Afaf’s cell phone buzzed. Before reading the text, she let her mind drift a moment longer in supplications for those she loved. She breathed deeply, whispered a final du’aa for her mother, who lived thousands of miles away yet still managed to disrupt Afaf’s sense of confidence. She’d weathered years of Mama’s undulating disapproval—or complete indifference.
Before she could text back, another explosion rattled the light bulb above Afaf’s head. She scrambled to her feet. The round of firecrackers sounded closer, as though coming from inside the building. From the floor above her: Miss Camellia’s music room.
Afaf looked up at the vent, her heart thumping.
The singing halted above her.
She snatched the two-way radio, her fingers trembling so badly she almost dropped it. “Lou! Come in, Lou! Gunshots! Over!”
High-pitched, wordless noise roiled from the ceiling. Young girls screaming. Terrifying and unfamiliar sounds, so unlike the swell and dip of laughter. Sounds that had lovingly crystallized in Afaf’s heart over the years she’d been teaching at Nurrideen School.
Then came loud thuds. Like bags of cement dropping to the floor.
Afaf leaned against the door, obscuring Gabriel’s wings as he hovered over Mary. Clutching the two-way radio, she listened, her face tilted up toward the vent.
1976
1
SHE DOESN’T answer her mother the first time she calls her name.
“Afaf!”
She keeps jumping on her bed.
“Afaf! Where are you?”
Majeed, her younger brother, is jumping opposite her on a twin bed. He freezes and cranes his head over the tune of “Aquarius.” The two of them play it relentlessly on a secondhand record player.
A garage sale, to Afaf’s father, is yet another novelty of American life. The first time he’d discovered one down their block, he told her mother, “These amarkan sell their own belongings for profit!” In the spring and summer, Afaf and Majeed accompany Baba on strolls up and down the alleyways of their neighborhood, searching for open garages, the white owners sitting on lawn chairs, drinking beers and tossing their cigarette butts onto the gravel, haggling with her father. Their wives wear terry-cloth shorts and halter tops, stark-white tan lines cutting through sunburned skin. Afaf can’t tear her eyes away from their sagging breasts. On their last trip, Baba purchased a record player from a man with an unkempt beard and glasses like John Lennon’s. And a desk lamp for a buck-fifty, though Afaf’s family did not own a desk in their cramped apartment. They do their homework on a chipped coffee table in the front room that her mother wipes down multiple times a day.
Mama had turned her nose up at the record player—Massari ala fadi, she scolds—a waste of money. The previous owner had thrown in an odd selection of albums: the Shangri-Las, Pat Boone, and Sam Cooke. Afaf and Majeed have so far memorized every verse of Hair, her favorite record. Baba listens to Leonard Cohen, improving his English through songs. “Suzanne” sounds like a bottomless well to Afaf.
On Sunday mornings, he strums his oud and sings ballads by his favorite Egyptian lute player, Farid al-Atrash. Not as unhappy as Leonard, Baba declares, as though both famous musicians are close friends of his.
“Afaf!”
The third time Mama calls her name it’s a sure sign of something serious. Afaf hops onto the brown shag carpeting and bolts down the narrow hallway of the apartment, Majeed sliding behind her in his tube socks across the wooden floor Mama mops every day.
Her mother’s on the phone, the yellow cord snaking around her fingers. A pot of fava bean stew boils on the stove and a stack of dishes has been brought down from the cupboard, but Mama hasn’t set them yet. Something’s disrupted her mother’s dinner activity.
She’s talking in frantic Arabic on the phone—Afaf guesses it’s Khalti Nesreen on the other end, Mama’s youngest sister, the only relative she has in the States, who lives two hours away in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Mama turns to Afaf with wide hazel eyes, two amber stones with flecks of green or gold depending upon her mood. When she laughs, they are like tiny golden nuggets mined out of the earth. Fear and anger usually turn them green, the color they are now as Mama glares at Afaf. They’re eyes only her brother Majeed has inherited. Eyes Afaf covets every day she’s surrounded by a sea of white skin and darting blue and green eyes at Nightingale Elementary School. She has Baba’s hair, thick and wavy.
