Mama Hissa's Mice

by Saud Alsanousi

  “Ayub! Thank God you’re here.” I rush to him, saying, “Don’t worry, it’s not confirmed, not a hundred percent.” He smiles. Tears draw tracks in the soot on his face. I smile back. I shake my head. “I didn’t see his face . . . maybe it’s not Dhari . . . he even smelled different, you know?”

  He looks at my face in surprise. I run my finger over my teeth. I remember my missing tooth. I ask him why he’s looking at me like that. He hugs me. He’s trembling.

  THE THIRD MOUSE: EMBERS THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 4

  Alone at home. It was the start of summer vacation in 1995. Ever since it became impossible for me to enter the Al Bin Ya’qub household and my father had purchased a large piece of land on the Abu Hayyan Al Tawhidi Street in Rawda to build a new house, my love for our house was greater than ever before. Rawda wasn’t more than a few minutes away from Surra by car, but I loathed being somewhere that wasn’t my own. Mom was at the market, getting her stuff together, like every year, before our trip to London. It didn’t even occur to me to try convincing her to allow me to stay in Kuwait, and there was no point trying to persuade my dad that I could be left behind . . . with whom? Two years before, I had asked her if I could stay behind. “By God, who raised the heavens, you can’t sit for a minute on your own!” she had answered. I gave in, even though the heavens had nothing to do with it. My dad was more preoccupied than ever building our new home. He was neither present nor important in my life anymore. It wasn’t because he was always away from the house, between the company and keeping an eye on the construction, but because he just couldn’t grasp what it meant for me to be uprooted from Surra. He would talk to me of the large diwaniya overlooking the courtyard and of the swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna, and ceramic steam room in the basement of our dream house. My indifference toward the blueprints of the new house that he would spread out in front of me bothered him. “Where do you want your room?”

  “Anywhere . . . does it matter?”

  His eyes flashed, his fury dammed by his two lips.

  That evening the house line rang. Aisha greeted me before she said, “Here, have a word with Fawzia.” My heart leapt upon hearing her name. It was the first time she had asked to speak with me since I’d been banned from their house, the reason being that I was now of legal age.

  Her voice came over the line with clear reproach. “Is that it, Katkout? You’ve outgrown us?” Despite the position that Fawzia held in my heart, the nickname “Katkout” irked me.

  I responded, remembering a claim that I was proud of, “I’m a man!”

  She let out a sigh before continuing, “You’re not a man—”

  “What?” I cut her off, wide-eyed.

  “You’re the king of all men.”

  I couldn’t control how much I pined for her and how I longed to read Ihsan Abdel Quddous’s novels in her room. “Fawzia, I miss you so much.” She didn’t let me finish what I wanted to say.

  She dove in. “You know what? If my eyesight came back for even one minute . . . I’d only want to see you.” She woke me up from the muteness that had struck me. “Katkout!”

  A loud laugh slipped out in spite of myself.

  “Has your mustache come in?”

  I felt the bristles of my mustache without answering.

  “Never mind Saleh. I spoke to him . . . It’s okay for you to come on back and read to me.” I asked her how she got him to agree. “He’s a lion when it comes to me,” she said, just as she always did. She chuckled, telling me that Aisha was the one who got him to change his mind because Fahd’s reading was absolutely atrocious and because Aisha read in a loud voice like a schoolteacher, and because I was seventeen and she was twenty-three. Changing the subject, she said, “My mother, God rest her soul, really loved you a lot.”

  I choked on my tears. “Me too.” I was tongue-tied. A wave of emotion washed over me.

  “Yallah, come over then,” she beckoned.

  I asked her to give me some time to get my plastic sword ready first. Her memory let her down. She asked me why the sword. I recalled an old scene. “So that we can parry. Me with my sword and you with your nose.”

  She restrained her laughter, coming across as angry as she exclaimed, “Katkout!”

  “I’m sorry, Fawzia.”

  “What?” Her voice grew louder.

  I caught myself. “I’m sorry, Auntie Fawzia.”

  7:15 p.m.

