The Bamboo Stalk

by Saud Alsanousi

  I don’t remember that. I was five years old. But definitely she did.

  Did she kiss Adrian? Did Adrian feel my mother’s kiss through Aida’s lips?

  If only your letter had come earlier, Mother.

  * * *

  That year Uncle Pedro finished building his new house on Mendoza’s land and bought a used car. He had found work driving trucks for various companies, paid by the day. The great advantage for me was that for the first time in years I had my own room in the house, after Uncle Pedro left. A room that encapsulated my life in the Philippines. It was a small room with blue walls, a bed, a ceiling fan and a window that looked out on the window of my grandfather’s little house next door. The distance between the two windows was no more than two metres and the watercourse ran through the gap below. Along the banks thin stalks of bamboo grew. There was nothing to disturb my peace of mind when I was in my room, except for Grandfather’s nocturnal ravings under the influence of tuba, which I could hear through his window, or his constant calls of ‘José!!!’ during the day.

  10

  I was five years old and Adrian had started walking a few months earlier. He was in the middle of his second year. I looked after my little brother if Aida was busy. I didn’t look after him in the full sense: all I did was keep an eye on him and stop him going outside or into the kitchen. He was chubby and very pretty, with small eyes and a flat nose squashed between his plump cheeks. ‘That’s what legitimate children look like,’ Mendoza told Aida.

  One night Aida asked me to look after Adrian while she went off to help Uncle Pedro sort out his new house. Merla was asleep upstairs. I was alone with him in the little sitting room. All I remember of what happened are some disjointed images that Aida pieced together for me when I was older. She explained to me the implications of one image that still flickers indistinctly in my memory.

  It’s dark and raining heavily. Thunder and lightning. Aunt Aida, in the rain, shouting, ‘Adrian! Adrian!’ Uncle Pedro’s children moving around outside. Men and women carrying flashlights, searching Grandfather’s land. Uncle Pedro running between the trees shouting, ‘Adrian! Adrian!’ Their clothes soaked and sticking to their bodies. The rain lashing down. The beams of the flashlights. Straight lines criss-crossing and never resting on one spot. All I remember are the voices and the images frozen by the sudden flashes of lightning.

  ‘Here, here,’ shouted Pedro’s wife. Then Merla screamed and Aunt Aida wailed. All the flashlights pointed to one spot. Everyone running to somewhere between our house and my grandfather’s house. I followed them. Pedro jumped into the watercourse, picked up something and put it on the bank between the bamboo stalks, which were leaning over because of the rainwater. A flash of lightning lit up the scene. Everyone dispersed, with shock on their faces. People made the sign of the cross. Uncle Pedro holding Adrian’s face in both hands. It was dark blue. There was a thick black liquid running from his mouth and nose. Uncle Pedro pressed the boy’s chest and kept pressing, locking his fingers, pushing down on Adrian’s chest. Hitting, hitting. He pressed his lips to the lips of my little brother and blew. Then he burst into tears.

  * * *

  We should be able to forget the mistakes we make in childhood, but if the victim of your mistake is still there, right in front of your eyes, and grows up with you, and the effects of the mistake still show, then how can you forget?

  I often make excuses for myself. I say I was just a child that didn’t understand, that I couldn’t be held responsible, that it wasn’t my fault.

  The excuses are persuasive, but if you try to convince both your head and your heart at the same time, one of them refuses to believe.

  I borrow my mother’s saying: ‘Everything happens for a reason, and for some purpose.’ Resorting to faith, by its very nature, requires faith.

  But what if the faith is all a pretence?

  With the passage of time everything new becomes old. But Adrian’s face seems new whenever I see it.

  He sits in front of me in his favourite corner, his mouth open, drooling constantly, reminding me of something I want to forget: a crippling sense of guilt about a mistake I can’t even remember happening.

  ‘Aida, isn’t there any way to cure him?’ I ask my aunt.

  She gives her usual answer: ‘No. That’s what they told us in the hospital, after the incident, years ago.’

  Although she’s told me to my face dozens of times over the years what the doctor said, I still ask. ‘What did the doctor say?’

