One day, he stayed after class. You are very patient teacher. His precise though broken words had startled her. He was usually quiet during the lesson.
You are a good student, Afaf told him, turning around to erase the board, avoiding his gaze. He was a handsome man, his skin the color of lightly steeped tea.
Are you a teacher of school?
Yes. I teach in Chicago. Third and fourth grades.
He nodded. You are natural teacher.
Afaf’s cheeks flushed and she accepted his invitation for coffee. She’d received marriage proposals from other muslimeen, the brothers and cousins of women she worshipped alongside at the masjid. She smiled politely at the frequent string of accolades she was forced to listen to as she splashed water on her face during wudu in the communal washroom, or when she slipped her shoes back on after prayer:
Hatim is a second-year resident at Rush Hospital, ya Afaf. You’d be perfect for each other.
Mashallah, my brother Feras is opening a second jewelry location in the mall. Do you want to see a picture of him?
They’re respectable men, but Afaf wasn’t interested. There’s something missing in them—or perhaps missing in her. After she joined the Center, being alone didn’t feel like a plague. It wasn’t the same as loneliness, the kind she’d felt for so many years without a sister, without supportive parents. When Bilal entered her life, he quickly filled up a space, like rainwater gathering in a watering can. It felt unexpected, though very natural.
They spent the summer outside the Adler Planetarium, sitting on the lakefront, watching sailboats like she did when she was a little girl. They ate falafel sandwiches and drank bottled iced tea. He told her about his time at the University of Tuzla and she shared anecdotes about her young pupils. They held back the stories of the things that had broken them.
One early October weekend they visited an arboretum outside the city, walking between great cedars and black maple trees. Afaf had stopped to pick up a fallen leaf and it crumbled at her touch. Bilal had grabbed her hand and pulled her close. Their lips met for the first time.
He guided her to a bench that faced a large pond bordered by blue spruces on the far side. Ducks waded in contentment, dipping their yellow beaks in the water. He and Afaf sat in silence for a long time before Bilal spoke in a low voice.
I come home from university. My village—it was burned to ground. My father, my uncles, my cousins, my friends. Dead. My mother and sister were already gone. His eyes crinkled as he looked at the rippling pond. I keep moving. I stay hidden in the forest for two weeks. No food. Only tomatoes I steal from nearby farm. I drink water from creek. He kept hold of Afaf’s hand. My mother. She still cries at night. She does not know that I hear.
He turned to Afaf and tucked a strand of her loose hair behind her ear, held her chin in his hand. I want my life to begin again. It was his quiet proposal.
Afaf understands what it means to start over, to be given another chance. For Bilal, it’s leaving behind the dead parts—his father and relatives, his ravaged country. And now he’s looking ahead at a future, one that includes Afaf. They’ve been on the same journey, their paths happily converging. Naseeb is what her aunt Nesreen calls it—fate.
Had not Allah had a hand in it, too? Islam led her here. Would she have found Bilal otherwise if not for her newfound faith? Look at her now: a devoted muslimah, a public school teacher. And she owed so much of it to the circle of women from the Center. Elhamdulillah, as Baba says.
Bilal squeezed her hand, his amber eyes warm and expectant. I will always take care of you.
For the first time in her life, Afaf discovers that to be desired by another human being—to be needed—is an exaltation, one she hadn’t anticipated. She’s already loved by others: Baba, Majeed, Kowkab, Um Zuraib. But what Bilal offers her is different than their kind of unconditional love. With him, the memories of white boys fumbling with her bra straps, pressing their chapped lips against hers, have wilted like the fallen leaf crumbling in her hand that day.
They plan to announce their engagement next spring. Bilal has accepted an entry-level job with an accounting firm in Chicago while working on his college transfer credits. His dream is to develop a system of halal banking practices for muslimeen, to appropriate the interest a personal account earns toward charity.
If Afaf teaches summer school, they’ll have saved up enough for a small wedding.
Back in Suha Bakri’s spacious kitchen, Afaf waves to Bilal’s mother Ilhana, who’s helping herself to a small plate of desserts from trays of knaffa and baklawa arranged on a granite counter. She is a slight woman with small shoulders, ice-blue eyes. Esma, Bilal’s sister, approaches Afaf, hugs her close, her headscarf the color of saffron.
