The Night Counter (13 page)

“Sanaa sends her greetings,” said Abdul Wahab. “Did my daughter visit to thank you for the dress you sent her?”

“Yes, she brought me a Koran from Mecca,” Laila said. “From your family’s pilgrimage there last year.” Abdul Wahab’s daughter had turned eighteen the previous month and had been inspired to put on a beige head scarf. Ghazi had told Laila that it would be polite to give the girl a gift to congratulate her on her decision. Laila bought the girl a long nightgown,
which somehow she and her mother took as a dress to go with the
hijab
, although the girl still seemed confined to a wardrobe of jeans and Gap shirts. Laila couldn’t bring herself to correct them, these two strangers who had brought her flowers while she was in the hospital—twice.

“How is Mohammad’s back doing?” Abdul Latif asked as he dipped a grape leaf in yogurt. “It was great to see your other sons with Ghazi at Friday prayers this week.”

Laila looked at her husband, but he turned away and poked at the grape leaves on his plate. Ghazi had not made any mention of the boys going to the mosque with him. She had noticed that Nasser was growing a beard but had thought it might be fashion, as he was the most stylish of her sons.

“I made a meat dish, too,” Laila said. “Let me go get it.”

“Mohammad will join his brothers at the mosque soon,
inshallah
,” Abdul Wahab said.

“
Inshallah
,” everyone but Laila said.

“He gave up alcohol last week,” Ghazi noted.

“
Al-hamdulilah
,” everyone but Laila echoed.

What woman was Mo ever going to meet at the mosque? It wasn’t like a church where he could end up sitting next to a nice girl.

Laila stood up to get the pork. “Mo is not named for the prophet, peace be upon him, you know,” Laila told them. It was important to her that these men know that. “He’s named for Ghazi’s father.”

She went to the kitchen and hesitated for just a moment before she pulled the pork out of the oven. She tipped the pan so that the tomato sauce would slide over the meat and then slipped the meat onto a platter without touching it. She cut off a sprig of parsley and put it in the center. Who knew pork could look so pretty? She went back out and laid the tray down with flourish. The men salivated.

“What is a meal for guests without meat?” Laila announced. “It’s with tomato sauce, like they make in the South.”

“We do not make veal with tomato sauce in the south,” Abdul Latif said, helping himself to a piece. Abdul Latif was from Lebanon. Although
he had been in the United States for nearly twenty years, the south still meant to him—and half of Dearborn—the part of Lebanon that bordered Israel, not Alabama and Tennessee.

Laila handed a serving fork to Ghazi. She said nothing as he served the others. Abdul Kareem lifted his plate up to his nose and sniffed it.

“Great,” he said. He took a bite at the same time as the others. They stopped in midchew. She held the serving fork in midair, waiting for the damnation. Then they began chewing again.

“Too much sauce?” Laila suggested, grabbing for a culinary diversion.

“No, no, very interesting veal,” Abdul Wahab said. “Very chewy.”

“Yes,
chewy
is a good word,” Abdul Kareem agreed.

“Perhaps that is because it isn’t
halal
” Laila confessed. She felt she had to be at least a little honest before she went to hell. And she had never said the word
veal
. They had.

Ghazi furrowed his brows at her not because the meat wasn’t
halal but
because she had told them it wasn’t.

“Back home we could not afford veal in my family,” Abdul Wahab recalled. “Life is bountiful here. Everything and lots of it,
al-hamdulilah.
”

Too late to take it away now.

“
Wallah, Seit
Laila, my littlest daughter would disown me now,” Abdul Latif said. “She told me no eating veal for it is not compassionate killing. She showed me pictures. Most cruel. But for you I will. For you,
maalesh
, no problem.”

For you with the cancer, Laila thought. Abdul Latif took a big bite, and the others kept chewing. “It is delicious,” Abdul Kareem reassured her. “Forgetting that we only eat
halal
meat is no big deal.
Suhtain
, bon appetit.”

They each took another bite and smiled. Their humanity gave birth to many more goose bumps.

“When your youngest finishes medical school, Madame Laila, he might want to spend a year working for the Red Crescent, helping our brothers and sisters back home,” Abdul Kareem said. The other men nodded as they kept chewing.

Laila wanted to scream that no son of hers was going to be dead. She calmed herself by watching them chew the pork.

“My daughter spent a year helping doctors in the camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Abdul Wahab said. “She’s in medical school now.”

“Oh, is she married?” Laila asked, thinking a doctor for a daughter-in-law wouldn’t be so bad.

“Of course—she’s already twenty-five,” Abdul Wahab said. “It was a huge wedding. Our relatives flew from across the country to be here, and they all got through airport security in time to make the reception.”

Laila was the only one who did not laugh. She did not fear God, she did not fear her religion, but she was terrified of other people’s fear of it.

“You shouldn’t laugh about the airports,” Laila said.

“Yes, but our people’s paranoia is also blown out of proportion a hundred times over,” Abdul Kareem said. “This country allows freedom of religion, true faith. They’re just worried about the crazies. They’ll see soon enough that the crazies aren’t in Dearborn. We won’t allow that kind of sacrilege.”

Not only were they pious, they were naive. Naive about the government. Naive about meat. Laila was not. She looked at Ghazi to back her up.

“
Allah karem
,” was all he said. “God is kind.”

Laila never raised her voice, even when her chemo was unbearable, because she did not like to cause a scene. However, these men needed a wake-up call about how easy it would be to put them in a compromising position. She had meant the pork as her secret revenge on her God-fearing husband, but she grabbed his plate and held it up.

“What you are eating is—” Laila stopped as she saw her father, disheveled from his nap, come out of the guest room.

Ghazi leaped up upon recognizing Ibrahim, and the others followed him. Ghazi shook hands with the man he barely had seen since getting his blessing to marry Laila, which Ibrahim gave even though he was not from Deir Zeitoon, which Ibrahim believed Marwan would have preferred. But Ibrahim had taken comfort in the fact that Ghazi had met Laila at a wedding for a couple from Deir Zeitoon, where they had spent the whole
night dancing to the Who and the Rolling Stones. That dancing Laila had died long before any cancer could get her. Ghazi used to say he missed the old Laila when all they did was watch TV on Friday nights. Now Ghazi told her that he considered their quiet life God’s will and wisdom. He spent most Friday nights these days at the mosque praying to God to keep her with him for as long as he could, leaving her at home to watch TV alone.

“You forgot to wake me up,” Ibrahim said to Laila, looking away from her as he admonished her in a way that had been familiar to her all her life.

“Welcome,
Amo
,” said Ghazi, guiding Ibrahim to a chair. The men all shook Ibrahim’s hand as Ghazi introduced him. “Sit, sit,
Amo;
let me make you a plate.”

Abdul Wahab helped guide Ibrahim into this chair, Abdul Kareem spread out his napkin for him, and Abdul Latif poured him a glass of apricot juice. Laila stood frozen, still holding Ghazi’s plate.

“He helped me with the grape leaves,” Laila told Ghazi. “Give him lots of those.”

Ghazi put grape leaves on the plate and then a little yogurt.

“Veal,
Amo?
” Ghazi said, and placed the largest pork chop on Ibrahim’s plate.

“Who says he wants any meat?” Laila snapped. She stabbed the pork chop with the serving fork and put it back on the platter. The guests stopped chewing, exchanging words with facial expressions that she knew said they thought the cancer was acting up.

“No, I like veal,” Ibrahim reassured her.

“Eat the grape leaves,” Laila almost ordered. “You helped me make them, after all.”

“My father-in-law—your father—should get the best piece of meat,” Ghazi said to her as she glared at him.

“Save the meat for your boys,” Ibrahim said. “I don’t need no meat at my age. You don’t go waste no luxury on me.”

Oh, God, she thought, I’ve hurt him so many times today trying to protect him. “No, no, go ahead,” she said.

“No,” Ibrahim said.

“I insist,” Laila said.

Ghazi put the pork chop back on Ibrahim’s plate. Ibrahim looked at Ghazi and the guests.

“Laila is a good cook, no?” Ibrahim said. They all nodded a little too enthusiastically.

“Sorry I overreacted, Baba. You were supposed to stay asleep,” Laila apologized. “I mean, I wanted you to get enough rest.”

“It was nice, thank you.” Ibrahim nodded. He cut into the meat and started to raise it to his mouth. Laila watched as if his fork had been suspended in slow motion like the baseball replays her mother always watched. When Ibrahim’s mouth began to open, Laila leaped up and yanked the fork and plate from him. Ibrahim bowed his head.

“Laila!” Ghazi yelled.

