In the Language of Miracles (11 page)

“I just didn't think it was appropriate for your patients to have to be reminded of this.” Angie nodded toward the flyers. “It's been bad enough this past year without stuff like that. It's inviting trouble, if you ask me.”

“No it's not, Angie.”

“Not, huh? So maybe it's a coincidence you've been getting those lovely e-mails and letters again?” She opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of papers, and held it close to his face.

“Why are you keeping them?”

“Just in case. It's evidence.” She shoved the letters back in and closed the drawer.

“As bad as last year?”

“Some are. Not all. There isn't exactly room for innovation here.” She
sniffed, a nervous habit he was used to, a period at the end of sentences she no longer wished to continue. Samir didn't need her to tell him what was in the letters—all variations of
Go Home,
he suspected, or reminders of his son's guilt. Angie had intercepted dozens of those last year before he realized they had been coming. Always the gatekeeper, always taking care of him. Nagla liked her because she sent away female drug representatives if they were too young or too provocatively dressed, only letting them leave their brochures. He liked her because she never made him feel like a foreigner.

She reached out and took the flyers from his hand. She looked at the stained one, and, uttering a soft “Oh,” passed her fingers across the stain, as if her touch would erase it.

“Here,” Samir said, reaching for the other flyer. “Let me hang it back up.”

“No, I'll do it.” She got up, headed toward the door. At it, she turned around. “It's just . . . people can get so nasty.” She shook her head before walking out of her office, leaving Samir staring at the empty doorway.

 • • • 

In his office, Samir shut the door and walked up to his desk, let himself fall into his chair. Angie was right about Pat, who never saw him as anything but Egyptian. Egypt, to her, was a place you visited once in a lifetime to ride camels, take pictures in front of the pyramids, and walk the Khan al-Khalili street bazaar and pretend you were whisked back in time to the world of the
One Thousand and One Nights
. It was not where you went to make friends. He suspected her first reaction to what Hosaam did was some sort of variation on
I knew it.

He glanced at the clock and saw he had fifteen minutes before his first afternoon appointment. He shouldn't have been that sharp with Angie. She was sensitive. One time, years ago, Nagla had called her at home to explain to her about Samir's temper, and he had been baffled
at how both women seemed to think he had one. That was back when he did not understand Americans as well as he did today. Now he knew better than to raise his voice to any American, male or female. They always seemed in such control of their emotions. No elaborate hand gesturing. No raised voices. Memorial services held to celebrate the dead.

He rested his head in both hands, elbows on the desk, and sighed. The Americans with their well-controlled, civilized grief, their healing process, their closure. People coming together to exchange words of sympathy, to hug and whisper over canapés and diet sodas. How sophisticated it all used to seem to him, how distinguished. How polished compared with the peasants in Egypt, who hired
meadeddaat,
women dressed in black, to come to the houses of widows and orphans to wail in such loud, offensive expressions of grief. Ehsan had always been drawn to these women, though she claimed never to have actually met one. But he could easily picture her as a professional mourner, going to the homes of the bereaved to offer a spectacle of grief. For a moment, he imagined Ehsan at the Bradstreets', dressed in black from her head cover to her shoes and purse, walking into the American house under the gazes of strangers, sitting down in a chair in the corner, and doing her duty by loudly wailing while swaying from side to side and hitting her thighs and the top of her head with her open palms.

He did not understand this whole idea of memorials, this whole insistence on holding tight to a knife that was already buried deep in one's heart and then twisting. It confused him, especially because it seemed like something Ehsan would do, Ehsan who, forty years after her husband's death, still insisted on visiting his grave on every anniversary, paying the groundskeeper to sweep and dust the tiled floors around the stone monument, baking bread and distributing it to the poor who hung around cemeteries, hiring a
quaree,
a professional Qur'an reciter, to read aloud at the foot of her husband's grave, sitting across from him and listening to the melodic verses with her head bent down, nodding in
approval. She believed the dead knew whenever their kin visited. Come this weekend, he was sure she would be at Hosaam's grave, reading the Qur'an and praying for Allah to forgive him his evil deeds.

Samir opened the bottom right drawer of his desk. Inside, a picture of his family lay faceup: Nagla, seated and smiling, with Hosaam, Khaled, and Fatima standing behind her, looking at a point slightly to the right of the camera lens. The photo had been Samir's idea; he saw a similar one in every doctor's office he'd been to, and he wanted one of his own to display in his office alongside his diplomas. The kids were younger, then—he remembered the picture being taken during the summer before Hosaam got to high school. At fourteen, it was evident he was not going to be too tall—Khaled had already caught up with him, even though he was three years younger. But Hosaam was stoutly built, with broad shoulders and a square face accented by a strong jawline. Later that day, he and Hosaam had played soccer in the backyard while Khaled reluctantly stood goalie. Hosaam was such a good kicker that Samir had been certain he'd make it to college on a soccer scholarship, playing center forward for whichever team was lucky enough to have him. He had imagined himself going on weekend trips to watch his son play. Four years of college, four years of medical school, three years of residency—internal medicine, like Samir—and Hosaam would have been ready to join his father's practice by the time Samir was sixty-five. Perfect timing to allow Samir to ease his son into full ownership of the practice before he retired.

