In the Language of Miracles (27 page)

It would have been perfect if those flocks of butterflies had appeared,
if God had intervened to straighten up a mess that He had not started. Ehsan would never give up on this kind of miracle. She would feel entitled to it, would insist that wanting God's help should guarantee its arrival. But, Khaled thought, maybe Brittany was right; maybe miracles did not happen, at least not anymore. Ehsan would be infuriated by such an assumption; she would consider it blasphemous.

Then again, perhaps they were both wrong.

Perhaps the miracle lay in Khaled's gaze up, in the anticipation of butterflies, in the faith that he was not alone. In his willingness to surrender to crushing winds, and in the hope that such surrender would teach him how to fly.

“Islam,” Ehsan had repeatedly assured him, “shares the root of the word
surrender
.” He would have to write this down. And then, perhaps, he would talk to Ehsan about miracles that did not involve divine intervention.

In the car, he leaned his head back, shut out the engine's hum as his mother maneuvered her way out of the parking lot. Khaled avoided looking at his father, who sat with his head against the door, motionless. Eyes closed, Khaled put his hand out and found Fatima's, squeezed it, and listened only long enough to make sure she had stopped crying.

T
he house had been empty for six months. Khaled pulled onto the driveway and, stepping out of his car, looked around. The street seemed deserted, engulfed in a mid-morning calm that only the absence of humans can invoke. Still, someone might have been peering from behind a curtain. He hurried to the front door, only once glancing toward the Bradstreets' house. He saw no one.

He turned the key and walked in, surprised at himself for having expected the door to squeak, for having half anticipated layer upon layer of dust and flocks of bugs buzzing around the rooms. But the house was spotless, a sweet and slightly musty smell lingering in the air. Someone had been here, of course. Fatima, perhaps. Or Aunt Ameena. He pinched the edge of one of the sheets his mother had draped over the furniture, bent down, and sniffed, recognizing, with an ache, his mother's favorite laundry softener. On the dining room table stood a wicker basket filled with mail. Aunt Ameena.

He would not stay long. On the phone, his mother had dictated a short list of things he needed to get her
men elbeit
: a box of jewelry in her nightstand drawer; a thick envelope tucked on a shelf in her closet. Sprinting up two steps at a time, Khaled remembered another word that Ehsan had read to him from one of his Sunday school books:
al-manzel.
Was there a distinction between
elbeit
and
al-manzel
? Did one mean “home” and the other “house”? To him, the words were interchangeable, the second more formal than the first but neither intimate.

For the previous six months, his parents' home had been the small apartment in Al-Ibrahimiyya, where his mother had grown up and where Ehsan had lived. This had been their longest “vacation” to date—his parents still called their trips to Egypt vacations, even after Samir had retired and their stays in Egypt grew so long that Khaled and Fatima started wondering why their parents bothered to keep the house in Summerset, why they bothered to come back from each trip to Egypt and pretend they intended to stay. Yet neither Khaled nor his sister dared suggest that their parents move back to Egypt for good. The implications were thorny: that their kids no longer needed them; that they had never truly belonged here anyway.

On his way out of his parents' room he stopped in his own, looking around. Nothing had changed in the years since he had left. Seven years? Six? He had to pause and calculate. Had he stopped by on any other day, he might have found something here he still wanted: the old book on lepidoptera on the shelf, maybe, or the stack of CDs he had left behind when he went to college. Today, though, he had only Ehsan on his mind. Walking up to his desk, he opened the bottom drawer and pulled out an old composition notebook. The black-and-white marbled cover had faded to a sepia tone, and the pages had curled up in one corner. He laid his mother's jewelry box and the envelope down on the desk and leafed through the notebook. Ehsan had picked it up for him during one of her grocery-store trips. He must have been eleven or twelve; he had just started middle school, and she, arriving from Egypt after a two-year absence, had declared his Arabic deplorable. “You cannot learn Arabic unless you write it down,” she had said, walking into his bedroom and placing the notebook on his desk. Each day, she would teach him something new, a word, a proverb, or an expression, and ask him to write it down in the notebook followed by its English translation.
Ahlak,
one entry said.
Your people,
his father had translated for him.
Your family
.

 • • • 

He headed toward the city in the relative calm of midday traffic. He had not planned on driving to New Jersey on the same day he was to fly out of JFK, but his mother had told him of the things she needed only the night before, her request preceded by apologies and affirmations that the things were “not that important, really.” He suspected she had waited so long because she had not believed he would really do it.

