The Beauty of Your Face

by Sahar Mustafah

  A song about a tiny bird floats into the kitchen:

  A tear fell on its cheek. Its wings tucked underneath it,

  It landed on the ground and said, “I want to walk, but I can’t.”

  It’s the same one Baba sang to her and Majeed, their favorite Marcel Khalife song. Baba plucks the strings with his pick, Ayman and Akram listen intently and smile up at their grandfather from the floor. The music drifts to her, each note lingering a beat longer in her ears, the melody slower, more melancholic. The song is a sad one, but she hadn’t paid close attention until she heard him first sing it to Ayman. Now it sounds like a brand-new song though it has always been so familiar. Afaf hadn’t been listening closely.

  2

  THEY FINALIZE their will and fax it to Majeed. In case Afaf and Bilal don’t return, Esma will take custody of her boys, and all of Afaf’s material possessions will be liquidated into their trust fund, which Bilal carefully prepared. Her gold dowry from Bilal—among them a beautiful pair of bangles, and a heart-shaped pendant and earrings set—will be equally divided between her sons, her clothes given to the Nur Society of Sisters, her books to a local library. The old beloved record player will be shared—six months with Ayman, six months with Akram. Her brother Majeed had long relinquished his rights to it, another relic discarded from his past. Instead, she offers him Mama’s wedding band and pair of gold earrings in the shape of almonds that she rarely wore. Bilal has his great-grandfather’s gold pocket watch, curlicues carved onto its protective case. It’s the only thing he’d managed to hold on to when his family fled the Balkans.

  This part had been easier than Afaf imagined: counting up what they owned, declaring its value, and dividing it up. But what about the things that really mattered? How do you stipulate them? There’s no space in a will for how to raise her sons to be dignified and strong, or the number of times to hug them in a single day until they’re finally able to pull away, or how to watch for the slightest trace of heartbreak or fear—no matter how much they’ll try to disguise it—or how to treat all whom they love with respect and constant affection.

  At the Center, Sister Nabeeha pans the room of women, preparing them for hajj. Her eyes are sharp and alert, like a schoolteacher’s. What’s left to do once you’ve taken care of your will and debts? Forgiveness. You must seek forgiveness from anyone you’ve wronged.

  She’s asked for Baba’s forgiveness, though he’d brushed her off, gently grabbing Afaf’s face, kissing her forehead. You are my best daughter.

  She hadn’t been good enough for Mama, could never ascend to the heights of pleasing her mother—even after Nada has been gone all these years.

  And what of forgiving others? she wants to ask Sister Nabeeha. Had the time come for her to forgive Mama? Did it even matter anymore? Her mother excised herself from them like a machete that slices off a finger, the stub bleeding for a long time before new skin grafts the wound and scar tissue appears—the only evidence she’d been there in the first place.

  Afaf calls her the day before her flight and Mama tells her two neighbors are also making the pilgrimage.

  “Allah protect them,” Afaf says.

  “Yes. They are fairly young women, though Um Sameer already has six grandchildren.” She doesn’t sneer about it and Afaf wonders if being back home has softened her mother’s view about religion. Perhaps when you hear the muezzin’s call to prayer five times a day you finally relent to your hijab-covered neighbors who nag you over for tea. You begin to see things in a new way. Or perhaps your losses have finally blunted to a bearable throb.

  “Forgive me, Mama.” The words dart out of Afaf’s mouth. For what is she asking her mother’s forgiveness? Never being able to replace her sister? Twenty-six years later, Nada’s face appears less frequently to Afaf, sometimes emerging from the corner of a long day like a shadow elongated across the floor. She no longer sees her sister in public places and she wonders if it’s because she’s stopped looking for her. But Mama could never let Nada go.

  Her mother clears her throat on the line. “May you safely return to your children, habibti.”

  Afaf hangs up and opens a tiny notebook of du’aa from the circle of women, a ledger of all the prayers they want her to say on their behalf—for their parents to recover quickly from surgery, for their brothers with legal problems, for their children’s safekeeping during this ominous time. She’ll be praying in a place believed to be closest to the ear of the Lord.

