Saud Alsanousi - The Bamboo Stalk

Because Merla stood for what I found most beautiful in the Philippines, I escaped the Philippines on my bike and went to Khawla, who represented for me the best aspect of Kuwait.

Khawla opened the door for me. I leaned my bike against the wall in the inner courtyard and looked around. There was no one. I wrapped my arms around Khawla and she laughed at what I was doing. I held her in my arms a long time. She tried to break free and said, ‘Isa, are you all right?’

I tightened my grip. ‘Yes, please stay as you are,’ I said. I let go of her a few seconds later.

She looked right into my eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

I shook my head. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I just missed you.’ I would have burst into tears if I had told her about Merla’s message.

‘Grandmother’s upstairs,’ she said. ‘Go and visit her as soon as she’s finished her physiotherapy session.’ She saw I was surprised, so she explained: ‘As soon as you left Grandmother hired a masseuse for her legs.’

I bowed my head. ‘I didn’t leave because I wanted to. She was the one who wanted it,’ I said.

Khawla pretended she hadn’t heard my last remark. She took me by the hand and led me to Father’s study. ‘This is the third masseuse to come and see Grandmother. After every session, she says, “She’s not as good as Isa”,’ she said. I pretended not to hear.

She had me sit in the chair at Father’s desk and she sat down on the other side, with her elbows on the desk and her head on her hands, looking into my face. ‘So? How’s Kuwait?’ she said.

I smiled at her. ‘The search continues. I haven’t found it yet,’ I said.

‘I’m worried you might have found it without recognising it,’ she answered sadly.

I was horrified by the idea that Kuwait was the Kuwait I had experienced every day since I arrived. ‘I’m ready to take the trouble to look for it, as long as there’s more to it than what I’ve seen so far,’ I said.

‘And how does it look to you so far?’ she asked.

‘Lots of images, all different..’

She looked into my face and said, ‘Tell me about Kuwait, Isa.’

Kuwait, an old dream that would never come true for me, even when I went there and walked on its soil. Kuwait for me was a sham reality, or a real sham. I don’t know, but Kuwait has many faces: my father, who I love, my family, towards whom I have contradictory feelings, my homesickness, which I hate, my sense of belonging, which I feel — as a Kuwaiti — whenever someone insults Kuwaitis. Kuwait is the fact that Kuwaitis have failed me by looking down at me. It’s my room in the annex of the Taroufs’ house. It’s a lot of money but little love, not enough to build a real relationship. Kuwait is a luxurious flat in Jabriya full of emptiness. Kuwait is a dark cell where I spent two days through no fault of my own. And sometimes it’s more beautiful — I see it as a big family whose members greet each other in the market, in the street or in the mosque. ‘ As-salam aleekum’ . . ‘ Wa aleekum as-salam.’ Or I see it in the guise of a kind old man who lives in a large house opposite the building where I live. I often see him from my little balcony. He stands at his front door after dawn prayers every day surrounded by men in yellow uniforms carrying brooms and black plastic bags. He gives them money and food. Kuwait is Nouriya, who hates me and refuses to recognise me, and Awatif, to whom it’s all the same whether I exist or not. Kuwait gives and doesn’t give, just like Hind. Kuwait is a society that’s like the Taroufs’ house. However close you go, however long you stay in one of the rooms, you’ll still be at a distance from the others who live there. Kuwait, Kuwait, I don’t know what Kuwait is.

‘Look for a job, Isa,’ Khawla said. ‘Only by working can you assimilate with the people here.’

I told her I was serious about working and that Ibrahim Salam had offered me a job and had taken me to various places to show me what the work was like, but working without speaking Arabic properly was impossible. She advised me to look in the private sector, where many companies depended on English in their business dealings and where the salaries were higher and they gave bonuses to employees who worked hard. The government also subsidised private-sector Kuwaiti workers by supplementing their income as part of a project called the National Workforce Subsidy, designed to encourage young Kuwaitis to find work outside the public sector. I couldn’t help laughing when Khawla finished giving me advice. She looked at me doubtfully. Before she had time to ask, I said, ‘Kuwait’s very generous when it comes to money.’

Khawla scowled. ‘Is that praise or. .?’

‘I have enough money,’ I cut in, ‘but I needed something that’s more important.’

To change the subject, I asked her about all the papers piled up on the desk. ‘What’s all that?’ I asked.

I was surprised to hear that she was still reading the novel that Father couldn’t finish because he was captured. ‘As soon as I finish the last line, I can’t help going back to the first page and reading it all over again. I correct some spelling mistakes and try to understand the things I couldn’t understand the first time,’ she said. She stopped a moment and looked at the sheets of paper on the desk. ‘It’s a difficult novel,’ she continued. ‘He says what he thinks about some things very openly, and sometimes he just hints. He speaks about certain things when he means different things.’ She stood up from the desk and went to one of the shelves full of books. ‘In order to understand Father more, I’m reading more of the books that he read,’ she said. ‘I’m still young. I’m getting older and I have a growing dream of finishing off what Father set out to write, to make his dream come true and publish his first, and last, novel.’

She suddenly shivered as if she had had an electric shock.

‘I have an idea!’ she said.

I looked into her face quizzically.

‘When you asked me one day,’ she explained, ‘I told you that in his novel Father portrayed Kuwait as he saw it, with tough love. He wanted to change reality with a novel that was candid and harsh, but his only motive was love.’

I nodded in agreement.

‘You. .’ She paused a moment. ‘You can see many aspects of Kuwait. Why don’t you write about Kuwait as you see it?’

‘Me?’ I said, taken aback. ‘What do I know about Kuwait that I could write?’

‘That’s exactly what you would write,’ she said with a broad smile, ‘what you don’t know about it.’

I thought before replying. ‘What I might write would be painful for the Tarouf family,’ I said.

‘Rashid al-Tarouf didn’t care about the Taroufs when he had you,’ she said with indifference. ‘So why should you?

Haven’t you inherited anything from Father other than your voice?’ she added with a smile.

I didn’t think seriously about what Khawla said about writing. I’m not a writer and I’m not good at Arabic and I don’t think I could write at length in English for people who mostly don’t read that language. So am I going to tell Kuwaitis my story in Filipino? Besides, Khawla had already told me that Kuwaitis don’t read. Whenever I criticised anything in Kuwait, she’d say, ‘Because we Kuwaitis don’t read.’

When I told her that writing a book wouldn’t work, she gave me a pleasant surprise by saying, ‘If José Rizal had thought like you, the Spanish would never have been driven out of the Philippines.’

I smiled. ‘After an occupation that lasted more than three centuries,’ I said with pride.

She looked at me with no less pride than I felt. ‘And for eight centuries Spain was under the control of us Muslims, many years before they occupied you,’ she said.