The old Cadillac carried them through vast expanses of sandy land on the edges of Buhaira province. Hend’s grandmother, the Sharifa, was very fat and white. She placed a pinch of snuff in her nostrils and sneezed into an embroidered white handkerchief. She wiped away the tears with real feeling, shaking her head in a movement that signified her resignation to God’s will. Hend’s mother sat opposite her, stiff and elegant, and cried a little. She exchanged kisses with young women dressed in black, plunged into conversation on subjects near and far. Her mother’s nose coloured slightly as she carefully inspected the jewellery, the elegant clothes, the sheer stockings, and the brass coffee-pots around her, and inhaled the pungent smell of Meccan incense perfuming the air. She finished her cup of coffee, kissed the hand of the noble grandmother with deliberate emotion, and took her leave. For a long time after this visit, the father avoided upsetting her. When she boasted about her dead aristocratic uncles, he would reply with feeling, ‘God have mercy on us all.’
Their house was not many-storeyed as her mother fervently wished it to be. The floor of the eastern balcony was covered in polished black and white tiles like a chess board. Hend drew a hopscotch grid on it with chalk. Sometimes the children used it to mark out opposing goalposts for soccer matches or invisible corners for hide-and-seek and games of Blind Bear. A heavy door inlaid with a pair of stained-glass windows stood in the middle of the house. The cracked glass panels were criss-crossed with tracks of white solder. The door was very heavy and difficult to open and close. It was repeatedly subjected to fierce slammings that inevitably produced more cracks in the glass. The delicate coloured glass tended to shatter whenever an angry hand chanced to fall upon it; her father’s hand in particular would make it shudder and splinter whenever he slammed it behind him, cursing the wretched day on which he was born. Afterwards, Hend would discover her mother curled up tight into a shaking, weeping ball.
Other kinds of tremors often assailed that unfortunate door: the shrill shouts of playing children running to catch balls that invariably overshot their mark and crashed into the glass. Each of the five boys had left his mark on the walls and windows of the chaotic house, as they had done collectively on their besieged mother’s body. Her father’s room, however, was the exception to the rule. It was always quiet and tidy. No one dared to open its door unless their father was stretched out on his bed, reading the papers, his wife sitting on a chair at his side in her sesame and honey-coloured robe printed with red flowers, talking calmly. Hend would be playing somewhere or other, her ear cocked to catch the tone of his voice. If it was clear and full of laughter, spring would come to caress their glass door. Mother smiled happily and didn’t scold, even when Hend covered her face in flour to scare her brothers, or climbed all the way up the flame tree in a monkey-jump contest, or poured a whole bottle of lavender cologne on her chest before poking through the powders and lotions on her mother’s dressing table.
Hend would collect handfuls of sandy earth and stones and bits of old toys and empty bottles so that she could play her favourite game – Little House. On the dusty ground she would draw the outlines of a house, with kitchen and bedroom and children. She would put her rag-doll child on her lap and feed it milk from her breast. She would sweep dust from the corners of her imaginary house, a house whose windows were always caressed by spring, a house in which she could drift off to sleep untroubled by the dark shadow of a man shouting at a woman dressed in a robe the colour of honey and sesame seeds: ‘I’ll go to hell and you’ll never see me again! Do you think you can tie me down with a pile of children?’ In other nightmares he would drag the woman along by the embroidered border of her honey-coloured robe and say to her: ‘Get out! That’s it. I don’t want you any more!’
Hend knew that the heavy thud of groans and kicks coming from behind the door would surely shatter its coloured glass panels. Her mother always emerged from these battles with exhausted, swollen eyes. The next morning she bound the door’s wounds with plastic strips to stop the cold winter wind from coming in through the cracks.
