Mama Hissa's Mice

by Saud Alsanousi

  THE SECOND MOUSE: BLAZE THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 3

  Your country, which you had always known as Kuwait, transformed in a matter of days to the nineteenth province of the “glorious” Iraqi Republic. A Kuwaiti citizen you were no longer. As the TV and radio declared, since the first week of the occupation, you had become an Iraqi citizen of “the reclaimed” Al Nida province. A province that had been wrongly cut off by the colonizers and had now rightfully returned to the bosom of the larger nation, thanks to God and the determination of the diligent soldiers now in power. “God is great,” Mama Hissa would utter when faced with the claims on the radio. Kuwait had been in the midst of a revolution; that’s how the Iraqi media painted it in the first few days, using to their advantage the Monday demonstrations protesting the emir’s dissolution of parliament. Apparently, the leaders of the revolution had asked their brotherly Republic of Iraq for help. In less than a week, the revolution became the young Republic of Kuwait, its government headed by a Kuwaiti citizen on TV cloaked in a bisht, shaking hands with the Iraqi president. Mama Hissa cradled her head. “O God, land him in trouble!” she prayed. At the end of the first week, the alleged revolutionists announced the accession of the young republic to the mother republic.

  ’Am Saleh, on the evening of the first day, Thursday, August 2, 1990, came out of his isolation after spending hours in his room, boosting his morale, giving himself hope: things would go back to normal in a couple of days. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that you had no idea what was going on. ’Am Saleh himself didn’t understand anything. On the second day of the occupation, the new regime blocked all international communication, leaving only domestic lines active. On the third day, Tina refused Mama Hissa’s offer to accompany her to the Sri Lankan embassy, preferring to stay with “Big Mama.” “Bint halal, what a good woman, better than the rest,” the old lady would say of Tina, while she grumbled, “Strangers are not respected in a strange land.” She ridiculed those in a rush to leave Kuwait. “Chickens,” she called them. Her words took you back to another time, to two years before, sitting under the sidra, hearing about how chickens gave up on their broken eggs, leaving them to mice that didn’t dare to approach the cage unless the egg yolk or egg white was visible. On the fourth day, your khal Hassan called up to let you know that he was making arrangements to get his family across to Saudi Arabia by land. You being his sister’s son, he was responsible for you.

  “Pack a small bag,” he ordered. “Tomorrow at dawn.” Sudden sorrow wore you out. How were you going to leave Surra? What if returning became impossible? Fahd simply asked one bewildered question swathed in sadness: “You’re leaving us?” You winked at him, indicating for him to follow you to your house. Mama Hissa had no control over something like this. No interventions in such exceptional circumstances. You had made up your mind.

  You and Fahd reached your house. It looked mournful as it always did. You bent down in front of your parents’ room.

  “Why?” Fahd wondered.

  “The key!” You pulled back a corner of the carpet by their door. You found a cluster of keys. Fahd looked at you, not questioning what their room had to do with you packing. He was humming softly, veiling his sadness. That’s what he always did when he wanted to cover up how he felt. “The key’s with the blacksmith,” Fahd sang. You tried one key after the other. You opened the bedroom door. You turned to your friend and replied, “The key’s with me.” He jumped on to the last words of the song, “And rain comes from God.” You rifled through the drawers. You searched for your passport among your father’s certificates, shares, and banknotes.

  Looking at Fahd, you asked him where to hide it. His wide smile preceded your suggestion. Right after you both arrived back at Mama Hissa’s, Fahd crouched down below the sidra, like a cat shitting, and dug a hole two hands wide. You were worried about the easily provoked saluki in his corner, his yapping getting louder. Fahd dropped the plastic bag containing your passport. He then filled the hole back up with his feet. After completing his mission, he dusted off his palms. He wiggled his butt at the angry dog, and let out a “Meeeeow!” Despite your worry, you both roared with laughter, not fully grasping the danger of what was going on. Slowly, you both walked the length of the hallway to the living room. You nudged Fahd, indicating with your chin the now-empty wall—hanging plants framing the bare square between the two vases with peacock feathers. “The president is gone!” you declared.

