After a number of years of useless schooling – as Hend’s grandfather saw it – her mother and her sisters were given lessons at home by Madame Teresa, the seamstress who made their trousseaux: wedding dresses, honeymoon dresses, pregnancy dresses. Madame Teresa carried swatches of fabric around in her pockets and the girls would watch the rapid movement of her scissors in breathless silence as they cut out complicated double cloche and croisé patterns. The clothes were stowed away in boxes, along with the bars of soap and the perfumes and the velvety bedspreads and china and brass sets from Gattegno and Cicurel and Sednaoui, and then they were carried off to the sound of jubilant ululations and the slaughtering of animals. Hend’s grandfather did his best to treat all his daughters equally as they set off to meet their destinies, and yet he was fond of insisting that ‘bringing girls into the world is a calamity that blackens the face and ruins the pocket’.
When it was Hend’s mother’s turn to make her grand exit from her father’s house, she was more happily disposed than the other girls. The paternal cousin she had the good fortune to be marrying was clean-shaven and handsome, with a spotless white shirt. One of the servant girls had told her that he looked like Yusuf Bey Wahbi. He was a law student at Alexandria University, which meant that she would have to take extra care darning his socks and starching his shirt collars and ironing and scenting his handkerchiefs; she also spent a good deal of time embroidering his dressing gowns to befit his new status as a respectably married man.
The screams of the firstborn filled the house and the labour pains repeated themselves from one swollen belly to the next. The delighted grandfather, puffed up with pride, patted his grandsons on the back, slipped a few banknotes into his daughter’s hand, ordered the animals to be slaughtered, then went back home. Five children later, Hend came into the world in the shape of a dark red crab, tormented by its ruling zodiac and its ascendant stars. Her father smiled and her mother murmured apologetically, ‘Girls are sweet, though.’ The grandfather didn’t come this time, and no animals were slaughtered. By the time Hend was born, her mother had grown much thinner and worn out from raising all those boys, from the constant din they made, from many a sleepless night. There were no more pregnancies after Hend, but her mother’s face was always pale and exhausted, as though she had just completed a gruelling journey.
As soon as the mangoes ripened in the summer, Hend’s mother would gather her six children into the old Cadillac and go forth on the ‘journey of winter and summer’, as her father sarcastically referred to it. His wife sat next to him and Hend sat in the back seat dreaming of faraway places that she had only ever heard of in stories, mysterious cities with brass domes wreathed in milky white clouds. Every year Hend eagerly waited for the moment when her mother would dab some perfume on her clothes, dust off the black cloak that she wore whenever she left the house, and pack up the jars of marmalade, the tins of home-made biscuits, and the freshly ground coffee that filled the kitchen with its delectable smell.
Hend would tug furiously at her mother’s clothes: ‘Take me with you!’ Her grandfather’s house wasn’t far, just on the other side of a few empty enclosures and a couple of estates made up of cultivated and fallow land. The car rocked as the wheels pitched into the black mud. The gate of her grandfather’s house creaked open slowly and the car passed through. The balcony, plunged in darkness and spread with colourful rugs, waited to receive them as they piled out of the car. Her mother smiled happily as she took in the sight of the kerosene lanterns hanging gaily in the orange orchards. She embraced her waiting sisters, who had also come from their husbands’ houses, and they clung to each other in a protracted bout of mirth. Hend watched and listened. Her grandfather came out of his room and put out his hand to receive the shy, confused kisses of his progeny. The children held on to their mothers’ dresses so that their grandfather could identify who they belonged to. He never caressed their hair or patted their heads; he only put out his hand to be kissed. On these trips, the world smelled of mangoes and vibrated with the buzzing of mosquitoes and the croaking of frogs glorying in the brackish waters of summer. The winter trip was shorter. The house echoed with the rustle of sluggish, lazy movement and the close rooms smelled of wood fires and Meccan incense. Even the games they played in winter were calibrated to the rhythms of the long, dark nights. The tales told were longer too, and more enchanting, and Hend would listen in wonder as she wandered feverishly through the corners of her unruly imagination. She dreamt of an old Cadillac, its windows open to the breeze, racing across unfamiliar lands and down endless streets, passing villages and dovecotes and mud houses, Bedouin tents and Pharaoh’s Hills, and she fell asleep to the whistle of its wheels.
