Mama Hissa's Mice

by Saud Alsanousi

  When I asked my dad, he said I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand what? I asked. “A smart man grabs opportunity with both hands!” My father grabs . . . and . . .

  News of Dhari reached me soon after, from my mother. He spent most of his time hosted by state security, subject to endless interrogations surrounding the clashes that had erupted in the Um Al Hayman area between the security forces and an armed group affiliated with Al Qaeda, members of which were known on the street as valiant mujahideen by some extremist Sunnis and terrorists by others. Kuwait was on a loathsome security alert. And because Dhari already had a file with the Ministry of Interior, accusatory fingers were pointed at him every time such an incident occurred.

  Their investigation eventually took an interest in us because of Dhari’s connection to our diwaniya, which people were suspicious of. I was taken aback by the investigator’s questions regarding the reason for our get-togethers, our relationships with those we didn’t know personally, and the places that Dhari frequented. “Cigarettes, oud, PlayStation, and cards! That’s our diwaniya for you,” I told the officer before he released me. He said that my stories in the paper didn’t suggest that I had any hostile inclinations like my cousin. I didn’t know that they read my stories in the state security bureau! Dhari, who had brought Surra to Rawda, whose idea it had been for us to get together in the diwaniya, became the reason for its shutdown and the splintering of its pioneers.

  Sadiq and Ayub boycotted our space in the beginning, immediately after the discussions around the battle of the two sects in Iraq. “God damn whoever brought Dhari into the diwaniya!” they both said. Our diwaniya that had brought us together over video games and cards started to bring us together over rumors that each would tell from his point of view: the historical dispute between the Prophet’s companions and his relatives; if not for the stance of so-and-so, there wouldn’t be . . . the fall of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad because . . . And when I stepped in to end the dispute, I became a reactionary restricting their freedom of speech, and my diwaniya a suffocating place.

  Mom begged for me to stay out of trouble. “No diwaniya, no headache.” She said my friends were like sacks of coal, always leaving a stain on the dishdasha of the one carrying them. I wanted to embarrass her by reminding her that one of my friends was her nephew. She didn’t care. “All of them are the same!”

  Only Fahd remained, hesitating now and again whenever his desire to play the oud, forbidden in his house, dragged him over to the diwaniya. Hawraa had overcome her ordeal completely, except for her non-negotiable stance on not getting pregnant again. Every time Fahd tried to cajole her, she would request that he forget the whole thing. She settled into her parents’ home in Rumaithiya for some weeks, Fadhila fortifying her with Quranic verses to undo any black magic. She washed Hawraa with lote water before Hawraa returned to Saleh’s house. The master of the house didn’t stop pressuring his son. “Divorce her!” Our diwaniya disintegrated into several café meet-ups. We’d gather from time to time, conditional meetings guaranteed by—at Sadiq’s and Fahd’s request—Dhari’s absence. When Dhari did come, our meetings became just Fahd, him, and me. In a building his father owned in Jabriya, Ayub set aside an apartment for entertainment as a replacement for the Rawda diwaniya. We would get together, far from Dhari—Fahd, Sadiq, Ayub, and me . . . the one who hated this tug-of-war. I, who’d become the rope.

  10:05 p.m.

  Present Day

  I toss the medals at my feet. Between Fawzia’s room and the stairs. I observe those entering below, carrying flashlights. The little girl hugs me from behind. Lines of light stream forth from the flashlights, overlapping and growing distant in the dark. Hawraa searches for her phone on the table in the middle of the living room. “It was here; I’m sure of it!” Her two boys hold the lady’s hands. Is it Fawzia? Who else would raise her head to the ceiling like someone pondering how one star gave life to the next? The woman in the niqab and the bearded man make me think twice before heading downstairs. Ever since the niqab and the beard have become a source of fear, we’ve been counting the steps between us and them. The woman stands next to the old man. He grabs his phone and pushes some buttons. He reassures Hawraa that she’ll find her phone. Hawraa seems anxious about the smashed-up car by the door. The phone rings in my pocket. Everyone looks, with the exception of Fawzia, to the top of the stairs. I come down the steps, Hissa in tow. Beams of light converge on my face. The phone in my hand flashes with Abu Sami’s name. I shake the hand of the man who doesn’t look like the man whose saluki scared me when I was a child. He doesn’t recognize me until Hawraa greets me. And I wouldn’t have placed him if not for his name appearing on the screen of Hawraa’s phone. The two boys lunge at me, hugging me. “Uncle! Uncle! Where did our daddy go?” they ask.

