CHAPTER

10

SHE’D TOSSED, reawakening in the hours before dawn, then lain sleepless in bed, running her fingertip over the pendant on her chest, Nefertiti’s tiny bas-relief features. She remembered the other night at the dinner party, Eduardo had asked what had drawn her father to fencing. “Honestly,” she’d told him, “I didn’t even know that he’d fenced until he got the invitation.”

He’d smiled. “Fencers give nothing away.”

The bedroom was cool in the early morning. Shivering, Amani finally threw back her covers. She sat up and rooted through the blankets for her T-shirt and jeans. Moving quietly through the kitchen, she made a cup of Nescafé and brought the steaming cup back upstairs. At her desk, she studied the letter: her grandmother’s pen had left a faint impression on the paper. The dim lights of the city glowed in her window: three a.m., too early even for the first call to prayer. She reread a poem she’d been laboring over for weeks, pressed her lips together in frustration. Finally, she hit the X key over and over, then highlighted the whole thing and hit Delete. The office chair creaked as she rocked to her feet, to rummage through some of the books stacked on the floor—all found at the marketplace stalls around the town center: the translated works of Nawal El Saadawi, Liyana Badr, Adonis, Amos Oz, Hanan al-Shaykh. There were several works in Arabic that she couldn’t read but loved for the way the covers were engraved with golden calligraphy—fairy tales, poetry, and legends, according to the booksellers, men in threadbare robes, their keffiyehs twisted in folds around their heads.

Amani once had an idea of what poetry was supposed to be. Something to do with language and compression and observation. She’d thought that one was meant to write fearlessly—as a book reviewer had said she had done in her collection. But she’d begun to lose faith. It seemed as if it wasn’t worth so much to write fearlessly if you didn’t know what to fear. She’d started to think maybe it was more courageous just to be afraid.

That afternoon, Omar came over and he, Gabe, and Amani took a cab to Hafez and Carole’s house in Abdoun. They got out at busy Zaghloul Street, passed rows of ivory-colored buildings, then turned onto a lane lined with fragrant, dreamy eucalyptus. Hafez’s house overlooked a glass-tile front courtyard and a splashing fountain. The white roof and surrounding treetops seemed to be sheared away by the low sun. It retreated behind distant clouds, and for a moment Amani felt loosened from things—lighter, as if she’d lost her bearings. Omar was scolding Gabe: the fencing match! This was not the time for drinking and feasting. “Amo, we should be at the gym right now,” he said, walking backwards to frown at his uncle.

“It’s just for show,” Gabe repeated patiently. “Not a real match. Ninety percent sitting and talking, ten percent fencing.”

They turned up the stone walkway: the sounds of laughter came through the door. Her father stopped on the front step. “There’s a hefleh.” A party. “He said it was just going to be a little get-together.”

Omar bent to peer through one of the windows. “It’s Hafez. This is a little get-together.”

Amani glanced at the forms moving behind translucent curtain panels. She knocked and the door eased open. A commotion of greetings overtook them as they entered. Gabe and Omar accepted glasses of araq. Amani smiled a bit deliberately, moving her eyes around the room. She kept thinking about the woman at the party saying—Ask your uncle. Her lipsticked smile: He knows where all the skeletons are buried.

“Aha—people I’m actually happy to see!” Hafez declared, throwing his arms around Gabe, and several people laughed. There were great-uncles, second cousins, a few neighbors with adult children with their own small children. “Look at this. It’s like Bedu at Wadi Rum and their ten thousand relations.”

“He invites everyone then complains when they come.” Carole put a glass of wine in Amani’s hand. “This is my life. I don’t know who half these people are. They just appear on the lawn.” She waved a hand. “Meanwhile, you two . . .” She turned to Gabe. “I was starting to wonder what we’d have to do to bring you for a proper visit. It’s like waiting for Italian movie stars.”