“Mabrook,” she says, her Arabic, like her English, stilted but sweet. She’s inherited her mother’s white skin and blue eyes.
Esma pulls an envelope from the pocket of her thigh-length tunic and presses it in Afaf’s hand. She winks at Afaf before joining her mother.
Inside the envelope is a bookmark from Bilal. One side is embossed in Arabic calligraphy. Afaf traces the golden loops and dips with her fingertip. The artist’s caption reads, “Love by Osman Özçay.” Such is Bilal’s affection. Quiet and solid, like oak wood—no hollow spaces, no echoes.
3
ON HER way home from the party, Afaf stops for gas to save her extra time in the morning. The late fall temperatures have not risen above fifty degrees. The sky is overcast and a soft drizzle mists her windshield as she pulls up to the pump.
“Twenty on number two, please,” she tells the cashier, smiling and trying to pull the young woman’s attention away from her headscarf.
The cashier doesn’t say anything, slides Afaf’s paper bill into her drawer, and presses a few buttons.
“Raghead.”
Afaf turns around, her heart thumping. Who said it?
A group of teenagers snicker near the Slurpee machine. A man in a suit fastens his eyes on the newspaper he’s purchasing, refuses to look Afaf’s way. The cashier gives her a wicked grin.
Afaf heads to the exit, her cheeks flushed. The deep contentment she’d felt just a short time ago in Suha Bakri’s home is gone, like she’d been blithely walking a tightrope, the safety net suddenly snatched from beneath her. Is this a prelude to what life will be like from now on?
Afaf’s eyes remain fixed on the entrance to the store as she pumps gas. Patrons go in and out, and some cast looks at her, while others are oblivious to this woman with the wrapped head. Is she strong enough to bear the taunts?
Afaf thinks of Kowkab and Um Zuraib: Allah will see us through anything. That’s what they tell each other, the circle of women, when things get hard. Like Bahiya Adwan and her father’s agonizing surrender to dementia. Or like Randa Abdul Aziz, still reeling from an ugly divorce. When they lose children to disease and the unknown, they’re told to recite Surah Al-Baqara:
O you who have believed, seek help through patience and prayer. Indeed, Allah is with the patient.
Afaf climbs into her car and flips the mirror open on the visor. Only her eyes and nose are visible, bordered by green fabric. She shifts position, trying to capture her full head, but it’s impossible.
She flips back the visor. I can do this—it’s such a small thing, she tells herself. A small thing.
When Afaf gets home, Mama’s at the kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee. On the same old portable television, she watches Good Morning America and Phil Donahue. She stays in the kitchen all day, cleaning and cooking and watching game shows, wiping down the counter though it’s spotless. At night, she closes her bedroom door and watches more TV on another set Baba bought her. No matter which room she’s in, the sound of the television obliterates the quiet, as though her mother can’t stand to be alone with her thoughts.
“Alf mabrook,” Mama says, green eyes gleaming with sarcasm. “Congratulations on the final step of your conversion. May the Lord redeem your soul.” It’s the same c
ontemptuous tone she heard at the gas station: raghead. Mama grabs her mug and rinses it at the sink. The hem of her black abaya sweeps the floor, her long sleeves wide and flowing. The bodice is stitched in silver and gold and the open collar contains loops of tiny embroidered flowers. It’s one of a dozen that Khalti Nesreen has brought back for Mama from the bilad.
The latest grievance—the most offensive, Afaf realizes—is Baba’s journey to hajj last year. With contributions from the Center, her father had gathered several thousands of dollars and flew to Mecca to fulfill one of the most sacred pillars of Islam. It would have cost less to purchase a ticket for Mama to fly to Palestine, with a few hundred dollars put aside for gifts for her family.
“How can you deny what Allah has pressed upon us, ya Muntaha?” Baba says to Mama. But Afaf understands it’s not really about religious obligation or even money. She recognizes the same vague fear in Baba’s eyes—if he lets Mama go, she’ll never return.
