Qissat (16 page)

He wrote, and read out loud, ‘Dear Khaled, Waleed and I miss you. We miss you as the ocean misses the breeze, as the thirsty earth longs for rain, as the lofty tree misses birdsong. Your long absence tortures us, we can no longer bear to wait. Come back to us, at any moment, and at any time.’

She jumped up to her feet and began applauding.

‘Yes, that’s it, Saad, more, sing!’

He scratched his head with the end of the pencil, as his teacher sometimes does. Her remarks intoxicated him.

She stopped with a sudden idea, ‘Would you like some tea, Saad?’

‘No, that’s not necessary.’

The cursed tea … it really is a good idea. But it would make her move away from you, denying you the warmth of her body. She took off like a gazelle into the small kitchen, which is attached to the wide room in which she lives. When you follow the movements of her body, something within you moves too, something you don’t understand, a strong feeling you like, which draws you to her.

He carried the papers and followed her, as she was lighting up the stove. He stood in the doorway, and asked, as his eyes continued down her figure,

‘What else should I say?’

‘First the tea, Saad, it’ll help the sweet words flow!’

Her hair tumbled down to her waist when she turned around. It was chestnut brown with red highlights, its strands thick and beautiful. Those two occasions on which you glimpsed her with her hair tied up hastily, she still looked beautiful.

He watched her as she hurriedly scooped a teaspoon out of the tea can, and poured water into a pale blue kettle, which was clean and white on the inside, and which she lifted onto the stove.

Your mother only uses a quarter of a teaspoonful of tea, and she keeps the morning tea in its kettle and calls it ‘baker’s yeast’. The day of Maryam’s visit, she poured the boiling water over it while Maryam watched, smiling in astonishment. Your mother left it to boil for a long time so that it would come out dark. You whispered to her in embarrassment, ‘Mother, please, just this once … this is Maryam’s first visit!’

But she called you disrespectful and told you to shut up, so you did, and she went on. Had Maryam heard and understood your plea? She drank her entire cup of tea, out of respect to your mother, because now you know that it was tasteless, that it was not what she was used to. She thanked your mother kindly, and refused a refill. Had she drunk it for your sake, Saad, after she’d heard your plea?

Your mother laughed and said, ‘This is the first time Saad has stayed around with visitors. What’s going on, Saad? Why don’t you go out and play? I swear, this is quite unusual.’

But you didn’t leave; you sat by your mother, your eyes glued on Maryam’s beautiful face.

Maryam asked, ‘How old are you, Saad?’

Your mother interrupted with a cough, and said, ‘Why don’t you guess, Maryam?’

‘Nine … ten years old!’

You screamed, because Maryam squashed something inside you, something deep, when she revealed that she sees you only as a child. You controlled your tears and said, ‘No, I’m thirteen, one month, and twenty days old.’

Maryam drew in her breath, and her smile expanded.

‘Don’t worry, he’s tiny,’ your mother explained. ‘Most people think he’s just a kid, but he’s ready to grow up. And he’s a brainy one, Maryam, God bless him. He’s ranked first in his class, and is also the youngest boy in his class. The principal and the teacher both love him, may God keep him, and … and … and …’

The boys at the edge of the playground were playing, pushing each other and laughing. He approached them once, wanted to join them.

‘Get out of here, you midget.’

‘Wait, come back,’ one of them yelled after you, ‘Let’s see if you’ve got a single hair on your chin.’

He was hairless.

‘Never mind. Any armpit hair?’

His armpits were smooth.

He searched everyday, but not a single hair sprouted.

Another boy yelled, following the other boys’ rudeness and teasing, ‘Well, Saad, got any hair on your…?’

‘God damn you, you rude bastard.’

Their taunts and screams got louder when he ran off crying, so he yelled at them, ‘I swear I’m going to tell the principal!’

One of them ran after him and tried to calm him down, and even cursed the boys. Afterwards Saad remained angry, but silent.

When your mother insisted on knowing why you weren’t eating any of your dinner, you poured out all your anger and frustration onto her. Didn’t other women give birth to boys who grew tall; weren’t their mothers women, like she was?

