Aunt Suzanne

I remember watching Layla – the fat girl with round green eyes like olives, so big like the size of coins – hit Sami and put him away in the other room. 1

"The rascal!" she would yell, pounding across the floor in her scarred and dusty feet, flailing the plastic sandal she had just smacked him with. They were her sandals – the same dull, clay-color as the dirt we tramped through in the Golan. This was during the time that we were living with my uncle Sameh and his wife on the goat farm that was planted amongst the dull gray-green shrubbery of the desert brush. Layla – Sameh's daughter from his third marriage to a black-skinned Bedouin woman from Palestine – turned many heads because of her startling green eyes. Uncle Sameh's hired hand – a skinny fellow named Anwar who wore his shirt halfway unbuttoned reeked of cow manure – always flashed Layla lascivious smiles, exposing his gapped teeth that were yellowed from years of downing the Bedouin coffee that Sameh's wife Nur made. 2

I watched Layla storm across the dim hallway – Uncle Sameh's house was so small and Layla's heavy footsteps made the weak floorboards shake. Those eyes widened and she stared at me. I was fixated on the wrath that was dormant in those lovely, exotic eyes that turned the village men's heads. 3

"Your boy is a rascal," she repeated. "He went dipping his fingers in the goat milk again, then knocked it all over and spilled it on the floor."4

My eyes shifted towards the upturned metal pail and the white puddle that stained the rose-colored rug Uncle Sameh had bought from one of the vendors who came across the border from Antioch every month. I could see little in the dim light. 5

"Sami did it," I repeated her, dumbly. 6

"Leave him in that room to rot!" she exclaimed, and suddenly she was not lovely, green eyes or no. I did not answer her back, and in the silence I heard Sami begin to cry. I could imagine him, sprawled across the dirty flower-print mattress that me, my husband, and our two small children all shared at night, a miserable child with sinewy limbs awkwardly flailed across the mattress. He had just had his fourth birthday, but he had the mind of a baby. He was born lame, retarded, and afflicted with a serious heart condition that had forced him to have three surgeries in his short life. My relatives had been kind to let us live with them in the Golan while my husband, Tarif, worked for the electrical company at the government outpost. But they considered Sami a bother.7

"The little demon!" Layla uttered. "Baba, keep Sami away, the little nuisance, when the guests come," she called to her father, who was reclining lazily on the worn brown sofa and smoking mango shisha. Typically he spent his afternoons at rest from the hard labor of the farm.8

I remember watching Layla hit Sami with her shoe. I shuddered when I saw the grin emerge on her pretty, round face – shaped in a soft, endless oval like the moon and paled with an excess of makeup. I heard Sami come with a thump as she threw him to the floor. Uncle Sameh lay passively on the sofa. He wanted Sami to stay in our room, out of the way of bothering the guests. More than that, he did not want our family to be embarrassed by him. He could not even chew his own food. I mashed it up for him with a cooking spoon and shoved into his little mouth. The last thing I remember having seen in that hallway was Layla pushing her thick, black hair out of the way as she picked up the metal pail and headed for the shelter where the animals were kept. 9

I pushed open the door to our room – it was made of a very thin wood and did not lock, and it left a three-inch crack at the bottom where it was not quite long enough to reach the floor. We had little privacy, but in any case I closed it behind me. Later I heard Layla say,10

"Why is Iman being so rude? Why did she go off to her room and shut the door behind her? Living in Damascus and marrying a rich man has taught her bad manners."11

I sank to my knees next to Sami, who was crying. I pushed away tears from his flushed ivory face, a sick-looking pallor compared to his father's and my healthy olive complexions. Light reflected in his deep, dark eyes. I lifted him into my lap – he was very light, about the size of a child half his age. 12

"Sami," I whispered. "Shhhhhh … "13

He reeked of sour goat's milk. It had splashed across his faded red t-shirt. He sat bawling in my arms, hitting his big head again and again against my chest. I wiped the milk with one of Tarif's shirts that he thrown on the floor to be washed. I rocked him, in vain hopes of silencing his tirade. I heard Layla yell at him again. I rested my fingers on his soft, curly hair. 14

You are beautiful, Sami, I would have whispered in his ear if he had a mind to understand, a true gift from God. 15

I wished I could quiet him, and I remember that once Layla had shoved a cleaning rag in his mouth to muffle his wailing. I carried him out of our room, balancing his lean and awkwardly proportioned body on my hip. He clung to me with his tiny fists. 16

Layla slammed down the milk pail onto the faltering floorboards.17

"The little demon!" I heard her mutter to herself.18

"Layla, binti," Uncle Sameh rolled over on his side from reclining on the couch, pinching the shisha pipe between his thumb and his index finger. "Have compassion."19

