 This really doesn't need any introduction. The only thing that might happen is I might change glasses, you know, because I'm at that age. So this section is called Restless Heart. The beating of your heart kept me awake one night. For months after you died, I saw you everywhere. Heard you, your voice, sonorous, throaty, reverberating in my ear. I wasn't crazy. I knew you were dead. I buried you after all. I mean, I burned you, cremated you. But I kept seeing you doing dishes in the kitchen with your back to me. I'd call you as soon as you stacked each plate in our plastic dish rack. But you didn't look back, and then you were gone in a flash, and I was left with nothing, not even an after image. I didn't mistake you for anybody. I never saw you in a crowd, thinking someone else was you. No, it was never like that. I saw you in the hallway, in our hallway, under the Turkish lamp you brought back from Istanbul when you were there so long ago. Remember the trouble they gave you at customs for a $20 lamp? And when you emerged from the swinging doors, you were furious. I kept telling you to calm down, but you wouldn't. You went on and on because you were angry, and you were an American, and you could travel feathers at airports. While I was alive, I loved you while you were alive, and I loved you still, but I forgot for a while. Forgive me. I couldn't obsess about you all the time, so you disappeared as if I'd bleached my memory. But you came back, you know, like a fungal infection. Remember Thrush, the white stains that attacked your innocent tongue looked like snowy down in all strawberries? We couldn't get rid of it, and you hated it, and I hated it, and you wanted it over. When, to make you feel better, I joked that the furry fungus matched your white lab coat. You turned up apoplectic. Wanted to strangle me. I still regret that. I thought it was funny at the time. You've been gone for decades. You hid deep in my legs. Why now? Why, in fact, my dreams now? What flood is this? Once, as I was buying groceries in a store where a young third-worlder mopped the floor back and forth, back and forth, around a yellow sign that announced Iso-Mohado. The mephitic aroma of disinfectant assaulted my senses, and you jumped the levee of my memory. Proust had his madlan, but bleach was all ours, Doc, all ours. The tomatoes didn't look too good. And I just went home. I'd been a coward. I was scared. Do notice I said scared and not frightened. You taught me the difference. You said children get scared. Men might feel afraid, might even feel terror, but men don't get scared. I'd been so lonely since you died. You left me ruthless in a downpour. You gripped the bed rail when you took your final breath, and I had to pry open your fingers one by one to free you. It took 17 minutes because my hands were shaking so much. Even in depth, you were stronger than I. And more obstinate. The mortician told me it took forever to burn you. Thrice, he had to put you back in the incinerator. You refused to turn to Alash. You sincerely believed that the distance between you and me would one day disappear. You told me I was not my mother and you were not my father. But how could we not be? How could we not be? The stones over her cenotaph still felt so very happy. You held out your arms and said join me, but I couldn't. And you said let me love you and I couldn't because you wanted to be so close. You held out the fireman's net and said jump and I couldn't. I felt the fall was much too great. I chose to go back into the fire. You said I like it when you doze on my chest, but I said the hair on your chest irritates my cheeks and makes it difficult to sleep. I could hardly bear the beauty of you. You were gone for so long and I moved along and everyone told me I was alive. But that night in my bed, each time my ear touched a single pillow, I heard your heartbeat once more, once more, once more, once more. My heart is restless until it rests in the bed was uplifting. So that's one section, but I have to take a break for a second because I left my water bottle over there. So the next section is just a little bit longer. And I guess all you need to know is nothing really. The narrator is remembering growing up in Yemen and then moving to Cairo. High above in the great altitude of Densana, you could hardly breathe, but I found it more open than the open spaces of the rest of the country. A city boy I was, like most faggots before me. Even as a child, I knew I did not fit in Buchalic Yemen, its mountains or plains, its deserts or beaches. Sana'a, on the other hand, may have been charmingly beautiful with its historic houses, but it was a city, an unpretender, bitter and onerous. Oppressive. So of course, it felt more natural to me. It was old as well as ancient. The imamate had kept modernity at bay for generations. We did not stay long, but I believe I would have survived there, or could have. We arrived in a rickety van covered in dust and sand and soot, whose driver, a weather wrinkled young man sporting a proud mustache, died with henna, was forced to jam a screwdriver between the glass and its rubber molding to keep the window ajar. We disembarked in the city with few possessions, the clothes on our back, a most colorful satchel, and my mother's well-functioning vagina. That deserves at least a smile. A question here, a whisper there, a lowering of shy eyes, a gasp of surprise, one of delight, a nod in the general direction, a pointed finger, and within minutes of setting our tattered slippers on the city's soil, she was knocking on a pinkish-brown door. I remember every detail of that door. With rows of pomegranates carved into its hardwood, a central jam studded with tarnished bronze pins that needed a good rub with lemon and coarse sea salt to regain their luster, a knocker through which you could hang a dish towel. I remember every aspect of the house and its eccentric decor, the windows framed by white arches, the indoor fresh fountains, the cupolas above the corridors, all inlaid with small black stones held together with a cement made from white lime. I don't remember much about its inhabitants and number of Egyptians, army men, engineers, politicians, and