In the Language of Miracles (3 page)

“What's going on? What memorial are they talking about?” Ehsan whispered.

“El-sanaweyya ya Setto,”
he said, trying to pronounce the words in his best Arabic. “They will be holding a memorial service for Natalie's one-year anniversary. The anniversary of her death, that is,” he clarified unnecessarily.

“
They're going to the cemetery?”

“No, not the cemetery. It's different, here. You don't have to hold a service at the cemetery. They're doing it at the park.”

“At the park?” Ehsan said, raising her eyebrows. Khaled nodded. “I'll never understand the Americans,” she sighed. Upstairs, a door slammed, and they all looked up, as if expecting to see Nagla's movements traced on the ceiling.

“What about your brother's
sanaweyya
?” Ehsan whispered to Khaled. “Aren't you going to do something for him?”

Khaled looked at Fatima, who was biting her lower lip, just the way their mother always did.

“I don't think so,
Setto.
We can hardly invite people over for him, you know,” Khaled said.

“I know that, boy. I'm not an idiot,” Ehsan said, slapping Khaled on the shoulder with the back of her hand. Her slap, surprisingly hard, almost made him topple over. He reached one hand behind him and steadied himself. “I just meant you, the four of you, and me, of course. Maybe just go over to the cemetery and read some Qur'an. Or ask people at the mosque to pray for him after the Friday prayer,” she said, looking at Fatima. Upstairs, they heard another thud, perhaps another door slam, or a drawer pushed closed too violently.

“Why don't you go upstairs to her,
Setto
?” Fatima asked.

“I don't know,” Ehsan said, glancing toward the back porch though she could not see it from where she was sitting. “What if your father wants to go up and talk to her again? I don't want him to find me there and think I'm snooping.”

“He won't go talk to her now,” Khaled said. “He probably thinks she should come and talk to him first. He always does that; yells at people and then expects them to apologize.”

“Khaled! Don't talk of your father in such a disrespectful way!” Ehsan said.

“But he's always like that!”

“She's his wife, so what if he yells at her? Your grandfather, Allah rest his soul, used to chase me around with the broomstick. At least he doesn't do that, does he?” Fatima, glancing at Khaled, sucked at both her lips, and Khaled smiled, knowing she was struggling to stop herself from laughing at the image of her heavy grandmother dodging a broomstick. “Besides,” Ehsan added, “he's the man of the house; he has the right to do whatever he thinks is for the best of his family.”

“
Thinks
is the key word, here,” Khaled mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing,
Setto
.”

Ehsan sighed. “Such bad luck,” she said. “Such bad luck has befallen this family. It's all because of the evil eye, of course.
Hasad.
People back home, they think of you here, living in this big house, driving expensive cars, and all they imagine is money growing on trees. They covet all that Allah has given you, and then look what happens. This!” She held both arms up in a gesture that encompassed their entire lives. Khaled looked at the console, at the picture of his brother's smiling face, slightly angled, so that he could not see his expression, only the sharp silver edge of the frame.

Sighing, Ehsan got up, headed into the kitchen, and opened the cabinet where she kept her incense kit. She pulled out the brass globe with its decorative perforations, the small box holding the dry incense leaves, and the bag with the pliers and the pieces of coal. In a moment, she would be resting the coal on the burning flame, letting it glow red and hot before she placed it on the layer of sand sitting in the bottom half of the incense burner. On top of it, she would sprinkle leaves of incense, let the fragrant smoke rise through the holes of the globe as she held it up by its three chains, swinging it in circles as she wandered the rooms of the house, chanting prayers.

Fatima picked up the abandoned tumblers still filled with tea and
placed them back on the tray that she carried into the kitchen. Washing the glasses by hand, one by one, she occasionally looked out the window at Samir, still sitting on the deck. When she was finished, she walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs, where Khaled could hear her knocking on Nagla's door. He headed toward the stairs, too. He would go to his room, to his laptop, away from all this. He climbed only a step or two before he stopped to look once more at his brother's framed picture. In the kitchen, he could hear Ehsan's incantations. The smell of the incense, sweet and tangy like a mixture of cloves and rosebuds, slowly filled the air, and Khaled, turning around, started up the stairs again. Of course it was all bogus, he thought. No amount of burning leaves could have possibly made a difference. No incantations, regardless of how sincerely and incessantly uttered, could ever prevent disaster.

