Qissat Read Online Free Page B

Mama’s gift, because, as though she’d read my mind, she tells me that the boy in the story is stronger and better than the kids that come from the whole pomegranate, and when she calls me ‘a half-and-half one’, that’s what she thinks of me.
***
    Baba takes me, that last afternoon on the bank, to the cemetery plot. Sido’s grave has a wooden plank with his name and a
sura
carved onto it. It is the opposite of Yia Yia’s grave. It has a Muslim Man in it, instead of a Christian Woman. I stand with my hands folded over my chest and recite the
fateha,
wondering if my Baba’s baba is comfortable under all that dirt. I then recite, in my head, all the verses I’ve learned, like a show-off, because I want Sido to know I’m good, so he won’t worry about me. We take a short walk past the cemetery and the shrub-dotted land to a tiny house on a hill. Baba opens its gates and shows me the big room inside.
    ‘This is where I grew up,’ he says. ‘Here, with my sisters. And whenever a brother would die, since three of them did, they buried them in that lot over there.’
    ‘Where we just were,’ I gasp, scared by the thought that Baba’s little brothers are buried already. Where would Gamal be buried? Would we all be buried separately, far away from each other the way Mama and Baba’s families are?
    ‘And we went to the bathroom outside.’ He looks around at the room and bites his inner cheeks. He doesn’t look sad. Mama says Baba is the kind of man that is happy being sad. Maybe she’s right. I look around the room and try to picture nine bodies sleeping on the wooden floor, six girls with all their girl problems.
    ‘All my sisters,’ Baba says, ‘got married before they were fifteen. No, I’m lying; Kameela was seventeen. They got married against that whitewashed wall outside … like prisoners awaiting execution.’ Baba stops and exhales wearily. ‘The minister came and married them to their husbands, who were usually ten years older, twenty times uglier, and a ton less sad about the entire deal.’ The wall is the one on the east end of the old house, the end facing the valley. I scan the scratched-up floors, touch the worn door handles, and try to imagine Baba as a child.
    ‘I walked to school, or rode the ass. I carried my book in a length of rope over my shoulder.’
    ‘Did you miss it here when you had to go to Egypt?’
    ‘I’m glad you mention that, my girl. I was sad, but going to Egypt, going to university, gave me my freedom. Your aunts never received such an opportunity. I want more than anything in the world for you to have that opportunity.’
    I stare at the hills outside.
    ‘Do you understand this?’ he asks me, his voice filled with urgency, and I nod.
    ‘It’s hard to explain this to you,’ Baba says, leading me outside. ‘Although I lost my home, I gained an education, which later became my home. This can also happen for you,’ he pauses, mines his mind for better words. ‘War is terrible. Terrible! But good things can come of it too.’
    He wants to take a picture of me: he tells me to lean and rest my back against the once-famous, now-dirty white ‘wedding’ wall. I stick my chin out and smile, my hands like soldiers at my sides. The flash makes me see stars. When I look at this picture closely now, I see that there is a ladder at the left-hand side of it, propped up against the yellowed wall. Baba had left me an escape route.

H UZAMA H ABAYEB
A Thread Snaps
    There are the same number of plastic slippers as usual – no more, no less. Nuwwar won’t collect them now. After the water has reached the narrow drain at the doorstep she’ll pick them up, along with the sandals with a broken buckle. Her back is about to part company with her bottom. If only the broom were a bit bigger, she wouldn’t be forced to bend over so far. But the broom grows skinnier day by day, just like her. Its coarse hair falls out each time it sweeps the wet floor. Nuwwar’s back is on the point