Guapa

by Saleem Haddad

  “Call me when this is done,” Taymour repeated.

  “Promise me that I’ll see you again,” I said.

  “I promise.” He squeezed my hand one final time before letting go. He ran down the stairs and into the dark night without looking back.

  When I could no longer see him I closed the door. Everything was quiet. If Teta’s screams woke any of the neighbors, none had been curious enough to investigate.

  I knocked on Teta’s bedroom door. She opened it and followed me, wordlessly, into the kitchen. She took a seat at the table and stared into the middle distance. She did not look at me as I made her a cup of tea and sat across from her. The tea remained untouched on the table between us as we sat and smoked cigarettes in silence. I tried to form the sentences to explain but none of the words I had so diligently practiced in the bathroom mirror were welcome in the space between us. Had I been rehearsing those words, many years ago, for myself or for her?

  “What did you see?” I asked. My throat clenched as I spoke, hoarse from the screams and tears that had been shocked back into hiding.

  “I saw enough.”

  “Let me explain.”

  “I’ve seen him come before. At the time I thought you were doing drugs. It didn’t even cross my mind …”

  “Teta …”

  “I know what your generation is like. I know that your generation doesn’t look to marriage and is looking to experiment and try new things.”

  “Teta …”

  “I don’t ever want to see that boy in my house again, is that understood?”

  I said nothing.

  “Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I’ve been too easy, too open. Is it because I would stick almonds in your ass when you were constipated? You really were a constipated baby. There are so many girls dying over you. Why do you have to be with a man? That terrible boy must have seduced you. I could just sense that boy was no good.”

  I had never seen her like this before, speaking in runaway questions that dragged us into dead ends and tired circles. Finally she took a deep breath and sighed.

  “We will have to keep quiet about this,” she said in a practical tone, more to herself than to me. She stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray and stood up. She patted down her cotton nightgown and walked out of the kitchen. I remained seated, listening as she shuffled to her bedroom and shut the door. Then I went to bed.

  I still don’t know what Teta saw when she looked through the keyhole. Did she see us kiss? Did she see us lying in bed together, forehead to forehead, alone in our thoughts? A few weeks ago Taymour and I had been in my bedroom when he stood up and walked to the door. He peered through the keyhole with the concentration of a scientist examining something in a microscope.

  “People can see through the hole if the key is turned to the side,” he remarked, turning the key back down so that it blocked the tiny space in the hole.

  “Don’t be paranoid.” I sighed, pulling him back between the sheets.

  We had been so careful. We had pulled the shutters down all the way, made sure the gaps between the slats were so tight not even the most curious eyes could peer in through the window. We had drawn the curtains and locked and bolted the door. We thought we had sealed our world airtight. But last night Teta managed to enter through the tiniest slip of a key in a lock.

  I get up from Baba’s chair and walk toward Teta’s room, following the sounds of her heavy snores. When I was younger, like a mother fretting over a newborn, I worried that her snores would suddenly stop in the middle of the night. I was plagued by the thought that she would die and abandon me the way my mother and father had. Her snores, loud and rumbling through the thin walls separating our bedrooms, were how I made sure she was still alive. Tonight the snores are leading me to my final confrontation.

  The door to her bedroom is ajar. She is asleep on her back under the covers. The deep creases on her face appear at ease as she sleeps. Her mind is elsewhere, in another world where last night never happened. Her mouth is open. The only evidence that this woman is Teta, strong and tough Teta, is in the imposing snores that boom from the back of her throat. One foot has escaped from under the white sheets, carefully manicured toes painted a simple red. The wooden furniture creaks gently in the night. It had been a long, hot day.

  I stand by the bed and contemplate her. Study her, read her. Watching her sleep, I think of how much I love her. The love that I had for Mama and Baba I had put into her. Where should I put this love after tonight? And all the love Teta had for her son, which she deposited on to me, where is that love going to go? I would never again kiss those deep creases on her forehead, or the wrinkles that gently line her cheeks. I could probably trace the decay of this exhausted family in the wrinkles on her face. Would she even let me kiss those wrinkles now that she knows where my lips have been?

  She’s an old woman. She’s had a long and difficult life. She’s watched her only son die. And, as she never failed to remind me, there is nothing more painful than watching your only son die. Now her only grandson has died also. Worse than death, he’s killed off the family name. He’s dashed any hope of the family lineage continuing, of her son living through future generations.

  My hands are shaking. I feel hollow and my nerves raw, as if I have just swallowed a vial of poison. I’ve let her down and brought her shame. I’ve dragged her along with me on this journey, this old woman who has been through enough in her life. I’m taking her on one last adventure.

  A pillow lies on the ground by her bed. I pick it up. I feel the cool touch of the white cotton in my hands. She always stores the linen in the freezer to keep it cool during hot nights. If I place this cold pillow on her face, the soft cotton that smells of orange blossom detergent, and slowly press down, what would happen? They would chalk it up to an old woman who died in her sleep. I would have the house to myself. No one looking through keyholes, no questions about where I’m going or who I’m sharing a bed with. But would her ghost forever haunt me? Would her spirit still peer through keyholes?

