Starving at the Dinner Table

It happened every day at the dinner table. Everyone would get their daily dose of praise and adulation and leave feeling happy. Everyone except me.

It always began the same way. Saqr would ask his children what they did that day. They would rush to answer, launching into a performance they’d rehearsed many times. The Arabic teacher liked my essay. They selected me to be on the show about Kuwaiti students. Ms. Wafaa praised my recitation. Convening these sessions was the perfect way for Saqr to convince the members of his family that they were better than others, that God had favored them over His other creations by granting them the privilege of belonging to this holy house. His house. God’s chosen house.

I followed the conversation from the deepest of the wounds I’d acquired after my parents died. I could feel their hands reaching deep inside me and pulling the scabs off, could feel the pus oozing out, listening to this dialogue between the proud father and his even prouder children, everyone bragging about the other and repeating their virtues. Every atom of my body wanted to walk onstage and join the scene, to enter the blessed spotlight of love and acceptance. I found myself listening through one of the holes in my loneliness to the conversations at the table, my eyes as wide as the disaster itself, my heart starving.

With time I started to feign deafness. I got so good at pretending that I eventually grew deaf. The voices coming out of their mouths turned into a kind of hum. The world hummed while I chewed. I now knew people could blot out their senses if they wanted to. This brought me a kind of relief. Deafness swallowed me up and the more it did the deeper I sank into a gauzy haze. Years later I learned that this blue fog was poetry.

One time I tried to play along. I’d gotten a good grade on a math test after doing poorly at school in the months following the accident, and I brought the test with me. I folded the paper and hid it in my pocket, hungrily anticipating the moment Saqr would glance my way. He didn’t. When he had nothing else to say he belched and shook his hands so bits of rice flew across the table.

“Thanks be to God,” he said, standing up and wiping his tongue across his teeth.

The only thing Saqr was interested in when it came to me was the discovery of a new flaw. He hadn’t looked at me the entire time.

“Saqr?”

“Yes.”

I took the paper out of my pocket and slid it over it to him. Seventeen and a half out of twenty. My parents died nine months ago and this was the best grade I’d gotten since the car rolled over and the world turned upside down. Here I am, Saqr, filled with despair and knocking at the doors of your happy paradise. Say something nice to me to keep me going, before the ugliness takes over completely.

“What’s this?”

“A math test.”

“You got seventeen and a half out of twenty?”

“Yes.”

“Ooof. Why?”

My body was paralyzed from the force of the surprise. A laugh escaped from Wadha’s mouth.

“Shame on you!” whispered Badriya.

Saqr put his hand on my shoulder. “Work harder next time.”

I struggled to open my mouth. “Seventeen and a half out of twenty isn’t good?”

“No, it’s not good.”

“Why isn’t it good?”

He asked his children, “What do you think, is seventeen and a half out of twenty good?”

“Not good!”

“Why not?”

They raised their hands like they were in a classroom. Me! Me! Me! They fought with each other to answer. Their answers were unexpected:

“The ummah needs children who are hardworking!”

“There’s a hadith that says God is pleased with those who, when they do something, do it well.”

Great words. Fine words. But I just wanted to hear something nice. The praise I was seeking turned into a condemnation. I folded the paper over and over in my hand, folded it until it disappeared.

After that I didn’t try too hard to give Saqr reasons to like me. Things got worse at school. I stood in the back of the classroom throughout math class because I forgot the multiplication table for the number six. The religion teacher hit the palm of my hand with a ruler because I forgot my hijab. Each day school turned into another tomb.

When I received a report card covered in inverted flags after the quarterly assessment, I forged his signature so he wouldn’t find out about my poor grades. I returned the report card to my teacher the next day thinking that I had saved myself a public shaming. Two hours later the vice principal was standing at the door of the classroom and asking for the students whose names were written on a scrap of yellow paper. My name was on that paper, the
paper of shame.

We were led like a flock of sheep, trembling in fear. She led us to her office and started shouting in our faces until we burst into tears. No one could hold out against Mrs. Ghunayma’s face screaming just four fingers away from our noses. She informed us that she had called our families and told them of the matter, and that anyone who did it again would be suspended from school for three days.

I went home, wondering what Saqr would do. It was no longer just about my poor grades; it was also about forging his personal signature.

I anticipated a harsh rebuke, sitting down to a meal of obscene language and invective at the dinner table. Come, let’s criticize Fatima’s failure at school. Come, let’s attack Fatima’s morals, Fatima who lies and forges signatures. Come, let her be a lesson to you. Fatima, the being cut into and undergoing reformation.

What happened was worse.

When I joined them for lunch, he looked at me neutrally then burst into laughter. A vengeful phosphoric glimmer shone in his eyes; almost an hour went by with him and his family laughing at me. You see how you messed up? Why don’t you study? He laughed and they laughed, while I tried to smile and tried not to cry. Tried to laugh at myself with them and failed.

After that incident, my brother, impelled by his good intentions to guide me onto the path of serious work, made a subtle change to my name. Having been “Fatima,” I became “Fashila.” Failure.

Yes, yes, I know.

He did it to motivate me, that’s all.