by Alia Yunis
“Inshallah,” Lena whispered into the phone so that the driver with the same “Sam” name tag as her brother wouldn’t hear.
“Try harder, min shan Allah,” Fatima pleaded.
“I heard it was a little foggy in Los Angeles today,” Lena answered.
She saw Sam #2 looking at her from the rearview mirror, witnessing her barely holding her happiness together for her mother.
“How’s your health?” Lena continued on the phone. “Great. I was just going to e-mail Amir today to say that I was thinking of coming next weekend. … No point? Why?”
Sam #2’s cell phone rang. “Listen, I need you to say in Arabic that she’s really pretty,” Bassam said on the other end. “Don’t let her know I’m telling you to say it. Did you flirt with her?”
“She’s talking to your mom,” Sam #2 whispered. “She’s your sister. What’s your problem?”
“Oh, some friend,” Bassam replied. “You think all those other women you flirt with aren’t somebody’s sister?”
“I’ll talk about her being pretty, but that’s it,” Sam #2 said.
“Well, just do it before you get to the Venetian,” Bassam said.
Lena was still on the phone. “No, Mom, New York hasn’t been too hot yet. Sunny but nothing to complain about. I’ll tell you more about it when I visit next week. What do you mean, don’t visit? I want to. I insist.”
Sam #2 slammed on the brakes in front of the Bellagio. They screeched loudly enough that Fatima screamed into Lena’s cell phone.
“No, Mom, everything is super,” Lena said. “I’ll call you later.”
Lena hung up as Sam #2 pulled away from the curb. “Affendi, I almost ran off the road,” he shouted in Arabic to his cell phone. “I got this real beauty in the car. She’s something—best-looking tourist this week.”
In the back, Lena blushed. The driver would be embarrassed, she thought, if he knew she understood Arabic. She didn’t hear Bassam telling Sam #2 not to overdo it.
“Oh, gorgeous,” Sam #2 said. “A little heavy in the hips, nice chest, small waist, big eyes.”
Heavy hips? She’d have to go to the gym more.
“What?” Sam #2 said, trying to follow Bassam’s words on the other end. “Heavy hips? No, I meant honey hips. New York girls, man.”
Lena stopped pinching her stomach fat. New York? So she looked like she was from New York, not Detroit. Good. Any further praise was cut off by her cell phone again. She expected it to be Lucienne with her meeting schedule for the next day.
“Mom cut off her hair,” Randa burst out. “Soraya saw with her own eyes.”
“I just got off the phone with her,” Lena said. “She sounded fine. Totally strong. She even told me she didn’t need me to visit. Oh, God …”
Fatima would no more tell her not to visit than she would cut off her hair.
“See, I told you,” Randa said, and hung up to spread the word elsewhere.
At the Venetian, Sam #2 opened the door for Lena.
“The driver who told me to pick you up took care of everything,” he told her. “Including tip.”
“Really?” Lena said. Bassam hadn’t forgotten. Sam #2 watched Lena walk away with her thoughts, which were now on Fatima’s hair.
WHEN BASSAM ARRIVED back at Candy’s bar, he walked past several belly dancers who had found their way there for a drink. Candy handed him a club soda, this time with a little grenadine syrup for variety. Pomegranate. Just what his mom put in the sauce for her grape leaves and stuffed eggplant.
“What are you staring at the glass for?” Candy asked. He took a twirl of her perm into his hand. There was only one Candy for him.
He would take it slow for once. “Candy, would you like to meet my mom?”
Fatima wouldn’t like Candy, but she’d like to meet someone before he married her, for a change.
“Why would I want to do that?” Candy said, looking at the picture of Fatima by the cash register.
“Candy, I don’t even know your last name,” Bassam said to this woman who had been his truest friend.
“Cane.”
“Candy Cane,” he said. “I like it. It’s sweet.”
Like she hadn’t heard that one before.
“And what’s your last name?”
“My real name is Bassam, you know.”
“Buy some what?” said Candy, and waited for the punch line.
“It’s Bassam,” Bassam said. “It means ‘smile’ in Arabic.”
