by Leila Rafei
She couldn’t remember what they did with that final bowl. They probably just threw it out. It seemed like a sacrilege. If she could do it all over again, she would have taken his spoon and ingested every leftover lentil as if to absorb his last living moment. All she had now was a simmering pot of broth before her, and the memories it induced. That, and the Quran he’d left her after his death, which she kept at her bedside and read nightly.
While the stew cooked, Suad retreated to her bedroom and reached for the Quran. By now she’d reread the whole book, cover to cover, approximately forty times. Yes, in the thirteen years since Mahmoud left, she read it no less than thrice per year—once during the month of Ramadan, when she would race furiously to finish by Eid, and then another couple of times throughout the rest of the year, when she read at least one surah per night. And if you quoted a line to her, not only would she cite the correct surah from which it came, but she would be able to guess the exact page on which it appeared. She was usually within range of five or so pages, which wasn’t so miraculous if you took into account the fact that she’d been reading from that very book since she was a child. She’d watched her little-girl hands grow into womanhood around it as the book seemed to shrink. What was once a supernaturally massive behemoth, too heavy to lift with one hand, had now lightened from the wear of its frayed and over-flipped pages. What once seemed like a universe of words, of stories, of meanings she didn’t understand, was now as familiar as an old friend. Even more than a friend—the father she had lost. Nobody knew it better. Nobody knew her better.
Suad sighed, running her hand across its worn cover. She had tried to transfer this habit to her children and even Mahmoud, but it didn’t quite catch on. On his rare visits home from the Gulf, the whole family would read together on the living room rug, gathered in a circle, while she kept one eye on her husband, who hated every second but wouldn’t admit it. And nightly, she would read the Quran to her children until they fell asleep, which in the heat of Mahalla, took as little time as saying bismillah al-rahman al-rahim. In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. She would tell them that she was never happy until she became a true believer, and that there were awful things in her past about which she shared no more than a shake of her head. The Quran fixed everything.
Her kids would never believe it, but in old photo albums deep in the boxes and shelves of their house, she bared her thick legs and curly hair in faded Polaroids, and she’d even had a sip of champagne on her honeymoon to the north coast. All of that changed after Mahmoud went away, when she started reading the Quran to pass the hours spent alone. She was at it quite a bit nowadays. There was plenty to fix.
*****
In the afternoon it was time for lemons. The stew had reached a thick consistency, the smell smoky. Suad followed her grandmother’s recipe perfectly, adding a splash of citron and a touch of turmeric that gave the stew a golden hue and tartness unmatched by any other bowl in the Delta. She tasted a bit at the tip of her spoon. Just a bit more lemon, and dinner would be served.
But it was difficult to work with her mind elsewhere. As she peeled off a rind over the kitchen sink, she wondered what her son was doing when he wasn’t answering his phone. The last time she saw him, he stood in the hallway brushing his teeth in preparation for his trip back to Cairo, looking uncomfortably similar to Mahmoud with his broad shoulders and slightly too-big teeth. Sami bared the latter often, with a wide smile shown generously to any stranger on the street. She couldn’t say the same of her husband, whose smile she hadn’t seen much of lately.
Suad was so accustomed to not having Mahmoud around that she no longer missed him or looked forward to his visits. Each time he returned to Mahalla, she greeted him with a stiff neutrality, and the joy with which the children met him only emphasized her coldness. She would stand apart, watching, waiting for him to approach her, to present her with a new bauble bought from some exotic merchant in bazaars that he said were even better than Khan El Khalili. Really, she’d ask, wide-eyed, and he’d wave away her provincial ignorance while trying to buy her favor. These bracelets are from India, darling, come see. And she would hold out her wrist, jangle them around on the end of her sleeve, and slip them off with a terse thanks. With pursed lips she’d wait for him to acknowledge her displeasure, but he never did. Mahmoud moved on quickly, if he ever even noticed, and within minutes he would turn his attention to some new topic or gadget or yes, some new woman.
