The Bamboo Stalk

by Saud Alsanousi

  He closed the car door, put on his seatbelt and lit a cigarette. ‘Never mind. We’ll try again another time,’ he said, without turning to face me.

  I didn’t say anything, just like my mother years earlier when my father came out of the same house carrying me in his arms. I preferred not to speak, and I prepared myself for a return to Mendoza’s piece of land once again.

  * * *

  ‘What’s the point of trying again, Ghassan?’ I asked when we were back in his flat.

  ‘Because your grandmother is bound to change her mind,’ Ghassan said. He stopped, as if trying to remember something. ‘She’s not sure what to do.’ He looked me right in the face. ‘It would be easier if she wasn’t so worried about what people might say,’ he added.

  ‘What have other people got to do with my family accepting me? How would they know about me?’ I asked naively.

  Ghassan shook his head in frustration. ‘Gossip rules here,’ he said. ‘And besides, it’s not about you, it’s about the Tarouf family. Everyone will know about it. Kuwait’s a small place.’

  ‘So small there’s no room for me,’ I added sadly.

  * * *

  When my grandfather Isa died, he left my grandmother with three girls and a boy – Rashid, my father. My grandmother gave Rashid special treatment because he was the only son and the man of the house. That’s what my mother told me. But what was more important was that my father was the only child whose children could inherit the family name. My grandmother had wanted to see Rashid have children, particularly males who might ensure the survival of the Tarouf name, especially as Isa my grandfather had been the last of the Tarouf clan since the death of his brother Shahin. My grandfather had my father to carry the family name after him. But when my father was killed during the Iraqi occupation without leaving a son (bearing in mind that I was just a ‘thing’, as my grandmother once put it), it became impossible for the Tarouf family name to survive. But now, with my sudden reappearance, my grandmother started thinking about that ‘thing’ – the only person left who could guarantee that the name of his father and grandfather continued and who could pass on the family name to his offspring.

  ‘What does the Filipina’s boy look like?’ she asked Ghassan at that meeting.

  ‘Like a Filipino,’ he answered.

  ‘That old woman is impressive,’ said Ghassan, although I hadn’t asked him for details of the meeting. ‘You don’t know what Rashid meant to Auntie Ghanima, and despite the way you look, you are his only son. Do you understand?’

  ‘No, I don’t understand.’

  ‘OK,’ said Ghassan, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Pass me that packet of cigarettes so I can explain.’

  I passed him the packet. He took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘Listen,’ he said, blowing out the smoke. ‘Khawla is the last person whose family name is Tarouf. One day she’ll get married and her children will take her husband’s name.’ He thought a while and then continued. ‘Apart from you, Auntie Ghanima has two other grandsons with the first name of their grandfather, Isa. But they don’t bear the family name because both of them have taken their family names from their fathers. Now that you’re back,’ he said, pointing at me with his index finger, ‘no one but you can guarantee that the Tarouf name will continue.’

  I was looking at him like an idiot. I showed no interest in what he was saying. ‘Who’s Khawla?’ I asked.

  * * *

  Khawla was born six months after the end of the war over Kuwait and so her father never saw her. She too was never lucky enough to be able to say ‘papa’. But I suddenly realised that I did have one advantage over my sister. In spite of everything that had happened, at least my father had carried me in his arms. I also bore the name that he had chosen, his own father’s name. He had looked into my face and kissed me, even if I remember nothing about it. Poor Khawla. Father never whispered the call to prayer in her right ear after she was born. He didn’t carry her in his arms and Khawla wasn’t the name he had chosen for her.

  My father had married again in the middle of 1990, this time to Iman. He didn’t spend much time with her because he was captured by Iraqi forces. His wife gave birth to my sister the year Kuwait was liberated and the two of them lived in Grandmother’s house until Iman married another man some years later. She moved to his house and left Khawla in the care of Grandmother, who treated her better than she did my three aunts – Awatif, Nouriya and Hind.

  In Grandmother’s house, my sister was Khawla, the daughter of Rashid, and nothing she asked for was withheld. She was Grandmother’s precious darling. Grandmother was anxious to protect her from both other people and from the djinn. Ghassan said that every night Grandmother put her hand on Khawla’s forehead and recited verses from the Qur’an. She prayed to God to protect Khawla and keep her safe from envious people. In the morning she gave her holy water to drink – water over which she had recited Qur’anic verses.

