Ahmedby Ihab HassanAhmed was happy when I first met him; only gradually the sweetness in his smile drained. Sweetness? He held it back, as some Egyptians do, history trampling on their lives. Slight, elfin—or was it ferret-like?—he had long, black eyelashes, genetic memories of sandstorms and pitiless light. So, what was Ahmed doing in the Land of the Long White Cloud? Hope and affliction blow people around the world like sand; the trails of violence, of suspicion, lead everywhere. Shadows drift from land to land. I was staying at the Auckland Hilton, a gleaming, white, angular structure jutting out from Princes Wharf, like a cruise ship that never departs. Why should it depart? There was a Hilton at every destination. Good morning, sir, where shall I put the tray? Those were Ahmed's first words. The brown smell of coffee rose slowly to my head. An interminable flight from San Francisco had erased two Greenwich Meridian days from my life, and I felt both drowsy and jaggedly awake. But I would have time to recover; it was going to be a long stay. (I consulted for a manufacturer of plastic hulls, specializing in sloops, all expenses paid.) I decided to breakfast in my room every morning, high in the hotel's prow, watching tankers and cargo ships glide in and out of Waitemata Harbour. Noisy or serene, they seemed always intent, self-contained, as if carrying gravid missions to the ends of the earth. One morning, I asked Ahmed: Have you been long in New Zealand? That was coy. Counting fingers on both hands, he said: Eight years, sir. I am originally from Damanhur, in the Nile Delta. He must have heard the same question a hundred times, and knew how to make the answer casual, unthreatening to Kiwis. I waited for his counter-query—he would have seen my Arabic name on the tab—but it never came. Instead, he asked: Shall I pour your coffee now, sir? He looked away, his sweet expression clouded fleetingly. As always, I answered: Thank you, I'll do that myself. Then, untypically, I said: My people are Lebanese, from Tripoli. Tarablus in Arabic. He brightened: Ah, the Cedars of Lebanon, I heard songs about them in Egypt when I was a child. His hand was on his heart. Do you visit often, sir? I knew, then, I had gone far enough. Nostalgia bores me with its implication that time betrays all promises. The tribal imperative bores me with its assumption that blood is more essential than water. I turned to the window in time to see a Swedish freighter, its hull striped yellow and blue, slip out to the Pacific among screeching gulls. I had visited Sweden, never Lebanon. Ahmed did not bring my breakfast the next morning, nor the next; it was brought by a young Maori with the patina of a smile on his copper-brown face. I then returned to the States. Three months later, I was back in Auckland, arriving at dawn, vaguely grum. Once again, I had lost two virtual days, though I knew I would regain them flying back east. Cincinnati, my home town, in the East? I had always thought of the Orient as a foreign place with exotic features and faces. From the smoked limousine window, I could see the light just beginning to touch the hibiscus and jacaranda in early bloom against neat, colonial cottages. With few altered features, I thought, these houses could blend into an American suburb. My father, a steady, austere man with an imposing, pock-marked nose, had never spoken to me of Lebanon. Perhaps he was hindered by raw memories of sectarian clamor and strife, a web of rage so intricate as to defy cisatlantic comprehension. But once, hand resting on my shoulder, he had said: Home is not where you first see the light, it's where you gather it into yourself. I looked out of the tinctured window, again, at the small, brick cottages, their gates and dormers painted white, commencing to stir. I remembered Ahmed. Could he afford to live in one of these? Was he still working at the Hilton? I realized then, with a half-twinge, that I did not look forward to seeing him. Why? Inchoate feelings run deep—I knew that—but I was in no mood to splash in turbid waters just now. The next morning, I tried to smooth a frown on my forehead when Ahmed brought breakfast. He smiled sweetly, though he seemed to have indefinably aged. Putting down the tray, surveyed it critically with cocked head, and, satisfied, stepped back, raising his arms in votive offering. Welcome back, sir, was it a good flight? Theatrically, I groaned, shoulders hunched downwards. His smile spread, baring crowded teeth—had his hair thinned? Well, he said, it's quite far from America. He paused, as if he had just forgotten a coffee spoon, then added gratuitously: The people here are very lonely, sir. It was an odd statement. I found myself wondering: what does he want from me? It isn't the tip. Does he want to share a plaint, whisper in a confiding ear? Does he know himself? But I was hardly the ideal confessor: I liked New Zealand, and held no grudge against fate. Everyone who drove in the South Island knew how gorgeous and strange the landscape could be: great, tangled forests