Chapter Seven
The Smell That Took Him Back to His Grandmother's Kitchen
Karim Nasser had not thought about his grandmother's kitchen in years. He had buried the memory the way a man buries anything that makes his work harder, deep and quiet, under the daily business of patrols and papers and orders. But the smell of the tomato had dug it up in a single breath, and now it stood in front of him, bright and whole, as if no time had passed at all. He could see the kitchen as clearly as he could see the pavement under his boots. It was a small kitchen, with a window that looked onto a courtyard, and a table that was always too small for the people who sat around it, and a stove that was always on, with a pot on it that was always full. His grandmother Amira stood at that stove in his memory, with her sleeves rolled up and her hands red from the tomatoes, and she sang under her breath while she worked, a song with no words that Karim had never learned and had never forgotten.
Amira Nasser had cooked for everyone. That was her rule, and she kept it all her life. If you came to her door, you ate. If you were hungry, you ate. If you were not hungry, you ate a little, to be polite, and then you ate a little more, because her cooking would not allow a guest to leave with an empty stomach. Karim remembered the tomato sauce most of all. She made it slowly, all afternoon, with tomatoes she had chosen herself at the market, tomatoes she had smelled one by one before she bought them, holding each one to her nose the way Karim had just held Mariam's tomato to his. Then she would cut it open on the wooden board, and the juice would run across the board, and the smell would fill the kitchen, and Karim would sit on a stool and watch and wait for the bread.
Omar was still reading the complaint. His voice went on, steady and official, about the shopfront and the pavement and the rules, but Karim heard it as if from a long way off, through the smell of sauce and bread and the sound of his grandmother singing. He looked at Mariam Haddad, and for the first time he saw her clearly, not as a problem to be moved but as a woman like his grandmother, a woman who had stood in a kitchen and fed people, a woman whose hands knew the weight of a good tomato. Her headscarf was dark, and her dress was long and plain, and her face was lined the way Amira's face had been lined, with lines that came from smiling and from squinting into the sun and from years of work that no one had ever thanked her for. She was seventy four years old. She had been selling on this corner for thirty years. Karim thought of all the mornings she must have risen before dawn, all the crates she must have carried, all the coins she must have counted. He thought of the tin cup she kept by her crates, and he thought of the way she held her bag of greens, and he felt something shift inside his chest, something heavy and certain settling into place.
Mariam was watching him. She had seen the change in his face when he smelled the tomato, and she had seen it again when he put the tomato down, and she understood more than he knew. Old women understand such things. They have seen young men stop in their tracks at the smell of bread, or the sound of a song, or the sight of a woman who reminds them of someone they have lost. Mariam did not smile at him. She did not speak to him. But she shifted her weight, just slightly, and she loosened her hold on her bag of greens, just a fraction, as if to say that she was not afraid of him, and that she would wait to see what kind of man he was. Karim met her eyes, and he held them for a moment, and then he looked away, because an officer on duty does not stand staring at an old woman in the middle of a street, and because he was afraid that if he kept looking he would say something he was not supposed to say.
Slowly, carefully, the way he had set the tomato back in the crate, Karim made a promise to himself, silent and firm. He would not let this morning end the way Omar expected it to end. He would find a way to help this woman keep her place on the pavement, to keep her crates and her tin cup and her living. He did not know the way yet. But he knew the reason, and the reason was enough to begin with. The reason was a kitchen, and a song, and a grandmother who had taught him that a good tomato has the sun in it, and that a person who feeds others is a person worth standing beside. Karim straightened his shoulders. He took a breath. He turned his face toward Omar, and toward Mariam, and toward the crowd that was beginning to gather, and he waited for the next word to be spoken, ready, at last, to speak a word of his own.