Wasted Salt

by Sarah Houssayni

  Zahra was scheduled to work Saturday and Sunday. She was in charge of stocking and inventory of the shelves and racks in the bay aisle at Wal-Mart. She spent her days emptying boxes that came from China. She arranged tiny folded clothes on shelves and hundreds of little dresses, shirts, shorts, and pants hangers. Baby sizes went up in three-month increment. After two years, it jumped one year at a time. This made as little sense to Zahra as the rest of the retail world of babies.

  Diaper companies organized the diapers by weight, and the food companies seemed to focus on stages, whatever food stages were for kids. Zahra had cared for her nephews when she was a teenager, before her injury. What those babies ate then was mashed food from whatever the family cooked that day, and what they wore was something their older brothers had outgrown.

  Mothers, grandmothers, and some fathers pushed kids around in carts while stocking up on baby formula, food, and clothes. She tried in vain to understand American’s retail logic: people who seemed poor, unbathed, and tired filled up their cart with unnecessary toys, and formula. The richer a person looked, the less they piled up in their baskets. It was exactly the opposite of what she had seen in Lebanon where shopping was the privilege of the rich and breast-feeding a necessity for the poor.

  What all the parents and grandparents of Wal-Mart had in common was their need for diapers—babies seemed to need those regardless what they wore, ate, or played with.

  After her day of arranging colored food jars and teething rings, she hoped to visit Noor and Iris. She had still not told them about the appointment in Kansas City. Zahra thought about what could happen that Monday. She had spent the last ten years dreaming about undoing her injury. In two days, she would find out once and for all if it could be done.

  When Zahra was eighteen, Nadim had taken her to a colorectal surgeon, someone who specializes in closing colostomies. The surgeon talked to Nadim as if Zahra was not in the room. He told Nadim that the risk in closing the colostomy was too high and that he advised against it.

  Zahra cried for days after that visit, both for the loss of her dream and because Nadim didn’t look at her once during the appointment to ask her what she wanted. This time she would speak and decide for herself.

  That night Zahra called Noor to ask her about Monday. Noor got so excited, she screamed to Iris across the yard, “Go to Kansas City to close Zahra’s colostomy!” Iris then ran to the house thinking that Noor was telling her Zahra already had the surgery. Iris grabbed the phone from Noor and was squealing and congratulating Zahra.

  It took a few minutes for Zahra to explain to the two women that she didn’t have the surgery yet and didn’t even know if she could have it but that she wanted them to go find out with her.

  “Of course we will go! I would never let you get surgery without being right there! Got to make sure those doctors don’t mess something up!” Iris laughed, and Noor did too. Zahra could hear their giggles over the phone.

  Their joy made her worry about disappointing them if the surgeon told her the same thing she had heard nine years ago.

  When Zahra hung up, she turned off the star lamp that Noor left for her and closed her eyes. Sleep eluded her as thoughts of what might happen raced through her mind like fallen tree leaves in a storm. Mustafa was in love. She was not in Beirut to share his excitement, his anticipation, his dates, his wild nights, and then the tears that followed when the man moved on to another guy or became paranoid of getting caught.

  Zahra wondered about love, what made it come to be, what melted it like snow.

  She realized that she was in love with Nadim when she was still in the hospital. She noticed that her face became hot when he appeared in her hospital room, that her heart raced so fast she couldn’t finish sentences. Love showed up one day after not being there the day before. Zahra kept hoping that it would disappear in a similar fashion. This was logic that she eventually gave up on.

  When Nadim’s voice reached her down the hospital hall, her insides tightened harder than with the worst cramps. She caught herself not breathing many days when he sat in a chair and told her stories. His scent lingered in the room long after he had been gone, his affectionate squeeze to her hand felt warm for days after it had ended. Nadim was fifteen years older than her, he treated her like a kid, loved her like a family member he felt responsible for. She didn’t blame him for not desiring her, even when her groin throbbed for him. Mustafa was the only person who knew about Zahra’s love for Nadim. Occasionally, Mustafa felt sorry for Zahra, especially when he was experiencing heartbreak himself, otherwise Zahra’s love for Nadim was like her colostomy: an unfortunate fact Mustafa accepted without questions.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Noor was tapping her feet on the blue carpet and biting her nails in the waiting room, while Iris read her romance novel. Zahra had gone into her appointment alone. She told them it was easier for her to hear what the doctor had to say without worrying about them. Every once in a while, Iris sighed. Noor was not sure if it was over the novel or out of worry for Zahra.