  “And the newspaper clippings,” he added. Khal Hassan, who had come with his son, Dhari, in tow, searched your house high and low. He decided to travel on ahead without you. He wrapped you in his arms and squeezed tight. His thick beard grazed your cheek. “I’ll get the family across and then come back to Kuwait.”

  You exchanged looks with Fahd, suppressing your smiles. Your uncle left, entrusting you to the care of your old neighbor until he returned. You and Fahd sprinted back to the bottom of the sidra to extract your passport. You couldn’t agree on exactly where it was buried. Neither of you could find it. You raised your head and peered up at the branches, clapping your palms together and murmuring, “May you be happy in your home.”

  The jinn of the sidra tree must have seized your passport. After five days, you found out that your uncle had made his way to his house, thanks to another Kuwaiti family, after his van had been seized at the Al Nuwaiseeb Iron Gate. He invited you over to his place. You refused. He then left you to your own devices in the care of the old lady, and said that he would drop by at some point. Fahd’s uncles decided to leave Kuwait and called up their sister, saying, “Aisha! Come with us to Saudi Arabia.” ’Am Saleh refused. “No one’s leaving,” he insisted. Mama Hissa rejoiced at his response. ’Am Saleh’s wife pressured him, asking why. He responded that the borders weren’t safe. The old lady swatted the air in front of her face and pulled at her lips, dispirited. On the sixth day, the crisis was still all around you. You clung to Mama Hissa. She was carrying her transistor radio. There was statement after statement about the Iraqi leadership. The news indicated Iraq’s intention to pull out after stabilizing the situation and handing over the reins to those who had cooperated with the Iraqi army; the Iraqi media dubbed them “Kuwaiti rebels.” The old lady shook her head in disbelief. “Don’t look for truth on the lips of liars!” The seventh day: ’Am Saleh acted in accordance with information he received through phone calls; the occupying soldiers were storming houses, and they would go as far as entering bedrooms to search for contraband or whomever they were looking for. Based on this intel, he had a word with Khala Aisha and Fawzia. The man of the house decided that the women must remain in their hijab and dara’a, even when asleep.

  He made no effort to hide his anxiety. “I’m worried about the women, Mother.” You remember how both his wife and his sister had to wear their wide long-sleeved dara’a even when they were going into their rooms to go to bed. Khala Aisha was in a hijab all the time, while Fawzia kept her hair in a tight braid. Neither one wore perfume, makeup, or any sort of adornment.

  You remember how concerned Mama Hissa was. “Whoever wants to”—she began, then abruptly stopped and continued, skipping over the forbidden word—“a long thawb or hijab won’t hold them back.”

  The eighth day: Fahd and you made your way out to see who was outside. A man, a distressed Kuwaiti, stood in front of you. He looked like he was in his thirties, with a bushy mustache and a short coal-black beard. He wore a tatty ghutra on his head. His face was familiar; maybe he was from the neighborhood. He extended his hand out to Fahd, handing him a plastic bag from the central Surra co-op supermarket.

  “What’s this?” Fahd asked him.

  “Bread.” The man smiled. “Bread and cheese, so you don’t have to go out.” He then turned on his heel before Fahd queried, “Who are you?”

  “Jasim,” he answered on his way back to his car. He opened the trunk and took out another bag, making his way toward your house. He turned to both of you
and clarified, “Jasim Al Mutawwa.” He pressed the doorbell. You let him know that your house was empty. “They’re traveling.” He gave your house the once-over, before making his way to ’Am Abbas’s home. You both went back inside. ’Am Saleh scolded you both. “Don’t ever take anything from a stranger!”

  “He’s not a stranger,” Fahd protested. He said that he’d seen his face somewhere, maybe at the supermarket, or at the mosque, or on the dusty plots where we played soccer.

  Fawzia fishes out a leaflet from between the loaves. Her brother snatches it and then reads it. “Can we go?” she asks him, hopeful. The leaflet calls for people to come join a demonstration. “To your room!” he yells at Fawzia, his finger pointed. She scrambles to her room, sobbing. He crumples up the leaflet in his palm and rushes to the censer to burn it.

  “Jahhal,” he called them. Children who didn’t know or understand the serious implications of their actions. He turned to his mother after the paper had burned to ash and said, “What good will it do to pick a fight with the occupying forces?” Mama Hissa was seated cross-legged on the ground behind her sewing machine, on her lap a Mackintosh’s sweets tin in which she kept her spools, needles, pins, and thumbtacks. While sewing up a tear in her prayer thawb, she smiled a mysterious smile that meant something or other to her son. His face flushed. He reminded her, as if justifying himself, of the young photographer who had been slaughtered at the Rumaithiya protest the day before. The old woman stopped spinning her sewing machine.

  Without looking at him, she asserted, “God is our protection.” ’Am Saleh’s face twisted in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. He made his way to the staircase, intending to make amends with Fawzia. He was certain, though, that she wouldn’t open her bedroom door for him.

  He turned to you. “Come with me.” Once outside her room upstairs, he whispered, “Go on, knock on the door.” You were just about to do so, when ’Am Saleh grabbed your hand. He pressed his ear against the door and listened. Fawzia was reciting the Quran softly with a heartrending timbre to her voice. ’Am Saleh sighed as he smiled. He told you she was reciting the Quran the same way Sheikh Bin Abidan, the imam of their old mosque, used to. Her recitations stopped. She didn’t say anything else. He prodded you to call out, “Fawzia!” She didn’t respond. You pressed your lips to the gap between the door and its frame. “Aunt Fawzia . . . open up.” She opened the door. She looked at you, irritated by your deception. ’Am Saleh strode forth, his face peaceful. You were right behind him until he put his hand on your chest and ordered, “Enough, run along now!” He shut the door. You were almost halfway down the stairs when you heard his bellows from above. Mama Hissa left her sewing machine, making her way to Fawzia’s room. She leaned her weight against the banister as she mounted the first steps. Her son appeared at the top of the staircase, waving some folded papers. “This girl is ridiculous!” The old woman didn’t say a word. “She’s stuck Kuwaiti flags on her closet! Pictures of the emir! And the crown prince!”

  He found some matches in the drawers of the TV console in the living room and took them into the courtyard.

  On the ninth day, London and Monte Carlo radio are the only two reliable news sources, as the occupying forces have taken over the TV stations. We are on tenterhooks while listening to the Arab nations’ stances during the emergency summit in Cairo. Waiting for them to condemn or stand beside the Kuwaitis, all in limbo between gratitude and pain. Countries that vote for. Countries that vote against. Countries that did neither.

  The following morning, the two brothers Abu Taha and Abu Naiel dropped by. “Dad! The zalamat are here to see you,” Fahd called out. ’Am Saleh looked at his son quizzically. Fahd shed some light by sharing that they were the Palestinians who owned the house at the end of the road. Baffled, ’Am Saleh asked what they wanted.

  Fahd pulled at his lips and shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know?”

  The two of you followed ’Am Saleh to the courtyard entrance, where he met the two visitors. He appeared fearful. “What?”

  “Here? At the door, you want us to spill the beans?” Abu Naiel reproached.

  ’Am Saleh stayed quiet. Abu Taha intervened. “There’s no problem with that; you’re right to keep us out here. We’ve just come to tell you . . . we’ve gone to all the neighborhood houses—”

  “The other houses in the neighborhood aren’t my business,” ’Am Saleh interrupted. “What now?”

  A car drove up and stopped by their sidewalk. Fahd recognized the driver and said, “Dad, that’s Jasim Al Mutawwa.”

  ’Am Saleh got wound up about the arrival of the man who had brought the bread, the cheese, and the pamphlet. He pretended to ignore what Fahd had said. He turned to Abu Taha. “What else? Are we done? Spit it out!”

  Abu Taha nodded sympathetically. “What you’ve heard on the news about Palestinians doesn’t apply to us. You know how long we’ve been living here. What’s happening to you is exactly what we’re going through.”

  “I don’t know anything. Is that all?”

  Abu Naiel chimed in, “Okay, we’re done here; we get it.” He signaled to his brother that they should get a move on. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  Abu Taha gripped his brother’s arm. “Hold on.” He looked at ’Am Saleh. “No one from the neighborhood has stopped us being here. Our children are like yours; they don’t know any other home. They’d actually die if—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with me,” ’Am Saleh cut him off again. He turned his back on them and firmly shut the black courtyard door behind him. He opened it once more when the bell rang. It was Jasim Al Mutawwa with a bag of bread. “We don’t need your food!” he barked gruffly before the man could get a word in.