  Present Day

  The racket of fire engines, ambulances, and rescue cars falls away, leaving a silence in their wake and wisps of smoke mingling with the smoldering air and pools of water around the building. People disappear into their houses, fearful of the security men’s bullets that have now become legal after the sudden announcement of a curfew starting at seven o’clock. The darkness outside the building doesn’t look like the darkness inside. We stretch our hands out in front of us, as if we have been plunged into ink. We grope the walls, walking up the stairs to the tenth floor. Ayub notices my slow pace. “Are you limping?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  The whop-whop of helicopters sails through the area. The caw of the corpse-catcher sounds too close; its echo fills the place. Bullets pierce the silence outside. Ayub is in front of me, his phone’s screen light dissipating the darkness of the stairwell. I keep my phone in my pocket in case his battery dies before either Fahd or Sadiq calls. Ayub halts, sticks his hand in his pocket, and pulls out a bottle of cologne. He pours it in his palm. Bringing it up to his nose, he inhales it like an addict. He puts his hand out to me. I refuel on the scent before we keep going up. I fumble with the buttons on my phone and call Dhari. The phone is off.

  “Watch out,” Ayub whispers.

  I look on as the light from his phone reveals a body on the stairs that was hidden by the darkness. I bend over the body, searching for a possible ID, but there isn’t one. It’s the corpse of a man who appears to be in his early thirties, with thick-rimmed glasses. His arms are hugging papers to his chest. I grab one of them and ask Ayub to bring his phone closer. The letters read: Religion is a blindfold!

  “No wonder the medics let him be,” Ayub muttered. I shake the body; maybe he’s still alive.

  “Dead!” says Ayub.

  I bring my ear close to the man’s chest.

  “Dead,” Ayub repeats.

  He turns his phone light to the top of the stairs. I can just make out a body larger than an arm in height on the banister. We keep moving. It’s the huge corpse-catcher. I look at it up close for the first time. It’s just as people say: an eagle body, an owl head, and it’s crow-colored. It stares at the corpse behind us. Loud banging reaches our ears, its echoes suppressed. Ayub turns to me, pointing to the source of the sound. The elevator. My face lights up. Maybe it’s Dhari. I urge Ayub to hurry up before the darkness kills Dhari. Ayub doesn’t answer. We’re between the second and third floors. We go up to the door leading to the hallway between the flats. I run in the darkness toward the suspended elevator, the banging still going on.

  “Who’s there?” I yell.

  The voice of a girl responds from the upper floor, asking for help. Disappointment floods me. I turn my back on Ayub in the hallway. “It’s not Dhari,” I say to him as I return to the stairs.

  His calm voice behind me objects, “And the girl?”

  “It’s okay . . . The power will come back in the morning. She won’t die!”

  He grabs my arm. I turn to him and look at his face, visible in the light of his phone. I’m surprised by the confusion in his features. We’re unable to help ourselves. Why is it that he’s still endowed with chivalry? I ask him why he’s looking at me like I’m a criminal. I grab his hand, urging him to follow me up to the tenth floor. He pulls his hand away. “Have you lost it?” he yells at me.

  “You’re the one who has lost it!”

  I don’t give him a chance to say a word. I explode in his face. Maybe he’ll come to his senses. “Is she your sister
? Your daughter? Your relative?” His eyebrows furrow, criticizing my words. I, too, scrunch up my eyebrows disapprovingly. What have we got to do with the person stuck in the elevator? We are all still stuck in this place they call a nation! I yell in his face, “Wake up! Wake up!” The screen light dies in his hand. We plunge once more into the ink, the silence. A sudden pain on my left cheek is followed by a sound like a thunderclap that throws me to the floor. The young girl in the elevator is still crying out for help. Ayub runs to where the elevator is stuck. I rub my cheek with my hand to soothe the stinging pain. A whistling in my left ear pierces the silence of the place. Like a terrified mouse, I crawl toward the corner to find refuge. I’m shivering. I imagine Dhari’s final moments. The fire devouring him. Screaming in pain. Screaming in horror. Screaming, begging God to bring the rain or ease the darkness of the grave.

