EUGENE P. NASSAR

Summer 1958

THE HOUSE was in deep shadow though it was noon. The wind had whipped up through the elm trees, the clouds were pushing fast and wild on the black sky and Mintaha could hardly hold herself up. As she wrestled with flapping sheets and clothespins in her apron pockets she hoped the rain would not come. The neighborhood was somber though it had been in bright sunshine two hours before.

But it was much the same to Mintaha as her life has been mainly within herself; she hardly knew the neighborhood, what was East or West. She knew other things; she knew moral beauty from moral ugliness, and courage from the lack of it; she knew a hardy plant, and she knew grief as the first cousin to joy. These she knew: some of the houses of Lebanese and a few others, a few stores, a few streets, and the people who came into her house. Her house was no longer a center; the father of the house had been dead one year and the house had half-died. Mintaha knew now the emptiness of a house without its father and husband and lost heart daily, but daily she struggled to gain heart, to not withdraw from what she knew was life; from duty and family and laughter. The thunder cracked and the wind blew furiously; the sheets snapped. Mintaha turned and at her side found Shafee’a.

“The Devil has a sick stomach today, Mintaha, soon his bowels will be moving.”

“Ya, Shafee’a, I thought the Devil liked the ladies. Why then does he do this?”

“Mintaha, you don’t know! The Devil comes to the ladies at night; in the day our Lord punishes the devils and ladies.”

“My sweetheart, the Devil I’m sure came to me last night and brought me such a dream . . .”

“Stop with your dreams! You dream too much; I have heard enough of your dreams. Have you coffee?”

“If you want my coffee you must hear my dream.”

“That is a heavy price to pay. Your cucumbers are not big yet. You have a few days left before your lady friends come to visit you. Yellah, here is your rain.”

It began to sprinkle. They left the wash and the wind and entered the house. Shafee’a had seen that Mintaha was tired and dispirited and quickly made coffee and did around the kitchen what she saw had to be done, despite her friend’s protest. She had been coming to Mintaha twice a week ever since Mike died and Mintaha looked forward to the visits since Shafee’a never cried. (Shafee’a damned up and down in Arabic and in the loudest tones of her loud voice the women who came to dump their load of misery in a house which had its share.)

“Speaking of Devils, Butros was in the house at seven-thirty this morning.”

“But Butros, Shafee’a, is one of the biggest saints, isn’t it so?”

“Saint! Butros, may his mother never rest, is a devil with six horns; he is Luciforus’s own son. Every morning, every morning before I have even my coffee he runs across the street zipping up his pants as he goes and knocks on my screen door, ‘Shafee’a, Shafee’a, may your sleep have brought you health.’ I say to him, ‘May this day see you in the river, Butros,’ but he comes in and drinks my coffee and stirs up my blood with his malicious gossip and his drooping eyes. I tell him, ‘Seventy-eight years old and still a fool, Butros? Is it not time at last to be a good man?’ And he tells me, may the flames take his father’s son, ‘I bear your words lightly Shafee’a, because I know you love me.’ Love him! If it were not Friday, I would cook him in the oven and eat him!”

They told Butros stories. One of Butros drunk rapping on Minnie’s door long ago and asking for a tomato to be eaten in the right way, by plucking it off the vine. Then Butros prone on the ground between the tomato sticks plucking tomato after tomato off the vine, eating, and singing as loud as he could the praises of his home city and that of the good family of this garden.

                       Zahle, the decorated bride

                           Adorned by the feats of its men.

To which Mintaha, of Zahle, laughing, answered

                       Zahle, the distracted bride

                           Disgraced by the madness of its men.

Then Mike (may God be watching him) and Abdoo had returned from the Ah’we to find Butros sleeping among the tomatoes. They carried him home, up the stairs, and his son had opened the door. They were shocked to hear the son who had said “Take my father back to where you put him in this condition.” And Mike had told him, “This is your father. If you do not respect your father, no matter what he does, you have nothing; you are less than he, you are nothing.”

“Good for you, Mike,” roared Shafee’a, “the father had some blood in him, the son is a worm.”

When Mike came home, shaken, and told his wife of the incident, both he and she tried thereafter to be good to Butros (as good as cox-comb would let them be).

But one day during the war Minnie had gotten a telegram from her oldest son from Galveston, Texas (“Is that near Lebanon?” she had asked her youngest son). It read: “Have written great play. Wire starving artist—private $10. Kisses.” Butros was at the table sipping coffee and eating olives with Mike when Minnie brought in the telegram and read it aloud.

