by Rajia Hassib
“I don’t want to hear about it. How come you’re still in your pajamas?” he asked Khaled. “Go get dressed.”
Khaled stood in place, staring at his father.
“Now!” Samir said.
Khaled did not move.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? Enta ettarasht?”
“I heard you,” Khaled answered in English. “But I’m not ready to go yet. Fatima and I are still talking.” His heart was pounding so forcefully he could hear his own heartbeat exploding against his eardrums.
“Enta etgannent ya walad? Ana olt terooh telbes!”
“I’m not ready to go change yet. I’ll go when I’m ready.” Khaled’s voice grew sharper, louder.
“Enta betoshkhot feyya?” Samir’s face flushed crimson.
Behind him, Nagla stood at the top of the stairs. “What’s going on?”
“Your son has no manners, that’s what’s going on.”
“Don’t yell at her!” Khaled said.
“Sallo ala elnaby ya naas,” Ehsan’s voice came. “This is not the way to do this. Calm down.”
“I’m not yelling at her,” Samir yelled. “Enta mal ommak aslan?”
“It is my business,” Khaled answered.
Nagla squeezed past her husband and inside the room. Her mother took her place, glancing in but not daring to get any closer. Next to Khaled, Fatima stood in the corner, her arms crossed, silent.
“What’s going on, Khaled?” Nagla asked. “What’s wrong, Fatima?”
“Khaled and I were just talking, and it got a bit—”
“We were talking and he just barged in yelling at us,” Khaled said.
“Stop this insolence, now!” Samir pointed his finger at Khaled. “This is not the time for your ill-breeding and stubbornness.”
“My stubbornness?”
“Khaled, just—” Nagla started.
“Calm down, Khaled,” Fatima whispered, coming closer and holding him by the arm. He jerked his arm free of her grasp. Samir slowly walked into the room. Outside the door, Ehsan started murmuring prayers.
“We will talk about this later,” Samir said, his teeth clenched. “Trust me, we will. Now you will go change. You will be on your best behavior until after this thing is over. I will not have you disgrace me in front of all those people today.”
“Have me disgrace you? Are you fucking kidding me?” Khaled screamed. His father closed in on him, and he, standing in place, watched him approach, feeling that every step Samir took deprived him of another chunk of air until his father’s proximity suffocated him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Khaled spoke directly into his father’s eyes.
Nagla put an arm between her son and her husband, pulling Khaled away. “Khaled, don’t—”
“Don’t what? Why is everyone mad at me all of a sudden? When did I become the bad guy?”
“No one said—” Nagla started.
“I will not have you talking that way!” Samir stamped, his foot hitting the floor so forcefully the frames on Fatima’s dresser shook. “I will not have you—”
“You have no right to have me do anything! You know what?” Khaled wriggled away from his mother’s grasp, got closer to his father. “You know what?” he repeated. He stood with his nose inches from his father’s face, towering over Samir.
“Etlamm ya walad!” Samir’s arms stretched taut by his side, the blood rushing to his face.
Khaled stood in place, panting. The unfairness, the injustice of his father’s attitude, of his entire life this past year, engulfed him in a rage he had never felt before. He was angry with Hosaam, with his father, with his mother, with Setto, with Fatima. He was furious with himself for letting them control him. They had no right to judge him, to pour onto him the frustration that his brother’s crime had filled them with. Wasn’t it bad enough they offered no support? Wasn’t it bad enough his entire family was another source of stress rather than of comfort? Wasn’t it bad enough he had to be all alone for this entire past year? For longer?
He had always been alone. Perhaps he would always be alone.
Khaled stepped back. Talking was useless. He walked around his father and out of the room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Samir followed him.
Khaled stepped into his own room, slammed the door behind him before his father could make it there, and locked it.
“Eftah elbab ya walad!” Samir’s voice boomed through the closed door as he tried to get in, alternating banging on the door with wrestling with the knob. Khaled stood inside, glaring at the closed door.
Nagla’s voice came through the door, strangely quiet. “Just let him be for now, Samir.”
“Baba—” Fatima started.
“I won’t let him be! You stay out of this, Nagla!”
Khaled put his hands on his ears, shutting out their voices. He walked around his room in circles. There was no place to go. He walked into his closet, looked around, and then walked back out. He walked from his bed to his desk and then to the door. He walked to the window, looked out. There was no way he could climb out of there, no conveniently placed tree whose branches he could scale. He walked to the door and let his arms fall. Outside, his parents were arguing, Fatima occasionally interjecting, while Ehsan’s prayers continued in the background.
“You will come out and talk to me right now!” Samir demanded.
“No, I will not!”
“I don’t have time for your nonsense. We have to leave in less than an hour.”
“I’m not coming,” Khaled heard himself say.
“What?” Khaled could picture his father’s mouth gape. Nagla whispered something, to which Samir replied, “You stay quiet.”
“I’m not coming,” Khaled repeated. “You can’t make me.”
“Yes, I can!”
“Try.”
