How could a smile and tears appear on one face at the same time in this way? He was smiling broadly and his eyes were red and glistening with tears. He had to struggle to get the words out. ‘OK, my son,’ he said.
I was happy, and deeply moved. Now that I had gained Ghassan as a father, after missing him all those months in his role as my father’s friend, I prepared to leave.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘To my flat,’ I said.
He picked up his car keys and said, ‘I’ll give you a lift.’
9
In April 2009 Kuwait was transformed into a vast advertising display. There were thousands of posters of various sizes in all the streets. The numbers grew day by day and in the end there was a poster wherever you turned your head – along the sides of the streets, on the roundabouts, on the back windows of cars and on the roofs of buildings.
As I was riding my bike to Ibrahim’s place one day, I suddenly had a feeling I was being watched by all the faces looking out from the posters. Some of the faces were smiling, others were grim. There were sharp, intelligent faces, expressionless faces and stupid faces. Most of the men on the posters were wearing traditional Kuwaiti dress, but some appeared in suits and ties. Very few of the advertisements had pictures of women. I later found out that this bonanza of posters in the streets was part of the preparations for their parliamentary elections.
Their? Why their and nor our? I was about to delete the word or change it, but it would jar if I changed it to our. I’ll leave it as it is. Their.
I got to Ibrahim’s place and found him in a bad mood, despite the welcome he gave me. I wasn’t used to seeing his face without his calm smile that made it distinctive, or that he made distinctive. He brought me a cup of tea. He asked me how I was and how work was going. I ignored his questions and said, ‘You don’t seem your normal self.’
He apologised and said, ‘You’re right.’ He handed me two newspapers and pointed to stories he had circled in pen. He had underlined some of the words and drawn arrows pointing to comments he had written in the small blank spaces on the page. I looked from one report to the other. One of them had a picture of a young woman hanging from a ceiling fan by a rope.
I handed them back to him. ‘They’re in Arabic,’ I said, puzzled.
Ibrahim tapped his forehead and said, ‘How stupid of me! I’m sorry.’ He went to the corner of the room, where there was a computer. He tapped on the keyboard until the printer churned out two pages. He handed them to me and said, ‘That’s my translation of what was in the Kuwaiti papers this week. I’m going to send it by email to the newspapers in the Philippines. I’ve started to hate this work,’ he mumbled.
I picked up the pieces of paper to read. Filipina Maid Slits Baby’s Throat in Revenge on Employer, said the first headline. I didn’t read any further. Filipina Maid Hangs Herself, read the second. The report sent a shiver down my spine. I read it carefully. In her late teens, in her room in her employer’s house, suicide by hanging, a rope, the ceiling fan.
I read the report word by word and I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. In my repeated readings of the report all I was doing was looking for the name of the woman. Any young woman who committed suicide, anywhere in the world, might as well have been Merla.
I felt depressed and I was about to leave. ‘Where are you going?’ Ibrahim asked me.
‘I just remembered something important,’ I said, heading for the door.
* * *
I rested the laptop on my legs. The email sign-in page was on the screen waiting for me to put in the password that would take me to my inbox. I wrote the first numbers, then waited a little. I looked at them, then deleted them. I started again but I didn’t complete the number. The idea that there might be a message from Merla drove me to put in the rest of the number and press ‘enter’. But I was so frightened that the message I expected might not be there that I folded down the screen, cursing my weakness and helplessness and Merla’s strength and craziness. Why was all this happening to me?
I picked up the phone, my hand shaking. I scrolled through the numbers. I called the number and waited for the other side to answer. There was no reply. It was 9.30 p.m. where I was, 2.30 a.m. in the Philippines.
I called again, and again, many times.
I got angrier and angrier. I swore I wouldn’t stop trying until I received an answer or my phone battery went flat.
At last! ‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Yes, who’s calling?’
Apparently I had woken her up, but her voice still sounded sleepy.
‘It’s Isa.’
‘Who?’
‘It’s José,’ I said, correcting myself.
She didn’t say anything.
‘Maria!’ I said. ‘Tell me, where’s Merla?’
