In my earliest memory, I am five years old walking up and down the hallway of a Chicago hotel, holding hands with my father, a man I have not seen in well over a year. I just arrived here, to America. I feel lost and I want my father to take me to see Jiddo, but Jiddo is six thousand miles away.

Babba buys me candy, so that I will stop crying.

In our hotel room, I draw a rainbow on a pad of hotel paper to give to Jiddo as a present. It is afternoon and pouring rain outside our hotel window, and then suddenly the rain stops, evaporates, like a human soul into the cotton shaped clouds. I run to the window while Babba is resting in one of the beds. I think I see a rainbow, like the one I saw from the plane, but it is only a trick of light.

Outside, the world looks strange and haunting.

I tuck the rainbow into the desk drawer, as if tucking away a dream.

From the journal of Suzanne Rasheed June 12th, 1982

1.
It was my fault they fought that night. It was a school night and I should have been in bed already. Instead, I was outside on the patio showing Frankie and Mindy my new Dachshund puppy. I held Buddy in my arms while the twins were touching the dew on his nose and giggling. Momma said I could take Buddy to school to show my class sometime, if Mrs. Leahy didn’t mind.

It was a Thursday evening, in the spring of 1998, when the leaves of the maple trees were just beginning to bud and the setting sun cast a soft glow behind the clouds.

It was just past 8 p.m. when my father arrived home from work. He had been agitated all week, snapping at me for leaving toys on the floor of my room, or barking at my mother when she asked why he left the garden hose uncoiled on the deck for fear someone might trip. He didn’t smile when he saw me, he didn’t ask about the puppy. He asked if I had taken a bath. No. He asked if I knew it was past my bedtime. No. He asked if my mother was inside. Yes. Time for your friends to go home, he said, and you go to your room.

I followed my father inside the house, through the kitchen and living room and down the hallway to my room.

My mother was washing dinner dishes. I heard my father light into her, about why Samuel was still outside when it’s past his bedtime, why he hadn’t had his bath yet, why those kids are always over and don’t they have parents. I could hear his voice rise in decibels, questioning her through gritted teeth.

He was using bad words, words that my mother said before were shameful, aib

as we say in Arabic, when she would hear the teenage kids in the neighborhood yelling them across to each other as they rode their ten speeds in the middle of the street.

My mother tried to explain she was late from work, she was delayed with dinner and cleaning the kitchen after, but he cut her off as she spoke.

I huddled in a corner of my room, knees bent to my chest. Buddy was near me pouncing on a squeaky dog toy. I gently placed my arm around him and pulled him closer to me.

I heard dishes break and my mother begin to cry. I cupped my hands over my ears. I tried to imagine my mother and I were still at Standing Bear Lake, as we were the Saturday before, watching Buddy take curious steps into grass that at times was taller than he. I tried to imagine this wasn’t happening again.

Then I heard the back door slam, and the soft groan of the van’s engine. The house fell quiet. My mother came to me, she came to my room, her face red and flushed. I could see the harsh imprint of fingers across her left cheek. She scooped me up from the corner and I wrapped my legs around her waist.

She held my head close to her, combing her fingers through my hair. We sat on the bed and she began to slowly rock forward and backward. I felt her trembling.

“I am afraid someday you’re going to leave Momma, I’m afraid you’re going to leave and not take me with you.”

I had this reoccurring dream that seemed to coincide with the frequency of their arguing. I dreamt that someone was lurking behind the curtains of our living room while I was on the floor building skyscrapers out of Legos. I always expected someone to come out and tell me they were going to take my mother away and I would be left in the house alone.

“No, habibi

, my darling, never”, she said. “I will not leave you. Momma is right here, I’m not going anywhere.”

Her eyes began to tear and her voice quavered. She made me promise again never to say a word to Jiddo or Tata, my maternal grandparents, or to my friends or anyone at school.

“What happens in the family stays in the family, it’s our secret, right?”

“Yes.”

“Scout’s honor?”

“Scouts honor”, I said softly.

