In the Language of Miracles (16 page)

“Don't walk out on me while I talk to you, girl!” Ehsan's shrill voice boomed behind her. Nagla ignored her, ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, where she kept a stash of cigarettes in one of the drawers. She had already lit one and was walking up and down the length of the breakfast table when her mother caught up with her.

“You think you can get away with being disrespectful to me? You think now that you're all grown up I won't know how to teach you manners?” Ehsan banged one hand on the table, and Nagla jumped.

“Stop yelling.” Nagla's voice was calm, though her words caused a
funny, minuscule ring in her own ears. She paused, trying to detect it again. It was gone.

“Is this what I get for trying to keep the peace between you and your husband? For leaving my home and traveling halfway across the earth to be with you?
Saheeh: men kharag men daroh etall me'daroh.
”

Nagla snickered at the saying. “Leaving your home did
not
result in any loss of status or dignity. Don't try to make me feel guilty, Mama
.
I'm onto all of that.”

“No loss of dignity? Then what do you call your attitude?”

“Being honest.” Nagla rested both hands on the table across from her mother. Her cigarette dripped ash on the tabletop, and Ehsan glanced at it.

Nagla went on. “For once in my life, I'm trying to be honest.”

“There is a difference between honesty and ill manners.”

“I was not ill-mannered.”

“Calling me a liar is not ill manners? Accusing me of lying to your father, may Allah have mercy on his soul? Insulting him, too?”

“I did not—”

“And which one of my ingrate sons has spoken to you about him, anyway?” Ehsan interrupted her, her voice getting edgier by the moment. “What lies have they told you?”

Nagla hesitated. Honesty dictated that she say what she knew: her father's temper, his string of professional failures, his anger that often bordered on cruelty directed at his wife and sons, his abusiveness. She knew the stories. She could still remember Waleed's face, the way he winced when he told her of the thrashings he and her other brothers endured, of the way their mother would throw herself between her husband and children to shield them from his belt. Nagla could recount those stories, one by one, and point out the not-so-subtle discrepancies between them and her mother's versions. Perhaps then Ehsan would recognize this thing that Nagla was trying to get at, this string of
habitual, perpetually justified, allegedly harmless lies, these “embellishments,” as her mother would probably call them, just as Waleed had done when trying to justify Ehsan's lies.
Because we do not air our dirty laundry for everyone to gawk at,
Nagla could imagine her mother saying. We do not even stare at it ourselves, the reasoning would follow, because, after all, this would not be decent. Better pretend all is well. Better justify abuse, cover up failures, keep on praying that God will not expose our nakedness like he did Adam and Eve's, will not withdraw his protection and subject us to the judgment of others.

Nagla struggled to find the words. There had to be a way to explain this to her mother, to get her to see what she now saw. But before Nagla could speak, Ehsan let herself drop onto one of the chairs. Resting her head on one hand, she started rocking from side to side, faint sobs emanating rhythmically, as if initiated by the pendulum-like motion.

“Why do you do this to me,
ya Allah
? What have I done to deserve such ingratitude from my own children in my old age?”

Nagla sighed, pressing the balls of her thumbs against her eye sockets, trying to steady her hands. Her mother's reaction did not surprise her. This was a signature Ehsan maneuver, as Samir called it, a staple of her arsenal reserved for unwanted conversations. Look at
me,
she seemed to say. Feel sorry for me. Forget about this other, unpleasant thing you wanted to talk about.

“Please don't cry, Mama
.”

Ehsan sobbed louder.

Nagla pulled up a chair and sat down. As she smoked, she watched her mother and tapped her fingernails on the glass top of the breakfast table.

“This isn't going to work, you know. Not this time.” Nagla puffed a cloud of smoke in the space between her and her mother.

Ehsan looked up. She was no longer crying. “I truly failed to raise you well.”

Nagla pushed her palm against the tabletop. Although pressed firm against the cold surface, her hand was still shaking.