sweeping up the sides of volcanic mountains, basalt rocks tumbling wildly into frothy chasms and a dark blue sea, shades of green more intense than anything I had seen in the northern hemisphere. And how would ancestral warriors, primeval ferns, bewildered emus, fit in sceptered Albion or among the flailing windmills of Holland? Aotearoa—that's the Maori name—seemed to me farther, more isolate, than Australia, and more poignant despite its lushness. Yes, what was Ahmed, sprung of Nilotic earth, doing here? I let his comment on loneliness slip. A week passed, I consulted at the firm, rode the ferry to Waiheke. I sat in the Bellini Bar downstairs, perched on a chrome stool, a vodka Gibson—no, not a Bellini—before me, and thought: we all time-travel now, shuttling between cultures, crossing the International Dateline. But does the scent of a mother's hair, sound on an infant's lips, time-travel too? Does a fanatic heart ever yield its home? Ahmed had an answer, a sort of answer, for me. It may have been two weeks after my return, on our brief morning chat. Would you like to visit the Lebanese quarter in Auckland, sir? he suddenly asked, with his usual smile. I didn't know there was one, I stalled. Oh, yes. It's small but authentic. He made a circle with his right thumb and index finger, held up in the air. Not far from here, he insisted, narrowing his long lashes as he pretended to survey the breakfast tray once more. Why did I stall? As a child of the American Dream, democracy was meant to seep, like calcium, into my bones. And this was New Zealand, where people say: "It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice." Ahmed brought me breakfast, this didn't make him a servant, not in the Middle Eastern sense, never in the modern "hospitality industry." Besides, his enigmatic sweetness—I didn't call it sadness then—intrigued me beyond all ambivalences. I agreed to meet him in the hotel lobby at noon on his day off. The day came, I went down to the lobby, hoping Ahmed would not call me "sir." When the elevator door slid open, I saw him in a light gray suit and open, lavender shirt. A woman stood at his side. Ahmed stepped forward to greet me, his palm stretched toward her: Please meet, my wife, Audrey. We shook hands. I noticed her milky skin and russet hair, her build a touch squat; I felt her calm. Dutch stock, I thought. We took a cab, Ahmed insisting that I sit in the back with Audrey. She had a small smile in her Delft-blue eyes as Ahmed, half turning around, pointed out sights along the way. He said: There's a good place out on Old Dominion Road, the Cedar Bakery. They make a good lamb and chicken schwarma and serve Lebanese bread with hummus and tzatziki. After, we can walk around. Please, sir, let me invite. I started to remonstrate. Audrey cut me off in her tranquil voice: Oh, it's not expensive at all. I sat back in my corner of the cab, sensing her curious, sidelong glance. I thought: what did Ahmed tell her about me? Everything in the restaurant, including the small staff, seemed "authentically" Lebanese. We sat at a corner table with spotless paper mats, ate and talked. At first, words came as if squeezed through a fine-mesh sieve. Ahmed used Kiwi slang—wally, hard yakka, tiki tour.—more for Audrey's benefit, I felt, than mine. She looked at him maternally, her judgment of him uncompromised by her feelings. I asked: Do you have any children? He answered quickly: No anklebiters, no. Audrey sipped her water glass, Ahmed's face clouded. He said: Audrey is a nurse, sir, and we have no time. I tried to change the subject: Do you revisit Egypt sometimes? Whenever we can afford it, Audrey said. Ahmed's family is warm. I can almost speak Arabic now. She laughed a muted sound from deep in her belly. Then, absently: But there are always visa problems. Oh? I don't know about Egyptian officials, but New Zealand Immigration strikes me as quite decent. That depends on your passport, Audrey said, in the same absent tone. I was relishing my hummus and didn't want to get into racism or geopolitics. I turned to Ahmed: You have family in Egypt? I have a mother, she's quite old, and two sisters. One lives in Jordan. He paused for a long time, Audrey watchfully silent. Also, two children from a former wife. They are in school—you call it junior high in America? I don't see them often. He looked as if he was about to cry. C'mon, Ahmed, she said, with an impatient smile. You worry more about where you're going to be buried. Audrey looked over at me, her annoyance already flickering out: Are there many Lebanese in America? Where do they live? Well, I heard there may be half a million. Many settled in Michigan, but they have also spread out into big cities across the States. My home state is Ohio. All Egyptians go to California, Ahmed said miserably. They like to stick together. They don't like to be buried in foreign earth. He looked at Audrey, moistly. I imagined her foot moving toward his beneath the table. After lunch, we walked out among gaudy groceries and aromatic food stalls displaying their