The Bamboo Stalk

by Saud Alsanousi

  Awatif, my eldest aunt, was very happy. She didn’t see a problem, and she was enthusiastic about me staying in Grandmother’s house because, as she put it, ‘He’s our son.’ Although the others ignored her opinion, she had insisted on recognising me. ‘He’s my brother’s son. God wouldn’t like it if we disowned him,’ she had said. Ghassan made me happy when he told me what she said. I was delighted to hear that God was present at the meeting to hear what was going on. Even if I hadn’t seen Him, I was reassured that He was present in Awatif’s heart, because that meant He was nearby. I asked God to enter my heart as well.

  Nouriya was totally opposed to me being around and had got angry with Awatif and warned her of what might happen if her husband, Ahmad, found out about me. Awatif wavered a while when her husband was discussed but she later relented. ‘My husband is a God-fearing man and would not take a negative position if he found out,’ she said. Nouriya had grown angrier and raised her voice. She said that, if there was no other way out, my full name should be just Isa Rashid Isa and the Tarouf name should be removed from my official papers. They should look for somewhere that could put me up, away from the Tarouf house, or settle the matter by offering me some money and sending me back to the Philippines, she added. She lost her temper. ‘Kuwait’s a small place and word spreads fast,’ she said. ‘If my husband and his family find out about this boy, it will change the way my husband sees me. I’ll lose the respect of the Adil family and I’ll be the laughing stock of Faisal’s sisters and sisters-in-law.’ Angrily, she had picked up her handbag to leave. Before she stormed out, she said, ‘I have a son and a daughter of marriageable age and I won’t allow this Filipino to wreck their prospects.’

  I didn’t understand what Ghassan said about Nouriya’s attitude. Why was she so upset? What was it that threatened her reputation and made her the laughing stock of her husband’s family? Why did my presence complicate marriage for her son and her daughter? Those were the same words Grandmother had said to my father years earlier when she found out my mother was pregnant: ‘And your sisters, you selfish, despicable man. Who’ll marry them after what you’ve done with the maid?’ These were things I didn’t understand. When I was in the Philippines my mother couldn’t explain them to me. I asked Ghassan what it all meant.

  ‘It’s impossible to explain such things to you, Isa,’ he replied, ‘and it’s hard for you to understand.’ I was in a difficult position, caught between support from Khawla and Awatif, and categorical rejection by Nouriya.

  Hind was unsure where she stood. She was a rights activist, well-known as Hind al-Tarouf. ‘My credibility is on the line and so is my name,’ she had said. She would have to sacrifice one of them – either her credibility or her name. If she upheld my rights as a human being when people found out that her war hero brother, Rashid al-Tarouf, had married a Filipina maid, she would have to sacrifice the way people saw her illustrious name. Sacrificing her principles and taking a stand against my human rights would preserve the prestige of her name and society’s respect for her. Or she could try to preserve both her own reputation as a person of principle and the reputation of her family by sacrificing me before anyone found out about me. But would it be any sacrifice on their part if they disowned me and turned me away? If that was the case, I would have been happy, because choosing to sacrifice me would mean that I had some value in their eyes. Real sacrifice means giving up things we value, something irreplaceable, for the sake of something else. But as far as I knew I had no value. They didn’t need me. If I disappeared it would be no loss to them, and they wouldn’t need anything to make up for my disappearance.

  ‘And my grandmother, Ghassan, my grandmother, what did she think?’ I asked, after he had briefed me on the conversation I couldn’t understand when I was with them. He blew out some cigarette smoke and said, ‘Auntie Ghanima has the first say, and the last say.’ Then he paused to think.

  I looked at his face with interest. ‘And what did she decide?’ I asked.

  ‘Did you hear her say anything at the meeting?’ he asked.

  ‘No, she was silent, just looking at people’s faces all the time,’ I replied.

  He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and looked at me. ‘Why ask me now what she thinks? Maybe she needs some time to think,’ he said.

