The Bamboo Stalk

by Saud Alsanousi

  ‘Yes, carry on, Khawla. I can hear you.’

  She continued: ‘You know you’re from the Tarouf family, but do you know what the word tarouf means? I don’t expect you to answer this question because it’s a purely Kuwaiti word and many people here hardly know what it means. A tarouf is a net that Kuwaitis use for fishing. It’s set up in the sea like a volleyball net and big fish get caught in it as they pass by. And we, the members of the family, get caught in this tarouf, caught in our family name, and we can’t escape it. We can move only as much as the net allows. But you’re a small fish, Isa, the only one, and you can slip through the mesh of the tarouf without getting caught. Isa! You’re lucky! You’re free. Do what you want.’ At last Khawla was done with her speech.

  Ignoring everything she had said, I replied, ‘So I’m a small fish, a rotten one that spoils the rest of the fish, as Grandmother says.’

  ‘You’re not like that, Isa, you’re not like that,’ Khawla said gently.

  I gave a long sigh, then said, ‘I wish I were beside you in Father’s study, listening to you. I miss you, Khawla.’ Should I tell her I saw her smile through the telephone? ‘Soon I’ll invite you to a special session in the study, but after we’ve dealt with the question of Aunt Hind,’ she replied.

  ‘The question of Aunt Hind?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you later. It’s something excellent for the family in general, and especially for Hind,’ she said.

  Without thinking I found myself making that ‘colololooosh’ sound. ‘So Hind’s going to get married?’

  Khawla burst out laughing. I pressed the question. She put down the phone or moved it away from her ear. Her laugh sounded distant. Sometimes she was laughing and sometimes coughing. I waited for her to end her laughing fit. ‘You made me laugh, you crazy,’ she said when she came back. ‘No, no, she’s not getting married. I’ll tell you later. Good night.’

  ‘Good night. Sweet dreams.’

  I was about to hang up but she called me back: ‘Isa!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I love you a lot.’

  I smiled. I didn’t add to what she’d said. Words are too limiting for some feelings, which prefer silence.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Khawla concluded.

  I held the phone in both hands, tapped out a message with my thumbs: And I love you more, and sent it to her.

  I leaned my head back and remembered why I had called Khawla in the first place. I had forgotten to tell her that I’d met Mishaal and that he would soon arrange for me to meet the other Kuwaitis from Boracay.

  I knelt on the ground and bent down to look under the sofa. Nothing. The other sofa. Nothing. Under the television table. There she was! I picked up Inang Choleng. ‘Guess who I saw today at the lift door!’ I said. As usual, she was listening with interest. ‘Mishaal,’ I said. ‘After two years. By chance. Young guys. Boracay. Crazy guys. We’ll get together again. My friends. Kuwaitis. Kuwaitis. Kuwaitis.’

  11

  A few days after meeting Mishaal, I finally went to a diwaniya, one of those places my mother had told me so much about. There’s hardly a house in Kuwaiti that doesn’t have one – an outer room where friends meet. The image that the name evokes is the one my mother planted in my imagination when I was young. It was where my father, Walid and Ghassan got their fishing tackle ready, where they discussed books or important political events, where they gathered round the television to watch big matches. I wasn’t planning to do any of that. Just going into a diwaniya was enough for me.

  A little after sunset my telephone rang and it was Mishaal at the other end. ‘Are you ready?’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you in five minutes in the car park under the building.’ What could he mean by ‘ready’? I’d been ready for a day like this for years, ever since my mother had talked about my father and his friends when I was on Mendoza’s land, when I wanted to have friends like my father’s friends.

  I waited for him in the car park. He arrived in a yellow sports car. I cursed my bicycle and taxis and buses. He shook my hand and said, ‘It’ll be a surprise for the other guys.’

  ‘I wonder if they’ll remember me,’ I said.

  * * *

  ‘One, two, three.’

  I counted the pairs of shoes at the diwaniya door before we went in. Taking your shoes off isn’t just for people who go to mosques. I turned to Mishaal and pointed to the shoes by the door: ‘There are three people inside and you’re the fourth. Where’s the fifth?’ ‘This is Turki’s diwaniya, and he comes in from the other door from the inner courtyard,’ he said with a laugh. So there was an inside door and an outside door.