  Ghassan often talked to me about Khawla. He was fond of her, and she of him. She saw him as a substitute for the father she had never seen. ‘She’s a wonderful girl,’ Ghassan said of her. ‘She’s intelligent. Make friends with her, Isa. She needs a brother as much as you need a sister.’

  Khawla had her problems too. She was fatherless, of course, and her mother had abandoned her for her new husband. These things didn’t seem to have had a negative effect on her however. She wasn’t like other girls of her generation. She was almost a copy of her father in the way she spent hours reading his books in his study. She dreamed of finishing off the novel my father had started writing but hadn’t finished when he died. She didn’t have many friends. Ghassan and her aunt Hind were her closest friends.

  ‘I’m proud of her. She’s like a daughter to me,’ said Ghassan.

  What Ghassan said about me being the only person who could ensure the survival of the family name made me feel like a legitimate king who had just come back from a long journey to reclaim his kingdom. But legitimacy alone wasn’t enough to secure recognition. Should I fight for it? Kings lose legitimacy when people reject them and I had been rejected, and I wasn’t even a king.

  I didn’t understand what continuing the family name meant. What would happen if the family name didn’t continue? And what did the way I looked have to do with it?

  I later found out that Grandmother didn’t know what to do the night after her meeting with Ghassan. I was her grandson – Isa Rashid Isa al-Tarouf, a name that brought honour. But I had a face that brought shame. I was Isa, the son of Rashid who died defending his country, but at the same time I was Isa, the son of the Filipina maid.

  7

  It was thanks to Khawla, Grandmother’s favourite, that I was accepted into the Tarouf household, albeit under duress. My sister told Grandmother that she insisted I be allowed to visit.

  ‘It would just be a visit, Grandmother, please,’ she said. ‘And afterwards you can decide.’

  Grandmother gave in to Khawla’s entreaties. ‘I don’t know why, but I’ve been pressing Grandmother to let you visit our house,’ Khawla told me at our first meeting. ‘Maybe it was curiosity, or maybe because I was happy to have a new brother suddenly appear in my life.’

  Ghassan and I had been in the sitting room in his flat when the phone rang. Ghassan had picked it up, and after a short conversation put it down again. ‘You’re lucky,’ he said. ‘You have a brave sister.’

  * * *

  Everything happens for a reason, and for a purpose. I like my mother’s faith. Her saying reminds me day after day that chance has no place in our destiny. My father married Iman to pave the way for Khawla, who spoke up for me in the Tarouf household. If it hadn’t been for her I would never have had a chance to come close to that house. But what if Khawla had been born a boy – a boy who had his grandfather’s name, Isa, and the family name that was about to die out, and who could pass it on to his children, who could then reproduce and act as an extension of generations that carried the name many years ago, people who built walls aro
und their ancient city and who were no less proud of having built them than the Chinese were to have built the Great Wall of China?

  Thank God for Khawla.

  * * *

  After sunset on the day after Khawla’s phone call, Ghassan rang the bell at Grandmother’s house, while I stood in fear behind him – in fear of being thrown out, of being humiliated and of not being accepted.

  The door opened. ‘Welcome,’ said a female voice. The voice and the accent aroused my curiosity. I stood on tiptoes to look over Ghassan’s shoulder, and there was a young Filipina maid dressed in white from head to toe – the headscarf, the uniform, the apron and the shoes. She looked like a nurse. I squeezed Ghassan’s shoulder with my hand. I was overjoyed to see a face that looked like mine.

  ‘Filipina?’ I asked her.

  Ghassan turned around and gave me a disapproving look. ‘Isa, she’s the maid!’ he said.

  ‘Luza, Luza, who is it?’ asked a voice from inside, speaking in perfect English.

  ‘It’s Mr Ghassan,’ said the maid, waving us in. As soon as we were through the door, we were warmly welcomed.

  ‘Salamuuu alekooom,’ someone said.

