“Well, look at us,” Sirine’s uncle says, “sitting around here like a bunch of Americans with our crazy turkey. All right, now, I want to make a big toast. Here’s to sweet, unusual families, pleasant dogs who behave, food of this nature, the seven types of smiles, the crescent moon, and a nice cup of tea with mint every day. Sahtain. Good luck and God bless us everyone.”
They nod and clink glasses.
“Is that for Christmas?” Jenoob asks. “When you say that part about God bless?”
“Really, it’s nice for any time,” Aziz says.
“What are the seven types of smiles?” Eliazer says.
Victor waves his hand in a discreet don’t-ask gesture.
Han sits across the table from Sirine and Nathan sits next to Han. King Babar roams from one set of knees to the next, accepting crumbs and table offerings. Sirine only half-listens to the dinner talk; she tries to focus on the food, professionally evaluating her work, but the table is so lively and busy it’s hard to pay attention to much of anything. She feels the electricity of Han’s presence across from her. His foot slides lightly across the floor till she can feel his instep touching hers. Nathan sits beside Han, watching his exchanges with Sirine.
Sirine puts a forkful of sweet potatoes into her mouth. The potatoes are soft as velvet, the gravy satiny. It is as if she can taste the life inside all those ingredients: the stem that the cranberries grew on, the earth inside the bread, even the warm blood that was once inside the turkey. It comes back to her, the small secret that was always hers, for years, the only truth she seemed to possess—that food was better than love: surer, truer, more satisfying and enriching. As long as she could lose herself in the rhythms of peeling an onion, she was complete and whole. And as long as she could cook, she would be loved.
Bowls are passed, clattering, and the conversation levels off into a buzz. Then Gharb leans forward smiling and says, “This is bizarre.”
Everyone looks at him.
He waves his hands. “All these guys and girls all together.”
“Yes, imagine the possibilities,” Aziz says. He is sitting on the other side of Mireille, who is sitting beside Sirine. Victor Hernandez stares at Aziz from across the table, his lips tightening.
“That’s what I mean,” Gharb says. “In my village, the guys and women eat apart from each other, to stay out of trouble. This is the first American house I’ve really eaten at, so I have to get used to it. I like it, of course. I do!”
“American?” Nathan says.
“You’re talking about Egypt!” Um-Nadia announces from the head of the table. “In Beirut, it’s always boy-girl, et cetera, et cetera. Much more sophisticated.”
“You know that’s not necessarily the case in Iraq either,” Sirine’s uncle says. “In our village, the big parties always separated men and women, but for just regular meals the family and friends always ate together.”
“Ours as well,” Han says. “Everyone together.”
“But, yeah, but that’s dangerous,” Schmaal says from his end of the table. Everyone turns to him. He shrugs. “What? All I’m saying is you can do that boy-girl in America ’cause that’s how it is here, right? But like in Kuwait? You’re just asking for it, man. You sit with a girl and you’re asking for trouble.”
Several people tick their heads back, make the disagreeing tch sound. “Wrong again,” his friend Shark says. His name is actually Sharq, which means East, but he has asked all his American friends to call him “Shark” instead. Sirine can’t hear the difference in pronunciation, but he assured her there’s a huge difference. “That’s the whole mishkila, the problem, of it,” he says. “That attitude. All the Arab kids are so uptight and freaked out about what’s the family gonna think, they’re afraid to act normal or anything.”
“Normal?” Abdullah asks, laughing. “What’s that?”
“You know—normal-regular. Like how stuff is no big deal if you don’t make it one.”
“Oh yeah? The year before I came to the States—my sister Maisoon?—she went for a ride with her boyfriend in his car. She totally wasn’t supposed to have a boyfriend, of course. But anyways. They parked way out in the country where they thought they were secret. Of course, some Bedouin or someone saw them kissing….”
Looks are exchanged across the table.
“Actually, worse than kissing. What is it? Making out?”
“Whoa,” Schmaal says. “They should’ve, like, known not to do that.”
