The Bamboo Stalk (28 page)

She turned away to help Grandmother back inside but she answered me anyway. ‘She says Ghassan brought you back to get revenge on our family because she refused to let him marry Hind,'
she said. With that she went off with Grandmother on her arm and with Inang Choleng in her other hand.

I sat down on my bed, too shocked to think. So Ghassan with the sad face had played a dirty trick – a trick that was out of character with his face. He had waited all these years. He had made all the arrangements for me to come back from the Philippines. He had put me up in his flat. He had treated me kindly, but only to satisfy his own sick desire for revenge.

*   *   *

Ghassan called me many times that day but I didn't answer. He must have called Khawla as well to find out why I wasn't answering his calls. In the evening he sent me a message saying,
I found out why you're not answering my calls
. That's all it said. Ghassan disappeared and I don't know which of us gave up on the other. His grave offence and the fact that he had been exposed must have persuaded him to avoid confrontation, rather than try to defend himself. Khawla took a neutral position, which left me the task of trying to work out whether Ghassan really had duped me. Khawla said this was what Grandmother thought, whereas Hind dismissed it. As for Khawla, she had no opinion on the subject.

*   *   *

From the time my father was captured and until years after the liberation of Kuwait, Ghassan was a frequent visitor to Grandmother's house as a friend of Rashid's. He asked after them and always reminded them that Rashid's disappearance did not mean the end of the relationship between him and a house where he felt at home and
with people he saw as family. He was in touch with Iman, Khawla's mother, to ask after Rashid's daughter. He felt he had to keep the promise he had made to the memory of his late friend. Everyone in the Tarouf household welcomed him because he ‘brought a whiff of Rashid', as Grandmother put it. But that factor faded with the passage of time. After Awatif and Nouriya got married, Ghassan felt confident there were others looking after the family's affairs. He gradually grew more distant, but in the meantime a vague relationship had developed between him and Hind. She was the only person who asked after him if he didn't come, because when he didn't come she felt the absence of her brother, Rashid, she said. Khawla was young at the time and wouldn't have known about these things unless her mother had told her. Hind stayed in touch with Ghassan by telephone. Their relationship led to a love affair. Hind kept her feelings a secret from everyone except Iman, who was close to her at the time, until eventually it was no longer possible to continue in the same way. Ghassan proposed to Hind. Grandmother said to him, ‘You're almost family and we hold you in the highest regard but when it comes to marriage, I pray to God to provide you with a woman who is better than Hind.' Khawla said she understood why Grandmother turned Ghassan down: she didn't want her grandchildren to be bidoons like their father – social and legal outcasts.

Ghassan stayed away from Grandmother's house and went off in his own world, while Hind went through a period of emptiness, which she filled with her interest in human rights. She wrote on behalf of people who had been mistreated, asserting their rights, and took part in public meetings as an activist in the field. Through seminars, television discussions and interviews with newspapers, she became known for defending people regardless of their gender, religion or affiliation. She was famous in Kuwait. People knew her
name – Hind al-Tarouf. But what no one know was that the only thing she was defending was a love that wasn't destined to last long, love for one of those whose cause she had dedicated her life to defend – a cause that became her cause.

I looked at myself caught in all these crosscurrents and waited for recognition from my family. I was horrified. I didn't want to suffer a fate similar to that of Ghassan. I didn't want to take revenge on my family even if they didn't recognise me. I looked around for Inang Choleng. I remembered seeing her upside down on her shell at the door with Khawla bending down to pick her up. I remembered what had happened in my room that same morning: Khawla standing by the door, talking about Umm Jabir and Grandmother's fears, my rebellion against my weakness and my fears.
I'm Isa Rashid al-Tarouf. I'm Isa Rashid al-Tarouf. Do I need them to recognise me, once I've recognised myself?

Not after that day, because the time had come for me to set myself free – Kuwait was more than the Tarouf household.

PART 5

Isa . . . On The Margins Of The Country

‘It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted in the field without becoming part of an edifice.'

