The Bamboo Stalk (19 page)

I had a strange, vague impression of Islam. For me it was associated with certain symbols, like any religion or civilisation or idea. If the symbol worked well, it left a good impression of the thing it symbolised. If the symbol was a failure, it sent the wrong message.

When I was young, I looked on Islam with some
bewilderment, mixed with respect when I found out how highly people regarded Lapu-Lapu, the famous sultan of Mactan, seen by Filipinos as one of their most important national heroes because he resisted colonialism in the sixteenth century. There are giant statues and other memorials to him in main squares across the country, portraying him with long hair, bare-chested, with his hands resting on the hilt of a sword planted in the ground. I remembered everything about this Muslim sultan. My classmates at school skipped this lesson and jumped on to the next lessons, but I read on until I reached the description of what happened on the morning of 27 April 1521, when Lapu-Lapu came out at the head of 1,500 warriors armed with
barong
knives, lances,
kampilan
swords and
kalasag
shields, in the famous battle of Mactan against Portuguese invader and explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who organised the first expedition to sail around the world. Magellan had sailed to Mactan in command of a force of more than 500 troops armed with muskets, on a mission to convert the sultan of the island to Christianity after successfully converting the ruler of a nearby island. Lapu-Lapu refused to meet Magellan's demands and sprang to the defence of the island. They managed to kill Magellan with a poisoned arrow at the end of the battle.

Lapu-Lapu was the only Muslim icon I knew. I saw him and his men as mythical heroes and I thought my Muslim father was a distant descendant of his lineage. Because of him I had a positive image of Islam. But later this image was severely challenged by another Muslim icon that undermined my earlier impressions. That was the Abu Sayyaf group, which financed its activities by robbery, assassinations and blackmailing companies and rich businessmen. I had heard plenty about
them when I was in the Philippines but I didn't pay them much attention because I was young and I wasn't interested in details of their movement at the time. Then they carried out their famous kidnapping in the middle of 2001. Everyone in the Philippines followed the news of the hostages, among them three Americans – two men and the wife of one of them. The news was horrifying. Twelve Filipino hostages were killed and the body of one of the American men was found with his head cut off. The hostages were held for more than a year before the army made an attempt to rescue them and the other American man and a Filipino nurse were killed. The Muslims in Mindanao are no doubt kind and peace-loving, like poor people everywhere, but people abroad only know them through the Abu Sayyaf group.

The heroism and life story of Sultan Lapu-Lapu, and the way ordinary people in the Philippines, regardless of religion, admired him and recognised his role in resisting invasion, were positive images that made me feel close to Islam. But the Abu Sayyaf group, by killing missionaries and other innocent people, very much alienated me from Islam.

*   *   *

The call to prayer was over and quiet returned. I was still in the car outside keeping an eye on Grandmother's house. The curtain on one of the upstairs windows moved. I caught sight of a young woman looking down at me. She disappeared behind the curtain a few seconds later. I looked down to the front door, where Ghassan was coming out. His face left no room for guesswork.

He closed the car door, put on his seatbelt and lit a cigarette.
‘Never mind. We'll try again another time,' he said, without turning to face me.

I didn't say anything, just like my mother years earlier when my father came out of the same house carrying me in his arms. I preferred not to speak, and I prepared myself for a return to Mendoza's piece of land once again.

*   *   *

‘What's the point of trying again, Ghassan?' I asked when we were back in his flat.

‘Because your grandmother is bound to change her mind,' Ghassan said. He stopped, as if trying to remember something. ‘She's not sure what to do.' He looked me right in the face. ‘It would be easier if she wasn't so worried about what people might say,' he added.

‘What have other people got to do with my family accepting me? How would they know about me?' I asked naively.

Ghassan shook his head in frustration. ‘Gossip rules here,' he said. ‘And besides, it's not about you, it's about the Tarouf family. Everyone will know about it. Kuwait's a small place.'

‘So small there's no room for me,' I added sadly.

