In the Language of Miracles (22 page)

ENGLISH
: Rest in peace.

ARABIC
: Death is rest.

T
he alarm clock's buzz interrupted Nagla's dream, and she flung her arm out from under the covers, slapping the snooze button and killing the noise. Of all mornings, today was one when a dream could be of major significance, a message with the potential to foretell the future or, at the very least, shed light on the present. She closed her eyes again, tried to recall her vision: did it involve a green field? Was Hosaam truly there? She tried to focus, hoping she might recall the elusive prophecy she was certain had been bestowed on her during the night.

Beside her, Samir turned, and she knew he, too, was awake. She remained motionless, even after she felt him sit up in bed.

“Why'd you set the alarm clock so early? It's not even six in the morning,” he asked.

“I'm going to the cemetery. I didn't want to oversleep.”

She had hardly had any sleep all night, only fits of slumber interrupted by sudden jerks, as if someone were standing by her bedside specifically to yank her out of her dreams whenever she started to doze off. She must finally have fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion, which might have explained that dream. Her mother always claimed that exhaustion brought people as close to the transcendent as possible.

“How long will you stay?” Samir asked. She knew what he really wanted to say: that she needed to be back in time for them to go to the memorial service together; that she needed to confirm to him that she was, indeed, going to the service; that she had not meant it when she claimed she would not accompany him there.

She slid out of bed and walked into the bathroom, running the water in the sink and starting to brush her teeth. He had left home after their scuffle over the
shoreik
the previous morning and had not come back till late in the evening. “I will send you packing,” he had told her. She knew he remembered his words as well as she did. They had not spoken since then.

She brushed vigorously, scrubbed her teeth and gums, spat out blood.

“Would you do it, Samir?” she asked. She could sense him standing behind her.

“Do what?”

“Send me packing?” She placed the toothbrush in its holder, splashed her face with water, and saw him, in the mirror, stepping out of the bathroom and leaving her alone.

She ran the water in the shower, waited for it to warm up before stepping in. Letting the hot water knead her back, she tried, again, to remember that dream. Dream interpretation was, according to Ehsan, a science that few could boast of understanding but that existed, as evidenced by the Qur'an. The prophet Yousef, peace be upon his soul, had been its most famous master, predicting both a crucifixion and a royal pardon out of the bird- and wine-dotted dreams of two prison inmates. Nagla was certain that the prophet had taken the secrets of dream interpretation with him to the grave, yet she could not help but wonder whether dreams still revealed prophecies, even if the knowledge to interpret them was no longer granted to humans.

Whatever Nagla knew of dream interpretation came to her secondhand from her mother: dreaming of grilled fish was bad, but dreaming of
live fish predicted good fortune, especially if the fish sparkled in silvery hues. Having a child was good if the child was a girl, bad if it was a boy, since girls were known to bestow fortune on their parents, a compensation for the financial burden daughters inevitably became. Dreaming of the dead had layers of interpretation: seeing a dead person walk off with a live one foretold sickness or death for the latter; receiving something from a dead person was good, but having him or her take something away from a live one was a prelude to impending grief. Seeing the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon his soul, in a dream equaled seeing him in real life and was a privilege reserved for the righteous (Nagla had, of course, never dreamed of the Prophet). A vision of the dead could tell of their status in the afterlife: seeing the deceased in his or her youth, full of health or in seeming happiness, indicated that the person's sins had been forgiven, that he or she had safely made it through life and was now in peace and under the good grace of the All-Merciful. Nagla, failing to remember the exact dream she had, started making up her own: one of Hosaam, in white robes (a sign of purity and virtue), giving her a hug and a pat on the back, whispering something comforting in her ear—though she could not imagine what that whisper might entail.

Stepping out of the bathroom after her shower, she saw Samir sitting on the bed, arms crossed. She felt him watch her as she put on her jeans and shirt and started brushing her hair.

“You cannot blame me for words spoken in anger.”

She did not reply.

“It's quite insulting, you know. Acting like you don't know me after all these years. Like you truly believe I could do anything to hurt you.”

