The American Granddaughter by Inaam Kachachi Read Free Book Online

of her pot full of stories and used it to nourish my roots, to bring life into the branches of my belonging. She spread her fingers to rub my forehead, the way she used to drive fear away after a nightmare when I was little. She rubbed vigorously to drive away the evil spirit that had possessed me and returned me to her in a distorted form. ‘Zuweina, my child, is there any other country on this earth where people entertain themselves with memories of oppression and abuse?’

XI
    Calvin had asked me once, ‘What do you think, Zeina, is the greatest invention of the twentieth century?’ In his right hand he had an empty can of beer that he was squeezing into a glob of metal. Calvin could consume a chilled beer in two swigs. He enjoyed the sound of creaking metal as he opened the can and then took a long first swig made up of multiple gulps. He swallowed and let out a snake-like sigh, imitating the handsome, rugged actor in the Pepsi ad. Calvin, too, was handsome, at least to me. I once tried to translate for him the Arabic saying about the monkey being as beautiful as a gazelle in his mother’s eyes, but he stared at me blankly and said that indeed he considered the monkey more beautiful than the gazelle. His realism didn’t irritate me. His freedom from the oriental superstitions that filled my pockets and weighed me down, and his lack of a sense of humour, didn’t turn me off. Nor did I dislike his ginger curls and the freckles on his nose and his back. I liked Calvin the way he was. If he had been romantic, or gallant, or a bit funnier, with dark flowing hair, I would’ve been inclined to lose myself in his love and leave the world behind to remain under his feet. The kind of love that borders on obsession scared me. I tried to avoid it so I could stay in control of the rudder of my soul, the only true companion in the days that I often just watched pass me by.
    I sat on the balcony and looked at Calvin lying on the bamboo sofa and thought to myself that yes, he was the man for this phase of my life. I was quite content with the temporariness of what he gave me. Tomorrow, as Scarlett O’Hara had it, was another day.
    ‘You tell me first what you think is the greatest invention,’ I retorted.
    ‘You really wanna know?’
    ‘Yeah, go ahead.’
    He got up and went through the door that was held open by a large stone. In one long stride Calvin reached the fridge and returned with the second can of beer. One shabkha there and one shabkha back. That was how we’d describe Calvin’s beer-hunt stalk in our dialect. But I didn’t have the energy for the process of translating shabkha for him. He’d ask me to say it again in Arabic. Then he’d try to pronounce it as if spelling, one syllable at a time, before shaking his head in mock amazement while repeating the word, happy with his linguistic fluency. Finally, he’d take out his little diary and write ‘ shabkha ’ in English letters with the definition next to it.
    He carried on the conversation, ‘Don’t yell at me, sweetheart, but I think the invention of the century is the remote control.’
    ‘Doesn’t surprise me that that’s what you think, you lazy tanbal .’
    I stuck my fingers in my ears as I uttered the Arabic word, to indicate that I wasn’t in the mood for explaining what it meant. He nodded obediently, drank half the can in the first swig and let out his usual sigh, before challenging me, ‘Come on, Zaynaa , your turn. What’s the greatest invention of the twentieth century?’
    ‘Ha ha. The nargileh, of course.’
    ‘But that’s a nineteenth-century invention, pre-technology.’
    ‘Doesn’t matter. Lucky for me that I came across it before it’s extinct.’
    He finished the rest of his beer and sighed happily before commenting on my choice, ‘I thought you’d choose the laptop.’
    It was true that I never parted with my laptop. But despite our attachment, I didn’t appreciate its ultimate necessity until I went to Iraq. If I had