Amreekiya Read online

  AMREEKIYA

  AMREEKIYA

  A NOVEL

  LENA MAHMOUD

  Due to variations in the technical specifications of different electronic reading devices, some elements of this ebook may not appear as they do in the print edition. Readers are encouraged to experiment with user settings for optimum results.

  Copyright © 2018 by The University Press of Kentucky

  Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

  serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre

  College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,

  The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,

  Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,

  Morehead State University, Murray State University,

  Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,

  University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,

  and Western Kentucky University.

  All rights reserved.

  Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

  663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508–4008

  www.kentuckypress.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Mahmoud, Lena, author.

  Title: Amreekiya : a novel / Lena Mahmoud.

  Description: Lexington, Kentucky : The University Press of Kentucky, 2018. | Series: The University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018027377| ISBN 9780813176376 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813176383 (pdf) | ISBN 9780813176390 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Palestinian Americans—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A3493353 A85 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting

  the requirements of the American National Standard

  for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Member of the Association of University Presses

  For my mother, Debra

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TEWNTY

  CHAPTER ONE

  Though he wasn’t a real uncle, I still called my father’s cousin Nasser my amu, uncle, and his wife Samia amtu, aunt, because they had told me to do so when they took me in at eight. I figured it was best to do what they said. Back then, after my mother died and my father decided he couldn’t take care of me, I had no place else to go. But now, nearly fourteen years later, they made it clear that I had overstayed my welcome.

  As family, they had to find an honorable way to get rid of me: find me a husband. But after nearly two years of lining up men, they were still unsuccessful, growing impatient with how selective I was. Why didn’t I want to marry a man who was pushing forty and already graying or a man who had been divorced and had three half-white kids? Those kids would just love me as a stepmother. Having an Amreekiya mother myself, I would be able to understand them.

  It also helped that, at twenty-one, I was only ten years older than that man’s eldest child.

  When I told Amtu Samia that the last thing I wanted was to be a stepmother or a trophy wife, she replied, “Is better to marry older man. This one with kids, you don’t have expectation to have many children because he already has some. With this gray-haired man, he will think you are pretty and forgive your mistakes fast, if they are not too bad.”

  Most of all, she said, an older man’s mother was either dead or on her way out, so she wouldn’t be much trouble to me.

  That was pretty much who came for me: older men. I guess I wasn’t the most desirable woman to have as a wife. I had a reputation for being short-tempered, and guys around my age didn’t want to have that struggle; it was too much work. Older men liked spunk; it made them feel young, alive.

  I wasn’t convinced. Older men were never my type. I didn’t like that they always thought they were right and dismissed me as an inexperienced young woman. If I wanted to live like that, I might as well stay in Amu’s house, cooking and cleaning for an old guy but at least not having to sleep with him.

  Amu rarely came home before eight, so whenever I saw his car parked in the driveway, I knew that he was early so he could introduce me to a man. Today there was an older Nissan parked at the curb, my usual space. I parked behind it and looked in the windows. An enormous biology textbook lay on the front passenger seat, an undershirt in the back, and some used napkins and wrappers and bags from fast food restaurants barely hidden on the floor. This man’s car was only a step above my fifteen-year-old Toyota Camry. I wondered why Amu Nasser even had him over.

  I turned the doorknob slowly to catch Amu and Amtu off guard, but I was the one to be surprised when I stepped inside. I kept myself from blushing when he came to shake my hand, thinking of how bad my messy bun and drab clothes made me look in front of my latest marriage prospect.

  Amu talked more about himself than Yusef did over dinner. It was typical for Amu—when he was around—to talk about his colleagues and clients as if we knew them all personally, though there were long periods of time when we heard nothing about them because he worked late most of the time. The information Amu gleaned from Yusef was that he was almost done with a master’s program in biology and working part-time at a research institution and a community college, as well as teaching a lab at the university. He had moved out of his parents’ house almost three years ago and lived on his own with various roommates over the years, but he was living alone now. His apartment was just north of campus, a complex I passed every time I did the grocery shopping after school.

  “Well, Yusef, you sound like a diligent young man. You believe so, Isra?” He looked over at me, a stiff smile letting me know there was only one acceptable response.

  “No,” I said.

  Amu glared and pursed his lips. “Why is this?”

  “Scientists strut around school thinking they’re better than everyone.” I rolled my eyes.

  Yusef looked from my face to Amu’s and laughed. Amu Nasser followed suit uncomfortably; Amtu Samia elbowed me under the table.

  “Tell me how to impress you.” He looked me straight in the eye, challenging me.

  He had me there. I took a minute to think of a response. “If you can cook and clean for yourself, I’ll be impressed.”

  Amu shook his head. “No, she jokes. Be nice, Isra.”

