The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi Page A

Kuwait. We haven’t had any news of him since the war.’
    The man looked calm again.
    â€˜Do you know what’s happened to him? Where is he now, sir?’
    He didn’t answer. He seemed uncertain and thoughtful. He pointed at a large stack of papers on the desk in front of him and said, ‘He’s here.’
    My mother’s eyes almost popped out of her head. She turned to me and whispered to me in Filipino so that the man wouldn’t understand, ‘Damn Pedro. The man seems to be crazy.’
    The man smiled. ‘I’m not mad,’ he said in Filipino.
    My mother blushed and the man continued in English. ‘I was in Kuwait during the war. We were part of a resistance group and Rashid was one of the members.’
    My mother stared at the man’s face as he went on: ‘You look surprised, but I’m even more surprised than you.’
    The man put his hand on the large stack of paper. ‘This is an account of our activities and the events that took place during the seven months of occupation. I started writing it more than five years ago, and the strange thing is . . .’
    The man hesitated before continuing.
    â€˜Yesterday evening . . .’
    My mother nodded, pressing him to go on.
    â€˜Only yesterday evening, Rashid’s role in it came to an end when he fell into the hands of the occupation forces.’
    When the man had finished, my mother didn’t say a word. She was silent in the truck too and at home. After meeting the Kuwaiti man all my mother had come up with was the news that my father had been captured, and an envelope full of money that the man had given her before we left his house. My mother hadn’t told him that she was Rashid’s wife, or that I was his only son.
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    15
    After the Kuwaiti man told us that my father had been captured in the war, Kuwait no longer meant anything to me. I automatically stopped thinking about going back to my father’s country. But my mother on the other hand continued to bring it up from time to time. ‘The promise will be fulfilled,’ she would say.
    â€˜And what if Rashid is . . .’ Aunt Aida started to ask her, but then she stopped and left the rest of the question hanging. Both of them knocked on the wooden part of the sofa.
    â€˜Even if Rashid is dead, his promise won’t die,’ my mother said.
    I felt sorry for my mother. What kind of faith could she have that didn’t waver through all those years? She was still building hopes on a man who went missing in war ages ago. I had lost interest and no longer had hopes of going to Wonderland, despite my mother’s faith.
    What if the promise was fulfilled
, I wondered. What if the man called Rashid did reappear? Could I really be replanted, like a bamboo stalk?
    *   *   *
    In 1997, my mother began looking for work and the first person she thought she could ask for help was Ismail, the Kuwaiti man.But by that time he had wrapped up all his business in the Philippines and gone back to Kuwait.
    After some effort my mother did manage to find a job as a servant to a rich family that lived in Forbes Park in Makati. She spent the whole day working in their house, came back at the end of the day, had dinner with us and then went off to her own house with Adrian.
    I felt my mother gradually growing apart from me. She was away at work and busy with Adrian and his special needs. She was often in a bad mood and always absent-minded, and I no longer saw her smile. She had changed a lot but I understood the reasons for all that and I didn’t hold it against her.
    While my mother grew distant, my relationship with Aida and Merla grew stronger. I was close to both of them, despite the distance between them. I never heard Merla calling Aida ‘Mama’. Instead she called her by her name: Aida. She went out without asking permission and came back late at night. She went on trips to places far out of Manila and Aunt Aida