  He paused, and smiled to reassure me. ‘Leave things to Khawla,’ he added.

  * * *

  There were many things my mother hadn’t told me about the paradise I was promised. She told me a lot about making dreams come true, securing a safe future and many opportunities that weren’t available to anyone in the Philippines. For years I had lived on Mendoza’s land listening to what my mother had to say: ‘One day you’ll go back to your father’s country.’ Yet when I did go back to my father’s country I found that I posed a dilemma for his family. They wanted me but didn’t want me. Some of them were happy I’d come back. Others were undecided and others wanted to pay me off and ask me to go back to the Philippines. In the meantime I was in a country I didn’t know, looking for somewhere that would take me in, torn between Kuwait and the Philippines.

  As soon as I learned to live with my new name, Isa al-Tarouf, and shook off my old names and nicknames – José, ‘the Arabo’ and ‘the bastard’ – I found there were people who were offended that I shared their name. I’m not Mendoza, who didn’t have a father. I’m Isa, and I have a father called Rashid al-Tarouf.

  9

  Three days after the family meeting I was in Ghassan’s flat feeling cold, though the weather was mild as far as he was concerned. I was wrapping my hands around a cup of coffee, toasting my feet in thick socks against an electric fire and watching one of the foreign film channels. Ghassan was reading a book. His mobile phone rang. He put the book upside down on his knees and looked at the screen of his phone. ‘It’s a call from your family,’ he said.

  In a single leap I was on the sofa where he was sitting. ‘My mother? Or Mama Aida?’ I asked impatiently.

  He didn’t answer. He put the phone to his ear and said, ‘Wa aleekum as-salam.’ The conversation went on for more than ten minutes, and throughout it Ghassan didn’t say a single word. He just nodded and murmured ‘Mmm’ every now and then. Then the conversation ended.

  ‘Listen, Isa,’ he said. ‘You’re going to go and live in your grandmother’s house.’

  As soon as he said the words I couldn’t help jumping up and down in the middle of the sitting room, punching my fists in the air and shouting, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ I felt that the ground was shaking under my feet.

  ‘Isa!’ Ghassan said in annoyance. ‘Stop jumping. We’re on the fourth floor and there are people beneath us.’

  I went back to the sofa where he was sitting and looked straight into his eyes. ‘Beneath us?’ I asked. ‘But we’re the lowest of the low, you and me,’ I said, shaking my head.

  Ghassan laughed so much that he was shaking all over. ‘I’ll miss you, you crazy,’ he said.

  Jabriya is not far from Qortuba, where my grandmother lived. But I suddenly felt sorry for Ghassan, though he had lived alone all his life. I felt that by moving to my grandmother’s house I was abandoning him. I remembered my father and Walid and when they were with Ghassan and my mother’s stories about the three friends – their private world, their conversations, their singing, their travels abroad and their boating trips. The man must feel very lonely in his small, claustrophobic flat in a building full of a mixture of migrant workers – Egyptians, Syrians, Indians and Pakistanis.

  ‘Ghassan,’ I said.

  He stopped laughing and looked at me.

  ‘Why haven’t you got married yet?’ I asked.

  His face reverted to the face of the Ghassan I knew. He took the book off his knees and put it on the sofa beside him. He was about to say something but he stopped. I picked up his packet of cigarettes, took one out, lit it and offered it to him.

  ‘Go on, spit it out with the cigarette smoke,’ I said.

  He took a dee
p puff. The end of the cigarette glowed bright red and bits of ash fell off. ‘I don’t want to have children who would curse me after I die, Isa,’ he said as he exhaled the smoke. He leaned back in the sofa and locked his hands behind his head, with the cigarette hanging on his lip. ‘All I could pass on to my children would be a label that has stuck to me all my life,’ he continued, then stopped and looked at me. ‘Being a bidoon, Isa,’ he said, ‘is like having a damaged gene. Some genes malfunction but are not passed on, or they only recur in later generations. But this malignant gene never misses. It passes from one generation to the next without fail, destroying the hopes of those who carry it.’