  I looked around to see who was speaking and found a parrot in a beautiful gilt cage fixed to the wall opposite the door. Ghassan laughed. The parrot raised its voice and started repeating the maid’s name: ‘Luza, Luza.’ Then it shouted a word I couldn’t make out. The maid came towards the cage, waved her arms in the air and said, ‘Shhhhh.’ The parrot shut up and Ghassan went on laughing.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said Khawla, who was waiting for us. I knew who she was at first sight. She looked older than her sixteen years. She was brown-skinned and taller than me. She had covered her hair with a black hijab. She had a sharp and prominent nose, thin lips and white teeth that were strikingly regular. She was pretty and she looked charming when she smiled. She spoke with Ghassan in Arabic, then turned to me. ‘So you’re Isa,’ she said cheerfully.

  I smiled at her and nodded.

  ‘Come on in, come on in,’ she continued.

  We followed her in, and she kept turning to me with a broad smile that showed how pleased she was. She invited us inside and asked us to sit down and wait. Then she went upstairs, looking back at me all the way up. Nice house, I said to myself. But I wondered how people found time to deal with all the details – matching the colours, the furniture, the marble floors, the fine rugs, the decorative touches on the walls, the chandeliers, the plush velvet curtains, the little wooden tables with tablecloths decorated with shiny beads that looked like pearls or precious stones, the vases of various sizes holding bamboo stalks. I loved the place even though I was cowering in my seat for fear of damaging something unintentionally. The Filipino face that met us at the door and the bamboo stalks made me feel more at home, even if the bamboo looked out of place in those expensive vases, rather like me in the Tarouf household.

  Another maid came in, older than the first, wearing the same white uniform. She looked Indian. She offered us some fruit juice, then withdrew. Then a woman came down from the first floor, apparently in her late thirties. She looked serious and practical. She had black hair, cut short like a boy’s. She put out her hand to shake Ghassan’s hand, then she shook mine and sat down opposite us with her legs crossed.

  ‘This is your youngest aunt, Hind,’ said Ghassan as he introduced me to her.

  I nodded and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, madam.’

  She nodded but didn’t quite smile. She and Ghassan spoke in Arabic, while I watched their expressions and noticed how serious they looked. She raised her eyebrows when she was speaking to Ghassan. She snatched a glance at me, adjusted her glasses with her finger, then went back to chatting with Ghassan. I noticed that he didn’t look at her when they were talking. I was silent, looking from one to the other. I felt like I was watching a film in a language I didn’t understand, with no subtitles. Although Ghassan and my aunt gave nothing away through their facial expressions, I interpreted their conversation the way I wanted it to be. I imagined her saying, ‘We promise him a private room when he comes to live here with us’ or ‘We’re very happy he’s come back to his country and his family.’

  Then an old woman appeared at the top of the stairs, leaning on Khawla’s arm and holding the banister with her other hand. She had to be my grandmother, Ghanima. She wasn’t looking at us in the sitting room. Her eyes were on the steps by her feet. She was having trouble bending her legs and was coming down slowly. She had covered her hair loosely with a thin black shawl, quite different from Khawla’s hijab. Some of her hair showed from under the shawl. Because she was concentrating on making her way down the stairs, I had an opportunity to take a long look at her face without her seeing me. With every step she took I discovered something new in her face. She was old – the wrinkles in her dark skin showed that. Her lips were thin, or she didn’t have lips, if I can say that – just a horizontal slit under her nose. She had thick eyebrows and a large, protruding nose that was hooked at the end. Her eyes were small and bright, with black pupils so large that hardly any white was visible around them. She had a keen gaze, as if she could see through things. Her crooked nose and her bright eyes gave her the look of a golden eagle.

  As my grandmother approached, leaning on Khawla’s arm, Ghassan and my aunt Hind stood up respectfully for her. I stood up too. She nodded in greeting to Ghassan. I was at a loss. I didn’t know what my role was or what I should do. Should I bow, take her hand and press it to my forehead as we do in the Philippines? In her presence I stood there confused, like someone meeting the leader of a tribe and ignorant of the social conventions. Ghassan turned to me and said, ‘Kiss your grandmother on her forehead.’

