“I chained it to the fence.”
He hands the tall man in the jumpsuit his lottery ticket. “Who told you to leave it there?”
Afaf’s speechless. The old woman gives her a sad smile, shaking her head. Afaf rushes out of the station, her head swimming.
Mama’s right. She is a lost girl.
6
MAJEED KNOCKS on her door. “You okay?” He pokes his head in. His hair’s wet from a shower. “Where have you been?”
Afaf turns over on her bed, faces the wall. “Leave me alone.” It’d taken her a half hour to get home. She had gone straight to her room, Mama still in the kitchen where she’d been when Afaf left hours before.
“So what happened at school?” Her brother speaks with a patient tone, as though he’s the older one.
“None of your business,” she snaps.
Majeed sighs, leans in the doorframe. “Why do you have to act like this, Afaf?”
She whips around to face him. “Should I be perfect like you?”
“I’m not perfect.” His voice drops. “You don’t have to make things worse for Mama. She—”
“You always take her side. Did it ever occur to you that maybe she’s the reason Baba is so miserable? Why he fucking cheated on her?” Her voice drops, too, dangerously low, her words toxic—she wants to poison her brother’s hallowed image of Mama.
It’s the first time the affair has been uttered between her and Majeed. Like everything else in their lives, they’ve always tucked away things over which they have no control, no say.
“That’s not fair, Afaf, and you know it.”
“What do I know? Huh?” All the rage and hurt suddenly bursts in her chest. Her stolen bike, the lash of Rami’s hand, Coach Phillips’s warning, Jell-O in her hair, Michael Wilson and all the other boys.
She buries her face in her pillow and sobs until her eyes are raw. Majeed stands over her, then goes to the record player and slips Hair on from a worn case that’s slowly peeling at the edges. He slides next to her on her bed and wraps his arm around her shoulders. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t make a sound except for his soft breathing near her ear. She doesn’t push him away.
“Easy to Be Hard” comes through the speakers, and she listens with her brother, like they did when they were kids.
The telephone rings. The arm of the record player is skipping.
Afaf rubs her tear-crusted eyes. “What time is it?” Her mouth feels full of cotton. The ringing from the kitchen is interminable.
Majeed bolts for the telephone, and Afaf can hear him in the kitchen as he answers. “Hello? Yes. This is his son.”
Afaf stumbles out of bed. “Who is it?” Her voice sounds hoarse to her, unfamiliar.
Seconds later, Mama’s hand is on Majeed’s shoulder. “Khair!” Her eyes are green with terror.
He holds up a finger, signaling them to be quiet. “Yes, yes. We’ll be right there. Thank you, ma’am.” He replaces the receiver and rubs the back of his head. “Baba had an accident.”
Baba’s crushed body under a load of pallets on the factory floor flashes across Afaf’s mind. She feels dizzy. “Oh, my God!”
“Ya rubbi! What’s happened to you, Mahmood?” Mama wails.
Majeed picks up the phone again, dials a number. It’s two o’clock in the morning. “Hello, Ammo Ziyad. It’s Majeed. No, no. We’re fine. It’s Baba.”
At the hospital, they learn Baba never made it to work at the factory. He slammed his car into a streetlight a few blocks from the apartment. His right eye is swollen shut, his nose broken. His wrist and two of his fingers are broken. His left ankle is sprained. It’s a horrible inventory.
Mama stands over his unconscious body, smoothing his forehead. “Laysh hayk, Mahmood? How did this happen to you?”
Afaf chokes back tears, covering his right hand with her own.
Beside her, Majeed whispers in her ear, “He could have died, Afaf.” His voice is shaky.
“He’s going to be fine,” she says loudly. Tubes snake from his right wrist to a mobile IV stand. A heart monitor blinks above his head. The odor of ammonia and metal is strong. It’s the first time Afaf’s ever been in a hospital. When Mama had taken her “little mishwar” in the past, Afaf and Majeed weren’t allowed to visit. She’d known then it wasn’t a regular hospital.
A white nurse enters with a chart and looks them over. She’s wearing an ugly brown sweater over her pale green scrubs, pulls a pen from an oversized pocket. “It could have been much worse,” she tells them. “Much worse.” She checks Baba’s IV. “I’m Patricia. First shift. Doctor will be in shortly to talk to you. Let me know if you need anything.” She speaks loudly and slowly to them, as though they can’t understand her. It’s a habit Afaf has observed in white people.
