Saying Goodbye to Citi
The scent of jasmine slips through the slatted windows and the waning sun illuminates the verandah bringing to life the gold gilt thread on the red tapestry lighting up the Islamic script. Allahu Akbar, God is great gleams brilliant and golden like the 24 karat coins that adorn the Arab women's caps at weddings. I'm not sure what I believe anymore, but I have to wonder if the Almighty himself is calling Citi, my grandmother, home as the Imam calls the Muslims to prayer five times each day. I am waiting for my turn to see Citi, to tell her I love her and kiss her in the Arab way, on both cheeks, although I know she can't see me and probably won't recognize me. She always made me feel special, but I know that I am but one of 63 grand kids. Who could keep that many people straight, especially with Alzheimer's?
Baba hadn't wanted me to come.
"It's too dangerous," he said. "Things are so bad you couldn't believe it."
I had to come regardless of what my father said. I had to see Citi one last time. She is everything, my last link to this place, this culture, she is my Palestine. Without her, I'm simply an American, an Arab-American who doesn't speak Arabic.
We haven't had enough time together, Citi and me. I remember, the day we met. I'd been an American tomboy of nearly 7 years old. My mother had forced me into a scratchy long sleeve dress on a sweltering summer day.
"I don't want to wear a dress, Mama, I hate dresses," I whined.
"You have to look nice. You're grandmother is waiting to meet you."
"Can't she meet me in shorts? This dress is too flowery and it itches."
"Hush, you know you can't wear shorts here. Get used to it or it'll be a long summer for both of us."
I had to make the long flight from Copenhagen to Tel Aviv and a long ride in the car sweating and scratching all the way to meet Citi at the family home outside of Jerusalem.
The car left my mother and I on the sidewalk at street level. We descended the smooth stone staircase to the front of the house, where we were greeted by a crowd of relatives. My ears were filled with the sound of Citi's heart stopping zaghree, a loud trilling sound of celebration that is incomparable to any other sound in the world save the muted version of Indians' war cries in the movies. I searched the faces of the tribe chattering loudly in Arabic who surrounded me. I wanted to know who was emitting such a loud, primitive sound. She stood in the center with her brood dwarfing her 4' 10" frame. I couldn't believe that this tiny woman trilling to high heaven was my grandmother. I forgot my itchy dress and allowed my father to lead me by the hand to where she stood. Her eyes were soft brown and kind, smiling eyes just like my father's. She wore a silky white hajaab and a traditional dress with blue and silver thread woven into black fabric. Her dress looked far itchier than mine. She snatched me from my father's grasp and hugged me close, kissing me on both cheeks several times. Citi held my face in her wrinkled hands as she searched for resemblances to various brown relatives.
"Fairouz," she said as tears welled up in the lines at the corners of her eyes. "Fairouz, habibti."
"What did she say, Baba?" I asked my father.
"She said 'Fairouz, my love,'" Baba said as Citi continued to speak quickly in her loud shrill voice. "She says you look like Aumty Sahar. That's good, she's pretty."
Once she had me in her clutches, there was no escape. I couldn't complain. Her love was so true, so real. She was happy. Her eldest son was home with his wife and child. I looked into her smiling face and I understood what it was to be Palestinian. If it had anything to do with Citi, I wanted in...
"We're just counting the days"
My father's voice reminds me that the brilliant life force who held me tight and called me habibti is slowly slipping out of my reach.
Baba stands in the doorway of the verandah. It's dark now, but I can see him in the dim light. His eyes are sorrowful and wet as he leans against the jamb fingering his prayer beads. I hear him, but the words don't register. His words are forced, strained, as if propelling himself back to America and the language he left nearly three weeks ago when Citi had her stroke.
"She doesn't eat, she won't drink water, w'Allah, she's not good", he says. "She needs to go back to the hospital, but they said she can't come back."
"Why can't she go back to the hospital, Baba?"
"You know, it's an Israeli hospital. They said if we took her home she couldn't come back." He swears in Arabic under his breath.
"But Baba, that's not right. They have to treat her," I say thinking of the Hippocratic oath. I say nothing more, knowing my dad won't understand as I don't always understand the way things work in the Arab world.
"They won't. She was screaming at them, she wanted to be home. So we took her home."
Angry tears singe my cheeks. As my grandmother lay dying, unable to return to the hospital the Israelis continue building the wall that will separate the house from the cemetery where she will be buried though it's a mere mile and a half away.
As a young girl, my father and I would walk along the dusty road peppered with scorpions that had been flattened by donkey carts to the old town of Beit Hanina where my Aunt lived in the house where seven of my grandparents nine children had been born. I could stand up in the enormous stone fireplace while my father reminisced about the round chewy bread Citi would bake on long flat pans.
"Don't cry, baba, you know, when your time comes, it comes. She's been sick for a long time. She didn't remember me, she keeps asking for my father," Baba said.
He says baba as a term of endearment. I've always loved the way the Arabs use their own title to speak lovingly. I always felt that I was truly a part of that person. When Citi called you citi, you knew you were loved, that you were truly her grandchild regardless of the American blood coursing through your veins.
"Can I go see Citi, now?"
"No, my sisters are giving her a bath."
"Okay, I'll wait."
"You can't cry when you see Citi, don't upset her. Just tell her you love her and kiss her."
"I know, Baba, there's not much else I can say in Arabic, anyway," I say mock accusingly.
My father laughs and says, "I know, I know, it's my fault. I should have taught you."
