The Beauty of Your Face

by Sahar Mustafah

  “My best friend Bassim took that picture,” he tells Afaf every time she holds it up for both of them to see. “Poor boy died of cancer of the blood. Maskeen.”

  Back in the old country, a young Baba honed his music while working at a muhmasa in Al Bireh, roasting watermelon and pumpkin seeds sold by the kilo.

  Afaf pulls out another dog-eared photograph. In it her mother poses with a group of girls, their arms linked, sporting beehives and kohl-rimmed eyes. Mama is the tallest, standing in the middle.

  “I loved your mother’s dress,” Baba tells Afaf, tapping the photograph. “You can’t tell here, but it was a beautiful green mokhmal—velvet with lace down her back. It was the first time I saw your mother.”

  But no photograph in the untidy pile in the shoebox could reveal the early turbulent periods of her parents’ marriage. After Nada was born, Mama refused to have any more children until Baba had settled into a stable job and they could move out of his cousin’s bungalow on Fifty-Third and Fairfield Avenue. They constantly fought and Mama had threatened to return overseas. It was an empty threat—they could barely make rent, let alone acquire a plane ticket.

  When they could afford an apartment of their own, her mother conceived Afaf, seven years after Nada. Afaf often wonders what sort of child might have come after Nada. If her parents had continued having children immediately after Nada was born, who might exist between her older sister and Afaf? Would she still have been born? It seemed unlikely to Afaf when she watched Mama move around the apartment, a nervous energy causing her to spill glasses of milk and drop plates, their sound clattering down Afaf’s spine as they hit the floor.

  Mama is slow to smile at her and Majeed, though her eyes light up whenever Nada is home. It was the two of them for so long, Afaf and Majeed were like interlopers. Mama and Nada had been newcomers to this country though Nada has no trace of an accent, no recollection of olive groves and herds of sheep. For seven years, her only daughter had filled the void of the loneliness in a new country. Afaf finds in the shoebox a Polaroid of Nada, an olive-skinned, chubby toddler, bare-chested, and seated on a blanket spread over grass, with the children of Baba’s cousin with whom they’d lived. And another shows Mama holding Nada as she stands next to Baba at someone’s birthday party, his arm lazily draped around her shoulders, balloons floating behind them. There’s something in her mother’s face that looks like tentative joy—not a full smile, but her green eyes twinkle with mirth. When Afaf arrived, followed three years later by Majeed, they were merely more mouths to feed.

  Baba twirls the phone cord and avoids looking at Mama. “Can I talk to Nada, please?” An interminable pause. “When? Two hours ago?”

  Mama gasps, bringing the dish towel to her lips. Baba silences her with a wave of his hand. Majeed clasps Afaf’s pajama top again, but he doesn’t tug. He only holds on.

  “No, no. That’s why I call you.” Her father’s broken English makes Afaf even more afraid—how can they get answers if others can’t understand Baba? Still, he is more fluent than Mama, who looks lost and flustered at the first error she commits in public places.

  Afaf remembers, on a visit to the cousin’s house, when Mama had taken the wrong bus all the way to the North Side. Though she was only four or five years old, Afaf still can glimpse the sun shining on Lake Michigan, the bus ambling along the lakefront. Her mother’s face tightened and her eyes glistened. She instructed Nada to ask another passenger how to get home. Majeed, a baby, cried on her mother’s lap while Mama bounced him. He kept reaching for an empty milk bottle in her hand.

  It is Baba who registers them for school each fall, one of the only fathers in line, the white mothers smiling coquettishly at him, this dark and smiling handsome man. Afaf proudly holds his hand. And it is Baba who translates Mama’s questions about vaccinations and fevers at the public health clinic on Ashland Avenue, the doctor’s needle poised next to Afaf’s bare arm. And it is Baba who gently squeezes Afaf’s hand when the first awful sting occurs. Mama is in charge of all of their important paperwork—birth certificates, medical cards, the lease. Though she can’t always decipher them, she keeps them safely tucked in a plastic folder with a rubber band clasp.

  “Should we call the police?” Mama asks once Baba has run through the short list of names. “Ya rubbi! Where is she?”