Baba’s eyelids flutter, his lips twitch, but he does not wake. A surgeon in pale blue scrubs comes to talk to them. He’s young, his hair parted to the side like a schoolboy’s. “I’m Dr. Morrison. Attending surgeon.” He shakes each of their hands.
“How this happen?” Mama asks, clutching a fistful of soiled tissue paper.
“He was intoxicated”—he glances at his chart—“Mrs. Ra-man.”
Mama stares wild-eyed, not comprehending.
“He was drunk. Blood alcohol level was point-ten when he was admitted.”
Afaf’s mind spins in panicked confusion. Hadn’t he just been holding her in the apartment? You’re a good girl.
A few minutes later, a police officer directs them into the corridor. Ziyad approaches from the waiting room; only family are allowed in the patient’s room. He had driven them to the hospital in dress slacks and sandals. His graying hair is uncombed.
The officer slowly recaps what happened. Her father called his boss from a pay phone at a bar on Ashland Avenue. The bar owner had alerted the police that a man—“A-rab, or Puerto Rican, maybe”—had been drinking all night.
The officer says, “He’s lucky he didn’t kill anyone. The car is totaled.”
Ziyad silently shakes his head, puts a hand on Mama’s shoulder. “La howla wala koowa illa bi lah.”
There are people all over the corridor, nurses rushing past with clear bags of saline, patients in wheelchairs, visitors hugging and clinging to each other as they receive good and bad news. This floor is full of victims: a hit-and-run, people with stabbing and gunshot wounds, kids with broken arms and legs. Across from Baba’s room Afaf can see a pair of hairless legs poking out of their hospital garb. An old woman reads from a Bible at the foot of the bed.
Mama’s sobbing and Majeed wraps an arm around her shoulders. He’s grown taller than her mother—taller than Afaf, too.
After the police officer’s done with them, they leave Mama alone with Baba. Once he’s discharged he’ll be taken into custody for driving under the influence.
Ziyad gives them change for the vending machines, returns to the waiting room. Afaf and Majeed head to the hospital cafeteria.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Majeed says, drinking his Dr Pepper.
Afaf waits for her hot chocolate to finish spewing into a cup. “The nurse said it could have been worse, Maj.”
“He’s going to jail, Afaf!” His voice is shrill and Afaf sees the little boy who’d always clung to her sleeve when they were kids.
She doesn’t say anything more. A DUI. Scenes from her driver’s ed class swarm her mind: terrible reenactments of drivers fumbling with their keys while her classmates snickered; the faces and names of victims scrolling at the end of a segment and a message from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She can’t recall Illinois’ penalty for a first offense. She taps her fingers on the rim of her cup, hoping Majeed doesn’t notice she’s trembling.
The two of them linger in the cafeteria, watching orderlies and nurses on their breaks having toast and cereal. There’s a family of five adults huddled around their Styrofoam cups, shoulders hunched, eyes wet with tears, sniffling between sips of coffee. Her chest inflates with someth
ing she can’t name.
7
WHEN HE’S finally discharged a week later, two Chicago police officers wheel Baba to an armored police van, along with a few other men who have recovered enough from their injuries to be transferred. Mama’s pride keeps her from calling Khalti Nesreen and asking for her husband’s help to post bond for Baba. Instead, she instructs Majeed to dial Ziyad’s number again and he and Baba’s other bandmate Amjad take Mama to the precinct on Twenty-Sixth and California Avenue. She pulls out a small wad of twenty-dollar bills, cash she keeps tucked in her dresser.
“This won’t be enough! Ya rubbi!” she whimpers. She’s been saving it for years, putting a little away from Baba’s checks.
“Don’t worry, Mama,” Majeed assures her. “Ammo Ziyad and Amjad will know what to do.”
It turns out that a first offense in Illinois is considered a misdemeanor. Since Baba has no prior record, a judge fines him five hundred dollars, sentences him to eighteen months of community service, and probation. His license is suspended for ninety days.
