Wasted Salt

by Sarah Houssayni

  Outside the window, she saw white puffs above the sea. Zahra smiled at the blue Mediterranean underneath. Zahra avoided the sea ever since getting hurt by the bomb while she was swimming. Something about being so high above it made the sea seem tame, it sparkled in the sun like the back of a small snake. Zahra smiled at the blue and looked at the clouds. She was going to America, where, ironically, the bomb that ended the life she knew was born. She hoped it was also where she would become whole again.

  Chapter Five

  “Welcome to Wichita Eisenhower Airport,” the illuminated runway sign said. Zahra pulled out her note pad from her purse.

  Mary Malone at airport

  Follow luggage claim sign

  This was the last thing written on her card. The past two airports were just what Nadim described: big and busy, hurried people going in all directions. Zahra had enough time to clean up, and attend to her bag.

  She refused all the food that kept showing up in front of her, except for one roll of bread on the way from London to Chicago. By then she was dizzy and her hands were trembling.

  Her wait in Chicago would be her longest, according to the cards Nadim wrote for her. Zahra followed people out of the airplane, past the sniffing dogs, past security into a huge room where Americans went one way and everyone with a visa went the other. Zahra’s bowels got restless during the immigration line wait. She couldn’t leave now—this was officially the beginning of her journey into this country.

  Officer Johnson was the name of the man who helped her. He walked with Zahra from the booth to a back room where people who seemed to have more complex situations waited. Before he left the booth to walk with her to the “interview room,” Officer Johnson paged his supervisor to ask if it was okay for him to stay with Zahra until she cleared immigration. He was a short man with red hair and a red beard. There was a snake tattoo on his arm with “don’t tread on me” inscribed underneath it.

  Zahra couldn’t understand all of his fast English. He said “refugee” many times, and “help you.” He kept asking her to write down what she was saying because he couldn’t understand her accent. Zahra couldn’t understand his either but she didn’t tell him that. Officer Johnson kept offering her cookies in a blue wrapper. He pointed to his mouth as if she didn’t know how where food went.

  “I know.”

  “Have one!” he said with a victorious smile.

  She gestured to her shirt and drew an imaginary circle where her ostomy hid from the insistent man.

  “Sugar is bad for me,” Zahra explained.

  “Ah,” he said, letting his hands and smile drop. “I will find you something else.”

  “Thank you.” Zahra smiled, and nodded.

  After leaving the immigration office in Chicago with a bag full of crackers, cheese, and a bottle of water, Zahra waited at gate A27. She devoured the sack’s contents. Officer Johnson was a kind man, but the other officers in the “immigration room” seemed more like jailers. Although she had never met a jailer, she saw them in Hajji’s TV shows.

  When the old, skinny black man pushed her wheelchair to A27, he said “final destination” and pointed to the sign that said “Wichita 9:45.”

  She gave the man two of the five-dollar bills Nadim had given her to “tip” people helping her at the airport. She had forgotten about the “tip” money until then.

  “Thank you, miss!” He sighed, looked around, and pushed the wheelchair away from Zahra. He looked slower pushing the empty chair away from the gate and back into the whirlpool of hurried travelers.

  Zahra’s eyes were heavy at the Wichita gate. She felt her surroundings turn into a dark humming as she fell asleep. The gate agent tapped her shoulder when it was time to board to her final destination. Zahra forgot for a moment that she was at a gate in an airport, farther than she has ever been from everything she knew and remembered. The agent gently smiled and pointed to Zahra’s boarding pass that had fallen into her lap.

  “Wichita. It’s time,” the agent said.

  Zahra followed the passengers and didn’t try to fight the sleep that claimed her as soon as she buckled herself in the seat by the round window.

  The thump of the airplane against the tarmac awakened Zahra. She looked out the window and saw a dark runway illuminated by yellow lights on each side. She was dreaming of being in Hajji’s kitchen, cooking for both of them. Hajji didn’t know what day of the week it was, what time of the year, or what year she was living in, but she knew when Zahra was cooking and when mealtime neared. Hajji stopped looking at the TV screen in front of her and turned her gaze toward the kitchen.

