I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops (13 page)

The television blared, and my attention was caught by the electricity advertisements: an electric stove, an electric heater, an electric boiler. I’d have to buy an electric boiler to replace the gas one, which had been leaking for a week now. The gas man had told us not to use it or else it would blow up, and had stuck on a red warning sign to remind us.

I turned, intending to ask the English boy why he lived with me, why he liked my company. Once he had said I showed him a concern that he had never met with before, even from his parents, and that he would love to visit my country one day. At the time I didn’t believe him because I wasn’t used to hearing the truth from people’s lips, preferring to believe what I thought rather than what I heard.

Instead I found myself thinking, AIDS. I looked at the two of them: “You ought to go and have a blood test.”

I was thinking I would boil the sheets that evening and ask the chemist for a powerful disinfectant and give myself a vinegar douche to get rid of all the germs inside me.

They went into the kitchen and I started to tidy the room, gathering the plates from here and there and scattering the remains of the food on the window ledge. The pigeons
flocked around it immediately, though dawn was only just breaking. I knew the neighbors complained that this habit of mine encouraged the pigeons to come up to the windows, but I didn’t care. “Eat up,” I told the nearest bird. “You’re lucky I’m feeding you, not eating you. Where I come from, if we see a pigeon we throw a stone at it. If it falls we accept our good fortune, kill it and eat it. If it carries on flying we shrug our shoulders and say, It’s the angels’ turn today. You’re not beautiful, you’re not white, or even a nice light brown. You’re gray and black like a big rat, but I love you because you’re English and you wait for me every day.”

My fiancé Farid
, insisted that I should go with him and his family to visit his grandmother’s grave on the eve of the feast. I had always thought this custom was for old or lonely people, who took comfort from sitting with their dead relatives. They say there’s nothing like visiting a cemetery for curing depression. I had not been aware of my own parents visiting family graves on special days, although once when I was little I prayed fervently that somebody I didn’t know in the family would die so that I could go inside
one of the buildings people put up around their graves. I had gone with our cook to her house overlooking the cemetery—an occasion that must have remained imprinted on my mind—and from then on I’d pictured the dead people living in those burial chambers, like us in our houses, only different: perhaps they moved about without making any sound, or stayed in bed all the time.

In those days the tombs seemed strange to me, with their engraved cupolas, the color of sand. They stood among a few faded trees and mounds of sandy earth that were perfect for rolling down. When I heard dogs barking and cats yowling, I was sure they were the guardians of these tombs.

We called in at Farid’s parents’ house. As I made to reply to his father’s greeting, his mother appeared from nowhere and asked me disapprovingly why I wasn’t wearing the diamond earrings.

“Diamonds for the cemetery?” I asked.

“Why not?” She nodded. “Everyone’s going to be there, I know, and they’ll say he only gave you a ring when you were engaged.”

Then she vanished and returned with a brooch of precious stones and came toward me to pin it on my dress. I took a step backward, insisting as diplomatically as I could that I didn’t like brooches. Turning again toward her room
she replied impatiently, “All right. Wear my marcasite earrings. But everybody will recognize them.”

I looked beseechingly at Farid and he said to her, “I don’t want her to wear any jewelry.”

Only then did she notice the bunch of white roses I was holding. She took them from me, smelling them and calling on the Prophet in her delight, then rushed to put them in a vase with some other flowers. The price of them had made me hesitate, but they had looked as if they were just waiting for someone to appreciate their fragrant beauty. I justified buying them on the grounds that
they
weren’t for me, and that anyway, from now on there was no need for me to feel a pang of conscience every time I bought something expensive, since I was going to marry a wealthy man. Farid told his mother that the flowers were for the grave. “What a shame. They’re lovely,” she replied, continuing to arrange them in the vase.

Farid signaled to me, and I understood that I shouldn’t pursue the subject of the flowers. I looked about me in an attempt to escape from my embarrassment at her behavior and pretended to be interested in the content of the baskets by the door: pastries for the feast day, bread in unusual shapes and old clothes and shoes.