advisors, evangelists in the recent beliefs, new converts to socialism, pan-Arabism, and buying sex on the cheap. Of course, what may have been a tiny amount of money to the men was abundance to my mother. She offered her charms earnestly and diligently, and luckily for us, another woman visiting the house took a quick fancy to her and to me. Auntie Badia did not much care for Sana'a or anything it had to offer. For a militant Kyreen, every other city paled and the Yemeni capital felt to her like nothing more than an oversized hamlet. She did not want to spend a single second more than she had to outside of her beloved Cairo. She had come to work with two other women and she intended to leave Sana'a the troops and the two women behind as soon as she made enough money. Three weeks after we arrived, three weeks after my mother had rediscovered her popularity, Auntie Badia offered her the opportunity of a lifetime. Come with me to Cairo. Work in our house, become acclaimed by real gentlemen for a change, and you don't have to veil your face in outdoors, and you can wear whatever you wish. It is most modern. In Cairo, God wipes the tears of his children's faces. We hardly had time to unpack the one colorful satchel before we were crossing the Red Sea in a rickety boat covered in dust and salt and engine soot. After the great modern city, we went to Auntie Badia's house. Faulkner once said that the best job ever offered to him was in a brothel, that it was the best milieu for an artist to work in. But Lair agreed, of course, and I learned about poetry in the whorehouse. My mother, with me in tow, was welcomed probably for the first time in her life. Being pretty, kind, generous, she was well liked by both the establishment and its customers. Being delusional, slightly unhinged, and indiscreet romantic, she fit in with the rest of my aunties. She finally found a home. If you ask me, these were the happiest days of my life, hard to believe I know. We lived in a house with other women who came in all colors and cultures, like the brothel's furniture, came in all shapes and sizes. My lovely aunties, short and tall aunties, white and black, voluptuous and boyish, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Uzbek, Indian, Yemeni. Most of them, my mother included, sat around in a daze around under the hanging lamps, spent half their time in hope and half in waiting. Waiting for something or someone to fly them out of their adopted life. For my mother, that someone was my father. Someday, her emir would come and he did it. Of course, and she forever forgave him, or I think she did. Auntie Badia, on the other hand, didn't wait for a miracle. She loved her life and she loved me. Older than my mother, though not by much, she took me under her wing, more precisely under her skirt. No, not sexual doc. I was much too young and she didn't have that much sex in any case. That's why she had time to look after me. She was dark, darker than me and overweight, which at one point was popular with clients, primarily Egyptians and other Arabs. But as Russians and Europeans began to frequent the house, she was less desired. She lay beyond their longings. Though she went through the prescribed notions every evening, it was merely gesture, a performance for performance's sake. The motions, including painting her face, while the men were already in the room. She was the only one who did that. About one hour after evening prayers, she descended the unbannistered stairs into the salon, spayed herself on a duchesse bise whose bright canary yellow clashed with every other single thing in the room, except for the caged canary that rarely sang if there were more than two people around. One's completely comfortable. Her heft proportionally distributed around the unusual chair's long, a Rubinesque or the Leesque. Antibadia languidly applied her makeup, none of which were store-bought. All natural. Organic even. Crushed fruits and berries were the lipstick. In a small wooden bowl, she mixed Galena and other powders for the cahal before her rat audience, outlined her eyes with a pencil-shaped stick of ivory. European men, Eastern and Western, weren't the only ones dazzled by the theatre. Americans soon joined them. And I, too, stood mouth-open, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, enraptured by beauty, and ignored by the men. I mentioned your countrymen, doc, not to make you feel terrible, but for whatever reason, they visited us in disproportionately large numbers and truly pleasing them became the main thrust of our establishment. They always overpaid, and because of their lumpen tastes, they weren't difficult to please. Your people and the Europeans loved watching Antibadia, were mightily entertained, made sure to arrive early whenever they were bringing in Yubi, so who would witness her great art. But when it came time to withdraw into the private rooms, they redirected their buzzard eyes. They chose to fuck my mother. They sure did. She was younger, prettier, drank Pepsi and 7-Up, blushed easily, covered her mouth when giggling, and had just the right touch of unthreatening exoticness, just the tad. Since my mother was busy most of the time, Antibadia took care of me. You would think at some point a younger model would have replaced her. Someone who would have been able to provide the house with a steadier and plumper income. But you'd be wrong. Irreplaceable she was. Antibadia spoke passable pimp in a few languages including English. Educyncratic she was. Those American men loved being around her, found her amusing, if not fuckable. An outstanding cook, whenever she approached a stove, God's stomach would begin to rumble. That was not all. She had a wonderful sense of humor, a likeness of heart, an infectious love of a good joke that I've never seen replicated anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Whenever she told a joke, mountains crane their necks and leaned in, not wishing to miss a punchline. When she laughed, men wanted to eat her up, but no one wanted to eat her pussy. You Americans are so fucked up. Docs so fucked up. You have no clue how cruel you are. Clueless cruelty. Soon after Antibadia