ENGLISH
: Home is where the hearth is.

ARABIC
: Whoever leaves his house loses prominence.

S
amir and Nagla arrived in New York on a sunny morning in April 1985. Sitting in the station wagon, Samir thought how perfect it was that this car now zoomed through the Big Apple while Egyptian music drifted from the dashboard. His cousin, Loula, was driving, and he, sitting next to her, exhausted after the ten-hour flight, slid down in the seat, looked out the window, and listened to Om Kalthoum's voice mingle with car horns and jackhammers. The singer's voice, low, chagrined, and so deep he felt it came from the bottom of the earth, was rumored to have been so powerful that she had to stand six feet from the microphones to insure they would not break. The recording dated back to the fifties, and Om Kalthoum tenderly reprimanded a lover for his long-endured cruelty. Samir listened and knew the answer to his own destiny was as simple as an American car playing Egyptian music in New York: he could, he was certain, build a life for himself and his family here, while preserving their Egyptian roots. Om Kalthoum sounded better contrasted with the New York skyline and its pure blue backdrop of a sky than she did in Cairo with its dusty roads and overcrowded streets. The contrast between her familiar voice and his new surroundings highlighted the beauty of each in a way Samir had never experienced before.

Glancing behind him, he smiled at Nagla, who sat in the backseat next to a squirmy Hosaam, too busy to see Samir watching her. He looked as she tried to comfort their ten-month-old son and knew, right then and there, he would do anything to give them the life they would never have had a chance at, back in Egypt.

“So when do you get to start?” Loula asked. Over the phone a few weeks earlier, Samir had told her about the medical training he was to start in Brooklyn, only two hours from her home.

“Not until July. But I wanted to get Nagla settled in first.”

“Do you know where you'll be staying?”

“The hospital has a couple of buildings they rent out of. I'll get in touch with them tomorrow and see what they can do for me.”

“You should talk to Ahmed first,” Loula said. “He might know someone who could get you a cheaper place. Sometimes these places they recommend cost an arm and a leg.”

“I don't need a cheap place.”

“Just to save up, you know.”

“Thanks, but I think we'll be fine.”

Loula did not answer. Born in Brooklyn to an American mother, she was Samir's first cousin whom he had seen only intermittently when she vacationed with her parents in Egypt. He suspected she was taking them in only because his uncle had insisted. Months earlier, Uncle Omar had assured Samir that he would have welcomed him in his own home had he not lived in Detroit. Loula was the only person Uncle Omar knew who might offer Samir temporary shelter.

Ahmed, her husband, Samir had met only once, and he had detested him. Tall and lanky, Ahmed had sat down in Samir's father's living room, legs crossed, the heel of his shoe facing Samir's father in unabashed neglect of Egyptian manners, and had spoken in an Arabic scattered with unnecessary English expressions that his then six-year tenure in the United States did not warrant. In contrast, Loula had talked almost
exclusively in Arabic, stuttering as she searched for words, pronouncing the letters in a heavy accent that belied her features, so Egyptian she seemed fit to play the role of Cleopatra. Considering that she was born and raised in New York, Samir had found it fascinating that she could even converse in the language. He did not understand how she had ever ended up with Ahmed.

In the station wagon, Samir tried to let Om Kalthoum's voice soothe him again, but he failed. He did not know what had offended him more: Loula's implying that he would not be able to afford the hospital housing (which, to be honest, he was not entirely sure he could), or her suggestion that he ask her husband for help, a man who, Samir suspected, knew nothing more about Brooklyn than he himself did. Whatever knowledge Ahmed had amassed in his years spent in the United States, Samir was sure he would be able to catch up on shortly. He did not need help from anyone, and certainly not from other Egyptians whose only claim to expertise on all things American lay in the limited experience a few years had to offer. Closing his eyes, Samir reminded himself he would have to veer away from any unpleasant confrontations with Ahmed during the days or weeks he'd have to spend at his home, and, most important, he'd have to make sure he got out of there as soon as possible.

