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No Matter Moses or Mohamed

Dina Hendawi-Coppes

Dear Benny,
    I liked walking the Manhattan streets with you. I put aside urine sidewalk stench and pedestrian barks at our pace; especially when we stopped in the middle of the path—whether side or street—to kiss. We were simply too lax for Manhattan; and I was really fine with that. Their way was lonely. He stomped on the next, knees to the groin, elbows across the back and then walked home seeing only a blur. I know she cried in her sleep because with a warm body beside her, she didn’t have enough silence to make sense of his poetry. Instead they languished there, perhaps she had a flash of epiphany, but it burned by before sense connected with reason, depositing a stone in the frame of her chest. And he believed he flourished in the city void while lauding it again and again, conquest upon empty conquest.
    I imagined us living in a farmhouse with some great stretch of land. Acres of earth. I’d spend days dawdling about the dandelions, the imperial trees, and even swoop through the grass Whitman-style; and none of it wasted time. Green land that howled in the darkest of the night; the wind whisking the grass into a frenzy. The silence in our home, numbingly sweet with house clock clicks and wooden plank creaks. The moon our solemn light keeping us still with whispered breath as we sank into one another and pondered.
    We imagined this life. And I believed you were so sincere when you painted it.
    The way we fumbled into one another, your eyes astonishing green, and your demeanor a full-bodied gasp at catching sight of me when you weren’t prepared. I moved my bag and let you sit beside me. My body warm with awareness, you moved uneasily in your seat; sweeping your eyes in my direction at times. I smiled inwardly. I had seen you in class before. You ignored the girls that twirled their hair, shined some leg, gave you eye. And when one brazenly approached you, you said few words with a polite nod; and she scurried to the back puzzled as to how her oiled gams didn’t make a hit. You answered the professor’s encrypting questions so fervently, penetrating its innards and unfurling them neatly like a chinese jig-saw; jostling your classmates’ cutting egos. You waited for the seminars to begin, reading Zinn or Chomsky with eye-balling intensity. I liked you very much merely on these insights. But when you seemed to quake with a certain knowledge of me, I leveled your eye at the end of class and shook your hand with the offer of my name. You asked the whereabouts of my name. I said Arab, Egyptian. Amira means princess. And then jested on how generous a name it was with all my clumsy deeds. But truthfully, my name is mine and my heritage is auxiliary; no need for baggage, I said. Here, here, you said. Every class after that you waded through people and seats until you occupied the one next to mine and remained endearingly awkward.
    What you didn’t know is that when I did realize you, when I did wake in mornings with your yesterday words reverberating—making meaning and love to them—I began to hesitate. While before I saw you, not yet undone by you; the next moment, the knowledge welled in me and I began to scrutinize myself. I’d see you day to day and want to shove my palms in my pockets. They were clammy, and you were perfect. I tested each word before saying it; searching each one. They had to be rounded, poignant. You noticed my clipped moves and understood what it meant for you. You thrusted your hand into my pocket and held it there. You grinned when I took my time to speak. But that one day, over crème brulee, surrounded by bistro kitsch, my face betrayed me with you a witness. After that, you asked me how I’d like it.
    Like what, I said.
    The next step: Meet the bigoted Zionist father or keep it light and choose a wedding ring?