“That’s not very funny.”
“That’s because it’s true,” Bassam replied.
He motioned to her to help herself to a cigarette from his pocket.
“A girl called Lena phoned here for you like six times,” Candy said. “Said something about you guys needing to go to LA.”
“I’ll call her in a few,” Bassam said. “Another sister.”
“Whatever you want to call her, boy.” Candy shrugged.
“So, Candy Cane, where did you go to school?”
“Lincoln High,” she said. “You went to Kennedy, I bet.”
“Harvard.”
“You’re a regular fucking riot tonight.”
“Candy, I believe you are my fucking paddle,” Bassam told her. Hope in a bottle blonde instead of just a bottle. He had no idea what she would want with an asshole like him, but for now she—no, she and he together—was an obsession worth exploring.
WHEN SCHEHERAZADE LANDED in Los Angeles for her 1001st visit to Fatima, the first person she saw on the sidewalk was the homeless man with Bassam’s dimple. There was no mistaking the resemblance, even beyond the dimple.
She would not be in Los Angeles tomorrow, even though she felt as if she were an established citizen, even more so than were the mortals she had whirled through today. In the unfiltered Pacific sun, the homeless men, aside from the one with Bassam’s dimple, had all changed in the last 1001 nights; the homosexuals and underweight beauties of her first few days had been exchanged for younger and thinner ones. The people on the bus and the shiny polished petrol caravans had increased steadily every day so that the bus was harder to get on and the traffic had even more petrol caravan blockages. It hadn’t even been three years, yet many buildings had risen up quickly since and just as many had disappeared. Not much seemed to be allowed to grow old here.
She wondered about the soldier she had followed to Los Angeles. Had he gone back to Iraq after his father’s funeral? Had he come back again and gone again? Perhaps she would look for him tomorrow, either here or there.
Outside Amir’s home, standing next to the petrol caravan, Scheherazade heard Fatima reciting loudly from the Koran and Decimal repeating after her in Arabic more accented than Nadia’s, more accented than Agent Sherri Hazad’s.
Scheherazade climbed up the eucalyptus tree. Fatima still was clutching the Al Kaline baseball in her hand, but it was as clear as a perfect diamond that great-grandmother and great-granddaughter had been up all night. She would give them more time together before the last day. Then Amir interrupted her quiet generosity.
“HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH,” AMIR shouted as he turned off the engine, keeping time to the gospel music coming out of his Honda.
He looked at the SUV parked in front of the fig tree and gave it the finger. “I’m the man,” Amir sang out. “Screw you and your SUV, buddy; the soap’s going to kill you off tomorrow. Slowly and painfully. Hallelujah. Halle—”
“Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem,” came Fatima’s surprisingly powerful voice from inside the house. It competed for attention with the cheap car radio. He turned off the gospel music.
His soon-to-be-dead-on-TV ex-lover and the whole neighborhood surely could hear Fatima. However, he was feeling too blessed today to care. He covered his ears when he heard Decimal repeat the Koran after Fatima in Arabic.
“It’s bismillah, kid, bismillah, in the name of God. It is all you have to remember,” Amir mumbled. Whatever. They hadn’t even noticed him disappear for his audition. He turned on
the hose so that the garden would continue to flourish like that of a successful person, which, after landing the part today, he was.
When he turned to water the rosebushes, something light green with a tiny pink streak caught the edge of his right eye. He turned to find that the pink was on the fig tree. Could it be? He moved in closer. Yes, it was a fig. Today had been filled with two enormous hallelujah moments. First, the director was off his all-protein diet and high on carbs during the audition, and now this. The fig tree had fruited.
WHEN AMIR WENT inside, Scheherazade came down from the eucalyptus tree to look at the fig. How had she missed this miracle? A tree that had not fruited in sixty-seven years finally had found a home in America.
Scheherazade climbed back up the eucalyptus tree so that she could see Fatima’s reaction when Amir showed her. This time, she was distracted by the closer voices below in the petrol caravan.