As soon as I uttered my cousin’s name, her sleepy voice woke up and she started to cry. I repeated my question, terrified. She fought back her tears and said, ‘She doesn’t want to talk to anyone.’
I lost my nerve and shouted at her. ‘Enough!’ I said. ‘You can save lies like that for Mama Aida.’
Her voice suddenly disappeared. ‘Hello, hello?’ I said.
I could still hear rapid breathing, so she was still on the line. I didn’t say anything more, in case I heard bad news. When the other person is silent, it can sometimes be more frightening than when they tell us a truth we’d rather not hear. That kind of silence opens the door to terrifying possibilities that may be worse than what we are frightened of. What might she be hiding? Why is the world spinning around me? I hoped she would keep crying so that she wouldn’t say what I didn’t want to hear. Go on, go on, cry, Maria. Mind you don’t say anything. It’s better that you cry at my question than that I cry at your answer. She was still breathing fast. Words and phrases from the story that Ibrahim had translated floated in my head. ‘In her late teens’, ‘hanging’, ‘rope’, ‘ceiling fan’. Terrifying images flashed before my eyes. The story in the newspaper. The picture. The lines that Ibrahim had drawn under the words swirled around me, surrounded me, pulled at me. The circle he had drawn around the story was wrapped around my neck like a noose, getting tighter, strangling me.
‘Listen,’ said Maria. I shut my eyes and pricked up my ears. She went on angrily: ‘I don’t know anything about her.’
‘Maria, please.’
She didn’t say anything for a while. I didn’t ask her again. I waited for her to calm down. Then she continued: ‘She changed a lot before she disappeared. She started to hate being with me.’
‘And then what?’ I asked her politely, and waited for her answer.
‘On the last night we were together, we’d been drinking, she said she needed someone who understood her and made her feel fulfilled, that she needed a man. I woke up in the morning and she was gone,’ she said.
She called off without saying any more. I put my mobile phone aside. I stared at the laptop but I couldn’t bring myself to check whether there was a message. I was like someone who shows clear signs of being ill, such as vomiting, high temperature and spots on their skin, but who refuses to go to the doctor for fear of hearing what they don’t want to hear.
I was sick at the thought that Merla had disappeared and all the symptoms of my disease pointed to the fact that she . . .
10
One weekend night I was on my way home in my work uniform after a tiring day. I stank of food for which I no longer had any appetite. My stomach turned whenever I saw an advert for the meals I prepared robotically every day. I would go back to the kitchen in my flat dying of hunger and enjoy some food that I had made with my own hands, as if the stuff I prepared all day long wasn’t really food.
In the lobby of my building that night I pressed the lift button and leaned back against the wall, waiting for it to arrive. My eyes were glued to the panel that showed which floor the lift was on. It started at 8, then 7, 5, 3, 2 and finally G. The lift stopped. Other things stopped too – my brain, my heartbeat and time itself.
It wasn’t just the lift door that opened. It was a door to Kuwait that opened, a door I had glimpsed in the Philippines when I was impatient to visit my father’s country. Suddenly it was wide open.
Through the door came a young man who didn’t even notice I was there. He probably wasn’t interested in the Asian standing in front of him in the uniform of a restaurant worker. My back was still against the wall. I was so surprised I couldn’t speak. The man ambled towards the main door.
‘Hi,’ I shouted after him, ‘a moment, please.’
The man wheeled round and looked blankly into my face. He looked around him, then pointed a finger at his own chest and asked, ‘Me?’
I nodded. ‘Shloonak?’ I asked him in delight.
The man grimaced. I went up to him and put out my hand to shake his. He raised his hand out of the way and recoiled in disgust. ‘Keep your distance. Don’t touch me. I’m not the type you’re looking for,’ he said.
I was taken aback. I was about to say, ‘Yes, you are one of them. Where are the others?’ but I was worried this might confirm his misunderstanding, especially as he didn’t seem to be completely sober. He turned away to leave, muttering angrily.
‘I’m Isa!’ I shouted after him. He walked on, paying no attention. ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Boracay Island! Red Horse beer!’
