In the Language of Miracles (6 page)

Khaled saw his mother fidget. Still she said nothing.

“And, while I'm waiting for this house to sell
and
paying to set up my new office, I should still be able to afford paying your tuition once you go to college in less than two years, is this correct? Do you think I own a money-printing press?”

“I could always apply for a student loan,” Khaled said.

His father glowered at him. Khaled fidgeted, looked at his mother and sister. Fatima threw a quick glance his way before looking down at her feet. His mother would not turn his way, even though he stared at her, waiting for her to say something or, at least, to give him a reassuring look. When Samir started talking again, his words were quaking with subdued anger. “I have not slaved for twenty years to have my son insult me this way, tell me he would take loans because I cannot afford to pay his tuition. Tell me I am not able to provide for my own son like my father did for me and like his father did for him before that.”

“I meant no insult,
Baba
. There's nothing wrong—”

“You two have the nerve to sit here and discuss my finances with me, tell me how to run my business. Tell me I should cut my losses, pack up and move before we go broke. Is this the respect you show your father?”

“We did not mean—” Fatima started.

“Enough!” Samir yelled.

They never discussed this matter again.

 • • • 

Lying in bed, Ehsan's and Fatima's whispers still seeping into his room, Khaled wished his father had been less stubborn, had truly considered the possibility of moving away. The angst that haunted him in the few months following his brother's death now returned with a vengeance,
filling his head with images of his father drawing attention to himself again during Natalie's upcoming memorial service, promising Khaled that they were all plummeting toward a rerun of the hostilities that had plagued their lives a year earlier. Again Khaled wished they had moved away. Tossing and turning in bed, he wished he could go to a new school where Natalie's friends did not stop and glare at him in the hallways, where he did not have to listen to her former teachers speak to him without making eye contact, as if they were addressing an ethereal being floating in the air somewhere between where he sat and his teachers stood, or as if they were intent on gazing into space for fear that locking eyes with him would turn them all into stone. He wished he lived in a town where patrol cars did not occasionally trail him as he walked home from school, where he could walk down the road and fear nothing and no one, be menaced by no one, perhaps even be able to interact with people without the constant presence of his brother's memory between him and everyone else, a barrier too high for anyone to climb over. He wished, more than anything, that he could talk to Brittany about all of this. But of course he could not.

Grabbing his laptop, he sat up in bed and navigated to her Facebook page. She had posted new pictures today, and he flipped slowly through them, savoring each one, grateful, as always, for her habit of daily updates. When they first met in person a few months back, he confessed to keeping track of her photos. He had watched her as he said so, his heart pounding, afraid that she would view him as a stalker, that her eyes would mirror the panic he felt. But she had laughed, tilting her head back, and he had studied her long neck, the short black hair with its one purple streak, the many hoops that adorned her ear, and had realized that the five years separating them were an immense stretch, long enough to witness the life and death of generations of migrating monarchs, long enough to allow for a friendship only slightly marred by his obvious infatuation. He had wanted to confess more, to tell her
everything he felt she needed to know about him, but he could not. Looking back, he sensed the stupidity of confessing to browsing photos she had put up for everyone's perusal but withholding other, drastically more important pieces of information. He had feared she would be scared away. Now he knew that she probably would not have been—but, after months of holding back, a late confession seemed riskier than ever.

He clicked on the message button, stared at the new window that showed her name in the recipient box. He did not know what he could possibly say to her, but he felt a need to say something, to know that he could communicate with her, if he tried. He browsed back to an article about monarch tracking he had read earlier that morning, and then copied its link in the message, sending it to her with no comment. Of all the people he knew, Brittany was the only one who would read such an article.

Closing his laptop, he turned the lights off and slid under his covers. Ehsan's and Fatima's whispers had finally abated, and, his eyes closed, he savored the anticipation of Brittany's reply and waited for sleep to come to
him.

ENGLISH
: Till death do us part.

From the marriage liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer

ARABIC
: Among all the permitted acts, divorce is the most hateful to God.

Saying of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon his soul

N
agla waited in bed until she heard the garage door rise and fall, signaling Samir's departure. As soon as she was sure he was gone, she walked down to the kitchen for a cup of hot tea and then back up to her room. Today, she would clean house, starting with her bedroom. She dumped the contents of every drawer on the bed, folding everything: her underwear and Samir's, his socks, her camisoles, his pajamas, her nightshirts. Usually, this repetitiveness soothed her, and the process, like meditation, kept her mind from drifting to troublesome territories. Today, though, undershirts seemed determined to crease rather than fold, and socks remained mismatched even after she had gone through all the drawers and emptied the laundry pail on the floor, zealously looking for missing socks as if their discovery would afford the key to heaven or the power to stop all evil.

“Vexation,” she murmured to herself as she stuffed the laundry back into the pail. “Just pure vexation.”

