Saud Alsanousi - The Bamboo Stalk

What Jabir had heard reached his mother, and from his mother it spread to the houses nearby and then to other people, and because Kuwait is a small place where almost everyone knows everyone else, and because words have wings, the news flew through the realms of gossip, especially places where women gathered. The news landed comfortably on the tongue of one woman only to fly off once again.

Khawla didn’t have an opinion on the matter. She took the middle ground, between me, her only brother, and the rest of the family. I couldn’t make out her attitude when she called me. I needed someone to stand by me. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had left the Tarouf house voluntarily because I didn’t want to impose my curse on anyone. When I was driven out of the house with my father many years ago, the house started to enjoy good luck. Why didn’t good luck descend on it when I left it voluntarily this time? Which of us was jinxing the other? Grandmother said I was a curse on the Taroufs but the way I saw it the Taroufs were a curse on me.

I still remember some of what Khawla said in that conversation. ‘Umm Jabir is despicable. Grandmother is ill. Nouriya is making threats. People we’re related to have found out about it and are saying Rashid had a son by a Filipina maid and so on.’ She suddenly stopped.

‘And what next?’ I asked her.

‘Some of the relatives have made it clear they feel sorry for me,’ she answered hesitantly. ‘They say it will reduce my chances of finding a decent husband.’ Grandmother had said the same thing to my father in the kitchen years earlier. It seems she was right. Awatif and Nouriya had escaped the curse of Josephine, but now it was about to strike my sister.

When I didn’t respond, Khawla continued, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean. .’

I interrupted her: ‘Not at all, I’m the one who should apologise.’

Kuwait really was a wonderland, but very different from the wonderland I had imagined all the time I was in the Philippines. This wonderland wasn’t the one in my dreams. The only thing that the country in my old imagination had in common with the new reality was that they were both wonderlands.

* * *

Rashid, Josephine, where did you stand on the mess I was in? Did you have the right to bring me into the world and then abandon me like this? If you had the right, you certainly didn’t live up to your responsibilities. We come into life involuntarily. We arrive either by chance, unplanned by our fathers and mothers, or because they planned us and decided when we should arrive. If we are conjured out of nothingness, if we really exist before our souls are breathed into our foetuses in the womb, then prospective parents should line up in front of us, for us to choose our fathers and mothers from among them. If we can’t find anyone who deserves to have us as their child, then we should revert to nothingness.

When I shared these thoughts with Abdullah in the diwaniya , he replied with a paraphrase of a Qur’anic verse that says that the soul is a secret known only to God, because we humans have only a little knowledge. When he’d finishing explaining the verse, he added, ‘But who knows? Maybe we did in fact choose our parents before our memories were allowed to start another life in new bodies.’

‘Do you believe in Buddhism?’ I asked immediately.

He shuddered defensively. ‘I’m a Muslim,’ he said.

‘But you’re talking about something that’s similar to reincarnation,’ I explained.

‘“ They will ask you about the soul. Say: The soul is by command of my Lord, and of knowledge you have been granted but little ,”’ he said, reciting the Qur’anic verse in question as if atoning for a thought crime he had committed.

Ibrahim Salam had a different opinion. He was upset that the idea had even been brought up. His answer was another Qur’anic verse: ‘“ Every soul will taste of death. Then unto Us you will be returned .’” With that he closed the subject.

* * *

The crazies knew all about me. ‘You’re not to blame, Isa, for everything that happened,’ Turki said. His words were a consolation, but he quickly added, ‘And your grandmother and aunts aren’t to blame either.’

‘But they’re rich,’ I retorted. ‘They have everything. What harm does it do them if I’m around?’

With a smile like Ghassan’s, he replied, ‘There’s a popular saying in Kuwait: a good reputation is worth more than wealth.’

15

I had three options: to hate myself for what I had brought upon my family, to hate my family for what they had done to me or to hate both them and myself because I was one of them.

My door bell rang and then kept ringing until I opened the door. A shark with its jaws ready to strike, accompanied by a pitiful dolphin, broke into my flat, dragging behind them a net, a tarouf , from which they hadn’t been able to break free. I, the little fish, tried to escape by slipping through the mesh of the net.

‘Nouriya?’ I said in surprise. I was stepping backwards for fear she would grab the collar of my shirt, as she had done the first time. On that occasion she had been at pains to control herself in case anyone in Grandmother’s house noticed. But in my flat, in the tank of the little fish, as Khawla had called me, there was no escape from the shark.

Awatif looked more conciliatory and I hoped she might do something but she didn’t. I pointed towards the sitting room and said, ‘Please come in.’

They didn’t budge. Everything in Nouriya’s face signalled contempt for me: her raised eyebrows, her thin upturned nose, her poisonous tongue.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I’m not Hind. I’m not Khawla. You’re to leave Kuwait immediately. Understood?’

Her arrogance outraged me. I don’t know how I dared but I blew up in her face. ‘I left the Taroufs’ house long ago. You have no authority over me,’ I said.

Her eyes opened wide as if she’d been slapped on the face. ‘You’re to leave Kuwait immediately,’ she shouted.

‘Kuwait isn’t the Tarouf household,’ I said.

Her eyes opened so wide it was frightening. She turned to Awatif in disbelief at my quick retort. ‘Are you defying me?’ she asked.

‘I’m not defying anyone.’

‘My mother has decided to cut off your monthly allowance. Hind is going to stop helping you. Don’t you understand?’

‘I have a job and a fair amount of money, enough to live for the rest of my life here.’

I looked down defiantly. ‘In Kuwait,’ I added.

Her lips trembled. She looked back and forth between me and Awatif in amazement. I don’t blame her. When a little mouse roars, it has more impact than when a lion roars. Her eyes glistened with tears. A flood of tears, streaked with kohl, rolled down her cheeks. She looked awful. Between sobs, she said something to Awatif, then turned to me. ‘I’ll pay you whatever you want,’ she said.

‘I don’t want anything,’ I snapped back.

She exchanged glances with her sister but I couldn’t work out what it meant. ‘May we come in?’ asked Awatif.

I waved them into the sitting room.

They sat next to each other opposite me. Nouriya sought Awatif’s help after her own approach had failed to persuade me to leave. Awatif spoke in something resembling English, helped by her sister. ‘Do you pray?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied tentatively.

She smiled approvingly and said, ‘That’s good. I was confident you were a sincere believer.’ I looked from one to the other, trying to work out where this was leading. ‘Be a strong believer. Accept your fate. Be content with what God has decreed for you,’ she continued.

‘God?’ I asked.

She nodded with a calm smile. From the confidence on Nouriya’s face I knew how confused I must look. ‘Almighty God didn’t create you to be here,’ she said, as calm as ever.