Seeing her cry always made me cry. I sniffled, then slid the knuckles of my forefingers across my nose, and wrapped my arms tightly around her neck. I could feel her tears fall on my cheek like little raindrops.

“You’re a very good boy, Samuel, and I love you very much, don’t ever forget.” She cupped her hands around my cheeks, kissed my forehead, and then wiped her eyes with her hands.

“Come now, let’s get your bath.”


After Momma tucked me into bed that night, I heard the phone ring. Her cousin Reem called from Arizona. Aunt Reem must have been talking about her son Rami because I overheard Momma say mashallah

, I can’t believe he is growing so fast. And then, elhamdallah

, we are doing great, we are doing just great.

To those around us, we were always doing great, even when we were not.

2.
Sometimes I’m hopeful they have left for good, but then they return, the demons and their blank stares…

I do not blame them, my mother and father.. who would have imagined…and besides, what were they to do? there were only two bedrooms, they in one, I in the other…this was before the other kids came and more bedrooms were built in the attic..

He was fifteen years older than me..he would have been twenty six then....my mother brought her brother here so he could finish his education, work, make a living…Majid – “noble”- …..his work friends called him Mikey…

Shoof keef mahlaha he said when he saw me for the first time...look at how lovely she is....

My bedroom had two beds, one in each of the furthest corners of the room..I would sleep in one bed, he in the other…when the house was quiet and dark and my parents asleep, he would call for me, he would call my name…. come lay with me Suzanne, he would say…come lay with Khalo..

I lay in his bed with my back to his chest… he buried his chin in my neck..I could smell the clean sweet scent of his cologne…

a shadow was cast on the west wall from the dim light peering through the window above us..

I felt him pull down my pajama, exposing my buttocks..I tried to pull them back up but he would remove my hand..I thought he would teach me to ride a bike. I felt something hard press against me. Or better yet, he would teach me to swim. I closed my eyes and then opened them again..the shadow was still there…..I felt something wet and warm.

I peed myself..

I squeezed my upper thighs close together to stop the flow..but I couldn’t understand why it was wet on my backside…I raced to the bathroom..his scent lingered behind me..

He called for me again the next night, and the night after that..

finally, I moved my bed a few inches away from the wall and I slept in the small crevice on the floor so I would not hear him calling for me again.

I never told my mother…by then I had already developed a habit for keeping secrets...

3.
“That mother of yours has no sense of time”, my father said to me in the van on the drive to school the next morning. He stayed out all night and came back in the morning. He always came back in the mornings. “A household needs order, and I don’t see how she can manage that house with no sense of order”, he added, shaking his head. I would not tell my father I didn’t like how he said this about my mother, the stern tone he took when saying this. I listened dutifully. Although I feared my father, I was happy he always came back. I was happy he took me to school and Momma picked me up. I was happy for Mrs. Leahy, and Frankie and Mindy and that Buddy was beginning to recognize his name.
I looked down at the watch that I received from my parents as a Christmas gift the year before. Seven- four – three it said. School began at eight and got out at three. Dinner was at six. Bed was at eight. I woke up at seven. Buddy was fed at four.
Dad always waited outside school with me until the first bell rang. He would chat with Mr. Berg while Garrett Berg told me his older brother Shane was taking him to see A Bug’s Life at the cinema on Saturday. Garrett was a wry little boy, with blonde unkempt hair and beady brown eyes, like the bugs in the movie previews. Garrett got in trouble at the beginning of that school year for applying waterproof tape to the water faucet in the boys’ bathrooms so when we turned on the water it sprayed up in a burst from the space left by the tape and drenched our faces. Frankie my neighbor caught him when he went in to pee and told Mrs. Leahy, who then gave Frankie a prize from the Prize Chest and sent Garrett to see Principal Gillen.
I think Garret got in even more trouble after telling Principal Gillen, “Don’t have a cow, it was only a joke”, which he didn’t find amusing. So for the next two weeks, Garrett was grounded and his father hid all the waterproof tape on a high shelf in their garage.

