The air fills with the muezzin’s call for prayer. Three o’clock. If she keeps dawdling, she will be late for Farida’s lunch. Riham winds the leftover yarn, clicks the needles together. On the way to her bedroom, she passes the framed photographs lining the hallway. Her family, in various poses of smiling and laughter. Souad with an infant Manar; Karam and Budur on their wedding day; Latif and Abdullah on the beach.
She performs wudu instinctively, done thousands of times, her hands moving of their own accord, splashing the cool water over her wrists, her ankles. Her lips move soundlessly with prayer. She cups the water, smoothes it over her face, behind her ears.
When her grandmother taught Riham to pray years ago, Riham asked her about this part, the ears. It struck her as silly, detracting from the gravitas of the ritual. It was because people rarely washed there, Salma had said. It’s easy to overlook. Through some network of synapses and cells—once, Latif explained to her how memories formed, the elegant cells shaking with potentiation, synapses in the curved temporal lobe hooking onto one another—it is this memory that has taken hold, latched onto the very act of touching water behind her ears, and she remembers her grandmother, briefly, each time.
As Riham stands over the prayer rug, the curtains in her room drawn—she prefers to pray in dim light—she begins the task of trying to keep her mind pure and focused. Every prayer, it is a struggle. Oftentimes, her mind returns to a single image: her struggling body in the water decades ago, the black splotch she saw in herself. “La ilaha illa Allah,” she begins, the words effortless off her tongue, just as her grandmother taught her.
Her mind skims between her grandmother and her son, Abdullah’s face drifting in her mind’s eye, his stiff back at the dinner table. She prays as snippets of memories drift across the backs of her eyelids like snow. An image of the dishdasha tossed on the couch. Abdullah’s beard, Latif’s tightened lips when his son stays out late. Her grandmother bent over a coffee cup, reading the dregs. She would do it only for guests, refused to do it for Riham and Souad, though they would beg her during the summers.
“As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatu Allah,” Riham murmurs first to her right shoulder, then to her left. “Ameen.” She slackens her body. She recites the names of everyone in her family, asking Allah to bless them, as always.
“. . . Karam, bless him. Linah, bless her. Mama, bless her. Latif, bless him.” She finishes and rises, then drops back onto the rug again, aghast.
“Oh, and Souad, Souad, bless her.”
She is stepping into her shoes when the telephone rings. She hears Rosie pick up, speak inaudibly, then a pause.
“Madame!”
“Yes, Rosie.”
“It’s Madame Alia. She says to talk.”
Riham sighs, eyeing the front door. “Okay.” She walks to the kitchen and takes the cordless phone from Rosie. “Mama?”
“That girl is ruining your brother.”
Riham rolls her eyes upward, berating herself for taking the call. “I’m pretty sure you said the exact same thing about the American girl he dated.”
Her mother sniffs. “That was different. That girl had an excuse—she was raised American, mannerless, no culture. She couldn’t help herself.”
“Mama—”
“But Budur,” her mother continues, undaunted, “why, we practically raised that girl! She was with us most of her childhood. Good parents, good upbringing. That whole mess with the first husband, I’ll grant you, wasn’t pretty, but these things happen. But what—”
“He was terrible to her.”
“—what I don’t understand is why on earth she would start putting on these airs. Going for her undergraduate degree, wonderful. I’m happy about that. You know I’ve always supported women getting an education. I pushed you and pushed you. And Souad! I was devastated when she had Manar instead of going to college and so happy when she finally got her degree—”
“You called her pretentious, Mama.”
“Well, art is pretentious. But Budur, she took her courses, she got her education. She has a small child, for God’s sake. Even the master’s, I can understand. But in literature! And now, it’s taking away from her family, depriving Linah’s grandparents of seeing her.”
“Baba says they’re coming in the summer.”
“I knew it! You and your father have been gossiping about me,” her mother accuses. “This always happens. You sit in that garden and talk about me, like I’m some pariah.”
Riham sighs. “Mama, you know that’s not true. He was just telling me the news. We’re all disappointed about it.”
“Good. If you’re so disappointed, you’ll call your brother. Tell him this is unacceptable. Talk to Budur if you have to. Tell them they simply have to come.”
The thought of Riham issuing commands to her brother makes her smile. She softens her voice, uses the one she reserves for her mother. “Okay, Mama. I’ll see what I can do.”
“You’re the only good one, dear. The only one that listens. Allah give you grace.” Even though she knows her mother is mercurial, that Riham is praised only because she never talks back, she cannot help but feel a small glow at her mother’s words.
“I’m worried about Abdullah,” she says impulsively.
Her mother snorts. “Finally. It only took you and Latif a year to catch on. I’ve been telling you since that boy turned sixteen, something’s off. He’s too easily taken in. I talked and talked, and no one listened. You see? Maybe if you and your father spent less time gossiping and more time listening, the boy wouldn’t be in trouble now. And Latif’s no help. A good man, yes, but too quiet. A father needs to speak up, needs to take charge. Not like your father, mind you. I had to be the father for you three. We let you kids run wild with your American cartoons, playing, and reading novels. We let you all become soft.”
Riham sighs. “Mama, I have to go.”
The last time Souad and Karam visited, they both seemed taken aback by the change in Abdullah. “It’s like he’s a jihadi,” Riham overheard Souad joke to Karam once. The evening of their final dinner, they sat in Riham’s garden, swatting mosquitoes and eating watermelon. The conversation drifted, predictably, to politics.
“The Americans and their missiles,” Atef had said to Karam. “Can you please tell your boy Clinton to take it down a notch?” It was an inside joke, Karam’s fondness for Clinton.
“Tell your fundamentalists to stop first,” Karam countered. The conversation turned to Monica Lewinsky, then the situation in Palestine.
“They’re saying it’s getting worse.”
“The Intifada didn’t stop the settlers.”
Abdullah spoke suddenly, with violence. “You’re all wrong.”
“What do you mean, son?” Latif asked gently.