I took the opportunity to show off my knowledge. ‘José Rizal says that anyone who doesn’t like his mother tongue is worse than a rotten fish,’ I said.
She frowned. ‘And who would José Rizal be?’ she asked inquisitively.
I shook my head, pretending to be shocked. ‘You don’t understand anything,’ I said.
Khawla wouldn’t leave me alone that day till I’d told her everything about the national hero of the Philippines. ‘He made that remark when he noticed that Filipinos had started to abandon their own language and adopt the language of the colonisers,’ I told her. She showed so much interest that I was encouraged to continue. ‘He was a doctor, a writer, an artist and a great thinker. He was familiar with twenty-two languages. He believed that freedom was life. He criticised Spanish colonialism and called for reforms. He incited revolution against the colonialists. He wrote a famous novel called Noli Me Tangere in which he exposed the practices of the Spanish and their appalling violations of the rights of the Filipino people. He followed that up with a novel called El Filibusterismo. He wanted to rouse the Filipinos from their subservience to Spain. People related to him and the Spanish resented that. They arrested him. He had been in prison a long time when he was executed. The people revolted and the Filipinos managed to throw out the colonisers within two years and declare independence. Freedom has a price and that price was Rizal.’ I looked at Khawla with pride. ‘In the Philippines they called me José, after him.’
Khawla was enthralled by the story of Rizal and listened to me with interest. When I’d said what I had to say, she said, ‘When Father said he wanted to change reality by writing, he wasn’t crazy like Grandmother says.’ She bowed her head, then continued, ‘If only he’d finished his novel before he was captured.’ She looked at my face thoughtfully. ‘If only people here read,’ she added.
* * *
The fact that I had good relationships with Khawla and Ghassan didn’t stop me from feeling lonely. A kind of barrier stood between us, even if it was a barrier full of gaps. Khawla had the same feeling. She felt alone although she was surrounded by Grandmother and our aunts. When I asked her one day how she fought against this feeling of hers, she surprised me with her answer. ‘Whenever I feel the need for someone to talk to, I open a book,’ she said.
I thought a while, then I said, ‘But books don’t listen.’
‘When I was little, Miri was the person closest to me. She always listened to me even if she wasn’t able to do anything,’ she replied. ‘That didn’t last long,’ she added, bowing her head. ‘My relationship with Miri upset Grandmother. She forbade me from talking to her.’ Her smile returned. ‘But I found an alternative,’ she continued.
I looked at her inquiringly, encouraging her to continue.
‘If I need to tell someone all the things I’m too embarrassed to reveal . . .’ She stopped and smiled and winked at me. ‘Then I tell Aziza,’ she continued, ‘she’s the one who listens to me best.’
‘Aziza? Who’s she?’ I asked her in puzzlement.
Khawla walked towards the glass door. ‘Wait a moment,’ she said. ‘It’s a good opportunity to introduce you to her.’
She came back a minute later with a lettuce leaf in her hand and put it on the carpet in the middle of the sitting room. Then she sat on the sofa. ‘Let’s wait a while. She’s rather slow,’ she said.
We didn’t have to wait more than three minutes before a tortoise appeared from under one of the sofas in the corner, the size of an average soup bowl. It walked slowly towards the lettuce leaf in the middle of the carpet. Khawla pointed to the tortoise, turned to me and said, ‘Aziza.’
I nodded in delight. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.
16
On 24 September 2006, Ramadan began. I really suffered during the month – the hunger, the thirst and the people.
Since I was Muslim as far as my family was concerned, I had to fast. And because I was willing to perform any ritual that might bring me close to God, even if I didn’t know what religion I was, I had to fast. I envied the Muslims their ability to tolerate the hunger and thirst. It’s admirable. But for me it was impossible. I managed to fast five hours the first day, six hours the second day and eight hours the third day. Then I fasted the whole of the fourth day. I jumped for joy when I heard the call to prayer at sunset from the local mosques and on the telephone – ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar’ – marking the end of the fast for the day.
After iftar on the first day I fell fast asleep on my bed, almost unconscious. No one inside the house talked. Khawla, Hind and Grandmother sat for hours in front of the television, moving from their seats only to pray. I hadn’t noticed they were so interested in television until it was Ramadan. There was also a lot of praying in the month. Even late at night I saw light from the window of Grandmother’s room. Khawla said Grandmother prayed all night.