  Her eyes open. She looks at me with a certain fear. I drop the pillow. She sits up in bed and rubs her face.

  “What are you doing standing there like a jinn?” she says.

  I take a seat beside her. She burps, a fleshy, authoritative burp that lasts for a few long seconds.

  “I shouldn’t have eaten that damn cheese for dinner.”

  “What did you do tonight?” I ask her.

  “Watched the shitty news, seeing how everyone’s destroying this country. We live in a republic of shame. Where’ve you been all night?”

  “I was at a wedding.” I pause. My hands shake and I steady them on my knees. “It was the wedding of the man who was in my bed last night.”

  She glares at me and smacks her lips. “Have you no shame to discuss this openly with me?”

  “I’m done with shame,” I say. “I’m done with your rules about what is eib and what isn’t. I have my own rules now.”

  “He has his own rules now,” Teta says to the lampshade. She turns back to me. “And who else is following your rules, exactly? Tell me, who? Or is it just you? What will everyone else say about your rules?”

  “They can say what they want.”

  “You think they will only talk about you?” She laughed. “What about me? Or do I not matter? And your father, God bless his soul. Does he deserve to have people talk about him?”

  “Stop hanging Baba over me.” I leap off the bed. “I have my own voice.”

  “What do you use your voice for? To seduce men to your bed? Is this a good use of your voice? Look around you. Look at this country. Look at what having a voice means. Having a voice, he says.” She stops to take a breath. “Having a voice is worse than eating shit and being silent.”

  We take a break. She takes a sip of her water. I glance at my phone. It is therapeutic, the yelling. I feel better. And when there is silence, there is real silence. Not a stir in the house. Only Teta and me, battling it out.


  Teta clears her throat. “Maybe you should go back to America with this voice of yours,” she says.

  “Would you even allow me to leave? If that was the case, you would have kicked me out last night. But no, you force me to live here, under your rules, under Baba’s rules. If I were to leave I would be a heartless traitor.”

  “No, no, no.” She shakes her head furiously like a stubborn child. “Your father is watching from the skies, boy, and there is no way I will let him think I accept you talking about him like this.”

  “Let’s talk about Baba, then,” I say. “What happened in those six months before he died?”

  She is surprised by this question. So am I. The question escapes from a place within me that I did not know existed. Our fight had established a pattern, we had drawn a line and had come to an agreement over what was and wasn’t acceptable to argue about. I don’t trust these lines anymore. As soon as a line is established it becomes necessary to cross it, if only to ensure the line doesn’t become entrenched, to ensure it doesn’t end up ruling us for another eternity.

  “Where are my cigarettes?” Teta begins to get up but I block her path.

  “Why didn’t Baba go in for treatment?”

  “Don’t bring back the dead, Rasa.”

  “We’ve been living under the rules of the dead for fifteen years,” I reply.

  Teta takes another sip from the glass of water by her bedside table and turns on the lamp. In the glare I can see her eyelids are heavy and gray, as if she has been seeing what happened last night play out over and over again.

  “What do you want to know?” she finally asks.

  “Why didn’t he go for treatment?”

  “The treatment would never have worked, he would only have suffered more in his final few months,” she says bitterly, pulling at her cotton nightgown. “The doctors said that even with treatment it was terminal. God wanted him and I wanted him, and I fought God for the life of my son, but in the end I lost.”

  “You let him die,” I say.

  “Don’t you dare say that,” Teta snaps. “All he wanted was to spend the last few months with me.”

  “And Mama?”

  “Your mother was broken.”

  “She needed help. She still needs help.”

  “Your mother left because she knew what she was bringing to this family. For all her faults, your mother learned one thing from me: shame.”

  “You’re lying. She couldn’t have just forgotten about me. You made sure she would never find us again. You moved us away, cut us off until there was nothing left from our old life.”

  “Rasa, I was trying to protect you.”

  “But there was one thing left, wasn’t there?” I say. “You overlooked one minor detail. The mailbox in the post office downtown. The same mailbox that you first rented out thirty years ago, when Baba left to university.”

  “Rasa, leave the past in the past.”

  “Did she send letters?” I grab her by the shoulders and begin to shake her. “Where are Mama’s letters?”

  She does not protest. She is content with being shaken like a rag doll. I stop and look at her. I try to imagine what she might be thinking. She does not actually care what people think of her, does she? What she cares about are those years before she lost her son, how fiercely she protected him and how quickly he was taken from her. And for so long I was shielding her from losing the one thing she had left: me.

  “Rasa, all I want is to make sure you’re taken care of. If you … if you’re with men, how will you live? Who will take care of you when you’re old?”

  “Give me the mailbox key now,” I yell. I know the key must be somewhere in the house. My mother must have written to me. My darling Rasa, I’ve missed you beyond words. I haven’t stopped chopping onions since I left you with that witch. I pull open the drawers of Teta’s bedside table, digging past pills, a pair of stockings, and a stack of old photographs. I pull out the entire drawer and turn it upside down, emptying its contents on the floor. No key.

