Loom: A Novel

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124 It was mea n, downright cruel of her, but Salma couldn’t help it. She had been doing pretty well up until then, keeping her mouth shut and going about her business despite the two blights that, today of all days, stranded as she was in the house, deeply affronted her sense of harmony and purpose: her daughter’s sloth and her mother-in-law’s sloppiness in the kitchen. In the living room, George surfed the channels with his remote, and she had silently fussed, the fussing a way to distract herself from thinking about the mess her mother-in-law was making in the kitchen. Crumbs and stains made her crazy. A sink full of dirty dishes was devastating . Never was she happier than on the eve of a major cleanup, thinking ahead to the lavender to be sprinkled on the linen, its perfume drifting to the dark corners where cobwebs had hung and been swiftly removed. George finally settled on a channel, and she stood up and headed back to the kitchen, bracing herself for what she might discover. Everything was clean when she made her entrance. Yet her delight was short-lived. Before she’d had a chance to scold herself for her hasty condemnation (all Emilie had wanted was to lend a hand), before she could enjoy the sight of a kitchen free from detritus, a kitchen orderly and disinfected from any traces of living matter, before she could let her eyes travel down the spread of spotless counters and sink and floor where, had the sun been shining today, it would have illuminated and enhanced the cleanliness and filled her heart with pleasure; before any of this could occur, there was her mother-in-law greedily licking her fingers, a big mound of kafta in the bowl in front of her speckled with parsley and mint and spices and onion, and Emilie sticking one finger then the other in her 125 mouth in an odious torrent of sucking and slurping. Salma waited expectantly . Surely Emilie will wash her hands? But the fingers plunged back into the meat and kneaded. Salma’s cheeks burned. “Shouldn’t you have washed your hands first?” she blurted. Emilie’s face switched from surprise to sadness, and finally to a resignation that made Salma lower her eyes. Yet, try as she might (and she did try to convince herself that the damage was reversible, that the heat would purify), she couldn’t chase away the image of her mother-in-law’s saliva penetrating the meat. (Although kafta hadn’t been on the menu, but Salma lets this slide.) Her old woman’s secretions, a faint whiff of urine and stale sweat always about her seeping through to everything she touched. Salma couldn’t help it. The threat of germs undercut her best intentions, made her ruthless. Emilie washed her hands and started making the patties. Salma inched closer and washed the bowl. Said things smelled divine. Lingered, busying herself, pretending to check on the leg of lamb. Emilie left the kitchen as soon as the patties were in the oven, and Salma returned to the living room. There, she inhaled deeply, as if the smoke from George’s cigarette would sweep her mind clear of her latest blunder, and turned her attention to him. Her husband, salt of the earth, who was bound, if she knew him at all, to do something to annoy and distract her from worrying about her mother-in-law. They were losing money and it will be hard to recover. This will make him ill-tempered for a while. He will ask for restitution, meals on time, coffee in his thermos. The TV spewed out the usual bad news. A girl abducted from her bedroom. A bomb exploding outside an abortion clinic. Love had once welled in her chest. What happens later? Is it exile that breaks up a marriage, drives a wedge between two people? Each of them too busy cobbling up a life from scratch to mind the other? He never told her his true thoughts about being here. This land has bounty, he liked to say. It was her only indication that he was grateful. She didn’t know if he was happy. He tried to keep up with the events back home. Every bit of news after their departure, the escalation of the war, the failing economy, the Israeli and Syrian occupations, proved he had been right to...