Guapa by Saleem Haddad

Author:Saleem Haddad [Haddad, Saleem]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-770-3
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2016-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

I came back after my first year in America to find that a barrier had formed between Teta and me, like film on Turkish coffee. I immediately informed her that I had ceased to believe in God and declared myself a communist.

“If you don’t believe in God then you can’t eat any more kaak during Eid,” she threatened.

“If I can’t have any kaak I will spit on the Quran,” I threatened back.

I didn’t budge. All the anger and betrayal I felt was put into the class struggle. I insisted Doris needed to have one day off to leave the house.

“One whole day every week,” I insisted during that warring hot summer.

“What else? Would you also like the girl to sit at the head of the table during lunch?”

“I’m sick of ‘the girl this’ and ‘the Filipino that.’ For God’s sake, you talk about her as if she were some kind of slave that doesn’t deserve even the most basic labor rights.”

I also brazenly taped an old photograph of my mother on the wall above my bed. Teta did not allow any pictures of her, and I had secretly held on to that photo for years. Throughout high school I had kept it hidden in a shoe box under my bed. Occasionally I would take the photograph out to examine it. The photo was old, taken in the eighties, and the colors had yellowed over time. Growing up, I had looked at that photo many times, at least once a week but usually every two or three days. I had always been so careful with it, keeping it out of the light and regularly wiping off any dust that might gather on it. But more than that, I was careful not to gaze at the photograph for too long, even if I wanted to, because I didn’t want the photo to lose its power.

In the photograph I am wearing a straw hat and sitting on my mother’s lap. I am happy, my finger in my mouth, giggling, showing off my few teeth. My mother’s lips are pursed, her fingers positioned like claws around my sides, as if she might be tickling me. Her lips were large and juicy, and her kisses were desperate and wet. When my mother closed in on me and covered me in kisses, tickling me with her mouth, I would howl with laughter. Her lips looked like they might be painted on, accentuated, but as far as I can remember she never wore lipstick. In the photograph she is wearing large dark sunglasses so I’m not able to see her eyes but I remember them very clearly, because they are my own. When I look in the mirror and see my sad face, the big green eyes staring back at me are my mother’s, and I feel sad all over again.

My mother only wore makeup around her eyes, black kohl that accentuated the greenness. I remember this because when I was eight, Mama returned from one of her trips to al-Sharqiyeh earlier than I had expected.

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