  Baba is quiet for some time. He looks at Afaf and Majeed, his eyes clouded over like he’s working out something in his head. The aroma of fava bean stew is sickly in the air. “What else can we do?” He lifts the phone from its mount and dials.

  Twenty-four hours later, two white police officers, a man and a woman, arrive at the apartment, and a word is tossed around: runaway.

  “In most of these cases, teenagers disappear for a few days if they’re mad at their folks,” one officer tells them. They wait for Afaf’s parents to offer any details of an embroiling argument.

  “She is happy,” Mama declares, tears streaming down her face. Baba guides her to a kitchen chair.

  Afaf isn’t sure that’s true. She pictures Nada and her white friends in their bedroom—the record player stays on an endless loop of “Made in the Shade.” She’s kicked Afaf out and threatened to beat her if Afaf persisted in knocking on the door. How many times had she caught Nada rolling her eyes at the other girls when Mama interrupted them asking if they were staying for dinner, a pot of maklooba emitting the pungent aroma of fried cauliflower and eggplant? Or how many times had she observed her sister’s cheeks flush with embarrassment when Mama, in her nightgown and dingy house slippers in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, answered the door to a classmate who’d come to work with Nada on a school project?

  And her parents never let her sister go to sleepovers, though Nada begged Mama every time she received an invitation.

  “Ayb! A young girl never sleeps outside of her father’s home! Shame!” Mama’s green eyes blazed at Nada. These were the only occasions when she became upset with her firstborn.

  There was a standoff in the kitchen one time over a camping trip, Nada and Mama the same height. They are opposites in every other way: Mama’s soft hair escapes from a loose braid down her back, while barrettes barely contain Nada’s thick waves. Mama’s complexion is like a pale custard; Nada’s skin is an olive hue—the same as Afaf’s. But it doesn’t matter to Mama. Nada is her world.

  After giving up the fight, Nada slammed their bedroom door shut, startling Afaf, who lay sprawled on the floor reading The Pinballs, a book she’d checked out from the library. It had been Nada who’d taken her to get a library card, who’d shown her where to print her name and guided her to the fiction shelves for books Afaf had instantly loved before she even read them.

  Her sister threw herself on her bed. “I can’t stand it here! I hate her! I hate both of them!”

  Afaf didn’t speak while her sister seethed, afraid Nada would pounce on her.

  “Don’t you hate it here?” Nada demanded. “We’re Americans but they don’t want us to act like it.”

  Afaf had silently considered this, never having quite felt like she ever belonged the same way Julie McNulty and Amber Reeves fit into the world like perfect puzzle pieces. And there was Mama, too, who seemed to love Nada most. Afaf squeezes in and out of spaces, trying not to make a noise around the apartment and at school. But Nada is bold and fearless. So different from her. So different from Mama.

  Perhaps such a burden would make any child want to run away, Afaf thinks as the officers question her parents. Perhaps Nada had endured enough from the times she was required to ask strangers for directions on buses because her mother couldn’t summon the words or courage.

  “Please,” Baba tells the officers. “Nada is a good girl. She never run away.”

  “Are her belongings or any personal items gone?” The female officer’s thick body strains against her uniform, one designed for a man. Her ash-blond hair is pulled into a bun at the base of her cap. Static crackles through her walkie-talkie.

  Afaf has alre
ady checked. Most of Nada’s clothes are still in the wooden dresser Baba brought home from the Salvation Army—Afaf is allotted only one to Nada’s two drawers. The bottom one is broken, and that’s where she found her sister’s diary. Nada wrote in it every night, shooing Afaf out of their room before she took it out and later stowed it away. On a hunch, Afaf carefully slides open the lopsided drawer. Wrapped in a red bandanna is Nada’s diary. But she doesn’t tell anyone she found it. She slipped it under her own mattress for the time being.

  “Did your daughter have a boyfriend?” the male officer asks. He’s a head taller than Baba, with pork chop sideburns. He’s chewing gum, smacking it between sentences. “A fella we might talk to?”

  “Boyfriend?” Baba looks confused. “Nada does not have boyfriend.”

  “Maybe not one you’re aware of, sir.” The female officer jots something down on her notepad. “Her friends might be of help on that point,” she says to her partner.

