Every morning she woke up at five and went to the balcony ready for battle. She paced back and forth as if on guard duty. She didn’t touch the flowers or pat the soil as she had been in the habit of doing, but rather whispered to the shouting children to move away from the window. Even though she was too far away for it to make any difference, her hand would go up in disapproval every time she heard a warning blast from a car horn down at the treacherous corner where there was at least one accident a week. If a neighbour asked her about him, she would put her hand on her cheek and close her eyes, signalling that he was still asleep, and motion to her neighbour to stop raising her voice.
She made him breakfast slowly. Coffee, orange juice and pear preserves. She remembered that before he left he had loved pear preserves.
‘You used to pick up a pear with two fingers and slip it into your mouth.’
He had forgotten that he had loved pear preserves so much.
Once he had woken up, he put his clothes on quickly, took a bite so she wouldn’t get upset and took off.
The next morning she would prepare a similar breakfast for him.
She would call to him, ‘Eliyya!’
He’d come back to her from the doorway.
‘At least don’t let them talk about you.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Kamileh’s concern was well-founded.
There was something in Eliyya’s gait and glance that drew attention. The first few days the greengrocer looked him up and down as he organised his produce, the colourful display extending into the middle of the sidewalk. The fat butcher eyed him as well as he sat out in front of his shop on Friday, slowly sharpening his knives in preparation for the next day’s slaughter. The bored policemen in charge of guarding the government house scrutinised him while making jokes they all hoped would not fall on women’s ears. Taxi drivers sought after him as they waited for passengers, standing in the square under the hot sun with their heads covered with baseball caps, which, at their age and with their flabby bodies, looked ridiculous.
His appearance was familiar — despite the American improvements on his attire — but his manner was strange. After a short while, they disregarded him. Either he must have changed his gait and increased his pace — while still not aiming in any particular direction — or they must have got used to him. He was just another Semite with his powerful nose and black hair.
He tried his best to stay on the pavement, as he did in the city he had come from. The municipality was in the process of repaving the old streets with black basalt cobblestones thanks to a no-interest loan from the World Bank. He wandered deeper into the streets. The roads became narrower and windier and the scrutiny increased, but Eliyya was not in the least bit concerned.
It was just before noon when he walked slowly by the houses. He stopped suddenly, looked into the open windows, into the rooms. The woman sitting in front of the door, as if to guard it, looked at him. She asked if he was looking for someone. He smiled, remembering.
He used to pass that way on his way home from school. From each of those low doors, a different aroma emanated, helping the children predict what was for lunch. At times they disagreed on what it was, but they always wrinkled their noses in disapproval of bean stew with rice, and held back their strong desire on Fridays to gobble down the fried fish, which their mothers forbade them to eat while it was still too hot. He smiled, trying again after thirty years to determine what was cooking. He stopped in front of a wide-open door, his nose leading him into the clean and tidy interior, and took in a big whiff. Nothing. The aromas must have been more intense when he was younger.
Lunch was always ready when he got home, his mother Kamileh’s lunch, which she spent the whole morning preparing. And preparing food meant cooking, over a continuous fire, cooking with yogurt and rice, because food, as far as Kamileh was concerned, was that which was slurped up hot, with a spoon. Everything else was snack food that didn’t satisfy the heart or fill the belly.
Eliyya would get upset and rebuke her with some sharpness. ‘You just do the cooking. I agreed to that because you’re stubborn. But you should wait for me to get home so I can set the table. That’s my job. You’re not to worry about it.’
Kamileh’s setting the table was something Eliyya just couldn’t tolerate.
He looked at the table.
The artificial bouquet of flowers that had lost its colour over the years was not in the middle of the table where Kamileh assumed she had put it. She must have hesitated over where to place it, feeling around for the right place without success. The plates and silverware were unevenly spaced, and the tablecloth had spots all over it from her missed attempts to fill the water glasses.
‘If I come back tomorrow,’ he threatened, ‘and find the table already set, I’m going to go and eat in a restaurant.’
The boy knew how to hurt his mother when he wanted to.
The next day Eliyya tried to set the table. From the kitchen Kamileh heard the clinking and clanging of the glasses and the spoons. ‘What are you doing?’ she shouted.
He didn’t pay any attention to her. ‘How do you manage to cook?’ he asked her.
‘I know it all by heart. The taste of my cooking hasn’t changed since I began cooking, even after I started losing my vision. You’ll taste these dandelion greens with sautéed onions which I’m sure you haven’t had in twenty years, and you’ll see they taste exactly the same.’
After being cut off from Eliyya all those years, Kamileh could not find a way to demonstrate her motherliness except to treat him as if he were still a child. She behaved as if her son were still the same boy who couldn’t get into a car without her giving the driver an earful about going slowly. And every time Eliyya started to taste a spoonful of his yogurt and kibbeh stew, she warned him it was still hot and to be careful not to burn his throat.
She sat with him at the table without eating.
‘I’ve already eaten,’ she would say if Eliyya asked her to join him.
‘When?’
‘When I was tasting the food as it cooked.’
‘I went to America believing that you never eat.’
Kamileh crossed her arms and listened. Her questions were specific. ‘Is your house there big?’
He smiled.
‘How many rooms?’
‘One room.’
‘One room?’
‘One big room.’
‘Who washes your clothes?’
‘The laundromat.’
‘…’
‘The machine…’
‘Do you eat well?’
‘Just don’t worry about me.’
‘Who cooks for you?’
‘Le Relais d’Arcachon,’ he said laughing.
She didn’t understand, nor did she ask.
That was just about everything. The rest was minor detail. She didn’t ask him about marriage.
Now it was his turn to ask questions.
After much hesitation and careful strategising, he posed the question as if it had just come to him.
‘Mother, do we still have anything of my father’s?’
‘Of your father’s?’
‘A picture. Things of his…’
He failed to surprise her. She had been expecting the question, probably from the moment he had returned. She didn’t say a word. Instead, she got up from her chair and went to her room. There was no hesitation in her step. She knew exactly the way to her room, even if she did worry Eliyya’s presence in the house might have caused a piece of furniture to be moved from its place or a chair to be pushed into the hallway. She was afraid she would fall, break some bones and have to depend on others, on some young girl to look after her. She didn’t want anyone staying with her.
She came back with a round wooden box. ‘Here you are,’ she said standing before Eliyya. ‘These are what we found in your father’s pockets when I went with my mother, Muntaha and Hamid al-Semaani to the hospital for him. Take them, they’re yours. Take them with you to the United States if you like.’