Mother of All Pigs. Malu Halasa

wonder these bushes produced the thorns in Christ’s crown,” Hussein said, disgusted. He was prepared to give up the project altogether but Abu Za’atar urged him on. Through his infinite contacts, the old man learned of an olive grove in the occupied territories that was about to be destroyed to make way for a new settlement. He procured a truckload of olive wood and, at his own expense, arranged for it to be transported to the farm. Hussein protested about the political implications, but his uncle was unimpressed.

      “Surely Al Jid told you the story about the sacred olive,” his uncle explained. “Each leaf bears the words ‘Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim,’ ‘In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.’ If a tree does not pray five times a day, God forsakes it and its fate is to be cut down. Is it my fault the Israelis find every Palestinian olive grove impious?”

      Hussein let the gnarled branches weather outdoors to reduce the tannin in the bark and then carefully built a fire in his smokehouse. At last, he was rewarded. The meat, everyone agreed, gave off the aroma of bitter olive, a rich mellow flavor that became instantly popular with the customers. However, consignments of wood arrived too infrequently for smoking to be economically viable. Apart from one man who provided his own juniper twigs and berries—he had a cousin who sent them from Germany, which enabled Hussein to produce a perfectly acceptable Westphalian ham—he was forced to go back to boiling his commercial product. After much trial and error he hit upon the method of coating the cooked hams with honey, anise, and dried nana mint. The real breakthrough came when he made a thick coating of Mother Fadhma’s za’atar spice mixture and a very Arab ham was born.

      This required time and space and necessitated the construction of a processing house to keep the meat out of the sun and away from flies. Although Hussein scrupulously never tasted the meat himself, judging only from its density and feel, he was not as satisfied with the texture of the boiled hams as he had been with the smoked variety. So he was pleased that Abu Za’atar was able to arrange for most of the farm’s processed meat output to be exported. Hussein made a point of never asking its destination. If frozen boar sperm and olive wood were easily smuggled across the river, there was no reason a cargo of hams couldn’t go the other way. He just didn’t want to know.

      Anything that was not made into processed meat was taken to the sausage machine in the other part of the processing block. Even before the arrival of the machine, Abu Za’atar had insisted that any leftovers too unappetizing to sell be partially cooked, minced with stale bread, and stuffed into intestines. He reasoned that the sheer novelty would ensure sales, and he was right. It was a labor-intensive process by hand. Ahmad’s sons helped out, but it was still too much work. Hussein complained to Abu Za’atar, who responded by turning to his mysterious friend Hani, a former Palestinian fixer and purveyor of the improbable. He had managed to smuggle Umm al-Khanaazeer across four hostile borders, the first of his magic tricks. The second was the unexpected delivery to the farm of an ancient German Wurstmeister.

      The sausage machine was a thing of baroque beauty. Pipes, bowls, pistons, mixers, drums, shakers, grips, and pots exuded a futuristic, functional elegance. The power unit looked like it could drive an ocean liner, and when the machine was working it rattled alarmingly. But it performed its task with flawless efficiency. Brain and brawn, ears and jowls, lungs and trimmings, and Hussein’s failed hams were placed in a large hopper above the primary grinding assembly. Once ground, they were mixed in a moving bowl by a rotary knife blade and then transferred to the emulsifier, a large drum where bread, cooked grain, herbs, and spices could be added gradually from their own separate hoppers. When the mixture reached the required consistency, it was forced by a screw mechanism through a small opening into the casings. The skins were washed, scraped, and treated with hydrogen peroxide and vinegar in a different part of the machine. An automatic tying arm twisted the links into two sizes, breakfast or cocktail.

      The sausages were more popular than the hams. In fact the only by-product that met with outright consumer resistance was the blood pudding. It simply would not move until Ahmad came up with the novel idea of dyeing the casing turquoise, a color that traditionally warded off the evil eye. After that, it sold steadily. The processing building was a monument to Abu Za’atar’s cheerful dictum that there was a use for “every part of the little piggy.”

      Swept along by his uncle’s enthusiasm and seduced by the money he was making, Hussein focused on the positive benefits and suppressed his apprehensions. The morning’s incident outside the mosque caused all the old anxieties to resurface. He would have liked to think of it as an isolated occurrence, but it was clearly more serious than that.

       4

      Before crashing into the bedroom door, little Fuad grabs hold of the handle and pushes hard. The slow gliding motion is deeply satisfying; it is the toddler’s first triumph of an otherwise unexceptional morning. Tentatively he enters a silent room. Muna, in one of the single beds, gives the impression of being fast asleep.

      Tiny juddering steps take him to an opened suitcase in front of a table between the beds. For someone still honing his rudimentary motor skills, stepping over something no matter how sleight is akin to scaling a mountain. He crouches beside the suitcase, then without warning hurls himself into it face-first. He uses a tartan miniskirt to pull the rest of himself inside. Muna, amused, raises herself on her elbows and watches.

      Meddlesome fingers trawl buttons and zippers. Unable to find anything suitable to suck in his mouth, the child considers his options. Ignoring a natural inclination to pull a strand of Samira’s long dark hair escaping from a nearby pillow, he grabs a convenient table leg and pulls himself upright. He’s still not tall enough. An erratic sweep of a small hand brings that which glitters enticingly on the surface within reach. Plopping down, he prepares to taste each contact lens package and family snapshot, when he is inexplicably removed from his heart’s desire. The intrusion is so rude and unexpected that he falls backward into Muna’s arms and screams. The more she soothes him, the louder he becomes. Once he sees that Auntie Samira is awake, he insists on going to her, bawling and kicking. An indifferent shake of her head sparks another outburst.

      The aroma of coffee and cardamom signals his imminent rescue.

      Mother Fadhma had left Fuad for only a moment. As quickly as her ailing physical condition allows, she enters Samira’s room and places a steaming tray of Arabic coffee on the table. “Shame on these girls for treating you badly,” she scolds, and takes the little boy in her arms. Safe with his jadda, Fuad swallows deep, long gulps.

      “Mamma is his favorite,” Samira says, and yawns. “The rest of us are fed up with babies.”

      Sitting next to Muna on her bed, Fadhma retrieves a handkerchief from her apron pocket and wipes the tears from the child’s blotchy face.

      “I didn’t mean to…” Muna is embarrassed but her grandmother raises a hand.

      “Nobody can be held responsible for a tantrum.” As she rocks baby Fuad, she remembers Muna’s father, Abd. Her special affection for him began the instant she saw him, seconds after a difficult premature birth. Fadhma had been a teenager at the time—probably a decade younger than Muna now. She took the tiny dark baby from her fifteen-year-old sister, Najla, and fell in love. It was Fadhma who had given him his nickname. In any other mouth Abd, which means “servant” or “slave,” would have been derogatory, but in those few moments she could tell his future: he would be dedicated in the service of his family. Although she couldn’t foretell her own: after her sister’s death and Fadhma’s marriage to Al Jid, she would raise thirteen children.

      After the inappropriate playthings have been safely retrieved, the suitcase shut and Fuad prowling with a newfound swagger on all fours, Mother Fadhma takes the photos Muna brought from America and looks through them again. She’d glanced at them last night, but in the harsh morning light they tell a different story. The sons of her sister dominate the pictures as they do the family. There are no proper images of Mother Fadhma’s beloved daughters—Magda, Loulwa, and Hind—even though they too live in Cleveland. Sometimes the camera catches a shoulder, back, or side view showing more hair than face, as they cook and clean in the houses of their half brothers