The Wanting (14 page)

“That’s crazy,” I said to him.

“As Allah wills,” he nodded. “But maybe being crazy is not such a bad thing.”

“Still, I can’t take your book,” I said.

“Oh, I can’t read anymore anyway. These eyes—they are already peeking into the other world.”

My mother called us to the table. I slipped
A Book of Tales
between my schoolbooks, took Uncle Ahmad’s hand, and led him into the house.

My father joined us from the bedroom where he had been napping, went to the sink to wash, sat down, readied himself, and nodded at Uncle Ahmad without really welcoming him. My sisters brought out the meal, and then my mother also sat down. In our house, we all ate together. This was one of the mysteries of my father. He had once been a Communist.

“In the Name of Allah,” said my father, and we all repeated, “In the Name of Allah.” It was just about the only prayer you would ever hear from his lips. Why he prayed before eating when he never did salah even once a day, let alone five times, or fast on Ramadan or ever set foot in a mosque is something only he could explain but never did. I didn’t pray either then, not salah and not at meals. As he uttered the prayer, my lips moved, but no sound
emerged. I looked over at Uncle Ahmad. He was like a Sufi, dizzy with God.

My father reached for the bread and only because of the glaring eyes of my mother handed the first piece to Uncle Ahmad before putting the rest directly into his own mouth. Then the ordeal of the chewing began. It was a simple meal—lentils, kibbe, squash, yogurt—but the noise of my father chewing, and the noise of my sisters, and the noise, yes, even of Uncle Ahmad chewing filled me with a disgust that had no name. It was worse than sitting down with goats, who at least do not talk with their mouths full. I fought the urge to run from the table; I closed my eyes and sang a song in my head, anything to drown out their eating.

“So,” my father said between bites, his mouth dripping kibbe drenched in yogurt, “Ahmad, are you well?”

“Thanks be to God.”

“You look well,” he said.

“Eat more,” my mother said, pushing the dishes toward him.

“Oh no, thank you, may Allah’s grace be upon you,” Uncle Ahmad replied.

“You don’t like it?” my mother asked.

“It’s delicious,” he said. “Wonderful!”

“Then eat.”

So Uncle Ahmad scooped a little more into his bread, but he was only nibbling. Almost nothing went down his throat.

“You look well!” my father repeated.

After Uncle Ahmad was gone, my mother said, “He’s so thin.”

My father picked his teeth with a match. “He’s going to die soon, anyone can see that.”

“Poor man.”

“Why? He’s had a decent life.”

“What kind of life?” my mother cried. “No wife, no children. No money, no land. What has he got? A bunch of old stories? He never even wrote any of them down. Who will remember him when he’s gone?”

My father let out some gas. “The lentils,” he said. “Too much salt.” And then he went out by way of the courtyard, calling over
his shoulder, “Amir, when you come to work after school today, try for once to be on time.”

In my corner of the room, I took
A Book of Tales
from its hiding place between algebra and history and let its moldy pages fill the space around me with a delicious gloom—yes, that is what I called it, because that was how it felt: a gloom that gives pleasure, a fog of dark magic that transforms toadstools into pretty flowers, a golden sarcophagus holding curses and blessings. I turned one page over and then the next, catching a bit of story here, a bit of story there:
Once there was a merchant with three daughters … a ghouleh hid under the bridge … and he said, By Allah, whose bowl is this?

“Amir! What’s the matter with you?” It was my mother standing over me. “You have to go back to school!” She tapped her watch angrily. “You’re late!”

A Book of Tales
became my Qur’an, and in its pages I began to sense what happiness was. As always, I went to my father’s shop every day after school for another evening of changing oil and repairing fuel pumps. But now my father’s mechanics, Ghassan, whom everyone called George, and Ibrahim Farsoun, nodded happily when I came in. I’d been telling them stories from
A Book of Tales
—at least mostly from
A Book of Tales
because I found myself making half of it up out of my head. I would simply watch the words come out of my mouth, and if I got stuck, I would paste some other story I’d read onto the one I was telling, changing the hero’s name or inventing some new country; I might turn a magic stove into a magic pen or a talking tree into a talking donkey, but it never seemed to matter. George and Ibrahim Farsoun laughed or grew angry, shook their heads in despair or clucked their tongues in appreciation at the cleverness of my maidens and princes, my beggars and enchanted birds. Their hands were black with sludge, their faces smeared with oil, but their eyes were fixed upon the landscapes I drew with my tongue. They never asked for a story,
of course. But when they turned down the radio, they were letting me know it was time to begin.

