The Bamboo Stalk

by Saud Alsanousi

  It was late and the only people on the beach were the guards and a group of guests sitting in the dark in a semi-circle like ghosts. Only their white shirts were visible. The lights in the hotel rooms behind me weren’t on, which made the stars look brighter. I went up the stairs and stood in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary. I put my hands together and began to pray. The sound of the waves around me was loud but it gave me a sense of calm. The waves were crashing on the rock, spraying salt water on my face. I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

  ‘I’m not crying, Mother Mary,’ I said.

  I looked up into her face. ‘Those were drops of seawater. Don’t worry,’ I continued.

  She didn’t look at me. She was looking at something behind me in the distance. I climbed the last step, which brought me to the same level as her. I leaned over her left shoulder and whispered in her ear. ‘But I will cry if I have to stay here too long,’ I told her.

  I wrapped my arms around her with my eyes closed. Then I heard a sound alongside the sound of the waves, rather like a piece of guzheng music. The hairs on my arms stood on end. I looked at the Virgin Mary’s face. Her eyes were still looking into the distance. I turned to see where she was looking. There was a group of guests sitting on the sandy beach. They were swaying from side to side. One of them was playing strange music on an instrument I didn’t recognise.

  I lit a candle. I clenched my teeth on the lighter and went down into the water to swim back to shore.

  6

  They were Kuwaitis, young men, five of them, sitting on the beach in a semi-circle. The one in the middle was holding an instrument that looked like a guitar. He was playing and singing while the other four listened in silence. He sang louder and the guard came over. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘You’ll disturb the other guests.’

  The Kuwaitis looked at him without saying a word.

  ‘You can sit over there,’ the guard added, pointing to the compound next door, which was dark because it was being renovated. ‘That hotel’s empty, as you can see.’

  The man in the middle stood up with his instrument and walked off. The others followed him, each of them carrying something.

  I was sitting close by, between them and the sea, level with Willy’s Rock, listening to what they were saying. When they had moved and started singing again in the other compound, under a towering coconut tree, I could no longer resist going to join them.

  ‘As-salam aleekum,’ I said, greeting them the way my mother had taught me. They looked at each other, then at me, and then they answered in unison, ‘Wa alaeekum as-salam.’

  I was worried they might be drunk, but apart from one of them they weren’t. ‘You’re from Kuwait, aren’t you?’ I said with a smile.

  They looked at each other in surprise. ‘Yes,’ said the man in the middle. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I can tell, sir.’

  They spoke among themselves but I didn’t understand what they were saying. Then one of them, a man with a glass in his hand, said in perfect English, ‘Please, have a seat.’

  ‘Can I really, sir?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ they all said, pointing at the ground.

  I sat down with them. One of them reached over and offered me a cigarette from his packet. I took my own packet out of the pocket of my shorts. ‘Thanks, sir. I have one,’ I said.

  He took my cigarettes out of my hand and examined them. He handed them back and insisted I smoke one of his Davidoffs. ‘Have one of these,’ he said. ‘It will clear your chest out.’

  His friends laughed. The man with the glass reached for a brown bottle with a red label. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked, offering me his glass.

  ‘Legally I’m not allowed to drink,’ I said. ‘I’m only seventeen. But I have already tried it.’ He was about to put the glass back in its place. ‘But I’d be delighted to accept your invitation,’ I added. I took the glass from his hand. ‘They say that Red Horse beer is powerful stuff. Is that true?’ I asked him.

  He downed the rest of his glass and grimaced as if he had bitten into a lemon. ‘Try it for yourself,’ he said.

  I drank a whole glass in one gulp and everyone laughed. The man poured me another glass and I asked the man in the middle, ‘Aren’t you going to play the . . .’ I hesitated, then asked, ‘By the way, what’s that instrument called?’

  ‘It’s an oud,’ the young man said. The name reminded me of the stories my mother used to tell about Ghassan, who played the same instrument.