Ooof, she yelped, catching a nick. She knew better than to ruminate with a knife in her hand. She watched blood speckle the white pulp of fallen rinds as she held her finger under the faucet. When the bleeding stopped, she tossed a lemon wedge into her mouth and bit her tongue just to feel the acid burn.
She’d long known there was another woman. Piece by piece, all the minute clues had come together—the rushed phone calls, the incongruous laughter, the seemingly spontaneous, independent happiness that arose like a slap of cold water to the face. Just thinking about it sent hot blood rushing to her temples. Whenever they spoke, Mahmoud sounded as if he were smiling into the receiver, quite happy to lie to his wife, the woman who’d never known another man—technically—and didn’t mind the lack of reciprocity. He would mention friends who’d taken second wives, quoting scripture in his own defense. How dare he.
It was no surprise when Mahmoud’s phone calls and visits began to dwindle, along with the wire transfers and envelopes stuffed with riyals. Now she relied more and more on Sami, who sent half his scholarship stipend to Mahalla each month, poor boy. In time his place in her heart had grown so big and so singular and strong that she sometimes felt as if all her insides would swell and spill out, no room to contain it all. She hated that he, too, was far away—off in Cairo, the big city where the streets stank of beer and hashish, and foreigners ran around half-naked with hair flapping in the wind, legs wide open to every tea boy and taxi driver in sight. She tried convincing him to stay home but could not. There was no future for him in Mahalla, no jobs unless he wanted to pick fruit or spin cotton. All she could do was pray for the day he would come back and bring a good wife into their home. One that she picked, one like his mother.
She opened the kitchen window to let in the breeze, which smelled of citron as did winter, the season of harvest. Before her, lemon trees spanned out from the windowsill to the edge of the yard. She liked to call them her children, planted and raised them from seedlings to full-fledged trees. That’s what they were, weren’t they? Children by another father. The only role Mahmoud played was in providing the land, perhaps tossing an order every now and then from the doorstep. Wash your feet before you come inside. Make sure you get the dirt out of your nails. I swear to God, if I eat one more lemon . . .
But she shouldn’t complain. It was a sin, after all. Best to leave sinning to sinners. Besides, if there was one good thing about marrying Mahmoud, it was that plot of land. He’d inherited it from his father, who purchased it for mere piasters a half-century ago. The plot used to be part of a vast field of sugarcane until the 1950s, when President Nasser divided and redistributed the land among all the workers who’d made it bloom, their family included. To this day, sprigs of sugarcane sprouted occasionally from the corners of fence posts and in between bushes of cotton. It was a reminder of the history of the land and where they came from—as was their family name, Sukkary, which a great-grandfather had taken around the same time.
The plot had been neglected for years by the time Suad married Mahmoud and moved into his family home. It was overgrown and muddy, and the only beings that dared tread its tangled vegetation were stray donkeys and cattle that wandered over from nearby farms. For a long time the family considered selling it, but Suad put a stop to that idea. Farming was far preferable to housework—if it came down to mopping floors or tending to the grove, the latter won easily. Anything to get out of the house, where her mother-in-law Abla watched soap opera reruns from dawn to dusk.
Bu
t Suad could never quite escape Abla. Even out in the grove, she always had a half-mind fixed on the dramas unfolding behind her bedroom window, and soon she learned all the characters and plots and subplots despite all her best efforts to weed, water, and till to oblivion. There was Mustafa, the playboy prince, his jealous wife Farida, and all the young mistresses that cried for his affection. All day long, she would hear their wails and heavy breathing, and in time she learned the slight tonal differences between the bad-news music and the good-news music. It was the same formula each episode. She knew something big was about to happen when Abla started screaming out directions to the actors. Don’t marry the officer’s son, you silly, stupid girl! The increasing hoarseness of her voice signaled the end of each episode and the end of another day’s work in the garden.
Every once in a while Abla would holler from her bed, ya Suad! She hated the way she said her name, stretching each syllable to its limit as if she was scolding her. Su-AD. Look here, girl. And Suad would wipe off her hands and come to her window to ask what the old madam wanted. Often it was another cup of tea. But she would have to clean herself first, she specified. So Suad would wash her hands and feet, make a fresh batch of tea, and bring it to Abla on a tray with sugar cubes and a square of basbusa drenched in honey. And then without a word of complaint she would return to the field, hoping it would be at least a few more hours of uninterrupted work before Abla called upon her again.
