“They’re making fun of my Arabic,” whispers my cousin as he squeezes next to me.
I roll my eyes, unwilling to move over. My face muscles are sore from all the silent smiling; perceiving people perceive me, smiling at their unwarranted encouragement, smiling away their disappointment. Zahid, meanwhile, has made a home in this colorful house filled with beds instead of sofas. His pride in our heritage deepens with every family story he learns, while I am resenting every word rolling off his Arabic tongue from my mute corner seat. He fooled me into believing that we would be in this together.
“I also forgot my Arabic,” he lied when we booked my flight.
Now here I am, stuck in awkward Arabic soundscapes that have become little more than background noise and a reminder of everything my mind has lost.
My grandmother, Haboba, The Beloved, Amna the matriarch, takes great pleasure in hosting her entire neighborhood for Zahid and me—the returned children.
“She’s telling them how hairy your arms were when you first arrived,” he translates, grinning. “They’re asking her if you wear swimsuits in the streets in Germany. She’s saying she doesn’t hope so, but it’s a possibility.”
Three intrusive pairs of eyes wander across the room, sizing me up, imagining me walking down European streets in a bikini with my arm hair dragging on the floor. Get me out of here. Haboba’s voice follows their scrutiny, asking me a question everybody knows she will not receive an answer to.
“Why does she still do this?” I mumble uncomfortably.
“I guess she can’t believe that you forgot everything,” Zahid says, sounding like one of the elders. “Can you not try to understand?”
“I didn’t forget everything,” I snap.
He gives me the no-need-to-be-so-angry side eye that he has perfected in the past days. “She wants us to go to see her neighbor.”
“No thank you.” I stay seated, pretending not to understand her obvious gestures. At least I can express my discomfort freely in her living room, but I will have to bring back my silent smile for the neighbors and, as I said, my face muscles are sore.
“Yalla,” Zahid nudges me. “Just a quick chat, it seems important to her. You still know yalla, don’t you?” he jokes and immediately regrets it upon seeing my outraged face. I rise with a theatrical sigh and walk out of the house into the arms of my cousin Abdo.
“Have you had enough of sitting around?” he asks without particular empathy.
“Nope, still loving it,” I retort. “Gonna switch it up and say nothing at the neighbor’s house, wanna join?”
“Khalto Balsam? Aiwa!”
Zahid and I exchange a surprised look. Abdo, one of the few cousins that actually grew up here, hates Sudanese social sittings even more than I do; the gossip, the etiquette, the “When will you get married?” and “What’s that you’re wearing?” Instead of smiling silently, Abdo usually chooses a fight. When that gets too tiring (a young person stands no chance against a Seasoned Aunt Who’s Seen It All), his male privilege allows him to just leave. Unlike me, he gets to run away further than next door.
The boys call Haboba’s neighbor Khalto, Aunty, because she belongs to the family. I don’t really know her, so I just call her Balsam the neighbor. Balsam the neighbor is exceptionally loud, small and skinny (in that order); a beautiful woman with an opinionated mouth. She wraps her ebony brown body in red colored toubs only, from bright pink to burgundy, to complement her big golden jewelry and white-toothed smile. We have never spoken, her quick tongue is beyond translation. In order to cross from Haboba’s to Balsam’s house, one has to take exactly three steps. We enter a wide yard decorated with cacti and bougainvillaea, and find the old lady awaiting us on emerald green cushions, her dark eyes outshining her teeth as she looks up from her tea ceremony. The three of us join her in a cloud of cardamom, cinnamon and bakhur, breathing in the familiar scents of home. Balsam smells and smiles like Haboba.
“Keifik, tamam?” she welcomes me. Are you well?
“Tamam,” I answer.
“Tamam?” she repeats.
“Alhamdulillah.”
“Tamam?”
“Tamam,” I assure her, impatiently performing as many tamams as she requests. It’s a Sudanese quirk and an attempt to pull me in after I swallowed my Arabic tongue and my father did not care to pull it back out.
She turns her attention to my cousins and I retreat into myself, wondering why she decided to host us in her courtyard’s uninhabitable heat at this time of the day. Our reflections cast against the white-walled house provide the only source of shade, reminding me of a scene in Aladdin as I watch Balsam’s shadow serve us steaming shai. She unearths a small leather pouch from her lap and empties its contents in our midst.
“Damn,” Zahid exclaims, forgetting himself. “Are those real?”
Abdo nods, his eyes revealing that this is what he came here for.
“Which animal is this?” I ask, uneasily looking down at a collection of delicate ivory-colored bones with calligraphic engravings.
Abdo shrugs. “I don’t know if it’s an animal.”
Balsam gives an instruction and after a moment’s hesitation, Zahid slowly takes a sip of his tea, swallows audibly, and pours the rest over the bones in her hands.
She rubs the bones gently with her steaming fingers, then lays them out on the floor; her lips pursed in an anxiety-inducing frown. I once again curse myself and my father for forgetting Arabic. Judging from Abdo’s elated face, he will not translate what is about to unfold, and I will have to catch as many familiar words as possible. Zahid, meanwhile, looks hella worried. She asks him a question, he nods his head yes. Raising a bone to his face, she appears to be translating what the calligraphic inscription reveals about him. Abdo’s amusement and Zahid’s embarrassment seem to increase exponentially with every word, until my cousin intercepts Balsam, agitatedly shaking his head. The elder shrugs off his anger and selects another bone with her petite fingers. She seems convinced to know what she knows. Is she predicting a future he does not like? Trying to catch his avoidant eyes, I cannot stop myself from asking, “What is she saying?”.
