They hang from my doorknobs, from the corners of my chairs and sometimes from between my fingers as I walk; prayer beads. tasbih beads. My prayer beads act like braille inviting the divine's mysterious presence into my life. There are thirty-three beads in all. I find their cylindrical shape a soothing comfort when rolled back and forth between my fingers; the weightiness a reminder that we are both earthen and ethereal.
My Turkish girlfriend, Hoda once gave me a set of prayer beads as a gift. Her father had given them to her in good faith to pray for her ailing mother, while upon her last visit to Izmir. She hated her mother with a passion. Her father, on the other hand, gave her everything. She didn't want anything from either one.
"He shouldn't love me so much." Hoda says this in a flat tone as she sweeps her kitchen floor around my foot. I pick at the raw salted green almonds. She serves me hot tea with mint leaves and sugar.
I'm envious. "You're lucky to have a father like that."
"I don't want to be my dad's little girl and he won't see it any other way." She says. "He has no interest in who I am now." Hoda goes and returns smoking a cigarette.
"He loves you Hoda that should count for something." I say.
"Ah, love." She retreats behind her smoke, her eyes on the space between us.
"And when I got home." She continues, "It was 'Hoda do this, Hoda do that.' My mom pushing me around like I was a servant. Her friends looking at me with their cow eyes asking, why isn't your daughter married Sophie? What happened to Walid?"
I listen. I don't know what to say to her anger, her fierce desire for independence. Men come and go in her life as quickly as a change of clothes. She begins to tell me of her most recent man. A computer guy, too innocent for her sharp talons. She's had some fun and now is preparing to dismiss him.
"The guy loves you Hoda, why do this to him?" I ask.
She shakes me off, snuffs out here cigarette, gets up to scrub her pots, pans, her back to me now. I watch as she scrubs with extra vigor, her knot of hair at the top of her head bobbing from side to side.
"So?" she shrugs, "It's his fault if he loves me."
I try to make sense. "Why not keep him around for a while?"
"He's not my type." She snaps her latex gloves off.
"Why see him at all? You're wasting time."
"To find out if he is my type." She says.
"How did you meet this guy anyway?" I begin to wonder if she has a heart at all.
She dries a few pots and places put them away. "In the personals. You should try it."
"No thanks." I say.
She laughs at me for being such a prude. For lacking the sense of adventure she clearly possesses. Outside, the trees rustle, their branches giving way to a sudden gust of wind. Spring is around the corner.
"With my luck," I say "I'd meet an X-con."
"Please. They're just regular guys."
"I think you need to give yourself a second chance Hoda. Find someone you really like. Marry him. You're thirty-three now."
"No." she says this firmly, as if she has practiced the word "no" all her life.
Fifteen years earlier, to escape the marriage proposal from her third cousin Walid, she had eloped with an American GI stationed in Turkey, much to her mother's horror. Her mother never forgave her for this. "You're not our daughter! You stupid girl!" Her mother screamed at her. Mother and daughter threw words at each other like stones. And the stones piled up, until neither would be speaking to the other. Once she left Izmir for America at eighteen, she found herself broke, disillusioned and desperate, in the middle of Kentucky, married to a man she could never love. She told me how she would go into the streets only to return home full of tears. The street signs, it seemed, gave her no direction. After five lonely years, she left for California and crammed her whole life into a second floor single with a roll out bed.
Her father would phone her, his voice sounding as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. He would make every attempt to bring his daughter back home. Even offered to buy her a house by the sea, if she would only marry her cousin Walid and give up this idea that she was ever married to that "American bum," as he put it. As if the marriage didn't count. She didn't have ears for her father, or her mother. And when Rima, her eldest sister called, Hoda made it a point to boast about her new summer wardrobe, which included a black string bikini that allowed her to soak nearly naked in the sun, and about the freedom she had to speak her mind without reproach. Her sister pointed out it was better to have a husband and children then act like an Infidel.