  I hear the same answer as always. ‘It’s because the oxygen didn’t get to his brain. Damage to the cells.’

  I’m always deeply disappointed, as if I expect a different answer every time I ask.

  After nearly drowning, Adrian was in a coma for weeks. After that he gradually regained weight and recovered his health.

  He recovered everything, except his mind.

  11

  At first no one dared tell my mother in Bahrain what had happened to Adrian and they were hoping they wouldn’t have to because he would recover before she came home. But two years later, after they had lost hope, Aida phoned my mother to tell her all about the accident, leaving aside the permanent damage it had done to him. Alberto had come back from one of his trips a few weeks after the incident. He was horrified at what had happened. He spent most of his four months’ leave in the bar close to his house, then disappeared to sea again.

  After Aunt Aida called her, my mother came straight back from Bahrain. That was in the middle of 1995. We waited for her at home – Aunt Aida, Merla, Adrian and me, Pedro and his children.

  Tragedy leaves deep scars on the walls of memory, whereas happiness paints pictures on them in bright colours. Time acts on the walls like rain: it washes away the colours but leaves the scars.

  Uncle Pedro pulled the door open just as my mother was about to come in. I jumped up and she hugged me. ‘You’ve grown into a man, José!’ she said, overjoyed. Everyone exchanged kisses and greetings with her. Everyone was awaiting the inevitable confrontation. The group moved apart around her. My mother looked at Adrian in his corner and went up to him. ‘Three years,’ she said with a big smile. ‘Enough for you to forget your mother.’

  Her smile faded.

  ‘What’s wrong with him, looking at me like that?’ she asked.

  Uncle Pedro wrapped his arms around her and Aunt Aida took her hand. ‘Sit down, first sit down, Josephine,’ my aunt said. My mother’s face changed.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ she asked.

  Slobber was pouring from Adrian’s open mouth. My mother clasped her hand to her mouth and sat down between her sister and her brother.

  Aunt Aida began to explain, stumbling for words. Uncle Pedro joined in, also explaining. My mother’s face was frozen and only her eyebrows showed signs of her anguish. She burst into tears. She went to Adrian and hugged him tight but he pushed her away. She turned to Aunt Aida, her eyes throwing sparks, and began to insult her between sobs. ‘You bitch, you bitch!’ she said.

  She raised her arm and brought it down on Aida’s face.

  ‘What kind of future can my son expect now, all because of you,’ she shouted, slapping Aida around the face. Aida stood up but she didn’t try to push her away or protect her face with her arms.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t come back,’ said my mother. ‘Why do all these things happen to me?’

  My mother went on hitting Aida, while I put my hands over my face, the sound of the slaps ringing in my ears.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t come back, I wish I hadn’t come back,’ she continued.

  Then she stopped slapping her sister and hugged her tight. Aida burst out crying too.

  ‘Josephine! Enough,’ said Uncle Pedro, pushing my mother towards my room.

  It was the first time I had seen Aunt Aida cry.

  Something inside me told me that no one but I deserved all those slaps. Although it was Aida’s face that received them, I could feel the sting of them.

  M
y mother spent a week crying over Adrian. Once she had exhausted all her sadness and all her reserves of tears, she called everyone into the sitting room. She sat on the ground with her suitcase open in front of her and gave out the presents she had brought from Bahrain for the members of the family, as if nothing had happened.

  I wonder if she believed that what happened to Adrian happened for a reason, and for some purpose.

  12

  In one of her letters from Bahrain, my mother said she wanted to swim across the sea to Kuwait to meet my father or at least find out what had happened to him after the war. She didn’t know that all she needed to do was come home to the Philippines and find out there.

  One night in 1996, or about a year after my mother came back from Bahrain, I was lying on the sofa in the sitting room of our little house, after an exhausting day at work with my grandfather. Aunt Aida and Merla were watching television and my mother was with Adrian in my room because there was a power cut at her husband’s house. Suddenly we heard Uncle Pedro calling ‘Aida, Aida!’ from outside. He opened the door and, clearly bursting to share some news, he asked, ‘Where’s Josephine? I went to her house and there was no one there.’