I sat next to my fiancé in the front of the car, with his mother and father and adolescent sister in the back. The eve
of the feast was like the feast itself, the crowded streets throbbing with noise and excitement, and everywhere the sounds of fireworks exploding. I remembered how as children we would rush to examine the peach-colored sand in our socks and shoes as soon as we reached home. Every year when the feast came around, it felt as if we were celebrating it for the first time. My mother would prepare the tray of
kunafa
and we would take it to the communal oven. Although we stood there for ages, our eyes fixed on the baker so that he would remember the tray; he always took it out late and the pastries would be rock hard. All the same we ate them with noisy relish. I remembered the handbag I had especially for the feast, the socks I wore even at the height of summer, the shiny shoes, the hair ribbons. We used to visit all our relatives, including those who lived at a distance and were hardly related to us at all. We would knock on their doors and wish them well, not meaning what we said. We knew the uncle who said he had no change on him was lying and would sit for ages on his doorstep before we rushed off to the swings and the pickle sellers, discussing the rumor that the feast was going to last a day or two longer this year for the children’s benefit.

People spent the whole of this feast-day eve in the cemetery. The children wore their brightest clothes. Amplified voices recited the Quran, and at the same time popular songs blared out from radios and cassette recorders. There
were women selling dates and palm leaves. One was smoking and the others shared a joke, their tattooed chins quivering with laughter. Fool beans and falafel, fruit juice and pickles of many varieties and colors were all on sale at the entrance to the cemetery. I thought I would have a display of pickles in jars like that in my own house.

Farid’s mother stopped at the first vendor she came to, a woman without a tooth in her head, and chose a large quantity of oranges, tangerines and palm leaves. She haggled with her for some time, then gave her a sum of money and walked off. “Lady! Lady!” the woman called after her. When she tried to ease herself up off the ground, I begged Farid to pay her what she was asking: “Poor thing, it’s a shame on a day like this.”

We hurried to catch up with Farid’s mother, elegant in spite of her plumpness, springing over the mud and earth and gravel like a gazelle. She carried her purchases, leaving the baskets to Farid, his father, and his sister, who looked increasingly morose. I found myself walking along beside her. She glanced at her watch and asked if I thought the sun would come out later, then lowering her voice she explained, “I want to go to the club. Have a swim and lie in the sun.”

I smiled at her. The noise was deafening. There was the clatter of saucepans and the roar of Primus stoves where the women had spread themselves out to cook in the narrow
alleyways and the open spaces between the tombs. The shrieks of children mingled with the voices of the Quran reciters, who moved from grave to grave and in and out of the tombs with burial chambers, which belonged to the comfortably off families. In vain they tried to raise their voices, and their audience—families wanting private recitations for their dead—had to give them all their attention to catch what they were saying, as most of the working reciters were elderly, despite the fact that there were young ones about, leaning against tombstones looking bored. I watched Farid’s mother darting from one to another, and all of them promising to find their way to her sooner or later with the help of the cemetery caretaker. When one of the younger ones approached her offering his services, she pretended not to notice him. Angrily Farid asked her why she had snubbed him and she answered, “Old men have more merit in the eyes of the Lord.”

Perhaps this was because the young faces didn’t bear the marks of grief and suffering like the old ones.

We went into a courtyard with a little garden around it where there were graves with pink and white ornamental headstones. Farid said they belonged to his great-grandfather and two great-uncles, who had asked to be buried in the garden, which looked green and moist as if someone had recently watered it. Then we crossed the courtyard into the main family tomb and found it crammed with members of
the family, a Quran reciter and dishes of dates and cucumbers and tangerines. The grave itself was festooned with palm leaves. Why are we sitting in here, right next to the grave? I wondered.