*
She slept and woke to find that she had grown a few centimetres taller, and that her face in the mirror had acquired a new fullness. Her mother extricated her from the folds of her black cloak and pushed her away. Hend wept in despair at no longer being allowed to play with her male cousins or scramble up the mango trees bare-legged. They told her that her loud squeals of delight at being caught in a game of hide-and-seek were scandalous, and from then on she had to sit next to the Guest, picking at mounds of cotton and twining wicks for the kerosene lamps, long slender wicks on which she hung her yearning to see the exotic places she heard about in stories.
The years passed and her mother grew more and more exhausted. Her aunts were busier than ever with their own affairs, and the journeys of winter and summer came to an abrupt halt: anyway, a woman’s place was in her husband’s house. Her mother sat in the western balcony and stared out into space while Hend wandered the dusty streets and alleys of the town and prowled around the gypsy camp nearby. Now, whenever she got angry she would say to her mother, ‘I’m leaving. I’m leaving you all behind for good,’ and run off to the gypsies. She cried herself to sleep on the straw-covered floor of their huts. She played Little House with the gypsy girls and laughed and romped in the straw. Then one day three pairs of arms snatched her up and took her away. Her brothers had worn themselves out looking for her all over town. When they finally brought her back home, her mother pounced on her and pinched her hard on the thigh. The pinch left a blood-red mark to remind her of the warning: ‘No daughter of mine dares run away from her father’s house.’ So Hend only threatened to run away from then on. She would pack up her clothes in a cloth bundle like the ones the gypsy girls carried around and lay her tear-stained face down to sleep on it. ‘I’m going,’ she would whisper to herself, ‘this isn’t my home. No one here loves me.’ Her mother laughed and called her a little sulker. ‘All day long, acting like the gypsy girls and the servants,’ she complained, ‘and if anyone so much as opens their mouth, she packs her clothes and mopes around the house.’
On a pitch-black night in a small village in the furthest corner of the Delta, the frogs, revelling in the warm summer darkness, raised a ruckus in the pools of stagnant water and a little red gecko scurried along the wall of an old house. Mosquitoes came in through the open windows. Hend’s mother, oppressed by the heat and her eternal solitude, leaned her aching back against the wall as the red gecko unfurled its tongue to snap up a mosquito. Hend grew to pity her mother’s shattered dreams. She liked to talk to her friend the Capricorn about her mother, about the family’s winter trip and summer trip, and she knew that he liked to listen to her. He watched her face tenderly and compassionately as she talked.
‘I want to leave here now,’ she said.
He responded with that steady, composed tone that drove her mad. ‘You think leaving will make anything better?’
‘Maybe I’ll have better luck somewhere else.’
He shook his head as he drew on his water pipe, silently releasing the smoke through his nostrils in one long cloud. The expression on his face puzzled her. He broke the silence with the same old question: ‘Have you written anything lately?’
She shook her head in the negative. ‘I can’t seem to.’
‘Write about the wint
er trip and the summer trip.’
She laughed. She loved him because he believed in her, but her answer was always the same. ‘Not now.’
‘You remind me of Yahya.’
‘Tell me about Yahya.’
‘He was moody like you. I remember when he was in love with Nadia Lutfi.’
‘What was he like?’
‘I told you. Like you, moody.’
‘I never liked Nadia Lutfi.’
‘If he’d met you, he would have loved you more than Nadia Lutfi.’
‘So what? How would that have changed anything?’
‘Maybe you would’ve found what you’ve been looking for. And you wouldn’t think of leaving.’
‘I’m not leaving. I’m trying, just trying.’
‘Maybe you would’ve fallen in love with him.’
‘Maybe.’
‘And maybe he would have chosen to stay too. To put off his death for a little while longer.’
She left him sitting there. She left Egypt too in a last-ditch attempt to escape everything that reminded her of her failure. She fled his attachment to her and the labyrinth of her own emotions. She crossed over to another continent without a word of farewell. She savoured her wretchedness and solitude. Pluto confronted her in stony silence, and Jupiter rested in the House of Capricorn: his house. She left without telling him that blessing and misfortune were defiantly conjoined in his stars; that their planets were fated to remain locked in opposing equilibrium, and that she knew he loved her.
