But it’s later than I thought, and Teta will be worried about me. I’ll have to find some way to make it up to her. I get off at Borough Hall and emerge into the reddish light. An elderly Black woman is feeding pigeons in the park, and grandmothers in saris, scarves, or Yankees caps are walking their kids to school, laden with their backpacks like blossoms heavy with bees. Black trash bags are lined up on the sidewalk for collection. We used to make this walk, too, on our way to the Islamic community center. You used to take me to their after-school Arabic classes, though I was far from the best in my class. You liked the location because it was close to Teta, so we could drop by for dinner afterward. It’s housed in a beautiful old two-story building and has been missing the Arabic half of its sign for years because of fears of arson. A few years after you died, the women’s entrance was scorched by fire one night, and I felt like telling you, Look, see where this silence has gotten us.
I walk down to the bodega and grab a newspaper to kill time. I am bleeding again, and the farther I walk, the worse my cramps get. I’m convinced my body is rejecting the piece of plastic in my uterus, no matter what my gyno says. I stop by the local bakery to pick up a man’ousheh for Teta, trying to assuage my guilt. The woman behind the counter can tell I haven’t slept. She says nothing; she doesn’t have to.
When I leave the shop with my paper box, I spot two men walking down the sidewalk across the street holding hands, checking the brunch prices in a restaurant window. The man on the right laughs at something the other man says, flipping his black hair over his shoulder. His partner rubs the back of the man’s hand with his thumb. They look at each other.
I drop my eyes. The man with the long hair reminds me of Sami, and on this morning, of all mornings, my unrequited crush is the last thing I want to think about. But I can’t help myself: I see Sami in the linen shirt this man is wearing, remember our thrift shop fashion shows and the day I held Sami’s hand when he finally got up the courage to get his ears pierced. Now he is using his art with laser focus to keep the memories of his community alive, and I am trying to forget him.
I turn away and head back to Teta’s apartment. A man in a crisp polo shirt passes the two men on the street and turns to stare. The knot of their fingers unravels when they drop each other’s hands.
* * *
Teta’s living room is cool and dark. The curtains are half drawn, blocking the usual rectangle of morning sunlight. Teta is in her chair, reading under your framed print of John James Audubon’s American Redstart, one of his paintings from the Birds of America. Next to it, hanging in a place of honor above the china-filled breakfront like a religious icon, is the most valuable thing in the house: your prized Laila Z aquatint of a hudhud in its walnut frame.
Teta motions to the sofa opposite her chair, and I sit down, unwrapping the man’ousheh for her. The apartment smells of disturbed dust, but the sounds of the city don’t find their way in. Apartment 4A is Teta’s stronghold against the repeating past.
“Hazy today.” Teta accepts the man’ousheh with a napkin on her lap to catch the stray za’atar. The bread is still hot from the oven.
“Summer in Brooklyn.” I don’t add what we are both thinking: that time of year again. Teta holds the man’ousheh between her lap and her mouth. You are on the tip of her tongue, but she won’t invoke you. Your death is an enchantment neither of us is strong enough to break.
I glance toward Teta’s days-of-the-week pill tray in the kitchen. “Did you take your meds?”
Teta scoffs between bites. “They raise the price one time more,” she says, “and I cut them in half.”
“You can’t do that. Those are your maintenance meds, Teta. For the myeloma. They’re important.”
We’ve broken two of our unspoken rules: I’ve questioned Teta’s frugality, and I’ve made her feel frail. Every month, as we get close to refilling her prescription, Teta starts cutting her pills in half. I’ve seen her do it, even though I tell her it’s dangerous and unnecessary. She’s never forgotten war and hunger, never forgotten hoarding medicine for her own sick mother during the French bombardment of Damascus in the late spring of ’45, and I’ve had to accept that sometimes to feel secure is its own medicine. Still, by now she must have found the spot where I stash the bills. She must know I don’t always have the money to pay them.
We eat in silence, and then Teta folds the napkin into a tiny square and pushes herself up on the arms of the chair. “The kazbara,” she says, as though the cilantro on her fire escape explains everything, and turns to the window.
“Teta, you’re not supposed to—”
Before I can stop her, Teta hikes up her wool skirt to slip a stockinged foot onto the fire escape. She knows I won’t pull her back, for fear of knocking her down, which is why she turns and smirks at me over her shoulder.
“Oh, you know what you’re doing,” I call after her as she lifts her other foot over the windowsill. Asmahan saunters over, curious.
“Don’t sass me,” she retorts. “I stood up to armed men with a bucket of water before you were born.”
There’s little I can say to that. “I already watered the kazbara, Teta. Come back in. Let’s play tawleh.”
But there’s no arguing with Teta when she has her mind set on something, and anyway, she’s been climbing out onto the fire escape to water her garden when I’m not home for months. She never grew thyme after you died, but she’s kept the garden ever since.
“First Christmas after you were born,” Teta says over her shoulder as she takes up the watering can on the windowsill, “your father, he wanted a tree. Astaghfirullah! He demand a tree, and I’m the only one home. I carried the tree on my back to surprise them. You remember, eh?”
Asmahan puts out a paw to test the situation, and I shoo her from the window. “I know, Teta. Twenty blocks.”
“Twenty-four!” This number has increased over the years.
I set one foot on the fire escape and freeze. It’s been years since I’ve been able to stand on one of these without panic. “Come inside. It’s about to rain.”
Teta waves the watering can for emphasis. “I took you to Prospect Park so we could walk and walk. Thirty, forty blocks.” Teta sits down on the window ledge and wipes her brow. “We used to walk and walk until I had the feet like two stones. You remember?”
I laugh. “Ma fi benzene.” The first thing I ever learned from Teta, who never got tired first, was how to tell her I was out of gas.
Teta cackles. She pinches a silver tuft of sage between two fingers. “To Allah belongs the east and the west.” She’s reciting Surat al-Baqarah. “So wherever you turn, there is the face of God.”
Surat al-Baqarah reminds me of the afternoons I used to spend with you during Ramadan, when I’d start out trying to fast during the school day and come home cranky and exhausted, and you’d recite it to me. Teta memorized the whole Qur’an as a young girl, something you used to say impressed everyone around her, given that her education was cut short by poverty. You always denied it, but I think you knew it by heart, too. You used to tell me, during those long afternoons, how fasting could bring you closer to God if you let it. You used to say that not worrying about your next meal made you feel more present to the world around you. I wonder how it would feel to inhabit my own body so fully that even the ache of fasting would feel miraculous.