***

    My father taught me how to sidestep. He said—we are Egyptian, yes. There’s Nasser, pharaohs, Naguib Mahfouz and Amr Mousa. There’s Islam and Copts, there’s corruption and noise. It’s all warped, he said, history skewed and skewered with clever inserts of winners and losers, the unabashed heroes versus the deranged anti-ones. The indigestible Arab leaders versus the latest sect of offense. America’s the villain. She’s always the villain. Israel is who we hate. And the Brits are who we will blame forever. People embrace the lore like diseased vices. It’s nationalism; it’s archaic; it’s tribalism at best. They tote torched flags with enraged ragged hearts while bombs drop on them with justifications. And a handsome media-strewn face pretends to deliberate his indeed deliberate plans to his ‘first world’ nation. An honest contorted mess, he said.
    Sidle past it, Amira, and be on your way.
    My father thought to set me totally free from it. No matter black or white. No matter Moses or Mohamed. Beautifully blind; but also utterly exposed and now ruined. I was his experiment of intellectual ignorant bliss. I never looked at my hands and legs. I never noticed a color there. I never saw the breadth of my midnight hair as very indeed Arab. I spent each morning, in front of the mirror, tracing my pools of eyes with kohl, my lips with balm, and never once did I see it. That is, never once did I see myself as your father did; even as you did. My stride was once wide with conviction; and now I falter about wondering how you both did it—how you put me out of my space without so much as a chance to thwart it. My father died hoping I’d fare freely, navigating past puppet strings and elegiac oaths, maneuvering towards sheer wisdom and light. I forgive him for his vision; but now I am half finished.
    When your father met us at the door, he shook my hand with malign and tact; a sneer pervading the lines in his face. I withdrew swiftly and searched for a rescue in you. You did nothing but carry me in with a gentle urging push at the small of my back. Your father looked me square in the eye and pointedly expressed: Impossible. I quickly looked away and searched for a response in you, but your strategic line of offense was being concocted as you no longer took notice of me. His foyer was cold with dim lights and barren stucco walls. I embraced myself for cover, a looming disquiet in my heart, a pounding alert in my head. He walked ahead of us into the salon with light terrifying steps. A new room unveiled; paraphernalia posed as décor on the walls. David’s star, framed and centered to the right, Golda Mier framed and quoted to the left: The Palestinians do not exist, it said. Poignant, direct, in bold, block letters, and laminated.
    Fox news blaring, newscasters squabbling, and decidedly disruptive, you shut off the television and hailed you’ve come with great news. Your father sighed hoarsely. You asked for a cork screw and left for the kitchen. I watched your swagger as you entered the room, and wondered how you could be so calm. Fidgeting and hot with fear, he spoke my name.
    He said it with such contempt.
    As you buoyantly rummaged through a drawer—whistling so sweet—your father called me an aversion to his people, Muslim filth, and a stark impossibility. The cruel suddenness of his words threw me straight off my rails. All my enlightenment gone.
    You returned with a cork screw, celebratory, untarnished. Sitting, my eyes darting about, my mind hearing your father’s words like a plagued mantra, I looked up again and saw his vein in his forehead, throbbing, making sinuous turns up to his widow’s peak. His unblinking piercing eyes, green like yours, but drained, lifeless. His conservative beard frayed with each bend of the neck. His hands, brittle and spotty with the sun’s unkind shine. His legs deviously crossed. He waited to hear it from you; and you Benny, with your brightness, your beaming hope, told your father that I’m it.
    I heard you through the static, through the mess in my brain, and felt proud of you, deeply in love with you. Your father, silent, kneaded one hand with the other, rolling his thin skin back and forth until it was lopsided with a mass of flesh beneath his pinky. You waited with dignity, tightening your grip on my hand.
    And then you filled the dead air with unfamiliar, startling words.
    Amira and I will marry as Muslims, you said. I will convert to Islam.
    Your grip on my hand grew slack. Your energy diverted, you honed in on your father. And when I looked at you, I saw how narrow and predatory your focus became. You were waiting with ferocity for your father to crumble. You pounced again.
    What’s wrong Dad? Amira doesn’t fit your vision for me?
    And there I was a non-Jew, a Muslim, not ever knowing it. I heard my Dad again. No matter Moses or Mohamed. His moral lesson bound to tragic memories. The day he read the untold story about the Palestinian village of Tantura. Four-flanked. Israeli soldiers. Women raped, men buried. Young boys digging graves for their fathers, throwing dirt in their mouths. A crazed silence burying their humanities. My father wailing for them, on the porch, assuming me far from view.
    No matter Moses or Mohamed.
    The day my father witnessed coverage on Gaza. Palestinians gathering up their sons, their daughters, their babies, and running without destination. Israeli tanks steam forward. Cluster bombs above. Ricocheted bullets into young born heads. No corner to hide, no open flank. And that poor father. The one that made my father weep in secret. That poor father, up against a wall, barricading his son. His hands up, STOP!
    Death hung his head into his son’s embrace. A moment after, his son dead too. My father punched walls, and patched them the next day with a tender smile for me. An accident, he said.
    No matter Moses or Mohamed.
    My father left me on the doorstep of my dormitory a month before his unexpected death. His silent heart took him. His overwrought, decided heart gave way. His eyes were so brown and kind. His bear hands big; his scoping embrace safe. He left me that day with his last thoughts. A placemat from the diner we just ate in with some grease-stained plans for me. Diverting routes. Whether medicine or art. No matter one or the other. My choice, but remember: Be who you want to be, he said, that’s what I taught you habibti.

***

    Your father told you that you’ll never get my stink off of you. I rose up and walked out. You followed me, pleading me to stay, to endure some more. Tolerate his toxicity for you, for us, because afterwards there will be marriage; in spite of him and his dogged ways. Irony is so cruel. You hail heart and unity; black with white; Jews and Muslims. You said I was your Amira, your girl. But now I understand what you saw when you looked at me. You didn’t see my face; you saw Arab composites: a team of black eyes and brows, wiry kinks and curls of hair, swollen lips. You saw an upper hand against your father. You saw someone, not me.

Sincerely,
Amira

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