it easy.”

  “O God, give our Ayub here patience like the Prophet he’s named after.”

  “Don’t you worry about my patience. It seems like you’re the one who needs it!” Ayub finishes the call by ordering me to resume our broadcast and announce that today after sunset prayers there’ll be a sit-in in front of Al Arabi club in Mansuriya. “For the imminent civil war, to condemn today’s events. We’ve got to band together!” he says.

  He’s still calling it the imminent civil war, as if it hasn’t already been around for the past few years. My show airs at nine tonight, and I can’t stay here until then. I know: what I’ll do instead is air Fahd’s piece because now’s the time for it anyway. I’ve started to hate this broadcasting business of mine. The listeners hate my voice, too. I’ve become like the corpse-catcher cawing over the rubble, my name linked to death and destruction.

  I pull my chair in close to the board. I adjust the headphones on my ears, bringing my face close to the microphone after confirming that what’s being transmitted is reaching our website. I lower the volume of the patriotic song already playing, creating a musical backdrop for my voice. I close my eyes, thinking of Fahd’s face when he was still a boy. “Dear listeners, we apologize for the earlier disruption—we’ll now resume broadcasting, starting with the What’s New Today segment before the news bulletin at three o’clock.” I jump to the program’s theme song for a minute, tops. During that time, I prepare one of the poems that Fahd has recorded in his own voice, accompanied by himself playing the oud to one of Abdulkareem Abdulqader’s most famous songs. “Our friend apologizes for his absence from the show today,” I resume, “so on his behalf we’ll start it off with a poem that he prerecorded. A poem by Khalifa Al Waqayan.” I switch back to the theme song again. A text comes through from Ayub in the meantime: “Your voice is wavering, get a grip!” Fahd’s emotive voice comes to life, reciting the poem:

  “Glory to darkness

  To thieves stealing from the mouths of babes

  Stealing their power to speak

  Stealing away from their mother’s eyelids

  The appetite to dream.”

  I catch the flash of my phone. Ayub’s calling me again. I ignore it. Fahd’s voice cracks with emotion as he continues with his most exquisite recitation:

  “Pride is for arrows

  For burning bloodthirsty spears

  Wandering on paths

  Its yearning mirrored by

  Doves of peace.”

  My phone is blowing up with calls from Ayub that start to worry me. He follows up his call with a text: “Stop broadcasting the poem, NOW!” Fahd’s voice gets louder:

  “Victory is for the cadavers

  For those exiting the excavations of eras

  Their only lines, written on tombstones

  Their faces, features of stone.”

  Ayub stops calling. The screen doesn’t stay dark for long, though. It lights up. “Thank God, your father and I are now hearing your voice online.” Mom’s words are followed by a plea for me to stop being so obstinate. To come and do my work from London, and later return to Kuwait. Who are you kidding, Mom? Yourself or me? You know too well that when I leave a place I love, I never return. Another message from Ayub: “I’ll keep on calling. Put on a song and answer me!”

  “Victory is for nothingness

  For those walking in the spring funeral procession

  They are asleep when the world wakes up

  As if they were sheep.”

  After Ayub’s last message, Fahd approaches the end of the poem. I decide to pick up his call.

  His voice thunders through, accompanying Fahd’s emitting from the radio next to him. “Have you completely lost it? ‘Glory to Darkness’?”

  “Who should we be glorifying, then?” I respond with an iciness that surpasses even what Ayub is capable of. He asks me to stop the madness. My mental state, he stresses, should never dictate what I broadcast to listeners. I tell him it’s not my mental state but the state of the country on its last legs. He sarcastically hums a melancholy melody. “Can you hear me playing my violin for you right now?” he says, before continuing in thinly veiled anger. “Sadiq is right about you. You’re such a drama queen.” Fahd’s voice fades out on the transmitter as he sums up:

  “Death to the pen

  To every quill and mouth

  When the springs of pain explode.”

