“I told you before,” she said. “I am taking Karim to the museum.”
“You are pregnant. You should be resting at home.”
“I can manage a museum,” she said. “And Karim is very interested in seeing the exhibition.”
He put down his newspaper. “What is the exhibition?”
“Traditional Qatari clothing.”
My father turned to me. I was even worse then about reciprocating visual contact, and I looked at my shoes. “Clothing.” He laughed. “My son is interested in clothing.”
I wished she had at least said it was about how the clothing was produced. But my mother just shook her head and took me to the door. “Do not forget to show him the jewelry and perfumes as well,” my father said as we left.
When we got outside she said, “Do not ever let anyone make you feel inferior for what interests you.” I tried to remember this advice whenever my classmates made fun of me for being interested in computers before technology became popular.
In the Metropolitan Museum I decided to observe exclusively the European paintings, as the museum was so vast that I had to specialize, and that area is also a major knowledge gap to address if I am to become as well-rounded as Mr. Schrub.
I spent a long time studying the paintings of Paul Cezanne, who focused on objects and sometimes nature. But he also painted men and females bathing. At first I stood far away from the painting so no one would witness me looking closely at it, but then I listened to a museum leader lecturing to a cluster of tourists.
“Cezanne was noted for his discomfort with female models,” she said. “He compensated by concocting imaginary tableaus in sylvan environments, and that visionary quality is what lends the bathing paintings a sense of the mythic. Note the characteristic diagonal, parallel brushstrokes that weld the bathers to the landscape while simultaneously asserting their division…”
I stopped listening, because although I appreciate receiving some data to help decipher a problem, it’s always more enjoyable for me to utilize my own intellect. After the tourists left, I moved closer to inspect the brushstrokes. The leader was correct, and I examined them for several minutes and was careless when other visitors came nearby. It’s beneficial for my programming to remind myself that major projects ultimately derive from discrete miniature components.
For the rest of the paintings I selected just a few that intrigued me, and similarly magnified them, even when they were of bathing females. After two hours I was taxed and walked home for exercise.
I rerouted through Times Square, as I had not been there in several weeks. While I waited at a corner, a man nearby with an advertisement on a board surrounding his body said, “Naked girls! No cover! $10 lap dance specials all night!” A mother was adjacent to me with her young daughter, and she covered her daughters’ ears by pretending to hug her.
I wanted to call Zahira when I came home, but it was too late in Doha. On Monday morning I called as I ate my labneh and pita, but my father answered. “Is Zahira at university now?” I asked him.
“It’s pleasant to hear from you as well,” he said.
I asked him how his business was progressing.
“Not well,” he said. “That’s why I’m home early. No one entered the shop today. I told Qasim I will have to let him go.”
“But he has worked for you for four years,” I said. “And without him, you will have to spend extra hours stocking and cleaning the store.”
“I cannot afford his salary. If I must work harder, then that is what I will do.”
“You should update your computer inventory system,” I said. His computer is obsolete and not connected to the Internet. “For instance, you do not currently use it to search for different suppliers, which could help you find lower prices and—”
“I am satisfied with my current arrangement,” he said.
It was frustrating, because I had several ideas for how a new computer could benefit his business, but I knew he wouldn’t listen. So I discarded the idea and told him he should advertise his shop in the newspapers, as I’ve advised him to do for years, because his shop does provide a valuable and unique service of searching for items that are difficult to locate. “You must spend money to make money,” I said.
“Advertising inflates prices without enhancing the product,” he said.
“Yes, but with greater profits from advertising, the manufacturer or supplier can then work on enhancing the product.” It’s an argument we’ve had frequently and we always state the same ideas, and I was able to discuss it while I tied up my full kitchen trash bag to deposit in the hallway incinerator.
“A new department store recently opened nearby,” he said. “Nearly everything I have they also have, plus additional products. And now there is an advertisement on our street for it that depicts a white female coloring her lips.”
Outside my window were many advertisements depicting females doing much more than that. “That is the means by which consumers respond,” I said. “It’s normal.”
“It’s immoral. And if we permit foreign companies to advertise like that here, soon Qatari companies will advertise similarly.”
“Showing females’ bodies is not necessarily immoral,” I said. I was about to tell him about the Cezanne paintings, but he interrupted.
“Is that what you think after one month as an American banker?” His voice was sharp like a right angle on the words “American banker.” “Have you completely adopted American values?”
I didn’t know why he had to note that I was an American banker, as I was a banker before, and he never previously criticized me for my profession. “I have not completely adopted American values. But after spending time here and seeing more of the world than merely Doha, I see that not all of them are harmful.”
“If you think that, then you are already brainwashed,” he said.
If there is one thing I dislike, it’s someone telling me that I am not in control of my own thoughts. “I would rather be brainwashed than not have a brain at all,” I said. “You are jealous because you don’t have the skills to succeed in a field like mine.”
After a period of muteness, he said, “I will tell Zahira to call you,” and disconnected.
The piece of paper on which Fawaz had written his address and telephone number was on my kitchen table. His address in Queens was in Arabic letters. I found an opening in the kitchen trash bag and put the paper inside, and in the hallway I threw it down the incinerator and shut the small door with force and went to work.
While I was in a restroom partition in the afternoon, I heard Jefferson and Dan use the urinals. Under the door I saw their feet at opposite ends of the row. Dan said, “My friend Tim’s coming in this weekend. Want to go to Gentlemen Only with us?”
“Yeah,” Jefferson said. “This time I’m getting the champagne room.”
“Didn’t you hear? There’s no sex in the champagne room,” Dan said.
They sang those words multiple times, and then Jefferson said, “Fuck that, if I’m shelling out 200 bucks, I’m getting a hand job,” and Dan said, “I hear that,” and they both left without depressing the flush handles or washing their hands.
I didn’t see Rebecca the next two days, which relieved me, as I still didn’t know what to say. Then I finally innovated something. The brain frequently works in the background on another problem when it is solving something else.
Sender: Karim Issar <k.issar@schrubequities.com>
Recipient: Rebecca A. Goldman <r.goldman@schrubequities.com>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 21:14:38