In the dim light I could see the gold-embossed calligraphy of the Quranic poster above Uncle Sameh's head glow. He was a mild and docile man, and steadily advancing in years. His Bedouin wife was young and supple, working long days milking the goats and doing the wash. She never spoke. She stared at us with huge black eyes, darkened by the shadows cast by her colorful headscarves. When she did speak she had a jarring Bedouin accent with all its harsh consonants; in Syria the way we spoke was much more delicate. 20

Goodness knows where Layla got her green eyes. Uncle Sameh's were dark brown. 21

Suddenly the screen door banged against the doorframe. It was ripped and during the summer the flies welcomed themselves inside our house. Uncle Sameh would grow quite irritated when he tried to pass the balmy afternoon hours reclining on the couch and was interrupted from his mango shisha to swat at them. 22

"Who?" I heard Uncle Sameh yell. He was too lazy to get up. 23

"Me, Tarif."24

I watched my husband take off his shoes and throw them into the plastic crate by the door. He was small and dark and I thought he was very handsome, with a smooth complexion the color of sand and eyes deep and black like the oval-shaped stones we used to find at the bottom of the pond when we were little children. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his corduroy pants and walked down the dim hallway slowly, frowning. He looked at me, a bit, and at Sami with his long arms slung across my shoulder. He took off his glasses and placed them in his shirt pocket underneath his red sweater. 25

"Iman," Uncle Sameh called to me. "Are you helping Layla prepare the food for the guests? Put the little boy down on the floor."26

He wagged the shisha pipe at me, but I lingered hesitantly. I hated to cook, which was what made me such a bad wife, and I simply would not throw Sami down on the dusty rose-colored Turkish rug to cry for me as I passed the hours imprisoned with Layla in the kitchen. The thought was repulsive. Nur was helping her, I supposed … 27

"Who is coming today?" I asked, lifting Sami higher on my hip. He was not heavy, but he squirmed and would not stay still when I held him. 28

"Your father and mother," he nodded. "And your great aunt Hind and her husband Fahmi. They are very old. The trip is hard for them. We should be very grateful that they are coming such a long way."29

Tarif seized another shisha pipe and slouched back on the sofa with Uncle Sameh, smoking. The tobacco stained his fingernails, I noticed as I watched his slender, wheat-colored fingers grasp hold of the pipe. 30

"Put the boy away," Sameh told me, nodding his head upwards at our room. "We want him out of the way of the guests. He'll bother them."31

I paused. 32

"Go, ya binti." 33

I carried Sami off to the bedroom and lay him on the floor. I looked at his bulging eyes stare up at me. His shoulders were hunched and his wiry hair was flattened from lying against my shoulder. Behind me I heard Uncle Sameh bemoan the idea of Sami soiling the carpets and humiliating us in front of the relatives. (In the village we couldn't afford diapers and simply cleaned up after the children's messes.) 34

"Iman, why aren't you helping?" Layla appeared in the shadows of the lightless hallway. The green eyes met with mine. "Help prepare the food," she urged. 35

"I was putting Sami down."36

"Wa allah, you're so slow. Get to the kitchen and help."37

I followed her, but I was irritated. You have no right to treat me like a child, I wanted to tell her. As I walked behind her I watched her thick dark hair fall at her shoulders, thick as reams of cloth. I hated that hair because I was so envious of it. 38

The kitchen was small and reeked of simmering spiced meat from the goat Uncle Sameh had slaughtered that morning. Nur sat in the corner on a wooden stool, dicing herbs with a blunt knife, and stared mutely down at the pail of boiling water, as mute as the goat carcass. 39

"Knead the dough," Layla commanded. 40

I scowled. When Tarif and I lived in Damascus we bought bread from the street vendor every morning. Everything in the village was harder. 41

"Thank God your imbecile son stopped crying," she mentioned as she sliced the sweet yams and lay them on the grill with herbs Nur had chopped. Nur dumped the herbs – still not speaking – over the grill and stared back down at the floor as she took a cleaver to the goat carcass.42

"You hit him," I accused. "He was crying because you slapped him with your shoe."43

"I only hit him because he spilled this morning's milk."44

"He has the mind of a baby," I reminded her. "You can't blame him." I stiffened. I glanced over at Nur for support. She gave me none. 45

"Uff!" 46

I pounded at the dough in rage, smacking it with clenched fists as I wished I would smack Layla.47

"You should be grateful to God otherwise you may have a child one day who is worse off than Sami!" I insisted. "If you have any children at all, for that matter. Is that what you would prefer?" I asked her harshly. "No man will stay married to you otherwise."48

"Well, your husband wouldn't stay married to you if all you had given him was a dimwitted son!"49

"Sami is my child and I love him! He is not a dimwit!"50

"Or maybe the only reason he stays married to you is because he's defective himself, and he has a shameful, defective child just like himself."51

