“Ethics” by Linda Pastan In ethics class so many years ago our teacher asked this question every fall: If there were a fire in a museum, which would you save, a Rembrandt painting or an old woman who hadn’t many years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs caring little for pictures or old age we’d opt one year for life, the next for art and always half-heartedly. Sometimes the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face leaving her usual kitchen to wander some drafty, half-imagined museum. One year, feeling clever, I replied why not let the woman decide herself? Linda, the teacher would report, eschews the burdens of responsibility. This fall in a real museum I stand before a real Rembrandt, old woman, or nearly so, myself. The colors within this frame are darker than autumn, darker even than winter — the browns of earth, though earth’s most radiant elements burn through the canvas. I know now that woman and painting and season are almost one and all beyond the saving of children. when I was fourteen years old, I lost my Russian accent. I could, in theory, walk up to a girl and the words “Oh, hi there” would not sound like Okht Hyzer, possibly the name of a Turkish politician. There were three things I wanted to do in my new incarnation: go to Florida, where I understood that our nation’s best and brightest had built themselves a sandy, vice-filled paradise; have a girl, preferably native-born, tell me that she liked me in some way; and eat all my meals at McDonald’s. I did not have the pleasure of eating at McDonald’s often. My parents believed that going to restaurants and buying clothes not sold by weight on Orchard Street were things done only by the very wealthy or the very profligate, maybe those extravagant “welfare queens” we kept hearing about on television. Even my parents, however, as uncritically in love with America as only immigrants can be, could not resist the iconic pull of Florida, the call of the beach and the Mouse. And so, in the midst of my Hebrew-school winter vacation, two Russian families crammed into a large used sedan and took I-95 down to the Sunshine State. The other family—three members in all—mirrored our own, except that their single offspring was a girl and they were, on the whole, more ample; by contrast, my entire family weighed three hundred pounds. There’s a picture of us beneath the monorail at EPCOT Center, each of us trying out a different smile to express the déjà-vu feeling of standing squarely in our new country’s greatest attraction, my own megawatt grin that of a turn-of-the-century Jewish peddler scampering after a potential sidewalk sale. The Disney tickets were a freebie, for which we had had to sit through a sales pitch for an Orlando time-share. “You’re from Moscow?” the time-share salesman asked, appraising the polyester cut of my father’s jib. Get the best of The New Yorker every day, in your in-box. Sign me up Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. “Leningrad.” “Let me guess: mechanical engineer?” “Yes, mechanical engineer. . . . Eh, please Disney tickets now.” The ride over the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach was my real naturalization ceremony. I wanted all of it—the palm trees, the yachts bobbing beside the hard-currency mansions, the concrete-and-glass condominiums preening at their own reflections in the azure pool water below, the implicit availability of relations with amoral women. I could see myself on a balcony eating a Big Mac, casually throwing fries over my shoulder into the sea-salted air. But I would have to wait. The hotel reserved by my parents’ friends featured army cots instead of beds and a half-foot-long cockroach evolved enough to wave what looked like a fist at us. Scared out of Miami Beach, we decamped for Fort Lauderdale, where a Yugoslav woman sheltered us in a faded motel, beach-adjacent and featuring free UHF reception. We always seemed to be at the margins of places: the driveway of the Fontainebleau Hilton, or the glassed-in elevator leading to a rooftop restaurant where we could momentarily peek over the “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign at the endless ocean below, the Old World we had left behind so far and yet deceptively near. To my parents and their friends, the Yugoslav motel was an unquestioned paradise, a lucky coda to a set of difficult lives. My father lay magnificently beneath the sun in his red-and-black striped imitation Speedo while I stalked down the beach, past baking Midwestern girls. “Oh, hi there.” The words, perfectly American, not a birthright but an acquisition, perched between my lips, but to walk up to one of those girls and say something so casual required a deep rootedness to the hot sand beneath me, a historical presence thicker than the green card embossed with my thumbprint and freckled face. Back at the motel, the “Star Trek” reruns looped endlessly on Channel 73 or 31 or some other prime number, the washed-out