Where Jasmine Blooms

by Holly S. Warah

  Margaret took another look at Alison. She was complimenting the food while Khalid relished his role as cultural ambassador. “This is maqluba,” he said. “It means ‘upside down’ in Arabic.” He gestured flipping a pot upside down.

  “Yes, I know, babe,” she said. “My grandmother used to make it, too.”

  Margaret was about to ask about Syrian cuisine, but Alison opened a topic of her own.

  “Another assassination in Gaza. Can you believe it?”

  The table gave a collective groan of disgust over the news.

  Jenin gasped. “No way. Not again?”

  Ahmed translated to his mother, who said, “Curse their fathers.”

  “Oh really?” Margaret asked. “Another one?”

  “A missile dropped on a car,” Alison said. “Three deaths. You didn’t hear about it?”

  “Well,” Margaret said. “I didn’t have time to read the paper today.”

  “It was yesterday. You don’t follow Middle East news?”

  “I try to. It’s just with three kids …” Margaret wanted to explain that she didn’t need to follow the daily news to know what was going on. Her life was colored by what was going on. Margaret couldn’t follow the news from Palestine without the images invading her thoughts. Children getting shot, houses demolished, suicide bombers. She felt helpless about the occupation, and Ahmed worried about his sisters in the refugee camps. Even fifteen-year-old Jenin was obsessed, fixated on Israeli human rights violations and illegal settlements.

  “We need to know what’s happening,” Alison said, “if we want to do something.”

  Margaret’s chest tightened. “It looks like Khalid’s gotten you involved in politics.”

  “Oh, it’s not Khalid. I’m getting a bachelor’s in Near Eastern studies at UW.”

  Margaret swallowed the bite in her mouth. “Khalid didn’t tell us.”

  “Really?” Alison nudged Khalid, who was engrossed in his chicken leg.

  “So, I guess that makes you a Middle East expert.” Margaret stopped herself there, already saying too much.

  “A person would really need their master’s degree to be a true expert.” Alison spoke in an affected manner—or perhaps it was her natural way of speaking. “I plan to get my master’s, though. I’m graduating this spring with Khalid.”

  Margaret looked at him, eyes widened. “You’re graduating?” How many times had she heard this before? He had been expected to graduate the year before. And the year before that.

  “Inshallah,” he said. God willing.

  The meal ended and the family retired to the living room, leaving behind a disarray of dirty plates and chicken bones. Rather than following the conversation into the other room, Margaret began the tedious duties of cleanup. Fortunately, Mona was by her side, taking brisk charge of scraping food off plates.

  Voices came from the other room. They were discussing when Khalid and Alison were getting married. Margaret hurried to the living room, her apron still on.

  “Did I hear right?” she asked, looking at the couple on the couch—Alison’s arm around Khalid in a gesture of ownership. “Are you getting married tomorrow?”

  Alison smiled broadly. “Khalid made an appointment at the mosque.”

  Margaret pictured the large mosque, the one Ahmed and Tariq attended for Friday prayers, the one where she had taken her first Qur’an class.

  “Mabruuk. Congratulations,” she said to Alison. To herself, she thought, God help her.

  The kitchen was finally in order, the dishwasher making its gentle sounds. Margaret took out her aluminum teapot, added five spoonfuls of sugar, fresh mint leaves, and three tea bags. In the living room, she offered tea to Alison first. All eyes were on Alison, waiting for her to take the tea.

  “No, thanks. I’m not a tea drinker.”

  The brass tray felt heavy in Margaret’s hands. She lowered her voice and said to Alison, “You should take it anyway.”

  “I’m fine,” Alison replied. Then recognition passed into her eyes. “Yes, of course,” she said and reached for a glass.

  Margaret served everyone else, then took a tea for herself. She stared at the empty tray. It seemed Alison didn’t understand the significance of accepting tea at this time—when meeting the family for the first time. Didn’t she know anything of Arab culture? This was so basic.