I was silent. Layla said that because Tarif's left hand was crippled from birth. He often hid its mangled form in the pocket of his pants, having little use for the stiff, misshapen, and paralyzed stubs of fingers he had.52

"Shut your mouth!" I scowled at her with so much fierce anger I would have taken the copper pot I was filling with boiling water and smacked her over the head. I glanced towards the faded curtain that portioned off the kitchen from the rest of the small house, hoping that the simmering meat was loud enough to mask Layla's pejorative words from Tarif's ears. "I hope you never marry!" I told her. "I hope no man will ever marry you!"53

"Anwar has his eyes on me," she said. She smiled. She was rather fat, but the men found her full figure appealing. Her skin was not very pale because her mother was a Bedouin, but she lightened her face with makeup and stayed out of the sun to keep from turning a swarthy bronze. 54

"Anwar is a skinny goat herder with a big nose and bad teeth!" I reminded her. "But my husband is very handsome. You are jealous because my husband has such a fine appearance."55

We were bickering like two little schoolgirls, and I waited for Nur to shush us and scold us for being so trite, but she did not. So the argument continued. 56

"He had to marry you," she reminded me. "His parents and your parents made him. Look at you, with your ruddy skin and flat hair and hips that are two big for your small figure! And you are rude and you frown all the time and never smile!"57

"I do not!" I insisted again, and this time Nur did intervene, saying in her hushed Bedouin accent,58

"Girls, stop behaving like dogs," she reminded us soberly. That was all she said. 59

My family had abandoned the goat farm and moved to Damascus when I was ten years old. We were Druzes, and there were relatively few of us in the city at the time, so my parents married me off to Tarif, a Sunni. 60

"You are lucky," my mother reminded me, folding her fat arms and grinning at me with delight in her dull, glazed eyes, hushed to a dismal grayish brown from the years. I was eighteen, and I did not want to get married. I had earned high enough marks in secondary school to study medicine, and I dreamed of going to the university and becoming a doctor. "He is a rich man from the family Riyad, an engineer, and a cousin to one of President Assad's advisors!"61

I scowled. None of us even liked President Assad much.62

"You should be very grateful," my mother told me. "He has much money and will care for you."63

But I was not. Tarif was twelve years older than I was and had been married once before, back when he lived in the United States getting his graduate degree in electrical engineering at UCLA. He had married an American woman, and I was fiercely envious of her. I could not bear the thought that he had loved another woman before me, and one who no doubt far surpassed me in beauty with pale skin and luminous blue eyes as clear as the cloudless cerulean sky that stretched over the desert. They had a daughter together, I heard, but I wasn't sure if Tarif ever spoke to her anymore since he had come back to Syria after the divorce. 64

The Sunnis considered us Druzes to be heretical and un-Islamic, idolatrous Shias of the worst sort, and they deplored our mystical rituals and adoration of the saints. Nevertheless, Tarif's family always treated my family very well. We had deep ties, I was told, which was why they were honored to unite our families in marriage. Tarif's family was of mixed faith as well, because his mother had been a Christian woman married to a Sunni man. She had died when he was only four years old, and he confessed to remembering nothing about her but her hair, which was wavy and dark brown and glowed with burnt auburn streaks when the light shined on it. He would pull on it when he sat in her lap. 65

"Her name was Maryam, from the family Nuri," he said. I asked if he ever saw his mother's family anymore, and he said he did not. His father had remarried when he was six years old. The only other thing he remembered about his mother was the stories she used to tell him.66

"What stories?" I asked.67

"She told me stories from the Gospel, about the Christ, even though my father forbade it."68

"Like what?"69

"Something about the Jews accusing him of healing on their holy day. He healed a man in the synagogue on Saturday." But that was all he would say. 70

"How did your mother die?" I asked him.71

"I don't know."72

When Tarif talked about God, he talked mostly about the things God had allotted us in life; our son was retarded and lame, but that was simply what God had willed, as he would often say. Who could question it? He did pray, but not more than once or twice a day, I thought. He knew of his Christian relatives from his mother's family, but he never saw them. He had an uncle who was a priest. I had only been inside of a church once, and it was for our neighbor's wedding. I remember nothing but the icons, and the only ones I recognized were those of the Christ and his mother Mary.73

The back door opened, then slammed again with a loud, jarring bang. 74

"Mama!" 75

I turned towards the filthy little girl with feet covered in dust from running barefoot in the goat stalls, dark hair flying behind her in tangled strands. Dirt marred her old and faded clothes. If my husband was a rich man who could care for us well, it was impossible to tell in the village. Water was scarce and we did not wash often, let alone wash our clothes. 76