To his chagrin, however, he and Nagla ended up staying with Loula and Ahmed for three months. Only a day after their arrival, the human resources lady at the hospital, portly and with too-blond hair, had looked at Samir over her reading glasses and told him, one more time, in a slow English that implied he might have had trouble understanding the language, that housing for the residents was currently full. He'd have to wait until June 30, when the senior residents would move out and make room for incoming interns. Samir, explaining again that he had been told accommodations might be available a month or two before his starting date, had to sit and listen to her explain to him that the key word here was
might
. Nothing was available. Short of paying for a hotel room
for eighty-some days, Samir had no other choice but to impose on his cousin's hospitality.

Loula was not as indisposed to having them as he first imagined. She and Nagla managed to use a mixture of broken Arabic and English to communicate, and in a matter of days Samir could see, to his relief, that the two got along well. Loula introduced Nagla to a plethora of baby products she had never heard of, from changing tables (“Really? A piece of furniture
just
to change a baby's diaper?” Nagla had later whispered to him) to baby gyms, swings, and all sorts of bottle-cleaning accessories. Nagla slowly started cooking Egyptian food for Loula and Ahmed, taking over the kitchen and preparing dishes of stuffed eggplants and green peppers,
musakka
, and baked fish in a casserole of potatoes, garnished with celery and marinated in lemon, cumin, and minced garlic. Within weeks, Nagla was spending as much time in the kitchen as she had at home, sometimes by herself and often with Loula by her side, trying to learn the exact way to wrap grape leaves around their stuffing. Nagla, Samir realized, was much, much more comfortable than he was.

Even Ahmed did not seem to mind having them, but Samir suspected that was mainly due to how much Ahmed enjoyed telling him exactly what to do.

“So you're really going to take that hospital housing place, huh?” Ahmed asked him one day. They were sitting on the back deck, where Samir found out anyone wishing to smoke had to go. Samir had not expressed his annoyance when Loula, seeing him light a cigarette inside the house only minutes after his arrival, had politely said, “Feel free to use Ahmed's ashtray.” She ushered him to the deck, opened the sliding doors, shoved him outside, and closed the doors behind him, coughing. He had found the adjustment a bit cumbersome, especially considering how cold the weather still was in April. Especially considering that he frequently had to endure Ahmed's company.

“I am taking the housing offer, yes,” Samir said, bending out of his
chair to flick his ashes into the ashtray on the table between them. Ahmed was smoking a cigar, and the wind, changing direction, blew the odorous smoke Samir's way. He got up and walked to the railing, stood leaning against it and looking at the hill in the distance.

“In
Flatbush
? You're going to live in
Flatbush
?” Ahmed asked. He was sitting in an oversized wicker armchair, both his feet resting on the coffee table, the cigar dripping ashes on the deck. Samir, hiding a vague feeling of alarm that started to creep up on him (what was wrong with Flatbush?), looked calmly at Ahmed and nodded.

“It's close to the hospital.”

“You don't have to live close to the hospital. It's Brooklyn! You can take the subway, you know.”

“I'll be on call a lot, and I don't want to be too far from Nagla in case she needs me.”

“You can get a place in Bay Ridge. That's where all the Arabs live.”

“I don't want to live where all the Arabs live,” Samir said, his teeth clenched. “I want to live close to the hospital.”

“Well, I don't blame you,” Ahmed said, crossing his feet. “I wouldn't want to live too close to Arabs, either.”

“That's not what I meant,” Samir said, irritated. That man could not sit without showing the soles of his shoes.

“I'm telling you, they're not the best company, when you live abroad. Still, Nagla would make friends. And you'd be close to all the shops selling Egyptian food.”

“What do you mean, they're not the best company? I'd love to live close to other Egyptians.”

“Oh, so you'd love to live with fellow Egyptians, would you?” Ahmed asked.