She combed her hair, paying no attention to the slight drizzle she caused as droplets of water fell to the carpet. Once she had untangled her hair, she wrapped it up in a towel and threw it over her shoulder. She tried not to think of her hair color, its blackness glistening with moisture.

“I need coffee,” she said, walking out of the bedroom.

 • • • 

In the kitchen, she waited for the coffee to brew. Outside, daylight had not yet broken, and she could see a light burning in Cynthia's kitchen. She kept her eyes on the coffee machine, tried to avoid looking at the house next door.

If she were to follow the path of honesty that had, only yesterday, seemed like the only possible one, if she were to cling to an iota of self-respect, then she should stand her ground, insist on not going to the memorial service, and point out to her husband the cruelty of his language, even if it was, as he was claiming, the result of anger. She tried to imagine how such a conversation could progress and grimaced. The coffee machine released the last few droplets of hot liquid and steam, and Nagla grabbed her mug and walked up to the window. Cynthia was in her kitchen. Nagla could see her shadow moving around, probably making her own coffee. Cream, no sugar, accompanied by one slice of toast and a dab of strawberry jam.

Upstairs the water ran again, and she knew Samir had stepped into the shower. She should, of course, tell him what she truly thought—but what kind of Pandora's box would such a confrontation open? What else would need to be discussed? Could a two-decades-old marriage be zipped open, its contents spilled to be inspected and probed without, in the process, killing those involved in it? Where would she even start? She shuddered to think of what would be said.

Her mother would advise her not to bring ruin on herself—
ma tekhrebish ala nafsek,
she could almost hear her say. Nagla knew that such a confrontation with her husband had a very high risk of escalating to something beyond her control. For a split second another one of the questions that had haunted her for the previous days tried to squeeze itself into her brain: So what? But she dismissed it. She was sick of questions. Instead, she imagined what her mother would say to calm
her down, if she were to speak to her: Samir had said worse before. He didn't truly mean it anyway. He was under so much pressure. He was only trying to do what he thought was best for his wife and kids.
You are his wife; you are obliged to stand by him. To support him. This is your duty.

We lie to protect our families,
Ehsan had told her.

We lie to protect ourselves,
Nagla revised her mother's statement.

We lie because the truth is too much trouble.

Nagla contemplated this last thought. Perhaps. But wanting to avoid trouble was not as cowardly as it seemed. In fact, she sensed wisdom in it, a rising above the trivial. An embrace of peace. A surrender to tranquillity.

Her mother would agree. Cynthia wouldn't. Nagla wasn't sure what Ameena would think, but, whatever her opinion on that matter was, she would probably back it up with a quote from the Qur'an.

Softly, Nagla stepped out onto the deck, her coffee mug in hand. She sat in her usual chair, her back to the Bradstreets' house, and lit a cigarette. She still loved the early morning hours, still enjoyed sitting on her deck, even though the idea of finding joy in such close proximity to the site of unthinkable tragedy seemed blasphemous.

But she didn't want to think anymore.

She sipped her coffee, took one deep draw from her cigarette, and watched the trees that had started to redraw their shapes amid the dissipating darkness. She wanted this weekend to pass. She didn't want to hang on to people's words and search for meanings behind them, not Ameena's, not her mother's (the truthful ones or the false), and certainly not Samir's. The assumption that every word had layers of meaning was, she decided, exhausting beyond human capacity. Dream interpretation made sense because it validated the very existence of dreams, marking them as the coded messages they had to be, whether they came from the subconscious (according to Freud—Nagla still remembered
something
from her college years) or from God (according to Ehsan). Dreams were simply more manageable than words.

Behind her, she imagined that Cynthia was holding her own coffee cup with both hands, letting its hot surface warm her fingers as she waited for daylight to come.

 • • • 

Back in her room, Nagla found Samir already fully dressed, pacing the floor. She walked into the bathroom and started drying her hair.

“How long do you plan to stay at the cemetery?” Samir asked again. “We don't want to be late to the service.”