  The drive to Kansas University Medical Center lasted over three hours. Noor packed snacks and had a three-hour long soundtrack. Iris brought her novel and read the “good parts” out loud. The main character in Iris’s story was an officer in the Marines whose wife and son died in a boating accident. Afterward, he had sworn off love. When he meets his high school sweetheart, he desperately avoids falling in love with her again.

  “But you know he won’t be able to resist it! Not when that was the very first and biggest love of his life!” Iris explained this over the radio that played Noor’s tunes.

  Noor said that the Marine should, “Give it a test drive! See if he still enjoys the ride!” Then she laughed, but Iris got mad and told her she was “nasty.” They both laughed, and Zahra smiled.

  Her colostomy was acting up from her tense nerves, and they had to stop three times on the way. Iris and Noor were very sweet about it and not once complained. When the Marine got deployed in her story, Iris cried and said she was putting the book down.

  The exam room was as plain as the rest of the building. It had an exam table on one end and two chairs upholstered in red on the other. In the middle of the room stood a black swiveling stool. The walls were white and above a small sink there were posters with drawings of bowels and colostomies. The room smelled of antiseptic and paper.

  After a swift knock on the door, an exceptionally tall ginger-headed man in green scrubs entered. His eyebrows, eyelashes, and beard were a fierce, dark orange hue. He extended his hand towards Zahra and smiled.

  “I am Doctor Knight, like the knight in shining armor!” The giant orange doctor laughed, and so did a tiny blond girl who carried a laptop and stood by the door.

  The door opened again, and a woman with partly gray hair and blue eyes walked in. She was wearing purple scrubs.

  “This is Jeanie, don’t let her scare you! She will try hard!” The doctor reproduced his bellow-y laughter once more.

  “Silly!” Jeanie said, looking at the doctor. Her eyes were kind. They reminded Zahra of the way Iris looked at her when she felt sorry for her.

  Doctor Knight and the tiny girl, who turned out to be a resident or a doctor “learning to become a surgeon,” listened to Zahra as she answered question after question about her injury. Zahra showed them the records of her one-year stay in the hospital. They were surprised that all Zahra’s medical records were in English, which was good according to Doctor Knight. “Since there was not enough time today to learn Lebanese, that’s your language, right?”

  Zahra nodded; she didn’t think explaining the fact that all Arabs spoke Arabic with one accent or the other was relevant to the visit. Zahra was too nervous to say much. Her heartbeat was in her throat and she worried those people might see it if she opened her mouth.

  Nadim had given Zahra an envelope with her surgical report—the description of what happened in her surgery and studies showing what was left of Zahra’s bowels. This
was at her insistence. Nadim didn’t think another surgery was a good idea. He advised Zahra to accept herself. She remained quiet until he stopped talking and never broached the subject again. Zahra wondered if anyone really ever “accepted” a colostomy. She thought what some people called “acceptance” was exhaustion and submission.

  “My good golly! You are tougher than nails, young lady!” Doctor Knight said.

  He explained to the tiny resident what he read and soon enough her expression matched his—a mix of disbelief and pity. Zahra’s eyes were burning. Something about the doctor reading her surgical report made it real and reminded her of what she needed to forget.

  “You are one lucky cat! Eight and a half lives later!” Doctor Knight announced, laughing.

  The two women giggled with him. Zahra bit hard on her lip, until she tasted blood and it distracted her from how much she wanted to cry and yell at the doctor. He was joking about more pain than could fit in all his medical encyclopedias. She squinted her eyes and stared at the white linoleum.

  “We can help you, young lady, I am pretty sure we can. It is going to take some studies, we need to check on your remaining bowels with a dye, something you drink, and we shoot films,” he explained.

  Zahra felt a dam break inside her heart. She cried harder than she had in a decade. Her tears tasted salty and warm. She smiled to the doctor and his helpers, and they smiled back.

  When Zahra walked out back to the waiting room. Noor got up and walked towards her. Iris didn’t see Zahra walking towards them. Zahra nodded to Noor and smiled.

  “Eh? Eh?” Noor asked, wanting to know what was going on.

  “Momkin,” Zahra said. It was possible, that was all she knew, all she needed and wanted to know.

