The Night Counter (37 page)

WHEN SCHEHERAZADE LANDED
in Los Angeles for her 1001st visit to Fatima, the first person she saw on the sidewalk was the homeless man with Bassam’s dimple. There was no mistaking the resemblance, even beyond the dimple.

She would not be in Los Angeles tomorrow, even though she felt as if she were an established citizen, even more so than were the mortals she had whirled through today. In the unfiltered Pacific sun, the homeless men, aside from the one with Bassam’s dimple, had all changed in the last 1001 nights; the homosexuals and underweight beauties of her first few days had been exchanged for younger and thinner ones. The people on the bus and the shiny polished petrol caravans had increased steadily every day so that the bus was harder to get on and the traffic had even more petrol caravan blockages. It hadn’t even been three years, yet many buildings had risen up quickly since and just as many had disappeared. Not much seemed to be allowed to grow old here.

She wondered about the soldier she had followed to Los Angeles. Had he gone back to Iraq after his father’s funeral? Had he come back again and gone again? Perhaps she would look for him tomorrow, either here or there.

Outside Amir’s home, standing next to the petrol caravan, Scheherazade heard Fatima reciting loudly from the Koran and Decimal repeating after her in Arabic more accented than Nadia’s, more accented than Agent Sherri Hazad’s.

Scheherazade climbed up the eucalyptus tree. Fatima still was clutching
the Al Kaline baseball in her hand, but it was as clear as a perfect diamond that great-grandmother and great-granddaughter had been up all night. She would give them more time together before the last day. Then Amir interrupted her quiet generosity.

“HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH,” AMIR
shouted as he turned off the engine, keeping time to the gospel music coming out of his Honda.

He looked at the SUV parked in front of the fig tree and gave it the finger. “I’m the man,” Amir sang out. “Screw you and your SUV, buddy; the soap’s going to kill you off tomorrow. Slowly and painfully. Hallelujah. Halle—”

“
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
,” came Fatima’s surprisingly powerful voice from inside the house. It competed for attention with the cheap car radio. He turned off the gospel music.

His soon-to-be-dead-on-TV ex-lover and the whole neighborhood surely could hear Fatima. However, he was feeling too blessed today to care. He covered his ears when he heard Decimal repeat the Koran after Fatima in Arabic.

“It’s
bismillah
, kid,
bismillah
, in the name of God. It is all you have to remember,” Amir mumbled. Whatever. They hadn’t even noticed him disappear for his audition. He turned on the hose so that the garden would continue to flourish like that of a successful person, which, after landing the part today, he was.

When he turned to water the rosebushes, something light green with
a tiny pink streak caught the edge of his right eye. He turned to find that the pink was on the fig tree. Could it be? He moved in closer. Yes, it was a fig. Today had been filled with two enormous hallelujah moments. First, the director was off his all-protein diet and high on carbs during the audition, and now this. The fig tree had fruited.

WHEN AMIR WENT
inside, Scheherazade came down from the eucalyptus tree to look at the fig. How had she missed this miracle? A tree that had not fruited in sixty-seven years finally had found a home in America.

Scheherazade climbed back up the eucalyptus tree so that she could see Fatima’s reaction when Amir showed her. This time, she was distracted by the closer voices below in the petrol caravan.

“He knows we’re here,” Sherri Hazad said from inside. “Talking about poisoning us with soap … the grandmother showed me some ‘expensive soap’ in the kitchen. I used it. I should get myself checked.”

“It might just be soap,” Sherri Hazad’s partner cautioned.

“What about the cousin taking a job in Iraq?” Sherri Hazad pointed out.

“Thousands of guys have,” Sherri Hazad’s partner reminded her. “I checked out the construction company. He’s already saved the taxpayers thousands of dollars by reworking the original blueprints. No time to think out a plot with insurgents.”

“And the guy driving the Saudis all around the Nevada desert?” Sherri Hazad asked. “There are weapon-testing sites out there.”

“Perhaps we should question Amir Abdullah sooner than later,” Sherri Hazad’s partner conceded.

Fatima’s Koran recitation filtered into the petrol caravan. “Maybe he’s got the old lady indoctrinating for him,” Sherri Hazad said.