"What is it, Najma?" I asked. 77

"I saw Jews out there, in a truck."78

"What were they doing?" I asked, minding the dough and not looking at Najma. She was five years old and had just started at the village primary school, which was quite poor. The teacher was a dull young girl who had not even graduated from high school, and she cancelled classes every time she had to help her family with the farming. Najma did not even know her letters yet.79

"I don't know," she shook her head.80

"They must have crossed the border to sell supplies to the villagers," I suggested. Ever since the Israelis had taken over the Golan, our lives were constantly interrupted by the sight of their tanks and trucks passing through and patrolling the outlying areas. We were simple farming villages in the Golan, and nothing the Israelis ought to have given much care to. But they did sell us clothes and electronics and batteries, things we would have had to drive far into the town to buy ourselves. 81

"I saw the Jewish star," she said. That was what she called the Israeli flag. She giggled happy with herself, because her name meant "star" and she loved to say it. Sometimes we would sit outside at night and Najma would point to the constellations with quite a bit of pride, as if they somehow belonged to her. Tarif called her his little star. 82

"Relatives are coming today, Najma. Go wash your face and your feet," I urged her. "Ask Layla to help you." 83

Layla threw down the rolls of dough she had been kneading and herded Najma out to the faucet outside the way she herded the goats to bring them in from the rain. Najma danced happily on her way to be washed up. Suddenly Nur said,84

"You've burned the bread."85

I pulled it out from the oven rack. It was black around the edges and brittle as charred flint. 86

"A pity!" I scowled. "Almost seven years married and I still haven't learned to cook properly!"87

Nur did not say anything in return, but I did not expect her to. 88

When we lived in Damascus I would cook for us every night. When we were first married and lived in a small two-room apartment adjoining Tarif's parents', and I remember my futile attempts as an eighteen-year-old newlywed barely out of high school. 89

"What is this?" Tarif would scowl, tossing the spongy bread up from his plate and fingering it in disgust. Crumbs fell at the expensive silver-plated watch that dangled loosely on his wrist and he brushed them off in disgust. "Wa allah, they don't teach you to cook in the village." He tss-ed quietly, annoyed. I wanted to tell him that I had lived in Damascus since I was a child and did not consider myself a village girl anymore, but he would not have cared. The first time he had said something of the sort I had cried … cried right in front of him. As I lowered my head in disgrace and pressed my fingertips to my eyes to absorb the tears, he said, 90

"Don't cry. Is that how the women act in the village, hmm? Crying all the time?"91

The back door banged shut again, and Najma came skipping into the kitchen, clapping her freshly washed hands. 92

"Where is Layla?" I asked.93

"She stayed behind to talk to Anwar," Najma stated matter-of-factly.94

Nur tss-ed under her breath, shaking her head in desperate despair. "The dog," she muttered in anguish. She looked at me. "Go."95

"What?"96

"Go outside with her. We can't have her alone with that man. What will people say about us if they see them together alone?"97

I gladly left the kitchen, wandering slowly out into the mid-day warmth. Spring had come after a cold, dry winter that was sparse of rain. Shriveled brush shot up haphazardly like dried out skeletons, and the fruit trees bowed low over the parched grass, heavy with figs, olives, and tamarinds. It was a nice time in the village, I thought, when we could eat fresh oranges with breakfast instead of having to buy them from town. 98

I stood back. A short distance away my eyes caught sight of the spry hired hand, brown-skinned from the long hours he passed in the sun herding the goats and cattle. He caulked his head back and laughed hilariously, showing those awful yellowed teeth that were chipped and gapped where a few had fallen as casualties to his life of labor. I hated the lustful glint in his eyes as he let them wander around Layla's beauty. I stood with my arms across my chest, frowning. 99

"Yaaa!" he let out a long exclamation once the searing eyes perched on bony, protruding cheekbones found me. "Um Sami … " he let my name "Sami's mother" fall out lengthily from his lips. Instantly I grinded my teeth together in disgust, hating the vile tone of disrespect. 100

"You should call her 'Um al-ghabi'," Layla corrected him. "'The idiot's mother'." 101

He threw his head back once more and laughed uproariously. 102

"Did you come to follow your young cousin around and make sure she isn't getting into trouble, hmm?" Anwar looked down at me. Even though he wasn't a tall man, he was much taller than I was, and his crossed eyes stared down his crooked nose to pity me. 103

"Everyone in the village knows about it," I answered, my tone as blank and unexciting as the bland insides of a cooked potato. "That you are always flirting with her. Nur was ashamed of what people would say about us if they saw you two alone together."104

Anwar laughed again. I hated the sound of his laugh. He let out a very long, "Heeelllllwa," ("sweet", speaking of Layla). "She's sweet as white cream." He reached out his filthy hand of parched, reddened skin calloused from labor and put it on Layla's arm. He moved his hand slowly to her waist, as if to flaunt his shameful lack of decency to me, as there was nothing I could do about it. 105