“Well, Michael?”

“Well, Mintaha? Do you have it? If you have it, send it. What else?”

And Butros has whispered, “Ya Mike. You should control your wife. She is too much for her sons.” And Mintaha had heard and turned fiercely, inflamed, “Butros, do you know what you are saying! Shame on you, old man. How can I respect your age when you speak so? I have brought the coals for your tobacco and put the sugar in your coffee. You are coming between a family, which does not befit your white hair. The money I send our son is all my husband’s money. Please leave that chair where you have sat many times, and go through that door, and do not come back to this house.” Yet six days later Minnie was preparing a smoke for Butros as he sat on the porch as he loved to do.

“Butros was born,” said Shafee’a, “to test the endurance of us all, it is obvious. St. Peter will kiss the feet of Butros’s wife. If he comes tomorrow morning I will serve him coffee with the turd of a dog and tell him it is honey of the old country. But what tornado of a dream did you have this time?”

“Shafee’a, I saw my father sitting at the table and he motioned to me to come to him, just like real, and he wanted me to bring him leban and bread. And I brought it and he wanted to kiss me, and I woke up. Does that mean he wants me, Shafee’a?”

“It means your father is not getting leban and Arabic bread in heaven. If it was true that heaven is run by the Jews they would have it, as the Jews I know love leban.”

“No, Shafee’a, it was real. He was the same as the day he died forty-three years ago. Something is going to happen in the house of Kassouf.”

“It would be more surprising if something did not.”

They were all gone, her loved ones of the House of Kassouf in America, or were going. Her father first at forty-four of apoplexy upon working very hard on a hot day and coming into the house and asking his daughter Mintaha for ice water. Her Uncle John, that massive man she loved so dearly, who had loved her and raised her as one of his daughters in Pennsylvania, had gone quietly. Mintaha dreamed often of both of them. She dreamt of her husband and all the others, those long gone or of the near past, and they spoke to her in the simultaneity of the dreams.

Her Uncle John’s wife, the sweet woman who taught Mintaha everything, had called for her from Utica when she was dying. She had heard that her Mintaha had gone partially deaf and had put her fingers on Mintaha’s ears and prayed that she would hear. And Mary Kassouf had died and left a great hole in her companion Mintaha’s heart. (She had asked Minnie to watch over her daughters but they had needed no watching.)

And without his wife Joe Kassouf had fallen into confusion and bewilderment, and had died. It was no life without her sitting silent at the center.

Mintaha and Mike had visited him one evening some six months after his wife had gone. Joe, heavy and tired, had taken Mintaha’s hand and led her to the far room of the house. She did not know what to make of it as she sat down by him. She was afraid of what she might hear at Joe’s lips.

“Ya, Mintaha, shall I tell you what I am thinking about?”

“Unless it is too sad, then keep it to yourself.”

“My cousin, I have had the desire, which I cannot overcome, for kishik with onion, as Mary and you could make it and my daughters cannot. Mintaha, bless your eyes and as a Kassouf girl, make a kettle full of kishik for me and Mike.”

“With all my heart, my cousin! I was afraid you might have wanted to marry again and had some unworthy devil in mind, to dishonor Mary and our House.”

“Ya, Minnie, are you crazy? Even if I was such a fool, which thank Our Father I am not, what do you think? At my age the only bride is kishik with onion.”

Mintaha smiled and Shafee’a was glad to see it.

“Ya Mintaha, I stopped before coming here to see Abdoo with some stuffed squash and he was on the porch. He can hardly see anymore and he said to me when he heard my voice, ‘Shafee’a, my sister, my day is lightened. But do I not look like a ghoul with these teeth? To the Devil and his fires with this dentist, shoemaker, butcher, thief! Next time my son brings me I will take them out and bite him with them in a delicate place and leave them there.’ ‘You have charming morning thoughts, my brother Abdoo,’ I said to him. ‘Observe Shafee’a,’ he said, ‘my wife is gone, my job is gone, I cannot fish or drink or walk up and down the streets. Every day I ask God to take me! What the devil is the matter with him? He has plenty of room. There are only Lebanese up there and some Italian popes.’”

“Ah, Shafee’a, you remember they used to call Abdoo Mike’s wife as they went everywhere together. One day the colored people at the mill invited Mike to their picnic and he brought Abdoo, who didn’t know where Mike was taking him. When they got to the park, they were the only ones who were not black and Abdoo said, ‘Ya, Mike my little brother, they will eat us.’ But they were very good to them and so Abdoo sang an Arabic song for them and a Negro woman learned it on the spot and sang it with him.”