  Margaret excused herself from the gathering, which was winding down, and gestured for Alison to follow her into the kitchen, where the two sat at the breakfast bar. “Seeing you and Khalid reminds me of when Ahmed and I met.” Margaret tilted her head and sighed. “We’re having our twentieth anniversary soon.”

  “Wow!” Alison looked stunned. “How old were you when you got married?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “So young.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “I see.” Margaret took a sip of tea. “You know, we also met while studying at the U.”

  “Just like us,” Alison said. “What was your major?”

  “Anthropology, but I didn’t finish.”

  Again, Alison had that stunned look. “Why not?”

  “We got married.” Margaret swirled the tea in her glass. “Ahmed graduated. I stopped studying just before we opened the first restaurant. I always thought I’d go back. Then I had Jenin, then Tariq, then Leena.”

  Alison shook her head. “That’s so sad.”

  “Not that sad.” Margaret crossed her arms. “What would I have done with a degree in anthropology?”

  Ahmed called from the living room, “Can you start the coffee?”

  Margaret slid down from her stool and gathered the coffee paraphernalia.

  “So, you speak Arabic?” Alison asked from across the counter.

  “I get by.” Actually, Margaret knew more of the language than she let on. It was easier that way, checking in and out of the conversation as she pleased.

  “I should be fluent by the time I’ve been married twenty years.”

  Margaret considered mentioning how tricky Arabic was with its various dialects and impossible pronunciation. Actually, she hadn’t lost interest in improving her Arabic. The truth was, she’d lost interest in what the family was saying.

  Margaret stirred the Turkish coffee pot on the stove, and the smell of cardamom filled the kitchen. She wondered if Alison knew coffee was the last thing served and a sign for guests to leave. Margaret handed a cup to Alison.

  “No thanks,” Alison said.

  Margaret set the cup down and looked at Alison. “This is a coffee-and-tea drinking family. You might as well get used to it.”

  Alison explained she only drank decaf cappuccinos.

  Margaret wondered how this girl would fit into this caffeine-addicted family. She went to the living room to serve the final round.

  When Margaret returned, Alison asked, “Can you do me a favor? I need to borrow a scarf. I need to wear one at the mosque.”

  “Sure, I got a closet full of ’em. Come with me.”

  When they entered the bedroom, Margaret noticed Alison’s eyes fall on her sitting corner, furnished with an armchair, television, small table, and lamp. As they passed the space, Margaret stroked her big tabby cat, asleep on the chair. “This is where I escape from the kids.” The half-truth slid easily out of her mouth. Well, it was a place of escape; that part was true.

  Margaret went to her closet and brought out a mountain of colors, textures, and patterns.

  Alison’s mouth fell open. “Why do you have so many scarves?”

  Margaret gazed down at the memories spilled across the bed. “I used to wear hijab, then I stopped.” The thought of covering her head with a scarf prompted Margaret to touch her hair. She had covered her long thick red hair for more than a decade, but during those last few years, her attitude toward hijab had gradually changed until finally she’d tormented herself over what to do. Drop it or trudge on?

  “Why did you stop?”

  Margare
t gave her standard explanation. “After 9/11, I didn’t feel safe wearing hijab. I just felt too visible and exposed.” She studied Alison’s face, and like most people, Alison seemed to accept this answer. This wasn’t the true story. Margaret could pinpoint the exact moment she had decided to give it up.

  It had been the year before. She had been shopping with Jenin in a department store crowded with mirrors and mannequins. In a side mirror, Margaret had caught a glimpse of a middle-aged Muslim woman in a familiar dark-colored scarf, hunched over a clothing rack. Margaret turned to the older woman, but she was gone. Nowhere to be seen.

  Margaret had turned again, momentarily disoriented, and then saw her own reflection. It had been a glimpse of herself that she had seen—not someone else. Herself. Prematurely aged in her navy blue scarf, pinned under her chin. Barely forty and already looking old.

  Alison picked up a scarf. “I think a white one would be good.”

  “You can keep it.” For a moment Margaret considered showing her how to fold and pin it and the various hijab-wearing styles, but decided to let the Middle East expert figure it out on her own.