  The man started plucking the strings with a small piece of black plastic.

  ‘Sir, what’s the name of the piece you’re going to play? I asked.

  ‘This is a song by my favourite singer in Kuwait,’ he said, continuing to strum. Then he stopped, put the piece of plastic between his nose and his upper lip like a moustache and said, ‘It’s called . . .’

  I don’t in fact remember the name he gave but I do remember that his friends burst out laughing. He laughed too, then started to play again. ‘His thick moustache makes him different from all the other singers in Kuwait, as well as his voice,’ he said.

  Then he began to sing. He moved his head around, sometimes looking up to the sky and sometimes resting his head on the instrument. I wanted to understand the words.

  I drank glass after glass and my head started to feel heavy. The music went on, and the singing couldn’t have been more beautiful.

  I stood up, with the world spinning around me. ‘Stop, stop,’ I said. The man in the middle stopped singing and all five of them looked at me.

  ‘Look, you guys. I’m going to tell you a secret,’ I said. No one said anything, so I continued. ‘I’m Kuwaiti,’ I said.

  I looked up with difficulty to see their faces. They looked surprised.

  ‘My name’s Isa,’ I added.

  They exchanged glances.

  ‘If you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it to you.’

  The man in the middle put his oud upside down on his lap and looked at me with interest.

  ‘Could you all clap please?’ I said. They started clapping, still looking surprised. ‘No, no, not like that,’ I said, and they stopped and looked at me.

  The man with the glass banged his feet together. ‘Like this?’ he asked, making fun of me.

  ‘No, sir. Clap the way the Kuwaitis clap,’ I said.

  This time they smiled and said things to each other I couldn’t understand. They started clapping in that crazy way. I shook my shoulders and my body swayed back and forth. Their surprise, their big smiles and the effect of the beer all encouraged me to continue. I leaned my shoulders forward, put my hands on my head to hold an imaginary hat. The man who was drinking stood up too and came towards me. He started moving his shoulders back and forth like me. The others began to show interest. I bent my legs, then leapt into the air. The man stood beside me, shoulder to shoulder. ‘No, not like that. Do what I’m doing,’ he said. He planted his feet firmly on the ground. I did the same. We went on shaking our shoulders slowly. I started pulling on that invisible rope with my hands, with my legs apart.

  They burst out laughing. They roared. They rolled on their backs. ‘Yes, you’re right. You really are a Kuwaiti, but Made in the Philippines,’ one of them said.

  They went on laughing at the top of their voices.

  The guard came running over. ‘Please! Please!’ he cried.

  The session broke up.

  7

  ‘José, José, José.’ It wasn’t Mendoza calling me this time. It was my mother on the phone, calling me after midnight, crying and struggling to say my name.

  ‘José, José.’

  She caught her breath and tried to put together the words to tell her news. ‘My father’s just died,’ she said.

  She went on crying. She sobbed and wailed. ‘Come at once. You have to be here,’ she told me.

  * * *

  When I took the ten-minute boat ride from Boracay to the airport on the other island, the young Kuwaitis were o
n the boat too. This time I wasn’t the man who stood on the bow. I was one of the people leaving the island, even if I thought I would be back after no more than a week of unpaid leave.

  The Kuwaitis were as cheerful as ever, singing and laughing and playing tricks on each other. They were just as crazy on the boat as they were in the hotel or later on the plane.

  On domestic flights the airline crew usually organises amusements for the passengers, such as competitions. They ask general knowledge questions and give the winners token prizes. But on that flight with the Kuwaitis the cabin crew didn’t know what to do. Nobody paid any attention to them and the activities they were trying to organise because everyone was focused on the crazy Kuwaitis, who were singing and clapping in their traditional way.

  One of them stood up in the middle of the aisle and addressed the passengers. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. Pointing to the passengers sitting on the right, he said, ‘You clap like this’ and began clapping. ‘That’s the beat,’ he explained.