Samir closed the drawer, pushing his family's picture back into hiding, where it had rested for the last year. No, making plans was not useless. For a short time after Hosaam's death he had let himself slide into that state of mind, but he refused to do so anymore. Plans
were
useful. Plans meant he would be prepared for everything that would come his way, be it hate mail or worse. He knew what those people who built nuclear bomb shelters in the fifties felt like. His responsibility
toward his family meant he had to be prepared. Memorial services tended to remind people not only of their lost ones but also of their anger. He remembered every anniversary of 9/11, when he and Nagla would debate whether or not they should take the kids to Sunday school. On other weekends, Sunday school had been a must, but on this first or second weekend of September their commitment became lax, blurred with the irrational yet real fear of a retaliatory act aimed at the mosque. People became angrier with Muslims in general in September than in any other month of the year. People would become particularly angry with his family now that this anniversary was approaching.

Samir opened the drawer again, looked at Khaled and Fatima, standing behind their mother, smiling. He knew how hard it had been for them at school this past year, even though they hardly spoke to him about that. Again he felt angry with Nagla for failing to support him in his decision to attend the memorial service. Keeping herself locked up at home the whole time, of course she would never truly blend in, nor would she ever understand the workings of the community she was part of, whether she liked it or not. To think that she could bury her head in the sand and wait till the storm passed was vexingly naïve. The flyers had been out only a day or two and already everyone was talking about the upcoming service. How could she think this would not affect them? Would not whisk them back into the center of attention, the center of resentment and anger? Yes, he told himself again. This could turn ugly. But he was not going to let anything happen to his kids. Not again. He
had
to step in.

ARABIC
:
Al-maktoub.
What is written. One way to refer to fate.

A
nd what are you going to do,
insh'Allah
?” Ehsan asked Khaled, standing in the middle of the kitchen, both hands resting on her hips. He looked at her, puzzled. He and Fatima had been dismissed from school early. A water main had burst, he told his grandmother, and the school had no running water. For a moment, he imagined her question implied he should go back and help fix the busted pipe. Never able to judge the extent of her ignorance of how things worked in the United States, Khaled hesitated before saying, in clunky Arabic, “The water company will send someone to fix it,
Setto.
”

“I'm not talking about the pipe, boy!” she said, raising both hands in exasperation. “I'm talking about Friday prayer! You get out early on a Friday, you
have
to assume God meant for it to happen so that you can go pray.” She looked at him as if he had failed to understand something as simple as why a round wheel was better than a square one.

“But the mosque is half an hour away!”

“Oh, and you, poor boy, cannot drive half an hour to go fulfill your obligations toward God? Your shiny new truck cannot make it there, but can make it to hooky games?”

Khaled chuckled.

“What's so funny?”

“It's
hockey
,
Setto,
not
hooky.
” He almost explained the difference, but seeing her eyes narrow with a familiar anger he refrained. “Sorry.”

“So you will not go pray?”

“I probably won't make it there in time anyway,” Khaled said, aware of a faint whimpering in his voice.

“Fine. Shows just how much trouble your parents go through to raise you a good Muslim.”

“I am a good Muslim! I pray all five prayers, every day—you see me do it. And I've been fasting Ramadan since I was twelve.” Her accusation was unfair, he felt, judging him based on one trivial thing. It also hurt because it confirmed his belief that nothing he could do would ever be enough to satisfy his family. They always seemed to expect more of him: more respect for his elders, better grades, more piety. He would have told her so, but the sound of his mother and Fatima, talking as they walked down the stairs, stopped him.

Nagla walked up to a cabinet, grabbed a travel mug, and started filling it with coffee. Behind her, Fatima headed toward the door to the garage. Khaled watched her place her backpack on the floor, pull a hairband out of her jeans pocket, and then swiftly toss her hair to one side, braid it, put the hairband on, and toss it back. The whole process took less than twenty seconds, and she was transformed, her long hair, which fell to the middle of her back, tamed and brought to submission. She never wore her hair down anymore, and Khaled, had he not known his father better, would have assumed the braid was a result of his parents' high expectations of Fatima, as well, of some unreasonable demands they put on her as they did with him. More piety. Less flaunting of seductive assets. More female submission. But his father would never demand that of her. That influence, he knew, had another source. Fatima, catching his eye, looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

“What?” she asked.