  Yusef stayed until almost eleven. I kept the tea and sweets coming on Amtu’s orders, and it felt like the evening would never end. Amu Nasser droned on about his work as a lawyer, and Amtu Samia kept nudging me to do things that she believed would make me more desirable to Yusef.

  My cousin Hanan came home from a choir recital in the middle of the visit, the only relief. She changed clothes and helped me with the trays of sweets and fruits. While we were both in the kitchen, I told her, “Shoot me now. I can’t take this for one more second.” I let out a long sigh. “Actually, just shoot your parents. That’d be better.”

  She giggled. “I know you have a crush on that guy. Yusefee! Yoo-see-feee! Don’t take your green eyes off me!” she sang quietly.

  I rolled my eyes. “Shut up.”

  Yusef tried to catch my eye the
whole time, but I kept mine somewhere else, on the armrest of the couch or on my tea or on Amu’s stiff face. I wouldn’t give him confirmation. I wouldn’t make it easy for him.

  On the way out the door, he smiled at me. I found myself smiling back.

  I had missed him so much.

  Amtu lectured me about what a catch Yusef was and how lucky I would be to have him, even though I knew they wouldn’t even think of him as a candidate for Hanan, not only because she was sixteen but because his family was too poor and uneducated for them. That didn’t matter in my case. Baba, my father, came from a refugee camp in Ramallah (Amu came from a family who were slightly better off in Jerusalem), and I was practically an orphan living off Amu Nasser’s charity, so I had no right to expect better. I tried to drown out the sound of Amtu Samia’s voice as I cleaned up the house.

  “Listen to me, Isra. You are acting as a child!” She went on to say she didn’t know how exactly I met this boy before and why he wanted to marry me, but, knowing me, something indecent went on between the two of us, and I was lucky that he was still willing to commit to me.

  I slammed a soaped-up dish back in the sink and turned around to glare at her. “Calm down! It’s not like I said no.”

  “You want him as husband or not?” She put her hands on her hips and straightened her back, her eyes narrowed.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “What? You think he wait around forever? Or that you have many men to choose from?” She threw her hands up in frustration. “Have there been that many men here since you’ve been a woman?”

  Amu Nasser was usually gone by the time I got dressed, but the next day he stayed a half hour later so that he could talk to me over breakfast. His approach was different from Amtu Samia’s: he spoke in a reasonable tone and presented the advantages I would have if I made such a marriage. “Yusef does not come from much money, but he is hardworking and has a good education, and he will be able to give all you need and most of what you want.” Then he inserted further persuasion. “You must know this: You have come from very little, and look at what you have made of yourself. Yusef is a young man as well.”

  “I know. I’ll have to spend the rest of my life with him, so I need time to think.”

  “But life will not stop for you, Isra. You must not take too long.”

  “He can give me a few days. I’m sure he had longer when he decided that he wanted to ask me.”

  He sighed. “You do not know what he has done to come here. His parents did not think we would consider Yusef for you, so they did not want him to come. If you agree, he will bring his mother and father.”

  I should have been touched by that, but I found it funny instead. Yusef’s parents should have seen all the old and/or divorced men who had come for me. It seemed like almost everyone we knew was aware of the way Amu Nasser and Amtu Samia regarded me. “I wouldn’t want to seem desperate by accepting too quickly.”

  He shook his head and sighed again. “Have your time.”

  I thought about it during all my classes and later at the doctor’s office where I worked, thinking about what it would be like to be a wife. Yusef’s wife. My parents never married; Mom didn’t see the point of it. It wouldn’t have made Baba any less of a deadbeat or her family any more accepting of the fact that she had a child out of wedlock with an Arab.

  Then there was Amu and Amtu’s marriage. They could barely stand each other and hardly spoke. Amtu Samia still did things for Amu Nasser sometimes, like having Hanan and me help her cook up big breakfasts on the weekend, but he never noticed or even said thank you, especially for the last few years.

  At the end of the day, Yusef showed up just before closing with flowers and a smile on his face. The waiting room was empty, but the nurse was filling out some charts in the office with me. “Isra, you didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend,” she said.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I whispered and stood up to meet him at the window.

  I opened it and thanked him for the flowers as he handed them to me. He reached in to squeeze my arm. “Sana told me when you got off, so I thought, if you had the time, we could talk.”

  I nodded, unable to fully meet his eyes. “Sure.”

  He rested his hand on mine for a few seconds and then settled himself in a seat while I finished up my work for the day. I set the flowers on the table away from my area so they wouldn’t get in the way, but I kept glancing at them, and I knew he saw me each time.

  Yusef took my hand in his on the way to my car, telling me how happy he was to see me after all this time. He got in on the passenger side of my car and made small talk at first, asking me how things were going, how I liked my job, but it didn’t take him long to get to the point: What did I think about his proposal?

