In the Language of Miracles

by Rajia Hassib

  “Try again, then,” Khaled said.

  “You try. I’m sick of this game.” Hosaam headed back toward home.

  Now, standing in the middle of the clearing, Nagla stared at the tangle of trees, looking at the exact spot where her sons had stood, then tracing with her eyes an imaginary line where Hosaam would have turned and walked back. He would have walked right past the spot where she now stood. Reaching out, she let one hand gently brush through the air where she thought he would have passed, twelve years earlier. She held her hand in place, at around shoulder level, a little bit lower. If time travel were possible, she would be able to go back to this same spot, and he would be right there, right where her hand now hovered, with his black wavy hair and large round eyes that so resembled her father’s. He would have been just tall enough for her hand to rest on the top of his head. Carefully, she moved her palm from side to side, stroking an imaginary head. She waved her hand through this spot of air one last time, then sat down, closed her eyes, and listened for the whispers and giggles she had heard so many years ago and hoped that the air would eventually carry her way, if she waited long enough.

  7

  ARABIC: Meadeddah. A woman hired to wail at funeral services—a professional mourner.

  When the elevator door opened Samir saw Pat, Cynthia’s sister, pinning a flyer to the bulletin board in the lobby of Summerset Medical where he worked. Samir stepped out of the elevator but stopped so abruptly that a nurse walking out behind him bumped straight into him. He turned around and mumbled an apology. Letting the nurse pass, he stood in place, staring at Pat. She, glancing at him, smoothed one edge of the flyer before walking past and into the elevator, where he saw her pull out another flyer and, Scotch tape in hand, start fastening it to the elevator wall. She was on the lower corners when the doors closed, separating them.

  Alone in the lobby, Samir felt free to examine the flyer unnoticed. He tried not to look at Natalie’s picture, though he was keenly aware of her gaze, like a blond Mona Lisa, eyes following the beholder as long as he was looking. The memorial was set for Sunday at the park—he knew that much. To be held at noon—that was new. There were going to be speakers; Reverend Fielding was presiding—good, Samir liked Reverend Fielding. He was a moderate man, peaceful, like men of religion should be. He would be preaching forgiveness, not calling for torches and pitchforks, like that guy in Florida did after 9/11. There were going to be other speakers, not mentioned by name. He wondered who. Teachers, perhaps. They always called in teachers on occasions like these. Friends of Natalie were encouraged to attend and to share memories of her.

  He heard the elevator door open and hurried out on the street. Behind him, he knew Pat would have emerged, probably watching him as he stepped out. He could feel her gaze piercing his back. She hated him, he knew; she always had. Nagla often complained that Pat’s visits to Cynthia never failed to produce some awkward encounter among the three of them. Nagla was certain Pat objected to Cynthia’s befriending her, even though Cynthia was too loyal to listen to her sister.

  “She hates me,” Nagla had said years ago, emphatically throwing a pan in the sink. Over dinner, she had spoken of nothing but Pat, whom she had met for the first time that morning.

  “I’m sure she doesn’t,” Samir said. On his knees, he was busy tying Hosaam’s shoelaces. The moment he was done Hosaam was out the kitchen door and in the backyard. Nagla watched him through the window as she did the dishes.

  “Oh yeah? She didn’t speak two words to me, and when she did she spoke only in slow, short sentences, like I’m an idiot.”

  “She probably thinks your English isn’t that good.”

  “She heard me talk to Cynthia!” Nagla said, turning around to frown at Samir. He picked up his tea and sipped, leaning against the kitchen counter and deliberately avoiding her eyes.

  “She didn’t even touch the baklava I made her! I spent the entire morning slaving over this dish and she didn’t even touch it! Said she was on a diet.”

  “Maybe she was.”

  “She had just eaten a Danish. What kind of diet is that? I saw the dish with the crumbs on the table next to her.”

  “Did you see her eat it?”

  “I saw the dish!”

  “That’s circumstantial evidence.” Samir shrugged. Nagla scowled at him again, her eyes narrowing. He had used an English word she did not understand. Hurriedly, he added, “What I mean is maybe it wasn’t hers. Maybe it was Cynthia’s and Pat really was on a diet. Or she might not like baklava. You’re taking this too personally. Americans are not like us; she probably didn’t know it was bad manners not to taste your dish. I’m sure she meant no offense.”