She abandoned the folding and walked into the closet she shared
with Samir, examining every shirt and pair of pants for possible donations, yanking out items she decided he did not need and putting them in a pile and then adding two of her own shirts. Years earlier, Ehsan had told her the story of a disgruntled wife who sold her husband's favorite razor to a traveling street vendor while her husband was at work. Ehsan had whispered the story in a mixture of awe and disgust. “Such disrespect,” Ehsan spat, implying that she, of course, would never have done any such thing to
her
late husband. Nagla, in a logic she still failed to comprehend, had despised the woman based on her hypothetical offense to Nagla's own father. Of course Ehsan never would have sold his razor. Nagla eyed Samir's favorite shirt and walked out of the closet to thwart temptation.

“So energetic so early in the morning?” Ehsan asked.

Nagla turned and saw her mother standing in the doorway, her own teacup in hand.

“Good morning, Mama. Come. Sit with me.”

Ehsan made her way to her daughter's bed, placing her teacup on the bedside table before climbing up on Nagla's side of the bed, her back resting against the headboard. Nagla continued sorting through the pile of clothes, aware of her mother's watchful eye.

“No breakfast today?” Ehsan asked.

“Don't feel like it.”

Ehsan nodded, and then she sighed. Nagla waited. When she was a child, she used to come home and join her mother in the kitchen, help her peel potatoes and pick through rice, and all the while Ehsan would listen as she gushed about everything that happened in her day. Nagla wished she could still report cut knees, spiteful playmates, and unfair teachers who picked favorites based on fair skin and deep parental pockets.

“I don't know what this woman was thinking, walking in here yesterday,” Ehsan started.

“She was just being nice, Mama.”

“She only caused you to have a fight with your husband.”

“She had no way of knowing this would happen.”

Ehsan sucked at her lips, a long
tsssp
that Nagla understood well.

“You don't know her, Mama. She wouldn't mean ill. She's a very nice person.”

“By Allah, you're the only nice one. You believe this whole speech about finding peace? I'll bet you they're only doing this to remind people of what happened. To turn them against you more and more.”

Nagla let a shirt she was holding drop on the bed, looked at her mother. “Has Samir been talking to you?”

“No, of course not,” Ehsan quickly answered.

Nagla searched her mother's face, her eyes narrow.

“The man means well,” Ehsan went on. “He only has his family's best interest in mind.”

“Best interest? You really think going to that memorial is in our
best interest
?”

Ehsan waved one hand. “I'm not talking about
what
he's trying to do, but about
why
he's doing it.”

Nagla walked over to her nightstand and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the drawer. Her mother watched her.

“Don't smoke inside, Nagla. You know how much your husband hates that.”

Walking over to the window, Nagla opened it and pulled the screen out before lighting a cigarette. “I always do, Mama.” She inhaled the fresh air before puffing smoke out the window. “He never notices.”

“He probably does. He just doesn't want to annoy you.”

Nagla snickered. “Yeah, right. Because he's so obliging. Did you ever wonder how come smoking indoors became harmful only after
he
quit smoking?”

“He's probably trying to get you to quit, too. Don't be so hard on him. He's a good man, Nagla.”

“I thought I was the only nice one?”

“Don't be smart with me, girl.”

Across the backyard, Nagla watched the edge of Summerset Park, the lush trees covering a plain that moved toward a gentle slope down to the park. Years ago, she heard of a woman who bought a house near a cemetery just so she could see her son's gravestone from her back porch. Back then, she had thought the idea touching. Now she was baffled at how the woman could withstand the daily reminder.

“You really shouldn't contradict him so often, Nagla. He's still the man of the house.”

“Contradict him?” Nagla turned to face her mother, keeping the hand holding the cigarette dangling out the window. “I merely mentioned that going to that service was probably not the best idea—which, by the way, you agree with me on, even if you won't say so. I was being respectful and considerate. I should have said that this was the worst idea ever. Even worse than that time he went and talked to the reporters.”

“You can't say stuff like that to a man. What do you think he'll do, say,
Oh, sure, honey, you're right and I'm wrong
?”

“Why shouldn't he say that?”

“Are you crazy? Your husband?” Ehsan shook her head. “You've been living in America for too long. You think our men are like theirs. Your father,
Allah yerhamoh
, would have cut me up in pieces before he would have let me challenge him so.”

“No, he wouldn't have.”

“You didn't know him.” Ehsan shook her head. “A real man. They don't make them like that anymore.” Her voice rang with pride as a faint smile curled her lips.

Turning around, Nagla leaned out the window, smoked in silence. Of course her mother would compare Samir to Nagla's father, and of course her father would win—at least in that context.

Nagla was five when her father died. The only distinct memory she
had of him was of being lifted in the air and swung around the room, her hair flowing sideways as she looked down on his smiling face. Everything else she knew of him came from her mother's stories, which Nagla had found as fascinating as the Indian action movies she used to watch as a child with their exotic colors and spontaneous dance routines. Years ago, Nagla's oldest brother had deliberately and quite mercilessly cured her of the fascination she had harbored with the father that Ehsan took great pains to describe to her in the most complimentary manner. Her brother, ten years her senior, had his own memories to counter his mother's, ones that involved, among other things, a brown leather belt with a brass buckle that his father used as a disciplinary tool. But even after she had learned to doubt the accuracy of her mother's stories, Nagla still found them a welcome refuge, perhaps because they transported her back forty years, planting her in a warm bed next to her mother, a dim light the only accompaniment to Ehsan's whispers of the great and mighty Mahmoud Fuad Mansour.