“I am not going to be drawn into this fight.” Nagla kept her voice as calm as she could. “I'm trying to explain something—to understand something.”

“Astaghfiru Allah Al-Azim,”
Ehsan sighed, covering her face with her hands.

Nagla went on. “I'm trying to explain to you that agreeing with everything my husband tells you will
not
bring me any peace. I know you mean well, but you are not helping.”

“So next time I should call him an idiot to his face—is this what you want? Will this bring you peace?”

“I never said that.” Nagla's cigarette was almost gone. She pulled a new one from the pack that lay on the table, used her old one to light it, and then tossed the stub into a half-empty glass of water that stood on the counter next to her. The cigarette fizzled and then went out, turning the water a murky gray. The color reminded Nagla of her treacherous jet-black hair.

“All I said,” Nagla went on, “is that you should not let him use you to get to me. He always tries to do so. Don't make it so easy on him. At least give me a chance to have a say in my own life.”

“I'm not preventing you from having any say in your life. Not that I've ever seen you try.”

The sarcastic tone pinched Nagla, and she jumped. “What do you mean?” She paused, narrowed her eyes. “Have you been speaking to Ameena, too?”

“What?” Ehsan looked puzzled. “What has she got to do with any of this?”

“Are you all ganging up against me, now? Is that it?” She walked up and down the kitchen again.

“I'm only saying that my opinion does not matter one way or the
other. If you want to take charge of things,
you
need to talk to your own husband. Don't blame it on me if you can't get him to do anything your way.”

“I
do
talk to him!” Nagla yelled. “Do you know how difficult it is to get him to change his mind on anything?”

“Oh, that's more like it.
Aywah kedah.
” Ehsan got up. The last trace of self-pity was gone from her voice, replaced with a tone that Nagla struggled to identify, placing it somewhere between anger and self-satisfaction. “So your husband can be difficult, huh? You can try to get him to change things but fail, correct? And what do you do when you fail? What do you do when he looks you in the eyes and tells you he will do what he pleases because he is the man of the house, because he is putting a roof over your head and your children's?”

“Samir never—”

“What do you do when you reach a dead end? Tell me, Miss Stand-Your-Ground.”

Nagla paced the kitchen.

“I'll tell you what you do,” Ehsan went on. “You tell him it's okay. You tell him,
Whatever you say, Samir.
You tell him you have nothing more to say.” She paused. “You lie.”

“I don't—”

“You lie to protect your family. It's what we do, Nagla. Because we are women, and there is nothing else we
can
do. So take a close look at yourself before you start judging me.”

At the head of the table, Nagla stood rooted in place, staring at her mother. Again a hurricane of minute details flooded her senses: how her mother's eyes kept darting to her cigarette as she spoke; how a strand of her hair had fallen away from her tight bun and was hanging loose at the side of her face; how the lighting had changed, with rays of sunlight reaching the edge of the countertop, illuminating the glass with its ash-infused gray water. Nagla tried to push the details away, to focus on the
unfairness of it all, on the cruelty of having both her mother and her friend blame her for things that were beyond her control.

“Erhamoony ba'a,”
she whimpered. Her call for mercy did not seem to faze her mother, who stood in place, watching her. Nagla rested both palms on the table and let her head hang down.

Ehsan walked out of the kitchen, only to walk straight back in. Before Nagla could lift her head to see where her mother had gone, she heard the click of glass against glass and saw a crystal ashtray that her mother placed on the kitchen table, right under Nagla's face.

“Here,” Ehsan said. “You're dripping filth all over the place. If you have to smoke inside, at least use an ashtray.”

Nagla stared at the large circular object, one of the many relics from Egypt. This one her mother had carried here over a decade ago, after a previous visit to her daughter's house had revealed an unsatisfactory lack of crystals. Samir had nicknamed it “the ten-kilogram ashtray,” marveling at how her mother had managed to bring it all the way from Egypt without breaking it or violating the airline's baggage allowance policy.