  I took a deep breath. “I’m still thinking about it.”

  He reached over and took my hand. “I thought we were … you know …”

  “I’m not sure about marriage in general.”

  He laughed. “Isra, who doesn’t want to grow old together and have babies and all that good stuff?”

  Did he think it was that simple? His parents’ marriage must have been perfect, or else he was completely oblivious, or maybe it was just that much easier for men. I never saw Amu or Baba stress or suffer because of the women in their lives. I would never be able to make him understand. “It’s not so perfect.” I paused and set the flowers down on the dashboard. “I would think you’d understand. You’ve lived a lot more life than I have.”

  He blew air from his mouth and tapped his fingers impatiently on the dashboard. “I know that, but things get complicated anyway.”

  I wanted to ask him what he knew about life’s complications. He was the cherished only son who had the support of his family for nearly all his endeavors (except for those related to marrying rich girls, apparently). His family didn’t seem to have a lot of money, and he’d always had to work hard in school. But that was far from being complicated.

  And what if I had a different vision of my life? What if I didn’t have room for him in that? “I said I would think about it, and I’ll take my time. I gave you yours. It took you long enough to even ask.”

  He raised his eyebrows and grinned. It lit up his whole face, showing his white teeth, his green eyes sparkling. “So you wanted me to ask?”

  I folded my arms and looked out of the window.

  He pried my right arm from the other, took my hand in his. “You should have said something. I would have been here in a minute.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to argue, but I refused to agree with him. “I can’t help that I need time to think.”

  He reached over and kissed my cheek softly.

  If I had known that Yusef had daisies waiting for me when I came home, it wouldn’t have been so hard for me to leave the roses to wilt in the car so Amu and Amtu wouldn’t see them. Amtu Samia had set the new bouquet on the coffee table in the living room. She was sitting on the couch watching television, and she reminded me that this sort of behavior wouldn’t continue in marriage. “But is nice he took the time to do it before,” she said, her arms crossed, her gaze turned right back to the TV. I expected to hear another lecture, but she must have been absorbed in her show, because she said nothing else.

  “So are you going to marry him?” Hanan asked, reading from a textbook on the loveseat. I had told her all about him the night before. Well, at least about how I knew him through my friend Sana, and that we went to high school together for a year.

  “I don’t know,” I said reluctantly, dropping down next to her.

  “Imagine you as a wife,” Hanan said. “And him as your husband.” She must have been the only one who didn’t want me to get married. She said that I would be leaving her alone with her brother Rasheed because he’d probably never marry, or move out, or even graduate from college (he was already in his sixth year).

  “I was her age when I married, and your father was not many years older than Yusef.” Amtu wagged her forefinger.
“In Amreeka, you girls have too long to grow up. You have too much time to think, ‘I cannot do this. I will have to be woman.’” She shook her head.

  She was exactly the reason why I would never want to grow up fast, the way she did.

  “Going to college is grown up,” Hanan said.

  Amtu dismissed the idea with her hand. “Laa, no, it’s only more school. You don’t have to be adult in schools, not at these American ones where the teachers spoil their students.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I found out that Amu was having an affair when I was fourteen.

  On Saturdays, I had to wake up early to help Amtu Samia with the big breakfast and do chores until four or five in the evening. I started with Amu and Amtu’s laundry, sorting the clothes from their hamper into whites, delicates, and colors.

  One day I noticed that Amu had left his briefcase on their dresser. Normally, it was either with him at work or in his office here at home, so I had never got the chance to go through it, the way I did with everything else in Amu and Amtu’s bedroom every weekend.

  The briefcase mostly had boring stuff—thick manila folders, chewing gum, some cash—but I found something to make my time worthwhile.

  It was a picture.

  A woman stood in a white bathrobe, exposing her whole sprayed-tanned left leg, almost showing her crotch. She held a wine glass in one hand, and she had thin, messy, reddish blond hair. I stared at the photo for several long minutes, finding her startlingly hideous. Her orangey tan and pinkish hair almost blended into the same color, and though she was probably in her mid-thirties at most, she had a gaunt face and body. She was practically a bag of bones, with a flat chest and chicken legs; girls my age had more developed bodies.

  Amtu Samia wasn’t the most attractive woman in the world: she aged before her time, with lines around her mouth and eyes, and up until the year before, she had been losing weight at an alarming rate. But even she looked better than this woman.

  Ever since Mom’s death, I had heard how everyone deemed her an immoral Amreekiya, not only sleeping with Baba before marriage, as most white women did, but having a child with him without a wedding. Amtu Samia was the worst about such insults, and I had countless arguments with her about Mom, usually with me ending up in my bedroom crying tears of anger and sorrow.