In the Language of Miracles

by Rajia Hassib

  “I wanted to be the one to tell you,” Cynthia said, raising her eyes to look at Nagla. “We’re planning something for next weekend—for the anniversary.”

  Nagla nodded. “Yes. We saw the flyers.”

  “I thought you might have.” Cynthia looked down. “Jim and Pat went a bit overboard with them, I’m afraid. They’re everywhere.”

  Khaled had seen the flyer that very morning. Standing on the platform of the Summerset train station, waiting for the Amtrak to take him to New York, Khaled had turned around and found himself facing Natalie, her image centered in the flyer thumbtacked to the green felt, safely tucked behind the glass of the display case. She was wearing her hair in the asymmetrical bob that she had debuted only a few weeks before her death and a blue sweater that Khaled remembered seeing her wear to school. Looking at the flyer behind the protective glass, all Khaled could think of was the blue morpho butterfly, and how he had once told Natalie he would one day travel to South America and photograph his own, not catch it to put it on display, but watch it, follow it around, guess at the span of its wings, maybe even attempt to measure it, but then let it fly away unharmed.

  Khaled waited for Cynthia to resume talking, his heart sinking. He imagined her asking his parents to leave town for the weekend of the memorial with no need to explain why the Al-Menshawys would not be welcome. He hoped that she would not be so blunt, that she would spare his mother the humiliation.

  “We’ll be planting a tree,” Cynthia said. “At the park. A rosewood. They live very long, you know.” Khaled reached out for his teacup, which he had placed on the wooden steps, sipped some of the minted black tea, burned his tongue, and put the cup back down.

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Samir said, nodding. Fatima moved closer to her mother and perched on the arm of Nagla’s chair, one arm wrapped around her shoulder. Khaled, watching her, smiled.

  “I wanted to come to tell you in person.” Cynthia addressed Nagla, but Nagla still kept her eyes down, intently examining the surface of her tea. Only one year ago, they would have both been sitting at the kitchen table, alone, the hot tea growing cold as they whispered and laughed.

  “I knew for a long time now that I’d be holding some kind of service,” Cynthia went on. Khaled strained to make her words out. Her voice, so soft, made it seem as if she were whispering the words for Nagla’s ears only. “I need this, Nagla. Some closure. I’ve also realized, a couple of days ago, that I would never get closure unless I spoke to you, too.” Nagla looked up, for the first time meeting Cynthia’s eyes. “I want you to know that I don’t blame you. I . . . not anymore.”

  Nagla nodded, quick, repeated nods, letting her head fall down again and her gaze rest on the tumbler in her lap.

  Cynthia sighed. “Also—that whole memorial thing; I never intended it to be that public. When I first thought of it, I was hoping for something private, just for the family. But then Pat thought we should let people come, too, if they wanted to.” Samir’s eyes narrowed at the mention of Cynthia’s sister. Cynthia went on, “Jim agreed, and now . . . Well, you’ve seen the flyers.”

  “I saw a couple of flyers today,” Samir said, crossing his arms at his chest. “I’m sure everyone saw them. You’ll have a good turnout.”

  Cynthia nodded, placing her tumbler on the side table. She had not once looked Samir in the eyes. She turned to face Nagla again, reached one hand out and touched Nagla’s. “I know this might make you uncomfortable, but that was not my intention. I’m not apologizing for the memorial,” she added quickly, “but I do want you to know that this is not meant for you. I also want you to know—I need you to know that I don’t blame you for what happened,” she repeated. Nagla nodded again.

  “Okay, then,” Cynthia said, getting up. Nagla and Samir followed her as she headed toward the door. Halfway there, Nagla’s eyes froze on the door-side console with its assortment of framed photos. She hastened, overtaking Cynthia and Samir, and stood by the console, her back resting against its marble edge. Khaled’s eyes met hers, and he understood. Of course. She was blocking Hosaam’s picture, the one of him when he was twelve or thirteen, grinning in his blue-striped shirt, his expression infused with the discomfort typical of school pictures. Khaled held his mother’s gaze, remained seated until Cynthia passed both of them on her way out. Only then did Nagla relinquish her spot, following her husband and standing by the door as Cynthia walked down the front path. Khaled followed, too, standing behind his parents and towering over both of them, watching as Cynthia turned to her own house, disappearing behind its front door.