Abdullah slaps the table so the forks jump and Um-Nadia makes a disapproving sound. “Big deal, they were kissing! How many American girls have you kissed?”
“Hey, I’m not saying I agree or anything,” he says. “Just that that’s how it is. And zero, to answer your question. Americans, non-Americans, whatever. Especially in public in cars.”
Nathan leans forward and gazes at Abdullah steadily. His face is flushed pink and he holds a glass of wine. “What happened to your sister?” he asks.
“My dad wanted me to beat her,” Abdullah says. “You know, ’cause, like, I’m the older brother and all. I’m supposed to teach her some kind of lesson or something.”
“Whoa,” Schmaal says.
“What did you do?” Nathan asks.
“We jumped up and down.”
Aziz starts laughing.
“We closed the bedroom door and I said, let’s jump. And we started jumping and hitting the walls and I was shouting all kinds of stuff like slut and whore and stuff. And Maisoon was screaming like I was pulling all the teeth out of her head. Then she messed up her hair like crazy and tore her shirt. Then we came out of the bedroom and my mother shoved me so hard that I fell on my butt and she grabs Maisoon and she’s like, you didn’t have to beat her so bad. And my father’s like, you’re tougher than I realized, son. So you can tell me anything you want about normal.”
Sirine bites her lip. She feels Han’s foot press against hers.
“That is really a pretty sad story,” Nathan says, his voice dark. “Really, I mean—there’s the treatment of Arab women for you, right there. The whole attitude.”
Han seems to hover just outside the conversation, his attention wandering between Sirine and his plate of frekeh. He eats slowly, one small forkful at a time. Sirine asks if he wouldn’t like some turkey and cranberry sauce, maybe some stuffing, but he merely smiles and shakes his head.
The conversation at the table meanders through the rest of the meal. While Nathan becomes moody and withdrawn, the rest of them talk about the foreign but not unpleasant experience of eating turkey, and the pleasures of the rice stuffing, the stuffed squashes and grape leaves, the creamed spinach and glazed sweet potatoes, the smoked frekeh and the baba ghannuj, and Um-Nadia’s sliced canned cranberry sauce. They gossip about the café customers and the students and professors at the university and then they start to talk about Middle Eastern politics, which upsets everyone, so Aziz tries to calm them down by speaking at length about his political theories, relating cultural politics to cultural poetics. “Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry,” he says, pinching his thumb to his forefingers. “It’s like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes.”
“That’s how I feel about eating,” Sirine interjects, and some of them laugh.
Aziz lifts his chin and lowers his eyes silkily. “Please tell us more.”
“Well, I mean…” She fumbles for words and tears apart a slice of bread, trying to think what she means. “Something like…tasting a piece of bread that someone bought is like looking at that person, but tasting a piece of bread that they baked is like looking out of their eyes.”
“Fabulous metaphor,” Aziz says.
Nathan lifts his head. “That’s giving other people power over you.”
“No more than usual,” Aziz says. “Somebody’s always going to have the power, and somebody’s always got to bake the bread.” He turns and smiles suavely at Sirine. “You’ve got the soul of a p
oet! Cooking and tasting is a metaphor for seeing. Your cooking reveals America to us non-Americans. And vice versa.”
“Chef isn’t an American cook,” Victor Hernandez says. “Not like the way Americans do food—just dumping salt into the pot. All the flavors go in the same direction. Chef cooks like we do. In Mexico, we put cinnamon in with the chocolate and pepper in the sweetcakes, so things pull apart, you know, make it bigger?” He gestures with his hands, opening his palms. Mireille looks at her plate of turkey suspiciously but Sirine’s uncle laughs and nods and says, “Yes, that’s very good. It wakes you up. Somewhere in the Quran, I maybe think the prophet says something about that—that food should make you optimistic.”
But then Jenoob asks how do you say in English what is the opposite of optimistic? And suddenly somehow the conversation veers back to politics. Schmaal brings up the U.N. and nuclear weapons inspections, and Gharb talks about the starvation in Iraq and crime and prostitution, and Nathan says that Iraq is suffering prefamine conditions and is still being bombed regularly by America, who was recently selling them helicopters, and does anyone care, and then they all get quiet and stare at their plates.
