PRAISE FOR MALU HALASA
“Malu Halasa has a mind like an octopus. She reaches in all directions and in Mother of All Pigs, her first novel, she pulls together more characters and plotlines than most writers would dream of. You could say Mother of All Pigs is a novel about defiance, or innovation, or emigration, or family. You could say it’s about Christianity or Islam or the Syrian civil war. You could say it’s about feminism. You could say it’s about a pig. No matter what, you’d be right. It’s an ambitious novel, and a fun one. Halasa’s got a great sense of humor to go with her wide-ranging interests and expertise, and the combination makes Mother of All Pigs a delight to read.”
—Lily Meyer, Politics & Prose
“Mother of All Pigs is the book that western readers have been waiting for: a novel about ordinary people in the Middle East told with deep, sympathetic, understanding of the region. Halasa tells the stories of Middle Eastern women and men with rare familiarity. An enjoyable book about a fascinating set of characters, this is essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about the Middle East.”
—Maziar Bahari, author of And Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival (now the feature film Rosewater)
“Malu Halasa’s richly woven tale of family duty and private love, of loss and repossession, is quietly subversive. Lamentations follow the birth of girls, she tells us, and helps us to understand the psychological hardships of womanhood in modern Arab culture. Halasa’s novel reveals in moving and warmly human ways the effects of large events and complex histories on everyday life.”
—Darryl Pinckney, author of the novels, High Cotton and Black Deutschland, and two works of nonfiction, Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy and Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature
The Unnamed Press
P.O. Box 411272
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Published in North America by The Unnamed Press.
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Copyright © 2017 by Malu Halasa
By Agreement with Pontas Literary & Film Agency
ISBN: 978-1-944700-34-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952070
This book is distributed by Publishers Group West
Cover design & typeset by Jaya Nicely
Cover Artwork: Haphazard Synchronizations: Majd Masri, YAYA2016
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to [email protected].
For Andy
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Acknowledgments
Disappointment burns like desertification. It smells of old socks and leaches through the crevices and cracks of the new house. The odor, familiar and unchanging, greets Hussein every morning. Equally persistent is the dull heaviness in his brain, today the result of too much Johnnie Walker Red at last night’s welcome dinner for his American niece Muna. It is her first time in her father’s homeland, and Hussein thought he was lifting the mood of the family gathering when in fact he was just being selfish and getting drunk. As he slowly dresses, he hopes that the fog in his head will clear once he splashes water on his face. But after he turns the faucet in the bathroom sink, not even a trickle emerges. He suddenly recalls the empty and creaking tanks on the roof and the water truck three weeks late. Guided as much by the smell, he gropes for the tins his stepmother usually reserves for such occasions. After tap water runs low, Mother Fadhma fills containers at the town’s communal cistern. Her health is poor so she brings it home by taxi. Because he is too lazy to help, he never complains about the expense.
This water is leaden, elemental like the smell that finds him in bed. The same taste pervades the glass of tea waiting for him on the kitchen table. His greedy first sip both scalds and steadies him, but the taste, so raw, repels him. It’s like eating dirt. When he bends to kiss his stepmother good morning he nearly loses his balance. He coughs, sags down into a convenient seat, and dismisses the prepared food in front of him with a barely perceptible shake of his head. He clutches the hot glass of tea to his chest like a life preserver.
“Khubz?” The old woman offers a piece torn from a piping hot pita. Mother Fadhma has arranged his tea and breakfast dishes with care as if the world revolved around his every want and need. Wrapped in a new blue polyester robe—a gift from her granddaughter from America—she is prepared to wait on him, but he only shakes his head again, so she takes a bite of bread herself.
“Such a party last night.” The words come out long and heavy like a sigh, but the inflection rises. She is soliciting his opinion.
Hussein sits utterly still. He knows she would appreciate a conversation about the party, about Muna, about anything, but he needs to save the already depleted energy he has for the long day ahead.
When she receives absolutely no acknowledgment Mother Fadhma’s small eyes narrow. She wants to scold him for eating too little and drinking too much; however, her silence was secured long ago. Even when he makes a fool of himself, as he did last night, she forgives him. On the rare occasion that she does summon the courage to rebuke him, her admonitions are gentle and consoling.
Hussein is still considered the most handsome of his six brothers. He even managed to look good in the plain khaki uniform, identical to thousands of others, that he wore during his military service. Something about the worn red beret enhanced his boyish features. The combination of his lieutenant’s star and the discreet embroidered eagle of his elite brigade produced a subtle magic that more than one woman had found irresistible. Now, as he takes a grubby butcher’s overall from the rack behind the front door and leaves the house, it is clear that this once dashing effect has been lost entirely. The intervening years have engraved crow’s-feet across his formerly smooth and attractive features.
The cracked stone