  Afaf also will pray earnestly for her mother. That’s all there’s left to do.

  Before Afaf, Bilal, and Baba head to O’Hare International Airport, they say goodbye to the boys at Esma’s house. Her sister-in-law’s children quickly steal her sons’ attention, and they squirm out of her arms to go play. The only tears shed are Afaf’s.

  Esma hugs her tightly. “Say prayers for my mother, draga moja. My brother will take care of you and Abu Majeed. Do not worry.”

  Afaf nods, dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her overcoat. Esma and Bilal exchange three kisses on alternating cheeks, a tender gesture they share with their mother. He pulls his sister close for a long embrace.

  “Allah be with you,” Esma says, waving from the driveway.

  Snow crunches under the taxi’s tires as they pull away, leaving behind naked maple trees and gray sky. In twenty hours, they’ll be in a desert where the Prophet once traveled to deliver his final sermon. An ancient place Afaf has only seen in books and on TV.

  The international terminal at O’Hare is a mix of citizens and foreigners: brown-skinned and blue-eyed; women in colorful saris under winter coats; men in patterned dashikis and hats. It’s a blend of ethnic and Western fashions.

  There’s a flock of muslimeen bidding tearful goodbyes to their adult children. Her heart lifts at the sight. She’s been dreading the airport. It’s comforting to see fellow pilgrims. As she passes them, Afaf catches white strangers staring at this display. Can they detect the notes of love ringing in the wishes and blessings these families exchange for a safe journey to hajj? Or do they only see potential terrorists standing before them?

  They approach the security queue and a female officer waves Afaf over. “You’ll need to remove that”—she points at Afaf’s headscarf—“and your coat.” Afaf touches the zipper of her abaya, royal-blue, tiny pearl beads on the hem and sleeves.

  Bilal steps forward. “Miss, this is ridiculous.”

  “It’s TSA policy. If you refuse to remove these articles of clothing, we’ll need to search you in private, ma’am.”

  “Do you think she is concealing something under her scarf?” Bilal says in a loud voice. People around them are suddenly more alert and skittish: Will this man attack us? Afaf can see the question furrowing in their brows.

  She squeezes Bilal’s hand, placating him, wanting to end the quiet spectacle around them. “It’s fine. I’ll see you on other side, okay? Take care of my father.”

  “Don’t worry, habibti,” Baba tells her. “We’ll be waiting for you.”

  Afaf is led to a small area siphoned off by tall partitions. She hears the regular traffic of people on the other side of the partition, the loading of small bags and electronic devices on the conveyer belts, metal detector wands beeping.

  “Please undress to your undergarments.”

  Afaf strips down to her long slip. A beautiful woman stands across from her, her white cotton bra and half-slip gleaming against her black skin. She looks over at Afaf, her eyes impassive. Afaf closes her eyes as another female officer waves a metal detector over her body. Her face flushes hot with humiliation, perspiration gathering between her breasts. This isn’t like a visit to the doctor’s office for her annual pap smear, or crouching among the muslimat at the communal washroom to perform wudu. She’s suddenly seized with the terror of being exposed: What if the partitions topple over? A hundred strangers gawking and pointing at her partial nakedness.

  “I’m going to be sick,” Afaf tells the officer. The vomit heaves from her thr
oat and she retches into a wastebasket someone quickly hands her.

  “No reason to be nervous, ma’am. Unless you’ve got something to hide,” the officer says with a sneer. Afaf squeezes her eyes shut again as her stomach churns.

  When she can finally dress again and is permitted to fasten her hijab, Afaf is physically drained, and a trickle of bile is tickling her throat. The officer leads her out of the makeshift room and she immediately spots Bilal and Baba. They wave and she catches more steely stares as Bilal hugs her. She bites her lip, refusing to cry.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nods, forces a smile. “I need to use the restroom.”

  She walks around a custodian mopping the floor and splashes cool water on her face. She catches a woman next to her staring at Afaf’s reflection in the mirror, unsmiling. Afaf stares right back, defiant. The woman drops her eyes, lathering her hands noisily. When she passes behind Afaf, the woman flicks water at her headscarf.