That evening, I decided to tell them the story of “The Prince Who Married His Mother.” It was a long one, and I remembered only a little of it, but so what? It was a story worth telling! Ibrahim Farsoun turned down the music, and the two of them fell back into the lazy rhythm of their work, waiting for me to start.

“Oh beloveds,”
I sang,
“long ago, in a remote time, in the city of Bagdad, there lived a prince so handsome no woman could look upon him without swooning and falling desperately in love …”

“Ah, yes …,” whispered George.

“But he was proud, was our prince, and not one of the women of his kingdom pleased him. Then, one evening, walking upon the rooftop of his palace, he spied across the courtyards a maiden who glistened beneath her veils like the moon itself—”

“Amir, can you come into the office?”

I looked up. My father stood in the doorway with his arms folded. George and Ibrahim Farsoun continued working as if nothing had happened.

I followed my father into the little alcove he called an office, nothing but a chair, an old table, a cash register, and an old television that was always on without the sound.

“You have to stop this now,” he said.

“Why?”

“It bothers the men. They can’t do their work.”

“No, it doesn’t. It makes them happy.”

“And you. You do half the work you’re supposed to. Since you started with this business, all you do is sit around and tell stories. How can you work and tell stories at the same time? It can’t be done.”

“I do my work.”

“Amir, I’m not telling you again. No more stories. Do you want to end up like that Ahmad of yours, begging from house to house? A man of no respect? A man of no qualities?”

“
I
respect him.”

“You don’t know what to respect. Sometimes I think you have no brains at all. You’re twelve years old—why can’t you be more like Fadi? Look at him. A success in business, a good friend, a blessing to everyone. What are you, Amir? You can’t even fix a carburetor.”

“I can fix a carburetor.”

“Then go out there and fix one! Mr. Ephron’s Opel has been waiting for two days!”

“I’m working on the Opel,” I muttered.

“Speak up! Talk like a man! Why do you always mumble?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

He shook his head in despair. “What am I raising? A little girl?” And with that he waved me away.

When I came back, George and Ibrahim Farsoun didn’t look up. I went over to the Opel, Mr. Ephron’s Opel. Its hood was gaping open like the mouth of a baby bird. I stared into that mouth of an engine, with its tongue of steel and rubber hose. It was waiting for me to feed it. But then something came up my own throat, something bitter that I tried with all my might to keep down but couldn’t. It wasn’t vomit. It was a scream.

Dear You,

After I got back from Rabbi Keren’s, and Pop still wasn’t home, I found myself walking around the house from room to room, like I was buying the place or something. Without Pop in it, the house was so empty, and I had this strong desire to just memorize everything about it, probably because of what happened at Rabbi’s tonight and how I agreed to everything and said yes and how—well, I’ll have to tell you about that later.

Believe me, our house was NOT a pretty sight. First of all, the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator. There was no milk, no eggs, just an open thing of kefir and a couple of apples. There were a
few other things—stuff that had been there for a long time—some pickles, for instance, some feta, mustard, a crusted-over can of tahini. I was hungry, but God knows I wasn’t going to eat any of that. I grabbed an open bag of Bamba and stood in the kitchen listening to myself munching, noticing how messy everything was, dishes in the sink, all kinds of pots piled up, garbage not taken out, cups of cold tea, and yet there was nothing there you could say belonged to a family. Nothing to say we lived here. Only that some slobs had eaten here. There was a basket hanging from a hook in the ceiling with onions in it, only the onions were not even there—just a few dried-up skins lying on the bottom of the basket. They reminded me of the ash that’s left after someone is cremated. The floor, I don’t even want to mention. It sort of stuck to my sandals, squeenchy squeenchy squeenchy. I can’t remember the last time it got washed. OK, enough with the kitchen. So I strolled past the dining table, which was covered head to toe with magazines, files, mail, binders, blueprints, napkins, books, and wine bottles. Jackets were piled up on the backs of the chairs till they looked like humpback whales. I turned on the TV for a minute, which is something I’m never allowed to do that late at night, so that’s why I did. Guess what again? Nothing on. It didn’t matter. I had no intention of watching TV. Anyway it was making too much noise, and I was trying to listen, because as usual everything was talking to me, but actually it was almost impossible to hear. So many dirty clothes piled everywhere it was like in the Negev where you find the ruins of twenty civilizations all right on top of each other—you could excavate our lives, week by week. But I didn’t feel like cleaning anything up. You’d have to have a tractor for that.

