Authors: Pauls Toutonghi
“My grandfather,” I whispered.
I stared at the photograph. It was most remarkable for my grandfather’s soft eyes. He had gentle eyes—eyes that looked slightly amused, as if they were in on a secret joke.
Every doorway seemed to be framed with flaking paint. The panels of wallpaper, once opulent and floral, were now stained and patchy; in several places, they’d drooped to the floor, where they lay,
curled and wilted. Beyond the ballroom were a living room and a kitchen. Off of one side of the living room was a balcony big enough for roller skating. And this was not an idle comparison. Presently, a twelve-year-old boy skated in off the veranda, an iPod tucked under his belt. He waved. Then he disappeared down a hallway into the recesses of the apartment.
“That’s my youngest son, Victor,” Banafrit said. “He loves the American film
Rollerball
.”
I indicated that I did not know the American film
Rollerball
.
“It is terrible,” Banafrit said. “But he wants to be the main character, the one who is played by the actor James Caan.”
It was funny to hear the sentence in Arabic, and then the English name, James Caan. But then I lost track of Banafrit, and Fatima, and the old woman, and my father. I lost track of everyone else in the room, because I was standing in front of a framed piece of art, a great branching tree that reached from near the floor to near the ceiling, at least two meters tall. Above the tree, which was drawn in slightly faded black ink, were two easily recognizable words: “ ‘Saqr Family,’ ” I read aloud. This was
naskh
calligraphy, a looping formal Arabic script.
I looked around. Everyone had left except my father, who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, watching me. A litany of facts tumbled through my mind like clattering dice, my Arabic calligraphy class at the Billings Islamic Center springing back into memory:
Invented by Ibn Muqlah in the tenth century
, naskh
was the most common script for the Holy Koran, written with a wide- and chisel-nosed pen
. I looked at the short stems of the letters, at the deep curves, at the decorative flourishes near the tree’s margins. The
script coiled and arched and shaped itself into a series of bright black leaves. There was a sentence, written at eye level, in ink that was fresh and new.
“ ‘In the Name of Allah,’ ” I read, translating hesitatingly, slowly, one word at a time. “ ‘The Most Benevolent, the Most Merciful. Not a leaf falls but He knows it.’ ”
“Fatima added it,” my father said. “Since she converted, she’s been unstoppable. She even changed her name.”
“I meant to ask,” I said, “about the head scarf.”
“The hijab?” my father said. “Almost all the women wear them these days, even if they aren’t Muslim. Except Banafrit. She’s not afraid of anything.”
I nodded and then read the rest of the text aloud. “ ‘Saqr Family. The family tree of the late Saleem ibn Shahallah ibn Elias ibn Nasrallah ibn Nameh ibn Saqr. Born in Allepo around 1705, married 1740.’ ” And then, on the branch that was cut off: “ ‘The older brother, Georges, became a monk and was titled Khouri Assayeh, the General Director of the Monastery of St. Michael, at Zunia.’ ”
“A holy fool,” my father said.
I stood there looking up at this artist’s rendering of my genealogy. The body buried in the soil, the roots rising from the rib cage, the generations of the past giving nourishment to the generations of the future.
“Where am I on here?” I asked.
Fatima poked her head around the corner. “Are you going to stand there all day talking and talking,” she called, “or are you going to come in here and have some food?”
“But look,” I said, pointing up to the wall. “The family tree.”
“And?” Fatima said.
“It’s amazing?” I said. “It’s beautiful?”
“Isn’t that adorable,” Fatima said. “He’s such an American. Now come in here and have something to eat.”
My father shrugged. And so I reluctantly left the family tree behind. As I walked into the kitchen with its long wooden dining table and stacks of chipped earthenware dishes, with its hanging dried bunches of peppers and cool tile floor, Banafrit rushed me over to an unoccupied chair. She installed me at the head of the table.
“How can you not be in awe of that painting?” I said. Actually, I didn’t say
painting
. I couldn’t remember the word for painting, for some reason, so I said, “Plant behind glass.” This was a problem with negotiating a foreign language; occasionally, it went badly wrong. They all seemed amused, but my father was the one to respond. “It’s nothing special,” he said.
