My Nieces and I: A Third-Person Narrative of Nine Years

'
'

'
'

When she first comes over for college, she is perceived by them to be penniless, though she is not. They cannot imagine how a 17-year-old can afford to live, sleep, dine, and buy plane tickets to take her across the ocean and back once every year...and all on minimum wage. So there are no requests back then, though she of course always asks. She enjoys, when serendipity allows, the occasional unplanned purchase of that one thing that catches her eye, that thing she recognizes instantly as being perfect for so-and-so. But she is (or tries to be), at heart, a pragmatist. So she asks.

Her question appeals to their reason; "I'm going to get you something anyway, so wouldn't you rather it be something you want?" They give the standard, polite reply; "Just come. We want you. We need nothing else." That does not pacify her, for she is determined. But they are youthful, and are more stubborn than she has learnt to be patient...for she too, back then, was youthful, or thought herself to be. So although she asks, and asks again, she is told and told again to just come, that her presence is gift enough, that she, somehow, is sufficient.

But she is not grown so much older that she has forgotten the single-minded materialism of youth, and knows that there are consumerist desires to be discovered within them, bubbling just underneath the surface. She knows what it is to be feverish for objects, things that have the potential to elevate you amongst friends and competitors, both groups more often than not occupying the same camp. She knows what it is to find distraction in these objects, to travel to faraway places, to leave the here and now through the benefit of a book, a video game, a doll. And so she asks.

But they have been convinced, or shamed into believing, that to ask is improper, and so they tell her that she is all they could ever want. She is pleased at the sentiment, and half-believes it, but shops anyway.

She has been unsuccessful in getting any input from them, and so is forced to guess. She comes to them bearing gifts, her best guesses, some educated and some not so much educated. For the one showing an artistic inclination, a set of coloring pencils that cannot be bought in Egypt, at least on a six-year-old's budget. For the one who has yet to discover her talents, a storybook, this being thought by Mariam to be a lowest-common-denominator type of purchase. Clothes, for both of them, for they like clothes. Not too many non-educational toys, for she is far more like her mother than she can readily admit to at this age. She is right about some things, wrong about others. The colored pencils are a hit. The assumption that reading can be enjoyed by all, not so much.

They are thrilled to see her, their joy real, not solely occasioned by the necessary show of affection between family. She is their favorite aunt, for reasons she cannot qualify, but that she accepts without too much argument. She, the only gift they asked for, is irritable over the next few days, and not such great company. She is jet-lagged, she tells herself. But the truth is that she is now unused to this place, her home. She sleeps in the mornings and stays awake at nights, and continues to do so for a few days. But the nights begin to be oppressive to her, with their lack of company and lack of things to do, and overabundance of time in which to think. So she begins to sleep at night and stay awake in the mornings, like the majority of her countrypeople. Her mood improves, or at least she becomes better able to control the snappiness that is second nature to her in this place, her home.

This episode of irritableness over, she is their favorite aunt again, and she notices with pleasure that they do not ask her for what she has b(r)ought. Her suitcase, sitting still packed in the corner, is never an object of their attention, surreptitious or otherwise. And she believes them, that they are happy to have her. She is pleased that they are polite children, that they have heeded society and silenced the internal greed that is natural to all of their kind. She calls them around, opens the suitcase, distributes her triumphs and her failures. For the gifts that do not seem to please (though the children try, they are not yet good actors), she will pay a slow penance during her few days with them. She will notice herself buying local trinkets to make up for the failings of the foreign, spending slightly more time than she is generally inclined playing cards, being gentler with her admonitions when they are occasioned. She will hug them more, and kiss them more, and show them that despite her error, despite not knowing them well enough to have gifted with flying colors, they are loved. She knows, somehow, that she would not feel herself to have transgressed at all if they knew more of her than those few weeks. But her plane ticket back is already booked, and in spite of herself, she is counting.

The years pass, and they grow out of one type of youth into another. They are no longer children, but adolescents. They have musical tastes that are all their own, and one of them uses more American slang that she should know. They are more emotive than ever, in a way that is undiscerning, and as a consequence, dilute. Their "I Love You's", if Facebook updates are to be taken as evidence, are indiscriminate. But she knows that she is still their favorite aunt, if only because her mother had only had so many daughters, and because people do not change.
'
She hasn't been home in two years by now. She is no longer in college, but works in a place called Corporate America, where the vacation time is strictly allotted, and does not make undue allowances for people who are oceans apart. She asks them what they want, and nine years later there is still that polite front, un-eroded by the passage of time. "Just come. We want you. We need nothing else."

But later, there is an email. They email regularly, something she hadn't done at their age, for she was born in 1984.

There is a short list of things to get, and the subject line of the email reads, "stuff we need". It is not a long list, nor a difficult list to procure, nor an expensive list, and so she does not immediately understand her dismay. But the list is jolting, saddening, and suddenly awakens her to the years and their passage.

Her sister, who had once been concerned with exfoliating creams, hair products, and other things related to the preservation and enhancement of beauty, has ordered a bottle of vitamins. One-a-Day, Women's. And this makes sense, because they have all grown older, even if Mariam had, an ocean of both water and denial away, chosen to forget that fact.

Her nieces order too much Americana to make her feel comfortable. How does a ten-year-old child, across an ocean, know what a burrito with beans is, and that it can be bought in Chapotle (sic)? The same niece who has requested this wants a shirt, her one provision in that regard being that it not conform to her mother's tastes. A Facebook update, later, listing things she would like to try: "Burrito, Fruit snack, Pop Tart, Corn Dog, Strawberries whipped with cream, Cheese with Ranch Dressing, Apple Crisps". She wonders if it is her niece's intention that she stumble upon this update, whether this is a masked, diplomatic way of asking for more America.

She fears that there is more that they want that is not included in this short list. The one with a taste for what she imagines a burrito might taste like does not listen to Arabic music. She had confessed this in an online conversation a few weeks before, and listed all of the bands that she liked to listen to sing in a foreign, less familiar tongue. She did this without hesitation, and Mariam reminded herself that her own sadness was an overreaction, that she too had once felt this way. "That will change," Mariam had typed to her niece. "You will understand when you are older". Her niece, Mariam thinks, had not believed her, and for that Mariam had blamed the myopia of youth, and ended the conversation hoping that she was not self-indulgent in her assignment of blame.

That short list, again - she fears that there is more on it than they have included, desires and wants written in the invisible ink of cultural, religious, and social uniformity. She worries about this, both for what it is, and for the hypocrite her fears are showing her to be. The next time they speak on the phone, she knows that she will find it difficult not to echo her mother, from years ago, when Mariam herself was drifting into mental landscapes unknown. "Remember: We are Arab. We are Muslim."

'

'