The Beauty of Your Face

by Sahar Mustafah

  “Is Nada gone?” Majeed asks Afaf again.

  “Yes,” she tells him, balling up the wrapper and throwing it at the ceiling. “She’s gone.”

  5

  FIFTY-FOUR DAYS pass. The leaves have fallen off the maple trees that line the street. Afaf and Majeed can no longer go outside without a coat and hat. Soon Christmas lights will border the windows and rooftops of the neighbors’ houses. Though her family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, it is Afaf’s favorite time of year. Baba takes her and Majeed for long walks around blocks of bungalows decorated with nativity scenes and snowmen with round bellies glowing with a warm yellow light.

  Khalti Nesreen comes every other weekend. Mama returns to cooking and Afaf is grateful for that—her mother is a far superior cook than her aunt. She comes home from school each day and the aroma of broiled lamb and tomato stews spiced with baharat welcomes her. It almost feels like life is returning to normal.

  Baba has begun to stay away again. He spends half his time rehearsing with his band, the other half with another woman. Afaf overhears her mother talking about her to Khalti Nesreen.

  “How much more can I endure, ya Nesreen?” Mama wails to her younger sister. “Ya rubbi! What kind of life is this?”

  They are plucking the stems of mlookhiya over sheets of newspaper spread across the kitchen table. Her aunt found a fresh bundle at a grocery in Milwaukee. A big bowl sits between them, a small mound of green leaves forming in it.

  Afaf sits on the floor of her bedroom, her door ajar. All she can gather is that the other woman is arabiya—a singular affront to both her mother and aunt. Afaf wonders if it would be easier if it had been a white woman who’d stolen Baba.

  After lunch one weekend, Afaf musters the courage to ask Khalti Nesreen, “Does Baba love another woman?”

  She stands on a step stool beside her aunt at the sink, drying the dishes she carefully hands to Afaf. She broke a small dessert plate the last time Afaf begged to help. A portable television drones in her parents’ bedroom. Baba bought it from a coworker and Mama accepted it without a word. He managed to fix the antenna until the screen finally cleared of static and images of people cut through.

  Khalti Nesreen stops rinsing a glass and looks hard at Afaf. “What have you heard?”

  Afaf shrugs, trying to be nonchalant.

  Her aunt looks thoughtful for a moment. “You must not repeat a word of this to anyone.”

  Afaf solemnly nods as she rubs a bowl dry. She understands telling a child is like telling no one at all.

  “It’s actually a sad story when you get right down to it,” Khalti Nesreen begins in a low voice, checking behind her for Mama’s closed door. “Her husband was killed in a car crash—God rest his soul. She’s a young woman, only twenty-four. It was naseeb, I guess. Our Lord has mysterious ways of bringing people together.”

  “Does Baba help her forget?” Afaf vigorously dries the bowl.

  Her aunt hands her another one dripping with water. “Yes. I suppose he does love her. But that’s not fair to your mother. Even if the other woman is sad.”

  “Mama’s sad even when Baba’s around.”

  “It’s complicated, habibti. You’ll understand grown-ups better when you get to be one.”

  It’s not an appealing prospect for a ten-year-old girl. Months of observing her parents and their misery have brought her to a critical decision: Afaf will never get married. She would still have to grow up, but she would live on her own. On a farm like Fern in Charlotte’s Web. Of course, she couldn’t raise pigs—they’re haram—but she would raise chickens and cows. Maybe she’d let Majeed come along, too.

  The day before Thanksgiving is a half day of school. She and Majeed run home, jumping over puddles of rain, her brother careful not to damage the colorful turkey he’s constructed from an outline of his hand. It’s the same one she’d made at his age, one of many childish creations she’d present to Mama after what seemed like hours of carefully coloring inside the lines or delicately gluing cut pieces onto brown construction paper. For Majeed, it’s yet another gift for Mama, like a potion that might break the spell of gloom—Afaf can see hope in her brother’s face. Their mother’s dresser is lined with macaroni art, a papier-mâché jack-o’-lantern, a color-by-number bouquet of flowers. Mama smiles at each offering, asks Majeed to explain how he’d made it, then she withdraws to her inner world. But, for a few moments, a curtain is drawn from her face and Majeed and Afaf can see someone vaguely familiar.

  As soon as Afaf opens the back door, she senses something is wrong. The kitchen counter is full of half-peeled, half-sliced vegetables, and dinner plates have been smashed on the floor.

