An Unlasting Home

A Novel

Mai Al-Nakib

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063135116
• Print ISBN:
  9780063135109
• Subtopic: American Drama

"So fresh and unsettling that it will enchant you from the first page and linger for days after reading...Its epic family saga style echoes that of Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses and The Arsonists’ City, Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies, and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko." -- Los Angeles Review of Books

In 2013, Sara is a philosophy professor at Kuwait University, having returned to Kuwait from Berkeley in the wake of her mother’s sudden death eleven years earlier. Her main companions are her grandmother’s talking parrot, Bebe Mitu; the family cook, Aasif; and Maria, her childhood ayah and the one person who has always been there for her. Sara’s relationship with Kuwait is complicated; it is a country she always thought she would leave, and a country she recognizes less and less, and yet a certain inertia keeps her there. But when teaching Nietzsche in her Intro to Philosophy course leads to an accusation of blasphemy, which carries with it the threat of execution, Sara realizes she must reconcile her feelings and her place in the world once and for all.

Interspersed with Sara’s narrative are the stories of her grandmothers: beautiful and stubborn Yasmine, who marries the son of the Pasha of Basra and lives to regret it, and Lulwa, born poor in the old town of Kuwait, swept off her feet to an estate in India by the son of a successful merchant family; and her two mothers: Noura, who dreams of building a life in America and helping to shape its Mid-East policies, and Maria, who leaves her own children behind in Pune to raise Sara and her brother Karim and, in so doing, transforms many lives.

Ranging from the 1920s to the near present, An Unlasting Home traces Kuwait’s rise from a pearl-diving backwater to its reign as a thriving cosmopolitan city to the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion. At once intimate and sweeping, personal and political, it is an unforgettable epic and a spellbinding family saga. 

II

Sara

Aasif has gone home. I’ve tried calling Christina and Josefina dozens of times, but there’s no answer. For them their mother is still alive and well at the Surra house, taking care of me, a forty-one-year-old baby. I tell myself that their not knowing will forestall anything bad happening, then feel appalled—a philosophy professor prone to magical thinking.

I get off the plastic chair to stretch my legs and wander to the nurse’s station. It’s empty. The nurse who spoke to me earlier ended her shift ages ago. The nurses must all be busy dashing between patients, checking vital signs, replacing IVs, noting changes in blue files at the feet of occupied beds.

My father wore down these corridors, cupping life and death in his hands. We knew Dad was a doctor, but we didn’t understand the burden of that vocation or its effect on our mother. He refused to go private, forfeiting money for service. Even after the government prioritized care to Kuwaitis, my father continued to see patients in order of urgency, nationality be damned. He cared for the sick and fobbed off the spoiled, who nonetheless demanded to be seen by Dr. Tarek Al-Ameed, senior-most cardiologist in the country. “They insist they’re having heart attacks when all they have is excess gas. Pass gas, I tell them. Don’t hold it in! They eat too much, and then they hold in their farts because they don’t want to have to redo their wudu’ before prayer.” Karim and I would giggle at our ordinarily discreet father discussing farts over lunch.

Dad would have turned seventy-three this October. I understood nothing of death at twenty, even less about what his loss meant to my mother. When Dad was killed, Mom was only five years older than I am now. By then my mother was already adrift: Karim and I gone; her interest in the bookstore waning; her belief in the human capacity to improve the world disappointed. Without my father, I’m not sure what anchored her to shore.

I catch the attention of a nurse as she exits a patient’s room. “Maria Torres?” She shakes her head, not recognizing the name. “She’s in surgery. Heart?”

“Give me a minute to check. I’ll come to the waiting room after.”

I try Christina and Josefina again. Nothing.

This is my fault. I should never have told her. I should have explained the situation to her daughters, asked them to say nothing. But I put myself before Maria, falling back on childish comforts that have long since faded. I came back to Kuwait to be with her, to take care of her, not to be taken care of. I came back for Curiosity Bookshop, not for atonement. I came back for Nabil—already gone.

“Madam?” The nurse puts her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, my dear. So sorry.”

Something happens to time in a crisis. The flux of temporality was the subject of my dissertation, but it still amazes me whenever I experience it directly. I phone Josie, and this time she picks up on the first ring. I break the news to her as calmly as I can, the sound of my own voice coming to me from a far distance. I volunteer to help with the bureaucracy and ask delicately whether they would prefer to bury their mother—I cannot say her name—in India or Kuwait. If they prefer India, I volunteer to pay the expenses.

Josie thanks me and says Kuwait. It would have to be Kuwait. Maria’s family is here, most of their friends are, too. She spent decades in this country that wasn’t hers to make a good life for her children. Josie says she’ll tell Christina. I suddenly remember that it was the two of them who had first driven to the spot where my mother was hit, at Maria’s anxious behest, because she was late home from her evening walk. And then the three of them drove together to this very hospital, only to find that my mother had died alone, her own children far away.