  Chapter 2

  Alison started the day skimming the Seattle Times world news and opinion pages, her cappuccino and yellow highlighter by her side. There was a brief article about an Israeli threat on Yasser Arafat’s life, which Israel denied and Arafat had brushed off. Typical. She didn’t linger over this article; it was old news. However, she did find an intriguing editorial piece. George Bush’s “Roadmap to Peace,” it argued, favored Israel and would jeopardize the Palestinian right of return.

  As she sat at her tiny breakfast nook and took in the key points from the article, Alison was distracted by the white scarf across the room. The scarf made her think of Margaret. Images of her sister-in-law-to-be in that outdated kitchen—her red hair and apron—filled Alison’s head as she tried to concentrate on the issue of the Palestinian right of return, one of her pet topics. Her mind drifted to where her life would be when she was as old as Margaret. Alison would be well established in her career by then; maybe she and Khalid would be living overseas. A dead-end street in the suburbs? She’d rather die.

  The scarf sat folded neatly on the bookcase, which displayed evidence of her studies: textbooks on Islamic civilization, Arabic literature in translation, and books on Islamic architecture, colonialism, and Middle Eastern film. Another shelf held her three years of Arabic language study: textbooks, grammar guides, and her Hans Wehr dictionary.

  The white scarf taunted Alison, reminding her she still needed to figure out what to wear. Of course, exchanging vows at the mosque wouldn’t be their true wedding—that would come later—but rather a request to fulfill, a showing of love that would please Khalid. It would be a field trip of sorts, getting married there.

  The clothing decision was difficult: dressy yet modest. Alison laid out the choices on her bed. Her favorite dress was made of clingy fabric with slits up the sides. Out of the question. She settled on a light-gray suit, fitted and flattering, but the pants were wide and the jacket long. The modesty requirement was crucial. She didn’t want to be kicked out of the mosque on her first visit.

  Now she was ready to confront the scarf. She had hoped to wear it draped gently around her face in the style of Queen Noor, but it wasn’t the right scarf for that look. Her new plan was to pin it on her head when she arrived at the mosque. Standing at her bathroom sink, Alison did a test run. She struggled with the safety pin and rebellious hairs popping out. She repeatedly shoved hair under the scarf, sliding the thing back and forth, seeking the best placement. By the time she got it in place, she had started to perspire and felt the onset of unexpected tears. All at once, Alison was filled with a longing—a yearning to see her Teytey Miriam, her late grandmother, and ask her for guidance.

  Nearly all of what Alison knew of her Syrian background she had learned from her two grandmothers, Teytey Miriam and Grandma Helen, both from Damascus, both immigrants to Chicago. Grandma Helen, her mother’s mother, was Alison’s only surviving grandparent—still alive and living on Chicago’s northwest side, still attending her Orthodox church in Oak Park and maintaining her identity as a doctor’s wife.

  But it was her Teytey Miriam, her father’s mother, whom Alison longed to see. A Greek Orthodox woman who had married a Muslim man, Teytey Miriam had been disowned by nearly all her family.

  Foremost in Alison’s memories were their trips to the Middle Eastern grocery store off Michigan Avenue—the two of them admiring the imported items and their labels, and Teytey Miriam chatting with the shopkeeper in Arabic. The spoils of these excursions would be spread out on Teytey Miriam’s kitchen table—bottles of rose water and pomegranate molasses, jars of tahini and grape leaves, bags of Turkish coffee, zataar, and sumac, as well as trays of spinach pies and shortbread cookies.

  Now, three years after her death, Alison fell back onto her memories of Teytey Miriam. Details that had once seemed merely quaint now played in Alison’s mind as clues that might help bring her own choices into focus, like how to slip on and off a Muslim scarf—surely her Teytey Miriam would have known this. And how to finally tell her parents about Khalid. Teytey Miriam could have helped there, too.

  A recent email from her mother flashed through Alison’s mind. It was the usual anti-Islam slander, something about Muslim extremism and the niqab—her mother’s attempt to inform and correct. There was no use explaining things; her mother’s views ran long and deep.

