MUSTAFA PLANTS HIS
chair in front of my desk, throws a pad of paper and a pen in front of me, and proceeds to stare intently at my face.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
“What rhymes with incinerator, man?”
“Huh?”
“What rhymes with incinerator?”
“Um…terminator?”
He slaps his hand to his forehead. “Of course!” He leans over my desk and scribbles
terminator
down on the paper, writing some notes beside it, his tongue protruding slightly as he focuses on the task.
I giggle and he looks up in surprise. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“You dig Snoop Dogg?”
“He’s OK.”
“Just OK?”
“Yeah.” I shrug my shoulders.
“You need mental rehabilitation. What about Nelly?”
“He’s cool. The Band-Aid on his cheek is a bit dumb, though.”
“Do you think he ever wears Disney Band-Aids?”
I’m about to laugh when I note the serious look on his face.
“Um, I’m not sure.”
“Because that would be cool. If he did go with the whole cartoon theme, though, he should go with Looney Tunes. Not Bugs Bunny because he’s a bit too high on himself. I’d go with Road Runner or Tasmanian Devil. They’re bad but cool, you know? It fits with his image. It’s all about your image, man.”
“Mmm…right, Mustafa.”
He shifts in his chair, sits upright, and starts tapping the pen against the table. “So why are you so worried about playing at your formal?”
I sigh. “It’s complicated.”
He cocks his head to one side. “The best things that happen to us are always complicated. Man, you have to get your hands dirty to have fun.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Mustafa, quit the counseling effort.”
“Hey, last year your hair was darker.”
I give him a look that clearly indicates that I think he’s crazy.
“Just an observation…”
“Yeah, well, I distinctly recall you had a mullet, and there was a lot more hair connecting your eyebrows then, too.”
He looks at me sheepishly and then suddenly breaks out into a wide grin. “That’s a good one! I might use that in ‘Dig Me for Who I Am, Not Whatchya See.’ ”
“I take it that’s on your album?”
“Yeah, but it needs a bit of work. I’m busy writing a new song. It’s about my friends, Enrico and Wayne and Omar. How the cops keep giving them a hard time, on their backs, you know, every time they’re out at the stores, just hanging out…all innocent and stuff. That song’s going to be deep! About ethnic pride and the stupid cops and their racism.”
“Wayne’s not an ethnic name.”
“Yeah, OK, so he’s as Anglo as you can get. But he sympathizes.”
I look at him cynically.
“OK, OK. So I’ll make the song about cops and how they stick it to us guys in the ’hood.”
“What ’hood would that be? New York?”
“Do you see an Eiffel Tower around here?”
I repress an outburst of laughter. “It’s called the Statue of Liberty.”
He waves his hand as if to brush my correction off as irrelevant. “Same thing. Anyway, it’s the Sydney ’hood. The Westie ’hood.”
“Yeah…right.”
He gives me an exasperated look and leans back in his chair, studying me like I’m a biology assignment.
“What’s going on, Jam?” he says softly.
“Nothing.”
“You ashamed of something?”
“No!”
He leans his face in close to mine. “I’m sorry we were a bit rough on you about your decision. We were so moved by the injustice that we felt inspired to rap about your plight. Want to hear?”
“Um, yeah, sure.”
He clears his throat and kicks off:
“They say it’s about tradition
But it’s really about inhibition
They say it’s about protection
But they’re denying us the right to make our own election
The parents need to chill
And stop interfering with our free will.”
Mustafa finishes, looking down at me with a triumphant expression on his face.
“That was…really deep. Thanks.”
He grins proudly at me. After a few moments he says: “Can I just say this to you, homegirl? I know you don’t want to play because you’re embarrassed. You have nothing to be ashamed of. If you dig what you’re doing, they’ll love you too. Do you think I walk around worrying whether people will dig my rap
music? I’m an artist. I respect my art. People can see that and they respect me for it. Man, we’ve got a rich identity! We’ve got our feet dipped in different cultures. It’s cool! Embrace it!”
He smiles, stands up, and returns his chair to his desk. For the rest of the class I observe him poring over his pad of paper, writing and crossing things out, tapping his feet to some imaginary beat, his forehead furrowed in concen tration.
I’ve never really taken Mustafa seriously. He thinks the Eiffel Tower is a New York landmark. He believes that a Band-Aid on his cheek makes him look tough.
And yet, he seems a lot less confused than me.
AUNT SOWSAN HAS
invited my family and Miss Sajda to her place for a Sunday barbecue. In typical style, there is enough meat, chicken, and bread to feed a country town, and we’re gathered around the outdoor table in the backyard demolishing it all. Aunt Sowsan has made side dishes of pasta salad, potato salad, a creamy garlic dip, hummus, and tabouli.
My dad insists I sit at the table with the adults and not hide myself with my plate in front of the television.
“Make sure you eat garlic,” my dad warns me and laughs. “Otherwise you’ll smell it on everybody else’s breath.”
I grab a piece of bread, fold a piece of chicken into it, and dress it with a teaspoon of the garlic dip.
“Advice taken!” I cry and gulp it down.