names in looping, foreign scripts. Some shops had lowered iron grills. A few women passed by, managing to appear pert beneath the hijab. It was not much, really, of a Lebanese Quarter, just an ethnic stroll on a mild antipodean day. But the mildness went out of it soon enough. A few blocks down on Dominion Road, we encountered three Maori youths lounging at a bus station. They were muscular, their flesh taut beneath t-shirts clinging to big, broad frames—I could not see how a spear could penetrate those bodies. Their eyes had red veins, and one dangled a jug of plonk from a hooked finger. As we approached, they began to leer. Suddenly, the one with the jug grimaced horrendously and stuck out his tongue—it hung like an angry, black snake. Ahmed slowed down; Audrey walked right up and took her place in the bus line. The Maori broke into a loud, good-natured laugh, but the smallest of them growled: Pakeha and sandniggers, sandniggers and Pakeha. Audrey did not flinch; no one spoke. When the bus came, we boarded it. The Maori jeered and stayed behind. I stood by the door, and when the bus stopped near David Jones, I waved to Ahmed and Audrey and got off. Never mind, I admonished myself, a Lebanese lunch can also leave a bad taste. A few days later, I returned to the States without seeing Ahmed. It is hard to recall events that acquire their meaning, their hue, so to speak, only retrospectively. But I remember, with unwilling clarity, sitting at my desk, a month or so later in America, and glaring at my AT&T bill. There were phone calls—amounting to $1239.44, to Jordan and Egypt—that I had never made. The phone company said I had charged the calls to my phone card in Auckland. I told them I knew no one in Jordan or Egypt—and who authorized those calls? They said, we'll look into it. A few days later, they called back, claiming that recipients had confirmed the story, the calls were mine. I spluttered. We can't give you their names, they said curtly. In cold rage, I wrote the FBI, the FCC, one Congressman, two Senators. Four fretful months passed; AT&T dropped the charges. But the matter did not drop from my mind. I felt alternately furious and betrayed. I thought of the time I had forgotten to shut down my laptop at the Auckland Hilton while I hosted some business associates at White's downstairs, downing too much Cloudy Bay Sauvignon with my barramundi to keep track of things. In a wild swerve of thought, I recalled the time at the Palais Jamai in Fez when a hot-eyed young waiter insisted deferentially—no, it was sheer, unctuous menace—that I find him a job in America, just because he had heard the maître d'hotel utter my Lebanese name. But Ahmed didn't fit in this scheme of mean suspicions, how could he? A year or so later, I returned to Auckland. I had missed the world-class sailboats, shimmering seascapes, strange constellations in the sky, all visible from my floor-to-ceiling window at the Hilton. But I also felt the moon shadow of suspicion lengthen as I approached New Zealand. A week passed: seven breakfasts and no Ahmed in sight. I considered inquiring about him. I pondered asking the Manager if the hotel employed any Jordanians, any Egyptians, beside Ahmed. Then, before I could ask, the phone rang just as I was finishing breakfast one morning. Hello, this is Audrey. I hope you are well. I pricked my ears like a genial Doberman. It's been some time since we saw you, hasn't it? Her voice was low. I have never been good at phatic reassurance, small talk, and Audrey was no better. Just over a year, I said. I thought I could hear distant shuffles and sounds, filtered through Audrey's palm at the other end. Then her voice came strong, brisk like a nurse's. I just wanted you to know that Ahmed is quite sick. It's pancreatic cancer. I could hear her breath and mine while I tried to coax from myself some appropriate inanity: I'm terribly sorry, I murmured. Audrey came to my rescue. Actually, Ahmed is doing all right just now. Would you like to visit him some time? He's back home. He wants to talk to you. Yes, of course. I reached for pen and pad. We live in Devonport. You can practically see the village from your window, across the Harbour. I jotted down the address and said: Please say hello to Ahmed. Then I replaced the receiver carefully, as if it contained a small plastic charge. Strange what sticks in the viscous folds of the brain, what slips away or rankles and remains. The matter of the fraudulent phone calls had been settled financially, but not, it seems, where scores even out. What harm had I suffered—except wasted time—what proof of malfeasance did I possess? My passage through Auckland, when the calls were made, may have been sheer stochastic coincidence. There was nothing in my scientific work—not in studies of fluid turbulence, not in the mathematics of chaos theory—that could resolve the squalid issue. But I had a dream the night before the visit to Audrey and Ahmed. I remember it particularly because it featured a black yawl, everything black, hull, spar, jigger and sails, even lines