Of all of my grade school teachers, Mrs. Leahy was my favorite. She had taught first grade at St. Stephen the Martyr for twenty two years. She was a slim woman with blondish brown hair pulled back into a bun. She wore oval shaped glasses with red rims and she seemed to love scarves because she always had one coiling around her neck, at times solid color, at times paisley. She told me once that from her father, an immigrant to America from somewhere in Europe that I can’t quite recall now, she acquired a love for reading, and her classroom was full of books of all shapes and sizes.
The first grade room at St. Stephen’s was always brightly lit because of the rows of windows on the north and west sides. There were dry erase boards with each week’s spelling list and a student showcase that displayed photos of kids who improved the most in spelling from the week before. I was a good speller then, and still am now; at least I would like to think so.
On her desk, she kept flashcards of math facts and the alphabet and the plant that Emily Neeson gave her for Teacher Appreciation Day. On the wall behind her desk, she hung thank you cards and sympathy cards and hand-made cards given to her by her students over the years. On top of the file cabinet was her family photo, her husband and two sons. The oldest son was in college then, the youngest died in a drowning accident off a bay in Wisconsin.
During D.E.A.R time, Drop Everything and Read, Mrs. Leahy encouraged us to read on our own, but many times she would read out loud to us. I liked to listen to her, watch her. She would outstretch her arms when she spoke of the horizon, look at us intently and raise her hand to the sky at the caroling of birds.
"Sudden and magnificent, the sun's broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn."
She would rap the page with her finger to alert us to the pictures and she smiled good- naturedly after each page. The entire class would hush, not a soul stirred, not Garrett Berg, or Frankie and Mindy, or even Tony Gibilisco who had a twitching problem. The Wind in the Willows is my favorite childhood story and I first heard it through the voice of Mrs. Leahy.
But the time I looked forward to most during the day was when Momma picked me up from school. It was then that we spent time alone, uninterrupted, before she got busy making dinner and picking up the house and I got busy with feeding Buddy and teaching Frankie and Mindy how to remove the Adam’s Apple in the Operation game without making the buzzer go off.
During these rides home from school, my mother would tell me of her childhood. These were much different conversations than I had with my Dad on the ride to school. Dad would tell me, “Son, you work for yourself when you grow up, you don’t work for anyone else. A man can’t get ahead unless he works for himself.” But I never understood if working for yourself got you ahead, then why were my parents arguing about money much of the time? Or why did I hear Momma plead with my Dad as we were headed to Boy Scouts one day to please sell the business, we are going broke.

“Thousands of miles away from here,” she would say, “there lies a kingdom of mountains and roads that wind through green hillsides lined with olive groves. Olive trees bend toward the sun and the vines are plump with grapes. Oh Samuel, you should see the grapes. Your great Uncle Ghassan has vines all around the perimeter of his house. You can stand beneath the vines and raise your arm up just a bit and pick off more than you could eat in a year’s time. And some of our relatives, like Aunt Houda, have entire orchards in their back yard. They grow olives and figs and...”
“What’s a fig?”
“Darling, it’s a fruit, a lovely fruit. Tata’s favorite actually, but they’re hard to get in the Midwest, only available in the fall. There’s a man in the neighborhood that would bring a basket of fresh figs and drop it off at the front door of our house every morning. The street vendors sold them too. And at Auntie Dhea’s house, she had rows and rows of cactus fruit, some grew to as large as the palm of your hand. But you have to be careful with those, they have small spines on the outer skin, so if you touch it with a bare hand, slivers get caught in the skin. In Arabic, we call the fruit sabar.”
The thought of the slivers made me look at my index finger and put the pad of it in my mouth.
As if the fruits themselves transported her into the recesses of her memory, she continued. “You know, I remember climbing to the roof of my grandfather’s house in Husn and feeding the chickens very early in the morning. I would throw the chicken feed and dozens of them would scurry to the middle. Then Jiddo and I would come back inside and take our breakfast, then go to the orchard to pick fruit until the mid day sun caused such as sweat, it stung our eyes. To this day, I still remember hearing the minarets at dawn.
“What’s a minaret?”
Through the rear view mirror I could see her smiling.
One day I will show you my love.