  I go for a music break. On Ayub’s call I listen to Fahd’s voice, delayed by a few seconds from the playback in front of me. “The poem’s finished. That’s it,” I reassure him.

  His voice grows soft. “Now wasn’t the time to play it.”

  “And now’s not the time for the country to demand glory, like that song’s lyrics claim,” I say, my voice rising.

  He reminds me that the location of our headquarters is no longer a secret.

  “The government can’t protect us. We’re being watched. You can’t ignore the threats from the religious groups.”

  “Don’t forget the religious communities who do support us,” I remind him.

  “The loudest voice always wins,” he answers.

  I respond, upset, by asking how he knows that they’re coming to burn the Fuada’s Kids HQ.

  He repeats the name, stressing each letter, “F . . . u . . . a . . . d . . . a. Just a little while ago, someone from one of those religious groups commented online on our name. ‘How can a nation prosper with a woman in charge?’ They think we’re women!” He bursts out laughing.

  “This isn’t someth
ing to laugh about!” I yell.

  He ignores my rebuke and proceeds to ask what’s new with the manuscript for my novel, Inheritance of Fire.

  “Nothing.”

  “Use an alias. Just think about it,” he suggests for the umpteenth time.

  If only he knew that contrary to my usual practice of changing all my characters’ names, his name was actually one of the ones mentioned in the novel. Oh, Ayub, if only you knew that you feature as yourself in my novel, would you still advise me to use a pen name?

  Ignoring my silence, he asks me not to forget the three o’clock news bulletin. He’s going to prepare a brief report for the Al Rai newspaper about today’s clashes, all in line with the censorship regulations. He’s then going to email me the whole thing to broadcast. He’ll come back later to prep a report on the probable Mansuriya demonstration to post on our website.

  “Ayub, do you still believe that what we’re doing is worthwhile?”

  “More than ever. The name Fuada’s Kids, which we used to make fun of a few years ago, is now a slogan that people use in the streets. But frankly, someone else should be asking such a question. I’m asking you to leave the microphone and make use of the national songs if you’re in a bad mood. Stay away from the provocative poetry. You know exactly what I mean. Even if we were free from the government censors cracking down on us, we’d still have the rest of the country to answer to.”

  National songs. One listens to those damned national songs and wonders, What nation are they singing about? I hang up. I continue with the What’s New Today segment, sometimes in my voice, and sometimes with voice recordings prepared earlier by Fahd. I text Dhari, asking him to come and finish what’s left of today’s show. I need to leave as soon as possible.

  Dhari calls me. “Hey, ma-man!” he responds with a stutter. “I was listening to What’s New Today. You sounded emotional.” He hesitates. “But g-good for you; it was a good episode.”

  I wonder what he thought of the poetry, knowing full well that he’s conservative when it comes to that type of stuff. “Could be taken a-any which way,” he always says. Surfacing from my internal dialogue, I pay attention to his warning at the end of the call. He asks me to take the stairs if I’m planning to leave the station after the sunset prayer because, according to him, the government is going to resume rolling blackouts in some areas this evening to force people to stay at home. The government is afraid that the situation will escalate. Poor Dhari. Blackouts have always plagued him. Many years have passed since his father’s death, and he still hasn’t been able to conquer his fear of the dark. I’ve seen him humbly praying, “Dear God, please ease the darkness of the grave for us.” I reassure him that I won’t stay here until sunset anyway. “You, sheikh, are going to come now to finish broadcasting the show.”

  From the lilt in his voice, it seems he’s smiling. He’s the one always insisting that his flowing beard doesn’t mean that he’s a religious elder. “I’m ready. Just let me get changed.”

  “Take a route other than the bridge between Surra and Jabriya,” I alert him. He thinks I’m warning him about the sour odor of the Bayn River.

  “Oh, m-man, no one can smell that except for you and A-Ayub—you guys are de-delusional!”

