I spend my time with my aunt’s husband or with Saad while I wait for the results. Abu Ghayeb asks me to work for a few hours with him in the morning, helping him out in the apiary. He doesn’t object when Saad also asks me to help out in the evening at the salon. In return for my services, Saad promises that he will pay me a modest wage. He suggests that I save up what I earn to cover the expenses I will incur in my studies. This way I will be able to avoid further sewing lessons from my aunt. Yesterday, she added another box to her collection. She collected some date seeds, dried them, and then painted them using Abu Ghayeb’s paints. She then placed them on the shelf with a label that said FRUITS.
As soon as the women enter Saad’s salon, their names change immediately. Haifa becomes Madame Falafel and Miss Uhud becomes Dudu. What I can’t understand is how the aged Mrs. Dhia has become Shushu! Saad calls them what he likes, and the women don’t seem to object.
I ask him in a whisper, “Why would such an old lady want to restyle her hair?”
“Some women need to have their hair played with by a man’s hand.”
Falafel is engrossed in her discussion with Dudu. “The competition is getting worse, my friend. I’ve started to lose my grip on my husband. There are pretty women at every corner. What should I do?”
The boiler isn’t working, and Saad is washing Dudu’s hair in cold water. Underneath her revealing blouse is the silhouette of two breasts responding to the cold.
They pursue their conversation, like two actresses in a play who have learned their lines, and are reciting them fluently. “In the beginning, a woman longs for the man of her dreams.”
“Then she longs for a brave knight.”
“Then the ideal man.”
“Then a suitable man.”
“Then a man.”
“Specifically, a married man.”
“Whereas nowadays, a woman just looks for a man.”
“Any man.”
The scene ends.
A little later, they embark on an unrehearsed discussion. Falafel’s ruddy complexion and red hair remind me of a Swedish milkmaid. Dudu says, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to my neighbor.”
“What?”
“Her husband has started drinking heavily since he received a warning telling him to cease his trading in cigarettes. He was told that this trade had now been restricted exclusively to the sons of eminent politicians. He had to quickly dispose of the stock he held and look for another source of income. He came home drunk two nights ago, and in a moment of anger, he opened their large freezer cabinet. It was empty of course, power cuts and all that; so he pushed his wife into it. Then he sat down on top of the lid, and started singing. If it hadn’t been for the neighbors, the poor thing would’ve suffocated.”
Falafel replies, “So, thank God, I suppose, for my minor problem with my husband. I shouldn’t complain.”
What a large woman! She walks past me. I can feel the impact of her high heels striking the ground. They shake the fillings in my back teeth.
In the first week that I worked for Saad, I learned how to direct the hot air from the dryers onto the ladies’ heads without singeing their hair. I learned how to make dilute coffee, and how to gather up the shorn locks while he prepared the hot oil therapy for those with damaged hair.
As for my aunt’s husband, he teaches me how to smoke.
I find him waiting for me by the fumigation unit. It is a metal cylinder with a cover that resembles an upside-down funnel, like a chimney. Beneath it is its fuel container. The cylinder is connected at its lower end to a leather pump. When it’s lit, the smoke emerges from the opening at the top of the chimney.
He says to me, “The best fuel to generate smoke is cloth, thick paper, or cardboard.”
He then takes out a bag of cloth. I recognize it immediately. It is from Umm Ghayeb’s moth-damaged collection. He stuffs it into the incinerator with a cunning smile. “Some benefit from others’ dilemmas.”
In order to get rid of his previous label, “the seamstress’s husband,” he has started calling himself “The King of the Bees” as for my aunt, behind his back she calls him “The Furry One.” She says that his chest and his shoulders are where his body hair is most dense. In the past, she used to evade his advances in the summer, and snuggle up to him in the winter. Nowadays he only comes back to the flat for a few hours. His scales are the only sign that he’s been home, unless, to avoid my aunt’s complaints at sweeping them, he gathers his flakes swiftly and hides them around the roots of the vine before he leaves.
He lights the cloth and places it inside the cylinder. He activates the pump a few times, and soon the smoke starts emerging from the funnel, but without any flame. “Some beekeepers use coarse wood chippings or dried sheep droppings.”
In spite of his new interest in bees, Abu Ghayeb hasn’t turned his back on his love of tourism. He tells me with sorrow, “Some of the retired employees from the Department of Archaeology tell me that the bombing has affected the city of Babylon. The excavation had been concentrated around Nebuchadnezzar’s Southern Palace, to reveal all its features that’d been buried underneath the rubble. But now, everything has come down once again, including the Eastern Gate of Keshno. All that remains are the city walls.”
I move a glass container away from his foot, fearing that he will knock it over as he works. I ask him, “Do you still see your friends from the Ministry of Tourism?”
“No, except on rare occasions, when we meet by chance as we go to pick up our pensions. We then go over for a cup of tea at the ministry cafeteria. By the way, the fumigator mustn’t be used excessively, as it might release hot smoke, and that could harm the bees.”
He points to the aluminum lever, indicating to me that I should pass it over to him. His tone is serious. “This is how the fumigator should be emptied and cleaned. All the remnants of the burnt material and the ash must be removed after it’s been used.”