  Khaled let his parents walk back in and then slipped out. He looked around him at the quiet street where he grew up, familiar even in the darkness. Taking a deep breath in, he savored a comfort that daylight seemed to eradicate, a safe sense of belonging that had lately become people-shy, obliterated by the slightest glance of recognition from a stranger. Khaled walked up to the swing hanging from the white porch rafters, sat down quietly. The chains holding the swing up rattled. They would not creak if he did not push the swing. He stretched his legs in front of him, leaned his head back. Across from him and on top of the opposing row of houses, the cloudy sky hid all stars.

  “Hey.” Fatima’s head was sticking out of the doorway. “Come back in. They’re fighting.”

  “Why?”

  Fatima did not answer but waved at him to hurry in before disappearing through the doorway.

  “No, Samir. She was not inviting us.” Nagla was sitting back in her chair.

  “It was as good as an invitation,” Samir said, hovering over her. “Why else do you think she came?”

  “She was just being nice.” Nagla paused, raised one trembling hand to her forehead. “Because that’s how she is.”

  Samir sat on the sofa, crossed his legs. “Twenty years in the U.S. and you still don’t understand Americans.”

  “What’s there to understand?”

  “That she took the trouble to come to our house. That she mentioned closure. Sure, it’s nice of her. But there is more to it than that. She wants to make peace, Nagla. How can she do so if we don’t participate?”

  “How are we supposed to participate? There is no way they want us at this service, Samir. Think of how awkward it would be,” Nagla pleaded.

  “I’m not saying it won’t be awkward; I’m saying it’s necessary. If we don’t go—especially after she came to our house to tell us about it—they will think we don’t want to put this thing behind us.”

  “Who will think so?”

  “Everyone!” Samir’s voice rose. Echoing him, Ehsan’s voice rose, too, reciting verses from the Qur’an. She had moved from the kitchen to the living room, sat in a corner chair across the room from her daughter and son-in-law, but had kept the holy book open in her lap, her lips moving rapidly as she continued her reading, barely audible.

  Samir sighed. “Think about it, Nagla. This is our chance to be part of this community again. This service is an opportunity for us to show that we are on the same side they are on. That we regret what happened as much as they do. That we are not—” He paused, searching for words. “That we are not what they think we are.”

  “I don’t know, Samir. We tried going public before, and that didn’t go so well, did it?”

  Samir stiffened up, blushing. “I was trying to help. To make things better for you and the kids. That’s all I’ve ever done. What else would you have me do, huh? Just hide and wait it out? For how long?”

  “We could always move, you know,” Khaled said. His father turned and glared at him.

  “We’re not starting this again. And who asked for your opinion, anyway?”

  Fatima, moving closer to Khaled, grabbed his arm and squeezed it. He said nothing.

  “Just think about it,” Samir resumed, leaning toward his wife again. “We could go together, as a family, showing our respect. Perhaps they would let me say a word or two, address them—”

  “You want to speak, too?” Nagla
interrupted him.

  “The flyer said they’d welcome speakers!” Samir said.

  “Yes, but not you! Not you!” Nagla got up, paced the living room. “I know you mean well, Samir, but I really think you’re off, this time. I mean—can you imagine?” She paused, raised both hands to her face. “Ya Allah.” She sighed.

  “Why not me? See, this is the mentality that’s setting us back. You’re acting like they are right; like we are not part of this community.”

  “It’s not about the community!” Nagla’s voice rose. “It’s about . . . about . . .” She choked up.

  “It’s about your refusal to support my decisions. Again.” Samir’s voice grew hard. Fatima nudged Khaled, took a step toward her parents, but her brother held her back. She glanced at him and he shook his head.

