In this first-place winner of the Azhar Short Story Prize, a woman cares for an elderly couple who, like her, live in the shadow of an uncertain return.
Rajaa is eighty-six, and unlike her entire family, she hates raw garlic. As a child, she once stole several bulbs from the kitchen basket and threw them into the valley. To the surprise of her elders, they blossomed the following year, and remain alive to this day. So does the mystery of the garlic that vanished.
This is my favorite of her stories, and the most hopeful. Every time she tells it, the details change, but the ending doesn’t. Every spring, the garlic sprouts, and only she knows why. I remember all her stories, full of both kindness and brutality. I try to stop her from telling the funny ones, because if she starts laughing, nothing can stop her, and then I’ll have to clean her sheets.
I’ve been Rajaa’s caretaker for the past few years. Every other evening, I arrive at her small house, at the end of a road that winds towards the valley. I spend the night, and when she wakes the following morning, I walk home, up the mountain, beyond the sharp turn, and past the broken-down brown car. I live with my brother, who works in construction, in an abandoned apartment building that was never completed.
We moved to this village when I was just a baby. I don’t remember our old home, but I can see it from the roof of our building. Once, I asked my brother why we can’t go back there, east beyond the valley, to visit our parents and the rest of our brothers who I haven’t met. He said that once that river refloods, we can cross the bridge and go home.
As a child, I spent hours alone on the concrete roof, playing hopscotch, jumping rope, and waiting for storms. But these days, the ground is dry, and it hasn’t been raining. The sky that was once blue has been orange for years, and the sounds of the explosions keep us up at night. It’s not that they’re very loud from here, they’re actually just a whisper, but we listen closely because we are counting, in order to grieve our dead.
Rajaa and Samir have five kids, one daughter and four sons, who are no longer here. Though eight years older, Samir insists on making Rajaa a labneh sandwich every morning. Before I leave, I return all the ingredients he leaves strewn across the tables and counters. But I always wait until he leaves the kitchen. I try to keep a quiet presence when he’s around. Once I heard him cursing in the bathroom, and I thought he was angry with me. But Rajaa said that he just couldn’t get the drain catcher back into the sink.
One evening, as it begins to get dark, Rajaa turns to me while we’re on the couch watching TV.
“I need to make tabouleh and loubieh.”
She seems distressed.
“We have everything we need,” I respond.
“My kids like tabouleh and loubieh, and I need to start right now, they will be here soon.”
This happens sometimes.
“Rajaa, your kids are not here, remember?”
She looks me in the eyes, with her determined expression. While I regret what I said, I’m hoping she might snap out of it. But she turns and heads towards the kitchen.
“My kids are coming for dinner.”
On her way, she stops to look at the broken clock in the salon.
“They should leave the city soon. Oh, but what if they get stuck in traffic again? I hope they don’t eat sandwiches on the road.”
I follow her. I don’t know what to say, and we need to eat dinner anyway, so we get started, sitting at the counter by the window. She arranges the parsley into dense stacks. I dice and drain them, and then the tomatoes from crates that Samir brings from the garden.
I set seven plates on the table. Samir sits at the head, Rajaa to his right, and me to his left, where I remember seeing their daughter sit in photos. He asks why there are so many plates, but Rajaa doesn’t hear him, and I choose to pretend that I don’t either. She’s still walking back and forth from the kitchen counter. I always think I’ve gathered everything, but there’s always so much I’ve missed. Today it’s the small dish with zeit wu za’atar, the tiny jar of salt, and the lemon halves.
Samir forgets about the question, and we all finally take our seats. Looking at the four empty plates, I hear distant voices. I hear my brothers and look east, towards a distant village I can’t see from here. I put tabouleh on all the plates and remove the lid from the tunjura, hoping my brothers will smell the loubieh and join us for dinner. Samir places a salted slice of tomato and an olive into a soft pita. Rajaa drizzles it with olive oil, and he hands it to me, asking where I have been all this time.
