I heard her calling
I’d never heard her sound like that before. She was all riled up.
“You get up here right now, girl!”
I got going quick, sprinting past the concrete bench and bounding up the stairs that led to the roof of the house. It wasn’t even six-thirty in the morning yet.
“What’s wrong, Grandma?”
“What’s wrong? Why should you even need to ask? Where did you get the coffee you brought home yesterday? Didn’t I tell you not to buy it from that scumbag? What does he do with the stuff, anyway—roast it straight over the sun? It broke up my sleep the way Abu al-Abed’s cleaver breaks up a leg of lamb!”
“But I didn’t buy it from him. I got it from the best shop on Umar al-Mukhtar Street.”
“What’s it called?”
“I don’t know, actually. But I smelled it from the sidewalk, and it made me think of you, so I decided to buy you some. He told me it was one hundred percent Brazilian coffee.”
“Brazilian coffee! Who told you I’d want that?”
“Mama said you liked it.”
“Well, I liked it fifty or sixty years ago. But when I gave up hope, I started to hate it.”
“Nobody hates Brazilian coffee, Grandma.”
“Well, I do!” She said it so ferociously, I started eyeing her hand to make sure she wasn’t about to grab her cane and wallop me with it.
“I don’t want any of that stuff in the house. You got that?”
“I got it, Grandma. But can’t you tell me the reason?”
“The reason is that it threw me off balance!”
“I don’t understand, Grandma. Just talk on my level, will you?”
“Your grandpa, your grandpa! I dreamed about him five times last night!”
“Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so from the start?”
“You’d never understand. But what I’m saying is that since I dreamed about him, I know that coffee of yours threw me out of whack. I stopped dreaming about him a long time ago. I sort of boycotted him, you might say. Back when he was writing me from Brazil and telling me he was going to come home, I liked Brazilian coffee. In fact, it was the only kind I drank for a while. The shopkeepers would try to trick me into buying their coffee sometimes by telling me it was from Brazil when it was really from Yemen. But I could tell the difference, because the other coffee didn’t make me think of your grandpa. You get me? But when I gave up on him—when he died without coming back like he’d promised he would—I started to feel all creepy whenever I had Brazilian coffee. So I don’t drink it any more, you got that? I don’t drink it any more!”
I tried to say a word or two in apology, but her hand was sliding in the direction of her cane.
“Don’t you say a word,” she snapped. “Not a word. You’ve done enough harm as it is tonight. I dreamed about him, you hear? When that happened, I shot awake to get away from him as fast as I could. He tried again a couple of times, but I was ready for him.”
After a pause, she went on, “Has anybody ever told you why people dream, girl?”
“No,” I admitted.
“It’s because they don’t get enough of life. They dream so that they can imagine that they’re awake—that they haven’t missed anything. And I do the same thing. But dream about him? No way! Even if it means I don’t get to live as long. Of course, sometimes we don’t have any say in what happens. It looks like I finally got so tired, he slipped into my dream ‘with little resistance,’ as they say on the news broadcasts. Now, if he’d stopped there, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But he had the nerve to tell me, ‘You’ve got to get married, Wasfiya!’ ‘Me, get married?’ I said. ‘That’s right. And I didn’t come see you until I’d found you a real catch.’ ‘Oh, really!’ I yelled. ‘So you’ve even brought the groom along? Wherever he is, you must be out of your mind, man. Do you think I’m still of marrying age?’ I mean, I was boiling mad. I screamed, ‘Listen, you old geezer. Don’t you know I’m all dried up? All you had to do was take a good look at me to figure that out!’
“‘Don’t you go trying to fool me,’ he chuckled. ‘When I died, you were as young as could be. And good-looking, too!’
“‘Oh, so you saw me before you died? I doubt if you could even remember what I looked like by the time you croaked!’
“‘You couldn’t have gotten old,’ he insisted. ‘I just died a few days ago!’
“‘A few days ago? What’s this bullshit? You’ve been dead for the last fifty or sixty years!’
“‘Don’t get morbid on me, woman! If I’d been dead that long, how could I have come all the way from Brazil to Gaza to see you, and then back again, five times in one night?’
“‘You knew I didn’t want you barging into my dreams. I shut you out over and over again, but you finally wore me out so bad that you could sneak in on me. So if you’ve still got so much get-up-and-go that you can hop back and forth between Brazil and Gaza five times in one night, why don’t you marry me?’
“‘Me?’
“‘Yeah, you! What do you need that I haven’t got?’
“‘Well, nothing,’ he admitted. ‘But how can I marry you when you’re already my wife?’
“‘Oh, right! That wouldn’t make any sense, would it?’
“’Now you’re talking!’
“‘But do you really want me to get married? Are you serious?’
“‘Yep,’ he said.
“But I know what he meant,” my grandma said to me. “I know what he was getting at. There’s only one reason he would have come to me five times last night. You know why?”
Before I could reply, she went on, “Well you see, honey—your grandpa’s got a yearning!”
“A yearning?”
“That’s right. I’m sure of it, and you know why? Since he didn’t do a single thing in his life that would have made me sorry he was gone, God punished him by not letting him have any of those big-eyed virgins!”
“I don’t understand, Grandma.”
“You don’t understand? Well, your grandpa used to try every trick in the book if he . . . .”
She stopped talking.
“How old are you?” she asked me.
“Twenty-five, maybe.”
“Twenty-five. So, then, you know what kinds of things go on between husbands and wives?”
I nodded.
“What did your grandpa used to do?” she quizzed me.
“Try every trick in the book.”
“. . . if he wanted me. You get it?”
“I get it.”
“So then, why wouldn’t he come from Brazil five times in one night?”
After another long pause, I started to get up.
“Sit down,” she said. “I’m not finished. How are your brothers and sisters?”
“They’re fine,” I said. “But things are hard. When the occupation authorities are after somebody the way they’re after Baba, you can’t help but worry about him, you know. He has to keep his eyes to the ground, and he has to keep them on the sky, too. Some of the airplanes you see, and some of them you don’t.”
“God be with them.”
More silence. I fidgeted. She started talking again.
“You know what your grandpa really wants?”
“What?”
“He wants to take me to where he is. I think he misses me. And I don’t think it has anything to do with his not having any big-eyed virgins!”
“Do you miss him too, Grandma?”
“Well, I’ve got no mind to die just to meet up with him, if that’s what you mean!”
“You’ve got plenty of years ahead of you, Grandma.”
“You never know how long you’ve got left. Don’t you know that? But there’s something else I want to happen before I’m gone.”
“What’s that?”
“I haven’t lived all these years and gone through all I’ve gone through just so I can die before I see those occupiers leave with my own two eyes. Do you think I’ll be ready to go before I know you, your mama, and your brothers and sisters are going to be all right? Isn’t it enough that they robbed me of the chance to make sure your sister, Jamal, Saleh, Amna, Mustafa, and Aziz were going to be okay?”
“You’ve made me sad, Grandma.”
“I wish I could have made you happy.”
“It makes me happy just to have you around.”
“Hah! Now admit it—you want to run away from me sometimes, don’t you? I can feel it.”
“Well, I guess so. May I go now?”
“Yes, you may.”
“Really?”
“Of course, really. In fact, if you don’t get up, I’ll shoo you out with my cane.”
“Anything but that!”
Then somehow or other, I’m not sure how, I ended up with Amna.