The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi Page A

weakness I put all the responsibility on to you.
    I was sure that Isa would soften my mother’s heart in her anger, because before I admitted our relationship to her she never stopped saying she wanted to see me have children before she died. But that night, after we came out of the hospital and went to visit her with Isa, I felt she would rather have died
than see the child.
    She was so angry she had changed the locks on the doors so that I couldn’t come in if I ever thought of coming back. I wasn’t happy about the way she behaved and I know how much she loves me, but although I couldn’t open the door to the house, I thought I held another key with which I could open her heart, a key called Isa.
    I looked at my mother with a frown. She laughed.
    â€˜Very good, keep on reading,’ she said.
    The smell of incense was the first thing that hit me when the servant opened the door. Was my mother burning incense to celebrate my possible return, I wondered. I stepped inside, impatient to see my mother’s face after months apart. The servant followed me, asking, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ I didn’t reply. I asked for my mother. She pointed to the stairs and said, ‘She’s upstairs.’ All the lights in the house were on, something that only happened on special occasions. I headed for the stairs and had gone one step up when my mother appeared at the top, about to come down.
    I stood stock still on the first step. She hesitated at first. She was about to back away as soon as she saw me but she resisted the impulse. My mother wasn’t one to run away. She looked me in the face, eye to eye. At first she looked angry and severe, but with every step I took up the stairs she mellowed and softened. I kissed her hand and her forehead. I held out the baby boy for her in my arms. ‘Isa,’ I said.
    I gritted my teeth with irritation at the name Isa, without looking at my mother’s face this time.
    Did her eyes water at the sight of the baby? Did she have visions of my father when I said the name Isa to her?
    She took the baby into her arms and walked slowly downstairs,
while I stood on the top step, watching as she stared into the baby’s face and tried to hold back her tears. She sat down on a sofa at the bottom of the stairs and I watched them from the top. I could see them between the crystal pendants in the large chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling. Isa started crying in her arms. My mother held him close, then burst into tears as I had never seen her cry, except years ago when she heard that my father had died. My eyes filled with tears as I watched my mother and my son, in the house where I grew up, surrounded by lights and the smell of incense. The smell reminded me of the question in the back of my mind: why the incense? Had she had a premonition about this day in particular?
    I walked downstairs to where she was sitting on the sofa and knelt on the floor in front of her, with my hand pressing hard on her knee
.
Although my mother and the baby were both crying I heard the door bell ring. The servant arrived a few seconds later.
‘Madam, there are four women outside asking for you,’ she said. My mother pushed the baby towards me as if it were a bomb about to explode. ‘The suitor’s family! The suitor’s family!’ she said. She wiped away her tears, stood upright in front of the mirror to restore the hard look that the baby had softened. Without turning towards me she pointed to the back door that led to the garage. ‘Take your son and get out of here,’ she said. I was stunned by the change in her mood. ‘Mother!’ I shouted, over the sound of Isa crying. ‘Mother, please,’ I added. She stepped towards the back door and opened it. ‘Get out. Now,’ she said, emphasising the words. Then she pointed to the baby. ‘And mind you never bring that thing back here again,’ she said.
    I