“Confusion to your house, Abdoo, if you are not a rare thing! Do you recall how he would go fishing with Abdullah in the truck day and night and never come home with any fish? And his dear wife Nahail, said to him one day, ‘Ya Abdoo, you are neglecting your family with this fishing that you love, but you catch nothing. Now, mighty hunter, I have a reasonable suggestion. Here is our washtub which I offer to fill with water and place in the middle of our kitchen. You can put your pole in it and sit all day till you are satisfied and your family will have you in its midst, and you will take no less fish for our table.’”

“Shafee’a, Shafee’a, do you remember Abdoo at Mike’s funeral! How he came to the coffin after Abdullah had sung and he wished to sign a farewell to his friend and brother, and he had written the words on the paper in his hand. But he cried before he started and his sons had to take him home.”

Mintaha had tears at her eyes.

“Stop, Mintaha! You will make me cry and I did not come to make a woman’s concert. You must not cry when you have good sons! But wait, I have a story for you about a old lady in the old country who did not have good sons.”

“Can this be a story to make one laugh?”

“We will see. The old lady was a widow and her children were married and neglected her so that she had little to eat and could hardly get out of bed.”

“Ya Botille! She would have been better off bringing up swine.”

“They were true swine but inedible. Her neighbor however was a good soul, but poor, and with many children. This honorable neighbor made up her mind to have the old woman fed by those damnable children in spite of themselves. So she visited next door and asked to borrow the old lady’s best olive crock, which the old lady gave her with all the usual blessings. And the woman sat down in front of her place and painted the crock gold. Now the first lady that went by of course wanted to know what she was doing and was told in all secrecy that the crock was to be filled with the old lady’s treasure and buried in the cellar. Meantime, every night for two weeks the woman took the crock of gold to the outhouse and relieved herself in it, and then she buried it and its treasure in the old lady’s cellar.”

“A swine’s treasure indeed.”

“And so the children were always in the mother’s house and the daughter-in-laws cooked and cleaned and combed their mother’s hair and dressed her in the highest style. And the boys, those ackroots, addressed their mother in high flown language, and she lived like a queen for six years, for which she thanked God and died.”

Well, yellah, the priest and the lawyer scrambled over to the house after the funeral ahead of the villagers and discovered that the old lady had not expressed her wishes about the disposal of the crock of gold. Priest, lawyer, and children argued the whole day (assisted by the villagers) but finally it was decided that the priest would get his tenth and the children would get equal portions of the rest except that the lawyer for his past and future services also deserved a bit of it. The lawyer in his wisdom suggested that the crock of gold be placed on his head (he had a very flat head) and that it be broken with a stick, the treasure remaining on his head to be his. This was done with all haste, and lawyer, priest, and living children all got their rightful share of the treasure.

“This is a story that should be taught in all schools.”

“You are right, Mintaha, except that it may cause a rash in places. Now, Mintaha, have you a story for me before I go?”

“You remind me, Shafee’a, with your priest, of the afternoon long ago when we were christening our youngest son and Abe Shalhoube and Father Lahoud, God bless them, were sitting on the couch in the living room and Abe told a story of a priest.”

“The story, Mintaha. It may be good.”

“There was a peasant in the old country who had a wife and eight children and one cow. From this cow they got milk and cheese and butter, enough to live from day to day. The peasant and his wife prayed incessantly that their lot be bettered. But the village priest had that typical frailty of man—covetousness—and could not bear that any cow be eating grass outside the fences of the church pasture. So on a Sunday at the pulpit, the priest turned directly to the peasant and spoke the words of the gospel that he who gives to God and His church of his house or his cow will have his gift returned to him three and four fold. The simple peasant saw the end to his misery and determined to give his cow to the church, whereupon his wife shrieked and his children wept. But he gave the cow to the priest (who accepted it with humility and grace) and went home in a blessed mood to await his fortune.”

“His wife should have ready a crock of gold.”

“Listen. The peasant’s cow felt out of place among the clergy’s cattle and too confined. Late at night it broke through the fence and for some reason the priest’s cows followed. The peasant on his mattress on the floor of his place was awake and heard the pounding of hoofs. He looked out of the window on the moonlit night and saw his little yard full of cattle. He roused his wife and cried, ‘It has happened my dear wife, it has happened. The Lord has given us twelve cows for one.’”

“This village Man of God was wild in the morning and rushed to the peasant’s yard. ‘It has happened, Father, as you promised,’ said the peasant. Our father had to think.”