  My heart raced. I looked at her forehead as if I were about to kiss a hot piece of metal. She wasn’t looking at me. I stepped towards her, encouraged by Ghassan’s smile and the happiness on Khawla’s face. I was standing in front of her, but as soon as I moved my face towards her forehead she raised her hand, which was stained dark brown with henna presumably, and put it on my shoulder, preventing me from coming any closer. I pulled back. She looked me straight in the eyes. My lips began to tremble and I bowed my head. She took her hand off my shoulder and involuntarily I examined the part of my shirt where her hand had rested, in case the tribal leader had left a mark there as part of a ritual recognising me as a member of her tribe. But nothing in this little fantasy of mine came true. I looked up to her face. She was still staring at my face. Her eyes were glistening – was it a sign of intelligence or did it mean that tears were gathering and about to flow? I bowed my head again.

  ‘Kiss her forehead, Isa,’ Ghassan repeated. The hot piece of metal seemed even hotter now. My lips were trembling even more than before. I moved my face towards the metal to kiss it, but my grandmother turned her face away towards one of the sofas in the corner and asked Khawla to help her reach it. Grandmother sat down, after resting her hands on her knees and bending her legs with difficulty. Khawla brought her a stool on which to rest her legs, and everyone but me sat too.

  Khawla looked at me standing there. ‘Please sit down,’ she said.

  The Filipina maid came in with a tray of tiny glasses for tea, rather like shot glasses but with handles and little saucers. I didn’t look at the maid. I didn’t smile. I didn’t utter a word. Even when she gave me a glass of tea, on a saucer with a tiny golden spoon and two cubes of sugar, I found I couldn’t say ‘thank you’, though everyone else did. Grandmother was looking around, sometimes at me and the maid, sometimes at Ghassan and Hind, examining our faces with her keen gaze. She was on guard and I didn’t feel comfortable in her presence. Sitting in front of an interrogator as a suspect makes you feel uncomfortable, even if you’re innocent. How much more so if you’re a rat in the presence of an eagle?

  ‘Salamuuu alekooom,’ cried the parrot. Then two women came in, one in hijab and the other without. They greeted Ghassan and kissed Hind and Khawla. then bent down to kiss Gran
dmother’s forehead. Khawla introduced me to them: ‘My aunt Awatif and my aunt Nouriya.’ They sat down next to each other on a sofa in a corner of the large sitting room. They didn’t look a bit like each other. Awatif, the eldest, was wearing a black cloak and was clutching her handbag with both hands. Her legs were pressed together. She wasn’t wearing any make-up and she had a pleasant face, though she wasn’t pretty like Khawla and Hind. She was smiling all the time and seemed friendly. She had big eyes set far apart and a broad and prominent forehead. All in all, including her cheerful face, she reminded me of a dolphin. Nouriya was the complete opposite. She sat with her legs crossed and seemed very self-confident. She had a fair amount of make-up on and was noticeably elegant, with sharp features. She held her chin up and raised her eyebrows when she spoke. She seemed arrogant. I looked from one to the other, making a quick comparison. How did a dolphin and a shark come from the same womb, I wondered.

  They were talking, each in her own way, while Grandmother watched them quietly. She looked at Hind if Ghassan was speaking, and then switched to Ghassan if Hind was speaking. They talked loudly and interrupted each other. Sometimes they looked at me and sometimes they pointed at me. Khawla was looking at me with the same smile she had had since she came into the room with Ghassan. They had a discussion that went on more than an hour. Ghassan nodded. Hind was tense, swinging one of her legs and speaking quietly. The dolphin smiled naively. The shark spoke excitably. The old eagle silenced everyone with a shake of her head. In the meantime the rat that was me was speechless, looking from one person to another in confusion and without understanding anything that was happening around me, except for the kind looks from a gentle little bird called Khawla.

  8

  When we were back in Ghassan’s flat after the visit to Grandmother’s house, I finally found out what had happened in the meeting. Ghassan had two options: either to hand over his charge, in other words me, to the Tarouf household, thereby fulfilling my father’s wishes, or to make arrangements for me to go back to my mother’s country. Khawla was happy to have discovered her new brother because, as she put it, if her mother had another child with her second husband her new brother or sister wouldn’t be as close to her in age as I was, so she insisted on me staying. ‘I’ll teach him Arabic and I’ll look after him. Don’t you worry about him, Grandmother,’ she had said.