“They think we’re all terrorists anyway,” Aziz says cheerfully, scooping up a forkful of mashed potatoes.
“Who’s ‘they’?” Victor says. He clicks the tines of his fork against the plate so it makes a dangerous ticking sound. “I don’t think that.”
“You? Oh, big deal. If you and I were out shopping at the mall do you think any of the white guys there could tell the difference between us? They’d think you were one of my terrorist buddies.”
“Yeah, if I was out with you. Which I wouldn’t be.”
Nathan picks up a plate of hummus. “The real irony of today is that this sort of all-American feasting and gorging is going on when back home they’re starving—”
“Whose back-home you talking about?” Schmaal says.
“Why does it always have to be politics and fighting with you people!” Um-Nadia cries.
“I agree. The Americans need to hear our poetry and stories and this and that sort of stuff,” Gharb says, then turns to Aziz. “Why don’t you ever write political poems?”
“That’s not what I mean!” Um-Nadia says.
“She means Americans need to know about the big, dark, romantic soul of the Arab,” Sirine’s uncle says, a bit intensely.
“Believe me, I used to be so political, I made Mahmoud Darwish look like Little Orphan Annie. I made Edward Said look like…Edward Scissorshands,” Aziz says, thumping his chest with one hand.
“Who is this Little Orphan?” Shark asks.
“But listen, I got fed up with all the harassments. Do you think I got nice letters in the mail when I read my political poetry? I did not. I got letters saying, no, don’t tell such unhappy stories about the Arabs. I got calls saying, no more bad news, write about hearts and flowers and happy, happy Arabs being so nice to each other. And from who did I get these letters? From the Arabs who are always complaining that there’s not enough truth about Arabs in the magazines and TV.”
“Of course,” Jenoob says. “All we see on the TV or movies about Arabs is they’re shooting someone, bombing someone, or kidnapping someone.” He counts them off on his fingers. “Those are the choices. The only lines they get to say are: ‘Shut up and sit down!’” he shouts, fingers cocked like a gun.
Um-Nadia grabs her ears. “That is enough!” She turns to Sirine. “Okay, fine. Now we should be looking into the matter of dessert.”
“Oh yes,” Sirine says quickly. “I’ll go get it.”
Sirine’s scarf is still folded on the kitchen counter. She picks it up. She is planning to wear it for dramatic effect while bringing in Victor’s pumpkin pies. She is standing in the cooling and darkening kitchen, among the silver shells of pots, looking for a pie knife, when there are footsteps. Nathan stands in the doorway, his face solemn. “Sirine, I was hoping to talk to you about our conversation the other day. There were a few things that I—” He stops suddenly, moves closer, his head slightly canted to one side. “What is that?”
“This?” Sirine opens her hands so a swath of material bells out, reveals the delicate berry-colored stitches. “My scarf.”
Nathan lifts his fingers and stops just short of touching it. “Is this from Han?”
“Do you like it?” She unfurls the whole scarf and swoops it over her shoulders.
“Oh,” Nathan says in a voice that is barely audible.
Sirine says, “It’s very old. It belonged to Han’s mother.”
Nathan’s face darkens. He doesn’t speak for a moment but just stares at her and the scarf. And then he says, unsteadily, “He told you that?” He doesn’t say anything more but simply stands there for another moment. Sirine slips the scarf from her shoulders. She opens her mouth, but Nathan says, “I—can’t—I—forgive me. I’m sorry,” and quickly leaves the room.
Sirine starts to go after him, but then Um-Nadia and Mireille come into the kitchen and there is a lot to do with pies and putting on coffee, and that’s all that anyone can think about.
Everyone has returned to the library for baklava, knaffea, cookies, pumpkin pie, and stories. The late afternoon sun comes into the library and infuses everything with brilliant orange and rose color, setting chairs and walls and the Persian carpet on fire. Schmaal holds up one hand and the tiny web of skin between his fingers glows. King Babar leans back into a stretch with his front legs straight out and his head craning back. He yawns hugely, so all that is seen of his face is teeth and an unrolling tongue.