“Going to Maraam's?” he asked. She nodded.

“How come you don't let your hair down anymore?”

“It's too hot.” She stood, hands on her hips, staring at him.

“Looks better down,” he said.

“Feels better up. And who asked you, anyway?”

“Just thought I'd mention it. Just in case you're only pulling it up because you're going to Maraam's. You know, considering that she covers her hair.”

Fatima scowled at him but said nothing. He looked away, uneasy, avoiding eye contact with his grandmother, who was watching both her grandkids, struggling, as she always did, to understand the English that they unfailingly reverted to when speaking with each other. He hadn't intended to annoy Fatima, but he could not help that her recent change irritated him. He suspected Maraam was behind his sister's newfound religious devotion. He would not have minded if Fatima did not, in the process, seem to shut herself away from him.

“We're leaving, Mama,
”
Nagla said, grabbing her coffee and planting a kiss on her mother's cheek.

“Leaving now?” Ehsan asked, eyebrows raised.

“I'm going to drop Fatima off at Maraam's.”

“I thought you said you'd take me to the store!” Ehsan protested.

“That was before I knew the kids would be home early. Now Fatima wants to go to Maraam's and I need to take her.”

“Why can't Khaled take Fatima? It's not like he's going to Friday prayer or anything,” Ehsan said, glaring at Khaled. He turned away, opened the fridge door, and pulled out a water bottle.

“No, Mama
,
I want to go. I want to walk in and see Ameena. But,” Nagla said, looking from Ehsan to her son, “Khaled can take you to the store. Can't you?”

She looked at him, the bottle up to his lips. He held it there, swallowing, frantically trying to find a way to get out of this.

“Khaled?” his mother asked.

He put the bottle down.

“Actually . . . I was going . . .” he said, unable to find the words—his Arabic, which he was expected to stick to whenever Ehsan was around, was rusty, uncomfortable, and heavy on his tongue. Even if it were not, he did not know what he could have told her. I was . . . what? Going out? Heading in the opposite direction? Did not plan on spending the next couple of hours with my grandmother?

“Sure, Mom
.
Of course I can,” he finally said, screwing the cap back on the bottle. In his peripheral vision, he could see Ehsan suck at her lips.

Nagla and Fatima had both stepped through the door to the garage when Fatima turned around and walked back in.

“I'll pull my hair up if I want to,” she told him. “I don't care if you don't like it.”

He placed his water bottle back in the fridge. She was turning around to walk out of the kitchen when he called after her.

“Do you want me to pick you up later?”

She hesitated. He watched her, waiting. “You can text me whenever you're ready to go,” he added. She looked down, her hands tucked in the back pockets of her jeans, just like she used to do whenever he tried to get her to touch one of the bugs he collected out in the yard when they were both little kids.

“Sure. Fine. Thank you,” she murmured before walking out.

“And your hair looks good, by the way,” he shouted after her. “Even pulled up.”

He listened, but she said nothing. He hoped she had heard him.

 • • • 

By the time they left, gray clouds hid the sun and a fine drizzle sprayed the windshield as Khaled drove down Main Street toward Foodland.
They took his truck, a used red Chevrolet Avalanche with which his father had surprised him for his seventeenth birthday only three months earlier, the kind of truck Hosaam had wished for and was never granted because Samir had deemed it too expensive. Khaled had looked at the truck and felt stunned, partly because he realized the moment he saw it that he never would have gotten such a truck if Hosaam were still alive, and the association had immediately made him resent the gift and feel alienated from it, as if the truck were tainted in a way he would rather not contemplate. Not that he hadn't liked it, of course. Still, he hated how every time he saw his vehicle, he had to remember Hosaam again.

They remained quiet the whole way except for the faint sound of Ehsan's prayers. Every time she rode with him she prayed as she tightly grabbed the handle above the passenger's window or held herself steady with one outstretched arm pushing against the glove compartment. In the winter, when he drove her through the snow, he could understand her panic, her fear of icy surfaces painting scenarios of slippery wrecks in her mind. Yet on a spring day with only a slight drizzle her attitude seemed absurd.

“You okay,
Setto
?”

She did not answer, but gave him one reprimanding look before turning away again, keeping her eyes fixed on the road. Khaled shook his head and said nothing. Ever since she'd arrived, Ehsan had been uncharacteristically sharp with him over trivial things: leaving a used glass on the countertop instead of rinsing it and putting it in the dishwasher, walking downstairs before school and heading for the coffeepot before wishing her good morning. Her criticism would have been easier to dismiss had it not always been followed by signs of tenderness, reminders of her surprisingly enduring favoritism that Khaled had expected her to transfer to Fatima, now that his sister showed deeper interest in the Qur'an and in religion than he ever had. But just as he would settle down with his cup of coffee, avoiding her eyes after her sharp
rebuke, she would suddenly approach him and start murmuring prayers as her hand gently smoothed over his hair and traced his shoulders, as if her fingertips would transfuse blessings and protection from the holy words straight to his body. He, cringing under the touch that was more appropriate toward a four-year-old, often considered wriggling free, breaking away, but then he would look at her face and remain motionless.