The gate of her father’s house was huge and ancient. One day, long ago, the camel caravans had gone out through that entrance and had never returned. She would often contemplate it from the inside, ponder the movement of the universe from behind it. The gaiety of passers-by, the screams of children she didn’t know, a ball made of stuffed socks that was passed between the nimble feet of running boys. Sometimes, in spite of the threats, she would open it cautiously, or creep underneath it. She would steal glances at the girls who looked nothing like her. They played out there, on open ground. Then one of her brothers saw her dawdling outside and pulled her away by her hair. Her mother threatened her: ‘I’ll break your legs if you cross the threshold again.’ So from then on she could only look at the dividing line and swallow her want till the day when she too could step over to the other side and never return.
Hend would watch the gypsies pass through in springtime. They would stream by in front of the gate and their animals kick up a cloud of dust behind them. She would wander in the space behind their tents pitched on the banks of the Abbasiya Canal. She dreamt of a house that would hug the street to itself, a house whose insides she could see without having to knock, a house with a wide hospitable courtyard to invite the greetings of passers-by, a house across whose open threshold floated the smell of cooking, of washing and the sweat of strangers. But the gate of her father’s house was high and shut fast. She would stand staring at it, and it would stare back at her.
*
Hend walks along the endless streets of Brooklyn. She never gets tired of walking in this land, alone and anonymous. She passes through Latino and Italian neighbourhoods and arrives in the Asian neighbourhood where she likes to shop for fruit and vegetables. She compares prices in the cheaper Vietnamese markets. She passes through the Turkish neighbourhood and continues on to Bay Ridge. She is amazed at how the architecture, the people’s faces and their skin colour, the merchandise and the wafting cooking smells are all so different. By now she will have walked for more than seventy blocks. By now she will have grown weary of the cacophony of languages and loud music and she will begin to long for the sweet aroma of water pipes. She heads for a small local coffee shop. The men inside flash curious smiles at her. Their good-natured dirty jokes remind her of home. Here is the Arab world in microcosm – the Brooklyn Gulf. They come from Gaza and Nablus, Beirut and Alexandria. The old men of the first generation stretch out in their wooden chairs and curse their exile as they nibble on sweet Arab pastries from The Groom’s Sweets next door. Through the window she watches old men come in and out of the storefronts: Seaside Fish, Abu Ali’s Falafel, Friendship Kushari, and Abu Kamal’s Grocery, which sells halal meat. Old photographs hang in the windows of the Arab shops as well as maps of antique cities and signs proclaiming solidarity with the suffering people of Gaza and South Lebanon. The residents spill joyfully out onto the streets when the Egyptian soccer team score three goals against Brazil, even though they lose the match. They pour insults on FIFA in a myriad of dialects.
The coffee shop she likes to go to is called Arabian Nights. It’s small and dark and the hookahs smell of stale water. The first time she stepped inside, she sniffed the air slowly and cautiously. She glanced around her stealthily and realised that she was the only woman in the place, so she sat down and started leafing through some newspapers and yellowed magazines. The waiter was tall and skinny. He reminded her of one of her Arabic-language teachers at school. The clients called him ‘sir’ out of affection but also, as she discovered later, as a mark of respect for his mysterious past. She tried to hide her face behind the newspaper but he accosted her with pointed questions nonetheless.
‘Do you live alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you found a job yet?’
‘Luckily, yes.’
‘So I guess you have a visa.’
‘I have a residence permit.’
‘You mean a Green Card?’
‘No. I’m a school teacher.’
The waiter to whom she was lying was called Muhammad, and he kept asking her questions she didn’t know how to answer. In Bay Ridge, they kill the heavy time on their hands by inventing ingenious questions designed to expose the white lies of newcomers; immigrants like themselves looking for a visa, a job, and a room. Muhammad continued his interrogation.
‘What do you teach?’
‘Arabic.’
‘You think Arabs in America need to learn Arabic? Now they’re bringing teachers over here?’
‘. . .’
‘So, you’re working?’
‘I’ve got papers.’
‘Does it put bread on the table?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Look, consider me a brother. Forget the visa and the teaching and all that stuff. If you need a job just say so. I’ll be right here. I’ve been here for fourteen years.’