“Yes, Mama?” Afaf stands as close to her mother as she bravely can. Mama scares her in a way she doesn’t understand. Her mother is a beautiful woman who takes care of her and her siblings. She cooks every day, Afaf and Majeed coming home to pots of maklooba and pans of kufta, spices reaching them in the stairwell before they open the back door of the apartment. Before bedtime, she bathes Majeed—Afaf is allowed to wash herself now—and lays out clean clothes for the next day. But there are other days when they come home from school and find Mama in her bed, weeping. This lasts for a few days. On those nights, she hears Baba talking to Mama, his soft and consoling words muffled by her mother’s sobs. Afaf moves carefully around Mama. She’s like one of those floppy puppets at the carnival that you knock down with a ball. Afaf worries her mother might not get back up again from her bed.
“Did Nada tell you where she was going after school?” her mother demands, placing her palm over the receiver, though Afaf is certain her aunt hears Mama’s desperate plea.
It hits Afaf: her older sister has not come home yet. She and Majeed have been distracted by their singing and jumping, hadn’t paid attention to the creeping autumn dusk outside the apartment. Nada is required to be home before the streetlights turn on, before their father comes home from the factory.
“No, Mama. She didn’t say anything to me.” They both look at seven-year-old Majeed—a futile action. He shakes his head. Why would her seventeen-year-old sister tell her little brother—or Afaf—anything about her mysterious life outside their apartment?
Afaf is ten years old, patching together small pieces of her sister—the hours Nada spends smoothing down strands of her thick brown hair, fastening them with tortoiseshell barrettes, or the sly smile that creeps across her face when she reads a letter on torn-out notebook paper, folded and creased many times. The quilt Afaf has assembled of her sister isn’t a whole person—only glimpses of a double life.
“Ya rubbi!” Mama bawls into the phone. “Nesreen, where could she be?” Her shoulders shake with sobbing, but Mama still listens and nods as her aunt says things Afaf can’t hear. Mama tucks frizzy strands of hair behind her free ear. Gray ones sprout from the crown of her head; she is due for a touch-up. Every month at the kitchen table, Khalti Nesreen drapes a plastic cape around Mama’s thin shoulders while her mother cradles a tiny cup of thick coffee spiced with cardamom in her palm. They laugh at their childhood antics in Palestine and Khalti Nesreen shares tidbits of gossip about the other arrabi immigrants in her husband’s circle, squeezing the plastic bottle of dye until the very last drop. Afaf understands a handful of Arabic words and sentences:
Massari. Money. Frequently uttered.
Bilad. The old country. Tinged with longing.
Ma assalama. Goodbye. At the end of long-distance phone calls, sometimes through choked tears.
Between the sisters, the crescendo in their voices signals an intimate merriment before their volume dips and sniffles replace laughter and Afaf hears Baba’s name: Mahmood. She wonders how two syllables could carry such anger and bitterness each time Mama utters the name. Afaf understands little of her parents’ marriage. At times, she finds them at the kitchen table, Baba in the middle of a story about a mishap at the plastics factory, and Mama laughs long and hard, her shoulders shaking as she spoons dinner onto his plate, grains of rice scattering off the edge. Other times, Afaf catches them at the kitchen sink, Baba reaching for Mama’s waist, her hands soapy and wet, and she elbows him in the stomach, pushing Baba away, her lips pursed.
As Mama whines into the phone about Nada,
Afaf wants to touch her arm, to soothe her, but it feels like she’s reaching out to a hot pan of frying oil. Afaf thinks better of it. This is not like the perpetual tears streaming down Mama’s temples, soaking the pillowcase. Mama is afraid, and this makes Afaf afraid. She looks down at Mama’s dingy house slippers, once snow-white, now the color of dirty dishwater, before grabbing Majeed’s hand and pulling him away.
They change into their pajamas and plop down on the blue velour sofa bed where Majeed sleeps in the front room. They stay out of Mama’s way as she clanks dishes, slams kitchen drawers, muttering to herself. Her brother huddles next to Afaf and they watch Three’s Company, a show that usually makes them roar with laughter. Tonight they can barely manage a giggle, for they understand the gravity of the situation: their favorite show always airs after dinner, when Baba has been home for at least an hour. Nada is beyond running late.
Afaf sometimes wonders what her older sister is doing outside of the apartment. Her clothes smell like cigarettes and her hair is disheveled, one barrette hanging lower than the other. She doesn’t dare ask: Nada is secretive, snapping at Afaf to mind your own business.
