Peacocks roamed the hills freely, like royalty. All they need do was look pretty to be admired, to be thought of, to inspire in others a desire for possession of an unattainable beauty. They couldn't fly though, at least not high enough to travel far. They could only swoop down from a tree, let's say, to join the others on the green by a lake. There, they would fan out their long iridescent tails to display several eye-spots used to ward off the winds of misfortune.
What Agnes didn't know was, divorce was as common as spring cleaning each year in within the society she'd found herself living. And unlike those feathered creatures that could be heard "Yeeowing" each morning, "pretty" made no promise. Sadly, it wasn't in her to understand that a woman's beauty didn't necessarily fade as the years passed, but instead, a woman's beauty slowly transformed over time like a majestic mountain, shaped by the sediment of the sky's tears, the sea's passion, a river's laughter and the earth's anger when it shook.
Perhaps she had forgotten to bring with her the ayn al-ḥasūd, or evil eye talisman, from Lebanon upon her journey to America as a young girl. Her Grandmother, Ramia, had given it to her when she had turned thirteen to ward off the envy of other girls and the jackal, should it turn up at the foot of her bead, unexpectedly. She had loved her grandmother who had died too soon. Possessing it may have also warded off misfortune and kept it at bay in her newly adopted country. Seemed though, she had left her past on those distant shores, as if her story were someone else's story, not her own. She never spoke about her childhood, not even with the American man she had married, a man who knew little about the language of the Arab heart.
When she found herself in divorce court at the ripe age of fifty, it was not her husband nor his lawyer whom she feared most, but the fact that she had not yet applied her rose lipstick. So, she politely excused herself from her female attorney Jennifer's presence in the courthouse hall before the hearing, and led her nineteen year old daughter into the lady's restroom. Once there, she searchingly stood at the mirror, touched her fingers to her short thick black hair and with great poise and a trace of sadness, she carefully twirled open her lipstick, leaned in and slowly applied a shade called Rose Madder to her full lips. This was all she wore throughout her life, just lipstick, no mascara, colorful shadow or kohl liner. It's all she needed. Her eldest daughter looked on in confusion. What did it matter? This lipstick at this time. After so many years, the man she married had not one shred of regard for the woman who bore him three daughters, yet here she was, carefully applying the deep rose hue, as if her beauty depended on it, as if it would make him reconsider, as if her beauty would spark a miraculous healing to his pruned heart and have him begging forgiveness. Truth be told, as a salesman, he had easily hid all his earnings and to the court, he claimed not a dime.
Any heart she hoped him to have had was apparently absent, at least to her daughter's understanding. Her daughter, Maysah, silently watched her mother and stood by her with concern for what was to come. It had been a strange day of stunning revelations. Once the hearing had begun earlier that morning, her husband, Henry, from Arkansas, had sat with a smug look upon his face, all coiled up next to his attorney and seemingly unaffected. Agnes had been seated on the other side of the courtroom with their eldest daughter and a look of resignation in her soft hazel eyes.
Her eyes welled up at thought of losing all she had come to know. She glanced at her daughter, guiltily. She had let her daughters down. She carefully placed her lipstick case back into her worn leather purse and straightened up for round two in the courtroom.
*
"Norak? Norak listen to me. I can't. Norak?" Agnes hung up the receiver.
"What's going on mom?" Her daughter Maysah asked from the kitchen table.
"It's Norak again." She said in exasperation.
"Just don't talk to her anymore, Mom." Maysah ripped into a left-over leg of roast chicken and dragged a torn piece of pita bread through the babaganoush. "Why does she always call you? What does she want?" She licked her fingers clean. It was noontime and she hadn't even eaten breakfast. Maysah liked to sleep in on Saturdays. She was famished.
"I don't know what to do." Her mother sighed. "Every time she calls me, she wants money. I don't have a penny to give anyone. Not a penny. I just don't. Everything is on its head habibi. Jesus – Mary – Joseph, have mercy." She sighed, as if it were all one word.
"Why doesn't she have any money?" Maysah couldn't understand why a woman living in their affluent community would want for money or anything, for that matter.
"Her husband left her sweetheart."
Maysah listened to the tone in her mother's voice. She knew it well. The sort of tone that implied a certain sinfulness in others who didn't have the Christian faith and were deemed lost sheep. The fact that her mother was now divorced meant nothing. Her mother dismissed the paperwork as an earthly matter, and clung to the idea that in God's eyes, she was still a married woman.
