Джоха Альхарти - Celestial Bodies

Then, my father, declining fast, in the Nahda Hospital. When I stuck my hand out to meet his, he knocked it away. When I marched in his funeral, my knees abandoned me. Muhammad was only a year old then.

And when I asked Mayya, Do you love me? she laughed. She laughed! Loud enough to shatter every wall in the new house. Her laughter... the children fled from it.

Mayya never watched TV serials. Salim loved the Mexican serials for a time but eventually they bored him and he threw himself into video games instead. Every time we went to Dubai he bought two or three games.

Mayya’s mother saying to me, Mayya’s my darling daughter. Abdallah, my son, she’s in your care now, and you must take care of her. But don’t take her away, don’t take her from me, away to Maskad. No one is better at the sewing machine than she is. Mayya doesn’t like to eat much, or to talk much, you know, Abdallah...

Earlier, much earlier: me, saying to my father, Please, Father! I want to go to Egypt or Iraq, I want to study at university there. He grabbed me by the neck and barked at me. By this beard of mine, I swear you are not leaving Oman. Do you want to sink so low? To come back from Egypt or Iraq with your beard shaven off? Smoking and drinking and I don’t know what? Is that who you want to be? So instead, immediately after finishing high school I went to work in his business.

It wasn’t until after he died that I could move the family to Muscat. Little London was very cute and she had filled out by then. In the village, every afternoon Mayya bathed her in the falaj. Scampering along the canal with its running water always made her laugh. I bought her Heinz baby food and Milupa baby cereals and powdered formula. She was the only child in all of al-Awafi who got such things. I bought them at the canteen and Mayya boasted of having them. But my father still shouted at me, calling me boy . I was the father of three children, I was no boy... Going in to see him in there, and he would start at it again, stripping off his dishdasha and his vest. His sparse white chest hair caught the pale sunlight slinking around those heavy curtains closed over the only window. I went over to open them but he shook his finger at me: Iyyaaka, boy! Watch out you don’t! So I left them as they were. He went on shouting, in one of those bouts of raving that took over his mind for most of the two years before his death. Boy! Boy! Tie Sanjar up, tie him to the column on the east side of the courtyard, out there, out in front of the house. Anyone who gives that slave water or shade has to answer to me. I knelt down beside him. Father, the government freed the slaves a long time ago, and then Sanjar went to Kuwait. (Every summer London would say, Papa, let’s visit Kuwait! But Mayya always rejected the idea: So we’re going to get away from this heat by escaping to somewhere hotter?) An Omani married Sanjar’s daughter and she came back with him to live in Muscat. When she saw me in the Nahda Hospital, where she worked as a nurse, she recognised me. At the sight of my father, who was very ill by then, her lips contorted.

My father calls out, weakly, his fever-black lips trembling. Tie up that slave, tie up that Sanjar so he won’t steal a sack of onions ever again. I remain silent and he waves his cane at me in fury. Boy, can’t you hear me? Listen to what I’m telling you — go and punish him, go, it’s the only way he won’t steal any more.

London playing in the water, which she loved. London was six when Mayya chewed me out one time for leaving her to play in the muddy flow of water for two hours. London will get polio, she warned me. London will be paralyzed. I couldn’t sleep for several nights, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her tiny feet. But she didn’t come to any harm. She went on scampering around like a miniature gazelle.

My father’s lips turned black, his eyebrows receded, and the spit flew in all directions from his mouth. Boy — have you tied that thieving slave Sanjar to the eastern column yet? I took his hand and kissed it but he pushed me away. Father, the government freed all of the slaves, and Sanjar... the government, Father. He growled under his breath as though he had finally heard me. What’s the government got to do with it? Sanjar is mine, he doesn’t belong to the government. The government can’t free my slaves. I bought his mama Zarifa for twenty silver thalers! I fed her, when a sack of rice cost a hundred pure good silver coins. Yes, that’s right, a hundred. One thaler knocking against the next! Aah, Zarruf, so pretty... soft and gentle, Zarruf, but then you got older. Aah, that one grew vain and cocky! I married her off to Habib and then she produced this thief. What does the government have to do with any of this? My slave, mine. How could he travel anyway, without getting permission from me? How, boy?

When he began to shiver and quake again, the sweat running down his neck and oozing across his chest, I wiped it away with the blue towel which was always hanging on a nail on the door. After he died, that towel of his vanished. Going into his room, crying uncontrollably, knocking against the floor and writhing in my sweat, I would look for the towel but I could never find it. The Farrasha sewing machine vanished too. I never go into the storeroom but I know Mayya is hiding it somewhere in there.

Mayya makes gorgeous meat sambusak. I only like sambusak shaped by her hands. When we moved to the new house she made a huge platter of it along with everything else. Mayya, I said to her, Let the maid help you cook. She was silent. A few months later, she insisted on sending the maid back to her home town, without any warning. But that night the room smelled of perfume, and I could half-see her body through her dark blue chemise, and I asked her, Do you love me, Mayya? And she was silent. And then she laughed.

Laughed! She laughed.

I was the tallest boy in the class. Zarifa tugged the hem of my dishdasha down as hard as she could. I guess she thought maybe it would last awhile longer if she kept pulling it down. Every time she yanked it hard in back, the neckline in front attacked and nearly choked me. How much do you have there, boy? the teacher asked me. I had carefully saved my gift from the holy day. All I had bought was a single sweet dried coconut bar. Half a riyal, I said. The teacher burst out laughing. Laughter looks so disgusting sometimes. When people laugh, they look like monkeys. Their bellies shake and their necks shudder, and worst of all, their yellow teeth display all the decay. How old are you? Ten, or maybe twelve. The teacher, Ustaz Mamduh, laughed again. You don’t even know your own age? You’re very big for the first grade! But what could I do about that, when the school didn’t even open until I was already halfway grown up? The pupils were all making noise. Their dishdashas did not press against their necks like mine did. Ustaz Mamduh, they whined, we don’t want Abbuuud to sit in front of us, he’s too tall! Abdallah, you’re toooo tall! Ustaz Mamduh took my hand and asked in a whisper, his Egyptian accent as broad as ever, Do you have any jelly-sweets for me? I shook my head. Tomorrow, bring some of those jelly-sweets you folks make here, tomorrow, he said. At home, Zarifa shouted at me. Jelly-sweets? Just like that? Not a pen, not a notebook, no, he said jelly-sweets ? Habib had abandoned her by then, and Sanjar was always fleeing the house. She dedicated her time to cooking and to me.

Mayya — she was always so busy, at first with sewing and the children, and then it was school and her friends, and then, sleep. When I was little I used to smell the fragrance of broth on Zarifa whenever I shoved my head into her chest, trying to go to sleep. Ustaz Mamduh said, Abdallah knows how to write his name and he will be moved to grade three. That’s how I came to be in third grade with four others, all of whom could write their names successfully on the blackboard. Or they had brought chunks of dark Omani jelly-sweets for the teacher. As Egyptian as he was, Ustaz Mamduh loved the Omani delicacy.