The Night Counter (33 page)

Scheherazade reached for the ball just as Fatima pulled it away.

“So a boy only needs one glove,” Scheherazade said, reaching for the ball again. “But you spoiled Amir and gave him two?”

Fatima put the ball back in the pouch and went silent. Scheherazade looked at the two gloves in her hand.

“Twins succeed doubly in half the time,” Scheherazade said, repeating Fatima’s words about Zade and his sister. Scheherazade walked through the boxes. Two of everything, exactly the same, sticking out of most of the boxes.

“Bassam with the dimple, Lena with no husband, Laila, Randa, Hala, Miriam, Soraya, and Nadia,” Scheherazade said. “That is eight children. You said you had ten children.”

“I do,” Fatima said after a long while of silence in which she caressed the baseball. “Laith and Riyad would have wanted the house.”

“When did your boys leave you?” Scheherazade said. She did not use their names as she could tell that Fatima had not said them out loud in some time.

“It was on April 4, 1974,” Fatima told her. “They had just graduated
from Ann Arbor the year before. There was a terror of tornadoes in the Midwest that day, but I only know about the one that my boys went away in.”

“
Allah yerhamhum
,” Scheherazade whispered, and folded her arms around Fatima. She kissed the top of the old lady’s head. “Two sorrows can erase thousands of days of happiness.”

“Especially when you caused the sorrow,” Fatima murmured, falling into Scheherazade’s embrace, “like Ibrahim and I did.”

“You do not have the power to make a tornado,” Scheherazade told her.

Fatima had heard many people say this to her in the last thirty years, but her self-imposed torture helped her make peace out of something with no human
rahma
, no mercy. “But we put the boys in its path,” she said. “They were born the day the Korean War ended.
Inshallah
, we thought, they will not fight wars. America is now finished with wars.”

She held up an MVP trophy and from inside pulled out a photo of two redheaded teen boys in University of Michigan uniforms. “They wanted to be Tigers,” Fatima said. “But Ibrahim and I hoped they would be engineers one day even though we barely had bank loans available to send more children to university. Luckily, even though the boys weren’t, to be honest, as good as their sisters in math, they got into college because they could play baseball well. And we did not have to pay anything.”

“So after university, did they play with your Tigers?” Scheherazade asked.

“Laith was told he was not good enough, and Riyad damaged his knee the last year in college,” Fatima went on. “But they were more than good considering they played a game their father didn’t even understand, as much as I tried to get Ibrahim interested in it. They talked about going to Lebanon for the summer after school. But then the Yom Kippur War came, and we did not want them to go there. We begged them to get more degrees so they would not go to Vietnam. They were both barely accepted into the University of Illinois to study more biology,
mashallah
, but we had such a party to celebrate. Ibrahim even barbecued hamburgers, like
Randa had always wanted. We were selfish. We wanted to save them from being Arab and from being American. I gave Laith the key to the house then and told them that on Mama’s soul, as soon as things got better around Deir Zeitoon and they finished their degrees, they could go back home to see the house. They went on a bike trip that April for spring break because I didn’t want them taking a plane to Florida with their friends, like they wished, with all the hijackings back then. When Ibrahim and Ghazi and Elias brought Riyad and Laith back to Detroit, the key was in Laith’s pants pocket. We gave them a Muslim farewell. Everyone walked in their funeral, but I could not leave them in unmarked graves. God forgive me, I made them gravestones of marble.”

“That happens back home sometimes, too,” Scheherazade said, and held her hand.

Fatima kissed the photo of the boys twice and put it back in the trophy.

“I heard the Greek lady saying to Millie that it was irony, that we had literally loved them to death, but Millie never repeated it to me, even though her sons went to Vietnam and came back okay,” Fatima said. “I threw away the clothes I wore to their funeral although they were in perfect condition, for I refused to believe there was anything to come for which I would wear them again. That is why my children do not tell me of Laila’s cancer. Or anything but the weather.”

“Nor to Ibrahim,” Scheherazade said.