Arriving at Foodland, he pulled in front and let her out before turning in to the parking lot. The steady drizzle, promising a late-night storm, had driven people here for provisions, and Khaled, weary of circling for spaces, parked in a spot at the far end and made his way slowly back through the rain. Walking into the store, he stood, startled to find Ehsan still in the entryway. Next to this week's newspaper deals and a poster announcing a lost Labrador retriever hung Natalie's flyer. Ehsan, shortsighted, had pulled out her glasses and was standing a few inches away, scrutinizing the poster. Khaled looked around, trying to determine whether anyone was watching her. Of all the people in his family, he felt she was the least self-conscious, though the most inviting of curious looks. Today, however, people hurrying into and out of the store paid little attention to her. Khaled pulled a shopping cart out of the dozen or so left and walked up to his grandmother, leading her by the arm. “Let's go,
Setto
,” he said, pushing the cart into the store ahead of both of them.

He turned around and asked “Where to,
Setto
?” as soon as he cleared the entry's traffic. He had expected to find her right behind him, but she was still walking through the double doors, and Khaled grimaced as he realized she had fallen behind even in such a short distance. During her last visit only three years earlier he was the one who had to sprint to keep up with her whenever she took him on shopping trips. Now, watching her slowly follow him, her black leather purse hanging off one arm as she swayed slowly from side to side with every step, he suddenly realized how much she had aged. He tried to remember how old she
was—seventy? Seventy-two? She had gained weight, too, or maybe he had just never noticed how heavy she was.

“Here, let me get this,” he told her as he reached out and took the purse from her arm. “It's too heavy for you to carry around.”

“Just watch out for thieves,” she said, breathing heavily as she looked around her, scanning the customers for potential pickpockets. “Don't let it out of your sight.”

“Where do you want to go first?” he asked, placing her purse in the cart.

“Don't put it in the cart, boy! It'll get stolen!”

“No it won't,
Setto
.” She glared at him, then moved to pull her purse back out of the cart.

“Wait. I'll show you something.” He threaded the child seat's belt through the handle, clicked it shut. “See? Now no one can snatch it.” Unsatisfied, she looked from him to the purse. “Where to first?” he pressed on.

“Produce,” she sighed, walking toward the fruit stands.

Khaled followed at a distance. When she moved in front of the vegetables, he watched her, and looked around to see how others watched her. Young women with squirming kids in shopping cart seats, older ones zipping through the packed grocery store, the occasional solitary man—everyone seemed to be moving at a faster pace than Ehsan, as in one of those movie sequences where the world zooms past the heroine, who moves at half speed, existing in a bubble that answers to different time laws than its surroundings. He would have to be patient. Again he scrutinized his grandmother: Ehsan looked different, he knew, with her black head cover and her loose-fitting black dress making her look stouter than she was. Meandering around, she seemed hesitant, walking up to the tomatoes, then to the rows of greens, and standing there, looking from basket to basket. Khaled waited, resisting an impulse to walk up to her, pick a few things out, and urge her to move on. She was a
careful cook and a slow shopper made slower, he suspected, by age. When he was younger, he used to enjoy going to the store with her because she would always bribe him with candy to keep him quiet as she took her time selecting tomatoes, examining every single zucchini, and weighing eggplants in her hands, comparing them to determine which ones were less seedy. Her most recent visit to Summerset had lasted only three months; this one, begun only weeks after Hosaam's death, was nearing a year, her longest stay ever. Khaled assumed she would have found her bearings in American supermarkets by now, even though each one of them was large enough to hold thirty of the small produce stores she was used to shopping at in Egypt.

A woman probably her age with carefully styled silver hair, wearing khaki pants and a sky-blue sweater, stood behind her, waiting for Ehsan to clear the way. His grandmother was oblivious to the woman's patience, lost in the six or seven kinds of lettuce that Khaled knew she was eyeing in order to choose the one that most closely resembled Egyptian lettuce (romaine, he knew). The woman put her hand up to her mouth and cleared her throat. Ehsan bent down, picked up a head of lettuce, held it closer to her eyes, pulled the wire holding it together straight, and peered down to read the label. The woman coughed, louder this time, and Ehsan put the lettuce back and picked up another one. Khaled, mortified, walked up to his grandmother and pulled her aside by her arm.