Saud Alsanousi - The Bamboo Stalk

My mother didn’t say a word.

‘Doesn’t he want to come back to Kuwait?’ Ghassan asked.

My mother started crying and I answered on the other line. ‘Yes, I want to go back, I want to go back,’ I said.

Ghassan promised us he would look after everything. ‘I know people who can help us bring him back,’ he told my mother. To me he said, ‘Give me some time to prepare your papers and get you a Kuwaiti passport.’ He said he’d like to come to the Philippines to bring me back to Kuwait himself but there was a reason why he couldn’t do that.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ the rabbit concluded.

10

Death is strange. It comes and then lingers, moving slowly and looking for someone else whose life it can snatch. As long as it’s passing this way, why bother to go away only to come back later?

Five days after Mendoza died we received the news of Rashid’s death. A week after the burial of Mendoza, death went off with the soul of Inang Choleng.

The neighbours noticed that the bowls of food outside the old woman’s door hadn’t been touched since the morning. ‘It looks like Inang Choleng is ill,’ one of them told Mama Aida. Aida went to the old woman’s house and came back minutes later with her face frozen in shock. With dry, trembling lips she picked up the phone. ‘Josephine, come quickly,’ she said, then burst into tears. ‘The old woman’s dead.’

She threw down the phone, then threw herself on to the sofa crying hysterically. I was so shocked I was tongue-tied and couldn’t think straight. She didn’t cry when her father died, I thought. Uncle Pedro came in looking pale and my mother arrived leaning on Alberto’s arm, followed by Adrian with his mouth open and large drool stains on his shirt. Mother sat down next to Mama Aida, covering her face with her hands and crying. ‘The poor woman’s died after waiting so long,’ she sobbed. ‘She died when her only hope died.’ What’s going on here , I wondered. I looked around at their faces: Mama Aida sobbing, my mother in tears, Uncle Pedro sad, Alberto silent, Adrian in his own world and the neighbour puzzled.

I went upstairs to Merla’s room, sat on her bed and picked up the phone. ‘Inang Choleng’s dead,’ I told Merla.

‘That’s sad, but what’s wrong with your voice, José? The woman was close to a hundred, maybe more. Did you believe the children when they talked about Inang Choleng as the witch who would never die?’ Maybe I did believe in the legends about the old woman, but it wasn’t her death or the legends about her that puzzled me.

‘Hello? Hello? José!’ Merla shouted, breaking my train of thought.

‘Come, Merla,’ I said at the end of our conversation. ‘Something strange is going on downstairs with my mother, Mama Aida and Pedro.’

* * *

Everyone but me went to Inang Choleng’s house. I sat waiting for Merla and as soon as she arrived, she asked where everyone had gone.

‘To the old woman’s house,’ I answered. She looked at me in surprise.

‘José, you frightened me. What’s going on?’ she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ I said uncertainly, ‘but. .’

I didn’t finish the sentence. She took my hand and pulled me away. ‘Let’s have our first and last look at the inside of the old woman’s house,’ she said.

I didn’t want to let go of her soft hand but I did. ‘Are you mad?’ I said. ‘You’re going to go inside the witch’s house?’

She looked at me in surprise. ‘So why did you ask me to come, José?’

I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what had made me do it.

‘I don’t know, Merla. But your mother was really sad, my mother and Uncle Pedro too. Their reaction when they heard the news was weird.’

‘Everything’s weird in Mendozaland, everything,’ she commented.

‘But my mother said the old woman had waited a long time,’ I said, interrupting her.

‘Don’t be silly, José,’ said Merla, interrupting me this time. ‘What else would a woman her age be waiting for, other than death?’

I didn’t say a word.

‘So let’s go and see the old woman’s shack.’

The neighbours were gathered outside Inang Choleng’s house, at least the men and the women. The children were watching warily from a distance. Uncle Pedro’s wife and children were outside. My stepfather Alberto was sitting on a rock nearby. When Merla and I approached, Uncle Pedro’s wife said, ‘Pedro and Josephine and Aida are with the priest inside. Aren’t you going in?’

Merla looked at me and waited for me to reply.

‘No, there’s no need for us to go in,’ I said.

Alberto came up to us and said, ‘Merla, José, you have to go inside.’

Merla came close and whispered, ‘I was planning to go in, but the way they’re insisting has made me worried.’

Pedro’s wife went to the door of the house, opened it and beckoned us in. Merla went first, reluctantly, and I followed her, even more reluctantly. The house was small on the outside and seemed even smaller inside. There was a bedroom, a bathroom, a small kitchen in the corner open to the main room. It smelled of damp, rotten food and death. I felt sick. At the wooden bed my mother and Mama Aida were solemnly saying prayers, while Uncle Pedro sat on a chair nearby.

Inang Choleng was lying on the bed under a white cover, with only her head and shoulders visible. There were three pillows supporting her hunched back. The priest was anointing her forehead with holy oil and saying prayers. He was incredibly brave. Her mouth was wide open, showing a few teeth here and there. I was dripping with sweat as I waited for the priest to finish his task. I half-expected the old woman to spring into life and dig her remaining teeth into his hand.

I was frightened. My guilt about stealing her food years before was encouraging the bee in my head to start buzzing again. My mother and Mama Aida crying, the buzzing in my head, my heart throbbing in my temples, and my limbs shaking — everything encouraged me to leave. Before I could do so, Merla nudged me with her elbow. I looked at her. She was looking at one of the walls. I looked in the same direction and my eyes popped out in disbelief. There were black and white photographs of Mendoza on the wall. One of them I had seen before on his army identity card. In another one he was standing with a group of men in military uniform. In a third he was sitting on a bench with a woman, two girls and a boy between them. There were other old photos of Mendoza I hadn’t seen before. I looked to Merla for an explanation for the photos. She leaned over and whispered in my ear: ‘You don’t understand anything.’ She knew that what she said would hurt me. I look at her disapprovingly. ‘Our wily grandfather had admirers!’ she said.

‘But I never saw him go anywhere near her house,’ I replied, completely mystified.

The priest left after he’d performed the rites. As soon as he was through the door, Merla asked the question in a low voice. ‘Why are there pictures of Grandfather on the wall of Inang Choleng’s house?’

Uncle Pedro went out after the priest. My mother pretended to be busy clearing the place up. Only Mama Aida spoke and even she didn’t look at us. ‘Nothing strange about a mother putting pictures of her only son on the wall,’ she said.

Merla and I looked at each other in disbelief. ‘So Inang Choleng was Mendoza’s mother?’ I asked Mama Aida.

She nodded, and floods of tears rolled down her cheeks. My mother turned her back and pretended to be doing something. Her shoulders were shaking from crying. I went over to her and looked in her eyes but she looked away. ‘That old woman was Mendoza’s mother. So who was his father?’ I asked her.