She wrapped one long strand of hair around the hot-air brush, held it in place until she could feel her scalp sting under the heat. Behind her, her husband stood by the door to the bedroom. She watched his reflection in the mirror.

“I don't want to have to go there without you, Nagla.”

She turned the hair dryer off, listened. “What?”

“I said I don't want to have to go without you.” She listened again, closing her eyes, trying to detect a tone she could have sworn had seeped into his voice, a layer of quasi-warmth, a pleading, perhaps, or a resignation barely detectable. Then again, she might have imagined things.

“Don't worry,” she finally said, turning the hair dryer back on. “I'll be back in time.”

 • • • 

Ehsan carried the
shoreik;
Nagla carried the cleaning supplies. They walked, Nagla leading, along the winding path bordering the cemetery until they reached Hosaam's grave. Ehsan threw herself on the wooden bench at the edge of the path, wiped her sweat as Nagla knelt by the grave, putting on latex gloves, pulling spray cans and sponges out of the shopping bag.

Nagla had expected to find the graffiti. It had first appeared a few months earlier, after they finally had the gravestone installed, and ever since, she kept the cleaning supplies in the trunk of her car. She would clean, and the graffiti would eventually reappear, redrawn with renewed creativity. This time they had done an impressive job.
Have fun in Hell
was sprayed in red and neon yellow, the two
l
's shaped like spikes spitting flames.

“Here, let me help you.” Ehsan started to get down on her knees next to her daughter.

“No, Mama, please, don't.” Nagla pushed her mother back up. “I can handle this. Besides, I don't have gloves for you. This stuff is harsh,” she said, nodding toward the cleaning supplies.

“But I have to do something!”

“Just read him some Qur'an, will you? Aloud?”

She sprayed and scrubbed meticulously while her mother's voice resonated behind her, starting with a couple of prayers for the dead and the living, then settling into a low, melodic recitation, her voice now smooth and silky, now cracking with emotion that Nagla tried to tune out. Again she tried to remember her dream. What had she seen? A meadow? Not similar to the park, but sunny and vast with patches of daffodils. She was probably making this up. She sighed, scrubbed the stone harder, dabbed at the rainbow-colored solution dripping around her son's name.

Behind her a car door slammed shut. A young woman in jeans and a T-shirt walked over to a grave a few spots away. There, she lay down, outstretched, her face buried in her arms. The grave was fresh—no headstone yet, the patch of ground barely sprouting grass.

Nagla, preoccupied in watching the visitor—no one ever came here this early in the morning—did not notice her mother's hurried voice as she wrapped up her Qur'an recitation, the sudden silence. By the time Nagla jumped up, tearing the gloves off her hands, her mother had already reached the woman.

“Mama!” Nagla hissed, hurrying after her mother. Ehsan ignored her, leaning down closer to the woman and pointing into the opened container filled with
shoreik
as she pushed it toward the young woman, who, still lying on her stomach, had lifted herself half up and was looking at Ehsan with moist eyes.

“I'm so sorry,” Nagla said to the young woman, pulling her mother by the arm.

“Feih eih?”
Ehsan said. “I'm just offering her some
shoreik
!”

“You can't do that here, Mama!”

“That's okay,” the woman said, getting up.

“Da fetir el-rahmah!”
Ehsan said.

“What is she saying?” the woman asked Nagla.

“She is saying this is the bread of . . . no . . .” Nagla looked for the words. More than two decades in the United States and the words still stumbled on her tongue. And her mother called her American. “Pastries, yes. She says these are the Pastries of Mercy. We bake them in Egypt for the dead. To pray for mercy for the dead.”

“And the alive,” Ehsan added in English, her accent heavy, “the” sounding like “zee.”

The woman looked down at the pastries, sniffed. “That sounds good. May I have one?” Ehsan, beaming and giving Nagla an I-told-you-so look, pushed the container closer to the woman, who pulled a pastry out, bit into it. Instantly her eyes watered, and Nagla wondered whether there was an ingredient in the
shoreik
that made people react that way, a serum of nostalgia.