“Why do you want to come?” his father had asked him for the tenth time only two days earlier. “It's useless, really. Just a waste of your time and money.”

“Nice to know you miss me, too,” Khaled said.

“You know that's not what I mean. Your mother and I can come over and visit once you settle down. We could be there next month, if you want us to.”

“I still want to come,
Baba.
”

“For what? A month ago, two months ago, I might have understood. But now—it's seriously of no use. Besides, it's not really safe here, right now.”

“It's safe enough for you and Mama to be there.”

“That's different. We can blend in much better than you can.”

Khaled listened as he looked out the tenth-story window of the apartment he was about to vacate. Arguing with his father over the necessity of a trip to Egypt at this time was useless, as all arguments with Samir always were. He understood what his father was referring to, of course: that he had missed everything already—Ehsan's illness, her stroke, the months she spent in bed. For the entire spring term he had been convinced that she would wait for him. Working on his thesis, preparing for his exams, waiting to hear from the various PhD programs he had applied to, he had been certain that Ehsan would manage to hang on just long enough for him to finish his last term of his master's
program. He had even booked the ticket months in advance, a direct flight from JFK leaving only five days after the term ended.

Heading into the Holland Tunnel, Khaled glanced at the notebook his grandmother had given him all those years ago. From the moment he knew he would be stopping by the house, he had intended to retrieve it. He imagined Ehsan would have wanted him to, though he was less certain she would approve of his plans for the notebook. He had lain in bed the night before thinking this through, contemplating especially why he would not give it to Fatima, who, he had to admit, would have probably liked to have it. But Ehsan had never given her a similar notebook, and passing it on to her might have ended up being a tactless reminder of Ehsan's favoritism. Besides, he did not want to stop by Fatima's place again, not after he had spent the entire preceding afternoon reassuring her that she did not need to fly to Egypt, even as he tried to explain why he did. He had finally managed to convince her that the trip came at an appropriate time for him but not for her; leaving now would mean she would have to abandon the summer internship she had finally secured. She needed the research experience. With any luck, she might even cowrite a paper or two, which would help her tremendously once she finished medical school and started looking for residencies. He had managed to spend two hours with her and not once say what was truly on his mind: that this trip was something between him and Ehsan, a final chapter in a story they both started a long time ago and that he now needed to see to its conclusion. He could not risk seeing Fatima again, because he was certain that, this time, his discretion would fail him, and he did not want to hurt her feelings.

 • • • 

Driving out of the tunnel, he glanced at the dashboard and saw that it was barely past midday, which meant he had a good six hours until his plane left. Even in New York City's traffic this should give him enough time for a detour. He picked up his cell phone and dialed Brittany.

“Hey, Dr. Al-Menshawy,” Brittany said.

He laughed. “Not until five more years. If I stopped by, would you be able to dash out for a moment? I have something to give you.”

In the city, he pulled up at a fire hydrant and texted her. He watched her walk out of the office building and down the block to where he was parked, and he smiled. He missed the purple streak in her hair, still could not get used to the sight of Brittany in a pencil skirt and a silk top. At least she had kept the multiple earrings on one ear, and her nails were painted a matte black.

“Haven't left yet?” she asked, leaning in through the passenger window.

“I'm on my way to the airport.” He reached out and handed her the notebook.

“What's this?” She held it in her hand, her eyes glistening. He smiled.

“Something I want you to keep for me till I come back.” Then, after a pause, “If you have the time, you can glance through it. If you want to, that is.”

She smiled, tucking the notebook under her arm. “Will you stop by again before you head to California?”

He nodded. “I still have a couple of boxes lying around in my apartment, and I have till the end of the month.”

She leaned through the window and all the way across the passenger seat, somehow managing to hug him across the distance. “I'll miss you.”

He hugged her back, careful not to wrinkle her shirt, inhaling the scent of jasmine and dew-covered leaves that hung on her hair.

 • • • 

Even before liftoff, he could feel the nostalgia engulf him. Across the aisle sat a young woman, a boy next to her, a baby in her lap. She was cooing to the baby, who was already getting restless, and he could see her lift the baby and, putting her lips to his ear, murmur words that he did not need to hear to know were verses from the Qur'an. He imagined
that was exactly what his mother had done to him on all those trips they took to Egypt when he was young. A few rows ahead, he could see a heavyset woman, dressed in black, her white head cover draping across her shoulder, her slow movements betraying her age.