  The young girl bangs on the elevator door. Dhari, in my head, is pounding the locked apartment door as the flames lap up his dishdasha. His palms leave black marks on the door. He yells, “Rain! Rain!” The flames crackle. The girl in the elevator yells. Fuada yells, “Protect yourselves from the plague!” And as for me, I am the plague. I’m the one who brought all these disasters. Fahd and Sadiq, if only you two hadn’t followed me to the dusty plot. Dhari, if only I hadn’t asked you to come. You came because of me. You died because of me. Your voice plays back to me, I hear it garbled on the radio. Oh God, oh God. I cover my face with my hands. I moan. I weep. Ayub leans over me. I don’t know how long I’ve been rambling and hallucinating. He clasps my hands and removes them from my face. He carries a flashlight in one hand. The other is wrapped around the slim, black-robed girl from the elevator. A young girl. She looks about nine. Ten at most. Hair unruly. She looks at me while pushing away the locks covering her wide eyes. “Uncle,” she says before parting her pink lips to ask, “are you guys all Fuada’s Kids?”

  I look at Ayub. I can just about make out his smile. The girl starts telling her story. Three days before, masked men in black stormed her house. They dragged her father across the floor before thrashing him in front of his daughters because of his involvement with a group violating the emergency laws. It happened one day after his release from the Tahrir detention center. She is the oldest daughter of three, whose mother died in the Avenues Mall bombing three years earlier. “Ummi went to God . . . but my father . . .” She says neighbors were looking after her sisters during the three days she spent on the banks of the Bayn River, calling out for her father. She heard that all those who’d disappeared since the start of the war had settled at the bottom of the river. “But my father never answered.” A policeman had carried her to our headquarters so we could broadcast news of her missing father; maybe someone had seen him somewhere other than on the bottom of the Bayn River. My face blanches as I look at Ayub. He shakes his head, confirming what he has always feared. Our headquarters aren’t secret anymore. The girl says the policeman warned her not to leave the building or go out at night. She ends her tale with the same question, “Uncle . . . are you both Fuada’s Kids?”

  We’re sons of bitches, I say to myself. Which face should I show her, when I only possess a weak one? It doesn’t correspond to the young girl’s expectation of what Fuada’s Kids should look like. I skip her question with a question of my own.

  “Hissa,” she answers.

  How can the smell of oud accompany a name like this, wafting here despite the stench of burning and decay? “Yes, honey . . . we’re Fuada’s Kids.” I choke on my words.

  “Which one are you?”

  “This here is the writer,” Ayub responds, smiling. She comes closer to me. She turns to Ayub and takes the flashlight from him. She flashes the light onto the palm of her hand, showing me the drawing of a crossed-out mouse. “I really love you all so much.”

  I kiss her small palm. “And we love you . . . Hissa.”

  THE THIRD MOUSE: EMBERS THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 5

  “Leave her door open,” Saleh said. I climbed the stairs with Fahd to Fawzia’s room. I was unusually nervous in the Al Bin Ya’qub household. I felt like a stranger, not as if I was in the home of my sweetest memories. Even Mama Hissa’s twin, in its tatty abaya in the corner of the living room, didn’t help me overcome these feelings. Nothing in me moved, except for the lump that I thought I had swallowed over the past five years since our old neighbor’s passing. I had just crossed the bedroom threshold onto the floral carpet when I saw Fawzia sitting bolt upright in her chair. Even Fahd’s gaze started darting between us both, while he was moving his hands as if he were playing the oud. He fluttered his eyelids dramatically. He sang a song that for him resembled the colors of the rainbow: “I saw you; I saw you. My heart trembled; my patience wavered.” Fawzia’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling, lacking in sight but full of tears.

  She smiled, chastising her nephew for his song selection. “You could only think of ‘I saw you’?”

  Fahd responded that the song wasn’t for her. He threw a lingering glance my way. “It’s your turn.”

  Fawzia responded instead with the words of another Abdulkareem song without singing it. “Even my eyes, what good are they, if they can’t see you?” She said Fahd wasn’t the only one who memorized Abdulkareem’s songs. Her nephew applauded her, his lips stretched by a wide smile. She extended her palms in another direction from where I was standing.

  I rushed toward her with my hand ready to greet her. “How are you, Fawzia?”

  “Welcome, my brother; welcome, sight of my eyes.”

  Fahd kept on singing mockingly all the while, moving his hands, strumming the air. “I’ve seen you . . . My mind’s yearning . . . My color changed and my pulse stopped.”