  Aida pointed to the door of my room. ‘She’s in José’s room,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’ Without answering, Pedro headed off to my room. My curiosity was aroused and I followed him.

  When Pedro opened the door, letting light into the dark room, my mother put a finger to her lips. ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Don’t wake up the boy. I’ll come and join you in a minute.’

  In the small sitting room my mother sat down between Aida and Merla, while I stood next to Pedro.

  ‘I delivered some goods to a company today,’ he said.

  Mother looked at his face with interest, her eyes half-closed.

  ‘The company belongs to a Kuwaiti businessman,’ Pedro continued.

  Now her eyes opened wide. ‘Go on. And then what?’ she said.

  ‘One of the staff said the man’s well-known in Kuwait,’ he continued, looking Mother straight in the face.

  Mother stared back. ‘A writer, a novelist, or something like that,’ Pedro added.

  Mother stood up straight. ‘Do you think . . .?’ she said.

  * * *

  Since my father had been writing for a Kuwaiti newspaper, my mother hoped it might be possible to get some information from this man, something that would lead her to him, or maybe she hoped that the man himself would turn out to be Rashid.

  Pedro decided to take my mother to see the man the next day to ask him if he had heard of my father or if he could help us reach him or find out what had become of him.

  My mother didn’t sleep that night. She woke me up early in the morning and asked me to get changed and join her with Uncle Pedro.

  ‘What’s a Kuwaiti businessman doing in the Philippines?’ my mother asked Pedro while we were on our way to meet the man.

  ‘The people who work there say he’s been living here for five years. But that’s none of our business,’ said Pedro.

  At the man’s office one of the staff told us he was away in Bahrain.

  ‘Will he be staying there long?’ Pedro asked.

  ‘Two weeks at the most,’ the man said. ‘He has a play on there.’

  Uncle Pedro turned to my mother and said, ‘Well our little play here seems to be over.’

  Mother turned to me and said, ‘The man’s in Bahrain.’

  She paused a moment, then continued, ‘He was here when I was in Bahrain, and today he’s in Bahrain and I’m here.’

  We went back to the car. My mother was speaking to herself: ‘Everything happens for a reason, and for some purpose.’

  She opened the car door and sat in the seat. ‘I’d very much like to meet this man,’ she said.

  We went back later in the hope of meeting the Kuwaiti man when he was back from his trip. My mother pinned many hopes on meeting him. ‘He’s bound to know Rashid,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps he knows at least how we can get in touch with him. Fate has something in store for us.’

  When we were almost home, in the narrow lane leading to Mendoza’s land, Uncle Pedro stopped his truck to make way for a vehicle that had just come out.

  When we asked Mendoza about the vehicle, he beamed with delight. ‘Those guys were representatives from Smart Communications,’ he said, taking a piece of paper out of his pocket. ‘I’ve just signed a contract with them. They’re renting six square metres of the land to set up a relay tower. They’re going to pay rent every month.’

  My mother looked away from Mendoza and waved her hand dismissively. ‘A cockerel every month, more likely,’ she said.

  13

  I really loved the piece of land I grew up on. I spent so much time alone there, looking at the things around me, that sometimes I thought I myself was one of the trees that grew there. I didn’t rule out the possibility that my head might sprout leaves or that mangoes might grow behind my ears, or that if I lifted my arms a bunch of bananas would appear under my armpits. Sometimes I imagined myself as a humble pebble on the same piece of land. It might shift position, it might be buried by sand and then the rain might uncover it, but it would stay there, never crossing the bamboo fence that surrounded the land. I loved the green, the colour of life, with all its shades, and in the end I sometimes thought it was the only colour in the universe. And yet, though I loved the green on Mendoza’s land, I hated Mendoza.