  I kneel down and hug them each in turn. I look into the eyes of their mother, her gaze transmitting a silent question: Where did my brother go? The woman in the niqab lights a candle on the table in the middle of the living room. She turns to me and nods her head in what seems like a greeting. Hawraa points to her, saying, “Um Sami . . . Florence.”

  I say hello. Fawzia, in the commotion of questions, looks up to the ceiling in silence. She looks like someone else. Chunky in an unhealthy kind of way. Extinguished, with gray hair and skin closer to ash than old coffee. Wrinkles travel her forehead and cheeks, drawing what resembles continents of an unknown world. She squints, her eyes devoid of light, morphing into a giant ear fixed on my voice. Her lips take on the shape of a smile that I can’t read. I approach her, holding out my hand. “Fawzia, how are you?”

  Her smile widens. She nods her head and a childlike spirit floods her face, aged before its time. “I’m well.” Even her voice doesn’t sound like it used to.

  Hawraa alerts her to my outstretched hand. “Give your hand, Fawzia.” She hesitates. She stretches out her arms in front of her, wriggling her fingers in the air. The whiteness of her eyes disappears behind a radiant blush. I hesitate. I bring my face closer, between her plump palms. She clutches my ears. My cheeks. She traces her trembling fingers between my nose and lips.

  Tears pour down her face. “Katkout . . . is it really you?”

  I nod my head between her hands. She turns her face. She tilts her head, bringing an ear in my direction, waiting for an answer. “It’s me.” I don’t say that Katkout has become a rooster, feathers plucked out, good for nothing except for yelling, “The mice are coming.” And that the mice aren’t scared of cocks that only scream among broken eggs. Hawraa invites us to sit down while nervously cracking her knuckles. Abu Sami and his wife excuse themselves. To avoid attracting attention, he says he won’t turn on the generator. He leaves.

  Hawraa starts telling me of a call she received two hours ago. “A stranger advised me to be careful after the HQ was burned down. Now it’s everyone else’s turn.” It’s possible their intention is to storm the homes of Fuada’s Kids to kill them one by one. The phone call didn’t last long, she says. “Someone knocked on the door. I was paralyzed. I sent Ayub a text to let him know. I left with the boys and Fawzia from the back door to Abu Sami’s house. I was so scared that I forgot my phone here.”

  Her voice grows soft. She asks me about Fahd and Sadiq, her face full of anguish. “Neither of them was at the HQ during the fire . . . Isn’t that right?”

  In a voice that sounds like my own I answer, “Just Dhari.”

  She clamps her hands over her mouth. “Dhari?”

  I nod my head meekly. “Dhari.” She stares at my face. She asks how he is. I’m unable to say. Her face turns sallow. She cries for him. Or maybe she’s crying for me. I remember Sadiq’s message on her phone. I look past my tragedy. I tell her about the message. She reads it. Her reassurance regarding her brother’s safety compounds her worry for her husband.

  “And Fahd?” she asks me. I remember his last message to her: “Farewell, O tortuous night . . . farewell . . . I travel on the clouds.”

  “He’s
well, God willing . . . well,” I respond. Heavy knocks on the door can only mean something grim.

  Hawraa gasps, hugging her boys. Hissa leans in closer. She confirms it’s the masked men. This is how they banged on the door before kidnapping her father. “They’ll come inside. They won’t stay outside for long.” Her stifled cries become fierce groans. The sofa soaks up a warm liquid under my thighs. I get closer to the table and blow out the candle. I carry Hissa in my arms. I tell everyone to lay low upstairs. Fawzia is the first to run toward the stairs. We follow her, she being the only one who can see in our darkness.

