After my grandmother buried her friend—our elderly neighbor Shaykha—she took to spending the late afternoons on the stone bench in front of our house, staring at her neighbor’s front entrance, the metal door shut and locked. The key was with Gran. After all, Shaykha’s son, who had emigrated so long ago, might be set free by the jinni women of the West, and come back one day to open up his mother’s house—the mother who went raving mad and died waiting for him.
One overcast day, as the afternoon was darkening, an old man appeared. He was a stooped, fragile figure, and his beard had gone white. When he saw her sitting there, he rapped on the door with his cane and called out, “Gharib wa-atshaan! I’m a stranger here, and I’m thirsty!” My grandmother waved at him to sit down. She brought him a glass of water, a plate of dates, and a little pot of coffee. He settled himself comfortably on the bench in front of old Shaykha’s house. He ate and drank. He began telling my grandmother how he had lost his way returning from the hospital. The driver he had hired set him down in this village instead of his own. He didn’t notice at first, and wondered why he could not find his way home. And then he realized that he was in a different village.
My grandmother told him about her neighbor who had died; about Shaykha’s longing that her son would come back; about the trees she had planted that had given fruit, about the wonders of the bitter orange tree that didn’t bear fruit until my grandmother patted and rubbed it with her own hands; about her son, Mansour, and his wife from Sur, the big city, and his children; about their first home when they were married, on the coast at Sur, and then how they had moved back to the village when the woman couldn’t bear the smell of the sea during her second pregnancy, which didn’t end in miscarriage. About little Sufyan’s aversion to formula and his wild love for chocolate even before his teeth were fully grown in; about her son Mansour’s trips to the Emirates with his children, and the little gifts he brought back—from bottles of perfume and hair creams to the combs that the girls always gave her. About the lengths of fabric and the wraps his wife brought her, and how she knew perfectly well that Mansour bought all these things and then handed them out to his wife and children to give to her. About the one time she traveled with them to the Emirates. She didn’t like it there at all, and decided to stay home after that, even when they headed off in the summers. Then she told him the latest news in the village.
When the man got to his feet, it was evening. She had persuaded one of the neighbors to drive him to his own village. As he was stooping to climb into the car, he asked her what was her name, and who were her family? When she told him, the man began to laugh. His mouth was open so wide that she could see his toothless gums. Before she could get too annoyed at the sight, or at the sound of his cackle, he said, “You? You’re Bint Aamir? The horseman’s girl? I tried to marry you fifty years ago, but your papa refused me.”
He kept on laughing, even as the car started up and took off. My grandmother stood there, staring after it.
That was the night my grandmother turned elderly. Through her few remaining years, the body that had been so strong and erect would slowly deteriorate, collapsing into lameness and violating the norms of suitable conduct that she had preserved, in all dignity, throughout her life.