She sighed until she got teary-eyed. Finally, you said, ‘You know, Salaah, Abdallah … even Mohammed: they’ve all started getting beard and armpit hair.’

‘Why are you in such a rush, son?’

You thought for a little while.

‘Come here, Saad. Come.’

She kept asking him to come, and pulling him close to her as he was trying to decide whether to give in or to fight.

At both sides of the house, in the small plot of land that made up the yard, were two apricot trees his father had planted. The one on the right had grown tall and begun to bear fruit, and the one on the left had remained small and close to the earth.

‘Look, Saad. Your father planted these on the very same day, and they were identical. This one grew and bore fruit, and this other one is still small. Its time hasn’t yet come. You’ll get tall, Saad, and you’ll get sick of how tall you’ll be, and you’ll grow up and become a man!’

Afterwards, you followed the trees’ growth, watched the small one on your way in and out of the house, in case it grew and surpassed the one on the right, but it never did; like you, it remained small.

Today was the first day you realised the benefit of your small size; for, if it hadn’t been for that, would Maryam have let you into her room? Would you have been able to be with her without any embarrassment, to sit so close to her, if you had grown like the apricot tree on the right?

Saad drank all his tea. It was dark and tasted sweet. He added two lines to the letter and left it without a signature, as she’d requested, and he never told anyone about the pound.

A week passed, then two, and Maryam would only smile at him when she saw him. Three weeks on, the taste of the candy he’d bought was but a faint memory.

The boys in the yard would wait for you, then catch you and go through your pockets for beans and sour patches and sweet sesame bars. Eventually they stopped envying you and taunting you, when they realised that your fortune was a temporary one.

He stood in her doorway and asked, ‘Maryam … won’t you write to Khaled again?’

Why did she hesitate to answer? Her face reddened, and she lifted her palm and rested her chin against it, and looked around the room in embarrassment even though there was no one around except for her children.

‘Huh? No, no, Khaled … Khaled came back from abroad. I forgot to tell you, Saad! He’s back. He left Kuwait.’

‘But I didn’t see him come back.’

‘Oh, of course not, you won’t see him, he went to Amman for work. He’s busy now, maybe he’ll come visit during holidays, I don’t know!’

That night went by so slowly, and you decided to hate Khaled. Did your words really affect him so much that he responded? Goddamn composition class and its effects! If he’d stayed in Kuwait, maybe the pounds would continue falling on you, and you’d enjoy drinking tea and sitting near Maryam. Maryam, who is beautiful regardless of money and letters!

The few times Saad saw her again, at the beginning of winter, when the alley was empty of playmates, she was more and more beautiful. He threw a ball into her yard on purpose one day, while he was playing alone, so that he could spy on her. She didn’t come out for days, so he jumped over the fence and glimpsed her in her room. She smiled when she saw him, but she never visited his mother again, after that.

Life distracted him. It grew colder, so the alley was completely deserted, and the teachers bored his soul with homework. He preoccupied himself with daydreams about a pound in exchange for two words.

A young boy whispered something into his ear while they were playing with a ball of fabric at the end of the alley, in the warmth of spring. The boy put on the speech and body-language of a grown-up.

‘Did you hear, Saad, that her husband didn’t behave like a man! He saw her with him and he let her run away … he went to her father and brothers crying, like a woman! Oh, he was no man. The entire neighbourhood can’t believe it. Maryam! But as my mother always says, “Beneath a bubble there is always trouble”.’

It took him a while to comprehend what he’d just heard. He asked, his mouth still wide open, ‘You’re saying Maryam … Maryam ran away?’

‘You midget! Haven’t you heard? The entire neighbourhood’s been buzzing about it. Maryam ran away with her boyfriend, Khaled al-Haddad, the taxi driver. She’s been with him for years, she was in love with him before she got married, and no one knew it until her husband caught them together. But he’s an ass, can you imagine, Saad … he didn’t kill her! He left them and ran crying to her family like a woman, and when he came back she’d escaped. Her husband’s a woman!’