‘Alright.’
‘I’ve got a BA in business administration. I used to dream of being a merchant sailor. You see what I do now.’
‘Yes, I can see.’
‘You don’t like to talk much. It’s obvious.’
She nodded her head slightly and said, ‘Sometimes.’
He looked as though he was finally on the point of giving up. He was puzzled by this woman who had come in by herself and was sitting by herself and seemed to be afraid of opening up, talking about any old thing or making up stories, like the others do to give their lives some meaning.
‘Okay, then,’ he said glumly. ‘If you need something, just holler.’
‘Thanks,’ she answered curtly, which seemed to annoy him even more.
She watched the marijuana smoke spiralling up and wreathing the TV screen, which was showing a soccer match. The game drew a slew of crude comments: your mother, your sister, the whore that you married, any excuse for exchanging friendly insults. A man came up and introduced himself, taking a seat at her table as he munched on a piece of sweet pastry. From his accent she could tell that he was from Iraq. He told her that he was the first of the lot to arrive in Bay Ridge but that he couldn’t quite remember the exact number of years. He wiped away a piece of kunafa stuck to his lip and his sharp, thin smile made him look like an eagle just before it swoops down on its prey. The deep purple circles under his eyes made her wonder whether he might be an alcoholic despite his constant chatter about the Islamic Center on the corner of Fulton Street and MacDougal. He questioned her in the same familiar and slightly suspicious tone as Muhammad the waiter.
‘Are you married?’
She inclined her head ambiguously, so he launched into the second question.
‘Do you have children?’
‘A boy,’ she replied.
Abd al-Karim was a Kurd, and he seemed nicer than he looked. He smiled again and started to give her advice. ‘Children are the most important thing in the world. Life here is hard. You have to keep a constant eye on your kids.’
He finally got up and went back to his interrupted game of dominoes. Later, when she had gotten to know the café and its clients a bit better, she learned that Abd al-Karim was part of the first wave of refugees to come to New York from Iraq and that he married a Mexican girl called Jojo. Jojo used to work in a coffee shop in Brighton Beach. She was dark-skinned and voluptuous, all silky flesh and curves, made for love. Hend wondered whether Abd al-Karim himself, with his thick moustache and his unusual tallness, used to be attractive in some long-ago time. The couple rented a small apartment in Brighton Beach because Jojo felt more comfortable living in a mixed Russian–Italian neighbourhood rather than an Arab one. She loved the ocean, the cosy local bars, the stout Russian men who looked a little like her husband. She claimed that their tough exteriors hid big hearts; men who turned into fragile, suffering creatures after their first drink. She confessed that she had had affairs while Abd al-Karim was out driving his taxi day and night, and she would complain bitterly about the strong smell of arak that always clung to her ex-husband.
She ended the marriage pretty quickly after their third daughter was born, but he didn’t move out because he had nowhere else to go. Besides, he wanted to stay close to the girls, who were growing up fast. He watched this happen with mounting anxiety. His oldest daughter, Diana, was beginning to look just like her mother, slender, voluptuous, and alluring, the exquisite fruit of mixed parentage. She took after her mother in many ways. She was shameless and defiant and full of teeming life. She was also brutally honest to the point of insolence. No one but her Creator could control her, as Abd al-Karim was in the habit of saying. She had inherited the hated dark circles under his eyes and she waged constant war on them with concealers and creams. Like her mother, she was obsessed with the arts of the body – massage therapy, moisturisers, and face masks – and she loved being photographed in provocative poses. Abd al-Karim beat her ferociously sometimes, or else he smashed the furniture in the apartment, and picked fights for the most trivial reasons. After these fits, Jojo always kicked him out of the house and filed restraining orders with the police. He would have ended up in jail on a number of occasions if not for the intervention of the people at the Islamic Center, who patiently talked to him about cultural differences and did the best they could to put out the fire burning in his heart.