  “I’m always supportive. When have I not been supportive?” Nagla stepped closer to her husband. “Why do you have to turn everything into a criticism of me? Can’t I even help you see the . . . the . . .” she stammered, and then, in a gush, added, “the stupidity of your plans?”

  “Eh ellet eladab di?” Samir protested. What kind of ill breeding is this?

  Ehsan raised her voice again. “Hal jazao alihsani illa alihsan.”

  “Baba,” Fatima said, stepping closer to her father.

  “Watch your language, Samir,” Nagla said.

  “Look who’s talking!”

  “Fine,” Nagla said, walking away from him. “Mashi.”

  She headed toward the stairs, started climbing up.

  “Where are you going?” her husband yelled. “We’re not through yet!”

  “I am.” Nagla did not pause, nor did she turn around. “You know what you want to do, go do it. That’s how it always is anyway.”

  “I’ll do what I want, yes. And I don’t need your permission!”

  Nagla slammed her bedroom door shut.

  Samir, as if noticing his two children for the first time, looked at Khaled and then at Fatima. “And what about you two, huh? Do you have anything to say?”

  Khaled shook his head.

  “Good!” Samir walked to the kitchen, paced once around the breakfast table like a man on a pilgrimage, then walked out the kitchen door and onto the back deck. Khaled could see him through the bay window as he sat down on one of the armchairs, leaned forward, and ran his fingers through what remained of his hair.

  “As stubborn as ever,” Khaled murmured.

  “He’s only trying to help, Khaled.” Fatima looked up the stairs. “You think she’ll be okay?”

  “She’ll be fine. She’s used to this.”

  “Psstt,” Khaled heard. He and Fatima turned around to see their grandmother summoning them. She had closed the Qur’an and placed it on the table beside her, where Cynthia’s untouched tea still stood. Khaled and Fatima walked up to her, Fatima sitting by her side while Khaled crouched down in front.

  “What’s going on? What memorial are they talking about?” Ehsan whispered.

  “El-sanaweyya ya Setto,” he said, trying to pronounce the words in his best Arabic. “They will be holding a memorial service for Natalie’s one-year anniversary. The anniversary of her death, that is,” he clarified unnecessarily.

  “They’re going to the cemetery?”

  “No, not the cemetery. It’s different, here. You don’t have to hold a service at the cemetery. They’re doing it at the park.”

  “At the park?” Ehsan said, raising her eyebrows. Khaled nodded. “I’ll never understand the Americans,” she sighed. Upstairs, a door slammed, and they all looked up, as if expecting to see Nagla’s movements traced on the ceiling.

  “What about your brother’s sanaweyya?” Ehsan whispered to Khaled. “Aren’t you going to do something for him?”

  Khaled looked at Fatima, who was biting her lower lip, just the way their mother always did.

  “I don’t think so, Setto. We can hardly invite people over for him, you know,” Khaled said.

  “I know that, boy. I’m not an idiot,” Ehsan said, slapping Khaled on the shoulder with the back of her hand. Her slap, surprisingly hard, almost made him topple over. He reached one hand behind him and steadied himself. “I just meant you, the four of you, and me, of course. Maybe just go over to the cemetery and read some Qur’an. Or ask people at the mosque to pray for him after the Friday prayer,” she said, looking at Fatima. Upstairs, they heard another thud, perhaps another door slam, or a drawer pushed closed too violently.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs to her, Setto?” Fatima asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ehsan said, glancing toward the back porch though she could not see it from where she was sitting. “What if your father wants to go up and talk to her again? I don’t want him to find me there and think I’m snooping.”

  “He won’t go talk to her now,” Khaled said. “He probably thinks she should come and talk to him first. He always does that; yells at people and then expects them to apologize.”

  “Khaled! Don’t talk of your father in such a disrespectful way!” Ehsan said.

  “But he’s always like that!”

  “She’s his wife, so what if he yells at her? Your grandfather, Allah rest his soul, used to chase me around with the broomstick. At least he doesn’t do that, does he?” Fatima, glancing at Khaled, sucked at both her lips, and Khaled smiled, knowing she was struggling to stop herself from laughing at the image of her heavy grandmother dodging a broomstick. “Besides,” Ehsan added, “he’s the man of the house; he has the right to do whatever he thinks is for the best of his family.”