  It wasn’t the smell that made me ask Dhari to avoid taking the bridge, but rather his name as printed on his ID and his thick beard, which will guarantee him safe passage through the first checkpoint but will inevitably get him in trouble at the second one. If I tell him this, he’ll take the bridge just to make a point. Ever since I pleaded with him to get a fake ID, one without his tribal affiliation, he’s been able to keep out of trouble at the checkpoints on some occasions. But he’s always justified when he says, “My dad did it before and no fake name helped him.” He confirms that even with the best of names it doesn’t always work. I think of my novel that’s in the process of being published, Ayub’s advice that has me stuck somewhere between my name and a pen name, and the calls from the Lebanese publisher, who suggests I cut out four chapters to avoid the book being banned. I drive away my thoughts.

  “Don’t forget to bring a flashlight and some candles,” I remind him.

  “Why?” he asks as if he has forgotten what he just told me.

  “M-man, the government is going to flip the switch!” I mimic his stutter jokingly.

  “Glory to da-darkness!” he says and ends the call with a laugh.

  Just as the resonant afternoon call to prayer rises up, giving me peace, the boom of a nearby explosion pierces my eardrums—the apartment floor shakes, my ears are ringing, and there are cracks in the window facing me. The rat-a-tat of gunshots follows. I find myself on all fours. How is the sky falling down even though a cease-fire has been announced? God have mercy. I crawl toward the wall. Leaning against it, I crane my neck to the window that overlooks the street. Even through the web of cracks, I can clearly see a thick dark cloud of smoke rising and the corpse-catcher excitedly fidgeting.

  Dhari calls me, scared to death. He’s just left his house. “Did you hear the explosion?”

  I tell him I did and that I see now what it’s left behind: smoke and dust rising behind one of the towering buildings.

  “Good Lord! Unbelievable. It was s-so loud, I thought it happened here in Al Faiha.”

  I beg him not to go any farther than Al Faiha, to turn around, go home, and lock himself in. Things have gotten a whole lot more complicated. He insists on coming, saying that he’s already taken the Fourth Ring Road and is about to enter Jabriya. Tunisia Street is just a stone’s throw away. More gunshots. I don’t hang up until he gives in.

  “Okay, okay, I’m on my way back home now. Don’t you dare leave HQ!”

  I call Sadiq and Fahd again. Nothing new: still no response. I dial Ayub’s number; the lack of a response doubles my worry. The wailing sirens of fire trucks and ambulances break through the continuous gunfire. My phone lights up with a call from an unknown number. The +44 code tells me it’s from London. I don’t pick up. I wander through the apartment, pacing back and forth like someone in a hospital corridor waiting for news on a relative in the ICU. If only it were like that instead, it’d be easier to handle. With every catastrophe that’s heaped upon our heads, we hope that it’ll be the worst and last one. But disasters are funny things: they come charging at us one after the other, eating our hopes alive. They rub their middle finger in the face of this alleged cease-fire.

  THE FIRST MOUSE: SPARK THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  (Chapter 6 removed by the publisher)

  Chapter 7

  Khala Aisha sits in a corner of the living room, correcting her students’ notebooks with her red pen. Her face is taut, tight as a rubber band. I don’t know how her students survive her class; the woman never laughs or cries. Sadiq, Fahd, and I are lying stretched out on the floor, with our hands cradling our heads and our feet resting on the small wooden cupboard under the TV. Fawzia is on the couch, half-reclined, while Tina sits in her usual spot on the first step of the staircase. We are watching an episode of Rest in Peace, World, which Fawzia recorded earlier. We love this TV series more than any other, our chests swelling with pride because it was shot in Surra, where we live. The three of us delight in pointing to different spots whenever we stroll on Tariq Bin Ziyad Road, which cuts through the dusty, sprawling plots: why, there were Hayat Al Fahad and Suad Abdullah, the two heroines of the show, in a scene from the last episode, running away from the mice, seeking refuge in the asylum! Fahd suggests a new name for the street: instead of Tariq Bin Ziyad Road, he proposes Tariq Uthman Street, after the show’s producer.