“He’ll take a coffee,” Banafrit said.
“Why not tea?” Fatima said. She was standing at the stove and holding a big pot of boiling water.
“He’d like coffee,” Banafrit said. “I can tell.”
“I’ll ask him if he’ll have tea,” Fatima said. She turned to me. “Will you have coffee or tea?”
All three of them peered at me. I felt like the mouse scrutinized by the owl family in the rafters. “Both?” I said hesitantly.
“Excellent choice,” Banafrit said, nodding.
“He’s very smart,” Fatima said approvingly.
“Don’t flatter him,” Banafrit said.
“You’re the one who put him at the head of the table,” Fatima said.
“I put him there because it makes him look dignified,” Banafrit said.
“I don’t care,” Fatima said, “as long as he helps us prepare lunch.”
If the first object that told the story of my father was that document, the ghostly tree to which the rest of the family seemed to be indifferent, then here was the second part of the story of my father: An onion. Or a bowl of onions. Because the bowl of onions landed in the center of the table, a big red earthenware bowl, overflowing with small bulbous shapes. They were pungent and purple, and sure enough, Egyptian walking onions, not out of place here in Egypt. Probably quite common, actually. Fatima handed each of us a knife.
I held the knife in my right hand. I hoisted it theatrically into the air. I traced small circles with its tip in a gesture that I thought was a little menacing—but also perhaps festive?
“Attention, everyone,” I said in Arabic. “I have an announcement.”
“No, no,” my father said. “No announcements.”
“Announcements are enjoyable,” I said.
“Not while cooking,” he said.
“I would like an announcement,” Banafrit said.
“Me, too,” Fatima said. “An announcement could be nice.”
“Absolutely no announcements,” my father said. “I forbid announcements while I am preparing a dish.”
I cleared my throat. “I would like to say—” I began.
“—that he is tremendously grateful for your hospitality,” my father said. “And that he doesn’t know how to repay you.”
“Except by staying here at the house,” I said. I smiled broadly.
“No, no,” my father said, “that is unfortunately impossible.”
“It is
necessary
,” Banafrit said. “He will stay with me.”
“No, he will stay with me,” Fatima said.
Someone once said to me:
Life is like an onion. You peel away the layers, and what is at the center?
I’m not sure even what that means, exactly, since there are so many different kinds of emptiness. But the phrase is memorable.
Life is like an onion
. I do agree, though, that our lives reside in objects, that we live in them, through them—that we give them grace.
“Stop your endless bickering,” said the old woman who’d met me at the door, walking into the kitchen holding a stack of table linens that reached several feet above her head.
“Wael,” my father said. “This is Kebi Merit, our cook.”
With an enormous sigh, Kebi Merit nodded to me and dropped the linens on the kitchen table. Then she collapsed into a chair beside them. She sighed again and began reciting some kind of prayer. She said it softly to herself while she started folding napkins and tablecloths.
Kebi Merit’s presence seemed to halt the argument between the sisters. There was a long silence in which the only sound was the steady clicking of my father’s knife through onion flesh. Tears came to my eyes. No one else seemed to notice.
“So, Wael,” Fatima finally said. “Tell us about your father, Malik?”
I coughed. “Why doesn’t Akram tell you,” I said. I turned to him. “My father tells me that you are old, old friends.”
“The oldest,” my father said.
“You know,” Kebi Merit said. “It’s strange. But I’ve just been thinking. And I don’t remember anyone named Malik from when you were a boy, Akram.”
“You’re old and losing your memory,” my father said.
“No. I remember everything,” Kebi Merit said. “Why can’t I remember Wael’s father, Malik?”
“He and I were inseparable when we were children,” my father said. “Like two halves of the same person. Then he moved to Europe before I went to Montana for graduate school.”
“Like two halves of the same person?” I said.
“He went to Switzerland,” my father said, talking over me. “To the Swiss Alps.”
It was almost chilling to hear my father quickly fabricate my life story, complete with an education at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and extensive travels around the world. No matter where I went, apparently, I missed my family home—this neighborhood in Cairo—where my ancestry stretched for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. That was how I’d come back here, to the family of his father’s oldest childhood friend, to learn the truth about my Egyptian heritage. It was, in some ways, a fictionalization of my own life. It struck me as a strange and particularly brutal gesture. I decided to strike back.