"That's all right, at least your English is good."
"Thanks a lot. Hey, I'm going for a walk to see the olive trees, you remember that place. Where we used to pick figs? Do you want to come?"
"Nah, I'll wait to see Citi."
"Come inside, it's cold out here. Aumty Sahar made grape leaves. They're in the kitchen."
"Okay, Baba, I'll see you later. Bring back some figs."
I hoisted my jet lagged body up and walked through the dark living room trailing my fingertips upon the rough rock wall as I entered the warmly lit deserted kitchen. A small lizard skittered across the kitchen floor and squeezed its green-brown body through a miniscule hole in the western wall of the house. My boy cousin Ahmed used to take sadistic pleasure in stomping on these interlopers. The lizards were fine by me, it was the snakes and scorpions that I took exception to. Citi would shriek "Hiya, hiya" anytime I was near a pile of rocks or bushes that might house a serpent. I didn't understand what she was trying to say. Hiya? It sounded like a word from the Hong Kong Fooey cartoons I watched on Saturday mornings at home in the States. I still don't know for sure what that word means, but she acted out the danger by forming her index and middle fingers into fangs and sinking them into her arm. "A snake?" I would yell. "Ah, hiya, hiya, snake," Citi would nod laughing.
The pot of grape leaves sits upon the enormous gas stove. I grab a plate and dish up a few of the fat stuffed sausage shaped delicacies and sit alone at the table. Arabic food tastes the best in Citi's kitchen. Everything is fresh. The leaves are picked straight off the grape vines in the courtyard. I used to roller skate on the smooth stone slabs around the well in the courtyard. From there I could see Citi when she came home on marketing days. She would balance her purchases upon her head and walk proudly with her free hands swinging. I tried to balance packages as Citi did, but I always ended up bruising the fruit or bursting boxes when they slid from my head.
My throat has grown lumpy and constricted as tears drop onto the dish in front of me. I can't eat the gorgeous food that reminds me of her. I dump the tear-soaked rolls into the trash, wash my plate and return to my perch at the table.
As a child, I had spent hours sitting at the same dark wood table helping Citi roll cabbage or grape leaves, coring zucchinis to be stuffed, eating Nutella in homemade pita bread. Citi's kitchen always held some sort of un-American ghoulish surprise. The chickens came from the butcher with the feet and head rolled up in the paper with the carcass. The dead, wondering eyes seemed to peep out of the garbage can and watch my every move.
"Fairouz, t'ally hone, come see your Citi," Aumty Sahar said sticking her round face into the kitchen. Her cheeks, normally flushed pink had taken on a pallid hue.
"Okay, Aumty."
As I wash my face at the sink, I could see bright lights in the back yard of a neighboring house. Droves of Arabs were singing and dancing under the tents. It was a joyous occasion, somebody must have been getting married. Citi will never dance at my wedding, I think. I take a deep breath and walk slowly to her bedroom.
The door is cracked and I ease my way in quietly. The room is all windows on two walls, but the heavy curtains have been drawn and my eyes have to adjust to the dim lighting. Citi's big fluffy bed has been replaced by a hospital bed and her back is turned to me as I enter. She is so hollow and shrunken that it is difficult to see where she ends and the bed begins. There is barely a lump where the contours of her body should be. She looks like a skinny child in her parents' bed. Her long hair is fanned out upon her pillow, thick and silver with streaks of black that belie the fact that she is nearly 90. Her denture-less mouth is sunken and the left side of her face seems to have fallen away from the right. She has far more wrinkles than I remember, but the laugh lines around the corners of her eyes are even more pronounced, which makes me think that she's been happy.
A chair has been placed next to the bed for visitors. I choke back my tears and sit down to breathe. In through my nose and out through my mouth. I hear Baba's voice in my head. Don't cry. Don't upset Citi. I sit, breathing, calming myself, readying myself to speak, to fulfill my reason for being here against my father's wishes.
"Citi, I wish I spoke Arabic, so you could understand what I'm saying."
She is silent, asleep and breathing short labored breaths. I change my breathing to sync with hers. I want to say so many things, but the words aren't coming. I sat memorizing her aged face for what seemed like hours and finally the words came.
"Do you remember that time in Ramallah when that man tried to push you out of the way and steal your cab? And you had a bundle on your head and you pushed him back into the crowd and threw me and Ahmed into the car? Or the time you had the ladies come and wash all of the stone in the courtyard and all of us kids decided to make mud pies? That mud is the best mud for pies. Boy, you were so angry. I can still remember you chasing us with your shoe. Iape, Iape. That's what you said. I had to ask my dad what that meant. And the time I caught you smoking a cigar at Lutfa's house. You said it was for a toothache. Or the time we were at the engagement party and you made that woman henna my hands even though everybody said I was too young? And when you came to visit for my high school graduation and sang for me in Arabic as I walked across the stage?"
I reached over and grasped her thin, birdlike hand. I wanted to hold her face as she had held mine on the day that I met her.
"Citi, habibti," I said quietly stroking her hand.
Her eyes opened and I looked one last time into her loving brown eyes. I placed her hand gently on the bed as I rose from the chair. I bent over the bed and gingerly cradled Citi's face between my hands. I kissed her on both cheeks, the Arab way.
"Ana bahebak, Citi, I love you," I whispered. "Habibti, Citi."
TOP OF PAGE
AUTHOR NOTES:
According to the Myers-Briggs, Najwa is an INFP, she likes long walks on the beach and hockey hair.
|