Ghassan had strange rituals in Ramadan. He didn’t like to stay in his flat during the day. He would call me after he came out of work. ‘Get changed. I’m on my way,’ he would say. We spent the time before iftar in a different place every day: the Mubarakiya souk, the fish market, the meat and fruit and vegetable market, the Friday market, the pet and bird market, the market for Iranian goods.
As usual I looked at people’s faces and facial expressions. During the day in Ramadan they looked different. People were tense when driving and honked their horns for the slightest reason. They put their arms out of the windows and waved them angrily. They looked sullen. ‘Ghassan?’ I said one day. He turned to me. ‘Does smiling during the day in Ramadan mean you’re not fasting?’ I asked.
One day, a little before sunset, Ghassan and I were in the pet and bird market and I saw a tortoise just like Aziza. I bought it without thinking. I held it in my hands and began to strike up a friendship. I had a strange need for animals at that time. There were so many animals on Mendoza’s land – the old dog Whitey, the cocks, the cats, the birds, the frogs and the lizards, but I hadn’t before felt how important these creatures are.
At home I was with the tortoise in my room. ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar.’ It was the call to prayer and time to break the fast. I’d forgotten I was hungry and what time it was. Khawla knocked on the door. ‘Aren’t you fasting?’ she asked, pushing in the door of my room. ‘It’s time to eat.’ She gaped in amazement when she saw the tortoise.
‘How did Aziza get into your room?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘That’s not Aziza,’ I corrected her.
The tortoise had to have a name, so I made one up on the spot. ‘That’s Inang Choleng.’
* * *
If I got bored in Grandmother’s house, and I often did, I would meet the servants secretly in the kitchen and chat with them, on my guard against being discovered.
When I saw the conditions the servants worked under in the house I felt sorry for my mother and wondered how she had put up with it years ago. But compared with the fate that awaited her in the Philippines, the hardship of working in Kuwait must have counted as luxury. The servants worked from six in the morning to ten o’clock at night. Babu said that in some of the houses nearby they didn’t have set work hours. The hours depended on the needs of the household. Any time someone in the family needed something, they had to be fully prepared to respond. Wily Raju was the one who worked least. All he did was drive Grandmother around if she had to go out, which didn’t happen often, and sometimes go out to buy stuff from the central market. In the morning he washed the car and the courtyard and watered the trees in the area opposite the house. I noticed that Raju enjoyed a weekly day off. Babu and his wife Lakshmi had a day off once a month while Luzviminda worked every day.
In one of my furtive meetings with them in the kitchen, I asked Luzviminda why she worked like an automaton without a single day off outside the house. She replied, ‘When I asked the old lady that, her argument was “If I let you go out, how can I be sure you won’t come back pregnant within months.” She didn’t realise t
hat if I wanted I could do that here, in her house.’ Then she started criticising Grandmother.
Babu didn’t like Luzviminda criticising, and neither did Lakshmi. Babu said, ‘Mama Ghanima is an old woman, like my mother. If she was that bad I wouldn’t have stayed in her house close to twenty years.’ His wife agreed with him, so Luzviminda held her tongue.
17
One evening during Ramadan, just before the middle of the month, the family gathered at Grandmother’s house for a special meal that comes between the iftar at sunset and the suhour before dawn. They called it the ghabqa. I was in my room with Inang Choleng. From behind the curtain over the window I could see the kids in the courtyard – the children of Awatif and Nouriya. In the meantime everyone else was inside – Awatif and her husband Ahmad, Nouriya and her husband Faisal, Hind, Khawla, Grandmother and her older grandchildren. The door bell rang every now and then. Lots of children gathered at the door, wearing special clothes. The boys were wearing traditional white thobes with sleeveless jackets; some had skullcaps on while others wore the same white headdress as the men. The girls were wearing different clothes: a light piece of cloth with golden decoration covering their heads and the top half of their bodies. All the children, boys and girls, had cloth bags hanging round their necks. Hind stood at the door with Lakshmi and Luzviminda on either side carrying large bags of nuts and sweets. The children sang in unison and clapped at the door. The songs ended with generous donations of nuts and sweets to go into their bags. The children kept coming to Grandmother’s door for three days in succession.
