Title Page

FOR RUTH

Epigraph

The house was sold with all its memories
all its furniture all its nightmares
all the sins committed, or just about to be;
the house was sold with the sound of its doors banging
with its windy corridors its view of the world its
imponderables.

CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE

1

1

When Yaqub returned from Lebanon in 1945, his father went to Rio de Janeiro to fetch him. The quay at Mauá Square, close to the center of the city, was teeming with the relatives of officers and men of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, coming back from Italy. Brazilian flags decorated the balconies and verandas of the apartments, rockets were bursting in the sky, and wherever Halim looked, there were signs of victory. He caught sight of his son on the gangway of a ship that had just come in from Marseilles. He was no longer a boy, but a young man who had spent five of his eighteen years in southern Lebanon. His bearing was still the same: his quick, firm steps gave him a poise and stiffness unthinkable in the other, younger son.

Yaqub had grown by a good few inches. As he came down to the quay, his father compared the physique of the son just arrived with the image he’d built up in the years of separation. Yaqub was carrying a threadbare gray canvas bag, and under his green cap his large eyes were wide open, taking in the shouts and tears of the soldiers of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force.

Halim waved with both hands, but his son took a while to recognize this man in a white suit, a little shorter than he was. He had almost forgotten his father’s face, his eyes, in fact everything about him. Apprehensively, Halim came up to the lad, the two exchanged glances, and then the son asked “Baba?” First came four kisses on the cheek and a long, drawn-out embrace, then the greeting in Arabic. They left the quay arm in arm and went to Cinelândia. The son recounted his journey, and his father complained of the hard times in Manaus—the poverty and hunger of the war years. In Cinelândia they sat at a café table, and amid the surrounding hubbub Yaqub opened his bag and took out a parcel; his father saw moldy bread and a box of dried figs. Was that all he’d brought from Lebanon? No letters? No presents? No, there was nothing more in the bag, no clothes, no presents, nothing! Yaqub explained in Arabic that his uncle, his father’s brother, hadn’t wanted him to go back to Brazil.

He stopped. Halim lowered his head, thought of mentioning the other son, and hesitated. He said: “Your mother …” and stopped in his turn. He saw Yaqub’s tense face; then his son got up, looking harassed, and let his trousers down to piss against the bar wall, right in the middle of Cinelândia. He pissed for a long time, and was now relaxed, quite indifferent to the loud laughter of the people passing by. Halim managed to shout, “No, you shouldn’t …” but his son either didn’t understand or pretended not to.

He had to swallow his shame. That wasn’t the only time: there were others, with Yaqub and the other son, Omar, the younger, the twin who had been born a few minutes later. What bothered Halim was the twins’ separation, “Because you never know how they’re going to react later …” He never stopped thinking about his sons meeting again, and how they would get on after so long apart. Since the day he left, Zana never stopped saying: “My son will come back a hillbilly, a shepherd, a ra ’í. He’ll forget Portuguese and he’ll never set foot in a school; there isn’t one in your family’s village.”

It happened a year before the Second World War, after the twins’ thirteenth birthday. Halim wanted to send the two of them to southern Lebanon. Zana resisted, and managed to persuade her husband to send Yaqub on his own. For years Omar was treated as an only child, the only boy.

In the center of Rio, Halim bought clothes and a pair of shoes for Yaqub. On the journey back to Manaus he gave him a long sermon on manners: you shouldn’t piss in the street, wolf your food, or spit on the floor. Yaqub said, “Yes, Baba,” with his head bowed, vomiting whenever the twin-engine plane shook, his eyes deep set in his pale face, and a look of panic every time they took off or landed on the six stops between Rio de Janeiro and Manaus.

Zana had been waiting at the airport for them since early evening. She parked the green Land Rover, went up to the veranda, and stood looking east. When she saw the silvery twin-engine coming up to the head of the runway, she ran downstairs, crossed the arrivals lounge, bribed an employee, walked proudly to the plane, went up the steps, and burst into the cabin. A bouquet of heliconias she had brought fell to the floor as she embraced her pale, frightened son. She said, “My darling, my dearest, light of my life,” and again, in tears, “Why did you take so long? What have they done to you?” kissing him on the face, neck, and head in front of the incredulous gaze of the crew and passengers, until Halim said, “That’s enough! Now let’s get off, Yaqub’s done nothing but throw up, next thing we’d have had his guts all over the floor.” But she wouldn’t stop caressing him, and got down from the plane holding onto her son; down the stairs she went and into the arrivals hall, radiant, full of herself, as if she had finally gotten part of her life back: the twin who had gone away through Halim’s whim or obstinacy. What was more, for some incomprehensible reason she had let it happen, whether out of passion or sheer folly, a blind, uncontrollable devotion, or all those things rolled together; either she didn’t know what to call it, or didn’t want to know.