“Remember not to jump too far ahead,” he said. “But true, no one should ever underestimate the influence someone has over someone else, intentionally or unintentionally.”

Scheherazade believed this to be the only thing she had ever heard anyone in a petrol caravan say that made any sense.

FATIMA HAD NOT
slept all night. After she had spoken so much about her sons earlier, there was no way she could. After today, she would have her entire afterlife to sleep. With the Al Kaline baseball clutched in her hand, she had spent the night sitting on her grandfather’s cedar chest doing what she was sure would be described at her funeral as her final worthy act: teaching this awful girl the miracle of the Koran. They took only occasional breaks, during which time she instructed the girl to look for the cordelia pants with the key.

Soon she would dismiss the girl to call Ibrahim. He would be the last earthly person she would speak to besides Amir.

“Let us do one more thing,” Fatima said. “Open the Koran to
Ayat al-Kursi.
”

“What, ma’am Tayta?” Decimal said.

“
Ayat al-Kursi.
” Fatima sighed. “The most important verse in the Koran. It’s very simple.”

“What’s it about?” Decimal asked.

“Learn it first,” Fatima said. “Then, if we have time, I’ll tell you what it means.”

Decimal opened the book backward, at least to Fatima’s Arab eyes.

“What page is it on?” Decimal said.

The book had gotten very heavy for Fatima in the last couple of days, and so she left it on Decimal’s lap as she delicately turned the pages to the right one.

“
Bismillah el-rahman el-raheem
,” Fatima passionately intoned, pointing with her index finger at the flowery calligraphy as if she were actually reading it.

“Don’t you want to put on your glasses?” Decimal asked.

“I don’t need glasses to read the Koran,” Fatima said. “You don’t worry about my reading. Just repeat.”

Fatima lowered her hearing aid to minimize the girl’s frightening accent. Still, she found comfort in the
Ayat al-Kursi
. But at the line about God owning everything on heaven and earth, she suddenly pictured the house in Lebanon in chrome and dropped the ball. The girl started to chase it, but Fatima put up her hand. “
Lahu ma fi semawati wa ma fil’ardi
,” she continued, and motioned for the girl to keep reciting after her while she hobbled to retrieve the ball.

When Fatima bent down for it, Decimal, who was focused on the book as though she, too, were really reading it, looked up just as the tremble in Fatima’s worried hand made her drop it again.

Decimal caught it before it rolled out the room and handed it to Fatima

Fatima held it close. “Let us look for the key again.”

“You don’t want to read any more Koran?” Decimal said, disappointed.

One could not discourage a sinner from reading the Koran. She had just taught the girl how God never sleeps on his duties, and neither would she. The key would have to wait. Maybe the girl could be rescued, her newfound virtue a final gift to a dying woman.
Inshallah
.

“If Zade, my matchmaking grandson, can get you married off, you
could have a fresh start, have even more kids—legitimately,” Fatima said. “He’s not so good at his job as I am, but I don’t have his time.”

“Who would marry a pregnant girl?” Decimal said.

“You’re right,” Fatima agreed, recalling the circumstances of her own marriage. “It would have to someone duty-bound. Well, then, perhaps Zade himself might be a forgiving husband. He’s a little old for you, but cousins are good. My grandparents were very happy cousins. No in-law problems, you know.”

“Cousins?” Decimal said, and began dry heaving in big gulps as she ran out.

Fatima marveled at how every woman’s morning sickness came for no reason. But the baseball signed by Al Kaline just for her boys stared back at her. Too cruel to leave it to Ibrahim, but who else was her sons’ heir?

She turned to put it in the cedar chest and found Scheherazade lying on the box. She sat up and helped Fatima sit next to her, rubbing her fingers along Fatima’s face to smooth out the Avon creases. “I’m going to have to freshen you up,” she said. She blew dust off Fatima’s new dress and began combing out her purple stubs.

“You smell like old beer.” Fatima grimaced and held her nose.

“That’s because I just came back from Las Vegas,” Scheherazade announced.

Fatima let go of her nose but did not ask after her son. She did not want to hear anything bad on her last day.

