Khawla knocked on the door of my room and as usual she didn’t come past the doorway. She told me that Umm Jabir had called Grandmother again and when Grandmother said she couldn’t send me over Umm Jabir asked her, ‘Is the Filipino really called Isa?’ Grandmother almost had a breakdown in response to Umm Jabir’s insinuation. Raju must have been behind this.
I shook my head indifferently and said, ‘So what?’.
Khawla’s eyes were bathed in tears. She told me that her mother, Iman, had had a call from Umm Jabir asking her about the Filipino who was living in the home of her former husband’s family. Iman found out about me without our inquisitive neighbour finding out anything, then came over immediately to ask Grandmother to let her take Khawla to live in her other grandmother’s house, because she didn’t want her daughter living in a house where I was living. I remembered a letter my father sent to my mother in which he said that his new wife would have no problem if I went back to Kuwait. What had changed? Khawla didn’t respond but just wiped away her tears.
‘I’ll cut out Umm Jabir’s tongue,’ I said. ‘I will not be the cause of you leaving the house you love so I’ve decided to leave.’
Although she was sad, Khawla didn’t insist I stay. Slightly shocked, she just said, ‘To the Philippines?’
‘To Kuwait,’ I replied. For the first time since I’d come to her house, Grandmother gave me a big hug as soon as she heard of my decision, and almost suffocated me. She let go of me after planting a kiss on my cheek. She turned to Khawla and asked her to translate what she was going to say. Highly embarrassed, Khawla said that on top of the 200 dinars a month, Grandmother would now give me another 200, so now I would have a monthly allowance of 400 dinars. I nodded gratefully.
Grandmother talked again to Khawla, who then turned to me. ‘She’ll also give you her share of Father’s pension,’ she added. Both of them were red in the face, out of embarrassment in the case of Khawla, out of happiness in the case of Grandmother. I turned my back on them and went back to my room, which would soon no longer be my room.
* * *
On the evening of the second day of the Eid, Ibrahim Salam was waiting for me outside in his car. As I was picking up my suitcase, Khawla opened the door to my room and for the first time she took a few hesitant steps inside. The fact that she came in like that disconcerted me. I left my suitcase on the floor and watched her. She stood in front of me, examining my face. I was so anxious my throat felt dry. Her face was completely expressionless. I tried in vain to smile but I couldn’t because I was so taken aback that Khawla had ventured into the danger zone. She put her hands under her chin and fiddled with something and her hijab came loose. She grabbed it from the part nearest her forehead, took it off her hair and let it fall to her shoulders. She shook her head and tossed her hair free. She looked straight into my eyes. I almost burst into tears. She wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my shoulder. ‘I’ll miss you, brother,’ she said.
My arms hung down and I didn’t reciprocate. My heart was pounding. She kissed me on the cheek, then turned and went back where she had come from, covering her hair with her hijab. Her words rang in my ears. The word ‘brother’ continued to echo even after she had left the room.
It was the first time Khawla had called me brother and, just one day earlier, Grandmother had embraced me and kissed me, also for the first time. If I had known that would happen I would have left the Tarouf house much earlier. I picked up my suitcase and turned off the lights. In the outer courtyard I looked towards the kitchen. Babu, Lakshmi and Luzviminda were behind the window watching me. They waved sadly. I left Grandmother’s house behind me. As I was putting my suitcase in the boot of Ibrahim’s car, Raju appeared from behind the garage door. He threw a cigarette end on to the floor and crushed it with his foot. He turned to me and said, ‘Goodbye’, then closed the door.
Hind’s car was in its usual spot under the awning. She was at home but she didn’t come out to say goodbye. I understood her attitude: how could she say goodbye to me when she had failed to play the role she should have played in my case?
I’m not blaming her, because, as my mother said of my father one day, ‘The decision is out of one’s hands if a whole society stands behind it.’
2
Ibrahim Salam shared his room with me temporarily, until I could find somewhere permanent to live. ‘Why do you have to live in Jabriya?’ I asked Ibrahim, since I had only painful feelings about the area. My father’s friend had died in a plane with the same name and it was in the same area that the friend who had betrayed him lived. ‘Because it’s close to my work in the Philippine embassy,’ Ibrahim explained.
