Tunis, January 13, 2011
Two days with my grandparents. Two days of tears and laughter. Two days when the past married the present to give birth to me: Lila, the Canadian, the Tunisian, the hybrid, the incomprehensible dream. Time heals all wounds, they say. I’m not so sure. I didn’t even have a past. Only the present counted for me. But all at once, gaping wounds opened up in my heart. One after another, like shots fired in quick succession. My mother’s flight, her marriage to my father, meeting my grandparents.
They lived a modest life in their old Arab-style house: two tiny rooms, a kitchen, and an inner courtyard. No bathroom, just a miniature squat toilet with a sink so small you could barely wash your hands, and above it a mirror stained from the damp.
“Don’t they take showers here, or what?” I asked Mom, a little disturbed by the primitive facilities.
I’d spoken softly to avoid being overheard, but grandma’s antennae picked up my voice.
“What does your daughter want?” she asked, glancing at Mom with an inquisitive smile.
Grandma talked to Mom like a guest she was trying to please. She was still treading gingerly. With each word, each silence, each glance, the past would come rushing back. She didn’t wait for an answer, and Mom was still looking for the right words. In a mixture of Arabic and French, which I easily understood, she said: “You want . . . shower? I put on water to heat. You shower in toilet . . .”
Mom interrupted politely. “Lila doesn’t really need to take a shower. She only wants to know where you usually take one. Don’t bother, Ommi, no need to heat water. She had a shower yesterday at Neila’s.”
Then she told me: “Lila, Arab houses don’t usually have a bathroom, because people go to the hammam. There’s one at every street corner, daytime for men, evenings for women and children.”
I’d asked a simple question. Now I was getting more information than I could assimilate.
Meanwhile, Mom couldn’t stop kissing her parents. Once on the right cheek, once on the left cheek, once on the forehead, and once on the right hand. I found my granddad Ali polite and gentle. He spoke to me in French, which irritated his wife, because she couldn’t understand every word. It was one of those rare times when he could get the better of her.
Grandma Fatma wasn’t mean, but I did find her a little excessive in the way she looked at you, the way she talked, the way she expressed her feelings.
The room where we spent our first night together also made do as a living room. There were two wooden beds, both a kind of narrow sofa bed with armrests and a backrest. They were decorated with little cushions. A foam mattress covered with the same fabric as the cushions provided enough space to sit down comfortably and even to stretch out. In the middle of the room was a low table with a vase full of plastic flowers. An outsize painting — a lugubrious still life — covered most of one wall. I wondered just where my grandparents had found such a monstrosity. An old television set stood in one corner, and next to it, shelves full of worn-out books. Atop those same shelves was a photo of me as a baby — I must have been two or three — in Andrew Haydon Park, in Ottawa, staring at the wild geese.
The entire evening, all Mom could do was ask questions. My grandparents did their best to answer. “Whatever became of little Najwa?” Mom asked Grandma Fatma.
“She never finished school. Hedia, her mother, could never make ends meet, even with the money her poor husband left her when he died. Six children, what can you do? So Najwa got married to a doctor who went to work in Saudi Arabia. She came to see us once or twice. Really put on weight. It was hard for her even to move around. But she was just as affectionate as ever.”
Mom seemed disappointed by Najwa’s story; her eyes turned sad once more. Grandma Fatma went on: “Next time she comes to see me, I’ll ask her to talk to you over the computer. Everybody uses skee or skibe or something like that. You talk to the computer and the other person answers you. I saw our neighbour talking to her son who lives in France. Here, all we have is a telephone, and it barely works.”
She glanced at the timeworn set, which looked like a relic from an old film. It sat atop a small table in one corner of the room.
Mom responded: “That’s a good idea. Ask her to call me on Skype, that’s what they call it. I loved Najwa. How I’d like to talk to her after all these years. We’d have so much to tell each other.”
I was having trouble keeping track of what they were saying. I didn’t know Najwa or any of the other people whose names kept popping up in the lively conversation between Mom and her parents.
I thought of my dad. Why had these people — my mother’s own family — rejected him? Why did they never accept him as a son-in-law? And, as though Grandma had read my thoughts, she surprised me when she said: “Ya Lila, you look just like your mother, like two drops of water, except for your eyes, they’re your father’s. He must feel so alone, that poor Iskander. You left him to fend for himself, you and your mother. No wife to prepare his meals, no daughter to keep him company.”
Her eyes were glinting maliciously. I couldn’t tell whether she was being sincere or sarcastic. Mom, whose face tensed at the sound of the Arabic version of my dad’s name, suddenly relaxed. Grandma’s question, sincere or not, had touched the secret doorway, the one everyone was thinking about, the one that put everybody on edge.
“Alex is doing just fine, Ommi. I left him plenty of food in the freezer. And what’s more, he’s a good cook. He can look after himself just fine. A few more days, and we’ll all be together, insha’Allah.”
Grandma was surprised, and her curious look gave her away: “What does he know how to cook, anyway? Tagines, soups, couscous? Does he know our cooking?”
“He knows everything. We learned together. I remembered the things I used to eat when I was a little girl and I tried to prepare them, and he helped me out.”
Fatma was wide-eyed. Granddad dropped in a word: “One day, he’ll come and sample one of your delicious dishes, ya Fatma!”
She fell silent; it was as though she already regretted that Granddad had gone so far.
The little heater in the middle of the living room cast its flickering blue light over us. The atmosphere was sweet and melancholy at the same time; Mom leaned over toward her mother and took her in her arms. A long, touching embrace. I could feel the tears running down my cheeks. Granddad stepped outside. I watched his shadow move along one of the walls. Then he slowly disappeared in the darkness.