Ehsan had not managed to pull off the miracle after all. She almost did; she had lingered until two weeks earlier, and had finally died only a few days before the spring term ended. He was shocked when his father told him; so deeply had he believed she would wait for him that her death, expected by everyone, totally blindsided him. Sitting in the airplane, the hum of the engines growing to a deafening pitch, he contemplated again how foolish it was to think she would be able to control the time of her own death. For the previous days he had been furious at himself for entertaining such a thought—had he learned nothing? For years now he had known better than to expect miracles; yet, when it came to his grandmother, his scientific mind-set seemed to be clouded by memories of incense and protective incantations. He had always thought of her on her own terms, as if she existed in a parallel universe where the rules she believed in worked for her, even if not for those around her. In such a world, the little details as well as the feelings people harbored for one another
could
change destinies: his status as her favorite; his promise to her that he would be back to see her as soon as he could; the ticket that he had purchased using her money, the two thousand dollars she had sent him (God knows where she got that much money from) when he got his BA two years earlier, crisp hundred-dollar bills tied up in a sealed envelope. The money he had lied to her about, assuring her he had spent it toward his graduate school tuition. If Ehsan had played by her own rules, she would have waited to see him. She would have died as he held her hand.

For the hundredth time in a week he reminded himself that no one could play by such rules, that Ehsan might have believed whatever she wanted to believe, but that some things were simply out of humans'
control. But then, as the plane climbed higher, it occurred to him that perhaps she had, in fact, managed to do things her way after all. She had died on the dawn of a Friday, at the time when angels come down to earth and bless those who are awake early in devotion to God. She had been buried that same day, in accordance with Islamic tradition; a swift interring that was the best preservation of the dignity of the dead. And, as his mother had described, her voice cracking over the phone, Ehsan had been ready for burial precisely in time for the Friday prayer, and her funeral service was performed not only by her family and friends, but by thousands and thousands of people who had flocked to the mosque for the weekly midday prayer and, finding a funeral service in progress, had rushed to perform the prayer that begged for mercy for those who have died and those who will eventually join them. Khaled, listening to his mother describe the scene, saw the prayer rugs spread in rows out on the streets and heard the whispers of attendees wondering who was this woman, lucky enough to die on the holy day and have that many people pray for her, a sure sign of her virtue. This, he was certain, would have pleased Ehsan immensely.

But perhaps he was wrong again. Perhaps the success of Ehsan's rules of life lay not in the time and manner of her death, but in the fact that he, sitting in an airplane high above the Atlantic, understood perfectly well what those rules entailed and
still
felt an insurmountable urge to go back to a country he could hardly remember, a country he felt he had never truly known. Samir was partially right, of course: flying back to Egypt two weeks after the funeral was futile, and traveling there during the Arab Spring was probably foolish, especially for a quasi-Egyptian who spoke Arabic with an American accent.

Yet to Ehsan, who believed that the dead boasted of their visitors, such a journey would have made perfect sense. And he
would
go visit her grave. He would sit by it and talk to her, just as he used to see her do by the grave of his grandfather. He imagined himself sitting in the cemetery
and talking to a tombstone in broken Arabic, and he chuckled. But he
would
do it. And he could almost hear her, boasting, trying not to sound too prideful, exclaiming, “See? My grandson flew all the way here from America to visit me. He can barely speak two Arabic words, the poor boy (though Allah be my witness, I did try to teach him), but he still knows enough to come here and sit by my grave, to try and recite the Qur'an with his heavy American accent. I taught him well, didn't I?” And Khaled would tell Ehsan, and whoever else listened, that he still kept some of her incense tucked in one of his drawers, that he still gravitated toward the trays of stuffed grape leaves in Mediterranean restaurants, that he still thought of her often, and that, when he did, he saw her cooking. He saw himself walking into his parents' house to the smell of eggplant
musakkah
and cold beef with gravy, of white buttered rice and
molokheyya
spiced with garlic and coriander, of hot, minted tea and
mehallabeyya
for dessert. And he still imagined she walked around at night, after everyone was asleep, twirling her incense holder, letting the fragrant smoke fill the air, reminding him that he was not alone.