“The swindler does not like to be swindled.”

“You are too frank, Shafee’a. Say rather the shepherd found the perfect solution for the member of his flock. ‘My uncle,’ said the priest, ‘God will tell us who deserves these cows. Whoever rises first in the morning and says “Good morning” first to the other shall keep them.’ The sly priest was sure the peasant did not know that the morning began at midnight, and he was right. But the peasant had a plan of his own.

“Why waste words, Shafee’a? The peasant slept that night in the tree by the priest’s house and placed an empty kettle at the door. Close to midnight the priest quietly arose, slipped out the door and knocked over the kettle. The peasant awoke and cried out ‘Good Morning, Father, what the devil time is this to be out?’”

“Well done, Mintaha! And what said Father Lahoud to Abe’s useful story?”

“‘Ya Abe,’ he said, ‘I have no cows and you have only two beautiful daughters. We can do no business.’”

“Who can believe that both are dead, such men, such princes! Do you hear me, Lahoud and Shalhoube, it was not time to go! But for me it is time to go, I must begin supper. Yallah, Mintaha, into bed.”

“Yes, I will go to bed. Run home quickly before the rain comes again. Kindest regards to Butros, if he comes to you this evening.”

“A curse as I leave!”

“And my apologies to Abdoo. He will understand.”

SHE LAY IN BED and she could not hear the thunder though she saw the lightening flash moment after moment. She wanted to think of her husband and her sons but only good thoughts. She needed to sleep and did not want to dream.

They were all they had had, Mike and her, and all that would have mattered in the old country. But America would take them, would swallow them up, would crush the family and obliterate the past. She would have to rely on their upbringing and their education but she had no idea where life would bring them.

She prayed that all would not be obliterated for that was twice death and what then was it all worth? But it must be worth; she could not bear the thought that it not be. And if it be, where was Mike to see it! It was too sad, and life was too risky, and yet one must keep going. And yet it was too hard.

Mike was gone and had not seen the blossoming of his sons. They had told him he was foolish to deny himself so much for his sons, the wicked people, and he would always say, “Ask my wife, she has the answers for you.” And she would tell them, “Is not Wisdom both Goodness and Knowledge? We can hope to give them a good heart, but we cannot give them knowledge beyond what we have.” And that would keep them quiet . . .

“Ya, Mike, what is to become of me, and of our sons! Take me Lord, before I am a burden, or before any disgrace!”

SHE AWOKE IN EXTREME DARKNESS for five o’clock. The storm had not come and yet kept hovering. She hardly knew the day or the year in this darkness. She had dreamt but could not remember, something of Mike speaking to her in the kitchen. But she must cook. She had only the one son home for supper tonight. The middle son was married and the eldest, the Harvard lawyer, was in Washington for something.

Lentils and rice she made, and her son all of a sudden was there beside her. She hadn’t heard the door or his greeting.

“You scared me. Sit down. I fell asleep and had a dream.”

“If it’s bad, don’t tell me.”

“I don’t know. Your father was sitting and saying something, but I can’t remember.”

“Maybe he was telling you that Tanous Kassouf has got a boil in a bad place. I just saw Selma and she said he went to the hospital today to have it fixed.”

“Ah, I knew it, I told Shafee’a, and she said no. I told her we would hear bad news of the House of Kassouf.”

“That’s not bad news—that’s nothing, a boil.”

“My father wanted to tell me this morning; he looked just like real. Thank God it was not something worse. He will be sore but it will go.”

“I studied pretty well. I took a walk and I had coffee in a place, and I saw some people in the library.”

“You’ve got a good life, between school and the summer. Think of the men in the mill.”

He had studied wretchedly. His whole body pounded and he had the cramps of wretchedness. He had had them all week as the time for him to leave again drew near. It was the nadir of his life this summer, with his father gone, his mother ill, and he, going overseas to study. He could not study, he could not think, he had roamed the streets as he had always loved to do, but saw only the sterility of his own mind. Having coffee had been better, human beings around him. He had wanted so badly to go home and lay on the bed, but he did not want his mother to see him miserable. He would walk tonight, go to a movie, anything to make the time pass.

“Good lentils, Ma. Did Shafee’a have any good stories?”

“Does she ever miss? We laughed and laughed.”

And so did mother and son in their repetition.

“You ought to make a book.”

“But stories alone don’t make a book Ma.”

“Don’t print the book until I read it to see if there is anything in it which is not fit.”

“Me, Ma! I’m your son.”

“That’s true, but the world is funny nowadays.”

