We made a lot of friends here, but every time we were asked where we were from and we told them from there, our new friends would open their eyes wide in disbelief. How could we be from there and have such a refined demeanour and hardly any accent?
My father opened a small shop that carried carpentry and painting necessities. He made a lot of friends here and our neighbours were always very nice, but my father continued to pine for his cousins and his hometown. The moment one of them turned up, he rushed up to them. He ran after them. Sometimes he recognised them by their features and would call them by their family names; their blond colouring and tall stature gave them away. He would accompany them to wherever their errands led them — to government offices or the Australian consulate to apply for immigration visas. He would go with them to Beirut, where they would have been lost without him, and he would help them with their transactions. He’d invite them to lunch at the Qubrusli Restaurant where he’d order his favourite meal — kefta, hummus, and two glasses of arak. He’d sit with them, tête-à-tête, and never allowed them to pay for anything from their own pocket. He told them he didn’t want to impose on my mother by inviting them to the house. He warmed up to asking them for news about everyone by name.
My father is dead now. One afternoon, he went into his room to take a nap, taking the newspaper with him, and didn’t wake up. We took him up there in a small procession of cars and after praying over him in the church, buried him under the first cypress tree to the right of the cemetery entrance. They congregated around us — relatives we had stayed in touch with and people we didn’t know who never missed a funeral or reception for condolences. The women were covered in black out of respect for my father. They sat next to us, asked about us, invited us to their homes. I felt we were indebted to them. From that day on, if I came across any of them lost in the city, I would rush after them and do everything to help them and invite them to visit us. I used to say to my mother that I sometimes longed to go to the town. That didn’t surprise her; she felt my feelings were normal. As for her, I think we were her hometown.
We sold our house there, the same house whose door my mother always insisted we close behind us when we came in. But under that first cypress tree to the right of the cemetery’s entrance, we still have a place, a place to which I bring a bouquet of flowers at least once a year, a place I don’t think anyone can buy from us.
Chapter 6
Ever since Muntaha read me your letter, going on and on and getting on my nerves before I cursed her and she finally came out with it — that you were coming to visit me — I’ve been scared to death about your return. Nothing gets past me, Eliyya. I’ve been onto you from the start, from the moment we drove back from Beirut airport and you sat beside me in the back seat of the car doting on me like a little child, patting my cheeks and wrapping your arms around me the whole way. When I asked you what you were planning to do now that you had come back, you changed the subject. You asked me about the accordion, as if to mock me. But I went along with you and we reminisced about how for three years you had been in love with that instrument of yours and rarely took it off your shoulders, and how you hadn’t wanted anyone to touch it, fearing it would get scratched. And as you see, I kept it for you, hanging on the wall there in the living room, despite my getting fed up with all the stupid neighbours, especially the women, who came in and out of the house asking what that instrument was, of what use was it, why had I hung it on the wall, and was it worth a lot of money…
It’s true that I can barely see my hand in front of my face anymore. All I know is that daylight starts flickering from behind the high mountains, and so I make myself a cup of coffee to drink with the morning. I can sense when darkness starts to come from the direction of the sea and envelops the world. But I am not stupid. That’s right, not stupid. People say that you’re smart. You got this from your mother, not from the Kfoury family. Ask about me. If you love your mother, why don’t you ask about her? Ask all the people in town. They all know me and know my story. They’ll tell you as much as you want to know about me. And if you press them, they will fabricate some preposterous stories about me. Any story they can weave together will fit me well, my son. Stories become me. Stories seem to become some people, and I’m one of those people.
My father took me out of school against my will. One day I lifted my head from my Arabic language book, and there he was, all of a sudden, standing in the classroom doorway. I don’t know why he removed his red fez as if entering a church. He called to me, after seeking permission from the teacher, and told me to get my school bag and follow him. Just like that, out of the blue. He put his fez back on his head and started walking, so I walked behind him along the road, my feet reluctant to go forwards as I looked back, crying. When we reached the house, he kissed me. He kissed me maybe for the first time in my life. He kissed me on my forehead and said in a sharp tone, ‘That’s enough. From here on, education becomes harmful to girls. Tomorrow you help your mother with the housework.’
I didn’t sleep that whole night. In the morning I begged my mother to ask the nun to persuade my father to change his mind. My school was run by the Lazarite nuns and the headmistress was a French woman named Mother Angele. She had asked her noble and rich family to send her share of her inheritance so she could finish building the school in our town. She loved me very much. She spoke to my father but didn’t get anywhere with him. Rarely did my father make decisions. He left all the decisions about household matters and children up to my mother. But if he did ever make a decision, he would stick to it to the end, as if his whole life depended on it.
That’s right, I’m not stupid. I know you’ve been going around asking people questions and recording what they say. Don’t laugh. Tape recorders have become so small nowadays you can put them in your shirt pocket. No, I don’t want to search through your clothes. Record as much as you want. I myself have a tape recorder here in my room, next to my pillow, that I turn on when I’m having trouble sleeping. There’s only one tape in it, of my own voice. My voice is still as beautiful as it was years ago. I recorded some Baghdadi mawwaals. It is said that prisoners used to sing those mawwaals to cheer themselves up.
I raised you as a child, why have you left me?
Is this the reward of a good deed, O light of my eyes?
As you can hear, my voice is still beautiful. I learned those mawwaals from my mother. I’ll let you hear them if you wish. I play the tape over and over until I’m able to fall asleep.
I like to sleep to the sound of my voice.
If I had been more determined, I would have written down my story myself when I still could. And I tried after you left. I bought a new copy book and sat at the table. I remembered the school desks and it made me so sad and sorry for myself again that I almost cried. On the first page I wrote one sentence: This is the story of Kamileh al-Hajj Abayd… I like to use my family name. We’ve always been known to be either very intelligent or crazy. They say that one of our ancestors in the distant past was returning from Jerusalem to his town in Syria when he happened upon a girl whose beauty enchanted him, and so he spent the night in that town hoping to see her the next day. He couldn’t bear to be without her, and he stayed there for days on end until he married her and people gave him the name ‘Al-Hajj’, the pilgrim. On the first page in my copy book I wrote: This is the story of Kamileh al-Hajj Abayd, starting with the day she left her father’s house wearing her bead-embroidered wedding dress and, for good luck, they lifted her up to stick a ball of dough over the door of her husband’s house, which didn’t stick well, up until the day her only son boarded a plane to America and didn’t return. But writing that sentence tired me out. It took me half an hour, which is why I have it memorised. I reread it and said to myself, ‘It’s a difficult task for you, and at any rate who will even care about your story, Kamileh? Your problems are nothing compared with other people’s problems. No one wants to burden himself with other people’s problems. It’d be better to stop.’ I often thought about doing it afterwards as I sat here by myself on the porch. When the day came when I could only hear people and not see them anymore, I thought about telling it out loud, just like I’m telling it to you now, and I would ask Muntaha to write it down for me. Muntaha is all I have left. My companion and my neighbour who comes to visit me almost every day. She never married, and I had become a widow so young.