Mama Hissa's Mice

by Saud Alsanousi

  You remember your father in front of the mosque, in heated discussion with ’Am Saleh, making no effort to mask his concern over the fraught relationship between the two countries and what could happen in the future. He abruptly brought up how the Iraqi government postponed its efforts to resolve the simmering border issues, despite agreeing to draw its Iraqi borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Your mind wandered, drifting to the maps drawn on wax paper in your geography classes.

  “You have an explanation?” your father asked your neighbor. Your eyes darted between them, listening as the images of school maps swirled around in your head, Kuwait appearing small and barely visible.

  ’Am Saleh raised his voice. “Iraq isn’t overstepping its boundaries. Enough with the rumors, akhi!”

  Not a word from your father.

  ’Am Saleh wasted no time in reminding him of the emir’s trip to Iraq—a couple of months before that day—and how Saddam had warmly received him before conferring on him the Order of the Two Rivers, Wisam Al Rafidain. “I think you get what I’m saying,” ’Am Saleh concluded. You remember your father not responding, shaking his head, making his way to his car, frowning. You remember the questions you threw at him during the ride home, though he didn’t pay you any mind. You asked him why all parties couldn’t just agree on redrawing the borders. The space between his eyebrows grew, his astonishment not hiding his crack of a smile.

  “Re-demarcation? And what does a ten-year-old boy know of such things?”

  His mistake exasperated you. “Twelve!”

  He didn’t react. He busied himself, listening raptly to the radio. You repeated your questions. “Uff! You never stop asking questions!” You didn’t understand why your questions made everyone clam up. You didn’t understand your father or ’Am Saleh. Not only did Fahd’s dad believe that the Iraqi president was the “Guardian of the Eastern Gate,” but apparently he was also convinced that since the emir had dissolved the parliament, obstructed the constitution, and imposed in 1986 a mandatory governmental review of all newspapers before they went to print, parliament wouldn’t be resurrected in Kuwait except through Iraqi means or pressure from Saddam.

  This fascination with Saddam infected Mama Hissa, too. She wasn’t concerned in the least by the photo on her hallway wall until Saddam made his statement four months earlier, that he would burn down half of Israel. You remember your question to her about how she was the one who’d said the only thing you’ll get from fire is ashes. Pleased, she responded that fire was good if it left behind Jewish ashes. ’Am Saleh intervened, trying to explain the difference between Jews and Israelis. She cut him off. “They’re all the same!”

  Two days after Abu Sami and his family had left, or maybe three days after, a rumor circulated through the neighborhood about why they had to travel, even though they did it every summer. It was said that his wife had received a call from her country’s embassy, urging her to make haste and leave Kuwait. It was also said that a number of other embassies had relayed the same to their citizens in Kuwait. “Rumors . . . just rumors,” ’Am Saleh kept insisting. He reassured the women in his household, relying on the foreign minister Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad’s statement: “The Iraqi-Kuwaiti problem is a passing summer cloud.” And you, beside him, seated in front of the TV, kept on asking questions that—according to him—weren’t suitable for a child to ask. He would answer unwillingly and you’d ask more. He’d fall silent. You’d ask again. He finally raised his voice, bellowing for the first time in your face. “Who do you think you are, asking such questions?” He asked why you didn’t just go on out with Fahd to the courtyard. You retracted your head between your shoulders, not saying a word. He left the living room in the direction of the hallway leading to the courtyard. He came back after a few minutes, understanding why you were still there, and in a soft voice said, “I’ve tied up the saluki.”

  THE SECOND MOUSE: BLAZE THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 2

  You were now their amana, someone they had to take care of properly, and so, the old lady didn’t let you sleep in Fahd’s room, far from her reach. Instead, she made space for you in a small corner of her room on a foam mattress on the ground below her bed, on top of a carpet, bright red like Fuada’s dress.