  The officer nods, smacking his gum. “’Gainst your religion, sir?”

  “Well, it’s . . .” Baba falters.

  Afaf cringes. Her parents’ humiliation and fear shrink the apartment. The police officers loom over them, exchanging disapproving smirks. Majeed huddles next to her in the doorway of their parents’ bedroom.

  “We’ll go have a talk with her friends,” the female officer says.

  Afaf sees something deflate in Baba. He nods at the officers. There is nothing more to say. This frightens Afaf. Baba is the strong one, not given to hysterics like Mama. The look of despair on his face shifts something in Afaf’s stomach.

  When Mama sees the police officers close their pads, she starts to wail. “No, no! You must bring her back! Please! She my baby girl! My Nada!”

  Baba peels her away and forcibly sits her down on the kitchen chair. He walks behind the officers, who are already heading out the back door.

  Afaf follows them, halting at the top of the stairs. Mrs. Blakely, the landlady, is standing halfway inside her screen door, holding it open as she speaks to the police.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Afaf hears the old woman say.

  “Nothing like that, ma’am,” the male officer assures her.

  3

  THREE DAYS later, they still have no leads. They’ve questioned a young man who claims to be her ex-boyfriend, but he’s been cleared.

  “He’s a harmless kid. Wouldn’t hurt a fly,” the male officer tells Baba.

  Her father is silent for a moment, then translates for Mama, though she’s already throwing her head back and forth, denying this information before Baba’s finished talking. Their daughter is gradually turning into a stranger, like a kaleidoscope morphing into a new image, the same colors taking a different shape. Afaf’s parents have lost someone they never knew.

  “We’ll be in touch with any news,” the police assure them.

  That night, Afaf pulls out Nada’s diary and opens it for the first time. A soft rain patters against the window. October’s close, the leaves on the maple trees that line the block have started to turn flaming red.

  The cover of the diary is full of rainbow stickers and cut-out images of ABBA. The inside page reads: PRIVATE! For Nada’s Eyes ONLY!

  Afaf opens to the first entry, dated last year:

  September 7, 1975

  Dear Diary,

  She’s driving me bananas. A BAZILLION questions! Where are you going? Who were you with? She’s so nosey. I can’t stand it anymore.

  Anyway, J. gave me a charm necklace today, like the choker Agnetha Fältskog wears from ABBA.

  I it!!!

  He’s super nice to me. He tells me I’m pretty though girls at school are a hundred times prettier than me. I don’t feel weird or different around him. He doesn’t tease me like the other creeps he hangs around (his friends = phonies). I’m starting to like him-like him.

  Gotta go! She’s calling me AGAIN.

  Yours Truly,

  Nada

  Afaf flips through the pages to another entry:

  November 21, 1975

  Dear Diary,

  I hate my life. I hate J. He dumped me for Stephanie Brighton. He lied to me.

  Everything about me is WRONG, right down to my dumb name. “Nothing’s here! Nothing’s here!” The boys tease me.

  Everything I HATE:

  1. my dumb hair

  2. my gross skin

  3. my HUMONGOUS nose

  I wish I’d never been born.

  I want to SCREEEEEAM in her face to LEAVE ME ALONE. She doesn’t have a clue. All she does is—

  Mama snatches the diary from Afaf’s hands. She didn’t hear her mother come into her room. Afaf’s hands are still open, suspended for a few seconds as though she’s waiting for something to fall into them. She folds them in her lap and swallows her fear.

  “What’s this?” Mama demands, flipping through the pages, though she cannot read her daughter’s handwriting. “Does it belong to Nada?”

  Afaf nods.

  “Where did you get it, Afaf?”

  She’s silent, her heart thudding in her ears.

  “Where?” Mama yanks her off the floor. Her eyes are a tumultuous green sea.

  Afaf winces at the sharp flash of pain in her shoulder. “In the drawer,” she whimpers. “I just found it.”

  “Mahmood! Ta’al! Ta’al!” Mama calls out.

  Afaf instantly forgets the throbbing in her arm, worried Baba will be disappointed if he finds out she’d been hiding Nada’s diary.

  Baba appears in the doorway, his eyebrows furrowed. “Khair, khair! What’s happened?”