“He moved away even more from his girls.” Fatima nodded. “He was shamed in front of their kindness after he had showed them so little. Both of us would have mourned the loss of any of our children just as long. I know that to be true. But the rest of the world saw how Riyad and Laith were favored, and so they pitied us so much, like Millie, like my grown-up daughters, that there was no getting out of the misery. Ibrahim had married me out of duty, but I did not want him to feel obligated to my sorrow when he had so much of his own. I stopped talking of all problems with him, even small matters like weeding the garden. None of my daughters who married after had big weddings as there was no time
when it seemed appropriate for us not to be in mourning, even as tragedies far greater than our own changed the outside world.”

“You can’t compare sadness to sadness,” Scheherazade said.

“At least my boys did not know sadness. Their faces did not remind Ibrahim of his sisters, and so for the first time he enjoyed his children,” Fatima said. “We sent them to camp. They got everything Randa and my other girls had not had. The bomb shelter had passed out of fashion, but they got swings, Boy Scout camp, and permission to date. The rules that applied to the girls didn’t apply to the boys, and yet they were always watching out for their sisters before the girls married—and even after— and helping Millie with the yard work after her husband passed. … Riyad was in love with Millie’s daughter Lisa. They called them high school sweethearts. Until the day of Millie’s funeral, when I had no choice, I did not look at Lisa again, not at the man she married, not at the three children she had with him. God forgive me, never seeing that girl again was the only good thing that came of Millie’s death.”

“But then Amir filled the house again,” Scheherazade said.

“No one ever filled it again. But when the boys had been gone a year, Soraya came with Amir to live with us,” Fatima told her. “Her laughter made Ibrahim freeze—she was the closest in age to the boys and their favorite sister—so she would leave Amir with us for longer and longer periods of time. She hated to see her father hate to see her laugh. Zade and his twin sister were born the next year. The world had new twins, and life went on, except for us.”

Scheherazade caught the mascara-blackened tear as it finally spilled out of Fatima’s right eye. “The first thing I had Mr. Kim write in my funeral instructions was that I be buried next to them,” Fatima said. “My boys were the only ones who asked about the house.”

“The keys have never left Laith’s pants?” Scheherazade said.

“Two years after the funeral, Ibrahim retired,” Fatima said. “He couldn’t stand being at home with nothing to do but watch news about Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance—he was a man who was a big leader in the union Marwan helped start. So Ibrahim said he would go back to Deir
Zeitoon to fix the house. We were sure after all these years it would need many repairs. It was only supposed to be for two weeks. But he got trapped in Deir Zeitoon for three months because that was when the civil war started in Beirut, and the roads to the airport were closed. So he spent his time repairing the house before he put the Mansour family in charge of taking care of it. Deir Zeitoon,
subhan Allah
, was spared the worst of the civil war. He put the key back in Laith’s pants when he returned, like somehow Laith still needed to know where the key was.”

“Lena and Bassam with his dimple must have been children then,” Scheherazade said after a while. “Surely you found light in them being home. God left you one son.”

Fatima, still clutching the Al Kaline baseball, stood up and pulled out a rusty
Adam-12
lunch box. She undid the latch and watched several pictures and folded papers fall at Scheherazade’s feet, pictures of a serious-faced young boy holding up awards and trophies. Scheherazade opened one of the pieces of paper. It was a tattered certificate that Fatima must have folded and unfolded hundreds of time: “Young Scientist of the Year.” Scheherazade opened one certificate after another: “Rocket Scientist of the Future,” “Tomorrow’s Pioneer in Medicine,” and so on.

“My Bassam was born the year John Kennedy became president and a woman in Florida caught a 680-pound sea bass,” Fatima said. “The year Laila got engaged. It was a year of big things and great hope.”

Scheherazade flipped through the photos of the boy genius. “How happy you must have been taking these pictures,” she said.

“I don’t remember.” Fatima shrugged.

“How could you not?” Scheherazade said. “So is this boy operating trips to the moon now or running this Microsoft place everyone talks about so much?”