  Zahra felt happiest at that time of the day. She looked forward to setting the table in the kitchen and calling Hajji to sit down for the meal. Hajji seemed to recognize Zahra then, not so much as herself but as someone who cared for her and she felt grateful for. Zahra hoped Connie remembered everything Zahra told her about mealtimes, bath time, and the rest of the routine that surrounded Hajji and kept her and Zahra content.

  As the person sitting next to Zahra got up and left, she followed him out of the airplane. She knew America was her new reality, there was no going back. She followed the passengers to the baggage claim, her eyes still heavy and her mind still refusing to wake up. Somehow sleepwalking felt less scary to Zahra than being fully awake and completely on her own.

  A big woman with blond hair below the luggage sign was holding a cardboard sign with “ZAHRA” written on it in a fluorescent pink. Zahra walked to her and pointed to herself. She was too tired for English. Her legs were shaking from exhaustion and her bag was bulging against her skin. She bit her lip hard to keep her tears inside. She missed Hajji, she missed Mustafa. She even missed her mother. Her heart felt void inside her sagging T-shirt.

  “Hi, honey! I am Mary, Mary Malone. Welcome to America! Welcome to Wichita!” Mary was screaming in Zahra’s face, gesturing around her and smiling like she had been waiting at this airport all her life for Zahra to show up.

  “Hello.” Zahra pointed to the bag on the belt and Mary jumped to grab it.

  “Let’s go, Zahra! I am parked really close! This airport is so small, you don’t ever need to walk too far! You must be exhausted.” Mary didn’t stop talking, not even to breathe.

  Zahra followed into the warm humid night. She closed her eyes and fell asleep soon after Mary started the car. When she woke up, the car was stopped, and two women were by the door staring at Zahra and whispering to each other. Mary carried Zahra’s bag into the house.

  “Sweetie, ahlan!” One of the women greeted Zahra, in Arabic. She had red hair and a pretty face. She gently touched Zahra’s shoulder and gestured towards the house. Her Arabic sounded Egyptian.

  Zahra wondered if she was dreaming. The pretty tan face with big eyes kept looking at her expectantly.

  “Ana Noor,” she said and extended her hand towards Zahra.

  Mary pointed to the pretty girl with red hair and yelled, “Noor, this is Noor!”

  The girl and Mary nodded and looked at Zahra expectantly. Zahra looked at Noor and smiled. The other woman in the house stood behind Noor with her hands on her large hips and watched the introductions; she seemed disappointed with Noor and Mary.

  “Will you just let her come inside the house? I am sure she is exhausted,” observed the large-hipped woman.

  Noor looked towards the voice and rolled her eyes. Mary laughed.

  “Hold your horses, Diane! Always on fire, aren’t you?” Mary declared while she gently tugged on Zahra’s arm. “Come on, come on,” she said.

  Zahra followed the three women into a small, one-story house that smelled musty, like summer clothes that had been packed and forgotten. There was a couch, a big chair with ripped fabric, and many other things that Zahra was too tired to look at. The light was yellow and dim. It came from a lamp that stood in the corner with a ripped shade. In the faint light on the low blue couch Zahra sat, and next to her stood Noor, who was still holding on to the luggage.

&
nbsp; “Beth from our church will come take her to her first appointment tomorrow. She needs her medical clearance before anything else,” Mary told Diane.

  Mary left, and soon Diane did too. “It’s almost midnight, girls, I will turn into a pumpkin if I don’t go to bed right now!” Diane said, laughing and then coughing as she walked into the next room and closed the door.

  “Cigarettes and pipes!” Noor said.

  Zahra looked at the closed door as if the cigarettes and pipes were holding Diane hostage in an ongoing coughing spell in that room. She nodded to the tall woman with pretty dark eyes and long fire-red hair. Zahra had never met anyone with hair like Noor’s, it reminded her of cartoon characters and dolls. Noor flipped her thick mane as she carried Zahra’s luggage to the basement bedroom. She held on to Zahra’s arm as they went down the narrow stairs.