  Ghassan stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, then withdrew to his room.

  * * *

  While I was in the sitting room late that night, Ghassan came out of his room with his face swollen and his eyes half-shut. He passed me his mobile. ‘A call from . . .’ he said, opening his mouth wide in a big yawn, ‘your sister Khawla.’ I took the phone. Ghassan turned and walked robotically back to his room.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi, Isa. I hope I haven’t woken you up.’

  ‘No, no. I hadn’t gone to sleep yet.’

  Khawla told me they had prepared a room for me in the annex with everything I would need. My heart skipped for joy. ‘You’ll find everything in the room,’ she said and began listing all the contents.

  ‘That’s too much,’ I said, interrupting her. ‘Far too much, Khawla.’ She stopped. I looked at the phone screen to make sure I was still connected.

  ‘Hello, Khawla?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here.’

  ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.’

  ‘But . . .’ She stopped again, then continued hesitantly. ‘Are you sure you’re happy about that?’ she asked.

  ‘Very much. It’s better than I’d dreamed of,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t staying in the annex a bit . . .’ she trailed off, as if looking for the right word. ‘Look, I did my best to make sure you could stay with us more properly,’ she continued, ‘but let’s wait and see. Maybe Grandmother will change her mind and let you live with us inside the house.’

  I realised then that Grandmother had only partially accepted me. The annex wasn’t the house itself. It was somewhere separate in the inner courtyard where the cook and the driver lived. Only the owners lived inside the house itself, and the maids on the top floor. I accepted the arrangement with good grace, partly because my room in the annex had once been the diwaniya where my father met his friends.

  ‘Hello, Isa, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I can hear you.’

  ‘There are some other things I want you to know before you come.’

  Before I moved to Grandmother’s house I had to be told several things. I mustn’t talk to the servants about who I was, especially the cook and the driver, because there were lots of neighbours and every house had a cook or a driver, or perhaps both. Servants in general don’t keep the secrets of the houses they work in. They gossip among themselves, which means that secrets are liable to come out in the neighbours’ houses. Khawla said a lot about this in our conversation and I concluded that I would be living in secret in Grandmother’s house, or the annex, and my presence must not be disclosed to others.

  ‘If any of the neighbours or their servants ask, then you’re the new cook. This is temporary until we find a way around the problem,’ Khawla said.

  10

  ‘Will we meet again?’ I asked Ghassan as I got out of his car with my bags, in front of Grandmother’s house.

  ‘Many times, you crazy,’ he replied.

  I turned and headed for the door. ‘Isa!’ Ghassan called out. ‘Take this,’ he said, reaching out through the car window. I left my clothes bag and went back to him, carrying with me the briefcase with all my documents.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the key to my flat, so you can come any time. I might not be there, but you’ll have the key,’ he said.

  Even you’re not sure I’ll stay in Grandmother’s house, Ghassan, I said to myself. I thanked him and went back to my clothes bag by the door.

  Even before I pressed the bell, Khawla opened the door and said, ‘Hi, Isa.’ She’d been waiting for me behind the door. Ghassan said goodbye by honking his horn, then drove off in his beloved Lancer, leaving me in the company of my sister. ‘Salamuuu aleekooom,’ said the parrot, as usual whenever the door was opened. I was about to go in, but Khawla stopped me hesitantly. She looked at the houses next door and said, ‘That way,’ pointing to the side entrance. ‘Your room’s over there, Isa, and from there you can come into the main house through the courtyard.’

  I went in through the side door, the door through which my father and I were evicted years earlier. The door led to the annex and Khawla was waiting for me there. She asked me to follow her and stopped in front of an aluminium door. She pointed to the door and said, ‘This was my father’s diwaniya. He used to meet his friends here.’ She opened the door and stood aside. ‘In you go. This is your room,’ she said.