“Ma, tomorrow I won’t go to the library. I’ll go out and do some jobs in the yard.”

“It’s about time. Everything is falling down.”

“Someday Ma, maybe next summer when I can come home, I’ll paint the whole house inside and out.”

“Someday water will come out of the water tap.”

“Ma, if I go out for a while now and come home early will you be all right? I can stay home.”

“No, I want you to enjoy yourself. Go out. I’ll finish my jobs while you are gone.”

Shortly her son kissed her and left. She did the dishes, wiped the table, turned the pages of the paper, then shut the light. She sat back in the heavy chair in the darkened house.

He is not happy now. Nor is his oldest brother happy. But they work. It cannot be that they will stay unhappy when they work, and they love each other. Lord, let them be happy.

Even the devils love something, and cry over something, even the dogs. Rose across the street, how she loved clean sheets and a clean sidewalk. And Frangesce when he came crying to me that morning! All because he took a rose from the bush. He never stole anything in his life, he said, but the rose in the night was beautiful, and he knew I hated to see them cut off the vine! Better to cut the vine from the bottom than to see that old man cry.

All of life is crying, crying, crying; cry for this one and cry for that one. What else is there to do but cry?

And Fate would come with a heavy axe in the next year, testing Mintaha’s capacity for life even further. Shafee’a would die with her stories and laughter. Abdoo would die, even Butros would die. Shafee’a would fall on a street of a stroke, like a great elm felled. Then, later, mother and son would visit Abdoo as he sat under his grapevine almost blind and eating cantaloupe.

“Can we call this life, Mintaha. What is this nonsense? No longer the days of pleasure when your dear Mike and I would walk the streets as men. Get me God on the telephone! He has forgotten me and I demand to be gathered up! He is making a fool out of me.”

And Butros would come to the house bent and with a cane, climb the stairs, sit in the porch chair, cry a bit, and call out for Mintaha.

“Ya, Mintaha, coffee, bless your hands, coffee and a sliced tomato from the yard. (Damn the doctors to the deepest devils.) Ya, Mintaha, Shafee’a is gone and Abdoo is gone! There is no house left but yours.”

“And our house has its oppression also, Butros, but it does not give in.”

She roused herself from the chair after an hour and walked out onto the porch where the sky had brightened up and people were walking back and forth. People nodded to her as she sat, and some stopped to talk and ask about her and her sons. She felt better, it was good on the porch. The neighbors respected Mintaha.

A little girl came by on a bicycle and asked for an apple.

“What is it, sweetheart, I can’t hear you.”

“Can I have an apple, lady?”

“I hate to cut roses off the vine and kill them, but a pretty girl like you, you can take one.”

“No, I want an apple.”

“An apple! Have three. And get me one too.”

The little girl jumped and got apples. She came up and sat beside Mintaha and they ate green apples.

“Do you know any stories, lady?”

“Listen, and I will tell you a story you’ve never heard, about a lazy cat named Hassan.”

“That’s a funny name for a cat.”

After the story the girl followed Mintaha back to the garden clothesline and put clothespins in the bag while the lady piled the white sheets on her arm. The evening had gotten quite nice, no wind and a mild blue sky. A sweet darkness was coming on. The girl and the lady looked at the garden getting shadowy and deep green. Then the girl ran to her bicycle and Minnie carried the sheets into the kitchen and onto the table.

Tomorrow she would iron. Tonight she hoped for no dreams, or good dreams, of the happy past, or the past or present made happy, of the dead alive and happy somehow, somewhere, or of the live laughing.

Laughter, tying the devil’s tail. She undressed for bed and thought of her son who (like the girl) loved stories.

If I am still awake when he comes in the house, I will tell him the story of the wife who put the devil in a bottle.

Summer 1964

THE HOUSE was in the twilight calm of late August and late suppertime (the hour which Leonardo said was the best for seeing, when branches stood out clear against the sky). The shadows would climb the porch steps now. The grass which had borne all summer the burning sun at noon would in some days or weeks be nipped by frost in the dead hours of the morning. September would be the month of changes, of the dying of gardens, of the end of swimming and the beginning of schooling, of early darkness and old people moving back into the house. There was then for Mike’s youngest son the touch of melancholy in all this quiet beauty as he stood with his brothers looking down on the neighborhood from the porch. Tonight he would walk.

Their father had died in September seven years ago. He had known his middle son’s first child; he would have been equally delighted with the others. The brothers stood quiet for a moment looking out on the rooftops, yards, and wooden fences. Their father had loved to stand and look out here with his sons or to walk back to the yard with one or another.