Hafez steered Gabe to a gathering of men seated in a ring on chairs and couches in the main living area: a blue cloud of cigarette smoke floated over their heads. “Come, come. Let me play host. Did you know that in Arabic the word for ‘host’ and ‘torturer’ is the same thing?” He slapped Gabe’s back with a laugh. “Look here—a roomful of power brokers, y’akhi—a bunch of desert sheikhs. These guys, they own all the well water.” Gabe shot Amani an anxious backward glance as Hafez ushered him in.

She watched the two brothers together. Hafez was larger than her father, with an energy that seemed to swing just as easily toward menace as charisma. Something had shifted incrementally in her view of her uncle. Carole brought Amani to the parlor, where the women were deep in gossip, switching casually between Arabic and English. Several embraced Amani, kissing and pinching her cheeks as if she were twelve. After patting her legs and asking politely in English how she was and how was her father, they turned back to their conversation in Arabic. She sank into the couch, her eyelids heavy. After what seemed hours of drowsy listening, Amani was relieved when she saw Omar appear in the crowd of women.

“Omar, no, no.” Carole stood. “Out. Please. Go back to the men. Dinner will be served in two minutes.”

“I was telling Amani the other day about your pine-syrup drink—do you think we could have some?”

“Oh, that sounds interesting.” Amani stood.

Annoyed, Carole tried again to dismiss Omar but he laced his hands together, pleading. “Aw, please. It’s the best stuff—like delicious medicine. Auntie does all these syrups and spice mixes right here in the house.”

Carole scowled but then her face softened. “Shu, Omar?” What now. She gestured toward the back of the house. “Go tell Mrs. Ward to give you some in the kitchen. Then Amani, promise you’ll come to me—we can eat out on the terrace, where the younger set are.” She put her hand on Amani’s forearm.

In the kitchen, Sadia and Mrs. Ward hurried between the refrigerator, sink, and counters. Soros, the old landscaper, was washing dishes, a wrathful expression on his lined face. Mrs. Ward glanced at Amani but didn’t stop moving. Sadia huffed and lifted big pots, making obvious circuits around Amani and Omar. They tried to move out of the way. “Thank you,” Amani mumbled to her cousin.

But more relatives came into the kitchen. More kisses. Someone asked about her dear husband, and she said, oh he’s fine. A great-uncle kept asking her questions in English about her “studies” while not understanding her answers. Carole walked through, announcing that anyone who wanted to eat mansaf with their hands would have to go to the side porch. “The rest of us will be given silverware at the table.”

Eventually, Soros looked over from the sink and snapped at them in Arabic; Amani understood something about donkeys taking up space. She excused herself to go to the bathroom. On her way through the living room, Uncle Hafez himself approached her. “My dear one.” He put an arm around her. “I’m so glad you’re here. Are you enjoying yourself?”

She felt that momentary hitch. And he smiled and said, “Oh, of course you’re not. I know, my dear.”

They moved—or he drew them—around a corner, so they stood in a hallway. “The first weeks in a foreign country are terrible. You can be anywhere. Monaco to Zimbabwe. One always asks oneself, Now, exactly why am I here? It’s even worse for you Americans, I think. You’re so unused to travel.”

Now Amani smiled. “That sounds more like a character failing than a reason for sympathy.”

Hafez waved this away. “Not at all. Look at your poor dad. He grew up here and he seems absolutely paralyzed.”

Amani tried to peer around the corner but saw only a crowd of men waving cigarettes.

“I wish we’d had more time together, when you were growing up,” he said, a tenderness in his face. It was the very same thought she’d had as a child. It had always been so exciting—those rare occasions when Uncle Hafez suddenly appeared at their house, as if from a puff of smoke. “But you’re here now—alhamdullilah! There are such places I’d like to show you.”

“I’d love that,” Amani said. “I’ve barely been outside of Amman. I hear I should see the Crusader Castles.”

“This is an important time for you here, I think. Maybe more than a visit.” Hafez’s face was solemn. “This is your heritage, after all.”