I saw disappointment, then anger on the face of my fiance’s mother, which she was unable to conceal. “You must have spent the night here” was her first comment to the assembled company. Nobody answered her, but to my amazement they stood up and greeted us, disregarding the recitation of the Quran: Farid’s three paternal aunts, his grandfather, the husbands of two of the aunts and their children. They made room for us on wooden chairs, disfigured by time and neglect, and we all sat down except for Farid’s mother, who began spreading more palm leaves over the grave until it had almost vanished from sight. Then she took out pastries, bread, dates, cucumbers, tangerines and glasses for tea. She put some pastries and dates in a bag and went up to the Quran reciter, thrusting it into his hands. He stopped in the middle of his recitation to mumble his thanks and handed the bag to a boy who was sitting at his feet counting out notes and coins before putting them in his pocket.

Farid’s mother asked him all of a sudden how much he took from each family. “Depends how much time they want,” the boy answered slyly.

“How much?” she insisted. “Last year, for example.”

“Last year was last year,” he replied. Then, peering into the bag, he named an amount that made Farid’s mother gasp. “That’s the same as a checkup at the doctor’s,” she remarked. I met my fiance’s eyes and we almost laughed aloud.

There was uproar outside, then the caretaker appeared, accompanied by a sheikh. When they heard the recitation in progress, the sheikh tried to retreat, but Farid’s mother grabbed his hand and pulled him in. In spite of the family’s obvious disapproval she led him over to where her daughter was sitting, while he murmured, “I mustn’t poach from someone else.”

Impatiently she answered him, “Just relax. He’ll get his share and you’ll get yours.”

The sheikh obeyed and sat listening to his colleague, nodding his head with feeling, while the aunts’ faces registered annoyance; one of them sighed and another turned her face away. Farid’s mother declared, “It’s not a feast every day, and we want to be sure our dead go to heaven.”

Then she approached the caretaker, wishing him well, and counted out some money into his hand, enunciating the amount in an audible voice. “I hope this place isn’t opened up again as soon as our backs are turned?” she inquired sharply.

“What do I carry a weapon for?” countered the caretaker.

“No. You know what I mean,” she said. “We heard that the previous caretaker used to rent out our tomb as if it was a hotel.”

“That’s why he’s the previous caretaker. You know I don’t even let kids come through here.”

I thought that relief was at hand when from outside the smell of kebab and meatballs wafted in, making my nostrils twitch. The blind reciter rose to his feet and was led away by the boy, while the newcomer began chanting prayers. I looked around the tomb room, especially at the aunts’ faces. They shifted their gaze from me to Farid’s mother and sister, and back again. When our eyes met we exchanged smiles, as if they knew what I was thinking and agreed: It doesn’t matter that Farid’s mother is difficult, and I don’t have any sort of relationship with her. Farid’s family all love him, even though he does exactly what she says.

The reciter paused to clear his throat and immediately one of the aunts turned to me and said she hadn’t expected me to be so pretty, in spite of the descriptions she’d heard, and only an illness had kept her away from my engagement party. Another asked if we’d found an apartment and what area we were thinking of. I answered these questions in all innocence at first, but from their expressions and the way Farid kept trying to catch my eye, I felt I must be on sensitive ground as far as his mother was concerned. Sure enough, she interrupted and said there was no urgency
about renting a place, her house had big rooms and was Farid’s as much as it was hers.

When I replied to the aunts that we were planning a simple wedding, just the family, Farid’s mother announced, as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said, that we’d be holding it in one of the big hotels. When I told them that my wedding dress was secondhand, and had been worn first in the twenties, she was unable to hide her alarm. It was then I realized a state of war existed between Farid’s mother and the aunts and regretted ever opening my mouth. From their loaded questions and the way they looked at one another after each of my replies, I could tell that they were using me to attack her in her most vulnerable spot. She protested, almost in a scream, “God forbid! You’re wearing a dress that someone else has worn, to your wedding? That’s out of the question!”