“He knows we’re here,” Sherri Hazad said from inside. “Talking about poisoning us with soap … the grandmother showed me some ‘expensive soap’ in the kitchen. I used it. I should get myself checked.”
“It might just be soap,” Sherri Hazad’s partner cautioned.
“What about the cousin taking a job in Iraq?” Sherri Hazad pointed out.
“Thousands of guys have,” Sherri Hazad’s partner reminded her. “I checked out the construction company. He’s already saved the taxpayers thousands of dollars by reworking the original blueprints. No time to think out a plot with insurgents.”
“And the guy driving the Saudis all around the Nevada desert?” Sherri Hazad asked. “There are weapon-testing sites out there.”
“Perhaps we should question Amir Abdullah sooner than later,” Sherri Hazad’s partner conceded.
Fatima’s Koran recitation filtered into the petrol caravan. “Maybe he’s got the old lady indoctrinating for him,” Sherri Hazad said.
“Remember not to jump too far ahead,” he said. “But true, no one should ever underestimate the influence someone has over someone else, intentionally or unintentionally.”
Scheherazade believed this to be the only thing she had ever heard anyone in a petrol caravan say that made any sense.
FATIMA HAD NOT slept all night. After she had spoken so much about her sons earlier, there was no way she could. After today, she would have her entire afterlife to sleep. With the Al Kaline baseball clutched in her hand, she had spent the night sitting on her grandfather’s cedar chest doing what she was sure would be described at her funeral as her final worthy act: teaching this awful girl the miracle of the Koran. They took only occasional breaks, during which time she instructed the girl to look for the cordelia pants with the key.
Soon she would dismiss the girl to call Ibrahim. He would be the last earthly person she would speak to besides Amir.
“Let us do one more thing,” Fatima said. “Open the Koran to Ayat al-Kursi.”
“What, ma’am Tayta?” Decimal said.
“Ayat al-Kursi.” Fatima sighed. “The most important verse in the Koran. It’s very simple.”
“What’s it about?” Decimal asked.
“Learn it first,” Fatima said. “Then, if we have time, I’ll tell you what it means.”
Decimal opened the book backward, at least to Fatima’s Arab eyes.
“What page is it on?” Decimal said.
The book had gotten very heavy for Fatima in the last couple of days, and so she left it on Decimal’s lap as she delicately turned the pages to the right one.
“Bismillah el-rahman el-raheem,” Fatima passionately intoned, pointing with her index finger at the flowery calligraphy as if she were actually reading it.
“Don’t you want to put on your glasses?” Decimal asked.
“I don’t need glasses to read the Koran,” Fatima said. “You don’t worry about my reading. Just repeat.”
Fatima lowered her hearing aid to minimize the girl’s frightening accent. Still, she found comfort in the Ayat al-Kursi. But at the line about God owning everything on heaven and earth, she suddenly pictured the house in Lebanon in chrome and dropped the ball. The girl started to chase it, but Fatima put up her hand. “Lahu ma fi semawati wa ma fil’ardi,” she continued, and motioned for the girl to keep reciting after her while she hobbled to retrieve the ball.
When Fatima bent down for it, Decimal, who was focused on the book as though she, too, were really reading it, looked up just as the tremble in Fatima’s worried hand made her drop it again.
Decimal caught it before it rolled out the room and handed it to Fatima
Fatima held it close. “Let us look for the key again.”
“You don’t want to read any more Koran?” Decimal said, disappointed.
One could not discourage a sinner from reading the Koran. She had just taught the girl how God never sleeps on his duties, and neither would she. The key would have to wait. Maybe the girl could be rescued, her newfound virtue a final gift to a dying woman. Inshallah.
“If Zade, my matchmaking grandson, can get you married off, you could have a fresh start, have even more kids—legitimately,” Fatima said. “He’s not so good at his job as I am, but I don’t have his time.”
“Who would marry a pregnant girl?” Decimal said.
“You’re right,” Fatima agreed, recalling the circumstances of her own marriage. “It would have to someone duty-bound. Well, then, perhaps Zade himself might be a forgiving husband. He’s a little old for you, but cousins are good. My grandparents were very happy cousins. No in-law problems, you know.”