“Absolutely. And I’m so glad you managed to bring us over.”

“Sometimes the mountain must come to Muhammad,” he said with a chuckle.

“I think this is such an important trip too. I want to learn this place. I want to know about Natalia. My father never told me—just—much of anything.”

Hafez’s smile deepened, but there was something fixed about his eyes and she felt he wasn’t quite looking at her. “Which doesn’t surprise me.”

“I used to ask, but he said he couldn’t remember. He always says carpenters aren’t paid to think.”

“You can ask me anything you like, my dear,” he said, opening his arms expansively.

“I just want to know who she was.” Amani felt slightly breathless, the pressure of unformulated questions. “I have so little sense of her as a person.”

“As a person? Oh, I think children have no idea who their parents are. If they’re lucky. I can tell you that your grandmother was obsessed with reading and writing. She clung to these forms of escape. She was ruined by the loss of her original home and family, which led to raising a family that was . . . intensely challenged.” He spoke in a blunt, matter-of-fact way.

Amani blinked, eyebrows lifting.

Her uncle placed one hand against his chest. “Honestly? Your grandmother was weak. A weak individual. I’m being totally candid with you. She was self-centered and not very interested in her kids. She wrote compulsively—to no end. She went a bit mad, I think. These are harsh things to say about one’s mother. No matter how true. At a certain point, your father, and Farouq, and I were more or less left to raise ourselves.”

Something shifted in Amani’s face. “She went mad? But—Dad never—”

Hafez shook his head. “No, no, not raving. Nothing exciting. She went mad the way the Palestinians do: from a fatal obsession with what’s lost.”

One of the sheikhs emerged from a back room and called to Hafez. “Not to worry my dear,” he told Amani. “Family first. We’re built on that wonderful old Arab expression—what is it? ‘Me against my brother, my brother and I against the stranger?’ ” He nodded at her briefly before excusing himself. “There is time,” he said. “We will talk about everything.” She looked after him. When she’d mentioned Natalia, Hafez’s eyes had gone so still. It was one thing to invite questions, apparently, and quite another to have them asked. His answer was either very honest or very angry, she thought. And had also felt like a challenge.

Amani turned down the corridor, in search of the restroom. Always so many cups of tea at these things. The house was bigger than she’d remembered. The master and guest bedrooms were in the wing to the left, off the kitchen. To the right was another dim passage. Amani walked down the tile corridor, and the party noise dropped off as if muffled by a veil. Amani peered through the first open doorway; it was a small, plain bedroom, evidently for one of the staff. The next door was closed. She moved on and found a bathroom at the end of the hall, but then noticed that it was filled with someone’s personal effects—soaps, razor, and medicines—clearly not for guests. She used it quickly, making sure to straighten the towels.

On her way back to the party, Amani stopped again to look at the closed door. It had an old-fashioned cut-glass knob on a bronze plate. She had the most uncanny sensation that there was someone in that room. Tipping her head to the door panel, she wondered if she heard breathing. Amani looked around, then squatted. Light shone through a large keyhole. She put her hands on the door and peered through the hole, then stood and rapped softly. After a moment, she turned the knob. There was no one there, just two narrow mattresses pressed against opposite walls, rough, polyester bedspreads on each, flat pillows, a single shared nightstand and lamp with a yellowing shade. She went in, looking around. On one side, the bedspread was iron-straight and tucked at the corners. The other bed was just a mattress covered with a fitted sheet. A few pieces of furniture were shrouded in drop cloths and the corner of a wooden armoire was visible. The walls were bare, aside from a single ornament hanging from a chain: a ceramic blue hand with an eye in the center of its palm.

She turned, her senses seeming to dilate; she saw each tiny fissure in the wall, the grain of the dust cloths. She heard the drum of her pulse in her ears, then froze at the sound of someone approaching. Omar appeared in the hallway and she felt a dizzy rush of breath. “Jesus. You scared me.”

