by Alia Mamdouh
Of course you do not know the name of that man who was a director of the Bank of Pennsylvania. His name doesn’t mean anything to you. Shall I remind you or shall I be quiet?
I was pressing him, as I smiled—if only he would simply say the name without all of these preliminaries.
His initials are JP. But here is what is important. Could you ever imagine that they would make the same thing apply to our country? This is where my interest in politics was checked. And since the news about our country is not reassuring I don’t listen at all, or if I do, it’s without paying attention to details or concentrating on what is happening. There’s nothing left here except marketing, Mother, marketing the heavens after the earth is already sold. The war was happening over there, over there where all of you folks are, over in the Orient and Europe. But here, in Canada and America, the screen offers us the golden age of the war of rumors. I don’t remember who it was that said, At the present time this country no longer thinks of anything except what entertains it. Imagine, Mother, my identity here is completely a matter of what I do for a living. My occupation and that is the whole of it. I’m a commodity, too, Mother. Commodification extends to everything that might possibly enter your mind. For the real American buys American goods; as for the true Arab, he buys American goods, too. I have remembered what Ken said after the 1991 war when he was reminiscing, and we were there; do you remember what he said then? The United States reminds me of Great Britain and its control of the high seas in the past. The seas of today are the information necessary to control the waves, the sound waves of global communications media—in all forms. The US is the country that imagines it cannot be done without. Americans cannot deny their country being the most just among all nations in the history of the world, and the most tolerant, and the most desiring of continuous review and improvement. It is the best model for the future.
Ken called. It was a Sunday and so Nader was there to answer the phone. He began to laugh and to comment to us on what Ken was saying. Children are pearls hanging from the beard of nature. Yes, of course I will say that to Suhaila, of course. Yes, she is right here, next to me, and she’s happy. Tayyib. Mother, it is Lady.
She was shouting and laughing very loudly. Listen, my friend. This child is for his parents—that’s his ideal place to be. As for you, pay close attention. Don’t be misled or dazzled by that ringing title of “the dear sweet grandmother,” because one of these days you will wake up to find that all hands are stretching toward you, ready to force the tree of your life to stop growing. They are wicked. They will use you in all sorts of capacities for they love your weakness. Don’t let your head bend and sway in ecstasy at this glorification of your new role. For that love is like morphine, and if you grow accustomed to it such love will deplete your spirit. Ho, there you are. Congratulations, my dear. Listen, we’ve sent a gift from all of us. When it reaches you it will make you laugh and laugh.
Ken took back the receiver, laughing. Don’t listen to this pessimistic dame! he said. May God bless all the children of the world. With us or without us they will make their way. That’s the world for you.
I sensed a sort of reverence in his voice. His laugh and his words offered me a kind of uninterrupted aid, advice, an injection of courage into my heart. Whenever the image of his good-natured face comes into my head, his voice begins to fade while his smile, or his laugh, surges out from a side of his mouth though his smile never does become any broader. Ambiguous, his smile is, somehow standing still, as if it is fenced in; it accumulates but nothing ever wells over to flood out, as happens with Lady who said to me one day, although it was not in response to anything I said, You, your people, do a lot of things in secret while out loud you go on at length about the exact opposites. Sex—it’s important, it’s necessary, and we must think about it. We do it all the time. We give ourselves and our partners pleasure. It is a beloved act and it is nice. I call it my water, it’s that essential. It comes from me slowly, with the natural oils that strengthen my soul and my body and deliver me from maladies and points of weakness. I imagine that if the contents of our bodies stayed inside of us they might turn against us.
Then she turned suddenly and asked me, What do you think?
Who decides whether something is beautiful and how do we prove that it is so? Do its beauty and pleasure depend solely on what we imagine? I thought of the German philosopher Kant, the ascetic, the chaste, who dreaded to squander semen, saliva, and sweat because he thought that would drain away his philosophical energy and intellectual life, which he was so anxious to preserve. And me, for whom do I preserve my powers and the sexual potential I hold inside? I am nothing but an actress and dancer on her way to retirement.
One night years ago in Brighton, Channel Four was broadcasting a documentary about the Vietnam War. Demonstrations had spread throughout the world by then. Ken’s face at that time is still before my eyes and I will not forget it as long as I live. He was at the height of his suffering. The smell of his misery filled my nostrils and his voice swung back and forth, between the here of Brighton and the there of Vietnam.