  The bedroom was smaller than any room Zahra had been in: two beds, a wall closet, and a vanity by a mirror filled it to the door. It was bright from a light fixture that hung from the ceiling. It smelled like fresh laundry, unlike the smoky, musty smell of the upstairs.

  “I clean this room to its bones and keep a ton of deodorizing beads in it!” Noor explained in English. Zahra didn’t know what “dee-o-dor-eye-zing beads” were, but she smiled and nodded to Noor.

  On the other side of the stairs there was a bathroom. It was tiny as well, but clean and well-lit. Zahra washed herself up, put on a new bag, and hoped the old one wouldn’t reek in the trash. She used the last trash bag she had with her to trap it in. She would ask for more trash bags tomorrow.

  After she sponge-bathed her body, she changed into another black T-shirt and sweatpants. She smiled, thinking about what Mustafa would say if he saw her right now. Zahra could picture him rolling his eyes at her lack of style.

  When Zahra walked back into the bedroom, Noor seemed asleep. She was under her covers all the way to the top of her red hair. Zahra’s watch illuminated to 12:48 a.m. when she pushed on its little button. She got into her bed and turned off the lamp.

  Chapter Six

  Noor was fixing her hair in the mirror, running her fingers through her candy red locks and puffing her lips while tilting her head to one side then the other. Noor smiled more to her reflection in mirrors than she did to anyone else, especially Diane, who brought forth loud sighs and occasional door slamming from Noor.

  Zahra couldn’t understand all of Diane’s English, it was faster than the CDs she used to learn the language and sounded different than the many English books she had read. Noor was very eager to translate and throw in free comments about what Diane was saying,

  “I did not say that!” Diane would sometimes scream if Noor took too many sentences to interpret Diane’s words.

  “How do you know what I am telling her?” Noor quizzed.

  “Because I can see her face!” Diane said.

  Noor threw her hands up in the air in despair and walk away from the two of them, the obligatory door slam followed. Zahra and Diane would sit in the uncomfortable quiet. Sometimes Diane would get a notepad and write down her thoughts and Zahra would respond in English. That seemed to make Diane always nod her head.

  Zahra was ready to find a job according to Diane.

  “Ask Noor to take you with her, you can make some money helping her. I need to make a better rent off of you guys.”

  “In Ramadan, we will work together, I can’t do then what I am doing now,” Noor proclaimed when Zahra asked.

  Noor left for her “job” at four in the afternoon on some days, and returned in the early hours of the morning. She worked from her room with the door closed the other days. Noor didn’t talk about her job in front of the computer or outside the house. She sometimes smelled like beer and always got in bed and covered her head with her pink blanket.

  Zahra pretended to sleep as Noor got in the shower and when she later crawled under the sheets of the creaking bed facing her. That was the first time in her life that Zahra anticipated Ramadan.

  “I can’t work from the house online during Ramadan, I will help you then. It’s a month when Sayidna Mohammed, aleh assalam, said to do more charity, sometimes the best charity is towards those you love the most!” Noor told Zahra.

  She seemed pleased with her charitable plans and with telling Zahra that she loved her enough to make her a charity for Ramadan. Zahra didn’t respond. They both lived in a basement room fit for unlucky mice, and seemed equally deserving of the charity of any season. Zahra didn’t know anyone else who spoke Arabic and, although she had read books and watched movies in English, she had never spoken English until she came to America.

  “Ramadan will happen a week after you get to America!” Fatima told Zahra before she left.

  Fatima sounded disappointed then. Her mother was more than capable of enjoying Ramadan without her. They didn’t live together, and their only exchange was that of money, given by Zahra and received without gratitude from Fatima. Zahra always gave her mother Eid money when that holiday came at the end of Ramadan.

  Zahra didn’t want time off from caring for Hajji. Their time together had no seasons and no holidays, just the soaps on TV and the occasional visitor.

  Nadim always came to visit his mother on Eid. He had the day off and always seemed in a good mood. He always gave Zahra Eid money and books. She was not going to think about Nadim and his books this Eid. Noor would be a good distraction with the grandiose plans she was promising Zahra. They were going to the mall with Noor’s boyfriend, Hussein. Zahra had not met Hussein but heard of him on a daily basis in Noor’s conversations. Zahra was not one to ask questions, especially about Hussein, who never called or showed up. Whatever the plan was, Zahra agreed that it would be a glorious Eid.

