The Bamboo Stalk (21 page)

‘Listen, Isa,' he said. ‘You're going to go and live in your grandmother's house.'

As soon as he said the words I couldn't help jumping up and down in the middle of the sitting room, punching my fists in the air and shouting, ‘Yes, yes, yes!' I felt that the ground was shaking under my feet.

‘Isa!' Ghassan said in annoyance. ‘Stop jumping. We're on the fourth floor and there are people beneath us.'

I went back to the sofa where he was sitting and looked
straight into his eyes. ‘Beneath us?' I asked. ‘But we're the lowest of the low, you and me,' I said, shaking my head.

Ghassan laughed so much that he was shaking all over. ‘I'll miss you, you crazy,' he said.

Jabriya is not far from Qortuba, where my grandmother lived. But I suddenly felt sorry for Ghassan, though he had lived alone all his life. I felt that by moving to my grandmother's house I was abandoning him. I remembered my father and Walid and when they were with Ghassan and my mother's stories about the three friends – their private world, their conversations, their singing, their travels abroad and their boating trips. The man must feel very lonely in his small, claustrophobic flat in a building full of a mixture of migrant workers – Egyptians, Syrians, Indians and Pakistanis.

‘Ghassan,' I said.

He stopped laughing and looked at me.

‘Why haven't you got married yet?' I asked.

His face reverted to the face of the Ghassan I knew. He took the book off his knees and put it on the sofa beside him. He was about to say something but he stopped. I picked up his packet of cigarettes, took one out, lit it and offered it to him.

‘Go on, spit it out with the cigarette smoke,' I said.

He took a deep puff. The end of the cigarette glowed bright red and bits of ash fell off. ‘I don't want to have children who would curse me after I die, Isa,' he said as he exhaled the smoke. He leaned back in the sofa and locked his hands behind his head, with the cigarette hanging on his lip. ‘All I could pass on to my children would be a label that has stuck to me all my life,' he continued, then stopped and looked at me. ‘Being a bidoon, Isa,' he said, ‘is like having a damaged gene. Some genes malfunction but are not passed on, or they only recur in later generations.
But this malignant gene never misses. It passes from one generation to the next without fail, destroying the hopes of those who carry it.'

Ghassan stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, then withdrew to his room.

*   *   *

While I was in the sitting room late that night, Ghassan came out of his room with his face swollen and his eyes half-shut. He passed me his mobile. ‘A call from . . .' he said, opening his mouth wide in a big yawn, ‘your sister Khawla.' I took the phone. Ghassan turned and walked robotically back to his room.

‘Hello.'

‘Hi, Isa. I hope I haven't woken you up.'

‘No, no. I hadn't gone to sleep yet.'

Khawla told me they had prepared a room for me in the annex with everything I would need. My heart skipped for joy. ‘You'll find everything in the room,' she said and began listing all the contents.

‘That's too much,' I said, interrupting her. ‘Far too much, Khawla.' She stopped. I looked at the phone screen to make sure I was still connected.

‘Hello, Khawla?'

‘Yes, I'm still here.'

‘Thank you for everything you've done for me.'

‘But . . .' She stopped again, then continued hesitantly. ‘Are you sure you're happy about that?' she asked.

‘Very much. It's better than I'd dreamed of,' I said.

‘Isn't staying in the annex a bit . . .' she trailed off, as if looking for the right word. ‘Look, I did my best to make sure you could
stay with us more properly,' she continued, ‘but let's wait and see. Maybe Grandmother will change her mind and let you live with us inside the house.'

I realised then that Grandmother had only partially accepted me. The annex wasn't the house itself. It was somewhere separate in the inner courtyard where the cook and the driver lived. Only the owners lived inside the house itself, and the maids on the top floor. I accepted the arrangement with good grace, partly because my room in the annex had once been the
diwaniya
where my father met his friends.

‘Hello, Isa, are you still there?'

‘Yes, yes, I can hear you.'

‘There are some other things I want you to know before you come.'

Before I moved to Grandmother's house I had to be told several things. I mustn't talk to the servants about who I was, especially the cook and the driver, because there were lots of neighbours and every house had a cook or a driver, or perhaps both. Servants in general don't keep the secrets of the houses they work in. They gossip among themselves, which means that secrets are liable to come out in the neighbours' houses. Khawla said a lot about this in our conversation and I concluded that I would be living in secret in Grandmother's house, or the annex, and my presence must not be disclosed to others.

