Everyone listened to my song in silence. I sang louder as the end of the song drew near and the rhythm picked up. I gave a bow with the microphone still in my hand. As the piano music faded out towards the end, I whispered the last line: ‘I remember the days when you’re here with me.’
The sitting room broke into whistles and clapping. People toasted me with their drinks. I bowed theatrically and blew kisses around in the air. The music began again. People gathered round the microphone to sing together and I withdrew quietly to my own flat.
I put the laptop on my knees. The browser was still on the email sign-in page. The fact that I was only half sober made it easier to press the ‘enter’ button. The inbox had many messages. Adverts, messages from my mother, pictures of her with Alberto and Adrian. The pictures reeled drunkenly in front of my eyes. I smiled at my brother’s big smile in the picture, and the stream of drool from his mouth. I missed my chubby little brother. There were pictures of my mother’s house and of our house. The money I had sent them had changed many things. But my sense of happiness with the messages and the pictures didn’t last long.
Merla, why?
13
The atmosphere in the diwaniya was no longer what it had been and the crazies weren’t the crazies I had known. They had given up everything to devote themselves to the parliamentary elections. Their conversations had become more intense. They were no longer interested in including me in the conversation so Arabic dominated their discussions.
One evening Turki asked me to go somewhere with him, along with Mishaal and Abdullah. ‘Where?’ I asked him.
‘It’s not far,’ he said. The four of us went off, leaving Jabir and Mahdi in the diwaniya organising files that contained lots of phone numbers. I later found out that Jabir and Mahdi were working for the election campaigns of several candidates. Since they weren’t yet old enough to vote they had decided to serve their country in another way, they said.
Turki had a small pick-up he’d borrowed from a friend. He stopped in a street in the nearby district of al-Surra, in front of a school. We got out of the car. He asked me to help him carry a large cloth banner that was in the back, while Mishaal and Abdullah were busy unloading some metal stands and bags full of sand.
We put the banner on the pavement and Turki spread it out. It was black with Arabic writing in yellow. Mishaal and Abdullah set up the stands and held them in place with the sandbags. ‘Isa, hold the cloth from the end here,’ said Turki.
I stood where I was and said, ‘Not before I find out what the words in yellow mean,’ I told him.
He put his hands on his hips and said, ‘Not now, Isa.’
I shook my head and insisted: ‘Yes, now!’.
He gave in to my obstinacy. He pointed to the words in turn, translating as he went: Sorry, al-Surra is not for sale. Kuwait is more precious. Mishaal and Abdullah had finished setting up the metal stands. They each took a corner of the big piece of cloth and helped Turki carry it. Soon the banner was up, facing the street. We looked back at it as we drove off in the pick-up for another site to put up more banners. The other ones said, Sorry, we won’t be ruled by the dinar. Kuwait is more precious. In the Kaifan area we met some other young men trying to attach banners to the wall of a mosque. Sorry, the consciences of those who resisted the Iraqi occupation are not for sale, they read.
I gathered that what we were doing was voluntary work and that the Boracay gang were not the only people doing it. In fact many young people in various parts of Kuwait were putting up similar banners against bribery, condemning the practice of vote-buying by some parliamentary candidates. ‘In some areas, the price of a vote has reached 2,000 dinars,’ Turki told me in disgust. ‘They’re not selling their votes. They’re selling Kuwait,’ he added sadly. I don’t know whether Kuwaitis needed that amount of money, given that the poorest of them seemed rich to me. All I knew was that my friends had shown me an aspect of themselves that I hadn’t seen in the days we had been together in the diwaniya: their persistence, their enthusiasm for their candidate in the parliamentary elections, their willigness to volunteer to work in the campaigns, distribute leaflets and put up banners in the streets warning people against selling their country.