He asks me, to see if I have learnt what he has been teaching me, “So tell me, why do we have to fumigate?”
“To calm the bees. When they’re exposed to the smoke, they’ll head toward the hexagonal cells, that are full of honey and gorge on it. That calms them down, and makes them less likely to sting.”
He says exuberantly, “Tesekkür ederim.”
“‘Thank you’ in Farsi?”
“No, Turkish. You mustn’t forget that we were ruled by the Ottomans for four hundred years.”
“I know. Then the British ruled us since 1917. They lost their power after the 1958 revolution and the fall of the monarchy. Right?”
“Right. We must know our history well.”
So I say, “And also our bees.”
Ilham somehow manages her affairs when she says, “God will provide.” She went into hospital and emerged five days later without voicing her concerns. The surgeons removed lymph nodes from the armpit affected by the disease. She took time off work, and my aunt helped her take a bath while attempting to keep the wound dry. A line of pink embroidery lay where her breast had been.
Umm Mazin sent her a “shepherd’s bag” mix, to heal the wound and regulate her periods. She also provided her with a treatment made from the leaves and branches of a flowering Melissa plant with lemon peels and coriander seeds. She battered the seeds and powdered them. She then asked one of her Christian acquaintances to soak them in pure 45 percent proof alcohol, as she wouldn’t allow her hand to touch the white cognac. The mixture was shaken in its container from time to time, and then filtered. Ilham didn’t like its taste, but adhered to the recommended doses.
Everyone, except Uncle Sami who didn’t leave his flat during her absence, enquired about her condition. Abu Ghayeb donated some money to buy her some painkillers. The teacher on the first floor kept sending her fresh flowers that he’d picked from the public gardens on Abu Nuwas Street. He’d ask me to give her the bouquets saying they were “To lighten her heart a little.” Saad, whom we later found out had many other nicknames, sen
t a wig that was a replica of her own hair, and a set of false eyelashes. He almost cried when he gave them to me saying, “Tell Lulu this is a gift from Aboul Su’ud.” Even her friend, the engineer who worked as a butcher, sent her a slice of liver twice a week to provide her with the proteins she needed. In spite of all that, she still refused to see any visitors in her flat. She flicked through Uncle Sami’s magazines without uttering a single word.
But Ilham is puzzled: how is she going to acquire a false breast? She can’t tell her colleagues at work that she’s had it removed as she might lose her job. My aunt does the thinking for her, and says to her, “Take your top off.”
Ilham stands up. My aunt places a measuring tape around her chest and notes the measurements on a small piece of paper: the circumference of the breast that remains, and its height. She leaves, saying, “Don’t worry, leave it all to me.”
My aunt spends the whole night making a breast. She prepares a mixture of beeswax, sawdust, and tiny off-cuts of nylon. She molds the mixture into a moderate sized dome. She then sews a bra with double lining. She places the lump of wax between the two layers of the cotton lining and lifts up her handiwork to reassure herself of its quality. She looks like she is examining a pair of cloth spectacles that dangle down on the right side.
It’s another morning and Abu Ghayeb doesn’t need me today. He has a meeting of the Amateur Farmers’ Association. I will join Saad. He is going to show me how to mix a dull blond hair dye with a grape red color. He will get a bordeaux with a greenish hue that should satisfy the client with the ten o’clock appointment. He is showing me how much peroxide to add to the mixture when we hear angry knocks on the shop’s front door. Ilham sticks her head in: “Good morning.”
She doesn’t allow the rest of her body to come in. “Thank you for the present, Saad.”
She nods in my direction. “Dalal, I want to talk to you now, please.”
We stand outside. She takes a medium-sized gelatinized blob out of her bag and places it in my hand. Her thin lips twitch as she says, “What about the nipple?”
“What?”
“Ask your aunt to add on a nipple for me. She shouldn’t need any measurements for that.”
She disappears from sight, with her smoke wafting behind her.
My aunt is rearranging her hair. She uses her reflection in the glass that covers the photo of her father that hangs on the wall. I give her the false breast. Its texture reminds me of the white jellyfish that I caught on the seafront in Copenhagen. How small I was then. I stuck my finger into each hole in its back, then ran all the way up to the thirteenth floor with the dead fish quivering in my hands. I threw it out of the window, watched it leave my hands, and eventually splatter on the pavement. I watched it change as it fell past the floors from a fist-sized shivery fish into a distant ball of spit.
My aunt rummages through her old belongings looking for a solution. She takes out a piece of old wrapping paper made of a thick plastic. Small air-filled bubbles protruded from its surface. It was usually used to wrap fragile things. She takes her nail scissors and carefully cuts a circle around one of the bubbles without piercing it. She then places it over the center of the breast and carefully melts the plastic edges using a lit matchstick, making the bubble stick securely.
My aunt is pleased with the result, but her features change the next moment. Her face takes on a combative appearance that I have not seen there before, as if she has suddenly put on a warrior’s mask. This is because of what I said, “By the way, Abu Ghayeb has suggested that I call him Khalo—maternal uncle.”