“This is chapter four—or is it five?” Sirine’s uncle asks Um-Nadia. “I hope you’re keeping track.”
“Wait, we need background here or something,” Victor says. “Where are we?”
Her uncle shakes his head. “You aren’t anywhere. It isn’t that kind of story that begins in one place and goes directly to another. It’s the kind of story that keeps going and going. And it’s completely without a moral. It’s a moralless story. You can visit the story for a while or you can go drink your coffee in the backyard and watch the finches. Which is also nice.”
“So,” Um-Nadia cuts in impatiently, “chapter four or five or six or what have you.”
“Yes.” Sirine’s uncle straightens his collar and takes a sip of coffee. “Chapter what-have-you.”
Eliazer, Cristobal, Gharb, and Shark are all asleep on the carpet, in between the furniture. Jenoob and Schmaal sleep on the horsehair couch, and one room away there is the sound of King Babar snuffling through their jackets on the foyer bench, searching for food.
Sirine leaves the library to try and find Nathan. She looks in the living room, the backyard, the dining room, the kitchen, then starts heading upstairs. She is going to insist that he speak with her and tell her what is going on. Instead, she runs into Aziz as he is coming out of the upstairs bathroom. “Tisslam eedayki,” he says. Bless your hand—the compliment to a cook. He takes Sirine’s hand and kisses the backs of her fingers, then he turns it over, kisses the center of her palm, and folds her fingers over the kiss like wrapping up a present. “Yes. Such a lovely old home. Isn’t your bedroom somewhere up here?”
“Like I’d tell you,” she says. “But the guest bathroom is downstairs, for future reference.”
“You know,” he says, his voice full of melody and suggestion, “I’ve always thought it was such a mistake for a beautiful woman to tie herself down to just one man.”
She raises one eyebrow. “You’d better go find that woman and let her know.”
“Are you sure that Han is so innocent?”
She folds her arms over her chest. “Are you saying that you know something I don’t know?”
He lifts one of her hands away from her elbow and kisses the inside of her wrist. She can smell his cologne—sweet lemon and grass. “So many things to let you know! You will come out with Aziz one night soon? Just on a friendly friend date? Just the two of us, just to play. No monkey
business. Nothing funny. Heaven forbid there’s anything funny.”
“Yes, heaven forbid.”
He bends as if to kiss the inside of her elbow but she withdraws her arm. “Not above the high-water mark,” she says.
She hears some footsteps coming up the stairs and she instinctively steps back from Aziz. It’s Victor, his eyes piercing and his arms tensed. He pulls up short when he sees Sirine and Aziz and looks back and forth between the two of them. “I thought I heard—I heard a woman’s voice and his—” He gives Aziz a withering look then turns to Sirine. “And I thought it was…I don’t know.”
Aziz cranes his neck around to look over first one, then the other shoulder. “Nobody here but us chickens,” he says.
Victor glares at him.
“I’m sorry, Victor,” Sirine says. “I haven’t seen…anyone else up here lately. Have you tried the kitchen?”
Victor finally breaks from glaring at Aziz and starts to stomp back down the steps. She hears him mutter, asshole pendejo.
“So about our fun-free date.” Aziz turns back to Sirine. “When shall we—”
“Can’t right now,” she says, slipping past him in the hallway. “I’m looking for someone.”
“And that someone is not me?” he says mournfully. “No one is ever looking for me. Of course. All right.”
“But thank you for the lovely lamb fatayer you brought today.”
He stops and bows, clearly pleased with himself. “That was made from the last of those beautiful lamb cuts from Odah.”
“What lamb cuts?”
“Remember when the Evil Eye came to the butcher shop and Odah took back the lamb? Well, when the police arrived, he left the lamb on top of a mailbox. I thought it was a shame for that beautiful meat to go to waste. So I came back and grabbed it, then I brought it to the bakery and the green-eyed girl made it special.”
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