“PA SHOULD BE HERE. It’s ridiculous that he’s not here.”

“He could enjoy life now.”

“He could have made the trip with Ma to the old country. That would have been the top of the world for him.”

“He and your godfather, Abe, used to argue right here on the porch for hours whether a street in Zahle bent before or after so-and-so’s house, and if the house had three or four arches, or if a stream was five or six feet wide as it passed his house or Abe’s house.”

“And yet they knew this town better than any of us.”

THEIR MOTHER called them in for supper. They sat down at the table of their youth.

Mike’s youngest son was day-dreaming of all the walking with his father; to the stores, to church, to the Ah’we, to relatives, to the mill, everywhere, up this street and down the other, back and forth, talking, watching, forming.

It was not possible to violate his father’s trust (he told himself) as his father never thought of his sons as different from himself.

And he was his father (he hoped); otherwise he was only himself and that was not enough.

They had walked together into kitchens thousands of times and had enjoyed thousands of treats given from hand to hand.

“YA TOUFIC, does a Khawajha [lord and gentleman] like you sit thus at the table in his long underwear?”

“Ya Khawajha Mike, it is the latest style. The Niswan [women] in this country show their underwear, and the men must follow their way.”

“Damn the Niswan, I’ll keep my underwear to myself.”

. . . HE KNOCKED ON TOUFIC’S DOOR. After a long while there was a fumbling on the other side. And then there was Toufic, with his few white hairs sticking up on his bald head. He was in the baggy pants and flannel shirt. When he saw Mike’s son tears formed at the corner of his eyes and he embraced him. The house was empty, his wife had died, and his children lived elsewhere. Everything was seedy; the armchairs were soiled, the rugs were worn in places and spotted in places, the wall paper was of big flowers and full of oil marks. Ashes from Toufic’s cigar were in most of the corners, the lights were all poor or defunct. A bedroom he caught sight of looked like a cell, nothing in it but a bed, a crucifix, a chair like those in the coffee house, and a dresser with nothing on top of it. It was like a ghost house. He could remember when it was full of noise, and people making spots on everything, and using with high spirits furniture of no aesthetic value.

Toufic’s son that was a doctor lived now in Denver, Colorado for some reason and came to visit his father with his wife (not the children) every two years or so, and stayed at the hotel. His wife would not touch a thing when she came because she was on vacation. If Toufic tried to cook something or make a salad, she would protest that Lebanese food was too greasy, and bad for Toufic. They would pay a few duty calls hurriedly, drop in on a few of the better bars and restaurants, go up North to swim, and then fly back to Denver, leaving Toufic with pictures of the children. Toufic looked at the pictures all the time, and found his own face in all of his grandchildren.

Another son had had money in a downtown business, married a show girl and put up a seventy-five thousand dollar house. The business failed, the mortgage lapsed, and his wife absconded. She took with her her jewels, her silverware, a boy friend, and the two children that were the apples in their grandfather’s eye. Toufic’s wife died, maybe of shame, a year later. Father and son however still loved each other (no one could help liking Toufic’s son), and he came fairly often to take his father to the races.

And he had a daughter that lived in New York City with her husband, an executive. They had no children after all these years, and she cried on her father’s shoulder whenever she would come to see him (without her husband). She sent him letters every week and little packages often.

Toufic put a little gold pot of Turkish coffee on the stove. They sat down in the narrow kitchen, and Mike’s son read him the letter from his daughter. As he read he remembered the girl who was older than he was, and how they had built up together fantasies of marriage, and pledged astounding feats of protectiveness and fidelity in this kitchen, and made every rung of every chair into a magical snare or deep, dark, entrance to an Arab tent.

Toufic took him by the hand and they went out the back door steps to the very small yard between all the houses. There the pear tree and the rose bush were that had come from the branches Mike had given to Toufic. They were both flourishing; Toufic was keeping the trust given to him by his friend who was gone now.

They went back into the kitchen and sat over their coffee. Khalil was gone, Joe was gone, Abdullah had died in the truck, and Aid was old, old, and could hardly take care of himself. The Ah’we was painted and full of young men, gamblers and drifters, and few of the old people went there any more. You had to go to someone’s house to play cards now, and in each house there were too many memories, it was too sad. Across the street at the fruit stand there were no chairs anymore to sit down on. You tell a boy to go buy you a cigar, he says go to hell.

He got up to leave and Toufic came out with him, sat down on his porch steps and smoked.

. . . WARMTH. Living within traditional values, within its comedy. Laughter, real laughter.