4.
On Saturday, when Garrett Berg was at the cinema seeing A Bug’s Life, I stayed home with Momma. Dad worked all day on Saturdays. He owned a pet store, had been in the family for twenty some years. The store was originally located in a small strip mall, in between a veterinary clinic and a bar and grill. It was in a prime location, on a busy street in the north central part of town. Then a development company came in to build a Fantasy gas station and car wash and because the bays were only leased, my paternal grandparents who owned the business at the time, had to move. They relocated the business to Iowa, just over the bridge, but still fifteen miles east of its original location and the patrons didn’t follow. Business was slow and grew slower every year. Then Pa died and my Dad took over the business and Nanny moved to Kentucky to live with her sister.
Sometimes Dad would let me go to work with him at the store. I would go in the morning and Momma would pick me up around lunchtime. I would give the parakeets fresh bird feed and water, or I’d shred lettuce leaves for the turtles. Sometimes Grandmas with full heads of white hair would come into the store with their snot nosed grandkids, peering at the animals. The grandkids would want ferrets but the Grandmas said they resembled big rats and would persuade them to look at love birds instead. And then sometimes when the Grandmas were in the bird section, I would ask Can I help you, and they looked down at me in surprise.
Oh sweetie, they would say, yes thank you. How much for these parakeets? Then I would go up to my Dad at the counter and return to her a moment later, “$10.99 each or two for $20 and she would smile and ask for a girl and a boy. That, Dad had to help her with.
Frankie and Mindy were surprised that I had only one pet when I had a father who owned an entire pet store. But Momma said pets were a big responsibility and one was enough. Buddy wasn’t my first pet. The year before, in kindergarten, Dad let me bring home a pet snake. He told me not to mention anything to my mother just yet. He snuck the cage downstairs into the family room, placed it in a corner and covered the front of the cage with stacks of old hunting magazines so you couldn’t see inside. I must have forgotten to put the rock back on top of the cage lid. The next morning my mother came downstairs to the washroom while I was brushing my teeth before school. I heard a scream and then an “Oh My Lord!”, and she raced back upstairs, shut the basement door and leaned against it with her hand over her heart. By the next morning, Ivan was back at the pet store for another kid to take home and surprise his mother.

On Saturdays like these, when I was home with Momma, she would make scrambled eggs and French toast for breakfast. Through the open windows in the kitchen, I would hear the flute-like melody of the meadowlarks and the early morning sun filtered through the blinds and bathed the kitchen in a warm glow. Squirrels would race up the maple tree, leaving behind them ribbons of bark.
The kitchen smelled like cinnamon which Momma loved. She told me once that whenever a baby is born into a family, the parents invite everyone to their home to celebrate. They reserve a special tea for this joyous occasion. It is made by taking cinnamon sticks and boiling them for several hours in a pan of water before pouring into a cup with some spoons of sugar. Then they add crushed walnuts at the top. She loved gerfa, this tea, so much that she made it many an evening, even without babies to celebrate. Momma served gerfa at my birth.
After breakfast, we would do a few chores in the house. Our house was much like others in the neighborhood. It was a raised ranch style home with a deck in the front and a fenced in side yard for me and Buddy to play and Frankie and Mindy when they came over. It had three bedrooms, one for Mom and Dad, one for me, and another room that my parents used for their office. It had a desk and filing cabinet for Dad, and bookshelves lined with books and completed journal notebooks for Mom. She told me she got into the habit of journaling in high school. She won a small scholarship to the Jesuit University for a paper she wrote on a social injustice happening at the time. She wrote about Haitian refugees attempting to flee their country to America, being deported and killed for attempting to flee. Out of all the area Catholic high schools, her entry was chosen as the first place winner and her English teacher encouraged her to continue writing. So every night after she helped me practice my math flash cards, she would write in her journal while I ate my evening snack and .tried to commit 2 + 2 to memory.

