Saud Alsanousi - The Bamboo Stalk

Khawla told me they had prepared a room for me in the annex with everything I would need. My heart skipped for joy. ‘You’ll find everything in the room,’ she said and began listing all the contents.

‘That’s too much,’ I said, interrupting her. ‘Far too much, Khawla.’ She stopped. I looked at the phone screen to make sure I was still connected.

‘Hello, Khawla?’

‘Yes, I’m still here.’

‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.’

‘But. .’ She stopped again, then continued hesitantly. ‘Are you sure you’re happy about that?’ she asked.

‘Very much. It’s better than I’d dreamed of,’ I said.

‘Isn’t staying in the annex a bit. .’ she trailed off, as if looking for the right word. ‘Look, I did my best to make sure you could stay with us more properly,’ she continued, ‘but let’s wait and see. Maybe Grandmother will change her mind and let you live with us inside the house.’

I realised then that Grandmother had only partially accepted me. The annex wasn’t the house itself. It was somewhere separate in the inner courtyard where the cook and the driver lived. Only the owners lived inside the house itself, and the maids on the top floor. I accepted the arrangement with good grace, partly because my room in the annex had once been the diwaniya where my father met his friends.

‘Hello, Isa, are you still there?’

‘Yes, yes, I can hear you.’

‘There are some other things I want you to know before you come.’

Before I moved to Grandmother’s house I had to be told several things. I mustn’t talk to the servants about who I was, especially the cook and the driver, because there were lots of neighbours and every house had a cook or a driver, or perhaps both. Servants in general don’t keep the secrets of the houses they work in. They gossip among themselves, which means that secrets are liable to come out in the neighbours’ houses. Khawla said a lot about this in our conversation and I concluded that I would be living in secret in Grandmother’s house, or the annex, and my presence must not be disclosed to others.

‘If any of the neighbours or their servants ask, then you’re the new cook. This is temporary until we find a way around the problem,’ Khawla said.

10

‘Will we meet again?’ I asked Ghassan as I got out of his car with my bags, in front of Grandmother’s house.

‘Many times, you crazy,’ he replied.

I turned and headed for the door. ‘Isa!’ Ghassan called out. ‘Take this,’ he said, reaching out through the car window. I left my clothes bag and went back to him, carrying with me the briefcase with all my documents.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s the key to my flat, so you can come any time. I might not be there, but you’ll have the key,’ he said.

Even you’re not sure I’ll stay in Grandmother’s house, Ghassan , I said to myself. I thanked him and went back to my clothes bag by the door.

Even before I pressed the bell, Khawla opened the door and said, ‘Hi, Isa.’ She’d been waiting for me behind the door. Ghassan said goodbye by honking his horn, then drove off in his beloved Lancer, leaving me in the company of my sister. ‘ Salamuuu aleekooom ,’ said the parrot, as usual whenever the door was opened. I was about to go in, but Khawla stopped me hesitantly. She looked at the houses next door and said, ‘That way,’ pointing to the side entrance. ‘Your room’s over there, Isa, and from there you can come into the main house through the courtyard.’

I went in through the side door, the door through which my father and I were evicted years earlier. The door led to the annex and Khawla was waiting for me there. She asked me to follow her and stopped in front of an aluminium door. She pointed to the door and said, ‘This was my father’s diwaniya . He used to meet his friends here.’ She opened the door and stood aside. ‘In you go. This is your room,’ she said.

All this for me? It was a room way beyond my dreams. I would never need to go out. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was twice the size of my old room. A large carpet covered the whole floor. There was a large double bed with pillows and a fancy white cover, a big-screen television and a small table with a laptop computer. There was a fridge, a heater and air conditioning. ‘Are you happy with this?’ Khawla asked me.

‘More than you can imagine,’ I said, comparing it with my wretched room in the Philippines.

She asked me to leave my bags and follow her. In the courtyard she pointed to a door near to the door to my room. ‘That’s Babu and Raju’s room, the cook and the driver,’ she said. She pointed to a glass door with a steel frame right opposite my room. ‘That’s the way to the big sitting room where we were sitting last time. You won’t have to meet the parrot if you come in through this door,’ she said with a laugh. She pointed to a window on the upper floor, above the glass door. ‘That’s the window of Grandmother’s room,’ she said. She looked at her watch. ‘It’s almost ten o’clock. Shall I leave you to go to sleep?’

‘No, no, it’s still early,’ I replied.

‘Get changed now, and I’ll visit you later.’

‘Won’t I be allowed to go into the main house?’ I asked.

She gave the sweetest of smiles. But was it a real smile or just the way she shaped her lips? She nodded and said, ‘Oh yes, Isa, but don’t be impatient.’

Fully dressed and without even taking off my shoes, I lay down on my big new bed. Before long I heard a light tapping on the door. I sat up. Before I even went to the door, my aunt Hind opened it, but she didn’t take a step inside. She looked around, inspecting the room. ‘Is everything as it should be?’ she asked.

I was standing by the bed. ‘Yes, madam,’ I replied, without looking at her.

There were some seconds of silence. When she spoke again, her tone had changed. ‘That’s strange,’ she said.

I looked at her, expecting her to explain what she thought was strange. ‘You have Rashid’s voice. It’s like you’re him but with a different face,’ she said.

‘Really, madam?’ I said, pleased at what she had said.

‘Why do you call me “madam ” ? I’m your aunt.’

I smiled and nodded without speaking. She nodded too. ‘If you need anything,’ she said, putting her hand into her little bag and handing me a mobile phone, ‘this is for you. You’ll find some numbers on it that might be important to you. Ghassan’s number, Khawla’s number and the phone number of the house.’ She turned away and, as she walked towards the glass door that led to the sitting room, she looked back towards me and said, ‘And my number too.’

* * *

After about an hour, Khawla came back and I opened the door for her. ‘Come in,’ I said, but she shook her head to say no.

‘Follow me,’ she said. ‘I want to show you something.’

I followed her but when we reached the glass door, I felt I couldn’t walk any further. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

She turned to me with her finger on her lips, asking me to keep quiet. Then I followed her. We went through the sitting room to a short corridor. We walked past the parrot’s cage, which was covered with a piece of cloth. At the end of the corridor we came to a wooden door. Khawla pushed on it and said, ‘In you go.’

It was a small room. Bookshelves covered most of the wall space. There was a wooden desk in one of the corners and a few pictures in gilt frames hanging where there was space on the wall. ‘This is my father’s study,’ said Khawla.

Amazed by the number of books, I asked, ‘And did Father read all these books?’ Khawla smiled. I recalled all the conversations in which my mother had spoken to me about this room. This is where she and Rashid chatted when Grandmother and my aunts had gone to sleep. This is where my mother brought my father cups of coffee. It felt strange, like being in a museum that contained relics of our ancestors.