Throwing Sparks (40 page)

The boys sat together like two cats eyeing their prey, slowly following my movements and exchanging sly little glances with one another. One of them would get my attention and the other would look over my appearance. The older boy returned and saved me from this monitoring. He carried a tray with coffee and a plate of dates, intoning hospitable words of welcome.

He was meticulous in his presentation of the coffee, as if he were practised in the art of hospitality. He ignored his little brother’s antics and contrived to come up with a suitable topic for adult conversation.

‘The rains are very late this year.’

‘When was the last time it rained in Jeddah?’ I asked. ‘The rain has gone the way of better days, son.’

My remark flustered him. He said nothing and I continued to be the object of attention in the room. I held their gaze in an attempt to stare them down and slow their overactive imaginations. I looked at them thinking these were the new branches that had sprouted from our common roots. I wondered whether I was sharp enough to tell which of them would be the ill-starred one.

Tariq seemed to me the most likely candidate to replay that story.

I erased the images taking shape in my mind and set them aside as one might put away unsharpened pencils.

Here then were people who were part of my family even though they did not know me nor I them. These were the people whom I was running away from and whose veins pulsed with the same blood as mine, although they did not know it. Did that insolent little wretch, Tariq, know that his impudence was my legacy?

Their eyes on me like wayward flies began to wear me out. When the silence had gone on long enough, I asked the eldest boy what his name was.

‘Fadel Ibrahim Fadel, uncle.’

He had used the term ‘uncle’ deferentially, but I was sorely tempted to confirm my status as his uncle. I wanted to tell him that I truly was his father’s brother, and the son of Fadel the elder who had sown his seed in two different wombs.

‘Isn’t your father at home?’

‘Yes, yes, he’s here,’ replied the boy quickly. ‘He’s just finishing his ablutions. He’ll be here any minute now.’

As though prompted, Ibrahim poked his head around the door just then, water still dripping from his face and down his thick beard.

Seeing me, he shouted with astonishment, ‘Tariq!’

Little Tariq jumped up, thinking that his father meant him. Ibrahim rushed in and flung his arms around me, squeezing me so tightly that I lost my breath. I was unable to contain myself any longer, and the tears streamed down my face. I sobbed as Ibrahim held me close. He wiped my tears and I dried his.

He waved at me grandly to the boys and said, ‘This is your Uncle Tariq – my only, my dearest and most beloved brother!’

As if he felt that the introduction was inadequate, he cried out, ‘Kiss his hands! And his feet too!’ Fadel bent down to kiss my hand and I picked him up and showered him with kisses of my own.

‘This is my eldest, Fadel,’ Ibrahim said.

Then Aghyad came forward and accepted my embrace without reticence. ‘And this is Aghyad, the son of Mariam, our sister. He’s been wanting to meet you for a long time.’

That left the devilish little Tariq who, yet again, did things in his own time. At his father’s insistence, he finally followed Aghyad’s example.

‘This is Tariq. In some ways he’s like our father, but in others he’s just like you.’

Ibrahim kept his arm around my shoulder and called out, ‘Mariam! Come over here, Mariam!’

I could not bear the flood of emotion any longer. Suddenly the branches of the tree had sprouted new shoots – nephews from both a brother and a sister – and here I was having lived my entire life like a severed limb, with nothing to sustain me but my dry and withered feelings.

What would I say to this Mariam now: I am your wayward brother who broke with his family? How was I going to justify my disappearance from before the day she was born?

A little girl, who could not have been more than ten years old, stepped into the room hesitantly and hurried shyly towards me.

‘Say hello to your uncle. This is Mariam, the last of my bunch. She looks just like our sister.’

She greeted me, speaking with a pronounced lisp. Her father’s eyes glowed with love as she spoke. He pulled me down affectionately to sit by him.

‘When all of you left the neighbourhood, I named my children after you – Tariq for you, Fadel for our father and Mariam for our sister – so that I could still feel your presence even though you were all gone.’

After a while, Ibrahim asked, ‘Where’s Aunt Khayriyyah? Why didn’t you bring her with you?’

‘She’s fine. I wasn’t planning on this visit, otherwise I would have brought her along.’ It was a stupid thing to say but it silenced Ibrahim.

So my aunt had not returned to her house in the neighbourhood or gone to her other nephew, Ibrahim. The worm was still wriggling around somewhere on the face of this earth. I thought I should cut short my visit as quickly as possible before I got mired in this sludge of emotions that already had me out of my depth. Before I could say anything, however, Aghyad was tugging at my sleeve.

‘Are you my mother’s brother?’ he asked. I nodded but had no desire to embrace him. ‘My mother never told me much about you,’ he added.

‘That’s because she hasn’t seen me yet. She doesn’t know anything about me.’

‘But you’re her brother,’ said the child, not quite understanding. ‘How could she not know anything about you?’

‘Well, it happens.’

‘Have you been away ever since you were born?’

His probing and unsettling questions silenced me.

They stirred up bitter feelings, reminding me that I was nothing but a transient, a stranger, a wanderer – and that I was lost. The journey had been so long, yet I still had not reached safe harbour. I had dropped anchor in many ports but had only seen land from a distance. When the journey is long, our memory is like a desert island; we no longer recall the people who washed ashore and could not but endure, or die.

‘Please tell me,’ Aghyad demanded, poking at me.

Would I ever be rid of the pest? For every question I answered, he nailed me with another as if he were trying to establish that I was the only crooked board in the lot. I looked at him closely: the boy was very handsome and he was determined to stick to me. I was not accustomed to being around kids, but I tried to be friendly and placed my hand on his shoulder. He jumped right into my lap and hugged me. The boy should have been named Arghad rather than Aghyad – cuddly rather than delicate.

The flow of questions was unstoppable now.

