“A Mother’s Voice” by Cecile Sarruf
My mother never did understand why I had returned to school to further my education. Hadn’t I already gone to university for a BA in English? What more did I need? Upon a visit to her modest one bedroom apartment in Manhattan Beach, we sat at her small round glass dining room table in the silvery light of a late afternoon. She lived in a retirement community, although she hadn’t worked a day in her life after marrying and having five kids. A fairly large painting I’d painted in college of two women by the sea, done up in the style of Renoir, hung on the wall behind us. She was proud of my artwork, as long as it didn’t include all the naked paintings from my life painting classes. She used to take those down back home and put them in the garage. Luckily, I had other aspirations.
It started when I was thirteen years old. My English teacher at Dapplegray Elementary had caught me staring out the back window in class, so she gave me a book called The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton to read and it changed my life. I decided right then and there that I wanted to become a writer. Inspired by the novel, I tried my own hand at writing a story on spiral notebook paper. Having no privacy whatsoever, my mother finally got a hold of my story about troubled teenagers on the run. What is this? She demanded to know. I made it up, I told her. Who are these people in your story! They aren’t real, I protested. She snatched my notebook away.
What do you write about? She now ventured decades later. Fiction, I told her. What is that? She asked, as if I’d stepped into something and muddied up my shoes. I glanced at the TV screen silently playing out silly cartoons in the living room. At least it wasn’t TBN. Fiction Mom. What is that? She asked. Stories mom, just stories. She grew serious. You don’t write about me, do you? No Mom, I lied. Are you sure? She asked. Her poor syntax and her 1001 questions irked me. Yes, I’m sure, I said. Truth be told, I had made use of her character in various written pieces while in my master’s program. This, she would never come to know.
We sat side to side sipping the warm chicken soup she’d prepared, dipping soft pita bread into it. As busy as I was with my own life in Los Angeles, I didn’t come around as much as she wished. I missed her lamb stuffed grapeleaves, her beef kebe with pine nuts and her sweet baklava; all of her good cooking ways had ended with a nasty divorce. We ate in silence; the kind of silence heavy with feelings, thoughts and wordless expression. Her apartment didn’t get much sunlight, something she complained about often. It wasn't like her childhood flat in Cairo where the bright sunlight would spill through open windows and doors from a bustling city, and where the Adhan from a minaret kept everyone connected to a greater purpose. Now, it was her TV that kept her company.
When we finished eating, she slowly stood up to clear the table. I pulled out a book I had brought along called Food for Our Grandmothers; Writings by Arab-American and Arab – Canadian Feminists by Joanna Kadi. I held it in my hands as a prized treasure. I loved the anthology and had read practically every essay and poem it offered.
Can I read something to you? I ventured. She didn’t own books, just the Holy Bible and a periodical called the Catholic Tidings. So, I was surprised when she nodded, yes. I thumbed through the pages of the feminist narratives, excitedly seeking one to share, one whose contents she might appreciate, even though she was as far from feminism as a woman could get. I finally found an essay titled “Mint, Tomatoes and the Grapevine.” In it, a Syrian sittu (grandmother), an immigrant to America, was remembered fondly by her American born granddaughter. Upon the old woman’s death and burial though, the priest spoke of the grandmother in such a way as to leave the immigrant woman unrecognizable to her granddaughter: “a handmaiden for their projects and needs,” he said sanctimoniously. Laid to rest in a foreign land, what did this American priest really know about the Syrian grandmother’s homeland and culture? Nothing, I thought to myself. All formalities lacking any particulars.
When I had finished reading, I asked my mother to share her thoughts. Did you like it? Her hazel eyes were distant. Did she not see the irony? Could she not acknowledge the displaced Middle Eastern woman in the essay? She slowly stood up and cleared the table without a word. She shuffled to the adjacent kitchen space a few steps away, as if the weight of her childhood memories would crush her if she spoke. I now observed her to be much shorter in stature and quieter than I’d known, like an old songbird curled up under foliage ready to die. Maybe she was tired of the unfamiliar and the need to assimilate. It must have been exhausting flitting from one tree to the next her entire life, seeking a branch to call her own.
I heard she used to sing “La Paloma” in French from her balcony in Egypt. Everyone loved her rich, deep and beautiful voice. This is what her brother told me, long after she passed. As a young girl, she was full of devil - may - care, and an excellent watercolorist. Neighbors would gather three floors down below and listen to the young girl with the olive skin, long thick black hair and infectious smile. I’m going to be a singer, she once announced to her family at the age of 18. However, when she came to America and found herself married to an American, she never did sing another note.
I closed the book.
When I finally took the elevator down to the first floor, I entered a sunny courtyard and glanced up to see her standing at the second floor railing waving me goodbye with a smile. She was a watercolor wash at that moment. I felt worlds apart as I waved back. It would be the first and last time I’d ever read to her. In a couple years more, she would be buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, more than halfway across the world from where she’d come. And the priest in attendance? A young clergyman with a eulogy that seemed to silence the Egyptian woman, even in death.
Cecile Sarruf is an Arab American author and fine artist with online and in-print publications. She tends to focus on socio-political and feminist issues when writing fiction, creative nonfiction and essay. Sarruf holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles.