Their commitment reduced me to silence. I didn’t ask many questions when they were talking in Arabic. I just observed their faces and enjoyed their enthusiasm, which was so infectious that I forgot about my Asian features when I was carrying leaflets and putting them under the windscreen wipers of cars, repeating to myself the words I hadn’t been able to read: ‘Kuwait is not for sale.’ In those days I was more Kuwaiti than I had ever been before. My sense of belonging to the country – the country in whose four-coloured flag my father’s remains had been wrapped – was at its peak. I recalled what Merla had said in one of her emails: Don’t bother about the way you look. I don’t bother about the way I look. Prove to yourself who you are before you prove it to others. Believe in yourself and those around you will believe in you, and if they don’t believe that’s their problem, not yours.
Merla was right in what she said. I needed her more than ever, and I needed her to tell me more.
* * *
When we had completed our mission, Turki took us back to the diwaniya. Jabir and Mahdi were still doing their paperwork, happy with the number of calls they had made, to ask voters to come to election meetings and to promote their candidates. I leafed through their papers. There were leaflets and pictures of candidates surrounded by Kuwaiti flags and a map of Kuwait. The map was small and easy to draw, rather like a bird’s head. I thought of the map of the Philippines, with its hundreds of islands and many irregularities.
My friends were supporting four candidates. I saw pictures of three of them on the leaflets that Jabir and Mahdi had, but the fourth leaflet didn’t have a picture. I asked Mahdi why not. ‘That candidate’s a woman,’ he said. ‘Maybe she prefers not to put her picture and just to make do with her name – Hind al-Tarouf.’
14
I was stunned to hear the name. For a moment I was oblivious of everything around me. So that was why Khawla was so happy that time when I went ‘colololooosh’ down the phone. It had never occurred to me that this might be why my sister was so pleased. Mahdi was hoping that Hind would win the elections and said this would be good for Kuwait. But Khawla had said, ‘It would be good for the family in general.’ If it was good for Kuwait, it would be good for me as a Kuwaiti. If it was good for the family I doubted it would matter to me.
When I heard Mahdi mention my aunt, he noticed how surprised I looked. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked me.
I was reluctant to tell him, but he was so enthusiastic about her winning and I was so proud to be related to her that I had to reveal it. ‘Hind al-Tarouf is my aunt,’ I said. Everyone was tongue-tied. The crazies stopped their work and exchanged glances with each other, then looked towards me, staring at me with curiosity. ‘You’re joking!’ said Turki.
I shook my head and said, ‘Hind Isa al-Tarouf is the sister of Rashid Isa al-Tarouf, my father.’
Jabir sat up straight. ‘You’re lying!’ he said. I didn’t say a word. Their surprise made me regret that I had spoken out so hastily. If only I had held my tongue. What was odd about Hind being my aunt, I wondered, though my mind was gnawed by doubts. Jabir continued, ‘Ever since I was young the Taroufs’ house has been like a second home to me. I know them as well as I know myself. But I’ve never heard of you!’
I replied with cautious confidence: ‘So you know Mama Ghanima, Awatif, Nouriya and Khawla.’ His eyes opened wide when he heard the names. I continued: ‘Maybe even Raju and Babu and Lakshmi and Luzviminda. But even if you’ve never heard of me, that doesn’t mean I’m not Isa Rashid Isa al-Tarouf.’ He was speechless. My answer, supported with names, struck him dumb. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked him. ‘Will my aunt lose the elections because of me too?’
Embarrassed, he shook his head. ‘No, I don’t mean that, but,’ he said. He put one hand on his head, not the way he would
if he was dancing one of those Kuwaiti dances, but from the impact of the surprise. I gave him time to take it in, but this time it was me who would be taken by surprise. ‘About a year ago,’ he said, ‘I don’t remember exactly when, but Rashid’s mother got a new Filipino servant.’ I nodded. He put his other hand on his head and said, ‘His name was Isa.’ The other guys were listening to our conversation in silence.
‘I’m Isa,’ I said.
He put out his hand to shake mine in an ironic, theatrical gesture. ‘And I’m Jabir, the son of your neighbour, Umm Jabir.’
Mishaal was sitting cross-legged in the far corner. He clapped. We all gathered around him. He looked straight at me and held out his hand as if holding an apple. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Kuwait’s a small place,’ he said.