"Layla, come to the kitchen and help cook at once!" I yelled, furious with rage. "Come, now, or I will call your father and he and Tarif together will smack that miserable wretch until he's as miserable as the pile of cow manure he reeks of!"106

Layla gave Anwar a parting glance. 107

"Those green eyes are like magic," he mentioned as we left. 108

"Layla, you miserable fool!" I berated her on the way back to the house. "You are a shameful, awful girl and you know you are!"109

"Oh, you keep your mouth shut, Iman. You should be glad my father lets you stay here the way your idiot son keeps spilling the milk and soiling the carpets."110

Nothing was said until we were back in the kitchen, and then we spoke of nothing but the food. We heard the rusty European import that my parents drove come to a halt at the top of the hill, and jovial voices calling out "marhaban" and "alhamdulillah ala salamtik". From the kitchen I saw Uncle Sameh push aside the vineyard vines that shrouded the outside of the old house and kiss my father and my great uncle Fahmi. I walked out after him with Najma holding my hand, leaving Nur and Layla behind. 111

"Iman, how are you, binti?" my father embraced me. I kissed my mother and told them I was well. Tarif and my father kissed, and once the obligatory formalities had concluded Uncle Sameh welcomed them inside the dim receiving room where he and Tarif had been smoking shisha. My great aunt and uncle – who were very old just as Uncle Sameh had said – were respectfully offered the plush sofa. The rest sat on the floor, cross-legged. My father and Tarif began at once to talk about politics, and my mother asked me about the children. 112

"An eternity has passed since we’ve visited!" she exaggerated. She kissed Najma a second time and told her how lovely she had become. She knew better than to ask where Sami was. Everyone knew that Sami was kept away, where people couldn't see him and be bothered by him. Once he started crying, Tarif gave me a sharp glare and widened his black eyes to urge me to go and shush him. 113

I pushed open the bedroom door just wide enough for me to squeeze through and shut it quickly behind me. 114

"Shh, Sami," I said. He beat his arms and legs wearily against the mattress. I put him in my lap and rubbed his back vigorously. "Are you hungry?" I stuck my finger in his wide mouth. I ran to the kitchen and mashed up some rice in a wooden cooking bowl and seized an orange from that morning's gleanings from the orchard and sliced it with a blunt knife. Patiently I spooned the mashed-up rice into his disobedient mouth, which would never open and close when I wanted it to, then squeezed juice from the sliced orange into it, though most of it fell in drops down his chin and squirted onto his already dirty shirt. Afterwards I rubbed his belly, trying to smile and make him feel happy. He was not. I wrapped him in the brown blanket embedded with years of dust that we kept on our bed and never washed. 115

"Wa allah, he cries so much," my great aunt Hind shook her head when I went back to join them. Nur had put down the large, round platters of goat meat and bread and hummus and figs – we never had meat except for very special occasions – and everyone had gathered around on the floor to eat. "God have mercy, your son is an idiot and can't walk," she muttered. I ignored her. I sat by Najma, laying one hand on her thigh to scold her to stop bouncing up and down on her knees. 116

Uncle Sameh said a blessing over the meal and we ate under a stark void of sound. No one spoke.117

Afterwards Layla and I cleared the platters. We drank tea and listened to Uncle Sameh argue with my father about selling the old farm we had abandoned when we moved to Damascus. 118

"You should sell it to us," Sameh insisted, striking the banana-flavored tobacco alit as he prepared another round of shisha for the men to smoke. "It's just going to waste, uncultivated. With that land I could buy six more goats and plant twenty more fruit trees!" 119

The other women and I dismissed ourselves to the kitchen, Najma bouncing happily behind us. Later she rushed back out the door play with the neighbor children down in the pond – a small, dug-out water hole where we got most of the drinking water for both us and the animals. It had dried up over the years and Anwar was working on digging a bigger one close by. 120

"Ah, money," my mother sighed as we sat on stools in the tiny kitchen that was still thick with the smells of cooked meat, a rare luxury. "I hate to hear the men argue about it."121

There was a silence as my mother slammed her glass teacup down on the cooking stove, then as we took in draughts of the lukewarm red tea, sweet with spoonfuls of sugar, my great aunt Hind said,122

"We need to tell Iman about Suzanne, since I suppose my husband is going to mention it to Tarif."123

"Who is Suzanne?" I asked. 124

My mother and Hind looked at each other, taking their time to down more slow gulps of tea, then my mother said,125