  Mishaal pushed the door open and waved me in. The floor was spread with carpets. There were no sofas, just mattresses on the ground for sitting on, with hand rests between them and cushions against the walls to lean back on. One of the men was playing with his mobile phone, another was lying in the corner under an open window blowing cigarette smoke into the air. I recognised him immediately: he was the one with the oud. Two of them were glued to the television screen. I thought they were watching a football match, but then I noticed they were holding controllers and playing with the buttons. They were busy playing football on PlayStation. No one paid us any attention except for the guy with the cigarette. He looked from me to Mishaal in surprise. ‘As-salam aleekum,’ Mishaal said. I quickly added my own ‘As-salaam aleekum.’

  Everyone turned to us. ‘Wa aleekum as-salam,’ they said. Mishaal spoke to them in Arabic, referring to me as ‘our Kuwaiti friend’. Their reactions varied from smiles to surprise. Some of them laughed. They all gathered around me in disbelief, saying things like ‘It’s you?’ or ‘I didn’t believe you were Kuwaiti’ or ‘We forgot all about you as soon as we left that place’.

  I put out my hand to the guy with the cigarette and Mishaal introduced us. ‘This is Turki,’ he said. I shook his hand. I leaned over and brushed cheeks with him the way Kuwaitis greet each other. Mishaal pointed to the man who’d been playing with his mobile phone and introduced me. ‘That’s Jabir,’ he said. Then he pointed towards the two who were sitting in front of the television, ‘Abdullah and Mahdi,’ he said. I shook hands and brushed cheeks with all of them in turn.

  * * *

  They were amazing. So cheerful and friendly – that’s what I can say about the Boracay gang. I was happy to meet them and enter their world.

  How could a country have so many faces? Which of these many faces was Kuwait’s real face? I wondered.

  I dropped in on the diwaniya every day, or almost very day, depending on Turki, who called me up whenever the gang was meeting at his place. Fortunately Turki’s house was in Adailiya, which wasn’t far from Jabriya. The others lived nearby too, except for Abdullah, who lived in some remote area. But that didn’t mean Abdullah needed a plane to get to Turki’s place, as he might in some remote parts of the Philippines, because it only takes about half an hour, give or take a little, to reach the most remote residential area in Kuwait.

  Sometimes I went to the diwaniya alone after work on my bike. Sometimes the Kuwaitis would take turns coming to my place to give me a lift. Everything would have turned out as in my dreams, if it hadn’t been for the language barrier, which I couldn’t overcome, though I could pick out some words when they spoke to each other in Arabic. I felt really sorry for my friends when they felt they had to abandon their own language just to bring me into their world. Mishaal spoke English fluently, Turki and Jabir less so, while Abdullah and Mahdi spoke to me the way Grandmother spoke to Babu, Raju, Lakshmi and Luzviminda. I think it’s wonderful when people stretch language to the limit, peppering their own language with words from other languages, or supplementing it with gestures, just so that they can tell you how they feel towards you: ‘I am happy katheeran li-anni see you after long time’, for example. Kind words don’t need translating. You only have to look at the face of the person speaking to understand how they feel, even if they’re speaking a language you don’t understand. Abdullah didn’t r
ealise this when he told me how happy he was to meet me again.

  Despite their differences their craziness united them. They lived in separate neighbourhoods and belonged to different families. Turki and Jabir were of high social rank, maybe level with the Taroufs. Mishaal didn’t recognise such things. He thought that family wealth was enough to break down all these class distinctions. And he, by the way, was very rich. As for Abdullah and Mahdi, I don’t know much about them, perhaps because their English was poor. All I know about Abdullah is that he was more committed to his religious observances than his friends and more modest in the way he dressed. He seldom wore anything other than the traditional thobe. Mahdi didn’t speak much. I hardly heard his voice except when he screamed in delight or anger at the result of a football match between him and Abdullah.