*   *   *

When my grandfather Isa died, he left my grandmother with three girls and a boy – Rashid, my father. My grandmother gave Rashid special treatment because he was the only son and the man of the house. That's what my mother told me. But
what was more important was that my father was the only child whose children could inherit the family name. My grandmother had wanted to see Rashid have children, particularly males who might ensure the survival of the Tarouf name, especially as Isa my grandfather had been the last of the Tarouf clan since the death of his brother Shahin. My grandfather had my father to carry the family name after him. But when my father was killed during the Iraqi occupation without leaving a son (bearing in mind that I was just a ‘thing', as my grandmother once put it), it became impossible for the Tarouf family name to survive. But now, with my sudden reappearance, my grandmother started thinking about that ‘thing' – the only person left who could guarantee that the name of his father and grandfather continued and who could pass on the family name to his offspring.

‘What does the Filipina's boy look like?' she asked Ghassan at that meeting.

‘Like a Filipino,' he answered.

‘That old woman is impressive,' said Ghassan, although I hadn't asked him for details of the meeting. ‘You don't know what Rashid meant to Auntie Ghanima, and despite the way you look, you are his only son. Do you understand?'

‘No, I don't understand.'

‘OK,' said Ghassan, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Pass me that packet of cigarettes so I can explain.'

I passed him the packet. He took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘Listen,' he said, blowing out the smoke. ‘Khawla is the last person whose family name is Tarouf. One day she'll get married and her children will take her husband's name.' He thought a while and then continued. ‘Apart from you, Auntie Ghanima has two other grandsons with the first name of their grandfather,
Isa. But they don't bear the family name because both of them have taken their family names from their fathers. Now that you're back,' he said, pointing at me with his index finger, ‘no one but you can guarantee that the Tarouf name will continue.'

I was looking at him like an idiot. I showed no interest in what he was saying. ‘Who's Khawla?' I asked.

*   *   *

Khawla was born six months after the end of the war over Kuwait and so her father never saw her. She too was never lucky enough to be able to say ‘papa'. But I suddenly realised that I did have one advantage over my sister. In spite of everything that had happened, at least my father had carried me in his arms. I also bore the name that he had chosen, his own father's name. He had looked into my face and kissed me, even if I remember nothing about it. Poor Khawla. Father never whispered the call to prayer in her right ear after she was born. He didn't carry her in his arms and Khawla wasn't the name he had chosen for her.

My father had married again in the middle of 1990, this time to Iman. He didn't spend much time with her because he was captured by Iraqi forces. His wife gave birth to my sister the year Kuwait was liberated and the two of them lived in Grandmother's house until Iman married another man some years later. She moved to his house and left Khawla in the care of Grandmother, who treated her better than she did my three aunts – Awatif, Nouriya and Hind.

In Grandmother's house, my sister was Khawla, the daughter of Rashid, and nothing she asked for was withheld. She was Grandmother's precious darling. Grandmother was anxious to
protect her from both other people and from the
djinn
. Ghassan said that every night Grandmother put her hand on Khawla's forehead and recited verses from the Qur'an. She prayed to God to protect Khawla and keep her safe from envious people. In the morning she gave her holy water to drink – water over which she had recited Qur'anic verses.

Ghassan often talked to me about Khawla. He was fond of her, and she of him. She saw him as a substitute for the father she had never seen. ‘She's a wonderful girl,' Ghassan said of her. ‘She's intelligent. Make friends with her, Isa. She needs a brother as much as you need a sister.'

Khawla had her problems too. She was fatherless, of course, and her mother had abandoned her for her new husband. These things didn't seem to have had a negative effect on her however. She wasn't like other girls of her generation. She was almost a copy of her father in the way she spent hours reading his books in his study. She dreamed of finishing off the novel my father had started writing but hadn't finished when he died. She didn't have many friends. Ghassan and her aunt Hind were her closest friends.

‘I'm proud of her. She's like a daughter to me,' said Ghassan.

What Ghassan said about me being the only person who could ensure the survival of the family name made me feel like a legitimate king who had just come back from a long journey to reclaim his kingdom. But legitimacy alone wasn't enough to secure recognition.
Should I fight for it?
Kings lose legitimacy when people reject them and I had been rejected, and I wasn't even a king.

I didn't understand what continuing the family name meant. What would happen if the family name didn't continue? And what did the way I looked have to do with it?