One night I asked him to tell me about the Prophet Muhammad in return for me telling him about Jesus Christ, rather like those bedtime conversations that Cheng and I used to have about Jesus and the Buddha. ‘I’ll tell you about the Prophet Muhammad, but you don’t need to tell me about Jesus,’ he replied. When I asked why not, he answered confidently, ‘I’m sure I know more about Christ than you do.’
He often spoke to me about Islam. I was interested in some of the similarities between the Qur’an and the Bible. Was Islam a new religion, as I had thought, or a supplement to religions that predated it? Ibrahim told me about the previous holy books that the Qur’an refers to. When I asked him about those books, he picked up a copy of the Qur’an and translated some passages, including one I remember from the chapter called ‘Women’: ‘Behold, We have inspired you, just as We inspired Noah and all the prophets after him – as We inspired Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants, including Jesus and Job, and Jonah, and Aaron, and Solomon; and as We vouchsafed unto David a book of divine wisdom.’ I understood from what he said that Islam didn’t dismiss the religions that came before it, because the Qur’an refers to the earlier religions, mentions the prophets by name and tells us they were all sent to mankind by God. Ibrahim switched some lights on in my head but turned out others. When he saw I was confused, he seemed more interested than me in the subject. I don’t know if he was trying to convince me or convince himself. He closed the Qur’an and put it back in its place in a drawer near his bed. He told me about miracles I had never heard of. Clouds that spelt out the word ‘Allah’ in the sky, a watermelon with seeds arranged to form the name of the Prophet Muhammad, a fish with stripes that could be read as Allah, and other stories like the ones I used to hear in the Philippines about statues of the Virgin Mary that shed tears or about the Virgin Mary appearing in some place, which would soon become a shrine. Ibrahim amazed me and it showed on my face. In response to my amazement he would ask confidently, ‘So? What do you think?’
I was amazed in the sense of being underwhelmed, but Ibrahim read it the opposite way. ‘These are just fantasies,’ I told him in the end. He turned pale. ‘If only you’d stick to reading the Qur’an,’ I added.
He took a folded piece of paper out of the drawer where he kept the Qur’an. ‘I’m going to show you a miracle,’ he said. I had goosebumps. Although I don’t believe in such things, he was so enthusiastic that I braced myself to see something new.
‘It happened more than two years ago, in December 2004,’ he said.
The date brought back memories of disaster and I interrupted him. ‘That was when the tsunami hit several countries in East Asia,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘That’s right, brother,’ he said.
‘The waves hit one particular island,’ he continued, unfolding the piece of paper. ‘It flattened the whole area but saved the . . .’ He left the sentence open so that the piece of paper could finish off what he wanted to say. It was a big glossy colour picture of a white mosque standing intact amid the devastation.
‘Where’s the miracle?’ I asked him, as amazed as ever.
‘Look. There’s nothing left of the houses around the mosque. Everything was swept away by the waves and only the mosque survived.’
My goosebumps disappeared with disappointment. ‘Ibra
him!’ I said. ‘The houses around the mosque were made of wood and corrugated iron, while the mosque had foundations that went deep into the ground and was build of concrete, with concrete pillars.’
‘Are you casting doubt on Islam?’
I shook my head. ‘No. But I am casting doubt on your ridiculous miracles. Would God send a tsunami to destroy the houses of the faithful around the mosque just so that people who didn’t believe in God will see that this is the true religion?’
For the first time, I was confident of what I was saying. God couldn’t be promoted in this way because, as I had started to feel, God is greater, God is mightier and much deeper than that. I didn’t say much because Ibrahim looked upset and I didn’t want to sleep in the street. I pointed to my heart and said, ‘Faith lies here, but with this missionary activity of yours, you’re trying to put it here.’ I pointed to my head. ‘But faith doesn’t stay there long.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, a sceptical look in his eyes.
‘The only place for faith is in your heart,’ I said with unusual confidence.