  Teta is silent. She stares at the photo of Baba on her bedside table. It is a photo of him holding me as a newborn. In the photo Baba has a bushy mustache and a happy glimmer in his eyes. I move to her closet and rummage through her clothes, tossing them behind me as I search. When I’ve cleared her closet I begin to walk out the door. The key must be in the living room.

  “You know, Rasa?” Teta says, as I walk out. I turn around to face her. “You’re just like your father. He was like a gold coin. The more he aged the more beautiful he was. Even in his sickness, he was radiant.”

  I slam the door behind me and return to my bedroom. I turn on the lights, drag the chair toward the closet, and climb up, reaching for the shoe box hidden behind the books on the top shelf. I look through the various letters and postcards from Taymour I had stuffed in the shoe box earlier that morning, which seems a lifetime ago now. I pull out the only other thing in there: the photograph of Mama and me. I don’t need to talk to Teta about last night. Once I find Mama’s letters, any evidence of her existence, I’ll talk to her. I’m her son, not Teta’s.

  I continue to search the house for any traces of my mother. I’m no longer afraid of making noise or waking anyone up. Let them all wake up and know that I am alive. In the living room I grab Teta’s bag and toss the contents on the floor. Her cigarettes, crusty tissues, glasses, chewing gum. All on the floor.

  I turn to the walls. One by one, I tear the photos of Baba off the wall. I throw the framed picture of Teta and Baba on the floor, relishing the sound of the glass shattering. I tear out the photos and look inside the frame for the key.

  For so long, by Teta’s side, I had always been so well behaved. I was protecting her just as much as she was protecting me. But at what cost?

  “Where is she?” I yell, grabbing the cushions from the sofa and tearing at the seams until they unravel. No key. I toss the cushion across the room. It lands on the table and a glass ashtray falls to the floor. I run toward the bookcase and push the television off the shelf. I savor the thud it makes as it crashes on the carpet.

  When there is nothing left to overturn, I stop and look at the room. I am panting like a madman. The room is covered in shattered glass and upturned furniture. There is no sign of Mama anywhere. For so long I had believed there was something of her here. I had held on to the hope that the house contained my mother somehow. But it was all in my head. She was never here. The only thing keeping her here was me.

  I am crying as I go into the bathroom. It is as if the depth of my mother’s pain has finally hit me. I am not just crying for my mother but also for myself, for the person I used to be, someone who believed they could change the world, who didn’t feel so helpless about the thought of a young man from al-Sharqiyeh being tortured to death in prison, someone who could fall madly in love with no fear of the consequences. What am I going to do tomorrow? How will this new person fill his days?

  I reach for the toothpaste and begin to brush my teeth. I take a good look at my face in the bathroom mirror. It is flushed and swollen. I move closer to my reflection, drawn by something familiar in my face. Red lines of burst blood vessels streak the area around my nostrils. As a child, I could always tell when my mother had vomited after drinking. She would throw herself into each heave with such intensity that blood vessels in her face would burst, leaving the area around her nose veiny and red. My eyes, bloodshot and exhausted, stare back at me. They are my mother’s eyes. I look at her staring back at me in my reflection, at the demons she and I share, the deviance and otherness, and for the first time I am no longer alone.

  But I am not just my mother, am I? This burning stubbornness to hold on to what is gone, to my mother, to Taymour, to the revolution, it is Teta who gave this to me. She raised me against all odds, this woman who thought her time of raising children was long gone. But after years of following her stubborn path, I learned something from her. I can only hope one day she will look back at this and admire me for carving out m
y own life.

  Teta’s door is still shut when I leave the bathroom. I walk to the living room and grab a pen and paper from the dusty drawer where she keeps her cards. I scratch out the numbers on the paper that list the score of an old game of bridge. I know how much Teta insists on saving paper by using every piece that remains blank.

  I am like you. I scrawl on the page, between the hastily written numbers and calculations. I circle it to bring it to her attention and leave it on the table.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket.

  Come outside, the text from Maj reads.

  There is a creak of a door opening.

  “Sir?” Doris’s voice drifts through the quiet house. I look into the corridor and see her head peeking out from her bedroom.

  “Don’t worry, everything is fine now,” I say. I step into her room, which is dark save for a collection of candles that are burning by the nightstand, just under the painting Mama had done of Baba. It looks like a shrine, but who is it a shrine for — my mother or my father?

  “Are you going out?” she whispers.

  “Yes.”

  “Too much problems outside. My family called. They tell me to go back.” She pauses and then pulls my wrist toward her and puts a small object in my palm.

  It’s a short, flat key.

  “Don’t tell Teta,” she whispers, putting an index finger to her lips.

  I step out of the apartment, close the front door, and walk down the steps and out of the building. On the empty street, the sun is rising in the east, bathing al-Sharqiyeh in reddish dawn. There are never any clouds this deep into summer, but this July morning, clouds of destruction hover over al-Sharqiyeh. Many citizens will be in their homes when they die today, and the smoke blooms that rise as the bombs drop will contain concrete, dust, furniture, bits of bodies, pulverized and floating above the ruins. On the horizon the slums are burning like a crazy carnival. They look so beautiful from far away and then they are gone, a smoldering ruin.