Khaled waited. Outside, the voices of the individual members of his family blended together in a mishmash of Arabic that he could not understand, peppered with Fatima’s occasional English words. The voices rose and fell, their words mingling, and he, his body tingling with anticipation, stood transfixed. His door shook with each of his father’s blows, but it did not give way. He waited, first trying to decipher the sounds he heard, and then, once his breath had grown steady again, covering his ears with his hands. He walked back and sat on his bed, his eyes still fixed on the door, its occasional flutters growing farther apart until the door finally stood still.
• • •
He changed into jeans and a T-shirt, put on his hiking boots, and sat back on his bed, waiting. Close to an hour had passed, but he still could hear the noises they made as they walked in and out of rooms, whispering to one another. His family was getting ready to leave for the memorial service, and he was not going with them.
When he finally heard the garage door rise and fall and his father’s car drive off, he walked up to his bedroom door, carefully opening it. He looked around, suspecting that his father might have sent his mother and sister off first and waited for him. No one was there. The hallway was empty. Angry with himself for his paranoia, Khaled stepped out of his room.
Ehsan stood in the kitchen. He paused at the foot of the stairs, watching her. His car keys lay on the countertop; he needed to retrieve them. He could do so and not talk to her.
She did not look his way. Grabbing his keys and stuffing them in his pocket, he glanced at her, curious. She was standing behind the counter, packaging individual pastries of shoreik in transparent wrap and stacking them on one side. The column of shoreik was getting taller, and, carefully placing the last one on top of the others, she walked up to the freezer and piled the shoreik on a shelf, Pastries of Mercy frozen for future use.
She did not look his way. She was probably angry with him, just like everyone else: because he had spoken disrespectfully to his father, because he had not joined his parents on their trip to the memorial service, because of countless other shortcomings that he knew his family saw in him. His grandmot
her was practiced in the art of the silent treatment, and he was determined he would not fall for that. He turned around and walked out of the kitchen, made it halfway through the living room, expecting her to call after him with a question or a reprimand, or, as she often did, to mumble something incomprehensible, forcing him to turn around and ask her what she had said. She did not. He stopped in place, vexed. He should not care what she thought; he had nothing to explain. Still, he turned around and walked back into the kitchen.
“He can’t make me do something I don’t want to do,” he spat.
Ehsan closed the freezer door and looked at him.
“He can’t keep on treating everyone this way. He can’t blame Mama for everything.”
“Your mother’s troubles are her own,” Ehsan said, walking to the kitchen table. She pulled out a chair and sat down. He did not.
“You know what I don’t get? Why everyone is so angry with me all of a sudden.”
“No one is, Khaled.”
He shook his head. “Everyone is.” He paused. “Even you, Setto. Don’t think I don’t know you.” He choked up. Fatima was wrong, of course. He was not jealous. Yet his grandmother’s apparent disappointment in him hurt more than his father’s did.
“That’s not true, Khaled. We just expect so much of you.”
“Well, that’s not fair.” He sounded like a little boy, complaining because his mother let his older brother stay up late but refused to grant him the same privilege. He bit his lip. His older brother had never had to prove anything to anyone.
Ehsan smiled at him. “Come,” she said, pointing to a chair across from hers. “Sit.”
He hesitated, and then he sat down. He would stay only for a minute or two.
“Habibi, these are difficult times for everyone. You have to understand that your parents are handling this whole thing the best way they know how to.” She sighed, shook her head. “Such evil has befallen this family. But I do pray for all of you in each of my five prayers. I stay up at night praying for you. I don’t know what else I can do.”
Khaled searched his grandmother’s face. Ehsan’s reaction was typical of her: waiting for God to intervene, to make everything right again. After all, her entire existence, for as long as he had known her, seemed geared that way: days spent in prayer in order to ask God to take care of her children and grandchildren, ask Him to protect them from harm, or, if that failed, ask Him for compensation for what has befallen them, plead for a merciful execution of fate.
Another Arabic prayer popped into his head: Allahuma enna la nasaloka rad alqadaa, walaken nasaloka al-lotfa feih. God, we do not ask You to thwart fate, but we do ask You to execute it with gentleness.
“Who says that God has to fix all our problems for us?”
She looked up at him, puzzled. “He doesn’t have to, habibi. But He’s the most capable of doing so, so we ask Him for help.” She was watching him, her eyes betraying only a slight alarm.
“And what if He doesn’t?”
Ehsan shrugged. “If He chooses not to answer our prayer, then the prayer must have been wrong. He knows best.”
“That simple, huh?”
“Yes.” She paused. He could see the panic creep up in her eyes, knew how lightly she treaded around any subject that, to her, seemed potentially blasphemous. “Remember what I always told you? That Islam requires surrender? You surrender your will to God’s? You accept what he ordains for you?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
He got up, stood by the chair, shifting his weight from foot to foot, examining his boots. He should go now. Yet a thought was forming in his head, and he feared that leaving now would snuff it out. “You explained two words to me, some time ago. I can’t remember them.” He frowned. “They sounded almost alike but they meant different things. One meant asking God for help but then going ahead and doing what you need to do without waiting for His interference, the other meant a sort of passive dependence on Him. You remember?”
Ehsan’s face instantly lit up with recognition. “Of course! Tawakkol and tawaakol.”