  Nagla, throwing one last angry glare at him, turned away and started vigorously scrubbing the pan. He looked at her and smiled. Back then, he had found her inability to understand American culture endearing. He accepted, as early as a few years into their lives in the United States, that Nagla would never blend in, a small price to pay considering that she would never have been able to afford the lifestyle he—and America—offered her, had they stayed in Egypt. That day, he had struggled to hold back what he truly thought: that Pat, unmarried and childless, made it back to her hometown so seldom that Nagla’s presence was seen as an intrusion. Nagla was acting just like her mosque friends did whenever Ehsan came to visit: flocking to Nagla’s house for tea, arms laden with homemade sweets, to welcome and entertain the mother they treated as their own, showering her with hugs and kisses that belied their superficial acquaintance. Pat’s visit, rare as it was, was a chance for Nagla to show her loyalty to Cynthia by being overly kind to her sister.

  But now Samir knew that Pat’s actions were always calculated. No doubt she showed up at his office precisely at noon because she knew that was when he took his lunch hour. For almost two decades he had walked to the diner at the corner at noon for his usual lunch of scrambled eggs and a muffin. Everybody knew that. In a town that small, no one could maintain a habit for even a few weeks before people learned to depend on it. Even now, as he pulled open the door of the diner, Samir knew he was expected.

  “Hey, Doc!” Shark yelled the moment Samir entered the diner. Samir raised a hand in greeting as he took his usual seat in the corner booth. Behind the counter, Shark was already spooning Samir’s eggs onto a plate. Shark was a heavy-built man with asthma so severe Samir could hear his wheezing across the counter whenever the pollen count was high, which, in New Jersey, was the case more than half the year. He also knew Shark sometimes wheezed when nervous, though Samir would never suggest that to his face. Samir gave him free inhalers. Because Shark was his patient, Samir was also one of the few people who knew Shark’s real name: Anton Tsharkovsky.

  Shark called out to one of the waitresses, and she hurried to Samir’s booth. She was a new girl, fresh out of high school, and Samir had seen her only a few times before. He watched as she poured his coffee, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, just the way Fatima wore hers. He smiled. She, sensing his regard, looked at him and smiled back before trotting away. He followed her with his eyes, wondering, as he always did when he saw young people in this town, whether she knew any of his kids. When he looked away, his eyes wandered to the corkboard installed on the wall next to his booth and he saw another one of Natalie’s posters.

  He looked away, feeling himself blush, as if he had witnessed something he should not have, a person grieving in solitude or a private moment between lovers unaware of his presence. His awareness of his flushed face angered him, and he looked down into his coffee, chewing on his lips, trying to avoid looking at Shark, whom he could see in his peripheral vision. Of course Pat had done this. She must have come here before she came to his office building. The absurdity of imagining that she stopped in every diner and place of business to hang flyers made him certain that her choices were meant to embarrass him, to remind everyone of his disgrace. He opened sugar packets, one after another, and poured the contents into his cup, stirring. He was still
looking into his cup when Shark carefully placed Samir’s plate in front of him and then squeezed into the opposite side of the booth.

  “Listen, Doc, let me tell you what happened,” Shark started, leaning forward to whisper. Samir pulled his plate closer and took a bite of his eggs. Over the years, Shark had perfected the eggs to Samir’s liking: just a little runny, made with real eggs, not out of a carton, the eggs not totally scrambled but only carefully mixed so that he could still see patches of pure white and vibrant yellow in them.

  “This morning, this woman, Jim Bradstreet’s sister-in-law, comes in the diner,” Shark continued. “She had flyers to hang, but I wasn’t here, see? The wife was here. She takes care of breakfast. Gives me a couple more hours to sleep.” Shark waved a dismissive hand, as he often did when speaking of Allison, his wife of more than twenty years. Samir swallowed his food, pulled a napkin to his lips and wiped them.

  “So Allison—she’s known that lady since high school.” Shark paused. “She told me her name just this morning. Can’t believe it already slipped my mind. You know who I’m talking about, right?” He looked at Samir. He was still whispering. Behind him, Samir could see the diner filling up. When Samir first started coming here, Shark couldn’t afford to hire help, and he could never leave his spot behind the counter for this long. Times have changed, Samir told himself. He sighed.