‘If any of the neighbours or their servants ask, then you're the new cook. This is temporary until we find a way around the problem,' Khawla said.

 

10

‘Will we meet again?' I asked Ghassan as I got out of his car with my bags, in front of Grandmother's house.

‘Many times, you crazy,' he replied.

I turned and headed for the door. ‘Isa!' Ghassan called out. ‘Take this,' he said, reaching out through the car window. I left my clothes bag and went back to him, carrying with me the briefcase with all my documents.

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘It's the key to my flat, so you can come any time. I might not be there, but you'll have the key,' he said.

Even you're not sure I'll stay in Grandmother's house, Ghassan
, I said to myself. I thanked him and went back to my clothes bag by the door.

Even before I pressed the bell, Khawla opened the door and said, ‘Hi, Isa.' She'd been waiting for me behind the door. Ghassan said goodbye by honking his horn, then drove off in his beloved Lancer, leaving me in the company of my sister. ‘
Salamuuu aleekooom
,' said the parrot, as usual whenever the door was opened. I was about to go in, but Khawla stopped me hesitantly. She looked at the houses next door and said, ‘That way,' pointing to the side entrance. ‘Your room's over there, Isa, and from there you can come into the main house through the courtyard.'

I went in through the side door, the door through which my father and I were evicted years earlier. The door led to the annex
and Khawla was waiting for me there. She asked me to follow her and stopped in front of an aluminium door. She pointed to the door and said, ‘This was my father's
diwaniya
. He used to meet his friends here.' She opened the door and stood aside. ‘In you go. This is your room,' she said.

All this for me?
It was a room way beyond my dreams. I would never need to go out. I couldn't believe what I saw. It was twice the size of my old room. A large carpet covered the whole floor. There was a large double bed with pillows and a fancy white cover, a big-screen television and a small table with a laptop computer. There was a fridge, a heater and air conditioning. ‘Are you happy with this?' Khawla asked me.

‘More than you can imagine,' I said, comparing it with my wretched room in the Philippines.

She asked me to leave my bags and follow her. In the courtyard she pointed to a door near to the door to my room. ‘That's Babu and Raju's room, the cook and the driver,' she said. She pointed to a glass door with a steel frame right opposite my room. ‘That's the way to the big sitting room where we were sitting last time. You won't have to meet the parrot if you come in through this door,' she said with a laugh. She pointed to a window on the upper floor, above the glass door. ‘That's the window of Grandmother's room,' she said. She looked at her watch. ‘It's almost ten o'clock. Shall I leave you to go to sleep?'

‘No, no, it's still early,' I replied.

‘Get changed now, and I'll visit you later.'

‘Won't I be allowed to go into the main house?' I asked.

She gave the sweetest of smiles. But was it a real smile or just the way she shaped her lips? She nodded and said, ‘Oh yes, Isa, but don't be impatient.'

Fully dressed and without even taking off my shoes, I lay down
on my big new bed. Before long I heard a light tapping on the door. I sat up. Before I even went to the door, my aunt Hind opened it, but she didn't take a step inside. She looked around, inspecting the room. ‘Is everything as it should be?' she asked.

I was standing by the bed. ‘Yes, madam,' I replied, without looking at her.

There were some seconds of silence. When she spoke again, her tone had changed. ‘That's strange,' she said.

I looked at her, expecting her to explain what she thought was strange. ‘You have Rashid's voice. It's like you're him but with a different face,' she said.

‘Really, madam?' I said, pleased at what she had said.

‘Why do you call me “madam
”
? I'm your aunt.'

I smiled and nodded without speaking. She nodded too. ‘If you need anything,' she said, putting her hand into her little bag and handing me a mobile phone, ‘this is for you. You'll find some numbers on it that might be important to you. Ghassan's number, Khawla's number and the phone number of the house.' She turned away and, as she walked towards the glass door that led to the sitting room, she looked back towards me and said, ‘And my number too.'

*   *   *

After about an hour, Khawla came back and I opened the door for her. ‘Come in,' I said, but she shook her head to say no.