  THE THIRD MOUSE: EMBERS THE INHERITANCE OF FIRE

  THE NOVEL

  Chapter 12

  We had stopped looking outside, only peering within; isolating ourselves as a nation. Ever since we had taken down the photos from the walls. Ever since we’d cut every possible thread tying us to the past. However, the July war of 2006, between Hezbollah and the Israeli army in Lebanon, revealed another face of Kuwait—one that had been absent for many years. Something similar had happened six years earlier when the Israeli forces pulled out from the south of Lebanon. Images of Hezbollah’s yellow flag proliferated rapidly, stuck to car windows, praising the statements of Nasrallah, whose photo came to occupy the walls of many diwaniyas. Even Ayub, who wasn’t troubled by any religious concern or preoccupied by any political stance, put up the yellow flag in the Jabriya apartment for some days. The joy wasn’t restricted to one particular sect. It wasn’t a victory solely for them. Both sects considered the end of the war a victory large enough to encompass them all. Except for a few, such as Dhari, who reminded us how Hezbollah had been involved in hijacking the Kuwaiti plane at the end of the ’80s. My father was also not enthused; he only saw the destruction of Lebanon, and how its tourism was taking a hit. If Mama Hissa had still been alive, she would have included the name of Nasrallah, the general secretary of Hezbollah, among the names of the “real men” on her list: her husband, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sheikh Fahad Al Ahmad. I was observing what was going on around me with no opinion of my own.

  “Mama’s boy,” Sadiq pestered me. He knew that my mother didn’t have an opinion on anything because everything invoked fear in her. And because “All cowards stay safe!” Maybe he was right. I thought about retorting with I’m my father’s son! But I didn’t. Not out of love for my mom, though.

  In the middle of 2007, my phone rang late one night, flashing Fahd’s name. I was fighting off sleep while editing a story before filing it for the newspaper. This call must be trouble, I predicted. “I’ve been in the hospital since noon,” he told me.

  “I’m getting dressed. I’ll be right there,” I answered him, half-awake. I didn’t ask why he was at the hospital. I didn’t even know which hospital he was in. I took off my pajamas and pulled on my dishdasha. I got in the car. I had scarcely lit my cigarette when he sent me a text message: “Hussain Makki Juma Hospital.” I stubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray before starting the engine. My phone trembled between my hands as I reread the text. Hussain . . . Makki . . . Juma. The hospital whose name people were too superstitious to pronounce. They would point to it as a symbol just as they would only allude to the disease that caused people to go there, fearful that this very disease would hear its name on their tongues and be spoken into existence. People would replace the inauspicious name with another one, such as “the wicked disease,” “the bad thing,” “the sickness that God spared us of,” or use English, as their word had a nicer ring to it: cancer.

  The doctor reassured us that tumors usually struck women well past their fifties. Hawraa wasn’t even thirty yet. “Let’s hope for the best,” her doctor said. The panic on Fahd’s face was as if he were the one being diagnosed. There was peace on Hawraa’s face, as if the infected part of her body were of no consequence to her. Fadhila kept on chanting Quranic verses to break the black magic spell afflicting her daughter. The days passed by slowly until the examination results arrived. We were hopeful that the tumor, which had taken up residence in her right breast, was a benign one. But it wasn’t.

  “My sister’s crazy,” Sadiq said a few days later in one of the Hussain Makki Juma Hospital’s hallways. Her doctor had a good bedside manner and had put Hawraa at ease. The discovery of the malignant tumor wasn’t very late, and yet it wasn’t exactly early either. He explained to her the available treatment options. Sadiq said that his sister skipped over all other possible treatments to the last resort. She asked her doctor about the likelihood of a mastectomy. “Quite high,” the doctor responded apologetically.

  She cut him off before he could go on, not giving him the chance to add anything positive. She clasped her hands under her chin. She nodded and smiled, expressing a joy that was incongruous with his response. “Thank you . . . thank you, Doctor.”

  If only the removal of all tumors were as easily done as Hawraa’s—by having the affected breast removed eight months after diagnosis. Fahd was caught smack in the middle between Saleh’s desire to separate the couple and Fadhila’s absolute unwavering conviction of a magic charm buried somewhere by Aisha. Hawraa’s recovery didn’t change the situation much. “Some tumors only stop growing when the body dies. If only they’d all die so we’d bury one of them in the cemetery of the other, just to spite them all, and we’d all live together in peace,” Fahd said.