The woman returned things to the refrigerator, wiped plates and stacked them into the overhead cupboard. She turned off the coffee maker from earlier in the morning and put the pita bread into a plastic bag and into a bread box. Her eldest was a young lady now. It was all she could do to keep up with the strange ideas she would bring home like when she espoused feminist causes, for example. Who had put these ideas into her daughter's head? She wanted to know. No one! Her daughter would finally break her silence. No one puts things in my head, I have my own mind! This would be her response as her mother would stiffen up. You won't use that tone with me, she would remind her daughter of her station in life.
Outside, a brisk wind kicked up. Clouds covered the sun then drifted away. Maysah bit into her mother's purple pickled turnips or kabees el lift cut in the shape of half-moons. Her thoughts were elsewhere, always wandering off in other directions when her mother got nervous about things. She hadn't yet learned how to fuss and pick away at life with the sharp judgmental forked tongue her mother had.
"Is Uncle Nabil still coming?" Maysah asked, gulping down ayran. The cold yogurt drink soothed her.
"Next week. He promised to help us. Finish up sweetheart. We're leaving."
"Where are we going? I don't want to go anywhere."
Her mother didn't answer. She left the kitchen and went to the hall closet to gather up her coat. It was still cold outside, but not like winter. "Come on." She finally stood at the front door with a purse and keys. Maysah cleaned her plate up and reluctantly put her empty dish into the kitchen sink, ran hot water over a few dirty dishes and readied to leave. Her two sisters were busy playing dress-up and pretend, priming and preening to the latest fads in their bedroom mirrors. "Noor? Suzanne?" She called out to the back of the house. "Keep the front door locked. We'll be back."
"Where are you going? I want to come!" Noor yelled out.
But Maysah and her mother had already disappeared.
*
Maysah had never been to Norak's. She didn't know all her mother's friends, the few she had scattered around the hill, squirreled away in their own lives. The three story house was on the other side of the hill overlooking the Pacific. "Yeeeow, yeeeow." They could hear the cry of peacocks when they came to a stop sign near a wood chip path near a large golf course. The afternoon sunlight played with the silvery leaves of eucalyptus trees along the winding road ahead. There were horse stables and swaths of land between the estates they passed. The air was fresh after a hard rain all night, the sky awash in blue. Most times, when her mother would visit a friend, Maysah would sit by and listen with half an ear, because when older women got together in her presence, they seemed to speak in code.
Norak greeted the two and swept her hand out in invitation to come inside. She was much taller than Agnes, slender and several years younger. Her home was chic and elegant, with mainly white and gold décor. The living room had a white wall to wall shag rug, a long white leather sofa and above the sofa, filling the entire wall, was a black and white photo of a reclining youthful looking Norak, wearing a plaid bikini, the kind made popular in the sixties. She appeared to be much younger in the photo too, maybe twenty. Maysah found it odd, this obvious display of vanity. Had it been hung up to remind her now ex-husband, the beauty he had once married? Her husband had left her and taken along their only son. She had been left the house, but not much else. The woman had never worked a day in her life.
"Coffee?" Norak politely asked the two, with her large black smiling eyes.
"Please." Agnes responded. She took a seat at the kitchen table overlooking the yard below.
Maysah wandered around to the large glass coffee table in the living room, with its golden lion legs. At its center was a four pronged majmor offering the remnants of bakhoor incense, which might have been burned earlier that morning, leaving a faint trace of the seductive aroma clinging to the air and silken curtains. A silver tray of nuts and dates had been set out as well. Maysah was bored. She wanted to return home to join her sisters in their merrymaking. She went to the far corner of the living room and retreated into a cushiony armchair. Above her head was a large silver hamsa talisman with a blue evil eye at its center. This Hand of God above her head professed protection, promising only joy and happiness. It dominated the corner where Maysah now sat. She listened from afar as the women spoke, her mother with a raised eyebrow and expression of loss. This was a different side of her mother she rarely witnessed. At home, her mother was stoic, determined to hold on to a sinking ship at all cost, but when she went to visit her few lady friends, Maysah observed her mother to be in a more confused state of mind, as if the world were against her from all sides. She picked up a fashion magazine from the end table and listlessly flipped through the glossy pages of models in repose without a care in the world.
Norak placed a large copper rakwe on flame and brought the Arabic coffee to a full boil, then she let it sit a bit. Like sisters, who put their heads together when things in life appeared dismal, so too, did her mother and Norak put their heads together, as if trying to figure out what had gone wrong in their marriages. Norak had married a Syrian engineer, who decided to return to Aleppo with their only son. Norak was determined bring him back to the States, although she had no idea how she would. However, she did believe in karma. One could not chase worldly pleasures without meeting its underbelly.