I later found out that Grandmother didn't know what to do the night after her meeting with Ghassan. I was her grandson – Isa Rashid Isa al-Tarouf, a name that brought honour. But I had a face that brought shame. I was Isa, the son of Rashid who died defending his country, but at the same time I was Isa, the son of the Filipina maid.

 

7

It was thanks to Khawla, Grandmother's favourite, that I was accepted into the Tarouf household, albeit under duress. My sister told Grandmother that she insisted I be allowed to visit.

‘It would just be a visit, Grandmother, please,' she said. ‘And afterwards you can decide.'

Grandmother gave in to Khawla's entreaties. ‘I don't know why, but I've been pressing Grandmother to let you visit our house,' Khawla told me at our first meeting. ‘Maybe it was curiosity, or maybe because I was happy to have a new brother suddenly appear in my life.'

Ghassan and I had been in the sitting room in his flat when the phone rang. Ghassan had picked it up, and after a short conversation put it down again. ‘You're lucky,' he said. ‘You have a brave sister.'

*   *   *

Everything happens for a reason, and for a purpose. I like my mother's faith. Her saying reminds me day after day that chance has no place in our destiny. My father married Iman to pave the way for Khawla, who spoke up for me in the Tarouf household. If it hadn't been for her I would never have had a chance to come close to that house. But what if Khawla had been born a boy – a boy who had his grandfather's name, Isa, and the family name that was
about to die out, and who could pass it on to his children, who could then reproduce and act as an extension of generations that carried the name many years ago, people who built walls around their ancient city and who were no less proud of having built them than the Chinese were to have built the Great Wall of China?

Thank God for Khawla.

*   *   *

After sunset on the day after Khawla's phone call, Ghassan rang the bell at Grandmother's house, while I stood in fear behind him – in fear of being thrown out, of being humiliated and of not being accepted.

The door opened. ‘Welcome,' said a female voice. The voice and the accent aroused my curiosity. I stood on tiptoes to look over Ghassan's shoulder, and there was a young Filipina maid dressed in white from head to toe – the headscarf, the uniform, the apron and the shoes. She looked like a nurse. I squeezed Ghassan's shoulder with my hand. I was overjoyed to see a face that looked like mine.

‘Filipina?' I asked her.

Ghassan turned around and gave me a disapproving look. ‘Isa, she's the maid!' he said.

‘Luza, Luza, who is it?' asked a voice from inside, speaking in perfect English.

‘It's Mr Ghassan,' said the maid, waving us in. As soon as we were through the door, we were warmly welcomed.

‘
Salamuuu alekooom
,' someone said.

I looked around to see who was speaking and found a parrot in a beautiful gilt cage fixed to the wall opposite the door.
Ghassan laughed. The parrot raised its voice and started repeating the maid's name: ‘Luza, Luza.' Then it shouted a word I couldn't make out. The maid came towards the cage, waved her arms in the air and said, ‘Shhhhh.' The parrot shut up and Ghassan went on laughing.

‘Come in, come in,' said Khawla, who was waiting for us. I knew who she was at first sight. She looked older than her sixteen years. She was brown-skinned and taller than me. She had covered her hair with a black
hijab
. She had a sharp and prominent nose, thin lips and white teeth that were strikingly regular. She was pretty and she looked charming when she smiled. She spoke with Ghassan in Arabic, then turned to me. ‘So you're Isa,' she said cheerfully.

I smiled at her and nodded.

‘Come on in, come on in,' she continued.

We followed her in, and she kept turning to me with a broad smile that showed how pleased she was. She invited us inside and asked us to sit down and wait. Then she went upstairs, looking back at me all the way up.
Nice house
, I said to myself. But I wondered how people found time to deal with all the details – matching the colours, the furniture, the marble floors, the fine rugs, the decorative touches on the walls, the chandeliers, the plush velvet curtains, the little wooden tables with tablecloths decorated with shiny beads that looked like pearls or precious stones, the vases of various sizes holding bamboo stalks. I loved the place even though I was cowering in my seat for fear of damaging something unintentionally. The Filipino face that met us at the door and the bamboo stalks made me feel more at home, even if the bamboo looked out of place in those expensive vases, rather like me in the Tarouf household.