The Language of Baklava Read Online Free
Author: Diana Abu-Jaber
(“I Want Her”) and even “Gameel Gamal” (“Beautiful Beauty”), which we belt out, lifting our voices over the rush of wind.
Rudy’s is a tar-paper shack perched on the gravel lip of Lake Ontario. It leans a bit to the east, and the sticky black roof sits at a drunken angle on top. There’s just a window with an apple-cheeked blond girl waiting in it with her pad of paper and a chewed stub of pencil. This lumpy little place with its ice-crusted freezers produces a lovely, buttery-satin ice cream. And even though we already know what we want, we still all study the lists of flavors, toppings, and novelties chalked onto the blackboard. I agonize over chocolate malts, root beer floats, and tin roof sundaes, but in the end I always get the scoop of vanilla dipped in the chocolate shell. The ice cream softens and slips, and the chocolate shellac stays semi-rigid and glossy, a minor miracle.
By the time we get back, a curious lethargy hangs over the house. The men are all asleep in the backyard or on the living room floor, and my mother and the aunties are murmuring at the kitchen table. There’s been a change of plans, my mother tells us, we’re not having shish kabob after all, we’re having chicken and stuffed squash for dinner. The kitchen stove is covered with burbling, lid-ticking pans; the air is towel damp and heavy with mystery.
None of us is really hungry anymore, anyway. We’re dozy and full from the ice cream and the sunshine and the hearty, full-lunged singing. My sisters settle down to nap, and my cousins and I play game after game of Parcheesi on the wool Persian carpet in my uncle’s library. The walls of old brown books seem to mutter and sit up, staring. Somewhere in the middle of the seventh or eighth game, my cousin Jess, who at nine is the oldest and shrewdest of any of us, Jess of the Cleopatra eyes and shining black hair like patent leather— suddenly looks up and says, “Let’s go see Lambie!”
We clatter down the back steps, calling for the lamb, and we accidentally wake Uncle Jack, who sits up in the grass outside the barn. “Ah . . . oh . . . well, Lambie had to go visit his grandmother,” Uncle Jack says.
Among our black-eyed, black-haired uncles and father, Diplomat-Uncle Jack was rumored to have somehow had ineffable red hair as a boy. Whenever he acted up, my Palestinian grandmother would put her hands on her hips and say, “That’s the Irish devil in you!” Even though he is the oldest of the brothers in America, he acts like the youngest. He is the clever mishkeljee— the “troublemaker,” with a fondness for stirring things up, spreading rumors, sprouting arguments, then disappearing.
“Lambie has a grandmother?” my cousin Ed asks skeptically. “Where?”
“Ah, yes, okay, um . . . she lives in Wisconsin. On a lovely lake filled with swans, in a house with glass doorknobs on every door.”
“I doubt it,” Ed says, though somewhat less incredulous now. It happens that Jess and Ed have glass doorknobs in their house. And I myself have heard of Wisconsin. I glance at the barn and think I see, moving quick and lithe as a lizard, the long slim arm and leg of Sami disappearing around the corner.
Dinnertime comes and we eat our chicken and stuffed squash, though the ice cream has dampened our appetites. Everyone does his or her usual. The grown-ups pile our plates with too much food. And there’s the customary struggle with Uncle Hal, who likes to feed the children gaping mouthfuls of food from his own hand. He even tries to feed our mother and our aunties, who roll their eyes and bat his hand away, preferring to eat their own dainty American portions on forks. Uncle Jack offers me some important life advice, which is, he says, to never start drinking before noon or I’ll grow up to be a bum. Auntie Rachel eats all the toasted pine nuts off the rice. Cousin Sami sits trembling with his hands on either side of his plate, eyes closed, not leaving the table. None
Rudy’s is a tar-paper shack perched on the gravel lip of Lake Ontario. It leans a bit to the east, and the sticky black roof sits at a drunken angle on top. There’s just a window with an apple-cheeked blond girl waiting in it with her pad of paper and a chewed stub of pencil. This lumpy little place with its ice-crusted freezers produces a lovely, buttery-satin ice cream. And even though we already know what we want, we still all study the lists of flavors, toppings, and novelties chalked onto the blackboard. I agonize over chocolate malts, root beer floats, and tin roof sundaes, but in the end I always get the scoop of vanilla dipped in the chocolate shell. The ice cream softens and slips, and the chocolate shellac stays semi-rigid and glossy, a minor miracle.
By the time we get back, a curious lethargy hangs over the house. The men are all asleep in the backyard or on the living room floor, and my mother and the aunties are murmuring at the kitchen table. There’s been a change of plans, my mother tells us, we’re not having shish kabob after all, we’re having chicken and stuffed squash for dinner. The kitchen stove is covered with burbling, lid-ticking pans; the air is towel damp and heavy with mystery.
None of us is really hungry anymore, anyway. We’re dozy and full from the ice cream and the sunshine and the hearty, full-lunged singing. My sisters settle down to nap, and my cousins and I play game after game of Parcheesi on the wool Persian carpet in my uncle’s library. The walls of old brown books seem to mutter and sit up, staring. Somewhere in the middle of the seventh or eighth game, my cousin Jess, who at nine is the oldest and shrewdest of any of us, Jess of the Cleopatra eyes and shining black hair like patent leather— suddenly looks up and says, “Let’s go see Lambie!”
We clatter down the back steps, calling for the lamb, and we accidentally wake Uncle Jack, who sits up in the grass outside the barn. “Ah . . . oh . . . well, Lambie had to go visit his grandmother,” Uncle Jack says.
Among our black-eyed, black-haired uncles and father, Diplomat-Uncle Jack was rumored to have somehow had ineffable red hair as a boy. Whenever he acted up, my Palestinian grandmother would put her hands on her hips and say, “That’s the Irish devil in you!” Even though he is the oldest of the brothers in America, he acts like the youngest. He is the clever mishkeljee— the “troublemaker,” with a fondness for stirring things up, spreading rumors, sprouting arguments, then disappearing.
“Lambie has a grandmother?” my cousin Ed asks skeptically. “Where?”
“Ah, yes, okay, um . . . she lives in Wisconsin. On a lovely lake filled with swans, in a house with glass doorknobs on every door.”
“I doubt it,” Ed says, though somewhat less incredulous now. It happens that Jess and Ed have glass doorknobs in their house. And I myself have heard of Wisconsin. I glance at the barn and think I see, moving quick and lithe as a lizard, the long slim arm and leg of Sami disappearing around the corner.
Dinnertime comes and we eat our chicken and stuffed squash, though the ice cream has dampened our appetites. Everyone does his or her usual. The grown-ups pile our plates with too much food. And there’s the customary struggle with Uncle Hal, who likes to feed the children gaping mouthfuls of food from his own hand. He even tries to feed our mother and our aunties, who roll their eyes and bat his hand away, preferring to eat their own dainty American portions on forks. Uncle Jack offers me some important life advice, which is, he says, to never start drinking before noon or I’ll grow up to be a bum. Auntie Rachel eats all the toasted pine nuts off the rice. Cousin Sami sits trembling with his hands on either side of his plate, eyes closed, not leaving the table. None
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