The Pickup

Chapter 37

I am going to America.

Told them, hadn’t he.

So it should not have amazed them that he now had the authority stamped in his passport and his wife’s. There were family embraces of congratulation implicitly apologizing for having doubted if not disbelieved him. Only Khadija referred to that — You were just boasting then, weren’t you. — He did not take the jibe kindly; Julie saw this in his face but did not understand what had been said.

Others in the family could not rejoice. Maryam cried: Julie would miss her wedding. He embraced his father; his mother. For forgiveness, for their blessing, once again. When he came home with his foreign wife his mother had allowed tears to mark the cast of face she had bequeathed to him, now she allowed no emotion to change the sculpture of years and the discipline of prayer. Or perhaps features and flesh could not express what she experienced in this departure; yet again. Only she, and her son, could know what that was. He said to her under the voices of others, I will send for you. To come; to visit us. It was as well, he knew, that she seemed not to hear.