Baba’s bandmates pay the fine and bring him home. They carry him two flights of stairs to the apartment. Like her father, both men have aged, but their faces are different than Baba’s. Lines of happiness etch their foreheads and crow’s feet proudly stamp the corners of their eyes. Baba’s face is a battlefield, wrinkles deep like trenches. Ziyad’s two sons are married—Nada would have been their same age—his first grandchild on the way. Amjad’s middle daughter is recently engaged.
They settle him in her parents’ bedroom, a place he’d only enter to retrieve his clean clothes or leave some cash for Mama on their dresser. She props a bunch of pillows behind him and makes sure he’s not too warm beneath an extra blanket. Afaf catches a long gaze between them—unfamiliar and strange. Mama doesn’t complain how far five hundred dollars can go, how humiliated she is to be in debt to other men. Quietly, she prepares afreekah with chicken—just the way Baba likes it. She sits with him until he’s sopped up the last morsels of barley soup with a piece of khubuz.
Something reignites between them, and Afaf and her brother stand back and watch, confused and hopeful. Khalti Nesreen whispers to them, “Like newlyweds again.” It is Majeed who calls their aunt, and she stays for the weekend with her baby daughter, helping Mama wash clothes and prepare meals for the week. Once in a while she steals a few puffs from Mama’s cigarette, exhaling through her nostrils. Mama has started smoking since the crash, long and thin Virginia Slims that she sends Majeed to buy from Pixie’s Drugstore around the corner from the apartment. She insists on single packs, though they’re cheaper by the carton.
Afaf takes her baby cousin Amal for a walk around the block, pushing the stroller as though she is hers. The baby coos at the dogs that stop to sniff her, their owners smiling and nodding at Afaf. Her aunt has endured years of infertility and two miscarriages. Naseeb, my darling, her aunt had whispered in her ear when Afaf had bent down to kiss Khalti Nesreen as she lay recuperating in her bed in Kenosha after she’d lost the second one. She patted the back of Afaf’s hand, smiling sadly at her with wet eyes. When baby Amal arrived, her aunt and uncle’s joy was palpable. Children, Afaf understands, are supposed to be a blessing.
At the apartment, Baba is a quiet patient. When he can finally use his fingers, he plays his oud and the tunes float from their bedroom like a spirit summoned from some long-forgotten place. In the past, Mama had complained that when he played, she couldn’t hear the TV as she cooked. Now she keeps quiet as Baba plucks his instrument, and Afaf catches her mother humming a song to his familiar melody as she dries the dishes or chops vegetables.
When Afaf comes home from school, she hears them laughing in their bedroom. This stings her a little, being left out of this slice of happiness. She’s tempted to say hello, but changes her mind. She doesn’t want to disrupt their sweet sounds, and quietly grabs a soda can from the fridge and gets ready for her shift at Dairy Queen.
Baba’s doctor clears him for mandated community service. His arm is still in a sling when he takes the bus to Twenty-Sixth and California Avenue to join a cohort of other men on probation. They’ll be clearing highway debris on I-55. Though his ankle has healed, Baba’s lower back still aches from the impact of the crash. Afaf catches her father wincing each time he stands, but he never complains. His nose is slightly crooked in a way that makes Baba look more severe, betraying the warmth restored to his eyes, a glow Afaf hasn’t seen in years.
It’s May and the days are warmer. Afaf is weeks away from graduation. She avoids Rami and his friends, cutting down a staircase, changing direction in the hallway. Sameera and the other arabiyyat whisper as she passes them. Kelly McPherson and Amber Reeves hiss at her in the cafeteria, but she won’t confront them. Since Baba’s crash, she’s determined that there will be no more incidents at Hoover High School, no more trouble. She can’t explain it, but something’s changed in her since that phone call in the middle of the night. She rarely leaves the apartment, only to work at Dairy Queen when she’s not in school. It’s as though being close to home will somehow prevent another calamity—perhaps much worse than Baba’s crash.
Even Mama has softened a bit. It’s like new skin once you’ve peeled away the scab. She’ll touch Afaf’s shoulder as she rounds the kitchen table, clearing it of platters once full of her delicious meals. Her smile comes more easily, like a breeze rustling through an open door. It’s a smile Afaf has seen in pictures in the old shoebox, rarely in person.
Tonight, Mama’s malfoof steams from a silver platter. She stands at the sink, scrubbing down a large pot. All the pots and pans have to be scoured before she sits down to eat with them. They’ve been eating together more frequently, engaging in strangely polite, yet guarded conversation.
