A few weeks ago, my grandmother had a stroke while in the bathroom. She got up from the toilet seat and died, in an awkward half-standing, half-stooping stance over the sink, her panties down to her knees, her fingers in her mouth. They found her seven hours after it happened; she was bloated and blue in the face. The irony is that, the day before, she’d tidied up her apartment expecting the death of her much older, Alzheimer-ridden husband. It turned out she was tidying it up for herself, when her sons (including my father) came over to mourn her own death. We all expected grandfather to go first too; he’s like a baby these days, he can only mumble and point. So it was a shock that my grandmother died, and the undignified way in which she had died, but then who is ever lucky, I thought, to have a “proper” death?
I didn’t attend her funeral; I didn’t want to. I want to remember her alive.
Grandmother’s death is the reason for our coming here because I know we all thought (but daren’t say) that anyone from our family could suddenly drop dead, so we should pop in to say hello so we don’t regret we never did. That’s one of the effects death has on people: suddenly, you’re aware how fragile everyone is and you start to believe that because of this awareness they are somehow far more in danger of dying than before.
We met my mother’s family first: my grandfather, my grandmother, my uncle, and his son. They all live in the same house. When my uncle divorced he had nowhere to go and not having enough money of his own, settled in with his parents and has been with them since. Their story is a depressing one. Grandfather had been the owner of a highly successful stationery store; he ran it for decades, each decade seeing him enjoying more fame and income than the last. Then, suddenly, in a fit of rage over some dispute, he decided to close down his shop, calling his business hopeless and a waste of time. My uncle was employed there, who also lived off the income they received. Ever since they closed down neither of which, due to their lack of education and qualifications, could find a well-paying job. So they live off their relatives’ sympathy loans and the pastries grandmother sells. And everyone directs their anger onto grandfather, who is now but a frail old thing, simply because he did a mistake a long time ago he can’t undo.
I have never been as aware of their poverty as I am now. It goes to show how much I have grown. On the surface, they don’t seem to be poor; you might even have judged them to be well-to-do: they dress nicely; they never frown; they are exceedingly kind despite their circumstances; their home is elegant and clean. So nothing about them really screams their condition. It isn’t obvious. For a long time, even I fell for it. I remember being told the truth when I was young and having a hard time believing it. But now I see it. I see the severity with which they treat my uncle’s son; they want so desperately for him to grow up to be right, to be intelligent and succeed. I notice how forced their gaiety can be; they want to entertain us, but their laughter and their smiles almost seem like their idea of what laughing or smiling should be like instead of being true. I hear their whispers behind a half-closed door as they count their money to see if they have enough to buy us snacks from the supermarket. I notice all this, and more, and it punches a hole into my chest to see them try so hard to be anything but what they really are.
And yet I can only feel. I can’t do anything; I can’t say anything—quite literally too, as I can’t express myself in their language the way I do mine. I stammer. I blush. I want to tell them how much they mean to me but suddenly I’m in kindergarten and I don’t know A from Z. I can only hug them and hope they feel something in my hugs my words have failed to describe.
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When I am not visiting them, I am cooped in my hotel room. The net connection is very moody, so I often find myself watching videos that freeze suddenly halfway through that no cursing can fix. So I draw or I read. There’s not much else to do.
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And then this thing comes out of nowhere. A government thing, concerning my passport and its renewal. Bear with me, as I don’t speak Adult very well. Either way, what I heard from my father was that I had to wear their traditional Saudi clothing for the whole ordeal. I was horrified—not so much about the dress-up but what on earth I would say. They would interview me for sure, I thought. If they asked me something and I didn’t understand, what would they do? What would they do? I kept asking myself, as I imagined some very unpleasant but somewhat plausible scenarios in which I answered in English instead of Arabic and the government official would look scandalized, press a red button under his desk, and they would take me away to be beheaded. I hate how my imagination scares the piss out of me sometimes.
Thank goodness you hadn’t seen me. You’d have laughed the hair off your head. In addition to the thobe and the gutra and igal (about those last two: I honestly don’t know which is which), I had to wear briefs under it. Briefs. Big briefs. Which was my uncle’s. And that I looked like a total douche in. To make matters worse, I couldn’t stop pulling my thobe up whenever I went up or down the steps—I felt and looked like goddamn Cinderella.
When I reached, it was all white with a flash of checkered red. My father wasn’t kidding when he said everyone wore it there. If a foreigner walked in with jeans and a t-shirt everyone turned to look at him. So I was very thankful I didn’t pull out a foreigner outfit for myself, because that would have ended up attracting more attention than I could bear. My hair was hidden, so no one would look and wonder at my anomalous curls; I did my best I’m-here-on-government-business look and all in all looked very common. I blended in.
And then, after about an hour and a half going upstairs, downstairs, then upstairs again because the damn fools are so disorganized with their stuff and speak to you with their eyes on their Blackberries, I finally got to the part which was the very crucial part and that, when successfully done, I promised myself I would jump on my costume back in my room like a crazed child and shout, “Ha! Ha!! Haaaaaaa!!!” (Later, I really did that. It was a thrill.)
My number was called and I went to the booth trying to remember to breathe.
I handed over my file. Government Man took it. He nodded several times. He coughed. He coughed again. He raised a finger to be excused of his lengthening coughing fit. Phlegm bubbled up in his throat. He didn’t spit it out, or even swallow it. And just as I will never know Victoria’s Secret, I will never know what this man does to his phlegm.
“And are you living here currently?” he asked, in Arabic.
“Yes,” I said, “No.”
“Well, which is it, yes or no?”
“No.”
“Where do you live?”
“Dubai.”
“Ah, Dubai. Ah. With the tall building, ah?”
“Yes. Dubai with the Tall Building.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Please sit so I can take your picture.”
Government Man motioned to a seat. As I sat down, the black coils holding my gutra and igal in place (I still don’t know which is which) fell into my lap. I wondered if the look on Government Man’s face was mortal offense. I pictured my head rolling away from my body, my eyes open stupidly—beheaded. The word kept repeating in my head as I fixed myself up for the photo. I tried my best to look as Saudi as possible. As far as my observation skills go, the Saudi look can be thus achieved: open your mouth slightly and curl a corner of your lip down (your choice which corner, though I find the right easier to manage); raise your eyebrows so that you look cold and haughty and also vaguely like you smell something rotten but that you also vaguely find appealing. That’s it in a nutshell.
Government Man looked pleased. He took the photo. Then he asked me to put my fingers into a scanner.
“Right first,” said Government Man.
I did as he said.
“Left.”
I did my left.
“Thumbs, please.”
“Sorry?”
“Thumbs.”
“Erm…”
“Thumbs!” And he actually reached over and grabbed my thumbs and shoved them over the scanner. I felt myself turning red. “Pinky finger. Didn’t work.”
You must remember this was all in Arabic. “Pinky finger” sounds well and recognizable in English, but in mumbling, throaty Arabic, especially Saudi Arabian Arabic…Save me.
So I just put all my fingers out on display and let him shove back down whatever finger he needed me to scan. Then Government Man said, “Okay, God be with you,” and I left, feeling as if I was a survivor of something great.