At the end of the episode, when Mr. Roper stands hoodwinked again by Jack, Baba slinks through the front door and Mama rushes at him. He leans his leather oud case against the wall.
“Where have you been? Do you know Nada hasn’t come home?” she shouts, twisting a dish towel into a rope.
“She’s not home?” Baba looks at Afaf and Majeed as though they can offer him a sensible reason. Her brother begins to whimper. Afaf holds his hand.
Baba turns back to Mama. His work shirt is half tucked in, the back of it flapping over his belt. His name is stitched above a breast pocket along with the factory’s name, Dyer Plastic. It’s one of two Mama washes by hand at night and hangs over the bathroom tub. By morning it’s dry enough for Baba to slip on again. “Where could she be?”
“This morning she told me she was going over to Laura’s.” Mama rolls the r in the other girl’s name so it no longer sounds American. “To study for a science test, I think.” She pulls at the dish towel like a tug-of-war between her hands.
“Tayib, tayib.” Baba takes a tentative step toward her as though gauging her instinct to reject him, a gesture Afaf recognizes as a child who’s also been held at arm’s length by her mother. Mama’s fingers untangle and braid hair, they straighten the collar of her dress on picture day, wipe her running nose when she’s got a cold. But she can’t remember the last time her mother’s hands caressed her cheeks, or her slender arms pulled Afaf in for a hug. Baba gently clasps Mama’s shoulders. “I’m sure she lost track of time, Muntaha. Did you call Laura’s parents?”
Mama looks like she’s been slapped in the face and jerks away. “No. But where have you been so late while I’ve been worrying myself to death?” Her cheeks flush pink.
Baba walks to the kitchen. “What’s Laura’s number?”
Mama’s anger swells, squeezing out the sheer panic that has been filling the apartment. “Tell me why you’re so late, Mahmood. Ah? More overtime, or were you with that sharmoota again?”
Sharmoota. Another Arabic word Afaf hears Mama spit out between sniffles at the kitchen table with her sister, uttered in connection to a woman Afaf doesn’t know. Khalti Nesreen sucks her teeth, squirts more dye from the bottle: ts, ts, ts . . .
“Bas, ya, Muntaha!” Baba scolds, his voice trailing in the hallway. “I told you a hundred times, I’ve been rehearsing with the band.”
Baba doesn’t own a car. He takes two buses to the factory—sometimes one, when his bandmate Ziyad picks him up during the winter months. Afterward they rehearse in a small detached garage belonging to a third bandmate, Amjad.
Mama shuffles after him. Afaf jumps from the sofa bed, Majeed scrambling behind her, and they follow their parents. Majeed wipes his snivel on the sleeve of his Scooby Doo pajamas.
“Aywa! You’re out playing with your cursed instrument, not a care in the world!” Mama punctuates each accusing word with a stab of her dish towel in the air. She remembers the fava bean stew and turns off the stovetop, slamming down a wooden spoon. Afaf and Majeed jump at the sound.
Baba pulls a slip of paper tacked on the side of the fridge with a magnet shaped like an apple. Afaf recognizes it as a sheet taken from her stationery pad, the one bordered with circus animals. She won it at the Valentine’s Day party last year in the third grade for throwing five ping-pong balls in a row of buckets, like on The Bozo Show.
Still, it hadn’t impressed Julie McNulty or Amber Reeves, the two most beautiful girls in her class. They would never invite Afaf to their birthday parties. That day, Afaf had proudly held her prize and Julie sidled up to her. You didn’t give Amber a chance to win it. Don’t be stingy, A-faf. You don’t really want it, do you? She’d glanced at Amber, who stood silently watching Afaf, arms crossed, blue eyes glittering with tears that never fell. Without a word, Afaf handed over the prize to Julie. For the rest of the party, Afaf stood in the corner of the classroom, looking down at her empty hands. At the end of the games, she watched as Julie and Amber, their arms full of homemade heart-shaped cards, stood at the front of the line like they always did when the class filed out. On Amber’s desk was the coveted prize; she’d carelessly left it behind. Afaf swiped it back—it was rightfully hers, after all, though she had relinquished it so quickly.
“Afaf.” Her brother tugs the hem of her pajama top. They linger in the doorframe of their parents’ bedroom, across from the kitchen table, out of their way.
