SAFIYA CHERFI
The Box
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to know what was in the box that sits on my grandmother’s chest of drawers. I know every grain of the deep stained wood and the earthy smell it exudes. It’s no bigger than a shoebox with a single brass knob on the edge of the lid. There’s no lock on it, not even a latch. All these years, I could have opened it and soothed my burning curiosity. But I wanted her to tell me, to show me herself.
I’m sitting next to my father on a plane to Algeria, my mother and sister on the aisle across from us. He’s barely said a word the past two days, since we found out jidda died. I booked the first available flight, grateful that it’s nowhere near Ramadan or Eid or we’d never get a flight. They’re waiting for us to have the funeral; we’ll arrive in the morning and bury jidda in the afternoon.
The first time I noticed the box, I was six years old. It was only our second visit to Algeria as a family since Baba had left in his twenties. I was sleeping in my grandmother’s room with her, my sister still a nocturnal newborn with my parents in theirs.
I saw the box and felt there must be something important inside. I looked at jidda, still a stranger to me then, but couldn’t bring myself to ask.
‘What is it, omri? Don’t be shy.’
‘What’s in that box, jidda?’ I pointed to it.
‘Walou.’ Nothing. I wasn’t convinced. I asked the same thing every summer after that and she always said nothing. But each year, a gleam in her eye shone brighter, encouraging my curiosity.
The summers of my childhood spent in Algeria all blur into one; the same excitement and contentment. Bonding with cousins, doted on by aunts and uncles. And my grandmother. The only one I felt like I never knew completely. She seemed to keep my sister and I at a distance, or she didn’t quite know how to be with us. Her other grandchildren saw her most days. She made them meals, wiped their tears and their bums, she cleaned grazes and punished bad behaviour.
I wanted to close the distance or rather, I wanted for it never to be there in the first place. My fascination with the box, my secret belief that it held answers about jidda that would finally make me feel close to her, seemed to be my best chance. So I clung to it. I’d go to jidda’s room each morning of our visits. I’d knock on the door and wait as she got dressed to tell me I could enter. I’d look at the box, sometimes run a hand over the lid and then go with her to the kitchen. I’d wait until the last morning to ask my question, thinking our departure would make her tell me. But still she said walou.
When I reached adolescence, her answers started to change. She didn’t show me what was inside but told me about the box itself. She said her father had made the box.
‘Back when they made things to last, to be mended not replaced,’ she said.
She told me it was passed to her brother when her father died. When her brother died, she told me she fought her nephew for the box. I didn’t know if she meant they argued with words or fought with their hands and I was too stunned to ask. Could she fight with her hands? The wiry hands that knitted us scarves and gilets, sent each winter, only to be piled up in the back of a cupboard. The hands that sometimes used to give a slap to my cousins but never laid a finger on us – me and my sister. It was a strange kind of jealousy seeing a faint red mark on my cousin’s arm that jidda had put there.
It was mum who told me, over the phone, that jidda had died. I drove two hours, back to my hometown, to be with my parents.
‘He hasn’t said a word all day,’ mum told me.
My mum doesn’t try to sugarcoat things, she just tells it like it is, even if it hurts. So that’s why she told me jidda had a stroke and nobody found her for hours. It was unusual for her to be alone for so long. My uncles, their wives, and their children took turns to visit but there’d been a miscommunication that day.
Her midday pills were dropped across the floor and my uncle’s wife found her in the evening. She was still alive then, but by the time they got her to hospital, she didn’t last long. Mum told me all this and Baba must have told her and I thought, God damn the person that told him. One of his brothers, no doubt; wanting him to feel guilty for taking his firstborn self to el ghorba, a foreign land.
Jidda, accruing health problems as numerous as her grandchildren, was no stranger to the Angel of Death. She had been close before but brought back from the brink; Malak el Mout had reached out for her soul and grasped it before withdrawing his hand. So why were we all shocked now that it has actually happened? Did we really think that Malak el Mout had forgotten her? There’s something selfish in our shock. Her death reminds us of something we don’t like; our own mortality. That death can come at any time. Even in old age.
We’re flying to Algeria to bury my grandmother and all I can think about is the box. I can see it on her chest of drawers in my mind. I hate that the curiosity doesn’t subside, even in her death; doesn’t diminish itself for grief.