finished painting her lady face, she joked with the customers, ruckus and railery and merriment in broken English. God the undecided into choosing the right girl for his next orgasm, and sit me on her lap. Well, on her thigh, since she was usually Oda Lee's king. Blow on my face, my sweet Europe. The powder has to dry. Sing for me, she'd say. Recite Abu Nuwa's. I love his poetry, but not as much as I love you. When the audience thinned out, she carried me to the kitchen, fed me, made me read aloud to her while I stuffed my mouth with her cooking. Poetry. Light, pure old rhymes at first. Quite more adult as I grew up, but always rhymes. Arabic poetry always rhymed. She put me on her bed, but along with before, my mother finished satisfying for the night. Aunt Ibadia usually woke to find me inventing the most elaborate games while sitting on the floor outside my mother's door. Serving tea to Sultan Ahmad, who entertained King George of Britannica. The latter so enthralled by my tea-serving prowess that he wished to seal me from my master while I demured and blushed and covered my mouth and giggled. After my fairly ritualized morning ablutions, I brushed my teeth, washed my face under my arms. I was forced to read and write in the kitchen while Aunt Ibadia sang and hovered around putts heating atop the wood stove like a mother hen with her chicks. Old Egyptian recipes she cooked flavored with old Egyptian folk songs. She even sang Yemeni folk songs that she learned during her short stay. Lovely songs, not like of Rahaza. Remember her? An Israeli singer who you used to like to dance to whom I couldn't stand and you insisted she was singing Yemeni songs that she heard while growing up in Tel Aviv? Because that's what the album cover said in clear lettering. Yet I hadn't heard any of those songs before and you accused me of being insensitive and racist even. And you made me listen to her over and over and over so I couldn't get the songs out of my head even though I hated them and I hated her. Until she died of AIDS too. Just like all of us. And she was just like us. And I felt so guilty for hating her and I forgave her sins that I couldn't forgive mine. Ofra's songs did not compare well with those of Aunt Ibadia couldn't measure up because Aunt's voice was gravely like sea pebbles on the beach. Ideal for those old melodies. Aunt Ibadia has sing-song melodies bore me across the grooves of childhood. I sat at the kitchen table with my book or papers waiting on the wall an old-fashioned ticking clock. The only visible one since the brothel had Vegas rules. No customer should be able to see the time. I stared at the black hands of the clock willing them to move to no avail. I would count to agonizing infinity and back and look up and barely a minute had passed. I remember that clock. Round the size of a salad dish. Arabic numbers on a subdued light gray an oyster colored background. I remember the pages in front of me writing the alphabet slowly. The aleph, the standing line trying to make it fit within the predetermined boundaries and glancing at the clock once more and again understanding that my mother had not woken up. My aunties would stare awake one by one come down from the late lunch come down for the late lunch and my mother would always be the last always the last. She would be happy to see me ruffle my most unruffable hair but she wasn't a day person and would take her a few hours to regain full cheerfulness. Her gelabia was puse. I still see it so clearly. Puse is the French word for flea the color of blood stains and was Marie Antoinette's favorite because if you squashed the flea on it you couldn't see the stain. But even though the whorehouse certainly had its share of fleas I doubt my mother ever considered the connection. She rarely considered much else than what was directly in front of her which was where I tried to be. I buzzed around her like a hummingbird around its zinnia. Look at me, look at me her head was usually down and her hair covered her face. She would grump, huh, uh-huh and yes to everything I said until she stabbed my heart with an enough now or can't you see I'm tired and I would slouch and begin my second phase of waiting waiting until she recovered and loom slowly she perked up and began to smile and as soon as she was able to pay me some mind the moazin's call would echo it for streets away time for evening prayers the only ones that the the only ones that the entire house observed the prayer rugs unrolled Aunt Ibadia on the most intricate and my favorite fine wool woven to depict a white mask its bloom in a red top by a delicate cold and crescent my mother's barely a step up from a straw mat the women all lined up facing toward Mecca their foreheads and noses pressed the rugs thrice while I remain still behind behind the murmuring hive so as to not distract their humming hearts promising devotion I waited impatiently for the ritual to finish hoping for a few seconds of attention since the end of prayer was the time to get ready for work and the cycle the eternal return the man returned my auntie screamed evening in full bloom Aunt Ibadia descended the stairs the laughter, the merriment my mother left with the man other couples spared up in rooms and Aunt Ibadia showered me with admiration what poem shall you recite for us this evening she would ask take care of your Aunt Ibadia who loves you most of all she loved me and she showed it I loved her right back but not enough because even then when the Austrian or Australian finished fucking my mother when the Englishman had left a deposit in one illicit container or another when the Russian returned to the lounge to wait for friends to settle up his bill or gather his wits then the American noticed me I was there with Aunt Ibadia such a cute boy the German, the Swede would say so adorable the man looked slightly less camped than when he walked in more sated he exuded confidence and I fucked your mother from every pore he smiled at me a smile stronger than destiny such a cute kid such a sweet boy I loved Aunt Ibadia I loved my mother but I worshipped the man I made him my religion thank you so much oh thank you what are you doing tonight?