I promise to call tomorrow morning to update her about the paperwork. She says that she and Christina will arrange to have the funeral in the next couple of days.

I arrive home to Aasif waiting by the pool. I shake my head. He lifts his hands to the ceiling, to a God he believes in beyond that ceiling. He says a short prayer for Maria’s soul, then asks me, “Do you want something to eat?”

“No thanks, Aasif. I’m going to bed.” I leave it to him to switch off all the lights in the house and to lock the front door. With Maria gone, he’ll have to start locking the door downstairs. I wonder if he’ll think of it tonight. I collapse in bed with my clothes on, and for the first time in what feels like ages, I sleep the sleep of the dead.

My eyes blink open at four in the morning to bright sunlight slanting through my window. My mind feels white like a star or a blank page. Why didn’t I draw the curtains last night? It takes a few seconds for things to recrystallize, and when they do, all I want is to return to the moment just before, when I first opened my eyes to the promise of a day with Maria still in it.

It takes all my energy to push myself onto my elbows, then inch my legs and feet across the bed and to the floor. Maria is dead, but my eyes are chalk dry. Then I remember the accusation against me and feel a glacier of guilt in my gut. Forgetting my case has come at the expense of Maria’s life. I sink back down again.

Some minutes later, I force myself into the shower, scrubbing the stench of hospital disinfectant off my skin. It’s 6:30 P.M. in San Francisco. I call Karim.

“Hey there, little sister.”

“Hey.” I can’t temper the blow, so I blurt it out fast. “I have some upsetting news. Maria died last night. Heart attack.”

“Oh, no!” I hear rattling as he puts down the phone, then I hear him sob. He gets back on a few minutes later. “Maria gone. This makes me so sad.”

“Will you come for the funeral? It should be in a couple of days.”

“Shit, Sara. I have a deadline.”

I’m half-annoyed that even Maria’s death is not enough to get him to return. The other half of me never wants him to come back here again. “It’s okay. I’ll be there. You can come after, pay your respects to her daughters? And, Karim, there’s one other thing.” If I don’t tell him now, I may never. I begin explaining the 1961 Press and Publications Law—a vague law against fomenting hatred. I jump to the 2012 National Unity Law, more restrictive, more punishing. I sound like a lawyer rehearsing a defense or building an accusation. Karim doesn’t interrupt, but I hear his breathing speed up.

“A few months ago, in April, the parliament passed an amendment to Article 111 of the Penal Code, which modified the National Unity Law. It made blasphemy a capital crime.”

My brother stops breathing. “Sara, what’s going on?”

I mumble, “I’ve been accused of blasphemy.”

“What?” His voice explodes in my ear.

“I’m going on trial for blasphemy. My lawyer is doing things by the book and promises everything will work out if I retract my words. Worst case, I’ll have to serve some time in prison or pay a fine. Maybe both. But I’m not going to die over this.”

“I’ll be on the next plane out.”

“What about your deadline?”

“I’ll sort it.” He sounds wrecked.

“Look, Karim, let’s wait until my next meeting with Mr. Al-Baatin. Finish up your project, then we’ll see.” I hear myself backtracking unconvincingly.

“I’m coming, Sara. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

I don’t know if Karim ever told Maria his secret. I suspect not. Maria lamented Karim’s absence from Kuwait like it was a death, not like she understood it even a little. I never asked her because I didn’t want to betray Karim. I was the keeper of my brother’s secret long after anyone cared.

It all started in California in 1983: the summer of Matt. Karim and I were in line for tickets at Edwards Cinema. Karim handed me the twenty-dollar bill Mom had given him. “Sara, you get the tickets.”

“If I buy the tickets, he’s going to ask how old I am,” I protested. “We have a better chance if you do it.” I was eleven; he was thirteen.

“No. You do it.”

“Is it because you guys are going to see Flashdance, not Return of the Jedi?”

The two of us spun around, and there he was. Matt of the baby blue eyes and sunbaked skin. Matt, whose name we didn’t know yet. He was older than us, but by how much, I couldn’t tell. Karim and I were firmly on the kid side of the divide, and this guy, despite his shortness, seemed much more grown up.

“It’s a great movie, you know, Flashdance. Star Wars is overrated.” Matt’s hair was dirty blond and shoulder length. He had a way of flicking it back without touching it, without any obvious movement of the head. “This is my third time. That last scene at the audition? Totally awesome. I’ll get your tickets if you want. We can sit together.”

I turned to Karim, willing him to refuse. He handed the stranger our twenty-dollar bill.