  Even the land wasn’t spared his greed. He destroyed the only thing of beauty I thought he had created. Despite his greed, there was one thing that had made me see him in a more favourable light – his interest in the land, the trees, his dog Whitey and his gang of cocks. I respected his interest in natural things, even if he didn’t himself take the trouble to look after them. Instead his interest took the form of giving me orders to look after them for him. But when he agreed to let them put up that monstrosity of a tower on the land that I loved, crowding out the trees, I could no longer believe there was a good side to his character.

  Often, mostly at night, I would lean my back against the trunk of the biggest tree on Mendoza’s land, with a piece of flat land stretched out in front of me towards Inang Choleng’s house. I would watch everything around me, except for the old woman’s house in case the bee in my head stirred and started buzzing again. In that space I had another life. I would sit on the damp ground. The place would be shrouded in darkness, except for the light that slipped through from the windows of the four houses arranged around me – our house, Mendoza’s house, Uncle Pedro’s house and Inang Choleng’s house.

  The frogs croaking, the crickets chirping, Whitey barking and the other dogs in the neighbourhood barking back, and other noises I couldn’t identify. The noises, coupled with the smell of the earth, would make me want to stay longer. If my mother couldn’t find me at night before she went back to Alberto’s house, she knew I would be sitting under my usual tree. She would open the window and shout, ‘José! Come on! Come inside!’ I would stand up and head back, with a feeling that the trees were bending their branches behind me and trying to grab me. The croaking of the frogs and the buzzing of the insects grew louder, and I sometimes imagined that among all the noises something was calling my name. The weeds caught my feet and made it hard to walk. I wasn’t afraid of leaving these things behind me because I knew I would soon meet them again. By sunset the next day I would have prepared myself to meet my friends again.

  As soon as I was home, Aida would comment, ‘Ah, the Lord Buddha’s back.’

  I don’t know why Mother would be upset that I was sitting under the trees. Perhaps she was worried I would strike roots so deep into the ground that I would never go back to my father’s country. But even roots don’t mean much sometimes.

  I was more like a bamboo plant, which doesn’t belong anywhere in particular. You can cut off a piece of the stalk and plant it without roots in any piece of ground. Before long the stalk sprouts new roots and starts to grow again in the new gro
und, with no past, no memory. It doesn’t notice that people have different names for it – kawayan in the Philippines, khaizuran in Kuwait, and bamboo in many places.

  Once the relay tower had been put up in the clearing in front of my favourite tree, I began to sit cross-legged on the ground facing in the opposite direction – with my back to the tower and facing the tree trunk. Although I was in a different position, the same sounds still found their way to my ears.

  14

  One morning, about ten days after the relay tower went up on Mendoza’s land, I was in my room when I heard Uncle Pedro honking the horn of his truck outside. I opened the window and shouted, ‘Need any help, Uncle?’ He gestured for me to come out.

  My mother was sitting in the seat next to him. She opened the door and my little brother stepped down. ‘José, take Adrian to Aida and you come back and come with us,’ she said.

  Off we went to the office of the Kuwaiti businessman.

  ‘He’s not coming today. You can come back tomorrow,’ one of the staff told Uncle Pedro, but my mother insisted on meeting the man. The worker turned to a colleague and didn’t say anything. His colleague picked up the phone and made a call. ‘You can visit him at home at this address,’ she said, writing it out on a piece of paper. ‘If it’s really so important.’

  Uncle Pedro pulled up in front of a simple house, not much different from the one we lived in. ‘Are you sure of the address?’ my mother asked.

  Pedro pointed towards the door of the truck. ‘Go and check for yourself,’ he said.

  ‘This couldn’t possibly be a Kuwaiti’s house, Pedro,’ she said.

  Pedro didn’t answer. She opened the door and turned to me. ‘Come along, José,’ she said.

  I followed her while Pedro stayed in the truck waiting for us. Mother knocked on the door. We didn’t have to wait long. ‘Welcome, come in,’ the man said in English.

  He was a man in his forties. He seemed simple, perhaps compared with the image that went with Pedro’s description of him as a Kuwaiti businessman. He was of medium height, thin, greying a little on the temples, calm-looking, and with a distinctive pointed moustache that drooped on the sides of his mouth, and black eyebrows that seemed to be thicker than they should be.