Mama’s father passed away shortly after she married. Her mother died last year from pneumonia. It had been over twenty years since Mama had last seen her. A framed picture of her sits on Mama’s dresser. In it Afaf’s grandmother wears a tailored dress suit with broad shoulders and carries an infant in her arms—Khalti Nesreen, the last of her children. A little girl—Mama—timidly stares at the camera, clutching the hem of her mother’s jacket. Afaf wonders what that little girl in the photograph was thinking—had Mama already predicted her life as a woman? Was that what made her expression so glum?
As customary, Khalti Nesreen hosted an evening of mourning in her house in Kenosha and she and Mama received friends and distant relatives bearing their condolences and offering aluminum foil-wrapped dishes full of rice and vegetables. The masjid sent a carton of fresh palm dates and a small donation. Afaf helped Khalti Nesreen serve the bitter, unsweetened coffee in tiny demitasse cups while Majeed and Baba sat with the men in the living room, Baba thumbing his musbaha, an onyx set of beads he’d brought home from hajj. Her brother stared at his feet. Ammo Yahya was showing a colleague an ancient map of Jerusalem that he’d found at a street art fair in Milwaukee.
In the kitchen where the women gathered, Mama wrung tissue paper in her hands, moaning about not seeing her mother before she died, complaining how it should have been her duty to host the azza as the oldest daughter—but how could she, when her apartment was so tiny it could barely hold the immediate family? Khalti Nesreen’s girlfriends stole glances at each other, eyebrows cocked in disapproval.
“Khalas, sister!” Khalti Nesreen snapped at Mama. She arranged a platter of the fresh dates and handed it to Afaf. “Inshallah God has mercy on our mother’s soul.”
Since her mother’s passing, Mama has become more unhinged. She’ll go days without showering, and Baba or Afaf have to gently remind her, steering her toward the bathroom, turning the faucet on, and helping her undress. She stares listlessly until Afaf pulls back the plastic shower curtain and invites her in.
“Do you think I’m an imbecile? I can take care of myself,” she snaps, alert again and disdainful.
On a bad day, Mama spends an hour scouring the stovetop with an S.O.S. pad; she’s already scrubbed off most of the laminate on the burner trays. Then she stands at the sink and plucks out the tiny wires from her fingertips, her slender hands scalded red from running them under hot water.
Today Afaf’s worried. Mama tends to wear the black abaya when she’s in a particularly foul mood. Afaf must be cautious: any gesture, any word, could set Mama off. Her mother’s like a caged tiger, gorgeous and deadly.
On the portable TV, a woman on a game show squeals in delight. She’s won ten thousand dollars and has a decision to make: walk away with it or triple the amount in a final round. The host, a short, shiny-faced man, places his hand on her shoulder as the giddy contestant ponders her choice. The camera zooms in on the woman’s face, then cuts to her family in the audience. They give her a thumbs-up.
“Dummy,” Mama says. “Take the money and go home.” She sets her coffee mug on the counter and leans against it. Her gray hair trails down one side in a loose braid; only a few strands of black remain. She’s still quite beautiful—a phenomenon that makes it difficult for Afaf to hate her.
Afaf pours the dregs of the coffeepot into a mug. “The women asked about you,” she tells her mother, taking a seat at the table.
Mama snorts. “They still think they can save me. Idiots.”
Afaf has come to understand an unshakable truth about her mother, something she finds difficult to share with Um Zuraib and the other women: It isn’t that Mama doesn’t believe in God. She’s simply denied His power, extinguished any flicker of faith that she might use to transcend her misery. The loss of her daughter, a troubled marriage, a lonely existence in a country where she never felt at home—she has no intention of relinquishing such injustices to prayer and fasting. Mama’s pain is supreme and hers alone; no higher being can ever claim that.
The TV clamors with applause as the contestant poses herself in front of the camera, the lights dimming behind her. In the corner of the screen, the timer counts down as she spouts single-word answers to questions the host fires at her.
Mama stands at the sink as Afaf sips black coffee, her mother’s eyes boring into her. The headscarf suddenly feels like a clamp on her head. Mama’s scrutiny turns it into a joke that someone could never play on her. Afaf and the rest of them are fools in her mother’s eyes, giving themselves up without question, without a tangible return on their pain.