“Shush, Maj!” She puts a finger to her lips and her brother’s eyes widen. He nods, and they silently watch Baba squint at the list of names Mama compiled. She wrote the names in Arabic—strange characters to Afaf, the letters strung together like charms on a necklace, broken in some places. The numbers are printed in English.
“Hallo? Yes, this Mahmood Rahman speaking,” Baba stammers into the phone. “Mahmood Rah—eh—Nada’s father. Yes. Fine. And you?”
Mama stands close to Baba, her jaw set tight, her eyes shining. Her earlier dread returns, the anger toward Baba seeping out of her face. All that matters now is Nada coming home.
2
AFAF’S SISTER was born in 1959 in Mama’s childhood house in Palestine. When they finally received sponsorship from his cousin, her father packed up his new family for America. He waited tables at a diner during the day and visited Chicago’s Gold Coast nightclubs like the Pump Room, where Sinatra infamously had a private booth. Baba failed to persuade club owners to give him a chance.
He was no Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash. His oud sung melancholic tunes, too exotic or “Oriental,” as they called it. “Folks like to dance around here,” they told Baba, shaking their heads at his potbellied oud.
His luck was no better in the South Side blues joints. Some of the managers were fascinated by Baba’s instrument—the downturned peg box, the way the notes on the downstroke bounced away when he transitioned to the upstroke.
But in the end:
“You ain’t singing in English, you ain’t singing here,” Baba recalls when Afaf climbs into his lap for stories of his musical life.
Baba’s parents were forced out of their home in Haifa in 1950. They had one hour to pack up all of their belongings while the Jewish settlers kept close guard, pointing their rifles at them. His mother tucked the key to the stone entrance of their stolen home in a pouch sewn inside her peasant dress and they breathed in the sea for the last time.
“You could smell the salt of the sea from our window,” Baba told Afaf. She wondered how it must have been for Baba to once have an entire sea and now merely a lake, though to Afaf, Lake Michigan appeared boundless during the summertime when Baba took them to the lakefront, outside the Adler Planetarium, to watch sailboats moving across the horizon.
Baba was a young boy when his father left them with a family in the West Bank, in search of work and a new home across the river in Jordan. They never heard from him again. Hi
s mother later died of a respiratory infection and he and his siblings were separated; two sisters were taken to El Khalil to live with a widowed aunt, and he and his older brother Jameel stayed behind with a foster family in Ramallah. While he attended school, Jameel apprenticed with a local blacksmith, hammering metal from early morning until the late afternoon prayer. The year Baba turned thirteen, his brother was kicked and trampled by a donkey on his way to the souk to barter goods for the blacksmith.
Baba was all alone in the world. The foster family was kind, but they could not quell Baba’s passion for music, a useless vocation. He cut school and spent time with a villager who taught him to play the oud. Blind Wajee—Wajee al-Amee—procured a secondhand lute for Baba and trained his young fingers to strum and hold the strings.
“Was he born blind?” Afaf asks, her imagination stretching with faces and places of her father’s first life. His second one began with Mama.
“La, la,” Baba tells her. “Wajee was a member of a royal British orchestra in Jerusalem. He lost his sight in a terrible explosion during a riot.” He kisses the top of Afaf’s head. “But he never stopped playing, mashallah.”
Not to be discouraged from all the rejections in Chicago, Baba enlisted a couple of fellow immigrants who worked at Dyer Plastic—Ziyad, a Palestinian from a small neighboring village who could play a heart-fluttering ney flute; and Amjad, an Egyptian percussionist who could seamlessly move between tabla and tambourine. They formed Baladna and played at arrabi weddings around the city. During the week, they lifted and drove pallets of resin at the plastics factory, carving out a new life for their young wives and their new American children.
Afaf loved to look at the black-and-white photographs from a shoebox her mother stored in a hallway closet, their winter coats grazing the lid. They are pictures she thinks she knows by heart, but then a new detail emerges like the way the feathery clouds obscure the sun, or how Baba’s coat collar is turned up on one side. Her favorite is of Baba standing on the beach at the Dead Sea. He’s wearing a pair of pressed slacks and a white button-down shirt. His hands are thrust deep into his pockets and he’s squinting at the camera, a smile dancing across his lips.
The Beauty of Your Face Page 2