“Did you hear that, Sowsan?” my dad cries. “Jamilah took my advice. God be praised!”
We all laugh and continue devouring the feast. Not that our efforts have made any impression on the plates. You know that
you’re at Aunt Sowsan’s house if everybody has managed to stuff their faces three times over but the plates of food look no different from when you started.
It is perhaps the one issue on which Shereen and Aunt Sowsan argue. Shereen gets pretty upset about the fact that so much food goes to waste when there are people starving in the world. She’s quite right, but it’s a habit entrenched in Arabic culture and Aunt Sowsan would consider herself to be dishonoring her guests if she didn’t make such an exorbitant amount.
It always feels odd to be sitting at the same table as Miss Sajda, eating and socializing outside of madrasa hours. But she fits in well and even Amo Ameen, who’s usually so quiet, is inspired to joviality and is cracking jokes and making everybody roar with laughter. I don’t particularly find the Arabic jokes funny, but that’s because I don’t understand the punch-lines or the context. I just pretend to laugh on their cue. That’s purely a protective measure designed to avoid my dad feeling sympathy for me and translating the jokes into English. Hearing him inject Aussie slang into an Arabic joke doesn’t make for very comic material.
Miss Sajda and my dad are doubled over with laughter as Amo Ameen launches into a new joke. I get up to help Aunt Sowsan and Shereen clear the food away and start on the dishes. Miss Sajda jumps up to help.
“No, stay,” Aunt Sowsan insists, motioning for Miss Sajda to sit down.
“No, I’ll help,” Miss Sajda says, starting to pick up plates.
“I won’t hear of it,” Aunt Sowsan says. “Sit down and enjoy my husband’s good mood while it lasts!”
Amo Ameen grins and Miss Sajda shrugs and takes her seat again. “If you insist.”
“I do,” Aunt Sowsan says, much to my disappointment. We need as many hands as we can get. The downside of Aunt Sowsan’s mammoth meals is the amount of washing-up afterward. It takes half an hour to eat and half the day to clean up.
I’m grumbling about the washing load to Shereen as we walk to the kitchen with a pile of plates in each of our hands.
“Tell me about it,” she mutters. “Dad and Amo Ameen could get off their butts and at least bring their plates to the sink. God, male sexism kills me.”
“I know!”
“What are you two whispering about?” Aunt Sowsan asks, poking her head between our shoulders as we enter the kitchen.
“The fact that this world is chauvinistic,” Shereen says. “Women cook and clean and men get fat on the food and get a cup of tea after dinner as well. It drives me nuts.”
“I agree,” I say.
Shereen looks at me in surprise. “We have a
Guinness Book of World Records
moment here!”
I stick my tongue out at her. “Don’t worry, I’m not fully converted. I still think hairspray shouldn’t be banned.”
“Environmental hazard.”
“So are my curls.”
“Well, my generation is generally different,” Aunt Sowsan says. “But men are improving.”
“Excuse me?” Shereen scoffs. “What about our beloved brother, Bilal?”
Aunt Sowsan pauses. “Ah, yes. Bilal—a mystery.”
After an hour in the kitchen, with our hands wrinkly from the warm water and our backs sore from standing over the sink, we’re finally able to sit down again with cups of tea and pieces of cake and Arabic sweets. We scarf down the pastries filled with dates and the cookies coated with chocolate and layered with strawberry jam.
While Aunt Sowsan and Shereen are inside praying the afternoon prayer, Amo Ameen asks me a question and inadvertently opens a big, fat, juicy can of worms.
“So you’re in tenth grade now, Jamilah?” he asks. It’s not often that Amo Ameen addresses me, but he’s uncharacteristically chatty today so I go with the flow.
“That’s right,” I reply.
“Don’t you have a special function in tenth grade? Like a dance or something? I remember Shereen going when she was your age.”
I look over at my dad and his face tenses.
“Yes, we do,” I say. “The formal. But Dad won’t let me go.” I jut my chin out defiantly, waiting for my dad to respond.
“Why not, Hakim?” Amo Ameen asks innocently.
My dad puffs on his water pipe and looks at Amo Ameen. “I have my reasons, Ameen.”
“Yeah, but they’re not valid!” I cry.
My dad puts down his pipe and sighs. “Do we have to go through this again, Jamilah?”
“I just don’t get it. What’s the big deal? I’m not going with a guy. I’ll go with my girlfriends.”
This is rather a difficult prospect, but if I can only get permission, I’ll do whatever it takes to drag one of the girls from my class with me.
“When will you ever trust me?” I ask.
Miss Sajda and Amo Ameen squirm uncomfortably in their seats as they watch my father and me do battle.
“How many times must I explain to you that I do trust
you?
It’s the people around you that I don’t trust. And then there’s your reputation. What will our friends say if they know you were out late at a party where there is drinking and dancing and God knows what else?”
“Who cares what people think? I’m so sick and tired of caring what the oldies in our community think. All they do is gossip. It doesn’t matter what you do, they’ll find an excuse to talk.”
“We don’t need to make it easy for them.”
“It’s not like you defend us anyway!” I yell. “You let them talk and talk and you don’t ever come to our defense! Uncle
Joseph lectures you about us being disgraces and
too free
and you sit back and take it!”