  Next to her bed was a small side table, on which rested heart, blood pressure, and diabetes pills; an alarm clock; and a glass of water with dentures plunged in. Nothing intrigued a boy of your age as much as staying in a room like hers, where everything was out of the ordinary for you: antique carpets; a brass bed and a tiger-patterned woolen blanket; a wooden comb; henna powder; lote tree soap; Nablus soap; a honey jar; dried figs; and three bags of dates from Barhiya, Sa’marana, and Ikhlasa. Expired saltine crackers and glass bottles filled with scents—you could make out cardamom pods, saffron, sticks of incense, and ripened aloewood fragrance. Other things you didn’t recognize, such as black stones and some tools that looked like they could possibly be for scraping dead skin from your heels. The air was heavy with a pervasive smell, most likely Vicks or Tiger Balm that Tina brought from Sri Lanka. There were other strong odors, pleasant ones, hovering like a cloud. Mama Hissa went to bed early and this annoyed you.

  On the second day, she allowed Fahd to share your mattress after much imploring from the both of you. But staying up late was still out of the question. She liked to split you up by placing a long pillow between you both. “Don’t remove it!” Her insistence took you by surprise.

  “You’re drawing boundaries now?” you pestered her.

  “Shut your mouth and go to bed!” she said in exasperation, as she lay down on the bed.

  You both stifled your laughter at her elephantine snoring that started up as soon as her head hit the pillow. In the dark you observed her movements. She would wake up sporadically, raise her head from the pillow, and then glance down at both of you before she slipped into sleep again. You didn’t understand the need for her over-the-top surveillance until the following night. You woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of her scolding her grandson: “Go to sleep, Fahd!” At once, he pretended to snore. She warned him that even in the dark she could see him. “Haram!” she upbraided him. He didn’t respond. For good measure, she reminded him that his hand would get pregnant if he kept on doing what he was doing.

  Since that night, you went back to sleeping solo and without the long pillow. The whole incident opened your eyes. Endless dreams disturbed you. You were afraid to shove your hand into the “secret” place, to discover an unexpected newness to your body and release wetness, as Sadiq had told you, that looked like egg whites. You feared that you’d be exposed, someone would catch you red-handed, exploring yourself, and that you’d be thrown out of the house—a man with a pregnant hand.

  The old lady’s snoring no longer makes you giggle. You toss and turn on your mattress, trying to steal a few minutes’ sleep whenever the snoring eases up. Mama Hissa’s words come back to you: “Even in the dark, I can see you.” You imagine her as a witch. An image of the glass with her dentures chattering away floats through your mind. Sleep refuses to settle on your eyes. You squeeze your pillow. You groan.

  “Go to sleep, for God’s sake!”

  You complain to her about how bored you are, how you can’t sleep.

  “Tomorrow I’ll tell you a story,” she promises.

  “I already know them all,” you say, certain that you had already memorized all the sidra jinn stories.

  She lowers her voice as you attentively listen to her air of mystery. “Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the four mice.”

  “Why tomorrow? Why not now?” Your fear of mice doesn’t deter your curiosity. She says it’s a long one. You get up, sitting on your haunches. You look straight at her in the dark and ask about the four mice. “What are their names?”

  “One mouse is called Jamr.”

  Embers. “And the others?”

  “Ramad,” she grumbles, naming one more.

  Ashes
. “There are still two left!” you hiss impatiently.

  Her snoring resumes again—she is fast asleep. You try guessing the remaining names. Mickey Mouse? Or maybe Jerry? Can’t be. You try to sleep. You count sheep. No good. You count mice. Sleep still evades you. The light coming in from under the bedroom door flickers. It catches your attention. Someone must be out there.

  “Mama Hissa!” I said.

  “Hmm?” she responds softly, her voice barely making it out of her throat.

  “There’s someone outside the door!”

  She turns to her side, her bed creaking from the weight of her movement. “You’re dreaming.”

  You scrutinize the door. The shadow in the light under the door is still dancing. “Wallah, there’s someone behind the door,” you confirm.

