I expected, as the soap forced me to close my eyes, to hear a lecture about the dangers of spinsterhood and the necessity of marriage for girls, but instead she said wisely, “Good. Don’t rush it. Where does marriage get you in the end? My girls got married early and their grandchildren are playing outside. But it was all hardship. Enjoy your life, my girl. There’s duck and roasted potatoes for lunch, so good you and your father will lick your plates clean.”
When I opened my eyes she was gone.
I returned to find my father sitting with a group of ordinary-looking men and women. The women were moderately beautiful, and all were in their sixties or a bit older. Rawya was the oldest one in the house. She might have been the last one remaining from her generation. I imagined that she was over ninety. Her health seemed good and her eyes were lively. She reminded me of my eldest aunt—her skin was wrinkled and her arms as thin as a skeleton’s but her eyes were full of a natural intelligence.
I greeted everyone in the group affectionately. The women hugged me and the men smiled and shook my hand. I sat next to my father, who was asking them about their news and that of other relatives. Every now and then someone would say, “But he died years ago.” And my father would reply, “That’s God’s will.” The names of so many dead made my heart sink.
The old woman called me to help her in the kitchen. All the women had gone in to help. But first she showed me around the house. There were so many rooms, big and airy. She opened one and said, “This is my husband’s room, God rest his soul. Everything here is as it was.” It was a big room, all wood, with a giant bed and wardrobe, a clean rug, the smell of incense, prayer beads on the bedside table—it felt like no one ever entered it. “When he died, God rest his soul, his brother wanted us to sell the house and give him his share of the inheritance. The house would have sold for a lot of money. But I stood up to him. I told him: ‘This is my grandfather’s house and there’s nothing for you here except hospitality when you visit. But your share? Your share in this house is the toilet, nothing more. You want to sell the toilet? Let me see you do that!’ He thought I was insolent, but I won. This room is cleaned every day. As you can see, it sparkles.”
I nodded in agreement.
She took me toward a wooden staircase in the middle of another hall inside the house and opened a wooden door that was invisible until you opened it. “This is the magic room. We called it that because your great-grandfather built it inside the staircase. When we were little, anyone who entered this room got a beating. It was his private room, and he could indulge in his vice of choice without being seen.” She laughed. “Those were the days! My father and my husband, God rest their souls, didn’t touch the stuff. It was your father who inherited the habit. He also enjoys a good drink.”
I laughed along with her while I looked around the magic room. It was tiny, under the stairs, and had a wooden bench with a worn-out foam cushion covered with a faded red flowery sheet and a very old wooden desk with several books in English on it. There was nothing else in the room, and it was obvious that the old woman did not care about cleaning it daily like her God-rest-his-soul’s room. Next to the magic room, adjacent to the staircase, was a small bathroom, which my great-grandfather must have installed in order to avoid walking all the way to the main bathroom.
I accompanied her to the kitchen. The women were busy at work: one washed the dishes, another stirred the contents of a big aluminum pot, which must have contained the soup made from the aforementioned duck, and another dried the dishes. Everyone was talking loudly and at the same time, though they quieted down a bit when the old woman entered the kitchen. Someone told her, “Go and rest, Grandma, we’re nearly done.” At this the old woman snapped, “I’m not dead yet! I still have my health.” That was met by simultaneously murmured prayers for her health and long life. I sat on a wooden bench and watched the matriarch direct the women of the family: “Add some pepper to the soup. The duck is not crispy enough. The rice is fine, but cover it so it doesn’t dry up. Which one of you stuffed these pigeons that are falling apart?”
A small kitten sneaked in, lured by the delicious smells. I don’t like cats. No one in our family does. I got a towel, and was about to shoo the kitten away when Rawya gripped my hand and said sharply, “Leave her, Nadia. She’ll leave of her own accord.”
I was embarrassed. “Sorry, Ammeto. I didn’t know you liked cats. It’s just that I don’t like them at all.”
The woman stirring the soup said, “No one in this family likes cats, Nadia. You just don’t know the full story, because you’re not from here.”
As another of the women was cautiously giving the cat some leftovers, I heard the full story that everyone else in the family knew. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a distant relative of ours, whose name was not mentioned for fear of bad luck, was in her kitchen when a fat black cat came in and snatched a chicken off the kitchen counter. Flustered, the woman lashed out at the cat with the big knife she was holding. The story goes that the cat was cut open without shedding a drop of blood. Then