The men stopped chewing again.

“It’s okay,” Ibrahim whispered.

“I want you to eat the grape leaves,” Laila said. “Eat the grape leaves. They’re my specialty.”

Everyone stopped in midchew. “I’m sorry,
Amo
,” Ghazi said. “It’s the can—”

Laila yanked Ghazi’s plate from him to jolt him into remembering that her father did not know she had been ill.

Ibrahim looked down at his plate for what seemed like his long life over and then slowly lifted his head. “Oh, Laila,” he murmured, and in his voice she knew he had not figured out the cancer but rather the pork.

“Maybe we should go,” Abdul Wahab said.

Ghazi nodded. Then Ibrahim pounded the table with his fork. “No, sit,” he said. “She’s so crazy like her mama. We will all only eat grape leaves. So my daughter will be happy. Laila, take everyone’s meat away.”

“Yes, Baba,” Laila said. “Everyone sit, and I will bring new plates just for the grape leaves.”

The guests were nearly back in their seats when a ferocious growl from the kitchen jolted them all upright again.

“Bullshit,” they all heard come out of the kitchen.

Laila ran into the kitchen and found Amani, Ghazi’s mother, head-scarfed and overweight, staring down at the garbage disposal. Laila turned off the disposal, which chugged to a stop. The smell of burning rubber came out of it, as did another odor, unpleasant but unidentifiable to Amani.

Amani had come to live with them two years earlier, and Laila often wondered if it was possible to revoke an F-1 visa, the student visa that meant Amani had to go to English as a second language classes every evening in order to stay with them.

“Bullshit,” Amani repeated, staring down at the malfunctioning garbage disposal. “Curses on Americans who think they can build anything. And is this the way that our dear God repays me for trying to help my son’s wife keep a clean house?”

Bullshit
was the only English word Amani seemed to have learned at school, and she wouldn’t believe anyone who told her it was a bad expression. “If it was so, so bad, not everyone would use it all the time,” she told her son. Other than
bullshit
, Amani said most of her words in Arabic, although she could understand about 30 percent of the English she heard, which had proved to be a good thing and a bad thing.

“Why did you leave cards early?” Laila asked, trying to move her mother-in-law away from the garbage disposal. She should have risked having the neighbors see her take out the pork. How did one unstick pork? Damn her mother-in-law for being helpful. It always resulted in trouble. Who comes home and starts doing dishes right away, anyway?

“Bullshit game,” Amani said.

“Would you like me to make you a plate, some grape leaves … and meat,” Laila responded, and lifted up the pan holding the remaining cooked pork chops. Amani sniffed and examined the meat long enough for Laila’s heart to race.

“No, thank you,” Amani finally said, grimacing. “Too much tomato sauce.”

“Sorry
, Khalto
,” Laila said, relieved for once rather than irked by Amani’s insults. “We have company.”

“No?” said Amani. “Bullshit.”

Amani waddled out to the dining room, and the men all stood up for her. Even Ibrahim made his way back up.

“Who are you?” Ibrahim asked as he shook her hand.

“I’m Ghazi’s mother,” said Amani, all pride. “Who are you?”

“I’m Laila’s father,” Ibrahim answered.

“Bullshit,” Amani replied. “You were already so old at their wedding, I thought you had died already. Where have you been? Never even visit to say ‘Happy Eid.’”

“Your mother-in-law lives with you?” Ibrahim said to Laila.

“It was either that, Baba, or we’d have to go to Egypt every year to visit her, and you know how much that can cost,” Laila said a little too desperately. “We would have never been able to buy a winter home in Florida.”

“You don’t have no winter home in Florida,” Ibrahim said.

“That’s because we’ve given all our extra money to the mosque,” Laila explained. “Ghazi and the boys go to the mosque every day now.”

She waited for her father to be surprised, and he was. “Religion can go this way or that way for you,” Ibrahim told Ghazi. “Just pray it goes the right way.”

“
Inshallah
,” Ghazi said.

“
Inshallah
,” the guests repeated.

Then Amani’s 30 percent English comprehension kicked in. “What money extra? Where money?”

“I want to go home,” Ibrahim announced.

“Please,
Amo
, you can live with us, too,” Ghazi offered.

“I don’t need no taking care of,” Ibrahim replied.

“Like I do?” Amani fumed. “It’s your daughter who does.”