"Tarif's aunt – his mother's sister. She hasn't seen him since he was a little boy. She has cancer – a very vicious kind. She doesn't have long to live and she told his family that she wanted to see him before she dies. She is a sweet old woman, I believe. Tarif's family asked us to bring you all back to Damascus with us tonight and stay a few days with Suzanne and her husband Antwan in the old part of the city." 126

"Where in the old part of the city?"127

"They live on Straight Street, not far from the monastery there."128

I nodded. "It's a Christian neighborhood."129

"Yes."130

"Of course, they are my husband's family, it is just strange that we haven't met them," I mentioned, barely able to conceive of relatives who were complete strangers. How were we supposed to treat them? Like family or like strangers? 131

"Perhaps he remembers her." 132

"I don't think so," I shook my head, suddenly losing interest in my tea and I dumped the cold dregs down the drain and placed the glass cup in the metal pan for washing. "He's never mentioned an Aunt Suzanne, and he said he hasn't seen much of his mother's family since she died. What else do you know about them?"133

"They are relatively wealthy," my mother went on. "Antwan is a businessman who travels to France and Turkey. Their young granddaughter Mary stays with them some times – Tarif's niece? No, his cousin's daughter. She would be like a cousin to him."134

I nodded unexcitedly. "What about Sami?"135

"What about him?"136

"We can't take Sami."137

"Why not? Now, Iman, don't be proud."138

I swallowed, imagining the embarrassment of his incessant crying and soiling the carpets. But I could not leave him. I feared how Layla would treat him if she was left to look after him.139

"Iman, stop sounding unhappy. Stop frowning that way," my mother urged me, eyes widening. 140

"I'm not unhappy," I insisted. I watched the light pour through the windows and catch the blue glass amulet that Nur hung to ward off the evil eye. It cast translucent rays over the kitchen, long streaks of luminous blue arranged in a ring of patterns. I shook my head in my defense. 141

"You're always such an unhappy girl," she noted. 142

"No," I shook my head again. 143

We cleaned the cooking pans and scrubbed out the pots, gossiping about the family and the neighbors and old friends of ours back in Damascus to pass the time. As evening drew near, I called Najma in from playing and told her,144

"We're going to Damascus tonight."145

"Really?"146

"Yes, let's go pack clothes for us and Sami and Daddy. We're leaving with your grandparents."147

I took Tarif's suitcase – a Parisian import made of now cracked and faded leather – and threw in the clothes we wore most without thinking much about it. Suddenly Layla stood in the doorway, resting her heavy frame against the rotting, termite-eaten boards and smiling. 148

"So you're going to Damascus," she nodded to herself. "Aren't you worried that I'll get into trouble without you to look after me?" she mocked, thrusting her head behind her just as Anwar did when he laughed.149

"I trust your parents to watch after you," I answered bitterly. "And if they don't, then I trust that God will punish you," I added as I dressed Sami in warm flannel pants and a wool-lined parka, knowing it would be a cool night. 150

Tarif pushed past Layla into the bedroom, putting on the leather jacket he had owned since I met him. The sleeves on that jacket were a bit too long and just his fingertips showed beneath the sleeves.151

"Why are we going to Damascus?" Najma asked as I helped her put on her faded pink jacket that had some American cartoon character emblazoned on the front pocket. Months ago she had left some sticky peppermint candy in that pocket and it had melted into a gummy mess and stuck the pocket shut. 152

"Visiting Daddy's aunt. She's very sick."153

I lifted Sami and carried him on my hip. Tarif seized hold of the suitcase. We said goodbye to Uncle Sameh and Nur and as we walked out to the car I asked Tarif quietly,154

"Do you remember your Aunt Suzanne?"155

"I don't think so," he shook his head. "Maybe."156

"Maybe?" 157

"I remember someone who would visit and give me sweets. Someone whose lap I would sit on who wasn't my mother."158

The sun was setting across the vast expanse of hills where blossoming fruit trees tumbled down the precipice in bursts of white, all the deep colors of pink and gold melting into the horizon and bleeding together like overturned cans of oil paint. We squeezed into the small passenger sedan with musty-smelling insides and torn sand-colored upholstery, the three men all crowded in the front together and Najma in Tarif's lap, and the three of us women hip to hip in the back with Sami grasping onto my clothes with his fists and moaning every once in a while. 159

I rubbed Sami's back as the car moved jauntily down the unpaved hillside, into the bleeding colors of the auburn sunset. I hated the silence that suffocated any conversations we might have had as the daytime was quickly seized into night and we were speeding down the freeway, through the rows and rows of villages and flocks, into Damascus. 160

Old Damascus was little but row after row of cement block apartment buildings and brown stucco two-stories, all the same pale, dust-colored brown, shrouded under the blackness of night. The pale glows of dim and yellowed lamps lit the narrow streets. By the time we arrived, Sami had fallen asleep with his head resting on my shoulder. 161