The stories were endless. Among Nagla's favorites was the time he, at seventeen, had been walking alongside the Nile in Al-Fayoum when he saw a little boy being swept away by the current of the muddy water. Mahmoud, who was not the best swimmer, jumped in without a moment's hesitation and splashed his way to the boy, keeping him afloat until some bystanders found a rope to dangle from the embankment. Mahmoud tied the rope around the boy's waist, hoping the bystanders would be able to pull the boy to safety. The current, however, proved too strong: every time people tried to reel the boy in, the angry waters would rise up and push him away from safety. Exhausted, yet determined to save the boy, Mahmoud did the only thing left to do: he took a deep breath, dove down, carried the little boy on his shoulders, and, using him as weight, literally walked on the muddy bottom of the channel, holding his breath for what people later swore must have been at least five full minutes, until he finally emerged at the edge, the boy's legs
dangling on each side of his head. The entire village had spoken of Mahmoud's bravery, Ehsan whispered, and to make matters even more exciting, the boy turned out to be the son of the village's
omda,
or chief. The
omda
's gratitude was immense, and he immediately gave Mahmoud a job in his office, arguing that a man with such courage had to be a man of great integrity, as well. Ehsan herself was very impressed, and felt quite honored when Mahmoud, a year later, chose her to be his bride. For years after hearing the story for the first time, whenever Nagla passed a channel or a river, she would find herself peering through the murky water, trying to detect her father walking the muddy bottom underneath the surface.

Apart from his bravery, Nagla also learned, Mahmoud had a good singing voice, knew how to bake the best
basbousa
, was accustomed to spending hours with his sons playing soccer, had sold the watch he had inherited from his grandfather just so that he could get Ehsan a pair of crescent-shaped gold earrings, had memorized the entire Qur'an by the time he was nine, and had been the confidant and advisor of everyone living on their street when they finally moved to Alexandria: The lawyer two buildings down, the doctor occupying the sixth floor of their apartment building, and even the university professor across the street, who consulted Mahmoud on new texts he planned to assign in class. Nagla listened to all of this in awe. Most important, however, she listened with teary eyes as her mother told her how Mahmoud learned to braid his only daughter's hair by the time she was three, just so he could keep it away from Nagla's eyes as she played in the humid Alexandria weather.

Forty years had passed, and Ehsan still told stories of her husband.

“Do you still miss him, Mama?”

“Of course,
habibti
.”

Nagla bit her lower lip, rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand.

“I still don't get the whole memorial service idea,” Ehsan started after
a pause. “But I'll tell you one thing: I do think there is some sense behind doing something to make it all better.”

Nagla stubbed her cigarette against the brick of the house's outer wall and then flicked it away, watched it fall on the grass next to a dozen or so others. She would have to pick them all up before Samir saw them.

“What did you do? To make things better after
Baba
died?”

“Oh, I had no time for anything but worry.” Ehsan sipped at her tea. “He left me with
koom lahm
, a heap of meat: five kids and barely enough income to afford bread and fava beans for all of us. I did not quit worrying till you got married. Worried all day, prayed and cried myself to sleep at night.”

Nagla put the window screen back, stared at the warning:
Screen will not prevent a child from falling
.

“You know what you can do, though?” Ehsan asked. “You could stop torturing yourself.”

“What do you mean?” Nagla turned around to face her mother.

“You think I don't see you? Up there in that attic all the time?”

Nagla crossed her arms, rested her back against the screen.

“What use is that? Keeping his stuff up there like it's some sort of shrine to
sidi
Al-Hussein?”

“That's not what it is.”

“Then what is it?”

“I just—I'm not ready. I don't know what to do with his stuff.” Nagla's eyes watered.

“You go through it. You keep a thing or two and give the rest away.
Sadakah garyah.
A good deed in his name to ask Allah for mercy upon his soul. Nothing better than a donation to do so.” Ehsan paused, took a sip of her tea. “I've been telling you for some time, Nagla, and I'll tell you again: You cannot grieve forever. It's been a year,
habibti.
You can't go on walking around the house like a ghost, passing by your kids and husband as if you don't see them. I don't mind doing the housework, but
there are things I cannot do for you. I cannot be a mother to Khaled and Fatima. They need you back,
habibti
.”

Nagla nodded, and with every nod she could hear the wire screen give a low, screeching rattle.

 • • • 

She waited until her mother settled in the kitchen and started preparing tonight's dinner before she ventured out in the hallway, stared at the folded-up pull-down stair.

Her mother was right. She had walked up there often. Whether this was a bad habit, though, was a matter of opinion.

She could go through her son's things. She could open the drawers, sift through the boxes, flip through the magazines, the notebooks, the leaves of paper that the police had not taken away.

She walked into Fatima's room and grabbed the chair she always used when she needed to reach the pull-down chain. She climbed on the chair, reached out, and held the chain, wrapping the cold metal around her fingers, letting her hand warm it up before she pulled.