Now he was back: as handsome and tall as the other son, the younger one. They had the same angular face, the same big chestnut eyes and black, wavy hair; they were exactly the same height. After he laughed Yaqub let out a sigh, just like his brother. Distance had not removed certain tics and common mannerisms, but Yaqub had forgotten certain words in Portuguese. He didn’t say much, only uttering monosyllables or short phrases; when he could, he kept quiet—sometimes, when he should have said something.

Zana saw straightaway. She saw her son smile, sigh, and avoid words, as if surrounded by a paralyzing silence.

On the road home from the airport Yaqub recognized a part of his Manaus childhood; with a jolt, he saw the brightly painted boats moored along the creeks where he and his brother and father had rowed their straw-roofed canoe. Yaqub looked at his father and only managed to stammer out some jumbled noises.

“What’s happened?” asked Zana. “Have they ripped your tongue out?”

“La, no, Mama,” he said; he couldn’t take his eyes off this scene from a childhood that had come to such a sudden, untimely end.

The boats, and the children running back and forth across the beach when the river dried up; trips to the Careiro on the other side of the river Negro, when they would come back with baskets full of fruit and fish. He and his brother would run into the house, chasing through the back garden, hunting lizards with a slingshot. When it rained, the two of them climbed into the rubber tree at the back of the house, and Omar climbed higher. He was more adventurous, and made fun of his brother, who swayed back and forth in the middle of the tree, hidden in the leaves, holding onto the thickest branch, shaking with fear and afraid of losing his balance. He could hear Omar’s voice: “I can see everything from here, come on, come up.” Yaqub didn’t move, didn’t even look up; gingerly, he got down and waited for his brother: he didn’t want to be told off on his own. He had hated being scolded by Zana when they had run outside on mornings of torrential rain, and Omar, with only his shorts on, covered in mud, plunged into the creek near the prison. They could see the prisoners’ hands and their silhouettes, and he listened to his brother jeering and swearing, with no idea of who he was insulting: whether it was the prisoners, or the kids helping their mothers, aunties, or grandmothers get the clothes off the lines tied to the stilts of the shacks built out over the mud.

No, he certainly hadn’t the energy to follow his brother—nor the courage. He was angry with himself and with Omar when he saw his brother’s arm around the neck of a boy from the slum at the back of the house. He felt angry at his own powerlessness, and shook with fear and cowardice when he saw Omar challenge three or four stocky youngsters, taking their punches and giving as good as he got, swearing furiously. Yaqub hid, but he couldn’t help admire Omar’s courage. He wanted to fight like Omar, feel his own face swollen too, the taste of blood in his mouth, the stinging of his grazed lip, and the bruises on his head and face; he wanted to run barefoot, unafraid of the hot road surface scorched by the afternoon sun, or jump up and grab the kite’s string or its tail, as it sailed upwards in slow circles. Omar crouched down and leapt up, twirled in the air like an acrobat fell on his feet and let out a war whoop, showing off his scratched hands. Yaqub flinched when he saw his brothers hands full of blood, cut by the mixture of wax and ground glass on the kite string meant for cutting the strings of rivals.

Yaqub was no acrobat; he didn’t smear his hands with wax, but he did have a good time at the Carnival balls at Sultana Benemou’s house; Omar went to the adults’ party and stayed up all night with the merrymakers. Yaqub was thirteen, and it was as if his childhood had come to an end at that last ball at the Benemous’ mansion. That night he’d not even dreamed that two months later he would be separated from his parents, his country, and this landscape that now breathed new life into his face as he sat in the front seat of the Land Rover.

The young people’s ball had started before nightfall. At ten o’clock, the grown-ups in their fancy dress came into the room singing, dancing, and shooing the youngsters out. Yaqub wanted to stay till midnight, because a fair-haired niece of the Reinoso family, a fine tall girl, was going to stay too and dance into the early hours of Ash Wednesday. It was Lívia’s first night at the grown-ups’ party, and the first time Yaqub had seen her with lipstick on, lids shaded with black eyeliner, her braids scattered with sequins that made her tanned arms flicker with light. He wanted to stay to dance, hold her, and feel he was almost an adult too. He was just summoning the courage to go up to Lívia when Zana’s voice ordered: “Take your sister home. You can come back later.” He did as he was told. He took Rânia to her room, waited till she was asleep, and raced back to the Benemous’ house. The room was bursting with revelers; amid all the colors and masks he saw the shining braids and painted lips, then went weak at the knees when he saw a face and hair just like his own, right next to the face he admired.

Lívia and his brother were dancing in one corner of the room. They were silently entwined, with a rhythm all their own that had nothing to do with Carnival. Whenever revelers bumped into them, their two faces met; then their laughter did suit the occasion. Yaqub glowered. He hadn’t the courage to go up and speak to her. He hated the dance. “I hated all the music they played, I hated the masks, I hated it all,” Yaqub said to Domingas on Ash Wednesday afternoon. He didn’t sleep a wink. He pretended to be dozing when his brother came into the room at daybreak, as Carnival tunes and drunken shouts filled the Manaus air. With his eyes closed, he could smell the perfume squirted by the revelers, and the sweat, the two bodies wrapped around each other, and he sensed his brother sitting on the floor looking at him. Yaqub lay there quiet, apprehensive, defeated. He saw his brother go slowly out of the room, his hair and shirt covered with confetti and streamers, and a contented smile on his face.