  “Shame on you,” Afaf snaps back. “What have I done to you?” What has she done to any of them? Is she not a citizen of this country like them? How naïve to believe she’s ever really belonged—with and without her hijab. Before and after a terrorist attack.

  “You’re all evil, bitch.” The woman’s awful words trail behind her like streaks from the custodian’s dirty mop across the tiled floor.

  The other women quickly rinse their hands, herd their young children out, roll their luggage past Afaf, not looking her way. One snickers before closing her stall door.

  Afaf leans against the mirror, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. She wants to ask these strangers how she—one woman, a mother and wife, a teacher, if they’d only ask—can be a menace to them. How can she make them unafraid?

  She lets the tears roll.

  “Are you all right, miss?” An old white woman pats Afaf’s shoulder.

  “I’m fine.”

  The woman turns on the faucet next to her. “Human beings can be awful.” She smiles kindly at Afaf in the mirror.

  “Will this be life from now on?” Afaf asks her.

  The woman is silent, gives Afaf a weak shrug, and dries her hands.

  3

  THE FIRST time Afaf felt Ayman in her belly it was like a delicate flutter of wings. A tiny human being was growing inside her, absorbing her nutrients, quietly thriving. The pain of his birth was so extraordinary, then instantly—miraculously—it halted as soon as he slipped out, and she’d been light-headed with euphoria.

  But in this place. No earthly experience has prepared Afaf for the holy city of Mecca, a marvelous clash between antiquity and modernity. Lavish hotels break up the desert sky, cars speed along busy highways driven by men with women clad in black niqab, only their eyes staring back at Afaf. A gigantic clock tower, its ticking mechanism designed to last a hundred years, stands outside of the Masjid al-Haram, where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac before an angel of God intervened.

  The holy mosque teems with thousands upon thousands of men and women from every walk of life, every corner of the planet, moving in one direction, counterclockwise, bodies huddled close to each other in a wave of white like clouds across the sky. The opulence of the outside world is temporarily discarded.

  At their hotel, they bathe and dress in a pure state of ihram before they enter the site of the Ka’aba at the mosque. Baba and Bilal wear white garments draped over one shoulder. Afaf wears a white cotton hijab and abaya, her notebook of du’aa inside a small purse fastened closely to her hip. She and Bilal are careful not to touch, sparking any sensual contact, though they’ll be absorbed by the bodies of strangers.

  All together they recite talbiyah:

  Here I am in Your service, O Allah, here I am. Here I am . . .

  Bilal smiles at her, tears in his eyes, and she’s blinded by her own as their bodies fuse into the massive crowd circling the Ka’aba. All the distress of the airport—the hatred, the undeserved animosity she’d absorbed from passengers over a dozen hours before—seeps out of her consciousness. For the first time in her life, she belongs. Here among the pilgrims who chant a palpable humming, lifting Afaf’s spirit, she’s found her place.

  Baba loops his arm through Bilal’s, his cane keeping him steady and upright. Afaf moves behind them, imagining Abraham and his son building this magnificent black house of God. For over two decades, she’s faced it from the west each time she prayed, from eleven thousand miles at home in Tempest, Illinois. Her stomach flutters with humility and the tingle goes through her entire body. They aren’t near enough to touch and kiss the Ka’aba, so they raise their hands in acknowledgment:

  “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

  For a moment, Afaf is arrested by fear: What if she faints, her body trampled by the other pilgrims? Hundreds of muslimeen have died during the journey, stampedes breaking out, fires burning through makeshift tents. She squeezes her eyes shut and breathes deeply, wiping morbid thoughts clean from her brain. She is in His grace now. She focuses hard on prayer: Bismillahi allahu akbar wa lillah hil hamd . . . Bismillahi allahu akbar wa lillah hil hamd. Then she opens her eyes, lifts her hands to the bright sky, and gives du’aa for her sons, for Majeed and Esma and her mother-in-law, for Mama and Nada, tears streaming down her face.

  Ahead of her, a young man has tied a rope around his body and corrals a group of elderly women with it—each one has a loop around her waist—leading them forward. It’s a spectacle Majeed would have scoffed at, though the pilgrims are oblivious, consumed by their worship.