The man suddenly stopped in his tracks and turned towards me. He pointed at me and took a close look at my face. ‘You?’ he said. I smiled in confirmation. He came back into the lobby. ‘The Kuwaiti Made in Philippines?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I replied with a laugh.
Still pointing at me, he continued, ‘You’re the one who . . .’ He leaned forward and shook his shoulders as if dancing.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, nodding again. We both burst out laughing. The doorman, disturbed by the noise we were making by the lift, came out of his room.
‘You’re the one who . . .’ the man said again. He put his hand on his head and bent his legs. He jumped up and as soon as his feet landed back on the ground, he turned and walked slowly, shaking his shoulders.
I couldn’t control myself. It was the dance I loved and that I’d danced with him two years ago in the Philippines. I went up to him and stood face to face. I began copying the way he was dancing. ‘Yes, yes. It’s me,’ I said. I stretched my arms out and he did the same. We began to pull on that invisible rope. Both of us were shaking, partly from the dance itself and partly because we were laughing so much.
The doorman didn’t come beyond the door to his room. He shook his head disapprovingly, clapped his hands and disappeared back into his room without saying a word.
Could I say it was the first time I’d had a proper laugh in Kuwait?
Yes, I could.
We exchanged phone numbers, Mishaal and I. Mishaal, who I called Michel because I couldn’t pronounce the difficult ‘ain’ sound in the middle of his name, was one of the crazy young Kuwaitis I had met in Boracay when I was working there. He was the guy with the glass of beer who danced with me on the beach. By strange coincidence I danced with him again in Kuwait, close to two years after we first met. Some coincidences are wonderful: they suddenly appear like a bend in a road that leads to the unknown. Mishaal’s reappearance in this manner gave me an opportunity to get close to my Kuwaitiness, which I had hardly been aware of.
Mishaal usually spent the weekend in his flat on the eighth floor of the building I lived in, doing what he couldn’t do anywhere else, as he put it. When he noticed I was intrigued, he showed me what he meant. He put out his hands, took hold of an imaginary glass in one hand and began to pour air into it from an imaginary bottle in his other hand. Then he pretended to drink. ‘You all claim that alcohol’s forbidden,’ I said with a laugh, ‘but it’s as plentiful as water.’
He nodded and said, ‘As plentiful as water, and as expensive as gold.’
I asked him about the rest of the gang. He said they were well. Although they lived in different parts of Kuwait they got together almost every day in the diwaniya of one of them in an area nearby. ‘Why don’t you meet here on the eighth floor?’ I asked, pointing upstairs.
‘As you know,’ he replied, ‘no one else in the gang drinks alcohol. Besides, places like this arouse suspicion.’
I thought that remark was odd. ‘But I live here!’ I said. ‘Do I arouse suspicion?’
He patted me on the shoulder and laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It only arouses suspicion in the case of Kuwaitis.’ I let it pass. Perhaps he didn’t mean it, or he’d forgotten I was Kuwaiti.
‘Does that mean they’re frightened of the police?’ I asked.
‘The police don’t frighten anyone,’ he said. ‘They’re frightened of what people will say.’ He held out his hand as if holding an apple. ‘Kuwait’s a small place. Everyone knows almost everyone else,’ he said.
* * *
I took off my work clothes and threw myself down on the sofa in the living room, elated by the encounter, which had added a touch of happiness to my evening. But too much happiness is rather like sadness. It’s irritating if you can’t share it with someone. I called Ibrahim. My words couldn’t keep up with my feelings: ‘Ibrahim! Would you believe it? Two years ago. By chance. Kuwaitis. Young guys. Boracay. Crazy people. We’re going to meet again. My friends. Kuwaitis. Kuwaitis. Kuwaitis.’
After a long silence in response to the news I brought, Ibrahim said, ‘All this excitement because you met some drunk guy?’
I tried to explain: ‘In fact he wasn’t completely drunk.’