It was my mother, Suhaila, who stuffed me between her ribs and closed her clothing over me because she was so intensely afraid for us, as we all were being transported in trucks and trains loaded with corpses. She did it so that I would not scream or cry from hunger and thirst. I was more lifeless than a fragile, skinny child should be, as she transferred me from her chest to between her thighs, imprisoning me there, where I snuck looks at the ailing, bony, yellowish body pressed up against me, the whole way, which was crowded with American soldiers. The stink of urine and armpits and fear cut through my mouth and nose, and her pubic hair sprinkled her urine slowly along my palate. I would drink and then for moments be silent and still. I would drink and nearly choke from the stream of it and the blood she was hemorrhaging. We were an easy target, all jammed together, to be crushed like insects, our dead bodies to be tossed into the thickets and garbage piles or dumped at crossroads. My mother’s pee was what saved my life. She inherited chronic bladder infection and a kidney blockage, and I inherited infections in the throat and a fissure in the esophagus whose effects are still with me. The urine contained pebbles and sand and a lot of blood that I swallowed and didn’t pay it any mind. Who can distinguish in such moments between blood and piss? Years later, when I reached my tenth birthday and we were in England, I learned to shake my body fiercely. I pricked and tormented and pounded it; I split my flesh and made it bleed. Walking through forests and thickets that scraped my skin I would press the thorns of bushes into my body. I would sting my flesh with broken glass and sharp implements. I saw my blood run, in those fields. I swam in my blood and I propelled it outside of myself, repeating, Take it, and look, Ken. Don’t you see those holes and wounds? Don’t you understand? I want to filter and cleanse my Vietnamese blood of American sweat. My mother began to follow me like my shadow on those mad trips of mine.
You are a lunatic, she said. You are demented just like him. Like your father who went on fucking me as the sounds of the bombs and rumbling from the missiles echoed on and on over our heads. Blood was pouring from his ears and the bottom of his mouth. And his thing was spraying blood mixed with semen. I got pregnant with you in the mud amidst the moaning of the wounded and the dead bodies on every side. Every shudder of his body sent me all the way down to hell but he didn’t care; he went on blasting apart my pelvis and hips, slapping, kneading my body with mud and bullets and the poison of microbe-filled dust. He would get up, naked, make his slack thing hard again, and start over. He would raise it high, and higher, like a missile; he wouldn’t close his eyes but he would bellow when he saw the airplanes on their way to us. They aimed well and his skull burst apart, skudding through the dirt where I was submerged in blood and terror.
When Caroline called she was on the telephone for a long time. She congratulated Nader first, on the third day after the birth. On the fourth day she spoke to Sonia in her hospital room. She didn’
t ask to speak to me. She was very good at choosing appropriate moments when Nader happened to be present, when Sonia and the baby were awake. Strange—it is a matter of instinct, not just alertness and vigor. I truly appreciated her style when I could see that she was choosing her words with care, for she was easing things for me. She knows pretty well what goes around in my mind and what sorts of stories I will be likely to tell her and the rest of my friends there. In my notebook I’ve written down some of the bothersome things, certain inconsistencies; there is no time to sidestep them and it wasn’t seemly to dodge them, at least not in front of myself. It was problematical: that Nader would cloak himself in all of the roles: mother, nurse, obedient servant and a man who does not know the meaning of neglect when it comes to affairs of the household.
He looked to me like something more than a son and a father. His masculinity made itself scarce and he became far less chatty. He was lavishly dissecting his new persona. He was a new man; he had become someone different. He was playing that role consummately and I was trying to fathom his new situation. That was in the beginning. He obeyed the call, Sonia’s call, and the pull of this new, impassioned, ebullient emotion: being Abu Leon, the father of Leon.
Sonia would be able to write the history of that decisive stage in their life together. Without a doubt he became her particular project. No, it was not jealousy sinking its claws into me; these were fragments of theories on liberation, justice, and freedom, remnants of my own unclear, hazy ideas that I fancied remained securely embedded in my heart: Sonia is a woman with her head held as high as a fresh carnation on its stem. Authority is clearly etched on her desiring face; the halo of vindictive femininity casts its light all around her; and as such I hear her voice as she speaks to him, coming or going. She speaks to Nader. She gives him commands that he can’t dismiss and she is constantly blocking his path. At first he tries to get around it but then he jumps up and says, Fine. Myself, I was going to insist on his release. Her authority had something supernatural about it, like the force of that legendary creature, the ghoul. I don’t know where this comes from. I did not feel that way the day Nader was born and I had no knowledge of any secreted power, hidden somewhere and all I had to do was to wipe the dust from it for it to rouse itself, to flap its wings, slowly, quietly, and without much obvious force. I followed the path set out before me, with my newborn, and I was silent. I faded; I disappeared. I began to echo whatever that husband said so that I would obtain approval and reap satisfaction, or at least so that I would not face the likelihood of standing in the mouth of the cannon. Was Sonia here as an instrument of revenge for my passivity? Was she here to redo my training and thus to destroy the Nader I knew completely, as if she were conveying to him what I used to suffer, and then to publicly, overtly, push me irretrievably off into the corner? The general outlines of what I have come to believe over the course of my life, those issues and ideas and the ringing words that we repeated in the lecture halls and theaters and demonstrations and plays, and the roles we took on, have been made opaque, false, and futile. The damage and injustice of it all have emerged in sudden and sharp contours before me now, as Sonia has dared to stand above the unassailable fortress. She takes up her new stance before my ancient one and the scales tip in her favor. I look, I notice, I repeat; I dread to call out (and with her right there), Beware, Nader, be careful! Is it because you are my son? And so it is as if I am warning myself again, as if I am back inside one of those long-ago days. I am shattered slowly and the glass splinters fling themselves all the way to the furthest seat in the theater and on into the home and across the bed. Why am I so upset? I get angry, with my hand on the balustrade and Sonia’s voice coming, elegant and eloquent; there is nothing that can curb its defiant canter. I hear her insistence, and the way she repeats things, gently, and then coquettishly, and then with that strength like an explosive device, and the magnetic appeal that she casts wide like a web-spinning spider, so that evil whisperings fill my head and spill over me like boiling hot water. Between us, what is there to divide us? There is her winning efficiency and my incapacity. By myself, I snarl and grumble, and then I surrender the flag to her while feelings of sorrow about Nader and myself fill me with regret.