“Yes!” Samir lied. He knew exactly what Ahmed meant, how people always warned to veer away from Egyptians and Arabs when you lived abroad, how they always said Egyptians would help you at home but
stab you in the back the moment you set foot off Egyptian soil. One of his fellow medical students had sworn to him, only weeks earlier, that an Egyptian resident at a Florida hospital had assured him he need not apply there because they never took foreign graduates unless they achieved the highest scores in their medical equivalency tests. This same resident, he later found out, had scored in the seventy-sixth percentile and had still secured a spot. “He just didn't want me there, competing with him,” his disgruntled friend had told him.

Everyone said Egyptians abroad acted as if preserving their own little piece of success required they make sure no one else shared it. Samir secretly believed this to be true. (“They will snoop into your business all the time, too,” this same expert on expatriate Egyptians had whispered to him. “Come into your home unannounced and open your fridge just so they can see if you're living at the same standards you had in Egypt or if you had to tighten the belt.”) Still, he hated to admit all this in front of Ahmed, and, even worse, hated to hear Ahmed criticize Egyptians and Arabs, as if he were not one of them. It was one thing to know the faults of your own people, he thought, but something completely different to speak so irreverently of them, as if you had somehow become better by virtue of a few years spent in the United States, in a large Connecticut house, with imported Cuban cigars that dripped ashes on the deck's gray wood.

“Yes,” Samir repeated. “I would like to live close to other Arabs. But I've already signed the lease on the new apartment.”

“Oh well,” Ahmed said, his lips twisting in a sly grin. “I guess Flatbush it will be, then.”

“Yes. Flatbush it will be,” Samir said, gratified to have the last word.

A few months later, Samir had realized that Ahmed might have had a point regarding Bay Ridge. Nagla, having to stay home with Hosaam as Samir worked eighty-hour weeks, had grown irritated with isolation. She knew no one, and even as he encouraged her to take Hosaam to the
park to meet other parents and make new friends, he knew she was too self-conscious about her limited English.

Plus, the apartment itself proved to be small and dark, with only one bedroom and a windowless living room stuck between the kitchen and bedroom. Even though they had both been relieved finally to take possession of their own apartment, walking in for the first time, Nagla's smile was not what Samir had hoped for. Her muffled comments and occasional “Oh, that's nice,” as she walked from room to room felt more like polite replies directed at strangers. He knew she was comparing this space with the one they had left in Egypt, which his father had purchased for him years earlier, with three bedrooms and a large, airy living room, the full front of it made out of sliding glass doors that opened to an eighth-floor balcony with a view of the Mediterranean. The apartment in Egypt, he had felt like telling her, was better, yes, but what else was better? What else?

Time, he had hoped, might help Nagla get used to the apartment that was to be her home for the next three years. He was wrong. Only three weeks after they had moved, he walked home from work late one afternoon and found a fire truck parked in front of the four-story brick building. At the foot of the front steps stood Mrs. Russell, the landlady, talking to one of the firefighters. When she saw him approach, she pointed at him and said something to the firefighter, who laughed softly and shook his head. Samir, curious but not necessarily alarmed because he could see no fire, had tried to walk past them and up the stairs when Mrs. Russell held him by the arm and spoke in slow, deliberate English.

“You must tell your wife to be careful, or she will burn the building down!”

When he looked at her, puzzled, she repeated her admonishment, word for word, only slower and louder. “You . . . must . . . tell . . . your . . . wife. Be . . . careful. Building . . . will . . . burn . . . down!” For added emphasis, she pointed at the building, lifted both arms high above her head, and then let them both drop.

Upstairs, Hosaam was sitting in the crib Loula had given them, holding on to the rails and crying.

“Nagla?” Samir called. There was no answer, but he could hear whimpering. Before turning to head into the bedroom, Samir glanced toward the kitchen and saw a patch of dark soot on the ceiling. The entire apartment smelled like burned oil.

She was sitting on the floor, in the corner between the bed and the wall, her legs drawn to her chest, her face buried in her knees, sobbing. Samir, speaking softly, sat down next to her.

“Nagla, what happened?”

Looking up, Nagla covered her face with both hands and said, “I . . . was cooking. The . . . alarm,” she said, sobbing, “the fire . . . alarm . . . went off. I didn't know it would. I was frying eggplants. I wanted to cook
musakka
.”