The girl couldn’t help it. She was obsessed with the earth; obsessed with the idea that she could revive it and mold it to her liking; obsessed with the power she had over the little buds, wielding water and light. At first she was overwhelmed with all the possibility and couldn’t decide what she wanted to grow. She might grow some cash crop like sugar or cotton, and perhaps sell it in small batches to the factories of Mahalla. She could grow greens like molokhiya and mint, which would be easy to care for, or fruits and vegetables, fodder for new recipes each day of the week. Back then, Suad dreamed of nothing but red peppers and eggplants, strawberries and melons budding fresh from the green earth.
Row by row, she planted an array of different crops for her first harvest. There were herbs and fruits and vegetables; bitter, sweet, and sour; those that could be eaten right off the vine and those that would need a sprinkle of sugar or salt. The lemon trees were the dividing line between the fruits and vegetables, and they flourished. The lemons grew so well, and were so pungent and pretty, that one row became two, and two became three and four, and finally the entire plot of land was rowed with trees of lemon.
Abla protested from her bedroom window, perching on its sill to ask what on earth the girl would do with all those lemons. Su-AD! But neither she nor Mahmoud wanted to deal with the garden themselves, so they relented. It became Suad’s. Soon all of her cooking was tinged with the taste of lemon, squeezed over tomato stews and legs of chicken. And in the summers, she would make batches of lemon-mint juice to last the whole season, drank up quickly by her children who smacked their lips in delight. Only Abla refused the lemon-mint juice, preferring her tea and basbusa instead.
*****
By dusk the scent of citron gave way to the cacophony of shouting of neighbors. Suad went to shut the window but stopped herself, holding her bandaged finger up in the air as if to say, wait a minute. The noise wasn’t coming from Dalal next door, who was the usual culprit with her big mouth. In fact, Dalal was nowhere to be found, her porch empty but for an idle cotton wheel. She bent out the window and strained her ear to pick out the voices of Mona and Umm Said, Elgazar the butcher and Abu Felfel with his peg leg. She hardly ever heard from the latter but today he spoke loudest, his old voice crackling, unused to itself.
“The kids have taken the city.”
“You’ve lost your mind, old man.”
“They’re storming the police station.”
“Who?”
“The kids, you donkey.”
Suad tensed up. Whoever these kids were, whatever it was they were doing, they better not be her kids. She looked back at Ayah, who sat staring into her phone, scrolling through Myface or Spacebook or something or another. She never thought she’d be so pleased with the sight. As for Sami, well—she could only hope.
With a prayer she shut the window, snuffing out all the rude voices that dared interrupt her day of mourning, and joined Ayah on the couch where they sat silently, ladling soup over mounds of rice to quell its bite. It had turned out too salty, as if all her pent-up tears had materialized and dripped into the pot as she cooked. She awaited Ayah’s complaints, looking forward to the chance to say—with one drawn -out, well-placed sigh—well, it was seasoned with tears, what do you expect. But all Ayah did was stare into the hypnotic abyss of her phone, doling out a nod from time to time, or at best a one-word answer.
“What are you doing?”
Nod.
“Who are you talking to?”
Nod.
“Any news from Cairo?”
Nod, nod, all day, nod. Nothing but the click of her keypad. It drove Suad crazy—click, click, click—a sound as small and yet obtrusive as the buzz of a fly. She looked over her shoulder at Ayah’s phone. The one button shined like onyx from the repeated touch of her thumb, like the mummy cases she saw on a trip to Cairo years ago, which had been fondled by too many visitors with curious hands. Her daughter’s hands were similarly mischievous, fingernails jagged with chipped green polish that seemed to chirp with each click.