‘Did you just get back from your trip?’

‘Sort of.’

‘They said grandmother was away with you. I want to see her. Can I see her now?’

The boy’s questions were aggravating me. ‘Your grandmother? What grandmother is that?’ I asked him.

Ibrahim intervened. ‘He means Aunt Khayriyyah. He had been complaining to his mother that he doesn’t have any family, so she told him all about everyone in her family and in his father’s family. He knows most of them by name now and studies them as if they were one of his school subjects. If there’s someone he doesn’t know much about because they haven’t been around, he fills in the gaps with his imagination.’

Aghyad started tugging at my sleeve again.

‘Uncle, can I have a picture of you?’

He had a family photo album which he showed me now. Every picture was identified by type of relationship and there were a few words about his impressions of the person. Aunt Khayriyyah and I were on two facing pages. In the space left blank for our photos were pictures of two cartoon characters. Under them, he had written ‘Don’t know him’ and ‘Don’t know her’.

I flipped through his album and found his mother’s page. But instead of a photo of her, there was a picture of the Lebanese pop star, Haifa Wehbeh. Underneath the photo he had written: ‘Heart-throb’.

‘You little devil, is this your mother?’ I exclaimed with a laugh to take the sting out of my words.

‘No, but it wouldn’t do to have a real picture of my mother in here.’

Everyone sensed that Aghyad was monopolising the conversation. Tariq’s response was to giggle at whatever his cousin said or did. Desperate for the flood of questions to end, I turned to Ibrahim.

‘Honestly, I’d like to meet our sister, Mariam. Where is she?’

‘She lives with her mother and sometimes comes with Aghyad to visit us. And I take him to see his father, sometimes.’

‘Are they divorced?’

‘It’s a long story. I came to see you some years ago, asking for your help with her situation. But you weren’t concerned at the time.’

I tied myself up in knots offering an apology. The excuses were flimsy and unconvincing.

‘What’s done is done,’ Ibrahim said, cutting me off. ‘It’s over and done with. She is now working and supporting herself, as well as her mother and her son.’

‘Does she need any help? I could—’ I started to say.

I pulled out my chequebook. Ibrahim placed his hand on mine as he had many years ago when he had uttered the words that had stuck with me since: ‘Foul money has a foul smell.’

This time, he said, ‘I don’t think so. Her work pays well.’

‘And what does she do?’

‘She manages a women’s clothing company. She apparently also got some money from her husband before he went into the hospital. If you saw the state he’s in you’d feel sorry for him.’

‘Is it serious?’

The evening call to prayer rang out, a harmony of cascading chants from nearby mosques, and it interrupted our conversation. Ibrahim turned to the boys.

‘Come on, get ready for prayers,’ he instructed.

They said their ablutions were done and that they were ready to go.

‘Have you done yours or do you need to do them?’ Ibrahim asked, turning to me.

‘No, no, I’ve done them.’

My tongue raced ahead of me and even though I said I had done them, the last time I had completed any ablutions was way back in the day of the Qur’an study groups. Ever since I had entered the Palace, I had been in a state of ritual impurity.

Ibrahim told the boys to get going. Fadel and Aghyad jumped to it, but Tariq dawdled again.

‘Tell me about Aghyad’s father. Does he need treatment abroad? ’ I asked Ibrahim. ‘I can arrange for his travel.’

‘No, no, his disease isn’t serious like that,’ Ibrahim chuckled, patting my knee. ‘He’s perfectly healthy. It’s just that there were some really bad complications and his case had to go to the governing council. Things will turn out fine, God willing.’

I did not understand how his treatment could be linked to the governing council and I said so. ‘What’s his sickness got to do with the
diwan
? If he needs treatment abroad, I am more than willing to help.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you the whole story later.’ He pulled Mariam off his lap and added, ‘We’ll finish the conversation when we come back from the mosque.’

‘We still have a few minutes – tell me the story.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m the imam. I can’t be late.’

We stepped out together. He held on to my hand joyfully, sensing maybe that what I wanted was to bolt and disappear into the long, narrow alleyways.

‘Don’t worry, Tariq. Prayer will ease your mind.’

He must have known that I was impure; he just did not want to embarrass me when I told him I had already performed my ablutions. He gripped my hand firmly as if he were afraid I might slip from his grasp and vanish again.

We entered the alley leading up to the entrance of the mosque and caught up with Aghyad, who took hold of Ibrahim’s other hand.

‘We’ll go and visit your father today. And we’ll take Uncle Tariq with us, all right?’

Ibrahim’s strides lengthened and he was literally pulling me along now. We reached the gate and many of the old neighbourhood folk flocked towards us, showering me with greetings and expressing their pleasure at seeing me after such a long absence.

‘By God it’s been a long time, Tariq,’ exclaimed one of my neighbours from the past. We embraced as he added, ‘Where have you been all these years? Is this your son?’ He bent down to kiss Aghyad.

‘No, this is Aghyad, the son of Waleed Khanbashi,’ Ibrahim replied on my behalf.

For a second, I thought I had misheard.

It was as if I had been struck by lightning and was rent asunder, splintering and scattering like shrapnel, swallowed up by the earth, hurtling into the chasm, down, down and further down until finally, I hit rock bottom, screaming silently.

It was the same Waleed Khanbashi who had driven us to the receding beaches and charged us half a riyal to use a tatty old towel; the same Waleed who had married Issa’s maternal aunt and suckling sister, Salwa, only to cheat on her by marrying …

My frown turned to horror as I looked at the boy, my nephew.

When a building collapses, the roof tiles and the brickwork do not ask who betrayed whom. As soon as the soul rises and departs the body, the dead begin to decompose, and the flesh sets to rotting. The earth opened up and I fell head first, seized with terror.