Don’t Let Your Kaffiyeh Show!

By Fawzy Zablah

She was a fat, white, woman with a double chin. Her hair was short, curly, brown with silver streaks. And her huge arms, well, they reminded Nabil of sea cows beached in the sand. She called to him, “Water boy! Excuse me! Water boy!”

Nabil looked up from the floor, kneeling, carefully picking up the pieces of an empty salad plate a server had dropped.

“Can you please bring me some ice?”

“Yes, ma’am. No problem.”

“Here,” she said, handing Nabil a plastic glass. “Use this one. Make sure you fill it to the very top.”

“Yes, ma’am. No problem. No problem.”

That was Nabil’s response when patrons asked for things. His boss was a short, fat, Greek man, who always had a Cuban cigar in his mouth and urged the employees to say, “My Pleasure” when answering customer’s requests. He’d overheard a sever saying it while vacationing with his family at a ritzy resort in Bermuda. Since he never enforced the saying, Nabil used the more efficient, “No problem.” Most of the tasks Nabil was asked to do were not his pleasure.

Nabil was a busboy. Busboys roamed the restaurant looking for tables to clean, dishes to pick up, and waters to refill. It was a small restaurant with two rooms. The front room was the lounge, where the bar was located. The lounge was kept so dim that when Nabil first walked in to apply for a job he thought he had mistakenly walked into a strip club.

“It looks like a cave with booths,” Nabil told his aunt.

The fat woman always sat in the lounge sipping martinis in the dark. The much better lit dining room was decorated in the style of an inn; inconsequential paintings hung on old-fashioned wallpaper.

After Nabil finished sweeping up the rest of the broken plate, he went to the bus stand and sank the plastic glass in the ice bucket. He returned to the table and handed it back to the woman. She snatched it out of his hand.

“Thank you!”

Nabil never wore his Kafiyyeh in public. He had only been in Miami two months, and remained an alien to the city and its people. In trying to fit in, he gave up the thought of ever wearing his Kafiyyeh, but not really. His father, a rare book dealer in Cairo, had bought Nabil the checkered blue Kafiyyeh before he left for Miami. Nabil’s plan was to study civil engineering.

The day Nabil left for America, he saw his father cry for the first time since his mother died. He helped Nabil pack and then sat on his only son’s bed, watching him rush around the room searching for his books and compact discs that he wanted to take on the long trip.

“Nabil.”

“Yes, Father?”

“Will you promise to be cautious and strong and to keep in touch?”

“Of course, Father,” he said, trying to fit a paper back copy of Amerika in his black tote bag. “There isn’t any reason to worry. Miami is not like Miami Vice. That’s just Hollywood.”

Father and son looked into each others eyes and the unspoken was spoken.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Father.”

When he arrived at his Aunt Farah’s doorstep in July of 2001, she warned him about Miami, and after September 11, she warned him about everyone.

“Be very careful,” she said. “It is a difficult time for the country. Do not involve yourself in discussions. Just walk away.”

Nabil assured her he would walk away. His goal in Miami was to better himself with a prestigious higher education at the Florida International University.

Nabil had indeed noticed that before the September attacks the patrons paid him little attention but now everyone seemed to be aware of his existence.

“Is my Kafiyyeh showing?” Nabil thought to himself. He had read a comic book in which Batman is forced to save a woman from a gang of thugs while disguised as Bruce Wayne. During the struggle, Batman thinks, “Is my cape showing? Don’t let your cape hang out.” Nabil thought it was funny.

“Is my Kaffiyyeh showing?” Nabil asked himself again. “You should run and hide and dispose of your Kafiyyeh! I do not want to run or hide my Kafiyyeh, but perhaps I should.”

The more demanding patrons reminded Nabil of his three uprooted cousins from East Jerusalem – Anwar, Saeed, and Talib. With their father, Nabil’s uncle, Hazeem, they had moved to Cairo, to Nabil’s house, after their own house was torn down by Israeli bulldozers for being in the way of settlement land.

From the second they arrived they became a great burden for Nabil. His father had told him the day before to be sympathetic to their pain. “They are our guests so you will serve them, tending to their every wish. Our home is their home.”

The three cousins, being the ages of six, eight, and twelve, tried their hardest to abuse their older cousin’s hospitality at every instance, especially when grownups were not around. They were not accustomed to being waited upon, but quickly adapted, as though they were Saudi royalty, and became mean spirited like a beggar who finds a treasure chest of gold.

“More water, please, Nabil. Fill it to the very top.”

“Yes, Anwar.”

“Nabil, where is my piece of Vaklava?”

“I will get it now, Saeed.”

“Nabil, my bread and goat cheese please!”

“I am sorry, Talib, I seem to have forgotten it.”

“But what about my plate? You are a poor host, Nabil. Don’t you realize how I am a traumatized person because of the Zionists?”

“Yes, I will get you your plate.”

And it went on like this for four months until one day Nabil blew up at the dinner table because he was worn out from studying, and cooking for his cousins, and his meal had become cold, and Talib kept requesting pepper on his dish.

“I am not a slave! And I do not care what the Zionists did to you and I am not here to serve you!”

Everyone stopped eating and stared at Nabil. Later on, that same evening, after Nabil had finished cleaning up, he eavesdropped on his father and uncle. They both drank tea and sat in the living room. Nabil pretended to be studying at the kitchen table, dreaming of America, when he overheard a moment that was only for brothers.

He pictured his father’s strong hairy hands on his uncle’s shoulders as he wept.

“I do not know what I’m going to do. Everything I owned was in Jerusalem. The day the soldiers came and I saw my life in ruins, all I wanted was to fall on my knees and weep until the sun fell from the sky and a new world began again. I was ready to die, but I knew I could not.”