  “Come on!” I responded, understanding the intense pressure he was under.

  “We just want to live in peace,” he answered me. I changed the topic and asked him about his wife. “Hawraa’s happy,” he said. After inspecting her chest post-mastectomy, Hawraa informed Fahd in a worn-out voice that she was ready to get pregnant again. But it wouldn’t be easy going forward. Not for another five years, or at least three, the doctor told her.

  “Five years without a pregnancy and the woman has lost her mind, her religion, and . . . a breast!” Saleh said to Fahd before urging him again, “Divorce her!”

  Some days later, Fahd and I sat in the diwaniya. We were alone when his father called him, asking, “Is Abbas with them?” I wouldn’t have known any better if Fahd hadn’t told me about a memorial service being held at the Imam Hussein Mosque for one of the members of Hezbollah. Twenty years before, the newspapers had pinpointed him as one of those involved in the hijacking of the Jabriya plane. He, according to which side you spoke to, had either “died” or was “martyred” in Syria a few days earlier. Fahd refused to answer his dad and hung up on him. That’s when I asked. Fahd let out a heavy sigh. “’Am Abbas and Sadiq.” I braced my forehead against my hand, damning this tasteless piece of theater: all of us had lead roles. A very poor director was orchestrating it, or maybe a very smart one, seeing as we weren’t aware of his presence. Our sectarian clot had reached the point of no return. At a time when the person being eulogized was in the land of the dead, we split up into two, preoccupying ourselves with his fate—in heaven; no, in hell—when in fact we were the ones in hell after living out our lives hiding this hatred that was within us, yet openly discussed in newspaper articles or in the heated arguments between parliament members, which people hungrily followed while I was still naively writing my symbolic stories of warning!

  After the memorial service, Ayub called me from his office at Al Rai, letting me know of some political movement’s decision to hold a national unity rally that, due to its name, had attracted interest from prominent political and religious personalities of both sects. “We’ve got to meet there.” Ayub seemed serious like I’d never known him to be, and this pleased me; it pleased me a lot, in fact, as I was being eaten alive by worry over our damned future. I didn’t have to bear it all alone. We were in dire need of someone to point out the wound clearly, even if it was necessary to cut through it and drain it of its putrid pus. My hopes were bolstered by this imminent rally; maybe it would do something, or at least say something worthwhile. Ayub contacted Fahd, Sadiq, and Dhari, telling us all the same thing: “Seven thirty, Tuesday evening.”

  Dhari called
me afterward, surprised by Ayub’s call and his interest. “This event isn’t as well intentioned as it sounds to you.” I pleaded with him to delay his judgment until after Tuesday evening.

  The four of us sat in the last row; our fifth member carried his camera and his recording equipment, preparing to cover the event. The open venue was packed to the rafters. The young organizers started running the sound and light checks. It ended up being a free satirical play. It openly made fun of us, the audience, shamelessly. The rally speakers stood in a line: previous ministers, clerics, and members of parliament, all behind the platform, each waiting his turn with the microphone. One of them started his speech with a prayer for Prophet Muhammad, his family, and companions. Another started with the same prayer, but stopped with the Prophet’s family, excluding his companions. Half the audience responded to the first, and the other half to the second. They spoke at length as I grew restless in my seat. I drew patience from the hope on Ayub’s face while he altered his filming angles. He was preparing sanitized news that he would publish in a soiled tomorrow. I turned to Fahd, Sadiq, and Dhari in surprise over the men onstage and their disregard for the audience as they applauded wildly, their chanting getting louder: “Unity, unity, national unity!”

  Sadiq stifled his laughter at the empty slogans. He looked at me, pretending to grab a pen and drawing a small circle on his palm. He pushed down on it with his finger repeatedly. I shook my head. “If only!”

  One of the guests, all of whom were well known for their financial corruption, stood up and spoke. His picture appeared behind him on the big screen. He waved his arms with theatrical flair and exaggerated expressions. He yelled, spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth, “Despite the storm . . . we’ve come together with love . . . Sectarianism won’t cleave us . . . and . . .”