‘Follow me,' she said. ‘I want to show you something.'

I followed her but when we reached the glass door, I felt I couldn't walk any further. ‘Where are we going?' I asked.

She turned to me with her finger on her lips, asking me to keep quiet. Then I followed her. We went through the sitting
room to a short corridor. We walked past the parrot's cage, which was covered with a piece of cloth. At the end of the corridor we came to a wooden door. Khawla pushed on it and said, ‘In you go.'

It was a small room. Bookshelves covered most of the wall space. There was a wooden desk in one of the corners and a few pictures in gilt frames hanging where there was space on the wall. ‘This is my father's study,' said Khawla.

Amazed by the number of books, I asked, ‘And did Father read all these books?' Khawla smiled. I recalled all the conversations in which my mother had spoken to me about this room. This is where she and Rashid chatted when Grandmother and my aunts had gone to sleep. This is where my mother brought my father cups of coffee. It felt strange, like being in a museum that contained relics of our ancestors.

I went up to a picture on one of the walls, a black-and-white picture of an old man with a very high forehead, unkempt hair, bushy eyebrows, a white moustache and a long, forked white beard that reached halfway down his chest. ‘I think I know who that is,' I said, turning to Khawla.

She came over to me by the picture. ‘You should recognise him, Isa,' she said.

I looked at her with a broad grin. ‘That's Grandfather Isa, right?' I said.

Khawla wanted to laugh but held it back. She rushed to the door of the room and locked it. Then she burst out laughing. ‘That's Tolstoy, Isa,' she said. ‘The famous Russian writer.'

I laughed with her to hide my embarrassment. To make amends for my mistake I pointed at another picture, of a man with the traditional headdress. The black ring on his head looked unusually thick. He was wearing a dark green coat and had a black, Hitler-style moustache. His eyes were covered by
black glasses with round lenses. ‘Now this man doesn't look Russian at all,' I said, looking at Khawla, ‘even if he is wearing a Russian general's coat. Would he be Grandfather?'

She covered her mouth with her hand to hold back her giggles and shook her head to say I wasn't right this time either. ‘No, that's an old Kuwaiti poet, a great poet,' she said.

Although I was happy she was laughing, I was also embarrassed. ‘I won't guess any more,' I said firmly. ‘You tell me who the people in the pictures are.'

I pointed at a picture of a large man, taken in profile, wearing traditional Kuwait dress with a brown cloak. He had a small white beard in the middle of his chin. ‘Who's that?' I asked.

‘One of the emirs of Kuwait, the Father of the Constitution,' she said.

I moved on to the next picture in the hope of finding my grandfather or some other member of my family, whose past I knew nothing about. On top of the desk I found a small picture in a wooden frame. I picked it up and while I was examining it, Khawla said, ‘I'll tell you the story of the man in that picture. That young man . . .' she began.

‘I know, Khawla,' I said, interrupting her. ‘I liked him without even meeting him. I've seen many pictures of him, and I know what finally happened to him when that plane was hijacked. It's Walid.'

‘You seem to know a lot.'

‘My mother told me some things.' I pointed to a picture of a woman in sunglasses with her mouth open singing into a microphone, her arms spread, carrying a handkerchief in one hand. ‘Who would that be?' I asked my sister.

She showed no interest in my question but rushed over to one of the shelves, saying, ‘If you want to see a picture of Isa al-Tarouf, our
grandfather.' She took out an enormous book and offered it to me. I took hold of it and looked at the picture on the cover. It was a very old picture of two men. I think it was originally in black and white and had been coloured by hand later. One of the men had a short beard like the Emir who had died on the day I arrived, but he didn't have the Emir's smile. The other man had neither beard nor moustache. The one with the small beard was wearing traditional dress under a cloak, while the other was wearing a white thobe under a black waistcoat, with a small chain that was probably connected to a watch in his pocket. The rings holding their headdresses in place on their heads didn't look like the black rings they use these days. They had black blocks linked together by thick yellow cord to look something like a crown. Khawla pointed to the man with the small beard. ‘That's Papa Isa, our grandfather,' she said. She moved her finger to the other man. ‘And that's his younger brother, Shahin,' she added. It was an enormous book, with high-quality paper and many pictures of old maps, wooden ships and houses made of mud.