It was his last Carnival party, the last morning he saw his brother coming in from a spectacular night out. He didn’t understand why Zana never reproached Omar, and he didn’t understand why it was he, not his brother, who went to Lebanon two months later.

Now the Land Rover was going around Nossa Senhora dos Remédios Square, getting near the house, and he didn’t want to remember the day he had left. He had gone alone, in the care of a family of friends who were going to Lebanon. Yes, why him and not Omar, he wondered, staring at the mango trees and oitizeiros overhanging the street, and those huge clouds, motionless, as if painted on a blue background, taking in the smell of the childhood street, the gardens, the humid heat of the Amazon, the sight of the neighbors leaning out of their windows, his mother caressing his neck, her gentle voice saying: “We’re home, love …”

Zana got out of the jeep and looked in vain for Omar. Rânia was on the veranda, beautifully dressed and perfumed.

“Is he here? Has my brother come yet?” She ran to the door, and there saw a timid young man, taller than his father, holding his battered canvas bag and now looking at her for the first time as a young woman, not the skinny little girl he had embraced on the Manaus Harbor quay. He didn’t know what to say: he dropped the bag and opened his arms to enfold her slim body, lengthened by her dignified pose; her slightly upturned chin gave her an air of self-confidence, perhaps a little distant or standoffish. Rânia was hypnotized by her brother’s presence: an almost perfect replica of the other, without being him. She observed him, trying to find something that would differentiate him from Omar. She looked at him closely, very closely, from several angles; she saw that the greatest difference was his silence. However, she heard her brother asking, “Where’s Domingas?” in a mature voice, and saw him walk to the garden and embrace the woman there waiting for him. They went into the little room where Domingas and Yaqub had once played. He saw the drawings he had done as a child up on the wall—the houses, the buildings, the colorful bridges—and he saw the pencil for his first writing exercises and the yellowed notebook that Domingas had kept, and now handed to him as if she was his mother, not the maid.

Yaqub lingered in the garden, then paid a visit to every room, familiarizing himself again with the furniture and objects there; he was overcome as he went into his bedroom. On the wall he saw a photograph: himself and his brother sitting on a tree trunk over a creek. Both of them were laughing: Omar, mockingly, his arms stretched upwards; Yaqub, his laughter checked and his hands grasping the trunk, looking apprehensively into the dark waters. When was that photo from? It had been taken a little before or maybe a little after the last Carnival party in the Benemous’ mansion. In the background of the picture, at the edge of the creek, were the neighbors, whose faces seemed to be as blurred in the photo as they were in Yaqub’s memory. On the writing desk he saw another photograph: his brother sitting on a bicycle, his cap cocked on one side, with shiny boots, and a watch on his wrist. Yaqub went closer and scrutinized the photograph to see his brother’s features, his brother’s look, and got a shock when he heard a voice: “Omar will be coming in at nightfall, he’s promised to have dinner with us.”

It was Zana’s voice; she had followed in Yaqub’s footsteps and wanted to show him the sheet and pillowcases where she had embroidered his name. As soon as she knew when he was coming back, Zana repeated every day: “My boy is going to sleep with my words, my lettering.” She said this in Omar’s presence; jealously, he would ask: “When’s he coming back? Why has he stayed in Lebanon so long?” Zana didn’t answer him, perhaps because she too was unable to explain why Yaqub had spent so many years far from her side.

She had furnished Yaqub’s room with a rocking chair, a mahogany wardrobe, and a bookcase with the eighteen volumes of an encyclopedia Halim had bought from a retired magistrate. A vase of caladiums decorated one corner of the room, near the open window overlooking the street.

Leaning on the sill, Yaqub watched the passersby going up the street towards Remédios Square. He could see carts, one or two cars, peddlers sounding their metal triangles; on the sidewalk, there were chairs in semicircles in readiness for conversation at nightfall; on the windowsills, candle stubs would later provide light in the darkened city. This had been the way during the war years: Manaus in the dark, and its inhabitants elbowing one another in front of the butchers and grocery stores, fighting over a piece of meat, a packet of rice, beans, salt, or coffee. Electricity was rationed, and an egg was worth its weight in gold. Zana and Domingas got up early each morning, and the maid waited for the coal man while her mistress went to the Adolpho Lisboa Market; then the two of them did the ironing, prepared dough, and cooked. When he was lucky, Halim managed to buy the canned meat and wheat flour the American planes brought to Amazonia. Sometimes he would get food in exchange for unsold cloth: frayed madras or plain cotton cloth, soiled lace, and suchlike.

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