  Jasim held out the plastic bag to Fahd’s dad, letting him know that between the loaves of bread was a sum of money supplied by the Kuwaiti government now in exile.

  THE SECOND MOUSE: BLAZE THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 4

  Swarms of flies invaded your neighborhoods—a result of the garbage bags piled up on the sidewalks. The flies stole into the houses. Shiny, big, sticky blue flies whose buzzing could be heard from a distance. Stubborn flies that didn’t pay any mind to Mama Hissa’s “Kish! Kish!” The number of stray cats also multiplied even though fish wasn’t being cooked anymore. We all began to get used to the seemingly ubiquitous kittens and stopped chasing them away. Pungent smells became the hallmark of our area. After the foreign sanitation workers had fled, we waited for the young men from the neighborhood, volunteers, to remove the garbage and burn it at a faraway location.

  Water was no longer abundantly available as it once was. It was cut off, always at a different time. We all economized when drinking or washing up. You cleaned your body every few days with moist towels. You, Sadiq, and Fahd teased one another about how smelly you were. Your necks and knees became black with grime. “Filthy is what we are now, and so is the country,” Mama Hissa commented as she pinched her nose whenever any of you passed by her. The times when water did flow in the bathroom, she would call the three of you to remove your clothes, but keep your underwear on. She rubbed your bodies with red soap or Nablus soap, grumbling as the black water coming off you ran over the white marble tiles. “You boys are dripping in oil!” She had filled up all the large kitchen pots and pans, as well as the bathtubs, with drinking water in anticipation of the long periods of time with no water at all. The old lady didn’t seem troubled about the water shortages, except when it came to Ikhlasa, Sa’marana, and Barhiya, the three Kayfan girls. “I’m worried that the palms are thirsty.” You didn’t understand how her brain worked: strict faith and rigidity toward the occupied nation, and a continual worry about the palm trees being thirsty.

  The mice no longer only hovered around the chicken coop beneath the sidra; they had snuck into the house as well. Whenever you reclined on the living room sofas, you smelled a sour soil smell, unsure of where it came from. Even though you never saw a sing
le mouse indoors, Mama Hissa confirmed that whenever she removed the couch cushions, she found small dark-brown pellets the size of rice grains. She’d say it was the mice; she didn’t have to see them in the flesh to know they were among us. You remembered her promise and reminded her, “When are you going to tell me the story of the four mice?”

  She pretended to be busy cleaning. “Tonight.”

  Night fell like any other night. She removed her dentures. In the darkness of her room, she started the story as she did every story, “Zur Ibn Al Zarzur, illi ’umro ma kadhab wa la halaf zur.” Zur the sparrow’s son, who never lied or bore false witness. Her snoring preceded the rest of the story.

  The unfamiliar circumstances brought you closer than ever to one another.

  The doorbell never seems to stop ringing. A number of youth volunteers from the Surra co-op walk up and down the streets, asking what families need, and accordingly hand out bread, baby formula, diapers, and whatever else they can to keep families from having to leave their homes.

  “Every day bread, bread, and more bread. Isn’t there any fish?” Fahd complains.

  “No, you spoiled brat,” Mama Hissa answers. She laments how things are now: barbed wire and trenches running parallel to the Gulf for the length of Kuwait’s coastline. She gestures toward the neighbor’s house and speaks of how ’Am Abbas’s boat hasn’t budged since this disaster befell you.

  One day, Fahd and you stood under the sidra, scattering seeds to entice the pigeons and starlings. “Ta’! Ta’!” you both beckoned. The birds didn’t budge. You didn’t understand why the pigeons felt at ease with Mama Hissa but not with you two.

  “Mama Hissa’s voice is different,” Fahd offered. The doorbell rang. Both of you raced toward it. There was a huge garbage truck being driven by a masked man with dark sunglasses. Another brown young man, who looked like he was in his mid- to late twenties, stood close to your door, his ghutra carelessly wrapped around his head. “You guys have any trash?”