* * *
It wasn’t wrong of me to tell my friend I was related to Hind al-Tarouf. But I did make a mistake when I didn’t ask him to keep it a secret, as my family wanted. If only this little country were bigger! If it were, would I have had to do all that? It’s almost impossible to live when you have to be so careful about what you do, what you say and where you go. How could I bring shame on my family when I was nowhere near them? What is this power that people have over one another? Why is the tongue the thing that people in Kuwait fear more than anything else? It’s just a small muscle wet with saliva, but it can do plenty of damage.
What Jabir had heard reached his mother, and from his mother it spread to the houses nearby and then to other people, and because Kuwait is a small place where almost everyone knows everyone else, and because words have wings, the news flew through the realms of gossip, especially places where women gathered. The news landed comfortably on the tongue of one woman only to fly off once again.
Khawla didn’t have an opinion on the matter. She took the middle ground, between me, her only brother, and the rest of the family. I couldn’t make out her attitude when she called me. I needed someone to stand by me. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had left the Tarouf house voluntarily because I didn’t want to impose my curse on anyone. When I was driven out of the house with my father many years ago, the house started to enjoy good luck. Why didn’t good luck descend on it when I left it voluntarily this time? Which of us was jinxing the other? Grandmother said I was a curse on the Taroufs but the way I saw it the Taroufs were a curse on me.
I still remember some of what Khawla said in that conversation. ‘Umm Jabir is despicable. Grandmother is ill. Nouriya is making threats. People we’re related to have found out about it and are saying Rashid had a son by a Filipina maid and so on.’ She suddenly stopped.
‘And what next?’ I asked her.
‘Some of the relatives have made it clear they feel sorry for me,’ she answered hesitantly. ‘They say it will reduce my chances of finding a decent husband.’ Grandmother had said the same thing to my father in the kitchen years earlier. It seems she was right. Awatif and Nouriya had escaped the curse of Josephine, but now it was about to strike my sister.
When I didn’t respond, Khawla continued, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean. . .’
I interrupted her: ‘Not at all, I’m the one who should apologise.’
Kuwait really was a wonderland, but very different from the wonderland I had imagined all the time I was in the Philippines. This wonderland wasn’t the one in my dreams. The only thing that the country in my old imagination had in common with the new reality was that they were both wonderlands.
* * *
Rashid, Josephine, where did you stand on the mess I was in? Did you have the right to bring me into the world and then abandon me like this? If you had the right, you certainly didn’t live up to your responsibilities. We come into life involuntarily. We arrive either by chance, unplanned by our fathers and mothers, or because they planned us and decided when we should arrive. If we are conjured out of nothingness, if we really exist before our souls are breathed into our foetuses in the womb, then prospective parents should line up in front of us, for us to choose our fathers and mothers from among them. If we can’t find anyone who deserves to have us as their child, then we should revert to nothingness.
When I shared these thoughts with Abdullah in the diwaniya, he replied with a paraphrase of a Qur’anic verse that says that the soul is a secret known only to God, because we humans have only a little knowledge. When he’d finishing explaining the verse, he added, ‘But who knows? Maybe we did in fact choose our parents before our memories were allowed to start another life in new bodies.’
‘Do you believe in Buddhism?’ I asked immediately.
He shuddered defensively. ‘I’m a Muslim,’ he said.
‘But you’re talking about something that’s similar to reincarnation,’ I explained.
‘“They will ask you about the soul. Say: The soul is by command of my Lord, and of knowledge you have been granted but little,”’ he said, reciting the Qur’anic verse in question as if atoning for a thought crime he had committed.
Ibrahim Salam had a different opinion. He was upset that the idea had even been brought up. His answer was another Qur’anic verse: ‘“Every soul will taste of death. Then unto Us you will be returned.’” With that he closed the subject.
* * *
The crazies knew all about me. ‘You’re not to blame, Isa, for everything that happened,’ Turki said. His words were a consolation, but he quickly added, ‘And your grandmother and aunts aren’t to blame either.’