He finally moved out of the Brighton Beach apartment and into Bay Ridge, and he began to spend all his free time sitting in the coffee shop and talking endlessly to anyone who would listen about the dangers of raising children in this hell of a place. In spite of his partiality to drink, he started to visit the Islamic Center regularly. He liked to sit and talk with the imam of the mosque and would sometimes even run little errands for him. He began to do volunteer work for the Center; he specialised in making funeral arrangements with the Muslim Cemetery in New Jersey for people from the community. He was the one who bought the white cloth for the shrouds, the incense, and anything else the family needed. Sometimes other volunteers would pile into his car and they would drive behind the hearse to the cemetery, where prayers would call on God to raise the departed soul to His eternal Paradise and to forgive the body about to be buried in a non-Muslim land. Newly arrived refugees went to him for advice about where to go shopping or where to find housing or Arab cafés and restaurants and how to guard children from the corruption of their new home (‘God have mercy on us all’). Abd al-Karim was also a firm believer in the Twin Towers conspiracy theory circulated in an anonymous letter that instructed the receiver to copy it and send it on to the largest number of people possible (‘so that God may multiply your good deeds’). The letter explained the miracle of the Quran and how it had predicted the events of September 11 and the destruction of the Cities of Injustice.
Hend sits by herself opposite Abd al-Karim, who hands her a new piece of paper every time he sees her; a piece of paper that, as always, she has no desire to read. She smokes her water pipe and gazes at the faces of the regular clients. When she senses that another argument is about to erupt, she decides to leave. She buys a pack of cigarettes and sits on a bench by the seaside, watching the sun as it sinks into the vast Atlantic, then she takes the bus back home.
Always, when nostalgia, loneliness, or self-loathing pulls her back to Bay Ridge, her son categorically refuses to go with her.
‘I don’t want to go to that place.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s dirty. And it’s vulgar,’ he moans in English. ‘I don’t want to be one of them.’
‘We can eat some Egyptian noodles.’
‘I don’t want to!’ he bawls hysterically.
‘Are you going to make Mama go alone?’
‘Why do you like it so much?’
‘Maybe because it reminds me of home.’
‘But I don’t like Bay Ridge! And I don’t want to go back to Egypt either.’
3
The Green Cemetery
Seventh Avenue is divided by Greenwood Cemetery, which sits on a hill that reminds
her of Pharaoh’s Hills back home. She likes to wander its winding avenues early in the morning because of the flowers, and because of the profound silence that used to frighten her. She passes the time reading the names of the dead who lie beneath the marble slabs. The elation of death and oblivion, the peacefulness of old people, wash over her. The houses that face the cemetery are also old, with stiff marble facades. Elderly Russian and Hispanic women sit in wooden rocking chairs on their porches. The Latino ladies carefully step out of gaily coloured houses into the pale winter sunlight, houses that put the grey hues of other neighbourhoods to shame. They smile at her like children. She smiles back and walks on with leaden, worried steps, as though she were approaching an ending of some kind. The sturdy coat that she bought at a thrift store smells of mothballs and mould. It weighs on her body, heavy and forlorn. She disappears inside it, seamlessly blending into her surroundings: the old women and the streets, cold, solitary, neutral.
She has become more like her grandmother than her mother, she thinks to herself. She remembers how she used to squirm in her grandmother’s lap, an angry child with a naked bottom. She was hard to keep up with as a child, light and thin, teething and crawling and speaking well before any of her brothers did. She proved that she was a creature capable of surviving and flourishing on the barest necessities of life. Her mother often left her to her own devices. She would crawl up the hill behind the western balcony right up to the solitary room roofed in wood and clay that looked, for all the world, like a heavenly dome. They called it ‘the high place’. A woman sat at its door, a woman who they did not call ‘grandmother’ but rather ‘the Guest’, though she never once stepped out of the confines of the family home. ‘The Guest is sleeping,’ they would say, or, ‘The Guest wants such-and-such,’ or, ‘Go and bring the buttermilk pan from the Guest’s room.’
Brooklyn Heights Page 3