Just at that moment, I realized I had to go into Pop’s room, I don’t know why.

Pop’s room basically has just one piece of furniture, his bed. But that doesn’t matter because you can’t take one step in there. All you can do is jump from the door to the bed, or else you’d have to slosh through the clothes and debris on the floor. Not to mention the sheets are pulled away from the corners of the bed, so you get a nice view of his mattress. Three or four—no, wait—six—water
glasses are squeezed onto the tiny reading table attached to his headboard. Every single one of those glasses still has water in it. I was kind of shocked at how many pill bottles there were, and mostly not the same kind of pill. For pain, I guess. There were a lot of books on the bed, all opened with their spines up, spread out on the white sheets, whining because they felt abandoned. From a distance I bet you would think they were birds flying through the clouds. Pop has a few pictures on his wall, though—the big wall on the right side of the bed, but it’s so dark you can barely see them. I don’t know why, but I felt l would like to look at them, so I squeezed myself into the space between the wall and Pop’s bed. So here are the photographs: A lot of me. Of me and him. Of me and my school. Of him and his friends. Of Babushka. Of Dyedushka, whom I never met. Of my aunt Katya, whom I also never met. Of a bunch of other people I haven’t the slightest idea of who they are. And there, in the corner, very small, stuck between lots of bigger photos is my mother. Well, no. Actually it’s just an empty space, because my father took it down a million years ago and put it in my room. But I took it out of my room and gave it back to him. I said, I don’t want her picture in my room, and he said, Well, I’ll keep it for you then, and I said, It’s not mine, it’s yours, and he said, I’ll keep it for you anyway, but as you can see, he never put it back up. Maybe he tossed it, after all. So there’s this empty place on the wall, just a picture hook. Isn’t it weird he only had that one picture of her? Like, where are their wedding pictures? How about at the beach? Hiking? Honeymoon? I looked for a long time into this little space where the picture wasn’t. It was silent. In fact, I could actually hear my own heart beating. But you can’t look at an empty space forever. I fell back onto Pop’s bed. Don’t tell him, but it smelled. On top of that, I landed on one of his upside-down books, and it hurt. I got mad and I shoved them all onto the floor. There was so much crap on the floor they barely made a sound. I lay back down, and my head sank into Pop’s pillow, I
love
his pillow, it’s so soft, not like mine. Now I could smell his hair. I like the stuff he uses. Honestly, I think I could smell Daphne, too, because she has a very peculiar scent, I don’t know what it is. That sort
of wacked me out. But really, it didn’t upset me. Actually, I like the idea. But the wild part is, I haven’t a clue when she could have been in that bedroom, because she never was in there when I was home, that’s for sure. Well, except for the time we brought him home from the hospital, but she slept on the floor. Do you think they come here when I’m at school?
Yaalah!
Anyway, I was lying here in his bed, and I spread out my arms, like an angel, all of my four sets of wings, my four sets of feet, too, like that drawing by Leonardo da Vinci that’s so famous, and my four faces, too, so I could see in every direction, even down through the bed. I wanted more than anything to hear my pop’s voice, to know where he was, what he was doing, but of course I had to settle for what the bed was telling me, which wasn’t much except for the Daphne business, which I guess is a lot. One thing, though, the pillowcase was stained with whatever the stuff is he puts on his cuts and scars, and there were even some bloodstains. You’d think I’d be grossed out and all, but I just lay there, trying to hear, trying to hear. One thing was really nice—looking straight up, the ceiling was very clean, very flat, very perfect. It was, I don’t know how to express it, filled with echoes. Hello, hello, hello … So I turned on my side, and guess what? There was something hard underneath my head. I slipped my hand under the pillow. It was a metal picture frame. It had glass on it. It was a photo for sure. I know, I know, I should have taken it out and looked at it. But then, I don’t know why, I just couldn’t. Maybe it was the photo of my mother, but maybe it was Daphne. I don’t know. I just felt I better not. There are some things you really shouldn’t touch.