  I did provide one service to the crazies, perhaps the most important thing I had done for them since we had met. Only when I was with them in the diwaniya could they play their favourite card game, koutbo sitta, which requires six players. It may seem trivial but for the first time in Kuwait I felt that my presence mattered, even if it was only to make up the number needed for a game of cards.

  We spent our time in the diwaniya playing cards or watching football matches, either real ones or virtual on-screen games between Abdullah and Mahdi. Sometimes Turki would strum his oud, and if we were bored, they would start talking about their love affairs. Abdullah was very meticulous about performing his prayers on time five times a day. Could I do that? Five times a day? When I asked him how he could keep it up like that, he answered confidently, ‘It makes me happy to have you with us in the diwaniya day after day. Wouldn’t you like to have God with you (he raised his hand and spread his fingers) five times a day?’

  We used to pray together, led by Abdullah. I don’t know why I prayed. Did I honestly want to, or did Abdullah make me feel embarrassed? Why didn’t Mishaal feel at all embarrassed?

  Although I didn’t know the real reason why I prayed with them, that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t sincere when I prayed, even if I didn’t know how to pray properly. I went through the motions of praying like them, but I said the prayers in a way that no else did. Perhaps the only word that we all spoke aloud and in unison was ‘Amen’.

  Mishaal didn’t budge when Abdullah called us to prayer by shouting ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar’. The others quickly formed a line behind Abdullah. We went through the motions of the ritual by following what Abdullah did, and said ‘Allahu akbar’ between each stage and the next.

  Mahdi was also meticulous about praying but he prayed in a slightly different way. I was probably the only one who noticed this because I sometimes lost concentration and absent-mindedly watched the others. When we were kneeling with our hands on our knees, I examined their feet. Turki’s toes were very small and close together. Mahdi’s feet were big and white and his toes were covered in thick hair. Turki and Jabir pressed their hands to their chests when they were standing upright during prayer, but Mahdi didn’t do that. We prostrated ourselves, bending down till our foreheads touched the carpet. Mahdi put a paper handkerchief on the carpet and touched that with his forehead. After prayers once, I stupidly asked Mahdi if he had an obsession with hygiene. He smiled and shook his head. Seeing I was confused, Abdullah stepped in to clarify some things about Islam I didn’t understand. ‘Islam . . . sect . . . Sunni . . . Shi’a.’ It all seemed complicated to me, or perhaps Abdullah’s language – Arabic interspersed with broken English and mysterious hand gestures – didn’t work for him this time. I shook my head to show I didn’t understand. Mishaal intervened. ‘We’re Catholic Muslims, and they’re Protestant Muslims,’ he said. Everyone roared with laughter, but nonetheless I understood from Mishaal what Abdullah had failed to explain.

  Abdullah and Mahdi sat cross-legged in front of the television and fought it out at their favourite game. Turki started tuning his musical instrument. Jabir lay on one of the mattresses, busy sending and receiving text messages. Mishaal pestered Jabir by blowing kisses at him as he fiddled with his phone. Then he picked up his own mobile phone and started jabbing at the keys like Jabir. He whispered words of love in Arabic, and also in English to include me in their circle: ‘Darling . . . I love you.’

  My heart suddenly missed a beat and I felt the same electric shock I knew from the past. It was Turki on the oud, filling the diwaniya with magic. He ran the plectrum across the strings in the middle of the oud while the fingers of his other hand slid up and down the strings on the neck. He only had one instrument but it sounded to me like the notes were coming from several instruments at the same time. Mahdi shouted in jubilation when he won the football match. Mishaal was still pestering Jabir by blowing kisses and saying, ‘I love you.’ Abdullah invited Mahdi to play again to get his revenge.

  As for me, I was in the diwaniya, but my heart was in the Philippines with Merla.

  12

  I rested the laptop on my knees. The email homepage appeared on the screen. How long before I plucked up courage? How long could I keep clinging to a hope that was tinged with doubt? Without thinking I wrote the password in the box. There was just one step left: clicking on the ‘sign in’ button.