  Then, turning to the passengers on the left, he said, ‘And you, clap like this – tak, tak, tak . . . tak, tak, tak. Is that clear?’

  He went back to his seat and shouted out, ‘One, two, three, now!’

  The man with the oud played a piece with a rapid tempo and the others sang.

  It was crazy the difference those Kuwaitis made to the flight: the smiling faces, the laughter, the cameras recording everything.

  It was such fun that I forgot I was going to the funeral in the church near Mendoza’s land. I didn’t feel sad at losing my grandfather, but when the plane landed at the domestic airport I did feel sad that these crazy Kuwaitis were going off to my father’s country without me.

  At the airport gate I was about to get in a taxi when one of them called me. ‘Isa! Isa!’ But the name didn’t catch my attention. It was just another noise in my head, along with the noise of the cars and the horns blaring, the people in the crowds and other noises.

  One of them grabbed me by the shoulder. ‘Isn’t your name Isa?’ he asked.

  It was the man who had been drinking beer.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.

  He pointed to his friends in a van nearby. They were looking at me from behind the windows and smiling. ‘Me and my friends,’ he said hesitantly, ‘we’re going to Ninoy Aquino International Airport to go back to Kuwait.’ He put out his hand with a large wad of cash. ‘We didn’t have time to spend this money. It’s yours,’ he added.

  ‘But that’s a lot, sir.’

  He ignored what I said and looked into my face. ‘I’m not sure that what you said was true, about being Kuwaiti, but . . .’ He paused. I wanted to swear to him that my father was Kuwaiti and I was born there and I had papers to prove it, but I let him go on with what he wanted to say: ‘But whatever you are, don’t even think of going there unless you’re a real Kuwaiti.’

  He turned away and headed back towards his friends in the van. I looked after them, the money in my hand and a puzzled look on my face. Before getting into the van, he looked back and said, ‘Stay here, my friend, and drink Red Horse.’

  ‘I can drink it there,’ I said in surprise.

  ‘The Red Horse there won’t accept you. It’ll crush you under its hoofs, my friend,’ he said. He rubbed his foot against the ground as if stubbing out a cigarette butt, then pulled the sliding door open and plunged in among his friends packed into the van.

  As the van drove off into the traffic, the man with the oud leaned out of the side window. ‘We don’t know what that drunk was telling you,’ he shouted, so loud that people turned towards me to see what was happening. ‘But come back to Kuwait if you’re telling the truth. You’ll find you have lots of rights there.’

  People were looking at me. The taxi driver asked me to get in. Through the back window of the van, the man who had been drinking shook his head and wagged his finger as if to say, ‘Mind what I say.’

  The van disappeared into the traffic. The crazies were gone, leaving me a pile of cash and a head full of uncertainties.

  8

  In the small church where I had been baptised years earlier, the family received condolences on Grandfather’s death. Many people had come from places far and near to console us and say goodbye to Mendoza after he was gone. It’s strange to say your farewells after someone’s departure.

  I sat next to Mama Aida, who turned up reluctantly after my mother and Uncle Pedro insisted. She told me how she had learned of her father’s death. ‘It was horrible, horrible, José,’ she said, looking towards the coffin where Mendoza lay. ‘I was in my room smoking, late at night. The old dog Whitey started barking. The barking soon changed into a howl like a wailing. My head felt numb and I felt an itching like ants in my scalp. I shook my head like someone trying to wake up from a bad dream. But Whitey didn’t stop wailing and then one of the cocks started crowing. Can you imagine the sound they made – the dog howling and the cock crowing at the same time? The cocks never dared to crow when Whitey was barking but this time they were crowing non-stop. One would stop for a rest and another one would take up where the other left off, and Whitey kept howling horribly.’