  While Alison’s father described himself as “Arabian”—which always made Alison think of horses—her mother never admitted to understanding Arabic, nor referred to herself as Arab, preferring instead “Mediterranean ancestry” or “Greek Orthodox” to explain her background.

  Staring at her reflection, Alison tucked the last strand of hair inside the scarf and realized she would just have to wear the thing to the mosque. In her tiny living room, she sat on the couch, making sure not to disturb her throw pillows. She touched the scarf on her head and waited for Khalid.

  It wasn’t a long car ride from Alison’s Capitol Hill apartment to the mosque on the north end. With its minaret and dome, the mosque was a unique sight in the city. As a student, Alison had toured mosques in Jerusalem and Cairo, but none in the States—and never as a bride.

  The steady spring rain had slowed to a drizzle, and the view from I-5 was gray. Alison looked at Khalid’s hand on the steering wheel and admired his profile. He turned to her with his brown eyes, long-lashed and brilliant. He put a hand on her thigh. She laced her fingers through his and told herself how lucky she was, how happy she would be.

  The whole thing was moving on fast forward. But in reality, it was last fall when Alison first noticed Khalid. He was sitting in a coffee shop near campus with a group of friends squeezed around a table. They’d laughed loudly and spoken in a mix of Arabic and English. Of the five, it was Khalid who caught her eye. Not only was he the most handsome—his dark curly hair falling over his forehead, his face begging to be looked at—but he had an aura about him, which drew his friends in and held their attention.

  She saw him there again and again, her heart rate speeding up each time. She would sip her cappuccino while keeping one eye on her Arabic homework and the other on him. He drank Americanos and was always with his friends, two of whom she later learned were cousins. Alison caught his gaze several times and bits of their conversation—mostly exchanges on events in Palestine. After a month of observing him, Alison had arranged her textbook in a way for him to notice it as he passed by.

  The bait had worked. He glanced down at her books and then up at her. “Do you know Arabic?” Those were his first words to her.

  “I’m studying it.” She tilted her head and took in his presence: his steady eye contact, parted lips, and his cologne, which hung in the air and mixed with the scent of coffee beans.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Say something in Arabic.”

  “Ana ahib al lughat al arabia.” I love the Arabic l
anguage. She flashed a smile.

  “Can I sit?’ he asked, gesturing to the empty chair. He didn’t wait for an answer but placed himself across from her. With a sense of ease, he leaned toward her. “So, why Arabic?”

  When she told him her major, he nodded with approval. He didn’t ask why she had chosen Near Eastern studies, a question posed by nearly everyone.

  After that, she’d trekked to the coffee shop daily, her palms always sweaty, her breath caught in her throat. He approached her again and again and flirted in the same breezy manner, his demeanor suggesting adventure and mystery. For weeks she could hardly focus on anything else, her mind continually turning back to him. He was an IT student, a green card holder, and a senior ready to graduate. Soon he was helping her with Arabic and teaching phrases from his dialect.

  It wasn’t just his looks—although he certainly was gorgeous. In the end, it was their long talks that had captivated her, the way he considered her views, listening as though her opinions mattered. He followed her every word with his attentive eyes. No one had ever listened to her like that. Their discussions began with Palestine and went to other places: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt—and back to Palestine. Everything came back to Palestine. Their favorite talking point was the plight of Palestinian refugees. Khalid outlined all his family had endured since 1948, captivating her with their history: a story of land lost, a refugee camp, another war, and continued displacement. She was moved by this and even more by the fact that he, after spending the night for the first time, told her that he loved her.

  Love? she had wondered.

  Weeks later at the coffee shop, during a discussion on the assimilation of Arab-Americans, Khalid had speculated on the motives of Alison’s own grandparents—their desire to pass as white—a motivation even she had failed to see. She smiled at his insight, rested her chin on one hand and regarded him: the perfectness of his face, the intensity of his eyes, the single curl that had fallen down onto his forehead.