More than his school exams on chemistry and the Koran, more than the drama of Leah’s pregnancy, more than the armies crisscrossing the world, Shafiq was obsessed with one all-consuming thought: how to teach Kathmiya her letters.
He didn’t have books from back when he went to elementary school dressed in hand-made jumpers. And anyway, he didn’t want to insult Kathmiya with materials made for little kids. So he brought her a map of the world he’d saved from a magazine.
“That’s India,” he pointed, watching her face as she pored over the shapes of countries. “This is Iraq,” he added. “The best country, of course.”
Shafiq’s patriotism had taken a beating during the riots, but his childhood had been dipped in so many nationalist anthems he could hardly separate the optimism of youth from his love of country.
“Iraq.” He pointed. “And India.” Kathmiya looked so determined and fetching. The sun was streaming in through the bare windows in the second-floor room of Leah and Salim’s house, where the two teens crouched together on mottled brown floor cushions.
“But, how do you read?” she entreated.
Shafiq looked down at his hands. He didn’t want to condescend, but there was only one place to begin. “Alef, ba, ta, tha, jim, ha, kha…” He was singing the alphabet like a six-year old.
“Alef, ba, tha, ta… you’re going too fast!” she complained delightedly.
So he started again, three letters at a time, until she knew it better than how to scrape blackened rice off an iron pot.
They sang together boisterously, like sailors at a drinking fest, swaying back and forth to the little baby tune. Shafiq hoped she would stay stuck on that lesson for, oh, about a year and take another year to learn which letters matched the sounds and another to write words, so that by the time she was ready to read a sentence he’d be old enough to write a note that said…
“Hey there.” It was Naji, looking at Kathmiya while he pretended to talk to Shafiq. “I brought you these.” He held out two bright oranges. To Shafiq they looked like grenades. His emotions started crashing: Naji, his favorite brother, handsome and charming and all the more infuriating for it. Son of a whore, get out! Shafiq thought, instantly depressed for insulting his brother and their mother at once.
Kathmiya reached out her hand, and just like every ball that Naji touched, the orange obeyed him and dropped gracefully into her palm. Shafiq could barely mutter “I’m not hungry” before looking back down at the map. Do they have these problems in India? he wondered. ’Cause I think I’m gonna move there.
If nothing else, school had taught Shafiq enough Alef, Ba to impress Kathmiya. But he had to wonder what else it was good for when Ezra, the most studious one in the family, ran straight to the gates of law school only to watch them slam in his face.
“Oh, yeah!” Omar came rushing in to Shafiq’s living room. “Anwar made it!”
“Fantastic!” Shafiq had expected that.
“So when’s Ezra going up to the capital?” Omar asked.
“Ah, we’re stuck with him in Basra.”
“Yeah, sure.” Omar didn’t even consider that Ezra had been rejected. “We’re gonna visit our brothers in Baghdad and go to the horse races, right?”
“Right, but—” Shafiq couldn’t think of a line, much less explain. Omar, also his “brother,” could con a market full of shoppers but he wouldn’t be able to wrestle this one to the ground. Shafiq would have a long list of ways to describe Omar before he ever got to Sunni, and that went both ways. No doubt Omar didn’t think of Ezra any more as a Jew than Shafiq’s family saw him as a Muslim. As stupid as it sounded, it was also wonderful: Omar plain forgot that Ezra was different. “He got rejected,” Shafiq finally said.
Omar looked confused for a moment, but then quickly recovered with a fresh idea. “Hey, now he can go to the American University of Beirut!”
“Sure.” Shafiq went along.
“No, really—I hear they have lots of parties, and don’t forget, the school is coed!”
“Yaba, yaba—that’s better than horse races.” Shafiq laughed, but he knew it would be harder for Ezra to see the possibilities.
“They took three Jews out of the whole Basra province,” Ezra railed to his brothers that evening as the bright blue sky faded to pale lavender. “I probably came in fourth.”
They were stretching under a mulberry tree in front of the house.
“There’s always American University in Beirut,” Shafiq tried. “You know, they accept girls, too.”
“Oh, yeah!” cheered Naji.
“But how can I leave you all? Baba’s not so young,” said Ezra stoically.
“Baba’s healthier than any of us,” Naji pointed out. Shafiq thought of Omar’s father in that dark living room with his frail legs looking like onionskins that would break if you touched them.
“I still have to be here to recite the Kaddish in case anything happens.” Ezra pouted.
“He’s not dying,”
“You go, Naji. Next year you go to University in Beirut,” Ezra said. “I mean, if you don’t manage to be one of the top three Jews in the southern part of this whole stupid country.”
“I’m not running in that race. We’re not any of us going to make it as lawyers or doctors,” Naji said. “But who needs prestige and money when you can have fun?”
Ezra sneered. “I’ll be having fun working as an Iraq Railways clerk for the rest of my life, is that what you’re trying to say?”
Shafiq knew Ezra had reasons for being angry, but that frown…it reminded him of when they walked through the streets together during the riots. Etched on, with set eyes to match.
“See, that’s your problem, you don’t think big. But I have an idea,” Naji said. A breeze rustled the tree’s leaves and cooled them all. “We open the first cinema house in Old Basra. Show the latest movies from Egypt, even from America. People won’t have to go all the way to Ashar to see them anymore.”
“I can’t even get accepted to law school and you think I can be a movie mogul?”
“Since you can’t think for yourself, yes,” Naji countered. “Let them all do law and deal with small-time criminals smuggling carpets from Iran. You and me, we’ll be working with Egyptian belly dancers and American blondes.”
“Fantastic!” Shafiq was all for the idea.
“And how are we supposed to pay for this?” asked Ezra.
“Our father can help.” Naji stood up to shake off the extra energy that his own idea inspired. “He’ll give us the money to get started.”
“You still haven’t even finished high school.”
“I have one year left but after that I’m free. Meanwhile, you take a job—any job, at the train station, whatever—but just until I get out. Then we’ll rent a place and order the films and screen them, and, well, charge admission of course.”
Ezra still looked skeptical, but Naji was beaming. “I have a name for the place. Can you guess?” he challenged.
“Uh…the Town Movie House?” Ezra tried.
“How plain can you be?” Naji rolled his eyes. “Lucky you have me as a partner. Picture this,” he said, flashing his hands across the air as if to frame a marquee: “The Roxy!”
Ezra laughed. “You don’t need to go to Baghdad. You are already halfway to Hollywood.”
“Wanna come with me then?”
“It’ll never lead to law school,” said Ezra, reluctant. “But I guess why not,” he added, a rare, faint smile capturing his mouth.
“Oh, yeah!” said Naji, jumping up, grabbing a tree branch above with both hands, and doing a set of pull-ups in celebration.
Watching Naji’s brown muscles flex in the sun, Shafiq almost forgave him. Stupid perfect Naji, charming everyone in sight. He shouldn’t screen movies—he should star in them.
Shafiq always made sure to be alone with Kathmiya for her writing lessons. He pointed to words and mouthed sounds and put his hand over hers to guide the pen in the right sloping direction.
Her perspective was so fresh, like the smell of morning in summertime, that he experienced a startling appreciation for the Arabic language. How could he never have noticed the amazing way that letters changed their shape depending on what they were next to? That words changed their sounds just to rhyme? That they had different singular, plural and dual nouns, as well as masculine, feminine and neutral genders?
Kathmiya’s extra-deliberate calligraphy showed him how magical it was.
Each time he went, he was spellbound, sneaking up to the second-floor room, feeling the sun warm their backs, dreaming of a kiss. It was almost more than he could take, but still not nearly enough.