During that week Alia brewed her mother tea, sliced cantaloupe onto platters. At night she curled childlike in her mother’s bed, her dreams slashed with tigers and floods, caves of burning lanterns.
Whenever her mother let out moans of pain, Alia rubbed circles on her back. When her mother’s breathing steadied, Alia continued to rub until her wrists ached, lost in thoughts about her mother dying. It was the most awful thing Alia could imagine, a fate that filled her with sharp, peppery fear. When Alia envisioned her mother dead, she couldn’t imagine anything beyond that—the boiling of rice, the trimming of hair. It was, simply, incomprehensible.
Men later referred to the storm as biblical, talked about the sickly shade of rainclouds, the bolts of lightning that forked the sky. The afternoon it began the two of them were sitting in her mother’s garden. Salma was feeling better and berated Alia for traveling to Amman.
“You have children to care for,” Salma scolded. “Your aunts are a bunch of worriers.”
Alia watched her mother pick at her cheese sandwich, pushing the tomato slices aside, breaking tiny bits of bread to eat.
“The jasmine came out nicely,” Salma said. Above them, clouds hung low and gray in the sky.
“It’s the late winter,” Alia said. “Shall I cut some for the vase?” She rose as she spoke, brushing crumbs from the djellaba she wore, one of the old garments from her girlhood. She liked wearing them around her mother, the musty smell tugging at something wistful. At the jasmine shrub, Alia stood on her tiptoes until she pinched a stem with several flowers, the petals startlingly white against the green leaves.
Twirling the stem, Alia brought the flowers to her nose and inhaled. Perfume, heady, a sweetness she could nearly taste. Something fat and wet plopped on her wrist.
“Oh!” Alia heard behind her, turning to find her mother’s arm extended to the sky, eyebrows raised. “It’s raining.”
Alia walked back to her mother. When she reached the chair, Alia lowered her own arm, carefully presenting the raindrop—still a perfect half-sphere—to her mother. “I know.”
Salma touched Alia’s hand, lightly dabbed the raindrop with her fingertip. Around them, rain began to fall softly but adamantly, plunking into the half-drunk tea, moistening the bread of the sandwiches. Her mother’s face creased into a smile, rain splashing her hair. She looked up at Alia, her eyes impish, joyful.
“Let’s go inside.”
Salma died later that evening, after the sky had darkened, drizzle giving way to a downpour. Wind and rain obscured the view as Alia drew the bedroom curtains.
“Recite for me, habibti.” Salma’s voice had been muffled beneath the blanket, slightly out of breath. Alia lay next to her. Thunder exploded in the distance.
“Bismillah,” she began. Slowly, she recited the Qur’an verses, keeping her voice steady. She chose her mother’s favorites—al-Fatiha, al-Kursi—feeling shy as she spoke. When she finished, her mother’s breathing had evened.
“There is no Allah but Allah,” Alia said softly and turned to her side, her forehead touching Salma’s shoulder. The sound of rain surrounded them as they slept.
Alia woke first to the thunder. Only then, disoriented, did she realize that Salma was talking in a low voice.
“You must remember.” Salma spoke urgently. Sitting up, Alia saw in the dark that her mother’s eyes were wide open, staring past Alia, toward the window.
“Mama?” Alia willed her voice calm.
“When it happens, you must find a way to remember.”
“When what happens, Mama?” An icy fear seized her. She had never heard her mother speak this way before.
“I was wrong. I thought I could make myself see something that wasn’t there. But it was a lie. I saw the houses, I saw how they were lost. You cannot let yourself forget.” Her mother began to cough, her voice frenzied.
Light, Alia thought. She needed light to see her mother, the dark suddenly terrifying for her. In panic, she rose and stumbled to the window, pulled at the curtains until they finally gave and slid open. Outside, rain churned in sheets, blurring the streetlamps. Above, nothing was visible, the sky dark.
When she turned back to her mother, Salma was dead, her face tilted toward the window. Her open eyes glistened in the limp, streetlamp light.
And then she was gone, the ordinary dullness of death taking Salma as it took everyone, Alia stunned and heartbroken at the predictability of it all. What followed was banal, excruciating—the funeral, Atef and the children flying in from Kuwait, the body washed and wrapped in white, being reminded of other deaths, of Mustafa, of her father, loss after loss after loss, as though rehearsed.
But since that evening, there remains a mystery, a question that plagues Alia: What remembering had her mother meant, what lie?
Alia doesn’t realize she has fallen asleep until she wakes, a sound of tires screeching from outside. She jolts upright, blinking in the glow of the television. As she stands—already the anger is flooding her body with adrenaline—she remembers some scenery of water, pillars shooting out of the ocean. A dream she was just having, or a painting she’d seen somewhere?
From the foyer come muted, shuffling sounds. There is murmuring, a low laugh. Alia cocks her head and listens. Budur, Souad’s closest friend since grade school. They walk slowly, one hushing the other, past the entrance of the living room.
“I can’t believe—”
“I know.” More laughter, and Souad flips the light on; Alia squints at the sudden glare. Her daughter wears jeans and a shirt so tight Alia can make out the lace of her bra.
“Mama.” Souad looks caught out but quickly rearranges her features to convey irritation. “What are you doing standing there in the dark?” She glances at the television. “What are you watching?”
Alia looks at the grandfather clock on the wall. “It’s two in the morning.”
Both girls fall silent, a glance exchanged between them. Budur looks scared; it is Souad who speaks up. “We ran a little late. I didn’t realize the time.”
“Where were you?” Alia feels the fury clog her. She crosses her arms over her robe.
Souad shrugs. “Out.”
“Out, Souad? Out where?”
“Yes, Mama.” Souad rolls her eyes. “We went out for a bit, it got late, now we’re home. Budur, let’s go to the—”
Alia begins to scream. “Out? Out? You think that’s what other girls are doing? Staying out till all hours of the night?” There is immense relief in yelling.
Souad slits her eyes at her mother, and, though her daughter is smaller than she, Alia nearly steps back. Since girlhood, there has been something queenly about her, formidable.
“That sandwich,” Souad says viciously. “This is about those stupid crumbs. You stayed up to yell at me for it?”