José Rizal

 

 

1

On the afternoon of the first day of Eid al-Adha, Iman visited the Tarouf house for the first time in ages to wish Grandmother well on the Eid. Her husband mustn't have known about this forbidden visit. She hadn't visited Grandmother in Ramadan or at Eid al-Fitr, so what exactly was it that brought her this time? It never rains but it pours, as they say.

Khawla knocked on the door of my room and as usual she didn't come past the doorway. She told me that Umm Jabir had called Grandmother again and when Grandmother said she couldn't send me over Umm Jabir asked her, ‘Is the Filipino really called Isa?' Grandmother almost had a breakdown in response to Umm Jabir's insinuation. Raju must have been behind this.

I shook my head indifferently and said, ‘So what?'.

Khawla's eyes were bathed in tears. She told me that her mother, Iman, had had a call from Umm Jabir asking her about the Filipino who was living in the home of her former husband's family. Iman found out about me without our inquisitive neighbour finding out anything, then came over immediately to ask Grandmother to let her take Khawla to live in her other grandmother's house, because she didn't want her daughter living in a house where I was living. I remembered a letter my father sent to my mother in which he said that his new wife would have no problem if I went back to Kuwait. What had changed? Khawla didn't respond but just wiped away her
tears.

‘I'll cut out Umm Jabir's tongue,' I said. ‘I will not be the cause of you leaving the house you love so I've decided to leave.'

Although she was sad, Khawla didn't insist I stay. Slightly shocked, she just said, ‘To the Philippines?'

‘To Kuwait,' I replied. For the first time since I'd come to her house, Grandmother gave me a big hug as soon as she heard of my decision, and almost suffocated me. She let go of me after planting a kiss on my cheek. She turned to Khawla and asked her to translate what she was going to say. Highly embarrassed, Khawla said that on top of the 200 dinars a month, Grandmother would now give me another 200, so now I would have a monthly allowance of 400 dinars. I nodded gratefully.

Grandmother talked again to Khawla, who then turned to me. ‘She'll also give you her share of Father's pension,' she added. Both of them were red in the face, out of embarrassment in the case of Khawla, out of happiness in the case of Grandmother. I turned my back on them and went back to my room, which would soon no longer be my room.

*   *   *

On the evening of the second day of the Eid, Ibrahim Salam was waiting for me outside in his car. As I was picking up my suitcase, Khawla opened the door to my room and for the first time she took a few hesitant steps inside. The fact that she came in like that disconcerted me. I left my suitcase on the floor and watched her. She stood in front of me, examining my face. I was so anxious my throat felt dry. Her face was completely expressionless. I tried in vain to smile but I couldn't because I was so taken aback that Khawla had ventured into the danger zone. She put her hands
under her chin and fiddled with something and her
hijab
came loose. She grabbed it from the part nearest her forehead, took it off her hair and let it fall to her shoulders. She shook her head and tossed her hair free. She looked straight into my eyes. I almost burst into tears. She wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my shoulder. ‘I'll miss you, brother,' she said.

My arms hung down and I didn't reciprocate. My heart was pounding. She kissed me on the cheek, then turned and went back where she had come from, covering her hair with her
hijab
. Her words rang in my ears. The word ‘brother' continued to echo even after she had left the room.

It was the first time Khawla had called me brother and, just one day earlier, Grandmother had embraced me and kissed me, also for the first time. If I had known that would happen I would have left the Tarouf house much earlier. I picked up my suitcase and turned off the lights. In the outer courtyard I looked towards the kitchen. Babu, Lakshmi and Luzviminda were behind the window watching me. They waved sadly. I left Grandmother's house behind me. As I was putting my suitcase in the boot of Ibrahim's car, Raju appeared from behind the garage door. He threw a cigarette end on to the floor and crushed it with his foot. He turned to me and said, ‘Goodbye', then closed the door.

Hind's car was in its usual spot under the awning. She was at home but she didn't come out to say goodbye. I understood her attitude: how could she say goodbye to me when she had failed to play the role she should have played in my case?