  “The saluki wouldn’t have let anyone past the courtyard door,” she reassures you. “Go to sleep, you scaredy-cat.”

  “There’s a shadow under the door. Look, look!”

  She lets out an impatient sigh. “It’s just Fawzia reminding me to take my medicine.”

  Since Fawzia doesn’t say anything from behind the door, you insist, “No, it’s not her.” You leave your mattress, making your way to the light switch. The old woman gets up, raising the blanket midway over her face. “Don’t! Go back to your bed.” She shrinks away from the light so that you don’t see her without her dentures, while she keeps repeating in a garbled fashion, “Over my dead body you’ll see me without my teeth!”

  You sit on the mattress, folding your legs under you, taking in the moving shadow under the door. You confirm that whoever is behind it, it definitely isn’t Fawzia or a thief.

  “Maybe it’s the mice,” Mama Hissa mumbles.

  You curl into a ball behind your blanket. You’re drowning in a sea of sweat. You curse the day you asked her to convince your dad to let you stay in Kuwait. You grasp at the fringes of sleep. You poke a leg out from under the blanket. You wiggle your sweaty toes, making space between them, to feel the air-conditioned air. You suddenly remember the mice and sharply retract your leg back under the blanket. Fuada’s voice explodes in your head, rising to a crescendo as she warns, “They’re coming; they’re coming!” Her voice disappears as soon as Fahd says from behind the door, in a voice just barely louder than a whisper, “Fajr prayers.”

  ’Am Saleh, Fahd, and you sat in a circle around the low dining table on the floor after your return from the mosque. Mama Hissa came in, holding a jug of milk, with Khala Aisha behind her, balancing the tray of food. Tina never got up at dawn. “Because she doesn’t pray like us!” Mama Hissa quipped to her daughter-in-law. You’d asked her a few years earlier, when both Tina and Florence were Christians, “Why do you like Tina and hate Florence?”

  “Tina’s a servant, and Florence is a Muslim man’s wife who doesn’t fear God! What if his children become Christians? You’re such a chatterbox, always asking such heavy questions,” Mama Hissa complained.

  The light before sunrise bathed the living room windows in a gray-blue hue. The place smelled of bread, broad beans, nakhi, and cardamom milk. The phone rang. “Let all be well, God,” Mama Hissa prayed before sitting down, harboring a bad feeling about the phone ringing at dawn. Fahd jumped to pick up the receiver.

  His mother turned to him, her face ashen. “My heart is aching; there’s nothing but disaster behind this call.”

  “Only God knows the future, you sham soothsayer,” Mama Hissa countered. ’Am Saleh put back some broad beans he had just taken out of the pot. All of you looked at Fahd expectantly. He returned the greeting. He nodded his head. He stretched out his hand with the receiver to his mother. “Uncle is asking about you.”

  Khala Aisha took the receiver, her eyebrows restless. Her lips trembled before she put the phone down, confirming, “Disaster!” She paused. “Kuwait’s gone!”

  You didn’t understand how Kuwait could be gone just like that: poof. And if so, where to?

  “The Iraqi army”—with her eyes trained on her husband in particular, she completed the news she’d just received—“has entered Kuwait!” Dukhool . . . entry—it was the only word you could come up with that day, while trying to digest the news; days passed before the word changed, growing and hardening into the bitter truth. Their “entry” became a “crisis,” the “crisis” an “invasion,” and the “invasion” an eventual “occupation.”

  Mama Hissa rambled on somewhat in denial about what the Iraqi president had done. “A change is going to come.” She rushed to take her medication. “Where’s the man who said he would burn down half of Israel?”

  You don’t remember anything that Khala Aisha said, or the stricken faces of everyone around you, asking what was to come. You don’t remember anything except for ’Am Saleh yelling at his wife, “Rumors! It’s just a rumor.” You wished you could seek refuge with Fawzia, who had withdrawn to her room, heartbroken by her brother’s decision after her high school graduation a few weeks ago. “No college for you,” he had determined.