Fatima reached to twirl her missing hair. “He’s a drunk in Las Vegas,” she said when she couldn’t find a strand to twist.

The light from the hallway filtered into the room as Decimal opened the doorway, clutching the mother-of-pearl Koran and a photo album,
the scent of the lemon soap from her scrubbed hands practically overpowering the cedar chest’s aroma.

Fatima covered her eyes, “Shut the door, girl.” As Decimal did so, Fatima put the Al Kaline baseball back on her lap, letting her new dress cover it.

“I’m sorry I took a while, but I had to go throw up a little first,” Decimal said. She carefully handed Fatima the mother-of-pearl Koran and a photo album. “Then I washed my hands and stuff doubly good, Mrs. Abdullah, before I touched anything. I saw this photo album on your dresser, but I didn’t look at anything in the underwear drawer. I thought you might be able to show me a picture of Gran in Detroit.”

Fatima willed herself not to look at Scheherazade. “I’m divorced, so stop calling me Mrs. Abdullah,” Fatima said to Decimal. “You can call me Tayta, but not too often.”

“Okay,” Decimal agreed.

Fatima motioned for the girl to sit next to her on the cedar chest and took the album from her, careful not to dislodge the pouch from her lap. Fatima turned to a picture of three little girls and two boys dressed in Arabic folkloric clothes. “Hala is from the time when my children dreamed of prescribing drugs, not taking them. That’s Hala—your Gran, as you say— and her sister Nadia outside the mosque on Joy Road. The girl with the bowed head and shiny shoes is Miriam. These two here are my boys, Laith and Riyad. Detroit built the mosque the year after Nadia was born, and they even brought a sheikh from Lebanon. We prayed there once a year.”

“How come you only went once a year? I thought you were supposed to pray five times a day,” Decimal asked. Fatima ignored Scheherazade’s laughter from the other side.

“Do you pray five times a day?” Fatima inquired.

“I’m only one-fourth Muslim,” Decimal said. “I’m 50 percent Christian and 25 percent Taoist. My mom says I can pick whatever one I want or become a Hindu because they don’t eat beef, which I don’t digest so well. All I know is I can’t be all of them ’cause I’d be so busy praying, I
wouldn’t have time to do anything else—five times a day and stuff for the Muslims, trekking to church every Sunday and all the saint holidays for Christians, and going back to China to my ancestors’ shrine every time I did something bad or needed a little luck and stuff.”

After listening to yet another story with too many words, Fatima decided it would be best to cut the girl off and get right to her schooling. She motioned to the girl to open the Koran to the first page.

“
Bismillah al Rahman al Rahem
,” Fatima began. “In the name of God the most merciful.”

FROM UNDER THE
fig tree, Scheherazade saw Fatima turn her head to the window for the second time. When she did not see Scheherazade, her face softened, almost as if she were relieved to have no choice but to look at the girl.

Scheherazade left, flying over a desert pitted with cactus and big petrol caravans and even bigger signs with men in cowboy hats and women in nearly nothing at all until suddenly a city rose out of the vast desert. It had more blinking lights than there seemed to be stars in the universe and colorful machines that clanged more than a troupe of court jesters dancing in their wooden shoes. There was no sun or moon to see from inside these palaces and monuments once glimpsed in Paris, Venice, and Luxor but never in such perfect condition. She had been born more than a thousand years after Ramses II ruled the real Luxor, and she was happy to see this new one before it, too, disappeared into history, as had so many wonders in her lifetime.

She floated in and out of green velvet tables with bright red chips, moving statues, and musical fountains. Finally, she reached a spot with little flashy adornment—aside from a long table for drinking and one of those televisions with Fatima’s ESPN playing. Next to the cash register at the drinking circle, Scheherazade saw a photo she easily recognized: Fatima in her wedding dress. At the long table in front of the photo, Bassam let out another burp as he took a gulp from his glass.

Before sitting down next to Bassam, Scheherazade opened her gilded silver compact and checked her kohl in the mirror. In her rear view, she observed that even though he barely smiled, there was no mistaking the beauty of Bassam’s dimple.