“A drinker and a liar!” he shouted, and started hitting me everywhere. I screamed and screamed and finally got free and ran to my room. I opened the closet and closed the door behind me and prayed to God the fire would burn somewhere else.

“My ache comes from losing my home,” my father tells us a lot. Part of me understands that, because I see him unhappy and feeling different than everyone else here, but part of me doesn’t understand. I see my uncles and cousins and neighbors, and they seem to be doing just fine. So mostly I try to stay out of his way.

My mother’s mother, who lives in Nawara, is dying. Ma wants to go home and stay with her, but Baba says there is no money. This makes Ma quiet, sometimes for a day or two. “I am trapped,” she yells at him.

Finally, I feel sorry for her too.

PART TWO

PART TWO

5 HALA Mourning

5HALAMourning

I bring the coffee. I mixed in extra cardamom because ours is a house of mourning and I think it will calm the spirits. The smell soothes me as the steam from the cups curls into my nose. I carry the tray with eight saucers stacked up and eight demitasses side by side filled with coffee.

The house is quiet even though it is an early summer morning. There are many people in our living room, but they are silent now. I am careful not to let my slippers drag too much on the floor when I walk.

Thin pale hands with coral chips at the end of each finger reach out to pick up a cup and saucer. Even in mourning Aunt Suha is lovely, perhaps more so than usual.

I move around the circle serving coffee to lowered eyes until my tray is empty and I return to a chair in the corner next to Latifa.

There is a shadow at the door. Uncle Abbas, Aunt Suha’s husband, enters the room bowing his head. “May God give safety to the heads of everyone in this house.”

“God protect you,” we answer.

“God keep you safe and preserve your children,” says Latifa, who always has to have the last word, regardless of the occasion.

Aunt Suha begins to wail for the spirit of my grandmother, her mother. The other women follow.

I watch them.

My brother Jalal serves the welcoming coffee, which is bitter. Uncle Abbas drinks from the cup once and shakes it so that Jalal will take it and return it and the pot to the table by the door.

“We are to God and to him we return,” says Uncle Abbas, and the women begin to wail again.

This visiting will last three days. Our house will contain death for forty more as the older women dress in black to remember those departed.