and halyards, even the shredded pennon. The boat tacked into a dim, setting sun, leaving behind an oleaginous wake. I seemed to be both steering and hovering above it, watching its course with indifference. When I woke, I retained nothing but that image—and a feeling of eerie detachment. The feeling dissolved all grievances, anxieties, suspicions. In that mood, I boarded the next day a frisky ferry to Devonport, a light breeze rumpling the harbor waters. I wanted the mood to last. It was a short walk inland to the address Audrey had given me, past souvenir shops and cafés. The confident villas on the shoreline yielded to quaint cottages, some in disrepair, strewn among patches of sand and scrub. Ahmed's place was small, almost prim, with a latticed veranda painted grey and white, lantana, dwarf palm, and purple bougainvillea in the front yard. Audrey opened the front door when I rang, a severe smile composing her features. Past her shoulders, I saw Ahmed lost in a large, faded, brocade wing chair. He sat there like some withered animal, yet intensely human. As I stepped into the parlor, he stood up, twisting sideways, leaning on the chair, pain striking through his alacrity, the old sweetness now a mere trace. But his eyelashes still curled upward, long and delicate. Welcome back to New Zealand, sir. Welcome to our house. I shook hands all around, and offered Audrey—I had decided against flowers—a box of assorted Middle Eastern sweets, gift-wrapped in white and green, the old colors of Egyptian khedives who flew their crescent flag under the vigilant eyes of Britain. There's something Egyptian, Turkish, Lebanese here, I said. I hope you'll find something you like. Audrey took the box: That's very kind, I'll be back with some tea. Please make yourself comfortable, I'm sure Ahmed's pleased to talk with you. We chatted over tea. I began to sense something unsaid in the air, like faintly sour incense—I had never liked that odor—so I tried to give our talk some forward slant, an aura of hope. Will you be visiting Damanhur soon? Ahmed seemed embarrassed on my behalf; I had overreached. Quickly, I asked: How's the family, your sister in Jordan? I knew that my question lacked innocence, lacked it in my mind, perhaps more in theirs. Oh, they are fine, thank you, Ahmed said, looking at the machine-woven Oriental carpet beneath his feet. But my sister in Jordan is having some trouble with the government. He hesitated. Audrey cut in: Egyptians are not as welcome as they used to be. There're too many of them, they're better educated, and they tend to fuss. Well, Ahmed said—palms upward, eyes meekly heavenward—everyone has visa trouble these days. A dense pause ensued. On his lap, Ahmed's fingers began to knead a stubborn, invisible loaf. I found myself wondering if Audrey's people ever called Ahmed a "sandnigger" behind his back. Audrey leaned forward in her chair: We've been lucky with visas, Ahmed, haven't we? But you wanted to talk about something else. She looked pointedly at him and, like a cornered ferret, his eyes began to dart. Can I show you my village, sir? It's just outside Damanhur. His voice sounded oddly shrill, a trill of desperation. He twisted out of his chair as I looked with unabashed perplexity from Ahmed to Audrey. She knit thin eyebrows, as if puzzled, then recovering herself: Come, it's a surprise. Ahmed rarely shows it to anyone. I followed my hosts down a narrow, varnished-floor corridor, past a bathroom and bedroom, to a tightly-shut door. Except for the transparent glass knob, it looked less like a door than a fitted panel in the wall. Ahmed turned the knob with a curious twist, pushed in the panel gently and stepped aside. I looked in with amazement shading into shock. The whole room, larger than the parlor, was a diminutive Egyptian village: square mud houses; a small mosque with a single minaret striped black and white; irrigation canals of blue glass; fields of green felt in two tones, one for rice, the other for cotton; a sakia here, a shaduf at the other end, to water the fields; groves of palm trees; dogs, donkeys, water buffaloes on the dirt roads; chickens in the yards, cats crouching on the flat roofs—everything but the fellaheen. Denuded of human beings, the scene seemed like a frozen dream. I continued to gaze, my silence deepened by the silence of my hosts. At last, Audrey said almost inaudibly: Ahmed built it by himself. Three whole years. Then, as if to herself: We could hardly afford it. Astounding! But I sensed, again, some cloying confession, no, some hurtful explanation, about to emerge. Astounding, I repeated, but I really must be going now. I tried to put as much cheer in my flight as I could manage. Ahmed and Audrey turned to me in consternation. But there was something else in their faces—I thought it then, I'm now almost sure. Call it relief, a quiet suspiration of mutual absolution. I moved toward the door: Thank you so much. I don't know when I'll be back in Auckland. From the front steps, I waved and they waved back. Ahmed gave me his old, sweet smile.
|