“My mother was a prostitute,” I said, pointing at my father. “You left that out.”
His eyes opened wide. Momentarily, he was speechless. Then he said, “I felt awkward revealing that information.”
“And you introduced her to my father, Malik,” I added, “because you tried to save her from the streets. You didn’t tell your sisters that?”
“Now, Wael,” my father said.
I looked intently at him. “He’s very well known in the family,” I said, “for his charity work.”
“Akram,” Banafrit said, “why haven’t you spoken of this before?”
“Well,” my father said, shrugging, “I did only what was necessary. I’m no hero.”
“Then you must not have told them how she died,” I said.
“How she died?” he said.
“Go on,” I said. I looked at Banafrit and Fatima. “It’s very tragic.”
“She was struck by a car,” my father said.
“That you were driving,” I said.
Banafrit gasped and dropped her knife and made the sign of the cross. She stood and walked over and enveloped me in her ample embrace. “You poor, poor boy,” she said. “You poor, poor boy.” I had the momentary sensation of drowning as the flesh over her biceps settled around my mouth like a muffler.
Fatima reached out and placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “This is a sad story,” she said. “You should have trusted us with it before.”
It was a sad story indeed—the tale of a prostitute accidentally run over by the very man who was trying to save her from the streets. It had taken an unexpected turn and provoked sympathy for my father. This was resolutely not what I’d had in mind. Although, to be honest, I hadn’t had much in mind at all. I’d just wanted to punish him, to make him uncomfortable. But now I’d failed at even that.
I pulled out of Banafrit’s embace. “I have to make a phone call,” I said. “I’ll just step outside for a moment.”
“Fine, fine,” my father said without looking at me. “Go right ahead.” Clearly, he was thinking:
Good riddance
. As I walked away, I heard him making apologies on my behalf. The truth was, I needed
a moment to calm down. I ducked into a bathroom, closing the door behind me. There was a mirror, and I looked in it, stared at my wide-set eyes and my bony nose. I ran the water and daubed it on my forehead.
When I was a teenager, I read
The Road to Wigan Pier
. It was an act of self-loathing. I wanted to see what it was that my family had helped create, helped actualize in the world. The book was indelible. There’s a line in it I’ve never been able to forget:
When a miner comes up from the pit, his face is so pale that it is noticeable even through the mask of coal dust
. There’s no air deep beneath the ground, or at least not the oxygen-rich air that we breathe up on the surface. I learned about black lung and boot rot and the many ways that miners could be crushed by collapsing rock or plummeting thousand-pound extraction equipment.
No wonder Dad left
, I remembered thinking.
He didn’t want to be implicated
. Ridiculous, but still—years later—the thought lingered as I ran the cool water and wiped my face clean.
A miner surfacing from a pit
, I thought.
Familial love is invisible. I’d come all the way around the world to find an invisible thing.
The lining of your arteries, the very blood you have circulating in you, pumping madly through your body, is .00001 percent copper. Why do you think your blood tastes like pennies? I turned off the faucet, conscious of the fact that I was wasting water. Cairo was growing by a million people a year. Ninety-five percent of Egypt is a desert. I took a few deep breaths. I dried my skin with a small hand towel. I turned and slowly opened the door and stepped back out into the apartment.
Kebi Merit was standing there, wrinkled and hunched over. She glared at me. “I know,” she said in a voice that was even and measured. “I know your secret.”
I stared at Kebi Merit. Her face was tight, pulled tight against itself, and she squinted at me, squinted relentlessly. At certain times in life, anything can have the magnificence of a symbol; as Kebi Merit leaned in toward me, the light in the hallway chose that moment to flicker and fail. Why do lightbulbs die? Many reasons: an air leak in the glass, a surge in electrical voltage. Most common is evaporation. Tungsten vapor evaporates off the surface of the filament, solidifies as smoke, and settles on the surface of the bulb. Eventually, this makes the filament too brittle. It can’t sustain the current. It fractures.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“I know who you are,” she said. “Both of your aunts suspect it, too. They’d never admit it. But they know. When you came to the door, it was confirmed.”