  All this for me? It was a room way beyond my dreams. I would never need to go out. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was twice the size of my old room. A large carpet covered the whole floor. There was a large double bed with pillows and a fancy white cover, a big-screen television and a small table with a laptop computer. There was a fridge, a heater and air conditioning. ‘Are you happy with this?’ Khawla asked me.

  ‘More than you can imagine,’ I said, comparing it with my wretched room in the Philippines.

  She asked me to leave my bags and follow her. In the courtyard she pointed to a door near to the door to my room. ‘That’s Babu and Raju’s room, the cook and the driver,’ she said. She pointed to a glass door with a steel frame right opposite my room. ‘That’s the way to the big sitting room where we were sitting last time. You won’t have to meet the parrot if you come in through this door,’ she said with a laugh. She pointed to a window on the upper floor, above the glass door. ‘That’s the window of Grandmother’s room,’ she said. She looked at her watch. ‘It’s almost ten o’clock. Shall I leave you to go to sleep?’

  ‘No, no, it’s still early,’ I replied.

  ‘Get changed now, and I’ll visit you later.’

  ‘Won’t I be allowed to go into the main house?’ I asked.

  She gave the sweetest of smiles. But was it a real smile or just the way she shaped her lips? She nodded and said, ‘Oh yes, Isa, but don’t be impatient.’

  Fully dressed and without even taking off my shoes, I lay down on my big new bed. Before long I heard a light tapping on the door. I sat up. Before I even went to the door, my aunt Hind opened it, but she didn’t take a step inside. She looked around, inspecting the room. ‘Is everything as it should be?’ she asked.

  I was standing by the bed. ‘Yes, madam,’ I replied, without looking at her.

  There were some seconds of silence. When she spoke again, her tone had changed. ‘That’s strange,’ she said.

  I looked at her, expecting her to explain what she thought was strange. ‘You have Rashid’s voice. It’s like you’re him but with a different face,’ she said.

  ‘Really, madam?’ I said, pleased at what she had said.

  ‘Why do you call me “madam”? I’m your aunt.’

  I smiled and nodded without speaking. She nodded too. ‘If you need anything,’ she said, putting her hand into her little bag and handing me a mobile phone, ‘this is for you. You’ll find some numbers on it that might be important to you. Ghassan’s number, Khawla’s number and the phone number of the house.’ She turned away and, as she walked towards the glass door that led to the sitting room, she looked back towards me and said, ‘And my number too.’

  * * *

  After about an hour, Khawla came back and I opened the door for her. ‘Come in,’ I said, but she shook her head to say no.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said. ‘I want to show y
ou something.’

  I followed her but when we reached the glass door, I felt I couldn’t walk any further. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  She turned to me with her finger on her lips, asking me to keep quiet. Then I followed her. We went through the sitting room to a short corridor. We walked past the parrot’s cage, which was covered with a piece of cloth. At the end of the corridor we came to a wooden door. Khawla pushed on it and said, ‘In you go.’

  It was a small room. Bookshelves covered most of the wall space. There was a wooden desk in one of the corners and a few pictures in gilt frames hanging where there was space on the wall. ‘This is my father’s study,’ said Khawla.

  Amazed by the number of books, I asked, ‘And did Father read all these books?’ Khawla smiled. I recalled all the conversations in which my mother had spoken to me about this room. This is where she and Rashid chatted when Grandmother and my aunts had gone to sleep. This is where my mother brought my father cups of coffee. It felt strange, like being in a museum that contained relics of our ancestors.

  I went up to a picture on one of the walls, a black-and-white picture of an old man with a very high forehead, unkempt hair, bushy eyebrows, a white moustache and a long, forked white beard that reached halfway down his chest. ‘I think I know who that is,’ I said, turning to Khawla.

  She came over to me by the picture. ‘You should recognise him, Isa,’ she said.

  I looked at her with a broad grin. ‘That’s Grandfather Isa, right?’ I said.

  Khawla wanted to laugh but held it back. She rushed to the door of the room and locked it. Then she burst out laughing. ‘That’s Tolstoy, Isa,’ she said. ‘The famous Russian writer.’