  The week before Ramadan started, with Noor working from her room and Diane smoking in hers, Zahra spent her time with Beth.

  “The refugee buddy,” as Diane referred to Beth. Beth was a member and employee of First Baptist, the church that sponsored Zahra’s emigration. Beth’s job, as she explained it to Zahra, was to help her “navigate the system.” Zahra was not exactly sure what the system was in her case and how she would navigate it, but she nodded to Beth.

  “When it’s all said and done, you will be able to find a job, go to the grocery store, and use the bus. Hopefully, you’ll make new friends and find a new home along the way,” Beth said, Zahra assented.

  Beth’s voice that grew louder the closer she was to Zahra. Beth’s excitement seemed in tune with her increasingly louder voice but irrelevant to everything else. Staying quiet meant the “refugee buddy” would talk less. Zahra needed medical clearance, paperwork, and hopefully a job soon.

  Beth drove a red Hyundai she named Jelly Belly. She talked about that car as one would of a child. During the first week of going to get her medical clearance and other appointments, Zahra learned daily facts about Jelly Belly. Zahra smiled and nodded in hopes of avoiding reruns of the same story—something Beth did when she had doubts about Zahra understanding something. Zahra could care less if they drove a pumpkin.

  “Jelly Belly, like the candy, you know! The one good thing from a divorce! I never even came close to driving a new car!”

  “Nice car,” Zahra replied. Every time the subject of Jelly Belly came up and Beth looked at Zahra expecting a confirmation of the narrative.

  “Someday you’re gonna buy a car! That day is gonna be amazing! Especially if it’s your first car! I mean this really to me feels like my first car! It is my car, I don’t have to share it with some bossy A-hole—do you even know what an ‘A-hole’ means?”

  Beth exploded in laughter. It didn’t seem like she was laughing at Zahra, more like she wanted Zahra to get the joke and laugh along. Zahra smiled and nodded.

  A car would be nice to get some day, she agreed with that more than she agreed with the rest of Beth’s stories. It would be nice to buy a car and learn to drive it. Nadim took her driving a few times, he showed her how to drive his blue Mercedes. He never seemed wo
rried about her driving it into a wall in the parking lot where he showed her how to drive.

  “In small town America, everybody owns a car. You have to learn to drive,” Nadim told her.

  She got more nervous with every lesson, her colostomy acted out with the longer distances that Nadim was teaching her to drive. Zahra would end the lesson by asking to go back to Hajji’s house to check on her, even when she knew that Hajji would be napping for another hour. After those days, when the topic of driving came up, Zahra looked away and stayed quiet until Nadim stopped asking when she would practice her driving lessons.

  Beth looked like she could be in her fifties, although she never shared her age with Zahra. Her face was long and pale, her eyes an anemic shade of brown and her hair parted in the middle along a gray line that became darker as it got away from her scalp. She worked with First Baptist, driving refugees in Jelly Belly to their appointments, and showing them how to use the bus. Beth told Zahra that she loved her job, although it didn’t pay like her previous one, which was selling phone accessories at the mall.

  “First Baptist is my church and when my pastor asked, I knew The Lord was calling me for more than selling cell phone chargers!”

  Zahra was not sure at first who Beth’s “lord” was. She talked about her lord a lot. Beth had more stories about her lord than she did about Jelly Belly and her ex-husband combined. When Zahra asked Beth who the lord was, Beth smiled and took her hands in hers and started crying.

  “I was hoping you would ask some day. I wasn’t going to intrude, The Lord’s ways are gentle and mysterious. He finds a way to your heart in the end. Come to church with me and you will understand more.”

  Zahra realized then that The Lord was another word for God and that Beth was hoping to share her religion with her all along every time she brought up what “The Lord” wanted Beth to do. Zahra had no intention of going to church, she told Beth that on Sundays she is expected to clean Diane’s house and run errands with Noor.