Caroline’s phone calls began again. In a word, she told me, this call is for you. What is this, Suhaila? When are you coming back? Two months you have been there, and I am sure you are sitting there collecting and going over all of your scattered parts, your faults and your great qualities. You will say thank you for this visit because it made you distinguish between artificial and natural light. Suhaila, what is the other thing you have become certain of? Do not swallow your pride in front of me and say yet again, I was unable to stand what was in front of me. Sonia became the general manager while Nader was just a simple doorman and gofer available for all tasks and services.
That will become your primary topic; it will satisfy your proclivities but it’s also a subject that stirs you up. You must understand, my friend, the significance of the story which is so often repeated. From behind that curtain you are scrutinizing another man, as if you are on the point of issuing separation papers. Separate him from your self, then, please do. Do not put all of this blame on her for making what is in fact the best possible use of your son. What is worse than that, in fact, is that she is submitting the application to you and all you have to do is to fill in the blanks: your own shortcomings and your having gotten off track. Have you absorbed the lesson? This institution is full of faults and slip-ups. To remain was well-nigh impossible for you, not because of who you were, or because of your husband, but because of the war. Don’t you see why I have never married?
Wajd would say repeatedly, It is not necessarily the case that depression is a condition peculiar to the wealthy and refined. Take Caroline, for example. You don’t suffer from the sort of self-pride she has, but for you, feeling depressed is like a hoarded treasure.
The day I learned that Caroline had a master’s degree in mathematics, I was stunned. And I laughed out loud when she told me. If you were an Eastern woman, Caroline, I said, you would have split my head apart talking about it and singing your own praises about the academic heights you had achieved, and you would have insisted that I call you professor.
What? she answered with a lovely quietness. But I got the equivalent of a doctorate in the philosophy of the Enlightenment from Durham University. As she spoke she was pouring out two new glasses of nicely aged wine. Her hand fluttered every which way in front of my face. Her nails, carefully shaped, were painted a dark silvery hue. The nails of an Indian fortune-teller, I remarked, and she laughed like a little girl. Around us were mounds of electric wires going to all sorts of advanced gadgets and pieces of equipment amidst which we sat: a television with a screen like those you see in the private theaters of French institutions; a digital large-screen plasma television and a VCR system for older tapes. I will give this to you, she said, on your next birthday. It really produces superior sound. It picks up everything. It’s the only one I have kept from the old days—or from the second wave. Very high lamps sent the light upward so that it did not hurt your eyes. There were three computers, the huge original one looking like a ponderous old electric dumbwaiter sitting on the stylish black table with its huge, glistening screen. The smaller one she carries with her whichever room in the apartment she is in; it’s like an obedient puppy that follows her everywhere. I envisioned her taking it with her to the bathroom as well. The third, smallest in size, she sticks into her handbag when she is traveling to some other country by air or train. Two printers, one of them the usual type and the second laser. A scanner for full-color images as if we are in a small institution or firm that depends on records, archives, and documents. Her library is a maze, a skyscraper in itself. I need an elevator and a uniform to move among these shelves, I told her. It was hard for me to remain inside that world for any length of time. It is simultaneously well ordered and chaotic, aberrant and overly regulated. I would require ner
ves of steel and advice from trained psychiatrists, plus an ancient prayer that I would proffer to assure that blessings would fall on me. She raises her eyebrows as I continue to flee from these presences. I feel, I say, as though I am facing an army of nice, pleasant enemies. She responds, laughing and saying, These are the seductions of knowledge. She sets me down inside symbols and numbers, lines, and languages, and invites me gravely, Come, write, if you would like to write. A button, two buttons, a light; and the information is all there in front of you in a second. Come on, start in. You can be sure that if you put your fingers there, no thunderbolt will strike you! And this is not a lamb shank that you put in the oven and forget while it roasts to a turn.
This, Caroline goes on, is where I establish links between me and myself and the world. But you are still out there roving around in the emptiness, in the deserts, addressing the stars with a sewing needle and expecting that your old moon will write your new history. Suhaila, my magic is stronger. This—this is magic, look at it and enter its world in safety, with confidence. I will donate my experience to you. Yes, slowly of course, and without a lot of to-do. I will give you a golden opportunity to make all of the mistakes, and I will appoint you an honorary consul in this world; but only after a year or two, when you’ve developed more of a backbone. She explains with the movements of her body, her hand, and her head. She is generous, lenient, gentle, tolerant, and courageous.