"Straight Street," I heard my mother mention as we turned across the stone pavement, slowing a bit in the lifeless residential neighborhood. Some nights the evening crowds swarmed the packed streets in droves, but that night the streets were sparse of people. I recognized the historic St. Ananias' house – a Christian relic we had learned about in school. It was gated off from the tourists at night, slammed behind rigid bars. 162

The car pulled up at Aunt Suzanne's address. Tarif motioned for us to get out, Najma grasping tightly to his hand. He let go of Najma in favor of the suitcase. My mother and I exchanged kisses and Tarif leaned in close to my father in the driver's seat to say goodbye. 163

"Come," Tarif urged once my parents had driven off, herding me slightly with his elbow. I hoped Sami would not wake. 164

The staircase inside the apartment building was so blackened and void of light that I tripped trying to find the stairs. It smelled of old, musty stone and wood, the sweet smells of Damascene cooking, cigarette smoke and fruit-scented shisha. 165

"Up the stairs," Tarif motioned. 166

"Who are we visiting?" Najma asked loudly. 167

"Daddy's aunt," I told her for the second time. "Her name is Aunt Suzanne."168

At the top of the staircase we stopped, lingering in the dark hallway beside a heavy wooden door with the bronze knob exactly in the middle. The intricate carving in the wood had had probably been crafted over a hundred years ago. Tarif knocked. A moment later an old man peered through the crack, opening the door just slightly. He was short — mellow gray eyes a deeper color than his fading hair - and wore glasses.169

"Marahaban bikum!" a smile slowly formed on his aged face and he grasped hold of Tarif's hand. "Alhamdulillah ala salamtik. Welcome, welcome. Your name is Tarif Ibrahim?"170

He nodded. "Yes."171

"Suzanne's little nephew," he smiled, placing a hand on Tarif's shoulder. I smiled at the thought of Tarif being called "little", as if to Aunt Suzanne he had not aged past the small child she had last seem him as. "Welcome, welcome, come in," he urged us. "My name is Nabil. I am your Aunt Suzanne's husband."172

The inside of the apartment was warm and smoky, as if Nabil had just been interrupted from chaining a cigarette, and lamps lit the corners of the room with faint, quiet light – just enough to see by. The floors were laid with Turkish rugs, clever designs reflecting the craftsmanship of a true genius. A teenage girl stood up from the couch. She was a pretty girl with a complexion the soft colors of light rosy gold on her round cheeks, long, straight hair illuminated with a dark shine beneath the lamp light. She wore a golden cross around her neck.173

"And this is Mary," Nabil introduced her. "Our granddaughter."174

"Hello," she smiled.175

Tarif nodded and greeted her in return.176

"Sixteen years old," Nabil nodded proudly. "She wants to go study at the music institute in Beirut, just like your cousin Khalil. Do you remember Khalil?"177

Tarif nodded. "I do."178

Just then the old woman, Tarif's aunt, appeared from the shadows. She walked slowly, weakly, but with a smile forming on the taut and shriveled skin of her weary face. Her eyes glowed … eyes the color of honey. Her hair was light – perhaps she had dyed it – because it was a soft light brown, the color of camel's fur. She was clearly frail and rapidly waning out of health, yet she was full of a different sort of life. 179

"Ibni," she whispered. She placed a gnarled hand, given no finery but a solid wedding band, on Tarif's arm. "Last time I saw you, you were a little child … six years old! Welcome." 180

He smiled slightly. "A long time has passed. I pray that you are well."181

"Thank God," she nodded. 182

"This is my wife, Iman," he pointed at me. "From the Golan. Our children are Najma and Sami." He placed one hand – his good hand – on Najma's shoulder. He hid the bad one in his pocket.183

"Welcome, welcome," the old woman embraced me, leaving an exuberant kiss on my cheek. I smiled. 184

"I am honored to meet you."185

"And I am more honored." 186

"Mary, show them to their room," Nabil urged her. 187

"Come with me," she gestured, and we followed her to the back of the apartment to the spare bedroom.188

"You live here?" I asked.189

"No, I'm just staying to be with my grandmother and help care for her," she said. When she smiled the light caught her dark eyes. 190

As Tarif through the suitcase down beside the mattress, Sami awoke and began pounding his head against my shoulder. I wondered if he was hungry. 191

"Sami," Mary looked at him. 192

I put one hand over his head, a bit ashamed, and expecting a deluge of rude questions. 193

"He's beautiful," she smiled. "How old?"194

"Four," I answered. 195

She nodded. I think she knew that there was something wrong with him, because she said nothing more and politely abstained from asking questions. I did not want to tell her that he was an idiot and that he could not walk or chew his own food or control his bodily functions at his age. 196

"Will you drink tea or coffee?" Mary asked us as we took off our warm jackets and threw them down beside the mattress. 197