A handsome young man, about my age or a little younger, dressed in a white thobe, walked past the children, kissed Hind and greeted Khawla in the outer courtyard, then walked inside. As soon as he walked through the wooden door, there were cries of ‘colololooosh’, a strange sound rather like the war cries of the American Indians – a shrill, high-pitched sound like a referee’s whistle. Khawla told me later that he was Nouriya’s eldest son and Grandmother’s first grandson. She always celebrated his visits by making this sound and in her prayers she asked God to give her a long life so that she could live to see him married.
The family members disappeared inside. I was still behind the curtain, with Inang Choleng in my hands. Thank God her shell was too hard to break under the pressure of my hands as I watched my family with a heavy heart from my exile in the annex. Just being with them would have been enough. Their voices sounded loud and close by despite the distance: their laughter, the words I didn’t understand, the ‘colololooosh’ rang in my ears.
The glass door opposite the door to my room opened. It was Nouriya in a strange outfit, maybe special for the occasion: a dress with wide sleeves, blood-red with shiny yellow decoration. ‘Isa! Isa!’ she started shouting.
I dropped Inang Choleng and didn’t notice she had hit the floor between my feet. Nouriya wrapped up her call with a ‘Taal’ and then went inside. I knew that word well. How could I forget it? She was inviting me into the sitting room to join in the party. Nouriya, who hated me, was calling me by name and inviting me in! I jumped for joy.
I don’t remember the aluminium door to my room, or the inner courtyard or even the glass door that led to the sitting room. I just remember standing inside the sitting room with the door behind me. They stopped chatting and a sudden hush fell on the room. I felt as if I had been struck deaf. All eyes were pinned on me. Grandmother took hold of the shawl thrown loosely over her shoulders and threw it on to her head. Hind and Khawla looked at each other in amazement. Awatif was aghast. Ahmad, her husband with the long beard, sprang to his feet and looked at me with sparks flying from his eyes. Faisal looked at his wife, Nouriya, as if seeking an explanation for what was happening. ‘Salamuuu alekooom,’ cried the parrot. Then through the front door Nouriya’s maid came in carrying a young boy. ‘Here’s Isa, madam,’ she told my aunt. Faisal stood up to take the boy.
Nouriya was flustered but handled the situation well. She passed me some silver bowls, then held out Faisal’s car key and asked me, as if I were a servant, to put the bowls in the car. I took the objects with trembling hands and before I left Ahmad suddenly shouted some words at me that I didn’t understand. He was waving his hands angrily and pointing at my aunts, but I couldn’t make out a word of what he was shouting. Khawla ran towards the stairs. Awatif looked horrified. Speaking in English that wasn’t very clear and that I understood only in part, she said something like, ‘You mustn’t come in like that when there are women present. Next time knock on the door and wait outside. That isn’t right. Do you understand?’
I nodded and said, ‘Very well, madam.’ I went out into the inner courtyard carrying Nouriya’s bowls. Babu, Lakshmi and Luzviminda were watching me in anguish from behind the kitchen window. I bowed my head and choked back my tears.
As I was putting the bowls in the trunk of Faisal’s car, Nouriya came up to me, her eyebrows raised and her face flushed. She glanced behind to the door of the main house. No one there. She grabbed my shirt and pulled on it. She clenched her teeth and said, ‘Listen. This time I saved you by pretending you’re a servant. Next time I’ll leave you to Awatif’s husband and he’ll slit your throat.’
I was so frightened my mouth was dry. I was trembling. The curtain on the upper-floor window overlooking the street moved. It was Khawla watching us from upstairs. Nouriya tightened her grip on my shirt and shook me. With great effort, I said, ‘But it was you who called me, Auntie.’
‘Shut up. I’m not your auntie,’ she said.
I got the message. I dropped the word ‘aunt’ before Nouriya’s name ever since that night on the pavement outside Grandmother’s house, or perhaps it fell into the boot of the car before I closed it on the bowls. Nouriya looked back again, checking that no one was there. ‘I was calling Isa my son, you idiot,’ she said. She let go of my shirt and gave her parting shot: ‘Don’t you ever speak unless you’re spoken to, you Filipino!’
The trick took in Ahmad and Faisal, although they were surprised that Grandmother had brought a male servant from the Philippines, since it was customary in Kuwait for people to have male servants from India or Bangladesh.