My father recoils as though I’ve slapped him in the face. I can’t bear to look at him and I jump out of my chair and rush into the house, locking myself in the bathroom.
THE POLAROID IS
in an old bottle-green album, wedged in between a photograph of my sister and me striking a pose for the camera, and a picture of Bilal giving me a piggyback ride. Next to it, in my mother’s handwriting, is a small note:
Baladna algadeed.
Our New Country.
My father stands with his arms looped lazily around my mother’s shoulders. They’re in the international terminal at the Sydney airport. My father’s grin is framed by a thick black mustache. His hair is high and thick, like a ball of steel wool. My mother’s smile manages to convey both fear and excitement. She’s dressed in flared green pants and a puffy white shirt and has gigantic copper sunglasses perched on her head. Her red henna hair is slicked back into a ponytail.
The photo has always tugged at me. Pulled me to it when I’ve missed her and when I’ve worried that I’ve forgotten the shape of her eyes and the contour of her cheekbones.
“What are you doing?” my father asks. I can tell that he’s trying to sound indifferent. There’s still a bit of tension between us since our fight the other day.
“Just looking at photos.”
He clears his throat. “Of who?”
“You and Mom.”
He approaches me slowly, peering over my shoulder at the open page of the album.
He lets out a chuckle and then abruptly tries to stop it. “I haven’t seen that photo in ages.”
“Mom was gorgeous. You know, you could have done with some hair gel.”
He sits next to me on the couch and smiles. “It was our first plane ride. We arrived in Sydney hungry. We thought we had to pay for the airplane meals. So we hardly ate and kept refusing every time they brought a tray around.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Your mother and I were startled at how easily everybody else accepted each meal.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “We had few savings as it was and weren’t going to spend them all on food.”
“Why didn’t you ask somebody?”
He snorts. “Pride. We arrived in Sydney with two suitcases, a Lebanese flag, one photo album, and a prayer mat. I was not going to advertise the fact that we had so little by demanding to know the price of food.”
“You know something, Dad, you were a major dork.” I smile at him as I touch the photo. “You seriously needed to apply some hair product to that Afro.”
“It was the fashion then. I’m sure Bilal’s children will tease him about his porcupine spikes and your children will ask you why you dyed your hair yellow.”
I slowly turn the pages of the album. And then suddenly he stops me. He tenderly touches a photograph of my mother sitting on the hood of a bottle-green Datsun 12Y. She’s grinning wildly at the camera.
My father slaps his hands down on his thighs and bursts out laughing.
“
Ya Allah!
I remember that day! That was the first and last time I took your mother out for a driving lesson. She managed to drive without incident all along Parramatta Road but then reversed into a parked car
on our street!”
He continues to laugh. “I was furious. You know why?”
I shrug.
“She wouldn’t stop laughing. She just wrecked the rear of my brand-new Datsun and she was in hysterics!”
I can’t help but laugh along with him.
“I was getting so worked up, losing my temper and pacing up and down the street, and she was doubled over in laughter. Pretty soon she had me laughing too. That’s how she was. She’d kill me if I messed up the linen closet or dropped a pan but she had a way of calming me down. I loved her contradictions.
“She was a wise and wonderful woman, Jamilah. We always complimented our friends.
You’re so wise, so funny, so smart.
We always laughed at our friends’ jokes and were cheerful when we saw them. We were always switched on for our friends. We wanted them to go away and tell others:
That Hakim, he is a nice man. Always laughing and happy and hospitable.
But to those closest to us, we felt we did not have to pretend. We felt we had the right to come home in a bad mood and not talk if we didn’t feel like it, without caring how the other person felt.”
It’s the first time my dad has ever been so candid with me about his relationship with my mother. I stare up at him, soaking it in.
“She was the closest person to me on earth and I never told her I admired her strength of conviction and her sharp wit and her kind heart. I wish I had spent every day with her as though it were our last.”
“Were you happy?”
“Yes, we were very happy. We could laugh and talk; we could sit comfortably in silence. Our moods matched like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Of course, the pieces didn’t always fit, as with all marriages. Since your mother’s death I’ve fallen in love with her many times over…
Khalas.
Enough. What is done is done. I am fifty-two years old and I have three children to raise. It is just that sometimes, Jamilah, I wonder how I am to do this alone…”
His voice fades away as he takes the album from me and fingers the edges of the photographs. “I’ve never asked you
this before,” he says, his voice solemn and guarded. “Have you ever thought…I mean, have you ever considered that I might remarry one day?”
His question takes me by surprise. It’s not that it hasn’t occurred to me before. When I see my dad sitting up late at night, smoking his cigarettes, drinking his coffee and staring at the floor, I think it might be nice for him. To have someone to hold at night. To have someone to watch M*A*S*H reruns and Egyptian sitcoms with over cups of tea and salted mixed nuts.
“It’s OK,” he says, interpreting my silence. “You don’t have to answer me.”
I’m glad. Because I don’t want to tell him that the selfish part of me wants him to be alone. Alone with only the memory of my mother to comfort him on those nights he sits and stares.