He looked at me in silence and I continued: ‘Look at yourself in the mirror and you’ll find enough miracles there to dispel your doubts, because you’re a miracle in yourself.’
I pointed to the drawer next to his bed. ‘Get the Qur’an out and translate some of it for me instead of offering feeble proofs that weaken your case.’
Religions are bigger than their adherents. That’s what I’ve concluded. Devotion to tangible things no longer matters as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want to be like my mother, who can only pray to a cross, as if God lived in it. I don’t want to be like one of the Ifugao and never take a step unless it’s sanctioned by the anito statues, which help my work prosper, protect my crops and save me from the evil spirits at night. I don’t want to be like Inang Choleng, tying my relationship with God to a favourite statue of the Buddha. I don’t want to seek baraka from a statue of a white horse with wings and the head of a woman, as some Muslims do in the south of the Philippines. I remember that statue well, when I once asked a Muslim boy at school if he had a statue or an icon of the Prophet Muhammad. He came back the next day and told me that drawing pictures or making statues of the Prophet was forbidden in Islam. But then he put his hand in his satchel and took out this statue. I was amazed at the way it looked and when I asked him what it was, he said, ‘It’s Buraq.’ I forgot about Buraq until I saw it again later in various sizes, some as large as a small foal, in the National Museum of the Philippines. On a rectangular plaque on the glass case it said, Buraq: the animal that the Prophet of Islam rode on his Night Journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and to Heaven.
The statue of Buraq, the cross, the Buddha, the anito, imaginary miracles and other such things help to reinforce people’s faith. People aren’t satisfied with the miracles that took place in distant times and that were the monopoly of prophets when religions were in their infancy. So everyone who wants to find faith goes looking for miracles that don’t exist. They make them up and believe in them, but their belief only shows how much doubt they still have.
I was sitting in front of Ibrahim. He was silent, as was I. In my right ear I heard the call to prayer, in my left ear the ringing of church bells. The smell of incense from the Buddhist temples hit my nostrils. I ignored the sounds and the smell. I focused on my steady heartbeat and I knew that God was there.
3
With Ibrahim’s help I found a flat that suited me on the third floor of an old building in Jabriya, an area I hated, about a ten-minute walk from where Ibrahim lived. The building had no families at all because the usual practice in Kuwait is that families live in special buildings where unmarried young men are not allowed to live. Where I lived there were no women or children at all. It was like a prison or a military camp. Migrants of various nationalities lived in the flats and some of them housed more than ten people. Most of the flats in the buildings were empty during the week but were noticeably full of young men on Thursday and Friday nights and on religious and official holidays. Only then would I hear women’s voices in the building. On the third floor, where my flat was, there were three other flats. One of them had five young Filipinos, in another there was an Arab man more than fifty years old, and the third was rented by a group of young men who came only at weekends, when they would make a lot of noise after midnight with laughing, singing and rowdy activity.
Renting the flat was a luxury I hadn’t dreamt of. I had two bedrooms, a sitting room, a bathroom and a kitchen all to myself. Moving was easy because the only things I had that needed moving would fit in three bags – a large one for my clothes, a small one for the laptop and, most important of all, the briefcase where I kept my documents. Ibrahim lent me a mattress and a duvet and brought them over in his car. Khawla was constantly in touch, tracking my move. ‘I feel guilty. I was one of the reasons why you left our house,’ she said. She said that Grandmother missed me. Her knees must be in a bad way, I thought. Hind didn’t call but she sent me a text message asking for my new address. I sent her the address and a few hours later a pick-up truck arrived with my bed, my fridge, the wardrobe, the television and a small cardboard box. The workers brought the things up, then left. I opened the cardboard box and there was my tortoise, hiding in her shell. There was a crack in the top of the shell that I hadn’t noticed before. I remembered kicking her a few days earlier in an angry outburst and I felt bitter remorse. I found a small piece of paper inside the cardboard box. In beautiful handwriting, Khawla had written: Aziza was jealous of your tortoise and denounced her to Grandmother, who got angry and evicted her, ;P. A cruel joke but I laughed, in the knowledge that Khawla wanted to make me laugh.