Wide-eyed, Suad watched the screen light up with strange words strung together in inconceivable ways, echoing those of the neighbors. Street closures in Cairo. Police station on fire. Three dead in Suez. She could make no sense of the words but they filled her with rage at Ayah, who gave one last nod before Suad reached for the phone, grabbed it like some kind of monstrous weed, and threw it at the wall, knocking down the framed photo of the president she kept by the door.
Ayah yelped and ran to the phone’s side. She scooped it into her arms like a cranky baby, tucking in its red and green and blue wires like spilled lamb guts.
“What’s gotten into you, mama!”
What’s gotten into mama? Well, nothing, not anytime recently. As Suad set the president’s portrait back on its hook on the wall, she watched Ayah put the pieces of her phone back together, sealing the compartments closed with yet another damned click. She had to admit she was relieved. Now everything was as it should be, the picture hanging, the phone intact, no sign of her outburst for Mahmoud to one day discover and hold over her head. Funny, the foresight that came to her at times like this. Almost like it took that crash to set her head straight.
“Do you even miss your grandfather?”
Ayah just buried her face in the bowl before her.
Good, thought Suad as she watched the steam cloud up her glasses. Better silence than a lie.
After Ayah ate every last bit of stew—Suad made sure of it—she shooed her away to the kitchen, where a dozen lemons awaited peeling. She popped a stray rind in her mouth and returned to the TV, which she hoped would provide some answers. But there were only reruns of Face of the Moon, the same soap opera Abla used to watch years ago. There was no word of what these kids that the neighbors were shouting about were doing. In any case she assumed, God willing, that the police would get everything under control by nightfall.
With the rind clenched between her teeth, she pulled out her phone to dial Sami again. It was already past sunset and he hadn’t called once, even though he knew just as well as she did that it was the anniversary of Giddo’s death. She had planned on waiting it out to see how long it took for him to remember, but she caved around noon and since then, there had been nothing but fruitless outgoing calls, unanswered and unreturned. The boy had become so remote ever since he moved to Cairo. It was only a two-hour train ride away and yet it seemed as though he’d moved continents and changed time zones like her husband, God forbid. Good thing Ayah had
stayed home for university unlike some of her friends, whose foolish parents cared nothing for their daughters’ reputations and shipped them off like lamb’s meat. But Suad cared. She cared for Sami’s reputation too. Other mothers might let their sons run free to partake in whatever filth they saw fit, but Suad monitored Sami closely for any sign of sin. Floozies. Hashish. Satanic rap music. So far it seemed he’d been good, mostly, although at times like these—when he wouldn’t answer his phone—she had her doubts.
One more try, Suad lied to herself, as she reached for the phone again. The phone must have rung about a hundred times until finally, it stopped. By that point the rind had become a mangled sliver on her tongue. She took it out to say hello. To her joy, there was an answer—and to her horror, it was a woman.
3
The pimpled American couldn’t mask his shock as Jamila removed her veil and draped it over her chair. His mouth hung open, as if he were about to say something—Miss, you forgot your . . . ahem . . . Miss, despite the zits, I’m actually a full-grown man, a strange man—and a white man at that—and perhaps you’d feel more comfortable putting that thing back on. Perhaps he would feel more comfortable, she thought, reading in his face the shy softness of sudden, unexpected attraction. It was surprising, she supposed, for a girl who’d been through all she’d been through to have retained a shred of beauty—despite her tiredness, despite the sallow tone of her skin, despite the pregnant belly just beginning to show under the folds of her abaya.
The chair creaked as she sat down, and the table was sticky beneath her hands. But that didn’t matter, just as the veil didn’t matter, because this was the moment she’d awaited for months, counting the days like a prisoner chiseling lines into the wall. It was her resettlement interview, and no protests, traffic, or tear gas would get in her way, though they tried. She’d arrived at St. Fatima’s two hours beforehand and had sat in the fly-ridden courtyard flitting through her paperwork five, ten, fifteen times. There was her refugee ID card, and that of her husband Yusuf; her diploma from Al-Safwa primary school; an assortment of ticket stubs and receipts proving time and location; and a book detailing all her internationally ordained rights as a refugee. Whatever that meant.