  I left the page as it was, with all my data inserted, without moving on to the next step. I moved the laptop aside, off my legs. I stood in the middle of the sitting room of my flat and looked around at the walls. ‘Which direction would it be in?’ I wondered. I spread the prayer rug, a gift from Awatif I had never used. There were many possible directions. I chose the direction that took my fancy. How many times did I have to bend forward? How many times did I have to touch my forehead to the ground? Should I put my hands together on my chest or leave them hanging by my sides? I didn’t know, but I did pray.

  I stood on the prayer rug. ‘Allahu akbar, God is the mightiest, You have been kind to me. You sent me the crazies that I dreamt of meeting. I’m grateful to you, my God.’ I leaned forward and put my hands on my knees. ‘Allahu akbar. God is the mightiest. I’ve been waiting for a message for some time. Isn’t it time the message arrived?’ I stood up straight again. ‘Make my dream come true. Don’t ruin my life by allowing the person I love to die.’ I lay down on the floor and touched it with my forehead. ‘I have plenty of money, I have wonderful friends.’ I sat up. ‘Allahu akbar, God is the mightiest. I pray to You as a believer, in the hope that You will accept my prayer. Amen.’ I looked to the right and then to the left to finish off my prayer.

  Someone rang the doorbell. It was my Filipino neighbour inviting me to someone’s birthday party. I stood facing him at the door. I looked towards the laptop screen, then at my neighbour. I began to interpret things Grandmother’s way. Perhaps Fate had sent him to spare me the torment of not yet receiving the message. I accepted his invitation with a nod, with complete faith in Grandmother’s view of the world.

  * * *

  Filipinos, at home or abroad, are always the same: they attach an almost reverential importance to some occasions. Birthdays are very important. They celebrate them every year with the same enthusiasm, as if it were the first time. They give each other presents, even if they are modest, and the recipients are happy with them, however inexpensive they might look. The person whose birthday it is looks delighted, even before he or she knows what the present is. Sometimes the present is important but the most important thing is that the giver hasn’t forgotten the occasion and has taken the trouble to look for a present to make the person happy. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a pair of socks, a key ring, a picture frame or a leather wallet pretending to be a well-known brand. The only thing that matters is that it’s a present. Filipinos aren’t only interested in birthdays. Holidays also have a special meaning for them. Why for them instead of for us? Am I choosing my words properly? What a muddle I’m in!

  At Christmas celebrations in Manila, you can feel the occasion as much as if you were in the Vatican. Am I exaggerating? I’ve never been to the Vatican to know, but anyway, it’s nothing like i
n Kuwait. In the Philippines, the occasion has a special warmth and you can almost see the effect on the faces of those around you. There’s an atmosphere of faith. Prayers. More people going to churches and cathedrals. That might be easy to explain, given that ninety percent of the population is Christian – eighty percent of them are Roman Catholics and the other ten percent of various other Christian denominations. But what is odd is our interest in other celebrations, such as the way Filipinos mark Chinese New Year. People come out on the streets to celebrate and some streets are decorated with Chinese lanterns and coloured streamers. People beat drums and some of them wear traditional Chinese costume and dance with brightly coloured dragons. We’re people who love to celebrate like no one else. We’ll never miss an opportunity to party.

  As usual my neighbours had decorated their sitting room with streamers. On one wall there was a sign reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU. The place was full of singing and dancing and all kinds of food and drink, including home-brewed alcohol – what the guests most wanted to find, however foul it might taste. I drank a lot that night. Everyone stopped dancing and the lights were turned off, leaving the place romantically lit by candles. It was time for videoke, the Filipino version of karaoke. The microphone was ready and the television was playing famous songs, with the words on screen. Being in Kuwait had helped me see Filipinos more clearly. We Filipinos love to sing.

  We?

  Yes, we.

  The microphone was passed around. People sang solo or in groups. Helped by the words on the screen, they sang to the music song after song. I couldn’t help joining in when the music started up for Parting Time by the Filipino singer Erik Santos. I grabbed the microphone and I didn’t need the words on the screen. I listened to the piano intro and waited for my cue to start. I shut my eyes to sing and thought only of my memories of Merla.