Nagla straightened up, still staring at the ashtray. Its very existence in her house seemed trivial and perplexing. She took another puff of her cigarette, struggled to concentrate. Another chunk of ash fell to the floor.

Ehsan sighed. “You just won't listen, will you?” She picked the ashtray up and shoved it into her daughter's hand. Nagla looked from the ashtray to her mother.

“How can you care about something like that right now?” she whispered. “I'm trying to talk to you. I'm trying to understand things, and all you care about is whether or not I get ash on my floor?” She tossed the ashtray onto the table. It landed with a loud clunk.

“Careful!” Ehsan shrieked. “You'll break your table!” She walked up to the table, pushed the ashtray aside, and started inspecting the tabletop.

Nagla's hand shook. Of course she should not have tossed that
ashtray. Such carelessness. She walked up closer to her mother, lifted the ashtray, and flipped it, checking its underside for scratches. Even the ashtray's weight in her hand could not steady it. She bent down and checked the breakfast table, too, scrutinizing it for unevenness or flaws.

When she straightened up again, she saw the edge of the ashtray sparkle in the sun that shone through the window behind her. On the tabletop, the light broke into a prism of yellow, red, and blue.

She stared at the colors, looking from them to the ashtray in her hand.

“Nagla?”

She, like her mother, had been concerned—even if only for a moment— with this piece of crystal, with the furniture that should not be allowed to wear down with use or age.

When had she learned that? Why was it so important that the furniture not break or tarnish?

She looked up at her mother. The air grew cooler, and her head started spinning. She focused, her brows knotted in concentration.

“Nagla? What's wrong,
ya benti
?”

Again she thought of the shape of the tress, of the words on Ameena's walls, of all the little things that had recently started to crowd her brain, fighting for space, pushing other thoughts out.

Like her mother, she, too, was more superstitious than she cared to admit.

She had gone back and used the
shahada
to bid Fatima goodbye. Even now that thought comforted her.

Like her mother, she, too, had lied to her husband. Habitually. Had never mustered the courage to criticize him to his face.

She groaned.

“Nagla?”

Like her mother, she, too, allowed men their imperfections. Their little quirks.

Such as Samir's constant pride in his own judgment. The way he gloated whenever something he foresaw happened. The silly little things. The car trouble he would diagnose, insisting that the brake fluid was leaking. She would take the car for repair and back, and, when he would ask, she would tell him he was right. She would
lie,
deliberately
.
Because, after all, he was a man, and he should not be proven wrong in front of his wife and children.

Stupid things. Such as how Samir would belittle Hosaam's opinions in front of everyone, arguing that boys needed a firm hand. That, too, she had accepted.

She had allowed other things as well.

Such as when Hosaam started spending more and more time in the attic. The never-ending drumbeat, and, later, the eerie silence.

Such as that time he inflated dozens of balloons and hung them in front of Natalie's window, then spent the night sitting on her porch, watching the dark window, waiting for her to wake up. Nagla had seen him and told no one. When Cynthia, the next day, had seemed alarmed to find him asleep on her deck, Nagla had scoffed at her friend's failure to see the romance in the boy's gesture.

Such as when he stopped answering her when she spoke to him. She had told herself that she was giving him the distance he needed, when, she now saw, she had been too cowardly to do otherwise.

It was, of course, all her fault. She had known that for a long time.

Behind her, a sudden blast of wind rushed through the trees, and the branches shivered. Even across her backyard, she could hear them. She turned around, facing the window.

Ahead, the line of trees bordering Summerset Park called her, the swish of wind through branches a language she understood as well as any other she knew. She squinted. From where she stood, she could see the trunks of the first row of trees, could even detect the shape of the rows behind it, the checkered patches of light and dark that the shadows
of the branches above formed on the bark and on the ground. She looked closer. Around her, everything fell silent, her mother's voice retreating into the background together with everything other than those trees. A sense of sudden urgency overcame her, a conviction that, if she looked closely enough, she would detect something of major significance.