‘Brother,’ Ibrahim broke in, ‘choose your friends very carefully. You don’t need people of that kind.’ I didn’t respond. ‘I know you’re looking for Kuwaiti friends, brother Isa,’ Ibrahim continued. ‘Join our group and not only will you have lots of friends, but you’ll have Kuwaiti brothers, as you wanted, to guide you to the right path and to give you assistance.’ I thanked him and the conversation ended. If Ibrahim had known what my Aunt Hind had to say about his group he wouldn’t have blamed me for being reluctant to accept his repeated offers. Why do things have to be so complicated? Ibrahim was warning me about the Boracay gang, while Hind was warning me about Ibrahim and his group. Didn’t I have the right to choose what I wanted? I wanted them all. Hind, Ibrahim and the gang of crazies. I ignored what I heard from him and from Hind.
I called Khawla to share my happiness at meeting Mishaal, after the disappointing response I’d had from Ibrahim. ‘As-salam aleekum, shloonik?’ I said.
‘Ana zein, inta shloonak?’ she replied with a laugh.
‘I’m fine’ I said.
‘Isa!’ she said. ‘Grandmother was just asking about you,’
‘I guess her knees must be hurting,’ I answered mischievously. I regretted my horrible joke.
‘Or perhaps she misses Rashid’s voice,’ she said earnestly.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,’ I cut in.
‘Never mind, but don’t be too hard on Grandmother. She loves you, Isa,’ Khawla said. My heart raced. ‘Would you believe it?’ Khawla continued, ‘I wish we belonged to some other family.’
Khawla sounded upset, and unusually sad. She immediately took the conversation in a different direction, nothing to do with why I had called. She wanted to talk about the family name and she came out with things I didn’t understand. ‘All the advantages the family name brings to family members are in fact no more than restrictions and a long list of taboos,’ she said.
Puzzled, I asked, ‘And what does this have to do with now?’
‘Because you still have something against Grandmother, but she’s not that bad,’ she said. I didn’t deny the charge. I just said nothing. ‘People envy us for no reason,’ Khawla continued. ‘In fact they’re freer than us.’ I was still puzzled. ‘Do you mind if I share my thoughts with you this evening?’ she said after a pause.
I had planned to share my excitement at meeting Mishaal but it doesn’t make any difference whether you share your happiness or y
our sadness with someone else. What matters is the sharing. ‘Yes, yes, with great pleasure,’ I said.
‘If we belonged to one of those families we like to describe as . . .’ She hesitated. Perhaps she was about to describe them as lower-class but she checked herself. ‘Ordinary families,’ she said, ‘then Hind would have been Ghassan’s wife long ago and no one would dare speak badly about us or make fun of our family name. The Taroufs marry their daughter to a bidoon man! Even if that bidoon man is descended from the same tribe as the Tarouf family! If only we belonged to some other family, an ordinary family. Then you would be living with us now, instead of Grandmother trembling all over whenever someone visits the house, in case they find out about you. Isa, I know how badly you’ve been treated but there are things you have to understand. Grandmother and the aunts don’t bear full responsibility. The people around us are full of envy. They’re trying to catch us out, waiting impatiently for any opportunity to do us down. We’re constantly being monitored. Some people may think a man can marry a Filipina woman, but if the man comes from a family of high social status, then it would be a crime condemned even by those who come from . . .’ She hesitated again, but this time she spelt it out: ‘humble origins.’ She continued to air her frustrations. ‘Dozens of young Kuwaitis die from drugs and no one cares, but it’s a big deal and a great shame if it happens to someone of good family. He may rest in peace but his family inherits the shame when he’s gone. If some businessman goes bankrupt all his problems come to an end as soon as he’s declared bankrupt, but if someone from an old family goes bankrupt, then they’ll never hear the end of it. People’s tongues will lash him like whips for the rest of his life, and his descendants after him. If someone succeeds at work and makes a fortune then he’s a self-made man, but if Faisal al-Adil, Nouriya’s husband, succeeds, then he’s a thief. Hello, hello, Isa, can you hear me?’
She rambled on. To be the victim of a tyrant is normal, but to be the victim of another victim! My sister tried to explain. And did I understand? Even if I did understand, was I convinced? And even if I was convinced, what did it matter?
The Bamboo Stalk Page 26