"Tea, thank you," Tarif told her, deciding for all of us. 198

She began to leave the room, and I looked at Tarif before following her and asked,199

"Should I leave Sami in here?"200

He shook his head. "Bring him."201

I could tell he needed his cloth diaper changed, but I ignored it. 202

"Sit, sit," Aunt Suzanne ordered us sternly once we were back in the living room together. Mary was preparing tea from the tarnished metal canister, marred with dross and dulled to a dismal shade of gray. 203

"Tarif, my little boy," she smiled proudly. She smelled of lavender perfume, I noticed as I sat down beside her across from my husband on the sofa. "Do you remember me?"204

"I don't know," he shook his head. "Did we visit you?"205

"Yes, yes," she nodded assuredly. "Many times. Your mother Maryam and I were very close. I used to hold you and sing hymns to you."206

"I remember," he nodded.207

"She loved you," Aunt Suzanne went on, as Nabil lit a cigarette and Mary poured the tea into glass cups. "She would tell me about how you were smarter than your brother Hassan."208

"Really?" Tarif blushed. I saw warmth erupt in his face. He was flattered, I could tell. 209

"Yes. Hassan – the little devil – used to mistreat you, and she didn’t like it. How he threw you in the mud puddles and dragged you around by the back of your shirt just because you were smaller than he was. She told me that you were smarter. She said you would become a doctor or an engineer."210

His face turned a deeper crimson, yet he smiled. "Thanks to God," he defused it.211

"You say you are from the Golan, dear," she looked at me. 212

"Yes," I nodded. 213

"I've never been. But I hear it is lovely."214

I nodded. 215

"What a lovely young lady," she said about me, to no one in particular. "And your children … "216

I was still holding Sami. My eyes wandered around the photographs on the walls – they were of no one who I recognized from Tarif's family – and the icons of the Christ and his saints. Gold ridges outlined the stoic face of a somber depiction of him, and his deep brown eyes followed whoever happened to be looking. 217

"Do you remember your mother Maryam?" Aunt Suzanne asked, and I was glad the conversation had not focused in on Sami. They all knew about Sami, I guessed. Someone had already told them everything. That was why they weren't asking about him.218

"Yes, yes," he nodded quickly, hands still deep in the pockets of his pants. "I do remember her. Tell me about her."219

Aunt Suzanne smiled. "She loved you," she said again. There was a pause. I could tell Tarif was uncomfortable. "She was pregnant with a little girl before she died, but she lost the baby. I wanted to think she was a good girl – she was my little sister and we were very close – but actually you are lucky any of the family still spoke to her after she went off and married a Muslim man against our parents' wishes," she shook her head unhappily. 220

"They forbade it?"221

"Well, they tried to forbid it. But your father's family was wealthy and influential. It was hard to refuse them when they were quite persuasive. They had government ties. But they were very angry at Maryam. They called her a prostitute and all other sorts of horrible names. No one knew why she married Ibrahim, and I doubted that she was happy after she did. But she was happy when she had you and Hassan. You were her life."222

"She wore a gold necklace," suddenly he remembered. "I remember sitting in her lap and pulling on it," he smiled.223

"Yes, you have a good memory." Then she sighed. "She wasn't the only rebellious one from the family Nuri. Khalil, your cousin, who is just your age, moved to Jamaica all by himself when he was eighteen. He dropped out of the music institute in Beirut and moved far away. No one knew why."224

"Yes, I do remember Khalil," he said, taking a long sip from his cup of tea. "We played together. I remember that."225

Suddenly Suzanne rose from her seat. She snapped her fingers, as if a deep insight had suddenly come to her. She grabbed a dusty book of photographs off the shelf, made of a withered and stretched-out red leather. 226

"Look," she handed it to him with a shaky hand. "There are pictures of you in there as a small boy."227

Tarif smiled as he fingered through the pages of peeling plastic. I moved next to him so that I could look over his shoulder. There was a stoic-faced Tarif at age five or so, ears jutting out from either side of his head. We passed through faded color photographs of the family's seaside vacations in Beirut, the children's graduations from secondary school – the boys dressed proudly in stiff black suits and the girls in dark blue skirts and white blouses with red bows at the collar. Suddenly Tarif placed his finger down on the page, black eyes widening.228

"This is my mother?" he asked, passing the photo album to Suzanne.229

"Yes, yes, that is my sister Maryam."230

Tarif stared down silently at the photograph in reverence. 231

"I remember her," he repeated. 232

We passed the rest of the evening watching Al-Jazeera and downing second cups of tea. Nabil offered Tarif a cigarette, which he smoked, even though he did not smoke cigarettes very often. That was when Sami began screaming and pounding his fists; I took him quietly to the other room. 233