  “Mama?” Majeed calls. He clutches his hand-turkey, eyes wide and afraid.

  Inside her parents’ bedroom, Baba’s clothes are strewn everywhere. Mama’s suitcase is laid open, a few of her dresses crumpled inside. It looks like someone was trying to escape but their plan was somehow foiled. Afaf’s heart beats fast.

  “Children?”

  It’s Mrs. Blakely, the landlady. Afaf grabs Majeed’s hand and leads him back to the kitchen.

  “Hello!” The old woman waves a hand, clutching the back of a chair. She’s out of breath from climbing the stairs, and she’s not wearing her wig. Her thin gray strands hang limply from her scalp. Afaf’s stomach ripples with fear. “Your mother—she’s not well.”

  “Where is she?” Afaf asks. Her palm feels slick against her brother’s, but she won’t let go. Majeed sniffles back tears.

  “Your father’s with her.” Mrs. Blakely wipes her nose with a handkerchief she pulls from her sweater pocket.

  “Where?”

  “He’ll talk to you as soon as he gets back.” Mrs. Blakely grabs Majeed’s hand. “Watch out for that broken glass. Oh, dear! What a mess!” She pats his cheek. “Come downstairs for some hot chocolate and marshmallows. Wouldn’t you like that, sweetie?”

  Her brother looks at Afaf, not certain if he should concede amid the chaos. Afaf nods at him and he wipes his nose with the sleeve of his coat. He sets the hand-turkey on the kitchen table and nods at Mrs. Blakely.

  She holds up his project with liver-spotted hands. “How lovely! Did you make that for your mother? I’m sure she’ll love it, dear.”

  Mrs. Blakely’s apartment is tidy and sprayed in baby-blue paint everywhere you look. Afaf detects a strange odor—mothballs. There’s a small piano in the front room, its lid covered with framed photographs. Most are black-and-white, scenes on a farm and in front of a white church. Mrs. Blakely had once been a pretty woman.

  She sets them at the kitchen table with hot cocoa. They drop marshmallows in their steaming cups. Afaf watches a fluffy cloud swirl in the brown liquid.

  In her bedroom, Mrs. Blakely speaks on the telephone in what she thinks is a low voice. Afaf puts a finger to her lips to stifle Majeed’s anxious chatter and listens to the old woman as she describes the drama that was unleashed in her tenants’ apartment. Mrs. Blakley had heard screaming—not those of an attack, but of sheer rage, she tells the listener on the phone. “Like a banshee out of hell!” Then dishes shattering. “I called Ma-mood at the factory and he came straight home, poor fellow. Took her straight to the emergency room.”

  Then an unfamiliar phrase emerges from Mrs. Blakely’s one-sided conversation: nervous breakdown.

  Two hours later, Baba knocks on the door. Afaf and Majeed run to answer, Mrs. Blakely in tow. He thanks the old woman.

  “Yalla, loolad,” he tells them.

  “When’s Mama coming home?” Majeed asks, clutching Baba’s hand. “Are we gonna visit her?”

  Upstairs, Baba gives each of them a brown paper grocery bag from a neatly folded stack Mama keeps tucked under the kitchen sink. Her mother rarely throws away anything. There’s a drawer full of ketchup and mustard packets, extra twisty-ties for garbage bags, and rubber bands from weekly discount ads tossed outside their apartment door.

  He tells them to fill the bags with clothes—a week
’s worth. Afaf helps Majeed and grabs the Hair album, not thinking whether or not Khalti Nesreen has a record player. That’s all Baba has told them: they will be spending Thanksgiving with their aunt. It is the first time they have been to her house.

  Ziyad, Baba’s bandmate, drives them to Kenosha. They each exhale their cigarette smoke through a slit in their car window. There’s a musbaha hanging from the rearview mirror. On the cassette player, Arabic ballads pour out against a background of static. Baba speaks in a low voice and Ziyad nods and sometimes says, “Khair inshallah. You must have patience, my brother.” Ziyad winks at Afaf in the rearview mirror and she tries to smile back, but she feels too glum.

  6

  KHALTI NESREEN’S house is a white colonial with green shutters. Ziyad drives up a long driveway, past a mailbox post stenciled with roses. The closest house seems a mile away. There is a small pond in the backyard and an expansive lawn. An oak tree stands in the center, a wooden swing attached to it. On the west side of the house is a tidy berm with a wrought-iron bench. A red-painted birdhouse at the edge of the driveway instantly captivates Majeed.