“Yo—this is, like, the servants’ part of the house.” He leaned inside the doorframe. “Those boys out there are getting wasted. If you’re spying you better hurry. I think Sadia likes to sneak cigs back here when no one’s watching.”

“Yeah. I’d want a hideaway too.” Amani touched the old armoire. It was small but well-made with panels and drawers with batwing pulls, decorative plates down the front. Her father would be able to take one look and say something like federal, or regency, or late French Renaissance.

“Cuz, I don’t know about this.” Omar still hung back in the doorway, looking over one shoulder as if expecting someone to appear. “I think I’m getting creeped out.”

“Wait—wait.” Amani noticed an open wooden box filled with old-fashioned costume jewelry—faux pearl bracelets and brooches. “So check this out.”

“What the fuck.” Omar came into the room and picked up a silver cuff. “What is all this?”

She took an earring with a big blue stone and held it up to her ear in the mirror. Settling on the side of the bed, she picked through the pieces—a pin covered with green rhinestones, a cameo, some gold chains.

Omar looked around the room. “What’s in this thing?” He opened the big wooden armoire and there was a scent of cedar and eucalyptus and linen. Amani returned the jewelry to the wooden box and went to peer into the armoire. A few embroidered dresses hung from wooden hangers. There were painted ceramic plates, a shelf filled with classics: Candide, Middlemarch, Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, Don Quixote. Under a lower row of unpainted shelves, she noticed a narrow drawer. Inside was an onionskin envelope.

Removing it, Amani sat back on the edge of the bed. The envelope was filled with scraps of blue paper and aerograms. They appeared to have been torn apart and crumpled, then carefully smoothed out. “This is Natalia’s handwriting.” She leaned over them, sifting through the pieces. “Some of it’s in English. They look like poems. Or meditations? Just—pieces of things, it looks like. Fits and starts.” She read:

The wind blew up the scent of tea and saffron and these too were the creations of storybooks. Princess Rosemary walked the earth in her robes of green, her power of good and evil: to make you remember to never let go. Because magical power is like that—good and evil both.

Among the scraps, she found a small fragment of a black-and-white photograph: a teenaged boy sitting cross-legged. “Doesn’t this look a little like my dad?” She showed it to Omar, who shrugged.

“Well, that’s cool yet depressing,” Omar said; he returned to the doorway and poked his head out. “What do you say, let’s get out of here.”

“I think this is all her stuff.” Amani looked around. “Hafez must’ve taken it out of the old house in Yara.”

“And stashed it here like the psycho he is,” Omar said. “Like in a museum.”

“Or a mausoleum,” Amani muttered, turning the photograph in her fingers. She returned the picture to the onionskin envelope, which she slid into her shoulder bag.

“Excellent,” Omar said. “Hang on to the evidence.”

Someone appeared at the start of the corridor. “Hold up,” Omar muttered. He went forward to intercept the person. She heard him launch into a cheerful volley of Arabic.

She left the room, quietly closing the door behind her. Breezing up the hallway, she passed Omar and another of their cousins, a woman with kohl-lined eyes whose name she’d forgotten. “Nope—that wasn’t the guest bathroom,” Amani said.

Her father was with a clutch of men sitting on cushions outside on the verandah. The air around them was sweet with the vapor rising from bottles of araq. She bent to his ear. “Want to get out of here?” She stood and waved to the others. “Sorry. Got to head out—poetry calls.” Farouq was there holding a drink with both hands, his face puffy. “Ya bint!” he croaked at Amani. Girl. “Sit with us—have a drink. We’re tired of each other.” He slapped a seat.

It took Gabe a minute to unfold himself from the low cushion and push himself upright. “Okay, okay.” He waved to the others as if they were far away. “Time to go now, bye-bye.”

The others called after them, “Where are you going? Y’akhi. Come back!” Amani let her father lead her to the door, as if she needed the help. Omar took her opposite arm. Gabe waved without turning to look back.