We get off the plane and my father mumbles a thank you to one of the air stewards and mum and I glance at each other. My sister links her arm through Baba’s. We all want to hold some part of him. We know the grief will hit him even harder now that we’re on Algerian soil.
Mum and I pull all four suitcases laden with last-minute gifts. Even though we came for a funeral, it would feel rude to arrive empty-handed from the land of abundance with easy access to things that were more expensive here. My sister still has her arms around Baba, she might even be holding him up.
Two of my uncles come towards us. I hear mum tut and mumble to herself. She told them not to pick us up. I knew they would anyway, and really she did too. She just wanted to delay the moment when Baba would see the pain in his brothers’ eyes and know that she was really gone.
I helped lower my grandmother’s body into her grave. Her face was framed by the white shroud that covered the rest of her body. The corners of her mouth were turned up ever so slightly into a delicate smile. She died smiling – as a believer, what more could you ask for? And I smiled to myself, lowering her body as I imagined her soul when Malak el Mout turned up this time.
‘You again! I’m ready, just take me this time. Don’t be shy.’
We’re in jidda’s house after the burial and I sit with two of my uncles and their long complaints about the corrupt government. When my sister comes over I manage to swap places with her. I slip unnoticed into my grandmother’s bedroom. I just want to see if the box is there. I won’t look inside, I tell myself, because she never said I could.
I walk over to the chest of drawers but the box isn’t there. My stomach feels heavy, my mouth tastes stale. I almost jump out of my skin when I hear someone come in.
My eldest uncle walks over to me. He thumps a hand on my shoulder as he says my name and tells me to follow him. He’s out of the door before I can ask why. He takes me outside into the back garden where my grandmother used to grow herbs and where a fig tree still survives. In the corner are a couple of plastic chairs. My uncle reaches underneath one then sits down. He holds a box in his lap. The box.
He motions for me to sit down in the chair next to him and I do so slowly, conscious that my heart is pounding at the sight of the box. The chairs are at a right angle to each other, placed too closely, our knees are touching.
‘She wanted you to have it.’ He pats the lid of the box.
I look up at his face and try to garner his expression but it remains passive. His hand rests on the lid.
‘Really? She wanted me to have it?’ I try to feign surprise.
‘She told me after she collapsed the first time. She made me write it down and sign it. She trusted me to give it to you.’
For a brief moment, I feel the immense pain my uncle is holding in.
‘Amo…’ I begin, my voice tight with the tears I don’t want to release.
‘She wanted you to have it,’ he cuts me off, his voice firm.
‘I don’t know what to say.’ I look into my lap again, a flurry of shame creeps up my neck that she insisted I have the box.
My uncle watches me silently, waiting for me to open it, I realise. It doesn’t feel right without her, though. As much as I want to know what’s inside, I always wanted her to be the one to show me. My chest stills as I lift the lid, years of anticipation leading to this moment.
Walou. Nothing.
I glance up at my uncle who is trying to hold in a laugh but failing.
‘She never kept anything in this box. Nothing was special enough. Don’t look so disappointed, habibi.’ He slaps a hand on my shoulder.
‘I didn’t want something from her, it’s not like that,’ I pause. ‘I just wanted something of hers. Something that made me feel… connected. To her. To here.’
I think back to all the conversations about the box. All the times I followed her, wanting to know what was in it, but really wanting to know her. She could have showed me, let me see with my own eyes that there was nothing. But then my questions would have stopped. Maybe I wouldn’t have been drawn to her the way I was. Maybe I would have found something else about her to be fascinated by, but maybe not. I feel like I finally know my grandmother better than I ever thought.
My uncle reaches over and taps my chest. “You are of her. You are of here, no matter where you are.”
I look down into the empty box. The box that her father made, that she waited for her brother to die for and fought her nephew for. The box that was too special to put anything inside. I smile as a tear finally rolls down my cheek, knowing she told me the most important things.
Safiya Cherfi is a writer based in Scotland, forever working on some novel or other. She is a book reviewer focusing on Muslim authors and translated literature. She has short stories published in Gutter, Sundial Magazine, Bandit Fiction and Noctivagant Press. She tweets at @safiyacherfi.