I'm not blaming her, because, as my mother said of my father one day, ‘The decision is out of one's hands if a whole society stands behind it.'

 

2

Ibrahim Salam shared his room with me temporarily, until I could find somewhere permanent to live. ‘Why do you have to live in Jabriya?' I asked Ibrahim, since I had only painful feelings about the area. My father's friend had died in a plane with the same name and it was in the same area that the friend who had betrayed him lived. ‘Because it's close to my work in the Philippine embassy,' Ibrahim explained.

One night I asked him to tell me about the Prophet Muhammad in return for me telling him about Jesus Christ, rather like those bedtime conversations that Cheng and I used to have about Jesus and the Buddha. ‘I'll tell you about the Prophet Muhammad, but you don't need to tell me about Jesus,' he replied. When I asked why not, he answered confidently, ‘I'm sure I know more about Christ than you do.'

He often spoke to me about Islam. I was interested in some of the similarities between the Qur'an and the Bible. Was Islam a new religion, as I had thought, or a supplement to religions that predated it? Ibrahim told me about the previous holy books that the Qur'an refers to. When I asked him about those books, he picked up a copy of the Qur'an and translated some passages, including one I remember from the chapter called ‘Women':
‘Behold, We have inspired you, just as We inspired Noah and all the prophets after him
–
as We inspired Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants,
including Jesus and Job, and Jonah, and Aaron, and Solomon; and as We vouchsafed unto David a book of divine wisdom.'
I understood from what he said that Islam didn't dismiss the religions that came before it, because the Qur'an refers to the earlier religions, mentions the prophets by name and tells us they were all sent to mankind by God. Ibrahim switched some lights on in my head but turned out others. When he saw I was confused, he seemed more interested than me in the subject. I don't know if he was trying to convince me or convince himself. He closed the Qur'an and put it back in its place in a drawer near his bed. He told me about miracles I had never heard of. Clouds that spelt out the word ‘Allah' in the sky, a watermelon with seeds arranged to form the name of the Prophet Muhammad, a fish with stripes that could be read as Allah, and other stories like the ones I used to hear in the Philippines about statues of the Virgin Mary that shed tears or about the Virgin Mary appearing in some place, which would soon become a shrine. Ibrahim amazed me and it showed on my face. In response to my amazement he would ask confidently, ‘So? What do you think?'

I was amazed in the sense of being underwhelmed, but Ibrahim read it the opposite way. ‘These are just fantasies,' I told him in the end. He turned pale. ‘If only you'd stick to reading the Qur'an,' I added.

He took a folded piece of paper out of the drawer where he kept the Qur'an. ‘I'm going to show you a miracle,' he said. I had goosebumps. Although I don't believe in such things, he was so enthusiastic that I braced myself to see something new.

‘It happened more than two years ago, in December 2004,' he said.

The date brought back memories of disaster and I interrupted him. ‘That was when the tsunami hit several countries in East
Asia,' I said.

He nodded. ‘That's right, brother,' he said.

‘The waves hit one particular island,' he continued, unfolding the piece of paper. ‘It flattened the whole area but saved the . . .' He left the sentence open so that the piece of paper could finish off what he wanted to say. It was a big glossy colour picture of a white mosque standing intact amid the devastation.

‘Where's the miracle?' I asked him, as amazed as ever.

‘Look. There's nothing left of the houses around the mosque. Everything was swept away by the waves and only the mosque survived.'

My goosebumps disappeared with disappointment. ‘Ibrahim!' I said. ‘The houses around the mosque were made of wood and corrugated iron, while the mosque had foundations that went deep into the ground and was build of concrete, with concrete pillars.'

‘Are you casting doubt on Islam?'

I shook my head. ‘No. But I am casting doubt on your ridiculous miracles. Would God send a tsunami to destroy the houses of the faithful around the mosque just so that people who didn't believe in God will see that this is the true religion?'