Late that evening, after I had arranged the flat, my mobile rang. I thought it would be Ibrahim but in fact it was from Hind, asking me about him.
‘What’s that young man like, the one that Khawla told me about?’ she asked. What does he look like? How old is he? Where does he live? Does he belong to some organisation? Lots of questions, rather like an interrogation. I answered them to the best of my knowledge, and when I had done so, she gave me a warning. ‘Isa,’ she said, ‘beware of those backward people.’ I was tongue-tied. ‘In Kuwait,’ she continued, ‘there are many types of people who are better to make friends with than those people you’re about to get involved with. I’m here if you need anything, but keep your distance from these dubious characters.’
* * *
Isolation is like a little corner where you’re alone with your mind and you can’t avoid looking it in the face. My mind would probably have wasted away like an unused muscle if I hadn’t pushed it to the limits when I was alone. I hadn’t planned to use it because I didn’t trust it and it made me sceptical about everything. Perhaps my mind acted of its own accord. It felt neglected and sprang into action. How is it that ideas have this ability to distract us from everything else? Hours went by without me noticing that my stomach was empty or that I needed to sleep. Maybe my head was so stuffed that I lost my appetite, or perhaps my mind was so distracted all the time that I might as well have been asleep. I would look out of the window at the street and say, ‘I haven’t been outside for three days.’ I suddenly realised I had been in the flat all that time. Without feeling it, it was as if I were in mourning. It was a mourning without flags at half mast, without the people outside wearing the sad faces I saw on the day I arrived in Kuwait. How did I spend all my time? I’m trying to remember. I didn’t watch television. I didn’t read a word. I never called anyone. Apart from thinking, what was I doing?
For the first time in my life, I felt useless. My old dream had come true, I had the paradise I was promised, I had travelled to Kuwait and I had more money than I needed. What next? In the Philippines all I had was my family. In Kuwait I had everything except a family.
I soon found it demeaning and embarrassing to take the money I received every month in return for being lazy. I felt increasingly useless now that a dream that had onc
e seemed distant had come true. The truth about our dreams becomes clear to us the closer we get to them. We mortgage our lives for the sake of achieving them. The years pass. We grow older while the dreams stay as they were when we were young. We finally make them come true, and then we find that we have outgrown our dreams, which are the dreams of the young and not worth the trouble of waiting years for.
Giving without love has no value. Taking without gratitude has no savour. That’s what I have discovered. I looked at the floor in the middle of the sitting room. I imagined my mother there, sitting cross-legged by her suitcase a week after coming back from Bahrain. The family were around her on the sofas, everyone waiting for their present. ‘Pedro!’ Mother shouted, throwing him a cigarette lighter as blue as Merla’s eyes. Pedro was delighted with the present because it was a present. ‘Aida!’ – a pair of rubber shoes. ‘Merla’ – two pairs of underwear. Pedro’s wife – a bra. Pedro’s children – a bag of sweets and chocolates. ‘José’ – a pen and a school bag. Then Mother picked up a white hat, went to Adrian in his favourite corner and put it on his head.
I can still remember how happy everyone looked. Why wasn’t I as happy with the presents from my Kuwaiti family as Uncle Pedro was with a cigarette lighter that wasn’t worth more than 100 fils? It’s love that makes things valuable.
In my isolation I found I had a morbid longing for my family in the Philippines. I was nostalgic for home although I had started to become familiar with some of the things in my father’s country. The taste of the water still irritated me as much as when I first arrived. The water in the Philippines tastes better. I was no longer surprised when I saw men kissing when they greeted each other. I was no longer suspicious of strangers if they said hello to me as they walked past me. I even took the initiative and said ‘As-salam aleekum’ to them as I went past. It made me feel as if I knew everyone in the country, especially when Ibrahim explained to me that the word salam, which was also the name of his father, meant peace. What a beautiful greeting! It provided me with an outlet, however small, through which I could share something with Kuwaitis. But whenever I tightened my grip on the hem of Kuwait’s thobe, it slipped out of my grasp. I called Kuwait and it turned its back on me and I ran to the Philippines to complain.
The Bamboo Stalk Page 22