“He’s fine,” Scheherazade answered.

Fatima remembered how she always told Ibrahim the same lie. “People his age are presidents of countries,” she said as her fingers tapped the ball on her lap.

“Let Bassam take the house,” Scheherazade suggested. “Maybe he’ll meet a nice Arab girl and start over.”

“What would a nice Arab girl want with Bassam?” Fatima asked. “A middle-aged man with no money. … Besides, the Azar family makes the best wine in the valley, in all the world, some say. Their vineyard is not far
from the house. Even the bad things we do best. I can’t put milk in front of the cat.”

“Back home, the house would be his,” Scheherazade said. “As your only living son.”

Fatima shuddered. Since Bassam had turned fourteen, Fatima had stayed up until dawn thinking of all the things that could happen: Bassam could hurt himself in an accident, be killed in a drug deal, get liver cancer, not get into Harvard, or, worst of all, kill someone. “After my boys died, I became afraid for all my children and stopped enjoying them except in my dreams,” Fatima recalled. “Then Bassam turned me into a night owl, so I hardly dreamed.”

Fatima wiped away a tear that had spilled onto the Koran.

“Let us not talk of tearful things,” Scheherazade said. “Don’t you want to look nice today?”

“Does it have to be today?”

“Today always has to be today, just as yesterday was yesterday and tomorrow will be tomorrow,” Scheherazade explained. “You’re mortal. That’s how it goes. Sun up, then sun down, then sun up. And so on. Since time began.”

“I’m not ready,” Fatima fretted. “I still have to find the key. And call Ibrahim. How many hours do I have left?”

“With me?” Scheherazade said. “A few.”

“Then what happens?” Fatima asked.

Scheherazade shrugged again and went for the Avon.

“You promised you would tell me,” Fatima admonished her. “The time has come, and you still haven’t told me.
Aabe alacki
, shame on you.”

“You’re the storyteller this time, not me,” Scheherazade pointed out.

“How would I know?” Fatima countered. “I’m not God.”

“Neither am I,” Scheherazade reminded her.

“If you don’t know how, then how do you know it is going to be tonight?”

Instead of answering, Scheherazade picked up the Koran and carefully
turned to a certain page. She placed it on Fatima’s lap. “Oh, would that I had prepared for my life,” she read aloud.

“When would I have had the time to do that?” Fatima demanded.

“You’ve had the last 1001 days.”

“I was preparing for a funeral!” Fatima replied.

“I didn’t tell you to do that.” Scheherazade shrugged. “You did.”

Fatima’s eyes flashed frustration, just as Scheherazade’s did when Fatima began a story of Deir Zeitoon. She raised her cane as if she were going to beat Scheherazade with it.

“I had to plan out every detail of my funeral so that my children would be spared the anguish of doing that,” Fatima said, her voice shrill. “Not like I was with their brothers.”

“Was the funeral the part of your boys’ lives you really remember the most?” Scheherazade asked.

“No.” Fatima sighed. “But it seemed like taking care of my funeral was the only thing I could do for my kids, especially since I couldn’t give them all the house. Let us be honest, I could not even marry them all off. And now I am going.”

“Going where?” Scheherazade said.

“To heaven, of course,” Fatima replied.

Scheherazade pondered that. “If you say so.”

“I’m not going to hell on Judgment Day,” Fatima vowed.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Scheherazade agreed. “What shall we choose to do today to celebrate our last day together?”

“Dying’s not a party,” Fatima said, but Scheherazade pointed again to the book.

“Oh, would that I had prepared for my life,” Fatima recited for her again.

Scheherazade grinned, which Fatima did not like. “What are you saying?”

Scheherazade clamped her lips together tightly, holding her breath. She did, however, indicate the line in the Koran again.

“Oh, would that I had prepared for my life,” Fatima repeated once
more. Scheherazade’s grin took up even more of her face, which wasn’t easy as she hadn’t let go of her breath. Fatima really did not like that grin. She circled Scheherazade, cane ready for attack.