In my room, I hugged Inang Choleng. I wept like a child in front of the small bottle I had filled half-full with the soil I had brought from my father’s grave the day I visited the cemetery. I looked at the bottle as if asking the soil to bear witness to what was happening. I threw myself down on my bed and nodded off. I don’t remember how long I slept but I remember I was woken up by the sound of the dawn call to prayer. I had been close to death in a horrible dream. I was in Mindanao and my arms were tied behind my back and my face was to the ground. Nouriya and Awatif were holding down my shoulders, pinning me to the ground. Grandmother was sitting at a distance under the tropical trees with tears in her eyes but motionless. I was about to call out, to ask her for help, but someone pulled my head back by the hair. I looked straight into his eyes. It was Ahmad, Awatif’s husband, and he was holding a knife. ‘Grand . . .’ I shouted, but Ahmad slit my throat before I could finish saying Grandmother’s name.
18
‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar.’
Besides being the start of the call to prayer, that’s also the signal that it’s time to start fasting. I woke up terrified, repeating, ‘Grandmother, Grandmother.’ I was desperate for a drink of water. My throat was dry and I could feel my heart throbbing in my temples. I felt my throat with my fingers. No sign of blood. It was a nightmare, a sequel to the living nightmare that had taken place in the sitting room when I burst in without permission. I took a bottle of mineral water from the bedside table and gulped it down without stopping till I finished the bottle.
‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar.’
When she first translated the words of the call to prayer for me, Khawla said they meant that God is greater than everything else in existence and mightier than anything you can imagine. So if that’s how God is, I should give up complaining to Inang Choleng and telling her m
y sorrows. I picked the tortoise up from the bed and put it on the floor. I wanted to get closer to God, and as far as I knew, God resided in Awatif’s heart, and at that time Awatif was far away in her own house with her husband Ahmad. But could God be far away too? How can I open my heart to God? I asked myself. ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar.’ The phrase was repeated towards the end of the call to prayer.
I picked up my mobile phone and called Khawla. ‘I want to go to the mosque,’ I said. Khawla had just woken up to pray as well. ‘It’s only a few steps from the house. Go before the prayers start,’ she said.
‘Do I need one of those dresses that you and Grandmother and Hind wear when you pray?’ I asked.
She burst out in giggles. ‘Go as you are, man,’ she said. ‘But make sure you’ve done your ablutions.’
I didn’t know how to wash before praying. In fact I didn’t even know how to perform Muslim prayers. I stood by the wall of the house looking at the mosque. It was a small mosque in the courtyard in front of a large building that looked like a school. There were many cars parked in lines outside it. People pray in Ramadan more than at any other time. ‘I’ll wait till it’s less crowded,’ I said, and because I didn’t know how to wash for prayers, I had a complete shower. I wanted to do my ablutions properly, as Khawla had suggested. I came out of the bathroom with my body in a state of ritual purity. But what about my soul?
All the cars were gone from the open space opposite the mosque, except for one or two. I walked slowly towards the door. There were shoes and sandals piled on top of each other at the foot of the door, and others arranged neatly on special racks. I stuck my head through the door. The people inside were barefoot. I took off my shoes and put them on one of the racks. As soon as I went in my bare feet felt a draught of cold air. I felt lighter than I had even been. I was almost flying. Is this the mosque? I wondered uncertainly. The floor was covered with carpets – light green carpets with dark green lines. There was a large chandelier hanging from the ceiling and although the mosque was air-conditioned there were fans attached to the walls. I stood in the middle looking around me. In front of me was the mihrab, a sort of alcove or niche like an arched doorway in the middle of the back wall. The area around it was highly decorated, maybe with Arabic writing. The mosque didn’t have as much detail as you would find in a cathedral or a Buddhist temple. I was struck by how plain it was. There were some people sitting in a circle, talking in low voices. Some people were praying, bowing, pressing their foreheads to the floor as though they were kissing it. Other people were reading the Qur’an. In one corner there was a young man kneeling with his hands open in front of his face as he looked down. The feeling I had had in my feet when I went in came back as I walked towards the mihrab, but this time in my heart. I felt that my heart was naked, unencumbered by anything.
The Bamboo Stalk Page 19