Pluto moves into the House of Capricorn slowly. It will stay there for the next twenty-three years. It rumbles on its elliptical course through the galaxy, destroying worlds and rebuilding them. They call it ‘the star of misfortune’ because it is full of surprises, ponderous, lumbering, and wasted, like pain. It opposes her, threatening to rob her of all that she knows and loves and craves. She looks out through the window and watches the heavy rain splatter across the glass. Her heart beats faster and her dreams are full of terror of the unknown.
She watches her sleeping child with resignation. She embraces him and kisses his hand. A heavy weight presses down on her heart and the sudden contractions fill her with anxiety. She’s afraid that he’ll wake up alone and terrified, and search in vain for a body that should be lying next to him: ‘Mama, where are you?’ She’s afraid of having to abandon him suddenly as her own mother abandoned her. That night she dreams that she is kissing her mother and the next morning desperately trying to shake her awake. ‘Mama, where are you?’ Her heart is still racing as she leaves a scrap of paper on the table next to him with a few phone numbers and a message – Mom will be right back – and descends the darkened stairs to go to the nearby hospital.
She sits in a long row of chairs waiting her turn. She moves between the oxygen masks and the blood-pressure meters and the heart monitors and stares at the long hallway full of doctors. She remembers a similar scene long ago – the same machines and the same medicine and food smells, the same white uniforms and glinting steel scalpels laid out on trolleys – and she is filled with dread. Her mother lay practically naked on a gurney, the thin wires of the heart monitor poking out of her chest. The little girl shrank away, terrified.
They wheeled Hend through the corridors of the hospital to the observation ward as she complained weakly that her chest hurt.
The doctor asks her, ‘Do you have a family history of heart disease?’
‘Yes,’ she answers listlessly. ‘My father died when he was forty.’
‘Do you remember which month?’
‘I think it was October or November. It was fall and school was about to start.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘He was telling me the story of the Prophet Solomon. Then suddenly he put his hand on his left shoulder and his heart stopped.’
‘Was it at night?’
‘Yes, around eight in the evening.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She died of breast cancer. Her breasts were always full of milk. My chest hurts too and the milk won’t dry up. I’ve begun to forget things – a lot of things. Am I getting senile?’
‘Is there something bothering you these days?’
‘I’m always under a lot of stress, but this is the first time I’ve felt my heart racing like this. I feel it in my shoulder. I’ve begun to forget, and I don’t want to forget. Do you know Hemingway?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hemingway began to lose his memory too. He couldn’t write any more because he was losing his memory. I want to write. Am I going to become like him?’
The doctor laughs. She asks Hend to put on her clothes. ‘I think you’re worrying too much. In any case I’ll look at the test results. We’ll be in touch if there’s anything to be concerned about.’
She takes the sedatives and leaves. She walks alone down the dark street. Her heartbeat still hasn’t calmed down. She opens the door of the house and finds him still asleep in bed. She tears up the piece of paper that she left for him.
She tries to sleep. She dreams that her mother is caressing her hair. In the dream, she weeps bitterly. Her mother wakes her and says, ‘Go to your son.’ She asks herself why God torments mothers with milk that won’t stop flowing.
The child gets out of bed and puts his arms around her. ‘Mom, did you go out last night?’ He asks her this as though she’s sitting in the witness box, in a commanding tone or perhaps an anxious one, as though his whole existence depends on her being there by his side. She answers him firmly.
‘I was here.’
He rubs the sleep and worry from his eyes, then says, ‘I dreamt that you went out while I was asleep.’
‘But I was here, darling,’ she repeats soothingly.
‘I dreamt that I woke up and didn’t find you.’
‘I’m right here, my love.’
She bursts into stinging tears. She rages against Pluto and death, the robber, and childbirth and her own self. She cries bitter tears, and her heart shudders as though it’s about to grind to a halt.
Her son puts his arms around her heaving waist. ‘Mama, what’s the matter?’