“What is it that you’re trying to not tell me?” Fatima demanded. Scheherazade put her hands on her hips, frustrated. She let go of her breath. “What more do I …” Fatima began. But the sun had risen high enough that its rays spilled into the room. In the sunlight, the answer came to Fatima. “
Ya Allah
, I’m not dying today?”

Scheherazade threw her hands up in the air. “As I said, I’m not God any more than you were with your sons,” she cried out. “But I shall assume that you probably wouldn’t have the strength to hold that cane up so high if you were about to leave the mortal world within hours.”

Fatima lowered the cane slowly. “So I’m not dying?”

“How should I know?” Scheherazade said.

Fatima pushed Scheherazade away as she approached her with a brush coated in old blush. “To know you have 1001 nights to tell your stories is a gift and a curse. But when our tales are over, so are our lives,” Fatima quoted Scheherazade from their first night together.

“There is not just one way to hear a sentence.” Scheherazade sighed. “All I meant was that life is in the end a collection of stories that are connected through us. Stories keep us entertained and enlightened, and if we don’t know the ending, all the better. Look, I’m the one who kept our stories going by not telling you the ending, as I don’t really know it. You already thought you knew the ending, but you didn’t. Indeed, those are my favorite endings. Surprise.”

Scheherazade let out a roll of laughter that rattled her bangles more ferociously than ever before in Fatima’s presence, and Fatima sat down, placing the Al Kaline ball back on her lap. “No, no, no,” she declared with three taps of her cane. “I can’t keep on living forever. That is impossible.” The sudden prospect of more life was more overwhelming than what she had thought had been a death sentence from Scheherazade 1001 nights ago.

“You won’t,” Scheherazade promised. “Eventually, you will die, and then you will be given your answer as to how. It will happen, but you
cannot know yet. God is always with the patient. That is written in your Koran, too.” She picked up a compact to apply more Avon to Fatima’s already sufficiently inflamed cheeks. “Death is written for us no matter what, but living your life so that it is filled with stories is the best way to wait for it. Like your boys did, and like you did before they were gone.”

Fatima rolled the Al Kaline baseball between her hands. “Perhaps now I have more time to take care of everything for my children,” she finally said, hope resurfacing.

“There is never enough time for that,” Scheherazade bemoaned with another flourish of blush.

“You perfected yours,” Fatima said.

“Only in my stories.” Scheherazade sighed. “My babies are long gone. But immortality lasts and lasts. For the first couple of hundred years the power is exhilarating, but then it gets very lonely. There are too many ghosts to haunt my evenings. Why do you think I came to you? I always need someone to keep me company for 1001 days. To deal with one’s stories alone would be too much for any soul—my children, my husband, my court, my sister and father are just stories now. But 1001 stories from another person are exactly enough. No more. And no less. One thousand is a boring number. And 1002 is just too much, no offense. Whether you count in English or Arabic, 1001 stories are perfect.”

Fatima bowed her head. “Leave me alone with my life. Go.”

“Not yet,” Scheherazade said. “One more day, one more story. Stop pouting. So death is just another thing in your life you have no choice in determining. Ten children and two husbands and you still thought you could control fate.
Smallah.
”

“Go,” Fatima repeated. She stood up tall and raised her cane again, bearing hip pain to threaten Scheherazade with it. As she did so, the Al Kaline baseball dropped out of her lap. Fatima quickly put down the cane to follow Scheherazade when she chased it. Neither the mortal woman nor the immortal woman could reach it before it rolled to the door. It was picked up by a hand Fatima recognized very well: Amir’s.

“Al Kaline,” he read, attempting breezy conversation. “The Tigers never had anyone like him.”

Fatima knew Amir had no idea how great Al Kaline had been but had heard enough of her shouting about death and life from the other side of the door to be disturbed.

From behind him, the girl sneezed. “Look what I found downstairs,” she said. “Amir says it’s the key to your old Ford Mercury in Detroit. Maybe you could leave that to your son Uncle Bassam.”

Fatima pretended not to see Amir nudge Decimal quiet. “Let us continue with
Ayat al-Kursi
, child,” she said, feeling cursed that this girl must have heard her speak of Bassam to Scheherazade. Or worse, Amir had been gossiping about the family. “And we must find the key, and I must call Ibrahim before I …”