  “Thinks is the key word, here,” Khaled mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Setto.”

  Ehsan sighed. “Such bad luck,” she said. “Such bad luck has befallen this family. It’s all because of the evil eye, of course. Hasad. People back home, they think of you here, living in this big house, driving expensive cars, and all they imagine is money growing on trees. They covet all that Allah has given you, and then look what happens. This!” She held both arms up in a gesture that encompassed their entire lives. Khaled looked at the console, at the picture of his brother’s smiling face, slightly angled, so that he could not see his expression, only the sharp silver edge of the frame.

  Sighing, Ehsan got up, headed into the kitchen, and opened the cabinet where she kept her incense kit. She pulled out the brass globe with its decorative perforations, the small box holding the dry incense leaves, and the bag with the pliers and the pieces of coal. In a moment, she would be resting the coal on the burning flame, letting it glow red and hot before she placed it on the layer of sand sitting in the bottom half of the incense burner. On top of it, she would sprinkle leaves of incense, let the fragrant smoke rise through the holes of the globe as she held it up by its three chains, swinging it in circles as she wandered the rooms of the house, chanting prayers.

  Fatima picked up the abandoned tumblers still filled with tea and placed them back on the tray that she carried into the kitchen. Washing the glasses by hand, one by one, she occasionally looked out the window at Samir, still sitting on the deck. When she was finished, she walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs, where Khaled could hear her knocking on Nagla’s door. He headed toward the stairs, too. He would go to his room, to his laptop, away from all this. He climbed only a step or two before he stopped to look once more at his brother’s framed picture. In the kitchen, he could hear Ehsan’s incantations. The smell of the incense, sweet and tangy like a mixture of cloves and rosebuds, slowly filled the air, and Khaled, turning around, started up the stairs again. Of course it was all bogus, he thought. No amount of burning leaves could have possibly made a difference. No incantations, regardless of how sincerely and incessantly uttered, could ever prevent disaster.

  2

  ENGLISH: Home is where the hearth is.

  ARABIC: Whoever leaves his house loses prominence.

  Samir and Nagla arrived in New York on a sunny morning in April 1985. Sitting in the statio
n wagon, Samir thought how perfect it was that this car now zoomed through the Big Apple while Egyptian music drifted from the dashboard. His cousin, Loula, was driving, and he, sitting next to her, exhausted after the ten-hour flight, slid down in the seat, looked out the window, and listened to Om Kalthoum’s voice mingle with car horns and jackhammers. The singer’s voice, low, chagrined, and so deep he felt it came from the bottom of the earth, was rumored to have been so powerful that she had to stand six feet from the microphones to insure they would not break. The recording dated back to the fifties, and Om Kalthoum tenderly reprimanded a lover for his long-endured cruelty. Samir listened and knew the answer to his own destiny was as simple as an American car playing Egyptian music in New York: he could, he was certain, build a life for himself and his family here, while preserving their Egyptian roots. Om Kalthoum sounded better contrasted with the New York skyline and its pure blue backdrop of a sky than she did in Cairo with its dusty roads and overcrowded streets. The contrast between her familiar voice and his new surroundings highlighted the beauty of each in a way Samir had never experienced before.

  Glancing behind him, he smiled at Nagla, who sat in the backseat next to a squirmy Hosaam, too busy to see Samir watching her. He looked as she tried to comfort their ten-month-old son and knew, right then and there, he would do anything to give them the life they would never have had a chance at, back in Egypt.

  “So when do you get to start?” Loula asked. Over the phone a few weeks earlier, Samir had told her about the medical training he was to start in Brooklyn, only two hours from her home.

  “Not until July. But I wanted to get Nagla settled in first.”

  “Do you know where you’ll be staying?”

  “The hospital has a couple of buildings they rent out of. I’ll get in touch with them tomorrow and see what they can do for me.”