  As I held her palm in mine, I saw my reflection in a now-meaninglessmirror in Fawzia’s room. The description in Fahd’s song matched me completely. I heard within me an Abdulkareem song other than the ones that Fawzia and Fahd had already sung. “She was with me, all life long, as close as an eye and its eyelashes . . . She was with me since childhood, a love that was written.”

  “Abdulkareem sings for me alone,” Fahd used to say. In that moment I discovered that Abdulkareem sang for all of us. His voice was no longer too grown-up. He had become more my age, or maybe it was I who’d grown up like him.

  The presence of four chairs, instead of two, caught my attention. It wasn’t long before Hawraa joined us, on the pretext of visiting Fawzia, and occupied the fourth chair. Her father was traveling, accompanying her grandmother to Jordan, a land conspiring between two lands, each one forbidden to the other, where relatives arrived from Kuwait and Iraq to see one another. Each time, Mama Zaynab would return with less desire to see her family but a stronger longing for the soil that she hadn’t set foot on for more than five years. I didn’t express surprise at Mama Zaynab’s journey to meet her family in Jordan, even though Sadiq claimed that his grandmother had traveled to see her family in Al Ahsa. Hawraa occupied the chair in front of Fahd. “We’re missing Sadiq,” I said, despite my certainty that there was no way to get him here, he who wasn’t interested in entering an Al Bin Ya’qub household when it was no longer open to all of us; even for me, it was only by sleight of hand. I had made a pit stop at Al Budur Bookstore before coming here, carrying the novel that Abu Fawaz had recommended, Holes in the Black Robe by Ihsan Abdel Quddous.

  Fahd didn’t miss a beat when he saw the novel in my hands. “Like the holes in Mama Hissa’s twin’s abaya!”

  Fawzia furrowed her eyebrows and sighed deeply. “God rest her soul.” She asked what we missed most about her. Many things, we all said. “Like what?”

  Hawraa responded that she didn’t actually miss her that much, because ever since she was a child she felt that Mama Hissa and Bibi Zaynab were one and the same. She stammered before repeating the end of her sentence, replacing “Bibi” with “Mama.” To her, it seemed as if Mama Hissa were still alive. Fahd smiled as he stuck out his fingers like claws
. He said that he craved her tasty achar with mutabbaq samak. Fawzia drew a deep breath. She said that she missed the oud cologne fragrance in her mother’s milfah. The three of them looked at me, seeking an answer. I missed her stories of the sidra’s jinn, animals, talking trees, the Kayfan girls, the Canopus star, and the four mice.

  “The four mice?” Fahd interjected. He asked me if his grandmother had ever told me that story. I don’t know why I nodded. I bestowed upon myself a privilege that time hadn’t actually allowed Mama Hissa to give to anyone. Fahd’s interest piqued, he begged me to tell him what his grandmother had never told him.

  “Later!” I responded.

  Fawzia got involved, asking me to tell them some of Mama Hissa’s tales.

  “And what about Ihsan Abdel Quddous?” I asked her.

  “We’ll get to that later.”

  Their curiosity wasn’t satiated with the names of stories that we had all memorized. They took an interest, though, when I looked at Fawzia’s face and told them that I had memorized the second part of Shail’s story. The story of Canopus was the story of the most beautiful celestial body in the Milky Way. Irritation flashed across Fahd’s face, his gaze suspiciously flitting back and forth between his aunt’s face and mine.

  “Are you sure that my mother really knew about the Milky Way?” she asked.

  “She said that the teacher from the literacy course had taught it to them,” I answered quickly. I leaned on the back of my chair. I set the stage for my story: “Zur Ibn Al Zarzur, illi ’umro ma kadhab wa la halaf zur . . .” Fawzia’s face lit up.

  “When Shail, the Canopus star, disappeared into the southern sky, weighed down by his great sin, and Shuhab set off searching for him, carrying his lamp out in front, the moon heard their tale. It became a full moon, lighting for Shuhab the dark paths of the sky. Shuhab’s line of vision extended farther, enabled by the lamp he held. Days went by when Shuhab could be seen in the sky, in the form of a shooting star calling out to his friend. Whenever Shail appeared, Shuhab would rush after him, crossing the distance of months without rest, but every time it seemed he had finally reached his friend—after the course of many long months—his friend vanished. Shuhab visited the moon, and it was completely full and radiant, the most resplendent body in the whole of the Milky Way.”