  “The Iraqi army has entered Kuwait!” you yelled up to Fawzia. You looked over at ’Am Saleh, the word enter taking you back to half a year ago when he was humming Halla bilhajaiie, we welcome you. You looked at his wife, wondering just how she had predicted that the phone call would be bad news.

  After the sun rose, it didn’t take long for the news that Fahd’s father had so wished was hearsay to become a reality. Baghdad radio broadcasted statements, one after the other, as well as people ululating, joyful over Kuwait being freed. You all wondered: being freed from whom, though? On Kuwait National Radio, before the frequency was jammed, the voice of Yusuf Mustafa, the broadcaster, was unusually tremulous. “Here is Kuwait, you free Kuwaiti citizens, you Arabs in every place. Treason has bared its fangs, and tyranny has shown its claws.” The hours dragged on. The phone didn’t stop ringing. Your mother called from abroad, completely broken. She could barely string together the following words: “BBC news . . . Iraq . . . Kuwait . . . war . . . your khal Hassan will come get you and take you to Al Faiha. You have to stay at home with him, understood?”

  ’Am Saleh was fixated on the TV, as still as stone, his eyes blinking the only movement. The scene in front of you was at the base of the three Kuwait Towers downtown. There were men—their dishdashas were Kuwaiti, but their faces weren’t—yelling and performing the Iraqi hosa dance, just like you had for the Hitachi camcorder. They were there, welcoming the valiant soldiers that stood up to help those who had rebelled and demanded that they be freed from the brutal, tyrannical emir, or the Korah of Kuwait, as the Iraqi media would call him, after one of Pharaoh’s sinister ministers of yore. The Kuwaiti rebels welcome the most glorious Iraqi soldiers, read the yellow chyron at the bottom of the screen.

  You didn’t understand a thing. You just felt, and that was it. You felt something, but you weren’t sure what it was. The questions that were fizzing in your head died on your lips. You weren’t able to lock yourself away in a room like Fawzia, or plunge into prayer like Mama Hissa, or distract yourself by answering phone calls like Fahd, or remain stonelike and expressionless like Khala Aisha, or close your eyes and rave like Tina recalling images of bloodshed in the Tamil Tigers’ clashes with the Sinhalese government. You were just like ’Am Saleh: frowning while watching it all unfold on TV. You took in the faces around you. Thrumming of choppers loomed within earshot. You hoped that they were Kuwaiti helicopters, but they weren’t.

  A slight sense of reassurance filled you after you received somewhat confirmed news: the emir and the crown prince had left the Dasman Palace. They had reached Saudi Arabia. Your childlike memory recalled Fawzia’s grand dreams: graduating from university and shaking hands with the emir. What if their time away lasted longer than planned and was even further drawn out? What if the emir . . . ? You shook your head, dismissing the thought. No sooner had you all sighed with relief at the head of state safely reaching Saudi Arabia than a phone call came in and confirmed, “Sheikh Fahad Al Ahmad has been martyre
d at the Dasman Palace gates.” How was he murdered? Each story contradicted the next. What was corroborated is that he didn’t know his brother the emir had already fled. He had made his way to Dasman Palace for his brother’s sake. He had come to blows with the Iraqi Republican Guard outside of the gates before three bullets struck him down. Mama Hissa burst out sobbing. “The man’s gone!” She slapped her thighs in grief. Aisha wept for him. Fawzia wept for him. You recalled the last time you saw him on TV, the day of the Peace and Friendship Cup. The opening song about brotherhood echoed in your ears. Your head swam with questions. The weakness that overcame you and Fahd made you both look to ’Am Saleh for some kernel of strength, but he was running his thumb under his eyes, revealing the redness of his eyeballs, pretending to be fine. He shook his head defiantly at the news. “Maybe . . . maybe it’s all just a rumor.”