SARAH OSMAN. I used to hide whenever I heard our garage door open. The door made a sound as loud as a

Transcription

1 FUL AND FALAFEL SARAH OSMAN I used to hide whenever I heard our garage door open. The door made a sound as loud as a bomb a rumbling crash often accompanied by a shrill screech as the door finished rolling itself upward. This meant that Baba, my father, was home. Baba never came home in the same mood. Some days he would greet me with a smile that spread all the way up to his blue eyes and faintly graying hair. He gave me an abrupt, whiskery kiss before setting down his briefcase, humming to himself as he flipped on the station that only played the English Premier League. Other days he stormed into the house and started screaming. Mina! His voice boomed. Yes? I stood in front of him, my stomach in knots. Why is this stain here? His thick eyebrows arched in fury. I have told you again and again not to spill things, you filthy child! But, I protested as my eyes brimmed with tears, I didn t do that. He moved his furious blue eyes about an inch away from my own and clenched his fists. We have the exact same eyes a blue gray that turns to ice whenever we are angry or scared. Who else could have done this? Who else is stupid enough? Apologize right now. I m sorry, Baba, I said, not to him, but to the floor. Stop crying. You are too old to be crying. 1

2 Baba s past still remains a bit of a mystery, though I ve managed to cobble together scatterings of it over time. I always had to force information out of Baba, and even now, he remains stoic about his past. He grew up in Egypt but moved to Birmingham, England, where he earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering. He received a full scholarship and studied for ten years, working tirelessly toward his degree. After he graduated, Baba never had to fight to break into his field he fell right into the perfect engineering job. He fought for other things, though. Once during his studies Baba made the journey home to Egypt to help orchestrate a protest against Israel during the Egyptian-Israeli war. Back in Birmingham, Baba became someone I wouldn t recognize today. He smoked pot, drank alcohol, slept with multiple girlfriends and let his faith in Islam lapse. He even picked up British slang. If I listen carefully, sometimes I still hear him refer to trash as rubbish and the vacuum as a hover. Around his early thirties Baba s job presented him with a choice: relocate to New Orleans or to Brazil. He decided to give New Orleans a shot, and to this day insists it was one of his biggest blunders. In New Orleans he was taunted by a co-worker for being Arabic. It was there that he first began to reconsider his decision. On rare occasions, my father made an appearance at my swim meets, or other after school events where parents were expected to show up to support their children. One chilly Saturday he attended a swim meet wearing a cowboy hat. He stuck out like a rainbow fish among a sea of anchovies. All of the other fathers, the American fathers, wore USC and UCLA baseball caps. I remember how my sister Nadia hid behind the bleachers when she saw Baba. She 2

3 ignored Baba s waves and cheers that seemed so vehement it made us uncomfortable. That s my daughter! he yelled about me to the other fathers, as though everything about the cheering was normal, as though everything about our family life was normal. I made no attempt to hide from Baba. After the meet I sat on the deck and watched him carefully. I watched the clumsy shuffle of his feet and nervous eyes, the awkward display of support unmatched at home. He seemed so small among the other fathers without the walls of our house and the monotone hum of his domestic life fueling him with anger and disappointment. When I was eight, Baba made his first and only appearance at an open house. All of the parents were supposed to leave notes for their children. The next morning, I found a small yellow note on my desk folded into the shape of a large pencil. My fingers trembled as I unfolded it: Mina, I am happy with your class. Your teacher is very nice. It looks like you do a lot of hard work. Keep it up. I am very proud of you. I love you, Dad How I studied that note. How I cherished it. It was the first and only time Baba ever referred to himself or our relationship in such an overtly American way. I refolded the note and in that motion, gone was Baba the menacing figure. Gone was the man who huffed and screamed when he wanted to display his authority over the home. For a moment, I almost believed in the new Baba who took the time to write that note, referring to himself as Dad. For a moment, I believed Baba was a normal father, a caring father an American father. 3

4 Baba didn't give gifts on Christmas as a matter of course. Christmas was a Christian, American holiday. It wasn't his holiday. The one holiday I could count on him to give us gifts was Eid: the celebration that takes place after Ramadan. Baba prepared for Eid by fasting. For an entire month, usually around October or November, Baba wouldn t eat from the time the sun rose until it set. He would sit in a tiny corner in the living room, watching soccer, glowering at anyone who dared to eat in front of him. Each night he rushed into the kitchen and gorged the moment the sunset. All of the pouting and yelling would end the moment Eid arrived. Baba opened his wallet gladly then, tossing twenties around, advising Nadia and I to save and spend the money wisely. He cooked ful and falafels with pita bread and Hummus, and the three of us would sit together and eat. In recent years, Baba decided to get back in touch with the rest of his Egyptian family. He has over fifty cousins who range from hotel owners in Alexandria to farmers from the countryside. After his first trip to Cairo, Baba brought back endless pictures of our family for Nadia and I. I discovered a cousin who looks exactly like me. I had never been able to find a relative on Baba s side of the family who resembled me. The first time I saw my cousin, I studied his picture for a long time, marveling at the curve of his nose and the wrinkles around his eyes. They were my wrinkles and curves. Baba returns to Egypt at least twice a year. He's gone for weeks at a time, occasionally sending my sister and I pictures of his trip. He's begun to visit other surrounding countries, such as Turkey, to have a stronger connection to the culture he once abandoned. 4

5 I have noticed that Baba has developed a stronger appreciation for his culture. He attends mosque regularly (whereas before he would only visit during Ramadan). On occasion, he will answer the phone in Arabic, which always catches me off guard. He cooks ful and falafel more frequently than he has in the past. He has finally begun to embrace who he truly is. Baba and I still don't have the best relationship. As time passes on, we still continue to fight. Some days I feel no closer to him, even though I have some distance and perspective that I didn't have when I was a child. But then I remind myself that I'm older, that I'm not the same scared little girl who would cower whenever he demanded that I apologize. I can now fight back, and that's because he taught me how to. Lately our conversations revolve around Islam, and Baba s insistence that I convert. I'm not serious about converting, but I indulge him in these conversations. I don t think I'll ever be Egyptian enough for Baba, just as he'll never be American enough for me. Converting to Islam will not change this. The divide means that we'll never be satisfied truly with each other; no matter how much we try to reach each other Baba sending me English versions of the Koran to flip through and me encouraging him to watch The Simpsons. It feels strange being in this place with Baba. Sometimes when I smile and kiss him on the cheek, I wait for him to lash out at me. He smiles at my boyfriend and asks when we will marry. He laughs and promises he'll get married first. Still, I answer his questions calmly, ignoring any comments that appear to be snide. I m always surprised when he compliments me. I sit with those compliments uncomfortably, forever wondering when he'll attack me, just as he did those many nights ago when the garage door opened with a jolt. 5

6 END ABOUT THE AUTHOR Author: Sarah Osman Country of residence: USA Nationality: American Mother tongue: English Sarah Mina Osman is a writer and a teacher. She currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and writes for Young Hollywood. Her ethnic background is Egyptian, Turkish, Creole, German, French, and Irish. She loves to dance and read palms. In addition to living in California, she has also lived in New Mexico and Australia. 6