When you have a home to go away from and come back to.

And loyalty, loyalty, loyalty . . .

Going away can be like falling in the ocean.

Or like a walk around the block, when you’ve never been away because nothing you’ve done has any meaning without your sense of home.

He turned onto his street.

. . . If you could walk rightly you see things you don’t forget, and these take on meaning. And it gets important, not where you walk, but how you see.

How to describe the nights in which you walked, and what you felt. How to make language sing to you.

What to say about the light in the garage at ten o’clock at night, the big door open, the little old man wheeling a garbage can out of it, his granddaughter sitting in the driveway, pulling at the hair of her doll. Why was it so mysterious? Why, why does peace roll over you in waves, when you stub your foot on the cracked slate sidewalk, or when that woman sat on the porch step in the moonlight and peeled an orange?

But that love, strange beauty, is no good without a home . . .

. . . again the triangle . . .

. . . you’d be better off sleeping than thinking this stuff over and over . . .

He went up onto his porch.

He lay on the porch swing for a while with the breeze floating across. He got up and went into the house and put on the kitchen light. His mother turned over in bed and mumbled. He went into her room to see if she would wake up and talk to him. Suddenly in the dark room she twisted and called out, “Mike! Mike!” A burning and a freezing went through his body.

His mother woke up and he sat on the bed and listened to her dream. Then he shut the light off and went into the kitchen and sat down to eat something by himself. He looked around the kitchen and all the doors coming into it. He wished his father were alive.

He sat there in the dark room.

He got up from the kitchen table.

He went into the bathroom and washed, into the bedroom and undressed.

Abstractions about love are not the thing.

You say tell love stories, but is that enough?

If not, tell more, and then more.

He crawled into bed and looked at the pictures of his brothers on the wall.

Tell of . . . what? . . .

What else? . . .

Ma’s love.

He worked it out in his head, the way he would write it.

SEVEN. What do we live for but for our children. And they for their fathers and mothers?

And the family. And those that love you.

When we are good it is that way.

When we are bad the devil is in us.

(I am going to kill the devil, Ma, if he ever comes in our house!)

And there are many that would like to break up families and make the worse the better path. It is because they are envious of a life of honor.

(Is it because they like our garden, Ma?)

Do not let them catch you, or ever be of their party.

Do not be too soft except to those who love you. And even then do not listen to women too much for women can tie the devil’s tail.

(But ma, ain’t you a woman?)

SEVENTEEN. Be on the lookout for fakers. You have good eyes and I think you will be all right, but there are so many fakers.

Your father does not know how to fake, nor your Godfather Abe (that’s why we picked him), nor Joe, nor Shafee’a, nor their kind.

If Shafee’a ever asks you for anything, you run, and if she wants you to carry her on your back up the hill, you bend down, and if to feed her with a spoon, you ask, “Is there not something else I can do?”

She is honest, and will keep her promises to me. And she laughs, that is important.

Look out for the man who wears fancy clothes all the time, he will be a faker.

And the man who gossips about others, tell him to move over, and find someone else’s ear.

And the silly girl who wants to talk about Love, and how much you love each other, she is a faker.

(nobody asked me yet, ma!)

Talk is cheap. You want a girl who is proud of herself and will throw the faker out the door even when her husband is a devil.

Find the strong, proud woman; it is the weak woman that will make your life a trouble.

But not the hard woman who wants what she wants.

(No! The soft woman, with long hair, ma.)

Do not be proud because you will have an education, which is lucky, but be proud if you have kept on the right road, and you have brought your children down the right road, and pray they keep on it.

TWENTY-SEVEN. He can take me anytime He wants.

I made a bargain with Him, first when I was sick, to leave me here till the boys grew up so that your father would not have to do it alone, and then to see you all finish schooling, and now it’s done, and I’m ready.

(Don’t talk like that, ma!)

We did, your father (pray for him) and I, something that was worth to be done, and I wish only that he had seen you.

But we live in you, and when people ask you who you are, say, I am Mike’s son, of the House of Nasser, and a Kassouf on my mother’s side.

(TELL ME AGAIN, ma, for the hundredth time, of your courtship and marriage, today, tomorrow, and years from now.)

MY UNCLE JOHN remember was three hundred and sixty-five pounds, and tall and handsome. He took my father’s place when he died after just bringing me to America, and he loved me so much, and nobody was like my Uncle John for me.

We lived as one family in the big house, and there was Uncle’s wife and my cousins, and Father Bschara. He loved me too, and he was round and comical, and when they ate, bless them, they ate for twelve. Wherever he went among the Lebanese all over the country, he would tell all the young men about Mintaha, the Kassouf girl in Pennsylvania, and it was all Mintaha, Mintaha.

And they came, all the rich ones, Maronite and Melchite, with rings and silks, and talked to my Uncle John. And he would ask me what I thought of this one and that one, and I would say, no, his nose is too long, and his eyes are too small, and he sees himself in his eyes, and they were all fakers. And the Maronites were all saying it was my Uncle, that he wanted only a Melchite, but it wasn’t so, it was only that I was fussy.

Then Father Bschara was called to come to Utica to take care of the Melchite people there. And Joe Kassouf, God bless him, my cousin, was Melchite, and at his house Mike, your father, heard about me from Father Bschara. And they came all together, the three of them to Pennsylvania on the train and they stayed at my Uncle’s house. And they came two more times and Father Bschara said to my Uncle that Mike was a very good man and did not gossip. And my Uncle John loved him from the first but he was so afraid for me because Mike had no money, and was unhappy without his family, and wanted to go back to the old country. And he came to me and asked me, “This one, Mintaha?” And I said “Yes.” “And is not his nose too long, Mintaha?” he teased me. “His nose is fine,” I said.

And the Maronites danced up and down. “See, see,” they said, “John Kassouf did not want a Maronite. And now the Maronites have stepped on the neck of the Melchites!” And when my uncle heard they were talking like this, he called Mike to him and asked how they would get even. Mike said he would carry a sign on his back downtown that he had changed to Melchite for his wife’s sake. “No,” my uncle said, “just tell that to the House of Dahroogh when they come, and let us watch them jump.”

(AND AS LONG AS FATHER BSCHARA was alive we went to him, but when he died we went to the Maronite church.)

AND SHMUNDAR OF THE HOUSE OF CHAMOUN made a plan with Mike and all of the men in the house that had come from Utica to play a joke on me. And they were all watching and Mike came walking softly in the kitchen, and asked me for a kiss in the silly way. And I pushed him hard and he went back through the door and fell down the cellar steps. And all the dummies from Utica came out singing of the House of Kassouf, and Mike came up, and they said, “Now she deserves a kiss,” but I still wouldn’t give him one.

(IT WOULD HAVE SPOILED THE WHOLE STORY, ma, if you did!)

AND WE HAD THE BIG WEDDING IN THE HOUSE, and my Uncle John invited the whole world, and he cried and I cried all day. Abe came, and Abdullah sang, and Aid did the sword dance. And it was the long mass, and when Father Bschara had to say to your father, “And you must leave forever your mother and father, and stick to your wife,” Abe, your Godfather, who was always comical, got up and said, “That is not a good thing for you to say, Father Bschara. I did not expect that from you.” And everybody laughed, except my Uncle John.

IT WAS PERHAPS six-thirty in the morning, breezy and fresh, the sun already up a while. He stood in the garden back behind the house. Mike’s son had been brooding a little in bed, but here and now in the morning air he felt very happy.

Maybe he would catch the lady in black today. She had taken, in her old age, to stealing directly from gardens (some grape leaves, a cucumber, a tomato), and reserving the lamentations for later in the day.

He should fix the crack in his bedroom window.

The fence too he should fix, and pull up the weeds around the plants.

The sun shone on the squash that flopped and twisted along the fence and the tar-paper shack.

The plump deep-red tomatoes hung heavy on the stalks. The stalks were having a hard time keeping their backs up, even though the rags and sticks were lending their aid. The little bugs were swarming all over the garden, up the sticks, the stalks, through the spray and into the fruit, getting their share. The grape leaves waved lazily in the breeze, and the worm crawled over the snail. The water in the rain barrel shimmered and puckered. The bird on the clothes wire jerked his head in two directions and then flew down to the garden ground and jerked his head two more times. From the roots of the stump many little trees were pushing up all over the yard, and others were still under the ground. The cherry trees were elegant and conversed with each other alone. Over in another yard the gigantic elm lorded it over the blocks of the neighborhood. Streets radiated out and criss-crossed all over the city. Somewhere, all the time, adulterers were adulterating other men’s wives, old men were talking together, and some people were leading deep moral lives; a man was swimming alone in the ocean, others were laying on beds, and one might be knocking sand off a chute in a plaster mill. He blessed the full world, the neighborhood bursting with all of life, the gardens everywhere the same and beautiful, and the feeling heart that rose and fell.

He picked a tomato off the vine, a pear off the tree, and went into the house and gave them to his mother.