  Mama Aida ran her hands along her arms, as if trying to stop her hair standing on end. ‘I ran downstairs in my nightclothes and went out without shoes,’ she continued, crossing herself. ‘Whitey was crouching at the door of Father’s house, howling at the sky. Someone had undone the collar that was tied to his kennel. The cocks were still crowing. But what really scared me and sent a shiver down my spine, José, was seeing Inang Choleng stooped at the window of her house in the darkness. She was topless and had her arms crossed under her shrivelled breasts. She was looking down, as if she had something in her arms.’

  Aida leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands. ‘I didn’t dare go near my father’s house. I hadn’t gone inside for years. I ran off to Pedro’s house without looking back at Inang Choleng’s house. I knocked on his door with both fists. Pedro asked what had come over me. “Father’s dead, Pedro, he’s dead in bed,” I told him. “Who told you that, Aida?” he asked, because he was sure I wouldn’t have gone inside. I pointed to the patio outside father’s house. “Whitey and the cocks,” I said.’

  Uncle Pedro came and sat down on the other side of me and his sister left straight away. ‘I’m going home,’ she said. ‘Enough. I can’t bear to stay here any longer.’ My uncle didn’t look at her, but he picked up the story where she left off.

  ‘After Aida told me I ran to Father’s house and opened the door. Whitey beat me inside. It smelled like the candles had been blown out only a short while ago. I pressed the light switch but nothing happened. I lit my lighter and found my father lying naked on his side, with his knees folded up against his chest, like the foetal position. He had covered his face with his hands like someone who doesn’t want to look at something horrible.’

  * * *

  Merla arrived three days after Grandfather died. The family had decided that his body should stay in the church for five days so that all the family members could see it before he was buried.

  Merla came to the church with Maria, who sat in the back row near the door while Merla came forward to the front row. She greeted us and said, ‘I’m sorry to hear the news.’ Uncle Pedro made room for her next to me and she sat down.

  The family members and the guests started to leave one by one and by sunset Merla and I were the only ones left inside. She turned to me and looked me in the face. ‘You hypocrite!’ she said. ‘Don’t pretend to be sad to lose him, José.’

  I put my hand on her knee and looked towards the coffin where the body was lying. ‘In fact I am sad, Merla,’ I said. ‘I had never looked at his face till now.’ I squeezed her knee. ‘If I had seen him again before he died, I would have told him I forgive him.’

  I took my hand off her knee. She stood up and walked towards the coffin. ‘What matters is that you’ve forgiven him. That’s up to you, not up to him,’
she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. Her back was towards me and her face towards the coffin, which was just a few metres away.

  ‘We’re not rewarding others when we forgive them their sins,’ she said. ‘We’re rewarding ourselves. They call it catharsis.’

  My silence didn’t mean I agreed with what Merla believed, but I wasn’t going to argue with someone crazy right now. I wanted Mendoza to be absolved of his sins against me before he was buried, and when he was absolved, I would have a clear conscience too.

  ‘Aren’t you going to have a last look at Mendoza, José?’ Merla asked, without turning towards me. Merla stepped towards the coffin and I followed with heavy feet.

  The coffin was at the front of the church, open on a table covered with a piece of white silk. It was surrounded by white flowers in silver vases. The coffin was white with decorative touches in purple and golden handles on all four sides. There was a crucifix hanging above it on the wall. To the right there was a picture of Mendoza in a frame on a wooden stand and some basic information about him – Sixto Philip Mendoza, born 6 April 1925, died 21 June 2005, aged 80.

  I stepped towards the coffin, where Merla was standing praying. Grandfather was lying under the glass cover with his eyes closed. His face was grey and the powder they had put on it didn’t hide the pallor. He looked respectable in a way he hadn’t looked when he was alive. He was wearing black trousers and a white shirt with vertical black stripes.

  I looked at the inside of the coffin lid at the end where his head would be. My mother had attached strips of purple cloth to it, each with the name of a close family member: Aida, Josephine, Pedro and his wife and children, Alberto and Adrian, Merla and José. When the lid was closed the names would be on the ceiling of the coffin, in front of Mendoza’s face, so he would be reminded of his family in the other world.