“What?”
I am taken aback by her reaction. “He said that the time had come for us to leave formalities aside. He says that Khalo is more appropriate than Abu Ghayeb or ‘my aunt’s husband.’”
She cries out, “How could he dare?”
I grow more concerned. “Why don’t you want that, my aunt?”
Her response is not directed at me. “Has he decided that he and I have become siblings, or what?”
She drops herself into her chair, and starts bursting the bubbles from the wrapping paper between her fingers, one after the other.
Two nights go by. I head toward the fridge—the heat keeps me awake. I open the door and stick my head into it, seeking a whiff of chilled air. I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but my footsteps draw me toward their bedroom. My aunt and her husband are reminiscing about their wish from the Days of Plenty when they hoped they could have a girl of their own. They planned to call her Zahraa, in memory of Abu Ghayeb’s mother. Her nickname would have been Zuzu.
After a few aahs from her, and an oof, and another oof from him, I hear him whisper to her in a low voice that sounds like an inhalation of smoke from a hookah, “Give me something to wipe Zuzu with.”
The next day, I clean their room, the way I always do, and change Abu Ghayeb’s pillowcases. I pick up a few sheets of pink tissue paper from the floor. They are stained with white splotches, like the flowers we used to make in kindergarten. They accidentally fall off the bed. The Zuzus have dried onto them. In the past they were my aunt’s dream for a daughter; last night, they were just viscous aahs.
After that, the fridge becomes my excuse to eavesdrop.
So, we achieve what the papers call “economic equilibrium.” Both my aunt and her husband are now providing for the household equally.
I manage to get a suitable grade in my exams. I am therefore accepted as a first year student at the College of Art at Mustansiriya University, in the Department of French Literature. I take the small minibus that is licensed to carry eighteen passengers. We complete our journey together at a reasonable pace. There is an unpleasant whooshing sound coming from a car beside us; a nylon carrier bag is caught underneath it. The car moves away from us, diminishing in size. An artistic thought goes through my mind. I want to stretch my arm out of the bus to remove the bag and stop the noise. I remember what Abu Ghayeb said to me when I was a child, about the importance of dividing the ratios in a painting. He started by talking about what he called ‘The Art of Arranging the Fridge.’ He said, “We have to place the tall, large items at the back. The items that are less tall and large go into the middle row, and then the short and small items are placed at the front.”
I lose track of time. The young man sitting next to me spits out of the window. He has a bundle of papers in his lap, and I catch sight of the title, Machiavelli’s The Prince. He quickly covers the title with his hand when he realizes I am looking at it. I think he might be a student of psychology. I must not forget, Umm Mazin has asked me to photocopy some papers for her. She wants me to use the machine at the university library to make photocopies of the ingredients list for her mixtures. I try to relax in my seat. My head is full of rows of thoughts, like hanging gardens that have not been watered well.
Ilham refused to give me any proper lessons. She just taught me a few basic principles, and how to pronounce words like “camion” and “citron.” She’s been refusing to speak to anyone, and has recently started saying, “I’m no use anymore.” I am forced to depend on myself. My need to spend money forces me to continue juggling my time between my studies and working for both Saad and my aunt’s husband. The sanctions choke us like a woolen blanket in the heat of summer.
I wait for Saad under the shade of a palm tree. I remember that Abu Ghayeb told me palm trees had been around for more than eighty million years. I also recalled what Umm Mazin quoted to me from the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, “If the end of the world is nigh, and one of you has a palm sapling in their hand, then they should plant it in the ground, if they are able to, before the end comes.”
A quarter of an hour later, Saad comes back from the baker’s shop and unlocks the door to the hair salon. Slung across his shoulder is an old carrier bag with a black-and-white photo of John Travolta and Olivia Newton John on it. The steam emerging from the hot bread inside the bag has distorted her smile. He says in a Lebanese accent, “Hello and twice hello!”
He stops by the palm tree, panting. He is gesturing at me to go back into the shop, so I do. The hysteria that has struck him is due to five silk worms crawling across the glass window like beautiful finger-length green accordions. I gather them up. I take the bread out of its bag and put them inside it. I then hand him the bag that has the word “Grease” on it, with the insects squirming inside it.
He laughs, “You’re my friend, Dalal.”
“And you’re a coward.”
“I admit it.”
We go back into the shop together. It is as though he is afraid he might have to face some more. “Talking about friends, you don’t seem to have any.”
“Ilham is my friend, even though she’s a few years older than me. Unfortunately, she no longer seems to be interested in our relationship.”
“Poor thing, she’s going through a difficult phase. She didn’t even ask me to attach those false eyelashes for her.”
“Yes, she wears her wig, and then disappears from early in the morning, till the sun goes down.”
He hands me a piece of bread with some cheese. That is our breakfast. He then says to me, “I once had a friend. Then I found out that he was picking flowers from my garden. He’d then ring the doorbell and offer them to me.”
We are refreshed by the taste of the tea. It has a few mint leaves floating in it. He adds, “If a person is nice, Dalal, then let them bloom in your garden, but if they’re evil, then turn them into manure.”
Absent: A Novel Page 13