“Cousins?” Decimal said, and began dry heaving in big gulps as she ran out.
Fatima marveled at how every woman’s morning sickness came for no reason. But the baseball signed by Al Kaline just for her boys stared back at her. Too cruel to leave it to Ibrahim, but who else was her sons’ heir?
She turned to put it in the cedar chest and found Scheherazade lying on the box. She sat up and helped Fatima sit next to her, rubbing her fingers along Fatima’s face to smooth out the Avon creases. “I’m going to have to freshen you up,” she said. She blew dust off Fatima’s new dress and began combing out her purple stubs.
“You smell like old beer.” Fatima grimaced and held her nose.
“That’s because I just came back from Las Vegas,” Scheherazade announced.
Fatima let go of her nose but did not ask after her son. She did not want to hear anything bad on her last day.
“He’s fine,” Scheherazade answered.
Fatima remembered how she always told Ibrahim the same lie. “People his age are presidents of countries,” she said as her fingers tapped the ball on her lap.
“Let Bassam take the house,” Scheherazade suggested. “Maybe he’ll meet a nice Arab girl and start over.”
“What would a nice Arab girl want with Bassam?” Fatima asked. “A middle-aged man with no money. … Besides, the Azar family makes the best wine in the valley, in all the world, some say. Their vineyard is not far from the house. Even the bad things we do best. I can’t put milk in front of the cat.”
“Back home, the house would be his,” Scheherazade said. “As your only living son.”
Fatima shuddered. Since Bassam had turned fourteen, Fatima had stayed up until dawn thinking of all the things that could happen: Bassam could hurt himself in an accident, be killed in a drug deal, get liver cancer, not get into Harvard, or, worst of all, kill someone. “After my boys died, I became afraid for all my children and stopped enjoying them except in my dreams,” Fatima recalled. “Then Bassam turned me into a night owl, so I hardly dreamed.”
Fatima wiped away a tear that had spilled onto the Koran.
“Let us not talk of tearful things,” Scheherazade said. “Don’t you want to look nice today?”
“Does it have to be today?”
“Today always has to be today, just as yesterday was yesterday and tomorrow will be tomorrow,” Scheherazade explained. “You’re mortal. That’s how it goes. Sun up, then sun down, t
hen sun up. And so on. Since time began.”
“I’m not ready,” Fatima fretted. “I still have to find the key. And call Ibrahim. How many hours do I have left?”
“With me?” Scheherazade said. “A few.”
“Then what happens?” Fatima asked.
Scheherazade shrugged again and went for the Avon.
“You promised you would tell me,” Fatima admonished her. “The time has come, and you still haven’t told me. Aabe alacki, shame on you.”
“You’re the storyteller this time, not me,” Scheherazade pointed out.
“How would I know?” Fatima countered. “I’m not God.”
“Neither am I,” Scheherazade reminded her.
“If you don’t know how, then how do you know it is going to be tonight?”
Instead of answering, Scheherazade picked up the Koran and carefully turned to a certain page. She placed it on Fatima’s lap. “Oh, would that I had prepared for my life,” she read aloud.
“When would I have had the time to do that?” Fatima demanded.
“You’ve had the last 1001 days.”
“I was preparing for a funeral!” Fatima replied.
“I didn’t tell you to do that.” Scheherazade shrugged. “You did.”
Fatima’s eyes flashed frustration, just as Scheherazade’s did when Fatima began a story of Deir Zeitoon. She raised her cane as if she were going to beat Scheherazade with it.
“I had to plan out every detail of my funeral so that my children would be spared the anguish of doing that,” Fatima said, her voice shrill. “Not like I was with their brothers.”
“Was the funeral the part of your boys’ lives you really remember the most?” Scheherazade asked.
“No.” Fatima sighed. “But it seemed like taking care of my funeral was the only thing I could do for my kids, especially since I couldn’t give them all the house. Let us be honest, I could not even marry them all off. And now I am going.”
“Going where?” Scheherazade said.
“To heaven, of course,” Fatima replied.
Scheherazade pondered that. “If you say so.”