One late afternoon, I came to visit and found ourselves reclining in her large comfortable olive green sofa, after a good meal of fried potatoes, roasted chicken, and cucumber yogurt salad. She suddenly stood up. "Let's go to the market. I'm out of cigarettes." The sun was waning. We left her apartment and went for a walk down the block to the Indian market.
"Evening, ladies." A little silver bell announced our arrival, as we entered. Dry- goods crammed every space available. There was no one but us two woman and Saleem, who moved his head from side to side from behind the counter. His eyes were unusually red.
Hoda looked past him to the cigarette rack and liquor selection. I shuffled down the narrow isles reading the labels as I went; lime chutney, mango chutney, Brinjal pickle, Tendi pickle, and Bengali chutney. The floor was yellow, the lights above were yellow. In fact, the whole place looked to be stained by turmeric powder. The variety of curried goods confused me, and I found myself back at the front, Saleem eyed me with restraint. The last time we had come to his market, his sari - wrapped wife sat in the corner behind him. He was not smiling nor greeting us then.
I touched one of the several orange mangos set in a small white box on the counter top. Fifty cents each, the sign read. A bargain, I thought. I broke the stem off and placed the mango to my nose. A sweet exotic perfume filled my nostrils. This indicated its ripeness. I placed it back, my fingers traveling from one to the other.
"Mango for you, lady?" Saleem's dark hand lightly brushed up against mine as he held out a larger one for me to consider. Instead, I pointed down to the Samosas in the case below. They looked like deep fried paper boats. I pretended not to notice the lazy horsefly caught behind the glass as Hoda pulled out her cash for a box of Camels, a bottle of Cuervo Gold and a bottle of Merlot.
"How much for those Samosas?" I asked.
"Two for three dollars madam. My wife made them." He said this proudly.
I stared at the two golden lumps. "They look good." I lied.
"The best." He smiled, moving his head side to side. Then he asked, "You have husband?"
I shook my head no, and smiled politely. Hoda was becoming aggravated with my little tete a tete with Mr. Headwrap, as she referred to them all. She had her cigarettes, her liquor. She was good to go. I slowly followed her out into the late afternoon, where the leaves of trees were now orange hued by the sun's laziness. Just as the market's door was about to close, he yelled something out to me. "I have brother looking for good wife. Beautiful lady like you should be married."
"Well then," my friend popped her head back into the store, "your brother should go back to India and find himself a nice fourteen year old bride, don't you think?"
*
Once home, Hoda lit up a cigarette, then offered me a glass of wine, while balancing the cigarette between her lips. She poured us each a glass, her left eye squinting. I took a sip and swirled the red wine over and under my tongue. She went to her stereo and tuned into some Euro-trance music. I wanted to point out her rudeness to Saleem, but I didn't want to get into the whole Hindu - Muslim thing.
"You know, "she confessed, while sinking into her overstuffed leopard print armchair, "I haven't cried in ten years." She let go a stream of smoke. Her lips were dry, her eyes set in a glazed stare. Her darkly kohled eyes were transfixed.
I leisurely sipped my wine. "How is that possible, Hoda. Everyone cries." I reasoned.
"I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't cry." She looked to me as if I had some remedy for this.
I looked away. "What about when you left your husband?" I asked.
"I cried for myself and I haven't cried since." She said.
I tried to imagine the inability to cry. I couldn't. "Everyone cries, Hoda." I reached out and held the delicate green silk curtains between my fingers. "Why can't you cry, Hoda?" The sun's last rays burned against the apartment windows across the way, the light gradually deepening into a rose colored hue.
"Ever kiss a woman?" She asked me with a sly look in her eyes.
I picked at a thread in the armrest. "You didn't answer my question." I said without looking her way. I felt her eyes on me.
"I told you, I don't know." This time, our eyes locked. "Ever kiss a woman?" she asked me again.