“Because of your sons?”

“Because of my sons! If I break down, then they too would follow, and what would become of them? So I would imagine them running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”

Nabil could almost see his father’s tender brown eyes watching his uncle, as he wiped his face.

“But now, Brother, you must regain your strength again for your sons. Each day you waste away, sitting around the house depressed, is a day in which the Zionists win. You must continue on and do what you must for the sake of the generations to come, for the sake of our sons.”

“Yes, yes, you are right. But there is a deep dark hole inside me.”

That night, Nabil realized that he must go to America and become the greatest civil engineer and build houses so strong they could not be destroyed by Zionist bulldozers.

As Nabil remembered all those things from his past, he carried the bus-tub to the dishwasher meaning to drop it off, pick up a new one, and hurry back, but the dishwasher, a large black man, splashed him with dirty dish water. Nabil knew it was intentional, because Sammy the dishwasher smiled and did it a second time.

“How many times have I told you, A-Rab? Bring the silverware bucket first!”

“Do not splash me again or I will be forced to tell the manager.”

Sammy sprayed him from the hose again. The night manager, a short white man with a bald spot and a thick mustache, stood in front of the television watching an American Football game.

“Sammy, leave Nabil alone. The guy has work to do. Now apologize to him. Keep running, keep running. Touch down!”

Sammy stared at Nabil. “I’m sorry, Osama.”

Nabil left the kitchen angry and wet. And once he was back on the floor, “Nabil, honey, can I get a water refill on D-4?”

Nabil grabbed a water pitcher and went into the dining room. He walked directly to the table where the water was needed. It was two older couples with four empty water glasses. He picked up a glass and poured the water carefully. Everyone at the table stared.

He put the first refill down.

“Thank you,” said the lady. The table carefully watched him as he refilled the second glass, which Nabil did not pick up because of its close proximity. He looked down at the table.

“Two left,” Nabil thought. His brow had begun to sweat. He grabbed the third glass, refilling it to the very top. He put the third refill down and picked up the last glass. As he refilled the glass, before he placed it back on the table, “Hey, Buddy,” a man said. “Could you bring us some lemon for this water?”

“No problem,” Nabil said.

“Thanks, Buddy.”

As Nabil grabbed a monkey dish of lemon slices from the bus stand, the tiny blond server squeezed his butt.

“Hey, Water Boy! Mrs. Sanders wants some more ice!”

Nabil looked down. He did not like the tiny blond server because she was a very rude and annoying person that treated the busboys with little respect. At five feet, she was the most annoying person Nabil had ever met. Nabil fake smiled.

“She wants her ice now, Nabil, so you better hurry or she might eat you!”

Tiny Blond Server was referring to the fat woman. Nabil never cared for learning the patron’s names. He had overheard a rumor that Tiny Server had performed oral sex on one of the bartenders behind the bar after the restaurant had closed. Her face made Nabil uneasy.

“Don’t go blow yourself up or anything!” She slapped his butt and ran away.

Nabil dropped off the lemon slices and they said, “Thank you, Buddy.”

He went back to the bus stand, grabbed a cup of ice, and a water pitcher in case there were waters to refill.


Mrs. Sander’s booth was the last one opposite the bar. The news had been on and everyone in the lounge was watching it. Nabil said a short prayer.

Arriving at the table, he handed her the glass.

“Why do your people hate America?”

“Excuse me?”

“Haven’t you been watching the television?”

“My people?”

“Don’t deny it! Maybe you don’t because you live here, but your family in Afghanistan does.”

“I am not Afghan. I am sorry. I don’t think I should be–”

“Your people just murdered thousands of Americans for no good reason!”

All the patrons in the lounge stared at Nabil. He felt their eyes.

“My people, they did not kill anyone! Those are crazy people!”

Nabil walked, away slamming the pitcher on the bus stand, spilling water. He grabbed a towel and started wiping the counter.

“I need a water refill all over my room!” the dining room server yelled.

Nabil picked up the other pitcher and went into the dining room. Don’t let your Kafiyyeh show! He searched for empty water glasses, four on the first table and they needed more butter, two on the second table and they wanted barbecue sauce. As he refilled water at the third table everyone in the dining room watched him. Nabil, with all eyes on him, began to think he was a Kafiyyeh by itself with no person underneath. A magical Kafiyyeh like in the One Thousand and One Nights. A walking, talking, water refilling, dirty plate removing, (Are you finished?) bus tub full of dishes carrying, restroom cleaning, coffee making, towel replacing, dirty ashtray swapping, garbage dumping, ice retrieving, spill cleaning, (On its knees or with a broom. The Kafiyyeh that is!) hot tea making Kafiyyeh!

And Kafiyyeh was the one overfilling the glass, spilling water on its black pants. Kafiyyeh let the same glass drop. No one in the dining room stopped watching Kafiyyeh.

“Oh no! My Kafiyyeh is showing!” Kafiyyeh screamed. And then, suddenly, Kafiyyeh fell on its knees pondering God, Love, Death and its very own Kafiyyeh existence. “I am not a Kafiyyeh,” Kafiyyeh whispered softly to itself. “I’m a writer in Miami and no sir, no, I’m not a towel head. Not a towel head. I am not a towel head.”

###

An earlier version of The Existence of Nabil appeared in the Struggle Spring-Summer 2005 issue.

Fawzy Zablah lives in Miami. He has been a contributing writer for D'Vox Magazine in South Florida. His short stories can be found online at Lit Vision, Prose Toad, Gorilla Mag, and Girls With Insurance in South Florida.