  He tugs on her coat sleeve. “Do birds live in it?”

  Afaf shrugs her shoulders, curious, too. This new vista on nature is overwhelming. She’s used to Chicago’s straight lines, block after block of bungalows, and two-story houses buttressed by long staircases. Her aunt’s neighborhood winds and dips, and contains more trees than she’s ever seen in one place.

  Baba escorts them to the door, carrying their paper bags stuffed with their clothes like groceries. He politely refuses Khalti Nesreen’s invitation to come inside, nodding his head at his friend waiting in the car.

  “I need to get back to Muntaha.” Baba looks haggard and sad. A few white whiskers have crept into his mustache.

  He drops down to his knees and gathers Afaf and Majeed in his arms.

  “What happened to Mama?” she whispers in his ear.

  Baba’s eyes shine with tears that he blinks back. “She needs to rest for a while, habibti.” He smiles and pats Afaf’s cheek. He tickles Majeed’s stomach. “Now go on, and don’t give your aunt any trouble.”

  After she closes the door behind Baba, Khalti Nesreen pulls each of them close to her and kisses them on the forehead and nose. “Welcome, ya loolad!”

  Majeed squirms out of her grip. “Khalti! Do birds live in that house?”

  “What house, habibi?”

  “The birdhouse!”

  “I don’t know, my love. You’ll have to ask your uncle.”

  “When’s Mama coming home?” Afaf asks.

  “She’s on a mishwar,” her aunt says, smoothing Afaf’s bangs out of her eyes. “A little trip. To relax and get better.”

  “But her suitcase is still at home,” Afaf says.

  “She won’t need much on this trip, habibti. It’s a short one. She’ll be back before you know it. Now come help me with this tabbouleh.” Khalti Nesreen leads the way to the kitchen.

  Her aunt’s words eerily echo from that day she assured Afaf and Majeed that Nada would also return.

  Afaf drops her body down on a chair and sullenly squeezes the lemon halves into a bowl.

  “Afaf,” her aunt says, lifting her chin. Her fingers are fragrant with parsley. “Everything will be fine.” She winks at Afaf and resumes chopping. Um Kalthum sings from a transistor radio with a cassette player. Mama always hummed the lyrics when she cleaned the house.

  At dinner, Khalti Nesreen’s husband regards them with detached courtesy, offering them orange juice from a glass jug instead of Coca-Cola like Mama does at home. Ammo Yahya and Khalti Nesreen talk about the hospital and his patients.

  “These amarkan are insufferable,” he complains. “They ask a hundred questions about a simple procedure.”

  “You work very hard, my love,” her aunt says. She spoons more tabbouleh onto his plate and checks the status of Afaf’s and Majeed’s plates. “Sahtain! Eat up!”

  “Are there birds living in that house?” Majeed asks Ammo Yahya.

  “Not anymore,” he says. “They’ve flown south for the winter. They’ll be back in the spring inshallah.”

  Khalti Nesreen chuckles. “I remember when we were kids, an old hajj in our village had over a dozen birdcages. He could hit a target from a kilometer away with his slingshot . . .”

  Afaf chews on a halved slice of khubuz, its edges blackened on the stove. Her mind drifts to Mama and her stomach knots up. How can she possibly miss her mother and still be relieved to be away from her?

  After dinner, her aunt leads Afaf and Majeed to a guest bedroom on one end of the second floor. There’s a bay window with a built-in cushioned bench that overlooks the driveway. Majeed immediately goes to it to observe the birdhouse, kneeling with his forehead pressed against the glass.

  “It’s too dark to see,” he says over his shoulder to Afaf.

  She sits on a small, tidy bed in the center of the room. It’s covered with a floral duvet of the same pattern as the curtains.

  “I’ll bring you an extra pillow, my darlings,” Khalti Nesreen says.

  Under the blanket, Afaf holds Majeed’s hand, the only thing familiar to her in this place. She’s never slept anywhere besides her apartment. Mama’s words echo in the dark: Ayb! A girl should never sleep outside her father’s home. Here in her aunt’s house, Nada’s absence looms in a strange way, like the ceiling fan hanging over Afaf, in a room neither of them had occupied together.

  She stares at the ceiling fan. Where has Nada been sleeping all this time? She’s still alive in Afaf’s consciousness, living somewhere close to her family yet in a place none of them has been. She closes her eyes and runs down all the houses and apartment buildings on Fairfield, the ones on her way to Nightingale Elementary School. Then she scans the stores on the main street she knows—Grocery Land, Soap N’ Suds—and ones she hasn’t been inside before. Has Nada been in any of them? Could she be in one of them right now?