“A priest came to see me,” Baba says, holding up his fork.
Afaf scoops a half dozen of the rolled cabbage leaves onto her father’s plate. “What priest, Baba?” she asks. Majeed looks at Baba, his hazel eyes curious, alert.
“At the hospital. They send priests. You know—to pray with people who are very sick. Or dying.” Baba clears his throat as if those last words scratch his membrane.
Mama turns off the faucet and faces them. “What are you talking about, Mahmood?”
“He say to me”—Baba switches to English—“ ‘I know you are not Christian, my son, but you believe in God, yes? Your God save you, my son. He give you second chance to live. To live right.’ ”
Afaf steals a glance at Majeed and he raises his eyebrows at her. She shrugs her shoulders. Baba has never spoken about God or religion. He and Mama don’t pray, never fast for Ramadan as she knows Khalti Nesreen and Ammo Yahya do. She knows it is Eid only by the long-distance phone calls Mama makes to her parents in the bilad.
Baba reaches for her mother’s hand. “Samheeni, Muntaha. Please forgive me.”
Mama looks stunned. Then an old, irrational expression spreads across her face like blood seeping from a cut. Baba has punctured something and they all watch her mother’s face collapse.
“So you’ve found religion?” Her words are slick with disgust, her eyes turn emerald, dangerous. “After all of these years you think God will ever forgive you? I certainly will not.” Mama storms out of the kitchen, slamming her bedroom door shut.
Baba turns toward them. Afaf, too, is stunned. What has come over their father? “She has every right to be bitter, loolad. It will take time, but I’ll make it up to her.” Baba grabs their hands across the kitchen table. “I am sorry,” he tells them in English. “I make things right for everyone.”
For a moment she feels her mother’s sense of disorder. It’s cataclysmic, this apology from Baba, this acknowledgment of how broken their lives have been. But her father isn’t the only one to blame—Afaf has always known this. They’re all culpable. Since Nada’s been gone, she’s turned into herself, nursing the pain as it slowly leached her, believing her grief was the worst. Hadn’t they all done the same thing, their deep, colle
ctive loss cementing them from moving forward? Baba is the first to drive a jackhammer into it, unsettling the ground, jostling them back to life. But can they be so easily repaired? There seem to be too many sharp fragments to reconfigure them into something resembling normal. So much time has been lost.
Her father returns to the sofa bed that evening and Afaf gives him his pain medication and tucks him in, gently placing the covers over his aging body, careful not to disturb his healing bones.
8
BABA LEAVES the house early every evening before his shift begins. After his DUI, his boss at Dyer Plastic fired him. He started a new job at a gas station owned by a wealthy Palestinian immigrant who knows his friend Amjad. It’s menial and less money, but Baba is happy to take it and, as with every other hardship, he doesn’t complain.
He prays at home every evening, facing the eastern corner of the family room after a washing ritual in the bathroom. Afaf stands in the hallway, watching her father, his back to her. He lays out a red velvet rug with a palatial mosque woven in the middle, minarets in golden thread. She wonders where he got the rug. His body folds over in prostration, then he lowers himself to the floor, legs tucked underneath him. When Baba pulls himself up, she hears a slight hmph and she, too, bears the pain of his lower back. She quietly escapes into her room before he’s finished.
Summer is almost over. Baba is busy with a new group of men—the organizers of the Islamic Center of Greater Chicago. They want to build a mosque to replace the old civic center on Sixty-Third and Kedzie Avenue, a dilapidated gathering place where mostly men congregate to pray on Fridays and during Eid. The women host Ramadan potlucks and run child care during the day. They’ve found a plot of land outside the city, off Interstate 55, in a small town called Tempest, and have begun petitioning for it.
Baba’s religious awakening rattles Afaf. It’s a new side of her father that she can’t quite understand. She’s happy he quit his drinking and devotes himself to recovery. But it’s like he’s stumbled upon a spring of water and he wants them all to drink from it. She’s uncertain if it’s safe and hangs back. She can tell it makes Majeed nervous, too. Her brother remains guarded toward their father, as though he’s walking on a bridge that might collapse at any moment.
The Beauty of Your Face Page 9