Джоха Альхарти - Celestial Bodies

Now, sitting up on her bedding, Mayya heard the muezzin’s voice. She found it comforting in the dawn silence. Life appeared to her sharply divided in two parts, like night and day: what we live, and what lives inside of us. She dozed off, waking up to the sound of her father opening the door, having just returned from the mosque. He squatted next to her and took the baby from her lap. Ma sha’ allah, your daughter is the very picture of you, Mayya! She smiled, seeing the traces of water from his ablutions clinging to his chin, and thought about how he had no choice but to spend most of his time outside the house until she would have completed her forty days of confinement, when the women who constantly came and went would finally depart. He appeared delighted with the girl. He had already told Mayya that the baby’s tiny body and sparse hair reminded him of her brother Hamad as a newborn. The dawn light edged into the room, illuminating it little by little, as Mayya and her father gazed at this new person without exchanging any more words. The rooster was crowing and she could hear the rustling of the nabk tree outside the window. Azzan returned the baby to her bed. I swear, Mayya, she really does look like Hamad! When he was born he was so tiny, only a touch larger than the palm of a hand. We said he wouldn’t live but he did. And then, once he was filling our eyes with his bounce, and giving us so much joy, he left us.

Mayya could remember everything. She had been ten when it happened. Hamad was two years younger. He took off into the farmlands on his steed, which was nothing more than a dry date-palm cluster, a limb fallen from a tree, his little-boy locks of hair riffling in the breeze and the silver amulet around his neck. Together they would slip away from Qur’an school. Mayya never succeeded in mounting that stallion, though she did try to get it away from him. The date-palm branch could rip a dishdasha to shreds. But since she was a girl, she couldn’t shimmy her dishdasha up her body and tie it around her middle as Hamad did his. Nor could she take it off as he sometimes did. They would steal green mangoes from Merchant Sulayman’s orchard and collect unripe dates from beneath the palm trees.

Then Hamad left them. Just like that, suddenly. Mayya remembered people coming to offer condolences and mourn with them; she remembered the tears and the silver amulet. Her mother was keen to retrieve his clothes and the amulet. No one cared about Hamad’s mount. The steed remained where it was, a thin dry body splayed apart for Mayya to see, every time she stared at the base of the courtyard wall.

When her father left the room the newborn began to cry. Mayya hugged her close. Did her daughter really look like her?

Twenty-three years later when she would smash her daughter’s mobile phone to bits in anger before slapping her across the face, the only remaining traces of resemblance were their brown skin and wiry frames. London would be taller than her mother, a good-looking young woman, and such a talker that it wouldn’t be surprising if she were nicknamed Chatterbox. This room would have become the refuge of her grandfather, an old man in his sixties. By then, the oily blue-green, already faded, would have been covered when the room was repainted a watery light blue. Against the wall would sit modern wood wardrobes instead of her mandus, the beautiful old gilt-edged wood chest, while a sofa upholstered in velvet would have taken the place of the Indian sequined cushions. The seam where walls and ceiling joined would be hidden beneath a white strip of plaster décor and London, who no longer resembled her mother in much of anything, would not enter this room, or the house around it. Not ever. That’s how afraid she was of her grandmother. But by then, this grandmother would have taken refuge in another room to which her mandus-chests had been removed along with some fancy pillows cushions, all wedged alongside the new, modern-style wood-frame bed and its accompanying suite of furniture. By then, this grandmother of hers was swearing out loud that she would slit her granddaughter’s throat if the rebellious girl really did marry the peasant’s son. How could she possibly marry the issue of the man who had threshed the family’s grain?

The clouds today are very thick, impenetrable. I like the idea of being so high that gravity loses its power over me, as I stare down at the clouds. I can remember how surprised I was to learn that clouds are not substantial enough to bear a person’s weight. Ustaz Mamduh exploded in laughter when he realised how deluded I was. So who do you think are, or you’ll be, when you grow up? A big important man who takes off into the air and sits on top of the clouds? Those clouds are like smoke, you idiot! Only air.

A month after she graduated, London said to me, I love clouds, Papa! When I was little I used to dream I had wings, like the girl in the TV Ramadan Riddles show, and I could fly up there and sit on top of the clouds.

I did not tell her that this had been my dream too. I didn’t get a chance. We were sitting in her new car. She was driving and talking incessantly. Suddenly she asked, How about we go down to the shore at Sib?

The renovations along the seafront at Sib had been completed by now, with a new coast road extending about four kilometres along that stretch of coastline. Every so often there was a stylish long asphalt parking area that allowed drivers to pause, alongside paved walkways with fancy entrelac for pedestrians, and lampposts that were miniature copies of the towering Burj al-Arab in Dubai. Long before these renovations were begun I used to go to Sib with my father, on his periodic visits to the fishermen there. He was trying to make agreements with them to buy their houses which overlooked the sea coast. He wanted to convert the area into a commercial complex. He was convinced that the Sabco and Okay Centre malls and even the al-Harthi Centre which opened during his final illness, were too far away for would-be customers who lived in the Sib area.

But the buying power here is weak, Father, I would exclaim. We are not in Dubai.

You don’t understand anything about commerce! would come his response. We’ll start with those fishermen, and then you’ll see.

Our excursions ended, as did talk of the project, when we learned that the Ministry of Housing had prohibited such commercial ventures anywhere along the seafront. We would be in Father’s white Mercedes, with me at the wheel. We didn’t have anything to say to each other, unless he wanted to bring up some issue concerning his business, or to moan how sad he was that it would all very likely be lost after his passing anyway, as long as his progeny consisted of the likes of me ‘who doesn’t appreciate the value of a penny’. One week after his death I presented my documents to join the distance learning programme at one of the universities in Beirut. The idea was that I would travel there twice a year for the examinations, until I graduated with a BA in Business Management. It doesn’t really matter to me now, Father, that you never saw my diploma. After all, you didn’t have any desire to see it. But what did that man desire? You are my only son, he would say. I want you to be a man... the best sort of man.

After my marriage I spent ten years on the road: back and forth between Muscat and al-Awafi. He refused to let us move to Muscat, for then who would keep the Big House alive? Who would preserve it as a home? Who would receive the guests? Who would preside over those sociable gatherings that brought men together every evening? He would not hear of it. No, no, absolutely not! We would do our business in Muscat — one day there, or perhaps two — and then we’d be back in al-Awafi. That was our home town, not Muscat. After another ten years, my son Salim said, But Muscat is our home town not al-Awafi. Why can’t we spend all of our school holidays and the big feast days here in Muscat?