  By the third circuit, she can tell Baba has grown tired. His bare head glistens with sweat. His collarbone juts out of his white garment. She has four more circuits to go, then they’re off to Mina, where they can rest and meditate until sunrise. Bilal is patient and kind, wrapping an arm around her father’s shoulders, letting Baba lean against him, and Bilal absorbs his weight.

  Afaf completes the seventh circuit and rests for a while. The hours begin to morph and stretch, the passage of the sun the only evidence of time passing. They follow seven times the path that Abraham’s wife Hagar took in search of water for her infant son. The spring of Zamzam appeared before her and they drank until their thirst was no more. She remembers the small vials of water Baba had brought home from his first hajj.

  Hours later, an air-conditioned bus takes them to Mina, a veritable tent city where men and women segregate for prayer and meditation. Afaf is nauseous as the bus ambles along a heavily congested road and takes sips of water from her plastic canteen. She checks on Baba, sitting next to Bilal. His face appears sallow.

  “Baba, stay hydrated,” she instructs him, handing him one of the fresh bottles of water the bus driver offers the passengers. “We’ll be there soon and you can rest.”

  “Allah yird’aa layki,” Baba prays. “May God bestow all blessings upon you.” He smiles weakly before laying his head back on the high-cushioned seat and closing his eyes. Even that appears to take effort.

  Afaf gives Bilal a worried look. He nods and his lips move in du’aa.

  Outside the window of the bus, she watches pilgrims walking along the road. In the distance, the muezzin’s call—a human voice so bottomless it is as disquieting as it is uplifting. Afaf is awestruck by its reverberation in the desert air. It reminds Afaf of the melancholic melodies Baba plays on his oud, and she’s already decided it will be what she misses most about this resounding place.

  They pass mountains, and the sun hangs over them midway in the sky. It’s asr prayer, when the day begins its decline.

  The vicinity of Mina is covered with air-conditioned tents. Generators drone twenty-four hours a day during this special season. After the devastating fire of 1997, the Saudi government replaced the cotton tents with ones made of fiberglass and Teflon, color-coding camps and paving pathways between them. Bilal escorts Baba to the men’s camp, and Afaf joins a company of fifty women, complete strangers who’ve become her companions for the night.

  Inside their tent, ever
yone feels generous and relaxed, though the quarters are tight, with floor mattresses crammed side by side and little space to move around. They perform salat al-isha’a, the last prayer of the day, and silently meditate.

  Has it been merely two days since she’d hugged Ayman and Akram? Has it been only five months since the planes crashed in New York? In this region, the horizon seems to expand beyond human measure. There’s no talk of money or politics, of war or famine. A veil of spirituality hangs over the pilgrims, shielding them from the world’s suffering.

  Afaf lies down on a soft mattress next to a woman from Melbourne by way of Sudan, her skin the color of soos—the licorice drink vendors were selling in the bazaar outside of Afaf’s hotel when they’d arrived. She speaks perfect Arabic. “Inshallah you are granted good pilgrimage.”

  “Inshallah you as well.” Afaf smiles.

  Tomorrow they must reach Mount Arafat for their journey to be validated by the Lord. Afaf says extra du’aa for Baba and his health, that Allah will see him through this experience which so many are granted only once in their lifetime. Will Mama ever appreciate the sacrifice her husband’s made for her?

  That night she sleeps soundly in the tent—her first sound sleep in many years—under a blanket of stars, the same ones that twinkle above Ayman and Akram though they are two worlds apart.

  At daybreak, she prays with her tentmates and the pilgrims begin their journey to Mount Arafat. She rejoins Bilal and Baba and finds they’ve acquired a wheelchair for her father. Afaf worries even more: he must be feeling very badly if he’s consented to a wheelchair. Bilal pushes her father and she keeps pace, making sure Baba takes regular sips of water from his plastic canteen.

  “Stop fretting, habibti,” Baba scolds. His face looks jaundiced, his eyelids drooping as he gazes up at her.

  Pilgrims flock the path, hundreds of black umbrellas poking out of the masses, shielding them from the sun.