Matt, it turned out, was sixteen and spent most of his time in his parents’ basement playing Atari. He didn’t have many friends, and all he really seemed to do was listen to records, watch movies, and drive around in his beat-up yellow Volkswagen Rabbit. Matt wasn’t a bad guy, but that summer I hated him. He was the first person to come between my brother and me, and I couldn’t figure out why.

I became Karim’s ready excuse. Sara wants to go to the mall. Sara wants to go to the beach. Sara wants to go to the movies. Mom would let us go out together unsupervised because she figured Karim was asserting his adolescent independence, and I suppose it was some relief to her that I wasn’t being jettisoned in the process. If where we wanted to go was nearby, Karim and I would walk. If not, Mom would drop us off. After she drove away, Matt would arrive in his car. We would drive around for hours, listening to Missing Persons, not talking much.

I didn’t mention Matt to Mom or Dad, and neither did Karim. The two of us didn’t speak about Matt to each other, either, even when we were alone. Being with Karim and Matt that summer was nothing like being around Karim, Faris, Daoud, and Nabil back home. Karim’s friends had become my friends, too. With Matt it was different. I was what made it possible for him to be with my brother, but I was also what kept them apart.

We would go over to Matt’s house in Laguna Niguel when his parents weren’t home. I’d hang out on the oversize brown couch in front of the TV in the living room with a bag of Doritos, watching reruns of Gidget and The Brady Bunch, while Karim went down to the basement with Matt. I was ordered not to follow unless I heard a car in the driveway, in which case I was supposed to run down and warn them. It didn’t occur to me to ask why they would need to be warned.

I didn’t hear a car in the driveway all summer, but on one of the final days of our vacation, I decided to sneak down to the basement anyway. I licked Dorito dust off my fingers and carefully turned the door handle. The stairs were carpeted and silent. It was dim, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust.

The two of them were making out on the couch. Matt’s right hand held the back of Karim’s head. Karim’s arms clasped Matt’s lower back. My brother didn’t look like a kid anymore, but I sure felt like one. I tiptoed up the stairs, hoping my brother hadn’t seen me.

The phone rings and jolts me awake. It’s Josie. The funeral is tomorrow.

Noura

The move from India to Kuwait had not been easy. Noura and Dana disliked the way sand could cling to every bodily crease. They would play outside their courtyard home in Shamiya, run along unpaved roads, and return at dusk with grayed knees and elbows. Their praying mantis of a grandmother squawked that they wouldn’t find a husband if they allowed themselves to succumb to the weight of the desert.

Noura and Dana spoke broken Arabic with heavy accents. For five months they attended Abla Samira’s Arabic language class with first graders at Zahra Elementary School for Girls in Jibla, folding their lengthening limbs under tiny desks. Though Noura was one year younger than Dana, the school decided it would be best not to separate the sisters. They were taught fifth-grade math, science, and all other subjects in Arabic, which meant that for the first few months, most of their lessons passed into oblivion.

At first, the girls at school disliked the sisters, the way children sometimes dislike what they envy or don’t understand. They would surround them at recess and mock: “What’s wrong with your Arabic, anyway? Have you landed from the moon?”

Noura and Dana, not understanding the questions, would remain silent, and their classmates would laugh, grabbing each other’s hands and dancing around them in a tight circle. After about a week of this, the sisters decided to laugh along with their tormentors. They started asking their classmates for help with Arabic and poking fun at themselves for their linguistic blunders. Soon their classmates were asking them for help with their English homework, begging Noura and Dana to teach them how to say I love you in Hindi.

“Moobaaraak . . . Kaleefaa . . . Aal . . . Mustehfaa.”

“Wrong again!” scolded Abla Samira, their young Arabic teacher from Palestine, who also tutored the sisters at home. “Listen to me: Mu, Mubarak, not Moo, not the sound of a cow! And your grandfather’s name is Khalifa. Kha, not Ka. And don’t lengthen your vowels. Remember, girls, you’re not Indian!”

Noura and Dana gulped down giggles. Abla Samira locked her gaze straight ahead and instructed the girls to repeat. Some days Abla Samira chittered along with them like a sparrow on a branch. Other days, like that day, she was all business, tapping on the desk with her metal ruler. Then the girls knew not to cross their pretty tutor. Without Abla Samira they would have been lost in their new country, their new language.

The reluctant sun was setting later now that it was the end of February. Earlier that afternoon, Mama Lulwa had asked their tutor whether she might prefer to conduct her lesson outside in the courtyard. Abla Samira thought it would be fine, but when the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Map
• Family Trees
• Epigraph
• Contents
• I: Sara Lulwa Yasmine
• II: Sara Noura Maria
• III: Sara
• Author’s Note
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher