Wasted Salt Read online

  Wasted Salt

  Sarah Houssayni

  Austin Macauley Publishers

  Wasted Salt

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Copyright Information ©

  Acknowledgment

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  About the Author

  Sarah Houssayni is a Lebanese American writer, pediatrician, and mom. She is a clinical associate professor at Kansas University. Her narratives have published in Family Medicine, Survive and Thrive, The Examined Life, Pulse Voices, and St. Cloud Repository. She is a Reader’s Digest Award winner for a personal essay; her novel Fireworks was a Chanticleer Book Award finalist. This is her second novel.

  Dedication

  This book is for Maysaa and Johanna.

  Copyright Information ©

  Sarah Houssayni (2020)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

  Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Ordering Information:

  Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Houssayni, Sarah

  Wasted Salt

  ISBN 9781643786544 (Paperback)

  ISBN 9781643786551 (Hardback)

  ISBN 9781645364733 (ePub e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019917070

  www.austinmacauley.com/us

  First Published (2020)

  Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

  40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

  New York, NY 10005

  USA

  [email protected]

  +1 (646) 5125767

  Acknowledgment

  Iain and Noah: you inspire me, encourage me, mend my heart, and make every breath worth taking and every battle worth peacefully winning. I am blown away by your intellect, humbled by your hard work, and endlessly entertained by your humor. I love you with everything I got.

  Nazih: my family since August of 1997. You got my back despite, against and regardless. I am so thankful and so blessed.

  My family of birth: Mama, Rami, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles. The distance cannot erase the memories. Thank you for claiming me.

  My family of choice: you make the home away from home just as sweet and just as warm. That includes you too, Wonder Twin, like you say “WE ARE KING!”

  My first readers: this story is because you asked for more.

  Charles: what a teacher, what a friend. Thank you for every email, every advice, and every encouragement.

  Meghan: your faith in me makes me try harder. Thank you for always reading what I write, thank you for being the kind, loving friend you are.

  Grayson: thank you for editing my manuscript.

  Juno: thank you for walking the walk and talking the talk. What an advocate!

  Ronia Stephen: thank you for donating your time to model for the cover picture, you are as beautiful inside as you are on the outside.

  Paula Moore: thank you for your great work with the cover photo.

  Residents, colleagues, staff, students, and patients at the Via Christi Family Medicine Residency: you make the grief of sickness bearable, the joy of health bigger, and work not feel like a chore.

  "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

  Falls drop by drop upon the heart

  Until, in our own despair, against our will,

  Comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

  - Aeschylus

  Foreword

  What you hold in your hand is a tribute. A tribute to the multiple powers of humanity. To the power of struggle to impact the course of life. To the power of friendship. To the power of resilience. To the power of transformation. To the power of changing places to find oneself. The power of home, in leaving it, and in loving it despite its imperfections, in finding it anew.

  Here is the continuing story of Zahra. A stone tumbled in the waters of past war Beirut, where mortar shells live inside of the hearts, minds, bodies of people, and govern their decisions in large and small ways. Her life ripples out into the life of others showing the interconnectedness of small daily decisions, failures, triumphs, and accomplishments. As you wade through the waters of her stagnant and well-circumscribed life in Lebanon, you learn bit-by-bit about what has driven her to US—to Wichita Kansas no less.

  Here you get to know Zahra, not as the young, sometimes petulant love-stricken teenager, resistant to norms and fascinated by her body’s capacity she was in Sarah Houssayni’s equally captivating Fireworks—but rather now as the determined, self-reliant, if ailing, adult she has become. What makes this story captivating and luscious though is the strong oceanic pull of the interwoven characters of Zahra’s life, who defy the usual simple categorization even if they are personifications of type. Each character has volume and edges; they are tangible and lasting. They are also diverse.

  We are brought into the world of Zahra’s relationship through her contact Nadim, a physician who has a brotherly love for Zahra, a long-standing patient-physician relationship that has become more of mentorship and sponsor as he has helped support Zahra to recover physically and emotionally from war injuries. We learn of her quiet and contented relationship with Nadim’s mother, Hajji, Zahra’s elderly charge for whom Zahra cares for with grace, and who fills the space emotionally and economically her family would not.

  And then there’s Mustafa, Zahra’s friend who, since childhood, has been determined to be a hairstylist, both typifying and exuberantly flushing out his identity as a flamboyant gay man living in Lebanon’s superficially sexually restrictive landscape. His life is in contrast to so many others who feel constrained and unable to live out their dream. But, inspired in some way by Mustafa, Zahra pursues her dream of bodily restoration and psychic expansion of place and belonging, and goes to the US.

  In a telling description of what it means to move and be moved by a new place, Zahra works to find ways to live and adjust in a new place where food, jobs, expectations, clothes, and even cleaning products are so different and often incomprehensible from what she is familiar with. But, as a keen observer of life, Zahra finds her path towards her goal of restoration despite, being largely tossed aside by family and would-be family in Lebanon.

  In the U.S., Zahra finds herself and strengt
h in an unconventional chosen family who accept and support her despite physical challenges, constraints, and cultural barriers. Her chosen family is a bit of a motley crew, that once again brings forth the power of unbridled living despite systematic life challenges, and includes a Noor, who exemplifies womanhood even as hers is challenged, and Iris a woman of faith whose own struggles bring her to a practical positivity that supports Zahra in finding her way.

  Here we see the power of humanity, of diversity of race, creed, color, language, and sexual orientation, and gender identity, to see the gritty, human, and often physically violent struggles people face to living as their authentic selves.

  For this reason, I believe I was asked to write this forward. What Sarah Houssayni has done here is demonstrate the importance of seeing people…all people…for who they are at heart. Even when people are complicated and living in complicated situations, all need love, support, and healing.

  As a physician and co-director of The PRIDE Study (pridestudy.org), a long-term study of sexual and gender minority people who include but is not limited to lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender (LGBTQ+) people, I know that the realities of people’s lives, as they are lived, are often invisible. But beyond that, often LGBTQ+ people face harsh discrimination, neglect, and acts of violence that threaten life, well-being and prevent the pursuit of dreams. Unfortunately because of this stigma and discrimination, LGBTQ+ people face numerous health challenges that are often magnified by trouble in seeking or obtaining appropriate health care. This is especially true for our most vulnerable folks and for people who have many overlapping identities: being immigrants or refugees, people of color, youth, and especially transgender people. Wasted Salt brings these struggles into high relief, amidst beautiful storytelling that draws you into people’s lives only to realize upon stepping back the devastating impact of living a life that may not be legible to others, but is nonetheless, valiant, beautiful, and powerful!

  Read on, enjoy, learn, dwell, and grow through reading the truth expressed in this novel. Then look to see how you can enhance what you do to make sure the beauty of ALL people’s lives can be lived OUT loud in your family, hometown, communities, religious center, or school. By buying this novel you are supporting these efforts by donating to The PRIDE Study—thank you! I vow to use any proceeds to promote health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people. You can learn more about our efforts and other ways to help at our website. But, I challenge you to do more. I urge you to look inside yourself and your life and commit to helping us all realize a world of healing and growth where all people have a chance to realize their dreams free from war, free from hatred, free from discrimination, and free from misunderstanding. The power of this book is in seeing how you can make this possible through greater understanding. You and your actions can help us all straddle the bridge between our current reality and this more beautiful future. So, join me, take whatever steps you can to bring that sometimes-elusive future into being. That oh-so-beautiful future where all can live in full expression of their dreams may be much closer than you think, if we all take actions in our lives to make sure that no one’s personhood or being-ness is considered “Wasted Salt.”

  Chapter One

  “I am going to the Jama’a hospital, just let me out here,” Zahra said.

  She shut the red cab door harder than she meant to. A hot breeze met her on the side of the street, and it felt cooler than the jammed car with broken window handles and no air conditioning; Beirut transportation at its best.

  Zahra looked for a good spot to cross the street. She needed to get to the other side to walk straight down to the hospital. She thought about the elderly woman with huge white bags in her lap. Zahra tried to give her room inside that cab. She stuck to the window and didn’t move to make space for the woman and her things. The woman seemed old and tired of carrying heavy bags in a busy city. She was in the cab when Zahra got in, next to another passenger, one who Zahra couldn’t see much of from the piled bags. When Zahra sat next to her, the woman smiled and moved the bags from the thick clear plastic covered seat to her lap, her hand was thin skin, brown spots, and bulging blue lines traveling to her crooked fingers.

  “Afwan,” Zahra said, excusing herself. There was not much space for her to sit.

  The woman smiled again under her mountain of things again when Zahra got out of the cab. Zahra nodded and made her exit quickly, unintentionally sending a loud, slamming door towards the old woman. She looked both ways before deciding to walk in the shade towards Wardiyeh Street.

  A loud honk startled Zahra a few steps later. She saw her red cab stop down the street. The car behind it was initiating the sequentially louder honks, now in rhythm with the driver’s arm waving out of the window. White bags arose from the back seat, held by a wiry arm.

  The blaring of one horn gave way to a chorus of protesting bleats and a street full of angry drivers. Traffic was stopped. Zahra looked away. She pushed herself between two cars parked close together and crossed to the other side of the street. She hurried down the intersection and then down another street.

  The faster she moved, the better the city digested the honks, until nothing was left of it but the usual rumbling of the monster’s belly: whiny beggars, congested engines, hurried pedestrians.

  Once she got to a shaded spot under a building, Zahra got her cell phone out to see if Nadim had texted her. He was probably busy, something came up—something always came up. He said he would come out of the clinic building and meet her at the doctor’s café. She despised that place the worst, always some doctor, some nurse, some hospital employee who remembered taking care of her. Zahra ran her hand over her black T-shirt and traced the bag against her flesh. It was empty; she hoped it would stay empty until she was back at home.

  Nadim was not in front of his clinic building. She considered waiting outside for him. The sun was thumping the sidewalk, making the bricks look bright and dry. The only shadow around was a tree, under which a woman was puffing her cigarette in long billowy swirls of white. She didn’t look hurried to be done. Zahra stood by the steps watching her finish her smoke and flick its dwarfed end groundward onto the yellowed brick rectangles. The woman walked away from the still burning stub as Zahra walked towards it, an understanding slight nod between them as they passed one another. Zahra pulled out her phone again as she stepped on the cigarette and smashed it flat. He still hadn’t texted her.

  “Ana natra,” she typed, nothing else, to tell him besides the obvious. She hated waiting.

  “Shoo kifik?” Nadim said. He appeared behind her with his usual smile. He always asked how she was before anything else.

  “Mniha,” she replied. She was good, but also hot and sweaty.

  He gestured to the doctor’s café like he always did, and she followed him, slowly and reluctantly. This would be her last time to come see Nadim and follow him anywhere.

  Nadim was a handsome and kind cardiologist. Patients, their families, and hospital employees flocked to him everywhere he went. Zahra watched him nod and wave with his tenacious smile. She looked away anytime some greeter’s gaze went to her after him.

  Many but not all hospital staff had seen her with him. It was what they didn’t say that sounded the worst; she was neither family nor a friend, more like an obvious charity case. He always introduced her as “My little Zahra,” even ten years after she was no longer sixteen. Zahra wished he didn’t say anything about her. People didn’t care to be introduced, and some of them had already met her making the prefatory show even more unnecessary.

  The hospital’s café was empty except for the volunteer lady in pink; “Mrs. Nabila” according to a silver nametag pinned a little sideways above her right breast. The occasional clanking of pans and muffled voices were audible from the little kitchen behind Mrs. Nabila’s black swivel chair. The lady in pink went back to her magazine after grinning her dentures at Nadim and Zahra, but mostly to Nadim. Nadim grabbed two juice bottles from the tall glass fridge and gest
ured Zahra to the back corner.

  “It’s hotter than hell today,” he commented.

  “What makes you think hell is hot?” she said. He smiled and she did too.

  Nadim was the one who always told her those same words. It was her turn to throw his sarcasm back to him. He told her what he never told anyone else, she was his “project human,” his Frankenstein.

  They met in 2006, when she was sixteen and he was thirty. She was critically injured by a bomb dropped from an Israeli helicopter, he was a volunteer physician helping at the hospital she was transported to. The medics assessed her injury to be “incompatible with life” but Nadim did not agree. He insisted that she be sent to the operating room and donated two units of his own blood to make up the ten units she needed to stay alive. She lived and became his “protégée.” He stayed around and became the unintentional object of her affection, attention, and thoughts. Over the ten years that she knew him, Nadim grew on her heart like vines on old brick buildings; impossible to remove.

  “Are you packed?”

  “Not much to put in a bag, I don’t think I will take much,” Zahra said.

  “Well, if you forget something, don’t be thinking I will be taking it to you! Wichita, Kansas, is farther than the moon,” Nadim teased. He giggled at his joke.

  Zahra nodded. She knew it was far. The few things she knew about Wichita: far, hot in the summer, and open for refugees like her. She planned on leaving her winter clothes behind. She needed to take as little as possible. Her mother would eventually give away the black sweaters, black pants, and black jacket, possibly to a woman in mourning over a dead family member.

  Zahra looked around the café, for nothing in particular. She wanted their farewell done already. There was no sense in dragging it. Nadim said he would visit her in Wichita, he said he would call and email. She didn’t want him to call and email her. She didn’t want him to visit and then leave her.