  Mama shows him the diary. “It’s Nada’s.”

  Baba slowly reaches for it as though it’s some kind of ancient text, portending doom.

  “What does it say?” Mama asks, sidling up beside Baba, gripping his arm.

  He shakes his head. “Afaf, read to us.” Baba extends the diary to her. He and Mama sit on Nada’s bed.

  When Nada was out with her friends, Mama always asked Afaf to read directions on a new appliance or a late notice from the electric company. Afaf would feel superior, possessing something she hadn’t inherited, something for which her mother was not responsible. But reading her sister’s diary out loud to her parents feels awful, as though Afaf’s reading a dirty magazine, like the one Bobby Jamison had brought to school one day and hid in his desk. Somebody told, and her teacher rolled it up with a rubber band and sent Bobby to the principal’s office with it.

  Afaf peers over the diary at her parents. They look tired like they’re battling the flu, their strength zapped from them. Afaf notices a deep line in Baba’s forehead that wasn’t there before. Mama’s mouth is turned down in a way that seems permanent to Afaf.

  “Yalla,” Baba commands.

  Afaf squeaks through each entry, her face flushing as though her sister’s words are her own. Nada’s alienation and self-loathing pour from the pages, each sentence stumbling from Afaf’s lips like a script she’s delivering, a part she isn’t old enough to play. The last entry is dated earlier that summer: June 22, 1976. Nada’s seventeenth birthday. But her sister left the rest of the page blank.

  “Who’s ‘she’?” Mama turns to Baba. “Is she talking about me?” Her mother’s eyes well up with tears and her lips tremble.

  When she’d first found her sister’s diary, Afaf soaked up Nada’s anger toward their mother. But now, seeing the deep sense of betrayal flush Mama’s cheeks, Afaf feels hollow inside. Nada’s words are like tiny daggers, stabbing Mama’s heart.

  Ten more days pass and Nada hasn’t come home. Afaf fills in the square on her calendar with a strawberry-scented marker she traded at school for a sheet of puffy stickers. She sniffs the tip before replacing the cap.

  On a late Thursday afternoon—laundry day—Afaf and Majeed trail Mama on the sidewalk as she rolls a wire basket full of their dirty clothes five blocks to Kedzie Avenue. A jar full of change clanks on top of the load. At the Soap N’ Suds Laundromat, her
mother breaks down when she pulls out a pair of Nada’s blue jeans, the bottoms frayed. Afaf quickly orders Majeed to help her sort the colors from the whites as she’s seen her mother do each week, and they proceed with the laundry as Mama lays her head on the folding table. Afaf grabs the jar of quarters that Mama keeps below the kitchen sink and lets Majeed insert the coins into the machines. Mama sobs, low moans muffled by her folded arm. The other patrons leave her alone, their eyes trained on crossword puzzles, or they stare straight ahead at the automatic dryers where piles of clothes toss and twirl.

  Much to Afaf’s embarrassment, Baba called the principal at Nightingale Elementary School. Mrs. Belmont, her teacher, pays more attention to her now—more than just to give her extra reading time, though Afaf doesn’t need it. She yearns to be a Cardinal—the top-tier reading group. Those students gather near the windows decorated with butterflies cut from construction paper, read silently from books like Treasure Island and The Summer of the Swans, books Afaf can easily read if she were given a chance. When no one is watching, she goes to a freestanding bookshelf against the back wall of the classroom and peruses a stack assigned to the Cardinals—they have red dot stickers on their spines—and runs her fingers across their hard spines. Afaf might have been happy to be a Blue Jay, too, but Mrs. Belmont keeps her with the Owls, the lowest reading tier. There are only three of them in this group: a white boy with thick spectacles and a speech impediment, and the only other arrabi child in her class, Wisam, whom Afaf also suspects could be a Cardinal if their teacher would only give them both a chance.

  Mrs. Belmont stops her as everyone shuffles out the door at the end of the day and tells Afaf not to worry about “the situation at home.” Afaf is unhappy with the interest her teacher has suddenly developed in her; the other kids look at her, mouths open in curiosity. She refuses to utter a word about Nada’s disappearance.