Maysah heard her name mentioned, noticed the women's glances and listened as their voices rushed along in hushed murmurs, sometimes a bit of Arabic peppered their dialogue, as if to emphasize a point. Norak finally poured the coffee and approached her with a set of large golden hoop earrings swinging against her pale long neck. Her nails were perfectly polished and she wore a yellow paisley shirt and purple bell bottoms. She handed Maysah a small finjan filled with the sweetened thick dark Arabic coffee. Norak had placed a short square chocolate nougat on the saucer as an afterthought. Maysah loved nougat with pistachio, how did the woman know? The coffee's aroma filled the space between them and Maysah politely thanked her.
"Would you like me to read your cup after you finish Maysah?" She asked her.
"No." Maysah said softly. "It's ok."
"We don't do these things Norak." Her mother said matter-of-factly. "It's superstition."
"There's no harm habibti." Norak countered as she returned to sit with Agnes. "It's part of our culture."
"I'm American Norak." Agnes would find herself telling anyone who asked.
"You forget your Lebanon?" Norak said giddily, so as not to offend her friend. She had a way of stating something serious followed by a lighthearted chuckle.
Agnes shrugged. Too tired to argue a point and besides, whatever she was thinking, she never truly let on. It was not within her nature to hang her concerns out to dry for everyone to see.
Maysah sipped her coffee slowly and watched the women from afar. Ever since the trouble began at home, seemed her mother had become easily agitated and absent minded. Sometimes, in the market place, her mother would wander up and down aisles looking for nothing in particular. Sometimes she would find her mother staring into a row of cans, lost in thought, as if she had forgotten what she came for.
Agnes suddenly stood up from the table. "I don't feel well, my stomach." She started. She pressed her hand over her belly with a look of discomfort on her face.
"Use the restroom downstairs habibi, I'm having trouble with the upstairs bathroom."
Maysah's mother slowly descended the white carpeted spiral staircase and disappeared. Norak seized the moment. "Maysah dear, have you finished your coffee?"
The girl came to the kitchen table with the small empty cup and matching saucer in hand.
"Have you ever had tabsir?" Norak asked her.
Maysah shook her head no, looked at her quizzically.
Norak lowered her voice to a whisper. "Your cup reading dear, your fortune told. Come, sit down. Let me see. Such a pretty girl you are with those gray eyes of yours and this long auburn hair." She placed a hand on Maysah's shoulder.
Maysah pulled her burgundy colored sweater close, wrapped her arms around her tiny waist and sat in a chair closest to Norak, her curiosity peaked. After two years of college, she felt a million miles away from her mother and her so-called friends, but there was a small part within her that was drawn to the mystery of things. The woman separated the saucer and placed it face down on top of the cup. She held the coffee set tightly to seal it. Then she brought it to her chest, and Maysah watched as the woman made three horizontal circles clockwise to make sure the sediment spread inside, evenly. She then flipped the set over quick and placed it on the table in the space between them. She paused. Five minutes had to pass to allow the dark sediment to drain. Norak glanced at the staircase and Maysah did too. There was a language now between them, a secret.
Norak carefully lifted the cup away and peered inside. She paused. "Well, you have no past." She said quietly, so no one but the two could hear. "See how the bottom is empty? Most of the grain is near the top of the lip. The top portion would mean your future." She studied the designs and patterns in the middle. Suddenly, there was a noise from downstairs. Both froze for a moment, searched each other's eyes and waited. Maysah glanced over her shoulder half expecting her mother to be standing behind her. Nothing. After a moment, Norak's shining black eyes returned to the cup in her hand. "There is nothing near the handle, so you have no love life." Maysah blushed at this. It was true. She had no interest in boys. "See this shape? It looks like a mountain. This means you have a struggle ahead." Maysah leaned in and noted veins of grain. "Ah." Norak stopped and studied a particular shape intensely. "Look at this. Look!"
Maysah peered into the cup, but could not make heads or tails of it.
"See these two wing shapes above the mountain, as if flying just past it?"
"Yes." Maysah's curiosity was peaked.
"This is a bird in flight. A bird like an eagle. It means...." Norak stopped. She had heard a noise. They both turned their heads towards the staircase on the other side of the living room. Someone was coming up. Norak steadied her gaze into Maysah's curious eyes, as if she simply had to tell her. "It means good luck. You will soar higher than any of the other women in your family. You have quite a journey ahead my dear."
Just then Agnes appeared at the top stair. Her gaze was pinned on the two. Norak stood up and silently took the cups and saucers to the sink, as if nothing had transpired. She ran the warm water. Maysah glanced up at her mother, then out the kitchen window to the treetops just off the balcony.
*
"What were you two talking about?" Her mother asked, once they were in the car.
"Nothing." Maysah answered flatly.
"Nothing means something. Tell your mother."
Maysah didn't answer her. Instead, she rolled down her window, stretched her arm out and cupped the wind in her hand.