His friend wanted him to play for a while afterwards, but Saad asked him to go away, so he did. The place cleared up and no one remained in the alley but him, in the pitch-black darkness. Khaled the taxi driver? She’d insisted that he was her husband’s brother! And you’ve been sitting around feeling happy about your pound, you idiot! Khaled al-Haddad? The one with the black hair, which he combed carefully every time his taxi made a stop? His hair shone with gel. And his eyes were stupid, and his voice was rough; you could hear him sing loudly whenever the taxi drove by. And she lied for
him
!

His mother poured tea into her exhausted husband’s cup, and the boy listened and cried, his face covered in a blanket. His mother whispered, ‘Oh dear, what a terrible man! He’s got no honour, no respect, no dignity! And her father and brothers, they aren’t men either. They swore they wouldn’t rest in their wives’ beds until they’d killed her and washed their honour clean.’

He’s now in his bed, in the corner of the room. When did his feet begin to shake? When he pulled up his body, which was overwhelmed with fear, he saw Maryam suddenly crouch down beside him, her thick, waist-length hair frizzy and dishevelled. The blood exploded from her bludgeoned head, and he fled fearfully, but a red waterfall spewed forth from her chest as she came nearer and nearer. He could hear his quickened breath, as he thought, Khaled al-Haddad! You wrote to him, begging him to come back. You tried and she didn’t like what you wrote, until you came up with the most beautiful words you’d memorised, as the ocean misses the breeze, as the thirsty earth longs for rain … as the lofty tree misses birdsong!

Did that jerk understand what you’d written? Did he return because he felt moved by your words?

The letter! What did he do with it? Did he keep it? What if her family found out about it? That you’re an accomplice? Would Maryam ever confess that your letter is what brought Khaled back to her? Or will Maryam keep your secret to herself? Would she die for Khaled al-Haddad? How did she ever fall in love with a person like him?

How and when do we call for the spirits of men? They were chasing after her, looking for her! Men he didn’t know were out for her head. Why did the walls around him feel as if they were closing in on him, making him more and more afraid, suffocating his breath?

He crept out of his bed when his parents were fast asleep. The road and the alley and her house had all surrendered to a sad silence. When his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he found that her gate was locked. Her house was covered in darkness and was frightfully still.

He resisted his fear, but still hesitated for a long while before he climbed the wall and sat on it. The house and the yard were coal black in the night and its darkness. The roughness of stones and cement scratched him, and a chill went down his spine. He sat still and swung his dangling feet back and forth.

As he got used to the darkness, the sand-filled yard looked still and quiet. It was empty except for his small shoe, which had fallen off and landed there. The loneliness of that shoe preoccupied his thoughts, he wondered whether it would fit any of her children. Next to the single shoe, from the stillness of the sand, Maryam bloomed, spread out in the night’s stillness and the dark’s cold. She was covered in wounds, and her blood flowed heavily, dripping around her, and flooding the entire place. She was a motionless, voiceless body.

The sight of her paralysed him with fear. He covered his face in his arms and wept, as the cold and terror went on, moving from the stones and the night into him. He leaned and cried and fell towards her. The blood-soaked body seized him, and his fearful wails escaped from his body as he landed – Bang! – right on top of her.

The sand was dry and hard and cold, and around him there was nothing but silence after the sound of his fall to the ground had evaporated.

He spied nothing in the empty sand-filled yard but a single, small, lonely shoe. He ran, opened the gate and took off into the road, racing away from his fear.

People’s feet looked a bit bigger than they really were, which made me feel dizzy. The clean floor was rising slowly up towards me, smelling of disinfectant. At the far end of the corridor a child began to make a noise as if he was crying, but he wasn’t, I was certain of that. It was more like a signal to the other children, for at once a baby lying next to me in a woman’s lap began to scream excruciatingly, then a few seats along a child of about two burst into tears, going on at his mother to give him something, although what it was I couldn’t make out from his garbled speech. Then the place suddenly erupted to the sounds of a child’s bitter sobbing coming from behind the closed door next to me and the voice of an invisible doctor pleading with him to keep still so he didn’t hurt himself, and promising him that it would soon be over.