Momma would wash and iron my school uniform while I plucked the dying leaves from the houseplants. One time, I even helped her shampoo carpets. I would hold the hose so it was out of her way. Sometimes Momma would play nice music, but I loved it most when she sang, as if the wind rustled through the windows to keep in time.
Sometimes we would organize photos. Momma kept photos that were developed in a shoebox until she had time to organize them in albums.
I am looking at two particular photos now, the last two photographs taken of my mother before she came to America. Relatives always told me I looked so much like her in these photos. The first photo, she is in the arms of her Aunt Dhea, the aunt who raised her while her parents were in America, taken against a gray backdrop. Her aunt has thick shimmering black hair coiled into ringlets and pinned back. Her features are soft and radiant, her eyes black with a thick black line that accentuates the upper lashes. She is wearing a white blouse, short sleeve, with a simple cross necklace dangling from her neck. She has but the slight impression of a smile.
My mother is to the left of her, wearing a brown sweater. Her hair is black, cut short, over her ears, and neatly combed back, and you can clearly see her small gold post earrings. She is not smiling, but rather a look of curiosity, perhaps as to why a photographer would take interest in photographing her. This is the only professional photo taken during her life back home.
In the second photograph, she is sitting alone in front of her grandfather’s house, Jiddo as she called him and as I call my grandfather. She is wearing a pair of shorts and long sleeve shirt with white collar. Her feet are dangling off the side of the porch. Her hair is curlier in this picture. She squints her eyes to shield them from the sun. She seemed to have no idea what was likely, what was possible.

After chores, we would go into the family room where she would open a drawer to the coffee table to find her journal and my colored pencils, sharpened to half their length, all bound up in a rubber band. When the weather was nice as it was that day, we would go outside and Momma would bring out Hy-C fruit drinks with curly straws. I had been working on a drawing called Rainy Day with big clouds and drops of rain and a field of grass and huge earthworms popping out of the ground. I told Momma that Frankie liked to pull the earthworms so they break in half. Frankie told me that if you cut a worm in half, one end would be a new worm, but the other half dies and I kept wondering if the new worm remembered the part that died. Momma would say ya haram, have mercy, (not for Frankie, for the worm).
He called them the B values, short for being…values such as wholeness, perfection, completion, being alive and living without forced choices…inherent needs that are characteristic of higher levels of human potential, necessary to grow, to become more, to fulfill our biological destiny..when forced to live without them, there comes despair, alienation and varied degrees of cynicism….perhaps that’s what Hemmingway went through or Toulouse-Lautrec, the French post impressionist painter made famous by his paintings of the Moulin Rouge….one shot himself and the other drank himself to death…wasn’t it Twain who said the fear of death follows the fear of life… I did not belong here, ..The truth is, I come from nowhere. I am rootless, tribeless, adrift. (I have recently found a subtle way of saying this, that didn’t stop any conversation and make people study their shoes.)

On that Saturday, she went to her bedroom and came back a moment later with something in her hand.
Here, she said, this is for you.
In my hands she placed a velvet square shaped box and inside was a circular row of beads, barrel shaped, made of red coral with a white tassel.
Oh, I said, these are like what Jiddo has.
Yes, that’s right. He brought them back from his trip last year, he brought an extra set back for you. I thought I would keep them awhile longer for you, but you might enjoy them now.
I never knew what Jiddo called them.
Prayer beads, she said. There’s the rosary that we pray, but these are special too. You can rub them, whenever you need a little help.
She smiled a half smile and looked down at her hands.
We’ll call Jiddo later so you can thank him. Go on now, wash up, how does McDonald’s sound for lunch?
Yay! I said.
I went to my room, placed the prayer beads on my dresser, with the lid opened

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 27.03.2010

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Widmung:
To RFA- Had I not met you, I would not have written this book. Had I not loved you, I would not have written it as well.