‘I can’t breathe.’
He pulls her by the hand and makes her lie down on the bed and relax. She takes one of the sedatives but it only makes her cry more, and she says to him, ‘I had one friend in the whole world. He was kind and gentle. He was born one day under the sign of Capricorn. He died today.’
‘Your friend?’
She nods her head. It’s the way of the world, always losing something, always living in the hope of discovering a truth that doesn’t exist.
Her son hugs her close, as though their roles were reversed, she the child and he the parent. ‘Don’t be sad, my darling Mama. I’m here with you.’
She hugs him tight and cries on his shoulder. Suddenly her only son becomes her one true friend.
10
Prospect Park
Flatbush Avenue converges with a half-dozen other streets at a spot called Prospect Park, or ‘The Tranquil Garden’. They say that Prospect Park was designed to be a smaller version of Central Park – the giant green space that sits in the centre of Manhattan – and that all its saplings came from there. They say that the park was first planted soon after the Brooklyn Bridge was finished. It used to be a hamlet surrounded by Dutch poultry farms, vineyards, and dairy factories, then, after the bridge was built, it became a suburb of Brooklyn. Over the years its picturesque Dutch architecture attracted writers and composers and bohemians of all kinds. Real-estate agents intent on demonstrating the appeal of Brooklyn are sure to point out to you the house that Arthur Miller lived in: ‘His young wife Marilyn Monroe lived with him in this very building before she became a star. And this is Henry Miller’s house. He’s the author of Tropic of Capricorn. Paul Auster still lives and works here in Brooklyn, and this is the tree that Betty Smith wrote her famous novel about.’ And in other places they stick up posters of the John Travolta film Saturday Night Fever. An
d the real-estate agents will remind you of all of them if you’re looking for a room suitable to house your dreams.
Hend has learned the map of Park Slope by heart. It helped that a lot of people she met liked to talk about the history of the neighbourhood. Many of them were dreamers constantly on the lookout for that one person who would discover their talent, always poring over their notebooks in some early morning café and waiting for inspiration to seize them. They always looked as though they were on the point of recreating the universe. At night, they eagerly sought out the stray journalist or editor in urbane establishments like Coco Bar and Exotic Bar and the Tea Lounge. Hend rarely set foot in those places. They were way too expensive and she dreaded the kind of attention that a woman by herself might attract. She hurried past them on her daily route – a route that took her nowhere.
Atlantic Avenue is home to a host of Arab-owned stores. Narak the Armenian’s shop is on a street to the south of the avenue, close to the park. Narak sells chessboards and novelty chess pieces, as well as books about the game. He also gives lessons to anyone who wants them. Passers-by stop at his place, especially kids on their way to the park, drawn by the whimsical shapes of the chess pieces, some of which have storybook themes, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The smiling Armenian relishes the delight of the children around him. They remind him of his days at the Scientific Renaissance Secondary School in Baalbek, where he used to teach art before emigrating to America. His patience was legendary. He would sit for hours teaching the kids the basic principles of the game by way of a set of magical mathematical formulas.
When Hend goes for a walk in the evening her son stays a few steps ahead of her, grave-faced and contemplative, in an effort to prove to his mother that he’s grown up now and capable of going out by himself. He gets all kinds of crazy ideas, like changing his first name because it isn’t ‘cool’ enough. He doesn’t like his last name either. He wants to call himself Ben, colour his hair blond, and spike it with gel to make it look like Iron Man’s. The pimples that have begun to pop up on his forehead upset him terribly. He calls them ‘acne’ in English and spends inordinate amounts of time fixing his hair so that it hides his forehead. He examines his skin in the mirror and decides he likes it because it’s ‘tan’ and his friends envy him. One day he says to her, ‘How come you don’t look for a decent job?’ The word decent confuses her. It takes her a minute to figure out what it means in Arabic – ‘respectable’ – and she bristles with resentment. ‘Why don’t you think about your own future and leave me alone,’ she replies sharply. Truth be told, she wishes she could find that kind of job. She’d like to be a painter or a writer or even an actress. She still dares to hope that some dreams at least can come true at any age.
Brooklyn Heights Page 14