  Noor let out a joyful scream that sent Iris’ book onto the blue carpet. Iris looked up to Noor hugging Zahra and crying and she followed suit. Patients and their families in the waiting room looked at the three women hugging and crying.

  “He asks her to marry him!” Iris said, as she picked up her book and hit Noor on the head with it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Zahra moved out of Diane’s basement on a Sunday morning, almost four years after she moved in. It was a cool and sunny spring day. The trees along the entire block of the new apartment were covered with blooms; pinks, purples and whites quivered in harmony with the wind. Noor and Iris helped her, and so did Zahra’s closest friends, Joel and Emily, from the philosophy club at the university.

  It turned out some people had read the same books and formed similar thoughts oceans away from Beirut. Zahra had gotten better at reading English and understanding it, she sometimes even dreamt in it.

  They used Joel’s truck to move a bed, a love seat, and a dinette set that Noor found for Zahra at the thrift store.

  “A couple spray paint cans and some fabric will turn this furniture to designer pieces! Design by Noor!” Noor said. She told everyone where everything should be placed, as Iris and Zahra rolled their eyes. Noor had drawn a sketch of what the apartment would look like furnished. She showed Zahra pictures on her phone that looked pretty good, better than any place she had lived or thought she would ever live in.

  The crew of five people worked all day until the one-bedroom apartment was ready. Zahra’s bedroom was painted a light sky blue. It worked well with the star lamp and the bedspread that Zahra got at Wal-Mart for twenty dollars with her employee discount. She had been the employee of the month twice in the time she worked at Wal-Mart, and her supervisor told her a raise would happen next, a whole extra dollar per hour.

  Zahra had already decided that she was going to start working at the nursing home where she volunteered a couple times a month. Being around elders comforted her, and made Hajji seem not so far away. She could bike to her new job from her apartment, and the university was also a ten-minute bike ride away. Bike rides were Zahra’s favorite thing to do, since Iris gave her a bike that “was done sitting in the garage and needed places to go.”

  Zahra had finished enough credits at WSU to graduate one semester early with honors with a Bachelor’s in Sociology and Social Work.

  On the coffee table sat a frame with a picture of Nadim and Hajji. Zahra dreamt of Hajji one night. In Zahra’s dream, Hajji’s eyes were not confused, she told Zahra to fly. Zahra tried in vain to explain to Hajji that she didn’t have wings. When she woke up, Zahra called Nadim.

  “Hajji died this morning,” he said, “I was going to call you when everybody left.” Zahra told him that she wanted to go back for Hajji’s funeral, Nadim told her to stay in Wichita. “You will not make it in time for her funeral, she will be buried before sunset.”

  Zahra cried, and Nadim cried with her. She wrote a letter to him that night, told him that she had been in love with him for almost half her life and that she needed to know if he felt the same way about her.

  She didn’t get a reply for months. When she finally did, he told her that he didn’t love her in the way she deserved to be loved, that he suspected her love for a long time. He asked her to forgive him for not telling her sooner that he was not in love with her.

  “Keeping you in the dark only made things worse,” he wrote. Zahra wrote back to him, and said:

  “Love is a wild animal trapped in humans’ hearts, no man or god to date has been able to tame it, it would be vain of me to try. Whether I live or die, meet someone or stay alone, the fact remains that love will always look like you. If there is a God, I ask Him to keep you safe and happy and to make you take up a little less room in my heart every day.”

  That was her goodbye to him, the last time she allowed herself in her waking hours to think about Nadim. He never stopped visiting her in her dreams; she in a hospital bed and him across the room in a chair discussing everything under the stars.

  Zahra bought pizza for her helpers as they sat in her living room with a downtown view. On one end Zahra saw Wichita State University, and on the other stood the tall building where, a little over three years ago, she was shining clean mirrors and windows with Noor. Zahra looked at Noor to see if she remembered the building, but Noor was not paying attention to Zahra. Noor’s pretty smile was directed at Joel.

  Iris was telling everyone how Noor just got her new driver’s license in the mail.

  “Show them!” Iris ordered.

  A smiling, blushing Noor pulled a laminated rectangle with her photo flashing her big white teeth. Next to sex was an F, underneath which “Noor Iris Hadi” had signed her name.

  Joel’s hand brushed against Noor’s when he handed her license back. Noor looked down and Joel did too. Zahra felt happy tears in her eyes and a lightness exactly where her colostomy used to be.