Cheryl glared at the family’s baklava pan, wishing she had the strength to mangle it into an unrecognizable shape. Anger at her father’s absence seethed just below the surface. Even though her uncles, her cousins, her grandmother all had volunteered to help her prepare the holiday delicacy, she refused.
They knew without her saying it, that, without her father, she was determined to make it herself. This is our time together, her father had always insisted. Our tradition. Our gift each year for our family and friends.
Earlier in the week, she had retrieved and carefully unfolded the recipe her father had written down in her school notebook. She ran her finger over the words and couldn’t help but smile at the spots of honey she’d dripped onto the paper the first time she’d helped. Unlike her father, they had not disappeared. Not vanished without a trace.
When her mother had wanted to join them one time, her father had refused, insisting this was their time. A father and daughter tradition.
Her mother had scoffed, and out of ear shot of her father, had taken her frustration out on Holly. “Your father’s not the only one who can prepare things for family, you know. I don’t know why you idolize him.”
Cheryl shook off the melancholy.
After getting all the ingredients lined up on the counter, she turned on the radio. Music—and patience—is the key to perfect baklava, Elias Haddad always said as he flipped on the radio to his favorite classical station. “Along with a glass of milk for you and a cigarette and a beer for me.” Only after lighting up and turning up the bottle for a deep drink, did he clap his hands together and say, “Now! Let us begin.”
Cheryl smiled at the memory, repeated each and every year they’d prepared the baklava. She walked over to the refrigerator and pulled the bottle of beer she’d saved after her father’s disappearance, and set it on the counter. The only other thing missing now was the cigarette her father smoked. And of course, her father.
As she proceeded, frustration soon got the better of her. The phyllo dough either tore, stuck together, or crumbled as she tried to lay the sheets one after the other in the pan. And she’d found she hadn’t ground the nuts fine enough. At first, she pushed through her irritation, but eventually a tear rolled down her cheek. Then without thinking, she gave the pan a hard shove and sent it crashing to the floor. She gripped the edge of the counter as tears stained her cheeks. Where was he? He’d said he would only be gone a short while, a few weeks, a month or so at most. His father, the grandfather Cheryl had never met, was ill and he needed to return to Aleppo to be with the family.
But she needed him, too.
Cheryl had clung to him before he left. “Why can’t I go with you? I want to meet my grandfather and grandmother.” She’d heard so many stories about Aleppo, she could practically smell the place.
“Next time, Halia,” he’d said. “The time will go quickly, I promise.”
That had been … forever ago.
After three months had passed, Cheryl began repeatedly asking her mother, “Why isn’t Papa back? He should have been here a month ago.” Her mother only waved off the discussion, becoming more and more annoyed each time.
Before the holiday break, Cheryl had come home from school one day, and walked into her parent’s bedroom to find her mother removing all of her father’s clothes from their bedroom closet. The pungent smell of his tobacco melded with his faint scent that hung on each piece of his clothing, a scent Cheryl associated with Syria. Had her mother discovered she’d been crawling into the closet to inhale her father’s scent and escape the world without him? She couldn’t imagine his things being gone.
She’d panicked. “Mother! What are you doing?”
“Just what it looks like.”
“You … can’t!”
Her mother wheeled around and threw a shirt at her. “Can’t? Can’t? I can do whatever I want here. This is my home. Mine. He’s not coming back. He abandoned us. Surely you realize that now.”
Paula dropped to her knees and one after the other, threw shoes atop the mound of clothes on top of the bed as Cheryl watched in silent horror. Then Cheryl turned and ran from the room.
Now Cheryl retrieved the baklava pan that had landed right side up on the floor. She cleaned up the mess and tried again to separate the paper thin sheets of dough. Now the entire roll stuck together. This time she picked it up and slung it into the sink.
“To hell with it,” she said, violating her mother’s strict warning not to curse.
“To hell with what?” her grandmother asked, walking into the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about.
Cheryl turned to face her and sobbed. “With Papa … and this.” She swept her arm toward the counter, the unused ingredients, and the pan in the sink.
“Oh, Cheryl. Come. Sit.”
Her grandmother embraced her and led her to the kitchen table where Cheryl had spent afternoons doing homework as her grandmother prepared dinner. Her grandmother wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and Cheryl laid her head on her grandmother’s bosom and sobbed.
“My sweet child, I should have known to help you. But you said you wanted to do it all by yourself.”
“I can’t do it all by myself,” Cheryl managed to say.
“Then I will help you. My beautiful girl, I am always here to help you.”
Cheryl snuffed snot to the back of her throat. A few seconds later, she laughed through her tears. “Glad that didn’t make it onto your sweater!” She smiled up at her grandmother, but could see pain in her eyes, too.
“Your father did not abandon you. Of that, I am certain.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Bah! Because he loved you more than anything in the whole world. Keep that in your heart and don’t listen to your mother. I love my daughter, but sometimes …” She hugged Cheryl and traced the side of her granddaughter’s tear-streaked face. “Now, let’s clean up this mess and try again. Yes? Kabelevskys can’t have Christmas without Haddad baklava.”
Ya abi,
This is my first entry in my new journal, Papa! I just wrote on the first page of this book with blank pages! (It’s hard to keep my lines straight.) A teacher named Mr. Dalton told me I should keep a journal. He says I could become a good writer. If I practice, that is. He is my English teacher, and he thinks I have talent. After being in his class for three months, I have learned something. I love to read what I write! I love it, I love it, I love it! I fall in love with my words. Now I keep every essay, every poem, every book report, sometimes even the long notes I write to my friends. I keep them in a plastic bag to preserve them. Every time I open the bag to put something new in, I start reading all the stuff I wrote before.
Anyway, I told Mr. Dalton, finally, I would start a journal. Then I decided I would only write to you. I can keep our memories alive this way. He says only by writing every day can you become a great writer.
Soon we will have another Thanksgiving feast without you. Our feast grows smaller and smaller because the family is losing our traditions. Traditions you kept alive. Mother especially. She says you abandoned us. I went with her one time when she visited Father Moody, but she made me wait in the entry. When she came out, she’d been crying. Father Moody said he would continue his search. That is the last time I think Mother went to see him. Pretty soon the whole winter was over. Spring, too. Then school ended. Later that summer, I caught her trying to move the rest of your things into the attic, but I told her I would run away. I think that scared her.
I miss making the grape leaves and the stuffed cabbage and the shish kabob and, of course, the baklava, and going to the grocery store and having our contests about who could pick out the best fruits. I miss your music, even with all the hissing from that little tape player.
Baklava doesn’t taste the same without you.
—Yom tani fil jannah bin tak