The Hidden Light of Objects Read Online Free PDF Page A

morning, stirred awake by the rose glow of the sun peeking over the terrace wall.
    Mama Hayat told stories. She raised her boys under a steady drizzle of tales. A drizzle in the desert was a luxury the twins never took for granted. Mama Hayat’s tales were often amusing. In her kitchen, as she was busy concocting meals nobody else would think to put together, her stories would gush out forcefully, like black oil. In the middle of frying and grilling, boiling and baking, their mother’s narratives would rise and rise, so wildly hysterical they made the twins fall to the floor and roll around the courtyard, two rubber balls of uncontrolled laughter. But by late afternoon, especially right after siesta, Mama Hayat’s accounts would turn sad. She would speak in elusive fragments, puzzle pieces the boys would grab on to and try, over weeks, months, even years, to put together. Only rarely could they forge sense out of her afternoon words, a procession of slow, solemn beetles. She would say things like: “Ships arriving and sailing past. Yellow follows no logic. A mountain of courage. Lost compass. Two in a drum left behind. What becomes of after?” Her glazed eyes would gaze out at the tree, and the boys, squatting together at her feet, would stare at their mother, transfixed, baffled, echoing her words, hoping to lace logic into her peculiar utterances.
    It might have been these confusing afternoon sessions that created in the twins the odd habit of unconsciously echoing each other’s words. It could also have been the fact that all during her pregnancy Mama Hayat had softly repeated to herself, “One becomes two. Two makes one.” She would mutter this as her hands tapped a waltz across her tightening stomach drum, a distended dance floor for her fingers. Who knows what floating eggs hear or what effect the outside has on the in, but a mother’s whispers, her incessant tapping, probably shape in unforeseeable ways. For twins, already uncommon, bagged together as they are, closer than close but with different fingerprints, the likelihood of an unusual outcome is no doubt doubled. Whatever the reason, Mish‘al and Mishari made statements always together, never separately. When they spoke, they sounded as if they were sitting atop a great, craggy cliff in Wadi Ram. The volume of their voices would decrease as the repeated portion of their statement or question shortened. A conversation with their mother might have gone something like this, with one of them starting and the echo bouncing back and forth between them:
    “Mama, could we please have eggs for breakfast?”
    “eggs for breakfast?”
    “for breakfast?”
    “breakfast?”
    “fast?”
    “st?”
    “Not today boys,” Mama Hayat might have answered.
    “But Mama!” Mish‘al would begin.
    “Mama!”
    “ama!”
    “ma!”
    “a!”
    “Why not?” Mishari would complete.
    “not?”
    “ot?”
    “t?”
    “Because it’s blisteringly hot out. If you eat eggs on a day as hot as today, chickens will grow inside your bellies and, soon enough, you’ll be laying your very own eggs to eat. Two little egg boys you will become, round as cherries and unhappy as plums. Now, useful as two egg-laying sons would be to me, is that something you could live with for the rest of your long lives?”
    “No, Mama, not especially.”
    “ot especially.”
    “ecially.”
    “ally.”
    “y.”
    “No. I didn’t think so. For lunch you’ll be having chicken stuffed with fruitcake. For now, I’ll put extra sugar in your milk and tea.”
    Mama Hayat never seemed to notice her sons’ echoed speech. Maybe it was because they were born to her this way, their earliest gurgles and babbles already ricocheting between them. In a vacuum, oddities instantly lose their oddness, idiosyncrasies are registered as normal. Mish‘al and Mishari spoke as one and their mother heard them as one. “One becomes two. Two makes one.” She believed this, had perhaps even made it so, and she lived