“Yes. Those two. Doesn’t our religion warn against a passive reliance on God? Aren’t we supposed to go out and try to solve our own problems rather than wait for Him to do so for us?”
“Yes, of course!” She was puzzled, he could tell. He wasn’t being very clear, but he knew he could corner her, could use her own logic against her.
He pressed on. “This is exactly what I’m doing. I’m taking matters into my own hands. I’m getting out of here.” She watched him, and he thought he could see her lips twist in a slight snicker. He continued, “Because I know you’re judging me for not going with them, but I’m only doing what you taught me to do. I’m taking control of my own fate.”
“So is your father.”
He stepped back, frozen in place.
Ehsan continued, “He, too, is trying to take things into his own hands. Yet you don’t think he’s doing the right thing, do you?”
“Baba never acts on religion,” Khaled protested.
“But you do?” Ehsan smiled.
“Sometimes.” He felt his face blush. “But that’s not the point. The point is that I’m doing nothing wrong when I refuse to let my dad tell me what to do.”
Ehsan shook her head. “He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, either.”
“And what do you think?” He searched his grandmother’s face. “What would you do?”
Ehsan got up. “I’d pray that God help us and lead us all to do whatever He thinks is right.”
She walked to the sink, pulled her sleeves up, and ran the water. He stood watching her. Questions were buzzing in his head, new ones that he had not considered before. He should ask her again what she thought should be done, try to get something out of her other than the stock answers she flicked at him all the time. But it was useless. She would only ask him to pray some more. Respect his parents. Ask God to shield him from the devil, the instigator of vexing questions.
He turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” Ehsan asked.
“I don’t know. I need to get out.”
• • •
He opened the garage door and stood next to his truck staring at his mother’s car, parked on the driveway and blocking his way. He swore. Back inside, he rummaged through the kitchen drawers, desperately looking for his mother’s spare key, even though he knew his father kept it on his key chain. Ehsan watched him with silent curiosity. Back in the garage, he retrieved a hoodie from the truck before walking out to the street, the garage door falling shut behind him.
His father probably did this on purpose, he thought as he walked away from his house, putting his hoodie on. Samir tried to lock him in, to keep him prisoner. But he would not let him do it. He would walk to the train station and go to New York. He would walk his way out of there, if he had to.
He made it only to the corner of the street before he stopped in his tracks. Ahead of him, people were walking out of their homes and getting in their cars. Vehicles drove past him in silent processions. He wanted to think people were heading to church—it was, after all, Sunday—but he knew they were not. They were heading toward the park, to Natalie’s memorial service.
As a traffic light turned red and a car stopped, he found himself staring at a couple of young boys sitting in the backseat, dressed in shirts and ties. The younger of the boys waved at him, and his mother turned to look at Khaled. He spun around and walked away, not waiting to see her expression.
Quickly he headed back toward his house. Turning in through the gate, he walked up to the front door, stopped. He was not going to be driven back in. He glanced at the Bradstreets’ house; he saw no one. They had probably left a long time ago. He hesitated, trying to decide where to go—and then he turned and sprinted around the house, the length of the wraparound porch, out into the backyard, and, cutting through it, out through the woods and in
to Summerset Park, where the trees enveloped him, shielding him from sight.
19
ENGLISH: For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Bible
ARABIC: Then to Him shall you return, and He will then declare to you all that you have done.
Qur’an
Khaled made his way across the thick woods, zigzagging through the forest he had known since he was a child. He inhaled the smell of the pines and the dry soil and listened to the sound of twigs and leaves being crushed under his boots. The familiar mixture of smells and sounds soothed him. His stride fell from the frantic trot that had whisked him through his parents’ backyard and into the park to a steady walking speed, and he could almost pretend he was on one of his many hikes, exploring the vast park in search of butterflies.
He knew the way because he had taken it before. Steadily he walked, cutting through the trees, through the meadow where he and his brother had once tried to access Ali Baba’s cave, and through a second set of thicker trees, their branches intertwined, snagging his clothes. He was grateful he had put on the hoodie. With every step he felt his mind become clearer, falling into a serenity that led him by the hand, showing him the way. He did not stop to question his destination, accepting it the moment he became aware of it.
He reached the spot he had been looking for, the way there as familiar to him as if he had been treading it every day, even though it had been a full year since he was here last. He slowed down when he could hear the sounds of people talking, the hum of engines slowing to park, the clicking as car doors slammed shut. He found the same location he had stood in a year before, when he, one day after his brother had died, had walked that same route to stand transfixed, staring at a square patch of grass enclosed in yellow tape, the square’s center stained a dark brown from which he could not avert his gaze, a black hole that he knew would pull his entire life in, crushing him. Today, the meadow by the park’s Visitors’ Center was lined with white folding chairs probably used most often for weddings. Scattered throughout the chairs, people sat in groups, huddled together and talking, while others exited cars parked nearby. In front of the chairs stood a podium, and, a few yards to the side, a young tree lay on the ground, its roots wrapped in a dark mesh. Beside it, a hole had been freshly dug in the soil, ready to receive it.