The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi

Author:Saud Alsanousi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789927101786
Publisher: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing
Published: 2015-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

9

Three days after the family meeting I was in Ghassan’s flat feeling cold, though the weather was mild as far as he was concerned. I was wrapping my hands around a cup of coffee, toasting my feet in thick socks against an electric fire and watching one of the foreign film channels. Ghassan was reading a book. His mobile phone rang. He put the book upside down on his knees and looked at the screen of his phone. ‘It’s a call from your family,’ he said.

In a single leap I was on the sofa where he was sitting. ‘My mother? Or Mama Aida?’ I asked impatiently.

He didn’t answer. He put the phone to his ear and said, ‘Wa aleekum as-salam.’ The conversation went on for more than ten minutes, and throughout it Ghassan didn’t say a single word. He just nodded and murmured ‘Mmm’ every now and then. Then the conversation ended.

‘Listen, Isa,’ he said. ‘You’re going to go and live in your grandmother’s house.’

As soon as he said the words I couldn’t help jumping up and down in the middle of the sitting room, punching my fists in the air and shouting, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ I felt that the ground was shaking under my feet.

‘Isa!’ Ghassan said in annoyance. ‘Stop jumping. We’re on the fourth floor and there are people beneath us.’

I went back to the sofa where he was sitting and looked straight into his eyes. ‘Beneath us?’ I asked. ‘But we’re the lowest of the low, you and me,’ I said, shaking my head.

Ghassan laughed so much that he was shaking all over. ‘I’ll miss you, you crazy,’ he said.

Jabriya is not far from Qortuba, where my grandmother lived. But I suddenly felt sorry for Ghassan, though he had lived alone all his life. I felt that by moving to my grandmother’s house I was abandoning him. I remembered my father and Walid and when they were with Ghassan and my mother’s stories about the three friends – their private world, their conversations, their singing, their travels abroad and their boating trips. The man must feel very lonely in his small, claustrophobic flat in a building full of a mixture of migrant workers – Egyptians, Syrians, Indians and Pakistanis.

‘Ghassan,’ I said.

He stopped laughing and looked at me.

‘Why haven’t you got married yet?’ I asked.

His face reverted to the face of the Ghassan I knew. He took the book off his knees and put it on the sofa beside him. He was about to say something but he stopped. I picked up his packet of cigarettes, took one out, lit it and offered it to him.

‘Go on, spit it out with the cigarette smoke,’ I said.

He took a deep puff. The end of the cigarette glowed bright red and bits of ash fell off. ‘I don’t want to have children who would curse me after I die, Isa,’ he said as he exhaled the smoke. He leaned back in the sofa and locked his hands behind his head, with the cigarette hanging on his lip.

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