‘But they’re rich,’ I retorted. ‘They have everything. What harm does it do them if I’m around?’
With a smile like Ghassan’s, he replied, ‘There’s a popular saying in Kuwait: a good reputation is worth more than wealth.’
15
I had three options: to hate myself for what I had brought upon my family, to hate my family for what they had done to me or to hate both them and myself because I was one of them.
My door bell rang and then kept ringing until I opened the door. A shark with its jaws ready to strike, accompanied by a pitiful dolphin, broke into my flat, dragging behind them a net, a tarouf, from which they hadn’t been able to break free. I, the little fish, tried to escape by slipping through the mesh of the net.
‘Nouriya?’ I said in surprise. I was stepping backwards for fear she would grab the collar of my shirt, as she had done the first time. On that occasion she had been at pains to control herself in case anyone in Grandmother’s house noticed. But in my flat, in the tank of the little fish, as Khawla had called me, there was no escape from the shark.
Awatif looked more conciliatory and I hoped she might do something but she didn’t. I pointed towards the sitting room and said, ‘Please come in.’
They didn’t budge. Everything in Nouriya’s face signalled contempt for me: her raised eyebrows, her thin upturned nose, her poisonous tongue.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I’m not Hind. I’m not Khawla. You’re to leave Kuwait immediately. Understood?’
Her arrogance outraged me. I don’t know how I dared but I blew up in her face. ‘I left the Taroufs’ house long ago. You have no authority over me,’ I said.
Her eyes opened wide as if she’d been slapped on the face. ‘You’re to leave Kuwait immediately,’ she shouted.
‘Kuwait isn’t the Tarouf household,’ I said.
Her eyes opened so wide it was frightening. She turned to Awatif in disbelief at my quick retort. ‘Are you defying me?’ she asked.
‘I’m not defying anyone.’
‘My mother has decided to cut off your monthly allowance. Hind is going to stop helping you. Don’t you understand?’
‘I have a job and a fair amount of money, enough to live for the rest of my life here.’
I looked down defiantly. ‘In Kuwait,’ I added.
Her lips trembled. She looked back and forth between me and Awatif in amazement. I don’t blame her. When a little mouse roars, it has more impact than when a lion roars. Her eyes glistened with tears. A flood of tears, streaked with kohl, rolled down he
r cheeks. She looked awful. Between sobs, she said something to Awatif, then turned to me. ‘I’ll pay you whatever you want,’ she said.
‘I don’t want anything,’ I snapped back.
She exchanged glances with her sister but I couldn’t work out what it meant. ‘May we come in?’ asked Awatif.
I waved them into the sitting room.
They sat next to each other opposite me. Nouriya sought Awatif’s help after her own approach had failed to persuade me to leave. Awatif spoke in something resembling English, helped by her sister. ‘Do you pray?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied tentatively.
She smiled approvingly and said, ‘That’s good. I was confident you were a sincere believer.’ I looked from one to the other, trying to work out where this was leading. ‘Be a strong believer. Accept your fate. Be content with what God has decreed for you,’ she continued.
‘God?’ I asked.
She nodded with a calm smile. From the confidence on Nouriya’s face I knew how confused I must look. ‘Almighty God didn’t create you to be here,’ she said, as calm as ever.
I must have looked like a wax sculpture, expressionless and immobile except for my eyes, which looked from one to the other in scorn. My god, they were trying to corner me into doing what suited them.
‘The right place for you is there, in the Philippines.’
I stood up. They looked up at me as I made a move to leave the sitting room.
‘Where are you going?’ Nouriya asked.
‘Just a minute,’ I said. I came back carrying my briefcase of photographs and documents. I sat down opposite them. I took out my blue passport and my black certificate of nationality from the briefcase. I waved them in the air. ‘I’m Kuwaiti,’ I said.
With irritating composure they shook their heads. Nouriya looked right through me and said, ‘You’re illegitimate.’
An electric shock ran up my spine like lightning, all the way to my head.
‘You are a believer,’ Awatif said.
The Bamboo Stalk Page 28