  It’s too alien a thought—Nada being dead. She hasn’t known anyone close to her who’s died. Her friend Sameera missed school for a week to travel to Detroit when her grandfather died. That’s what old people did.

  Outside, it is still—no car horns, no people laughing in an alley. The floor creaks as her aunt and uncle close their bedroom door at the other end of the hallway. Afaf hears a strange hoot—could it be an owl? It’s a sound she believes Nada, too, might have never heard before.

  Khalti Nesreen will host Thanksgiving. There is a small community of expatriates from Egypt and Iraq who live in Kenosha, among them a few physicians and their families whom Afaf’s uncle has invited. Afaf can tell Khalti Nesreen is very nervous and doesn’t want to disappoint her husband.

  She bastes the turkey, curlers in her hair the size of soda cans and a frilly apron wrapped around her knit turtleneck dress. Her Marie Claire magazine is propped open on the kitchen counter, a juicy, golden-roasted turkey taking up the centerfold. A bit of flour dusts the corner of an “Easy Turkey Day” recipe. Her aunt recites each direction out loud as she performs it, less clumsy in English than her mother. Afaf doesn’t recall Mama ever consulting a magazine or a cookbook. There was no need: Afaf doubts the suppers they normally ate—maklooba and waraq dawali—could be found anywhere in a recipe book.

  Khalti Nesreen permits Afaf to set the table, then returns and rearranges the silverware, approving everything else.

  “Okay—I think we’re all set,” she says. “Let me do your hair, Afaf. Yalla! Before the guests arrive.”

  She pads up the carpeted staircase in fluffy pink slippers. Afaf remembers how her mother’s dingy slippers had once swallowed Khalti Nesreen’s feet.

  The guests include a childless couple, newlyweds like Khalti Nesreen and Ammo Yahya. The woman has a hooked nose that makes her appear unkind. Her husband constantly blows his nose, much to his wife’s annoyance, his handkerchief sliding in and out of his pocket like a magician practicing his act. He ogles Khalti Nesreen each time she
stands up to serve or replenish a dish.

  There’s an older couple with two daughters close to Afaf’s age. She attempts a polite smile at them, but they only snicker and whisper in each other’s ears. Afaf tugs uncomfortably at the French braid Khalti Nesreen fashioned for her, adorned with a pink ribbon at its end.

  The adults give Afaf and Majeed pitiable looks and wear phony smiles as though everything is okay. An ache churns in her stomach. Majeed is oblivious, amazed by the impressive spread Khalti Nesreen has laid out.

  Though the turkey looks rather pathetic—its skin is still pale, not at all golden like the magazine photograph—there are platters of Middle Eastern dishes to steer attention away from her aunt’s failed assimilation: mahshi koosa simmered in yogurt sauce; oozi rice with spicy ground beef, carrots and peas; chicken musakhan with tangy sumac. Yet it is the lamb roast that wins everyone’s approval. The charred fat still sizzles in the foil-lined pan. Khalti Nesreen beams with pride.

  The children sit at a small folding table with stiff metal chairs. One of the girls keeps kicking Afaf’s shin and apologizes insincerely.

  More than ever Afaf wants to be home—she wants Mama home—celebrating Thanksgiving in their tiny apartment despite her parents’ bickering. Mama always prepared chicken stuffing and candied yams and her turkey was perfectly roasted. And a pan of her mother’s delicious waraq dawali was set out among the other dishes. Baba sang and played his oud after they could eat no more. It was the only time of year they all gathered around the table—Baba, Mama, Nada, Majeed, and Afaf—to eat at precisely the same time. It was the closest she’d ever felt like amarkan.

  Afaf wonders if Mama is having turkey and gravy, wherever she is. Does she even know it’s Thanksgiving? Does she miss them?

  And Afaf wonders again about Nada. She fights hard to keep Nada’s face sharp and clear in her mind, though it fades when Afaf’s away from home, where school portraits of Nada hang in the hallway along with hers and Majeed’s outside their bedroom. At her aunt’s house, Nada’s face blurs in her mind, like it’s out of focus. In their apartment at last year’s Thanksgiving, she and Nada broke the wishbone, her sister triumphing like she did every year. At Khalti Nesreen’s table, no one goes for the wishbone from an inedible turkey.