Afaf touches the hem of her scarf, wondering if she’s made a mistake, and a sense of perverse disappointment comes over her: she still wants Mama’s approval. And for a moment her mother’s power over her outweighs the Lord’s. Afaf closes her eyes and silently prays: Allah, keep me on the path of righteousness.
In the absence of Mama’s approval, Afaf turns to Baba—has done so for years—clinging to her father’s esteem as if it were a branch on a cliff. Together they pray and fast, attend meetings at the Center, help organize fund-raisers. They carefully move around Mama like a stream split by a rock. Afaf wonders what Majeed will say when he sees her. His final semester is under way, then he’ll go to law school. She doubts he’ll ever come home to live again. His room has remained the same, his tidy bed in the corner, his old Muscle & Fitness magazines on his nightstand, free weights in a plastic tub. She remembers how awkward he was, his body taking up more space, puberty stretching his limbs and broadening his shoulders. The boy Majeed was who always surpassed Afaf when they were kids—the overachiever, the star athlete, the good son—would always be preserved in his room like the trophies still irreverently piled on his dresser. The man that he’s becoming is elusive, someone Afaf doesn’t know well, someone she suspects sleeps with girls at school and guzzles beer with his friends at bars off campus.
On the phone, he rails about the Oslo Accords and the desolate failure of the Palestinian Authority. When she tries to speak with him about Islam, he changes the subject. Afaf has prepared herself for a stern inquisition about her decision to wear hijab.
At first he was quiet on the line. That’s a big step, Afaf. Are you sure?
Of course. I’ve been thinking about it for months.
Then I’m happy for you. As long as you’re doing it for yourself.
In other words, not for Baba.
Though Majeed is devoted to the Palestinian struggle—he’s the head of his university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine—he refuses to join Baba at Friday prayer. He’ll meet him afterward at the Lower Delta Restaurant, where she pictures Baba recapitulating the imam’s sermon on premarital sex, her brother squirming as he silently sips his tea.
The timer buzzes on the TV and the audience moans in displeasure. Just like that, the woman has lost it all.
“Dummy,” Mama says again, shaking her head.
“The party was fun,” Afaf offers. “Um Zuraib sends her regards.” Since the group of women had adopted her, Afaf
secretly hoped it might generate some jealousy from Mama, some fear that she might be replaced. Her mother is undaunted. Afaf’s devotion to Islam has made her an enemy—just like Baba, both of them coerced into a war they hadn’t started with Mama.
Mama snorts again as she lights a cigarette. For a moment, Afaf imagines the billowing sleeve of her abaya catching fire, then her hair, her mother’s mouth opening in an awful scream though no sound comes from it. And Afaf just stands back and watches how brilliantly Mama burns before turning into a pile of ash.
In her bedroom, Afaf unpins her shayla and slips it off her head. She drapes it over one side of her dresser and the fabric licks the top of the old record player she keeps on a small table. She pulls a record from an old box beneath it. Nina Simone begins to croon. Her voice, deep and overcast, drowns out the noise of the game show and commercials in the kitchen. It was one of the very last records—Here Comes the Sun—Afaf purchased from a store in Chicago that sold vintage comic books and music. She’s searched for Farid al-Atrash and Um Kalthum, hoping to surprise Baba. She’d kept all of the early albums Baba had brought home that day from a garage sale, their sleeves now worn and fringed at the edges.
Afaf gathers her lesson plan book from her messenger bag. Next week her third-graders will be honing their multiplication skills (five and six times tables) and practicing adverbs in their autobiographies, bound by construction paper they assembled themselves.
Had she ever pictured a life in teaching before Um Zuraib? She’s forever indebted to this woman, a surrogate mother to Afaf, who, alongside her dear friend Kowkab, encouraged her through the tough coursework. You have so many gifts to share with the world, ya Afaf. It took her five years to complete her degree—she’d had to work, to help Baba with the bills—and still she’d graduated cum laude in elementary education.
She finds children are amazing creatures: eager to learn, quick to forget injury, open to change. At least until high school, when your world suddenly becomes smaller and you move awkwardly through your days, exposed like a raw nerve. At ten years old, all Afaf wanted was to be seen and accepted, to not have teachers look over her head as though she were invisible.
The Beauty of Your Face Page 13