"Have you?" I responded. Her eyes went to my lips then back up to my eyes as if she wanted to walk around inside my head. We looked at each other in search for some elusive truth.
"Come on. You haven't? " She didn't believe me.
I placed my wineglass down. I stretched out my entire body and folded my hands over my belly. "No, I've never kissed a women Hoda, how 'bout you?"
I could feel the excitement in her voice as she answered, "yes." The word 'yes' hung between us like a smoke ring.
"Anything serious?" I asked. Downstairs, I could hear children race past the building, a bicycle bell announcing their passing.
"No. Nothing serious. I was drunk."
Somehow, I didn't believe her. I'd never known her to speak without something hiding behind her words. "Well then, why mention it to me?" I responded sharply. The soft look in her eyes immediately hardened.
"Oh, never mind." She rose stiffly and went to light a candle. She carefully placed the candle between us. She reached under the coffee table and slowly pulled a large wooden box out. It appeared to be from somewhere else, like Morocco. "Let's play a game." I could smell the Sandalwood oil on her skin as she knelt down beside me, near my feet.
"What's in the box?" I asked, leaning forward.
"These are special cards." She said, as she opened the box carefully. "First you have to place all the cards face down like this." She created a neat row. "You aren't supposed to look. Then you put one hand over the top, like this." Her hand hovered over the cards without touching them. "You think of a question. Not a 'yes' or 'no' question, but one that will give you an explanation. The card will answer you with an image. You're supposed to figure out some sort of personal meaning from the image."
I tried to imagine the power of one's energy flowing from thought, to hand, to card. The idea excited me.
"You go first. I'll watch." I said and I sat back. She closed her eyes as if in meditation. I was mysteriously drawn into the sandalwood fragrance she wore.
With her eyes closed, she asked the cards a question. "Why is it so hard for me to love a man?" Then she opened her eyes and pulled out a card from the deck and flipped it over.
On the card was an illustration of a woman standing at the very edge of a stream. One foot outstretched, her big toe touching the waters' edge.
"I think," Hoda cradled her face into the palm of her hand, "it means I should be careful and test the waters before jumping in." We both studied the card. There was a long silence.
"Or perhaps," I finally suggested, "it's telling you, that you're too afraid to completely immerse yourself when it comes to love?"
"Why would you say a thing like that?"
"You have no empathy Hoda."
"I haven't?"
"You have?"
"I have."
"Then why can't you cry?"
She did not have an answer for this.
*
I cup the prayer red beads in my hand and wonder, after a year had passed, why we haven't spoken. Why it doesn't bother me that we haven't spoken. And then again, why it does. The last time I'd seen her, she had called me to bring her home from airport. Her mother had taken ill and she had gone to pay her last respects toward the woman she despised. While she was there, her father had given her a set of prayer beads. Pray to Allah for her life, he had begged her, hoping his daughter would stay home and change her ways. Once back on American soil, she did not waste any time in ridding herself of the prayer beads. We were parked in front of her apartment building when she reached into her purse.
"Here, I brought you something." She held them out for me. "I have no use for them."
"Where did you get these?" I held the beautiful red tasbih beads up to the streetlamp. They sparkled.
"My dad wants me to pray."
"They're yours, Hoda. I can't take them. They're yours."
"I don't pray and I know you do...so ...here...for you."
I hesitated then took the beads from her outstretched hand. She gathered herself up and stepped out of the car. I left her standing in the clear night, her small darkly clad figure under the yellow street lamp. I waved goodnight to my friend, as I drove down the street. I watched her slowly disappear in my rear view mirror. As I came to a stop at the end of her block, I could feel my cheek burn, where she had placed a warm kiss.
I never heard from her again. No explanation. A year passed and it was only through a mutual Israeli friend that I learned the truth about Hoda's mother. The old woman had finally died half way 'cross the world. I wondered if ever, Hoda had found her tears.