“I’ll tell you later.”
Our silence weighs light with Abdo’s giggles and heavy with Zahid’s refusal.
“Tamam,” she says resolutely and hands me the latest bone of discussion, drowning out Zahid’s protest by raising her eyebrows in matriarchal admonition.
I catch the word Kandaka, strong woman, and smile to myself.
The bone is unexpectedly heavy, dry and cold. I wonder how Balsam has been holding it so daintily. She intertwines our fingers, takes an elegant sip of her tea and continues speaking; words are evaporating from her mouth, curling around her head and expanding across the wall. They paint a picture of Zahid driving a car back home in Canada, looking much more content than his real-time twin. He is blasting Drake through his sound system and smoking weed from a pipe while racing down a highway. Taking one hit too many, he starts coughing, a little at first, then uncontrollably. We see him panic, drive to the side of the road and puke all over the steering wheel. Balsam’s silence mercilessly stretches our breaths while we watch him recover, mortified.
She picks another bone to inspect, passes it on to me, and Zahid and his car wash away. A girl appears in their place; she is lying in bed naked, crying, hiding her breasts underneath long, chunky braids. I recognize her as his former girlfriend and wonder if I should look away. Is this the infamous day he dumped her, after we had already accepted her into the family? Balsam’s voice shows no empathy as she continues her speech. I hear the word 3eib, shame. Meanwhile, my cousin is tearing up and pleading with her. The scene changes, we hold our breaths. Now, the girl is clothed and yelling in a house entrance. This must be when he realized what he had done and thought he could win her back. She slams the door in our faces and disappears. We fearfully stare at Balsam as she studies the bones, caressing and turning them.
She invites me to choose one. I shake my head nervously. This time I am the one evading Zahid’s eyes. Abdo, of course, has no such inhibitions; the bone he picks takes us back to Canada where Zahid is walking across the lawn behind his house. He is FaceTiming me with one hand and carrying a large lunchbox in the other. Looking around to make sure that his baby brother did not follow him, he gets out a chicken sandwich and—oh God—a can of beer. This was recently, during Ramadan, when the boys used to secretly eat under the sun while I encouraged them to do so.
“Khalas,” says Zahid quietly. Enough. “We get the point.”
But Balsam won’t let us go until I pick a bone. She uses my stubborn stillness to elaborate her findings until my cousin exclaims “Just do it!” He’s staring at the wall, bracing himself for the next humiliation. I find my hand theatrically hovering over the bones, waiting for a sign to indicate which one is meant for me. Nothing happens.
“Sorry, sorry,” I mutter in embarrassment and quickly settle for the nearest one. It conjures up an image of myself sitting on a wooden bed covered in red cloth. Heavy golden-plated jewelry adorns my head, a chain of hoops travels from my braids to my nostril. I am wrapped in crimson silk cloth with golden embroidery, leaving only the beads and henna drawings on my arms uncovered. In front of me lies a silver platter holding perfumes, incense, crushed sandalwood, dates, and two cups of milk. Haboba enters the scene and hangs a black rosary around my neck. Zahid enters the scene and sits down next to me. He is wearing a white and red jalabia, traditional groom’s clothing. Abdo bursts out laughing. I don’t have to look over to my cousin to know that we both want the earth to open up and swallow us. Instead, I drop the bone and the image disappears. Unfazed, Balsam continues with her advice.
Who would have thought that I could ever be grateful for my swallowed Arabic tongue.
“Where have you been?” asks Mo, another of my many cousins, as we return to Haboba’s living room. “Bro, are you okay?” he adds upon noticing the dried tears on Zahid’s face.
“Balsam just put the Fear of God back into him,” I say, feeling slightly guilty about the twitching corners of my mouth.
Mo shakes his head.
“It’s forbidden in Islam to read the future. She probably—”
“I need to borrow your prayer mat,” interrupts Zahid.
“Sure,” Mo looks perplexed. “It’s in my room.”
Without another word, our cousin takes a pack of cigarettes out of his jean pocket and drops it into the kitchen bin. He locks himself in the bathroom, presumably to wash off his sins.
“What’s he gonna do? Pray?” I whisper, searching the boys’ faces for concern, only finding grins.
“Those bones really scared him,” laughs Abdo.
They scared me, too. If fate has written Zahid as my future husband, I will have to commit to a life without marriage. And if Balsam knows all his secrets, does she know mine, too?
My grandmother’s bathroom is a small outhouse with a non-functional toilet and a cold shower. Its wooden door provides visual, but not acoustic privacy; to avoid everyone hearing me poop in the middle of the backyard, I conduct my toiletry ritual at an ungodly hour. Most nights, I find Haboba lying awake on her outdoor bed, conversing with Balsam across the wall from one court to the other. If only I understood Arabic to know the secrets they share when only the sky and pet goats are their witnesses. Tonight I am not surprised to overhear Zahid’s name. My grandmother says, “hasheesh.” Balsam says, “Drama,” and in between hearty giggles, they mention his mother Mayada, the queen of gossip.
Then, the neighbor asks about me. I hold my breath.
“La,” I hear Haboba sigh. “Babaha ma yaguli haja.” No, her father does not tell me anything.
“Lil asaf,” replies Balsam. How unfortunate.
************
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