Mother of All Pigs. Malu Halasa

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СКАЧАТЬ dawning of a new era belonging to the One God. It would have been a history lesson that her husband would have been proud of, but he was oftentimes oblivious to the repetitive nature of his stories. Already Fadhma can sense the tedium rising from Samira’s side of the room, so she leaves her tales for another time and asks, “What are your plans for today?”

      Muna eagerly nods at Samira’s reply: “We might go to Amman and come back early for the wedding feast tonight. Or we can spend the afternoon at the Internet café. I’m sure something will come up. We haven’t decided yet.”

      “Don’t go far,” her mother warns. “Guests are expected this afternoon.”

      “Guests?” Samira echoes incredulously.

      “Some of the townspeople are coming to meet Muna,” her mother proudly exclaims.

      “Well, maybe we should try to get a SIM card for my phone,” suggests Muna evenly, “but it probably won’t work. I’m told the town has bad reception”—she sounds almost apologetic—“because of Jebel Musa, but the mountain isn’t the problem. It’s me. I’m addicted to the Internet.”

      Samira appears sympathetic, although Fadhma doesn’t know why she should be. The young speak a different language and Fadhma can’t ignore the feeling in her tired old bones that her daughter is hiding something. Where has she been going these past few months? Whom is she spending time with? A man? Just because Muna is visiting, Samira shouldn’t think she can take advantage. Fadhma is keenly aware this is not the right time. She would rather sew her lips together with coarse straw than cause a scene and create a trail of speculation that finds its way back to Cleveland, Ohio. Suddenly the room feels hot and claustrophobic. Wordlessly, Fadhma packs the letters back into their box.

       5

      Two men haggle loudly by a truck. “You must make up your mind,” bullies the taller of the pair, a much older balding, beak-nosed man. His shoulders droop winglike and his arms flap excitedly. Thin, wiry, ornery—more scavenger than songbird—he bobs up and down in barely suppressed excitement. Blood rising, talons at the ready, he is about to land a decisive blow. But mid-swoop he flutters impotently back to earth, acutely aware of being watched. Not every rabbit needs to know when the hawk strikes, Abu Za’atar thinks, and ushers his prey into the Marvellous Emporium. Fresh kill is always needed to line his nest. He hasn’t earned the nickname ar-Rish Ajjanah, the Featherer, for nothing.

      Once the transaction is completed, the driver summarily dispatched, and the precious boxes of junk, really—electrical parts and secondhand US Army T-shirts—dumped in a storeroom, Abu Za’atar berates himself for getting overexcited. Some men his age wind down with backgammon or crossword puzzles. Armed with only a feather duster and microfiber cloth, he often takes these forays through the canyons of his empire, a momentary respite from life’s duller pleasures. These expeditions also serve as a stark reminder that his most prized possessions, many hidden away from public view, have a value beyond money.

      The accumulated layers of kitchenware; exotic imported foodstuffs (mainly Asian); sports, casual, and ready-to-wear—men’s, women’s, children’s, toddlers’, and newborns’; absurdly high high heels and flat, sole-destroying trainers; festive decorations for all holidays, including those Islamic (Shia, Sunni, Druze, Alawi, and Ismaili), Christian (Syriac Christian and Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Maronite, and Phalange), and pagan (Yazidi, Zoroastrianism, and Druidic), and the big names in between (Buddha and the Maharishi); syncopated doorbells; Chinese paper cuts; hotel-standard pants presses; analog telephones; electric shoeshine machines; and haute couture nail polish, among thousands of other remarkable products and gadgets, are more than just a jumble of unrelated artifacts. A passerby glancing in through the window would be forgiven for mistaking the Marvellous Emporium for a postmodern aberration of outsider art. Abu Za’atar keenly insists to first-time customers that no one but he alone can prize an object from its exhibition place, citing avalanches as a clear and present danger.

      In the past he considered the emporium a fixed monument to his life on earth, to be dismantled when the appropriate time comes, buried in a landfill, and forgotten. But Umm al-Khanaazeer has made him appreciate its finer aspects. He now considers the Marvellous Emporium a work in progress not necessarily about himself, but one that has been growing organically, with a universally generous purpose. The Featherer vociferously argues with his imaginary critics as he dusts among the shelves. If anyone were to ask him, he would insist he means advancement in the greater sense. No one in the town has been as devoted as he is to improving the public good, even if that means shoving a superstitious people into the present. Right or wrong, politically correct or deeply insulting, he remains an APC—Agent of Progressive Change—the letters of which should appear like a degree from the university of life after his name on the emporium’s neon frontage.

      That is when he is not misled, waylaid, or kneecapped by nostalgia. It is no accident that his inventory through the winding aisles deposits him in a very private place. He takes the tiny key he religiously keeps in his pocket and unlocks the aptly named “booty nest,” a secure, glass-fronted case stuffed with jewelry. Since the Syrian conflict, many more beautiful refugee women have been bombarding the Marvellous Emporium, desperate to sell their gold. But the acquisition of these pieces no longer contains the emotional frisson that once excited him. His current business venture with his nephew pretty much consumes his every want and need. Now he realizes, not without a tinge of bittersweet regret, he has no desire to dose himself with herbal Viagra.

      Despite his apparent disinterest, women have been doubly persistent in their desperation to sell jewelry, and he has been acquiring quite heavy pieces for a song. He casts his eyes over the substantial fortune represented by a deluge of bracelets, brooches, necklaces, hatpins, camel cuff links, stray antique beads, and a fine array of filigree silver and gold in the booty nest. He scrutinizes the mound of glittery, lurid stuff, and still what he so desperately wants eludes him. Roughly yanking the magnifying glass on a chain around his neck and holding it up, he peers cockeyed and peevish through it. An incessant forefinger pecks at the stash and impatiently flips over the only business card kept there to reveal any hidden pieces underneath.

      By the time he excavates a broken pair of tarnished earrings, embossed with a cursive design, he feels feverish. He repositions a more solid, crass gold collar with pink rubies to camouflage and protect the inconspicuous bits of metal, which have an unearthly glow, like the dim recollection he has of a slender Palestinian refugee girl. She sold the cheap earrings to him and he extracted a high price from her for the privilege. It was the first of those kinds of bargains he ever made, all the more satisfying because of his innocence and hers too, although that has never once crossed his mind.

      Abu Za’atar lowers the magnifying glass and carefully closes and locks the glass-fronted chest. He pauses and takes in the Marvellous Emporium rising around him. Despite his hard work and lifelong dedication, even he has difficulty believing how it all began—as a board under a sheltering cloth tied to four poles. The stall back then had but a single purpose: selling the dried thyme-and-sumac mixture sprinkled with sesame dust that gave the family a purpose and a name: za’atar. From a few brittle leaves, seeds, and a secret magic ingredient—onboz seeds from the marijuana plant, to which Abu Za’atar attributes his own predisposition toward flights of fantasy—the tent eventually grew into a short, squat structure along what was becoming a well-used pathway.

      Under his father, the village shop was never much of a money-spinner. Occasionally the wooden shelves overflowed with bags of coffee from Yemen or cotton thread carried along the Silk Road by itinerant salesmen. More often than not the only goods on display were several nondescript, crumpled packages, which remained unopened on an upper shelf, and a large drum of cooking oil. It was simply a question of limited supply and even lower demand. There was very little money to spend on nonessentials; what the farmers СКАЧАТЬ