  “Pat,” Samir said. “Her name is Pat.”

  “Pat! That’s it! You got it, Doc. It’s driven me crazy this whole morning trying to think of her name.” Shark slapped a hand on the table and the plate and utensils rattled. Samir, losing appetite, gulped down his coffee, which, as usual, was only mildly warm.

  “So Pat comes in here with this flyer about that poor girl’s memorial service. They’re giving her a memorial service this Sunday.” Shark nodded toward the flyer.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Good. Allison said you’d probably know about it already.” Shark leaned back. He gave up whispering. “So Allison, she doesn’t want to offend this woman, see? They went to high school together. Pat—can’t believe I keep forgetting her name. You think I’m getting old?” He looked at Samir intently, waiting for his answer. “You know, dementia or something?”

  “Not old, just fat.” Samir nodded toward Shark’s bulging stomach. Shark roared with laughter. People turned to look.

  “You got me there, Doc,” he said, slamming his hand on the table again. Samir put his coffee down, put his napkin on the table, shifted in place.

  “I’ve been babbling, haven’t I? Keeping you from your lunch. Bet your eggs are cold. You want me to make you another batch?”

  “No, Shark. Thank you. I have to go back to work.”

  “Yes, sure.” Shark got up, hovered above Samir. He put his hands in his pockets. He looked like an oversized schoolboy caught flicking paper balls at the blackboard while the teacher’s back was turned. Samir waited. Shark did not move.

  “What is it, Shark?” Samir finally asked. “If this is about the flyer, I’ve seen it before. No need to explain.”

  “I couldn’t say no, Doc. I wanted to, but what can I do?” He lifted both hands in the air, palms facing up, and looked at Samir.

  “Why is it that everyone thinks I’d object to this flyer?” Samir asked, his teeth clenched as he reached for his wallet, pulled a ten-dollar bill out, and stuck it under the saltshaker.

  “I also told Allison that whole board thing was a bad idea, that people would start using it to sell stuff. But she saw it in a Starbucks and just had to put one up here.” His voice was low and he was avoiding Samir’s eyes. “You’re one of my oldest costumers, Doc, and what happened . . . I look at my own boy sometimes and wonder. You never know what goes on in their minds, you know. Just yesterday I see Brad getting out of his shirt and he has a tattoo on his side, by his rib cage. Says he’d had it for a year—and I never noticed. And it’s in some sort of foreign language, too.” Shark shook his head.

  “It’s okay, Shark. About the flyer, I mean.”

  Shark looked him in the eye for the first time. “You sure? Allison says the flyer is already up everywhere. Says half the town is going anyway, and it would look bad if we didn’t hang the flyer up. Says the preacher at our church told people about it last Sunday. Of course they only want to remember the girl, you know. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Of course not.” Samir wondered how accurate Allison’s estimate was. Half the town? “Actually, I’m probably going, myself.” Samir got up. Shark was a good six inches taller than he was, so Samir had to look up.

  “You are?” Shark’s eyes were round with surprise.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Well . . .” Shark looked around, as if expecting help. “Why not? You’re absolutely right.” He looked down at Samir. “I think it’ll be very nice of you, Doc.” He nodded emphatically, and Samir thought he could hear him wheeze.

  • • •

  Walking back into his office building, Samir saw that the flyer was gone. He stood in front of the bulletin board, staring at the empty space. He walked into the elevator, and there, too, found bare walls. He rode to his office on the third floor, walked straight into Angie’s office, and looked in her trash can. Both flyers were there.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he hissed, bending down and pulling the two sheets out of the trash can, waving them in Angie’s face. She stared at him, then reached out and pulled down the blinds, separating them from the waiting room full of patients.

  “Why’d you take those flyers down?” he asked, trying to control his voice. In the fifteen years Angie had been his secretary, she’d heard her share of his raised voice, and he knew she hated it.

  “She had no business putting those flyers up here,” Angie hissed back. “This is your place of business. It’s not professional.”

  “She’ll think I took them down!” he blurted.

  “So what?”

  “So . . . so I don’t want people to think I’m that coldhearted.”

  Angie frowned at him. Behind her square tortoiseshell glasses, he could already see tears forming.

  “I didn’t mean that, Angie. But, really, you shouldn’t have taken them down.” He put the flyers on her desk, straightened them out. One showed only a few creases but no stains. They could probably hang that one back up. The other had fallen on top of Angie’s opened tuna can. Now a big blot of grease smeared Natalie’s face. The sight of the stain made Samir so sick he wanted to shred the paper, like his father used to tell him he should tear papers that held holy verses or Allah’s name on them into tiny bits and pieces before throwing them away. Throwing them whole would have been sacrilege. When Samir asked how come tearing them apart was not sacrilege, his father looked at him as if he were an imbecile. “Because then they are only letters, not words. Letters alone have no meaning.”

  “I just didn’t think it was appropriate for your patients to have to be reminded of this.” Angie nodded toward the flyers. “It’s been bad enough this past year without stuff like that. It’s inviting trouble, if you ask me.”

  “No it’s not, Angie.”

  “Not, huh? So maybe it’s a coincidence you’ve been getting those lovely e-mails and letters again?” She opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of papers, and held it close to his face.

  “Why are you keeping them?”

  “Just in case. It’s evidence.” She shoved the letters back in and closed the drawer.

  “As bad as last year?”

  “Some are. Not all. There isn’t exactly room for innovation here.” She sniffed, a nervous habit he was used to, a period at the end of sentences she no longer wished to continue. Samir didn’t need her to tell him what was in the letters—all variations of Go Home, he suspected, or reminders of his son’s guilt. Angie had intercepted dozens of those last year before he realized they had been coming. Always the gatekeeper, always taking care of him. Nagla liked her because she sent away female drug representatives if they were too young or too
provocatively dressed, only letting them leave their brochures. He liked her because she never made him feel like a foreigner.

  She reached out and took the flyers from his hand. She looked at the stained one, and, uttering a soft “Oh,” passed her fingers across the stain, as if her touch would erase it.

  “Here,” Samir said, reaching for the other flyer. “Let me hang it back up.”

  “No, I’ll do it.” She got up, headed toward the door. At it, she turned around. “It’s just . . . people can get so nasty.” She shook her head before walking out of her office, leaving Samir staring at the empty doorway.

  • • •

  In his office, Samir shut the door and walked up to his desk, let himself fall into his chair. Angie was right about Pat, who never saw him as anything but Egyptian. Egypt, to her, was a place you visited once in a lifetime to ride camels, take pictures in front of the pyramids, and walk the Khan al-Khalili street bazaar and pretend you were whisked back in time to the world of the One Thousand and One Nights. It was not where you went to make friends. He suspected her first reaction to what Hosaam did was some sort of variation on I knew it.

  He glanced at the clock and saw he had fifteen minutes before his first afternoon appointment. He shouldn’t have been that sharp with Angie. She was sensitive. One time, years ago, Nagla had called her at home to explain to her about Samir’s temper, and he had been baffled at how both women seemed to think he had one. That was back when he did not understand Americans as well as he did today. Now he knew better than to raise his voice to any American, male or female. They always seemed in such control of their emotions. No elaborate hand gesturing. No raised voices. Memorial services held to celebrate the dead.

  He rested his head in both hands, elbows on the desk, and sighed. The Americans with their well-controlled, civilized grief, their healing process, their closure. People coming together to exchange words of sympathy, to hug and whisper over canapés and diet sodas. How sophisticated it all used to seem to him, how distinguished. How polished compared with the peasants in Egypt, who hired meadeddaat, women dressed in black, to come to the houses of widows and orphans to wail in such loud, offensive expressions of grief. Ehsan had always been drawn to these women, though she claimed never to have actually met one. But he could easily picture her as a professional mourner, going to the homes of the bereaved to offer a spectacle of grief. For a moment, he imagined Ehsan at the Bradstreets’, dressed in black from her head cover to her shoes and purse, walking into the American house under the gazes of strangers, sitting down in a chair in the corner, and doing her duty by loudly wailing while swaying from side to side and hitting her thighs and the top of her head with her open palms.