Technicolor planets more familiar to me than our own. On the drive back to New York, I plugged myself firmly into my Walkman, hoping to forget our vacation. Sometime after the palm trees ran out, somewhere in southern Georgia, we stopped at a McDonald’s. I could already taste it: The sixty-nine-cent hamburger. The ketchup, red and decadent, embedded with little flecks of grated onion. The uplift of the pickle slices; the obliterating rush of fresh Coca-Cola; the soda tingle at the back of the throat signifying that the act was complete. I ran into the meat-fumigated coldness of the magical place, the larger Russians following behind me, lugging something big and red. It was a cooler, packed, before we left the motel, by the other mother, the kindly, round-faced equivalent of my own mother. She had prepared a full Russian lunch for us. Soft-boiled eggs wrapped in tinfoil; vinigret, the Russian beet salad, overflowing a reused container of sour cream; cold chicken served between crisp white furrows of a bulka. “But it’s not allowed,” I pleaded. “We have to buy the food here.” MORE FROM THIS ISSUE “Ethics” by Linda Pastan In ethics class so many years ago our teacher asked this question every fall: If there were a fire in a museum, which would you save, a Rembrandt painting or an old woman who hadn’t many years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs caring little for pictures or old age we’d opt one year for life, the next for art and always half-heartedly. Sometimes the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face leaving her usual kitchen to wander some drafty, half-imagined museum. One year, feeling clever, I replied why not let the woman decide herself? Linda, the teacher would report, eschews the burdens of responsibility. This fall in a real museum I stand before a real Rembrandt, old woman, or nearly so, myself. The colors within this frame are darker than autumn, darker even than winter — the browns of earth, though earth’s most radiant elements burn through the canvas. I know now that woman and painting and season are almost one and all beyond the saving of children. when I was fourteen years old, I lost my Russian accent. I could, in theory, walk up to a girl and the words “Oh, hi there” would not sound like Okht Hyzer, possibly the name of a Turkish politician. There were three things I wanted to do in my new incarnation: go to Florida, where I understood that our nation’s best and brightest had built themselves a sandy, vice-filled paradise; have a girl, preferably native-born, tell me that she liked me in some way; and eat all my meals at McDonald’s. I did not have the pleasure of eating at McDonald’s often. My parents believed that going to restaurants and buying clothes not sold by weight on Orchard Street were things done only by the very wealthy or the very profligate, maybe those extravagant “welfare queens” we kept hearing about on television. Even my parents, however, as uncritically in love with America as only immigrants can be, could not resist the iconic pull of Florida, the call of the beach and the Mouse. And so, in the midst of my Hebrew-school winter vacation, two Russian families crammed into a large used sedan and took I-95 down to the Sunshine State. The other family—three members in all—mirrored our own, except that their single offspring was a girl and they were, on the whole, more ample; by contrast, my entire family weighed three hundred pounds. There’s a picture of us beneath the monorail at EPCOT Center, each of us trying out a different smile to express the déjà-vu feeling of standing squarely in our new country’s greatest attraction, my own megawatt grin that of a turn-of-the-century Jewish peddler scampering after a potential sidewalk sale. The Disney tickets were a freebie, for which we had had to sit through a sales pitch for an Orlando time-share. “You’re from Moscow?” the time-share salesman asked, appraising the polyester cut of my father’s jib. Get the best of The New Yorker every day, in your in-box. Sign me up Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. “Leningrad.” “Let me guess: mechanical engineer?” “Yes, mechanical engineer. . . . Eh, please Disney tickets now.” The ride over the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach was my real naturalization ceremony. I wanted all of it—the palm trees, the yachts bobbing beside the hard-currency mansions, the concrete-and-glass condominiums preening at their own reflections in the azure pool water below, the implicit availability of relations with amoral women. I could see myself on a balcony eating a Big Mac, casually throwing fries over my shoulder into the sea-salted air. But I would have to wait. The hotel reserved by my parents’ friends featured army cots instead of beds and a half-foot-long cockroach evolved enough to wave what looked like a fist at us. Scared out of Miami Beach, we decamped for Fort Lauderdale, where a Yugoslav woman sheltered us in a faded motel, beach-adjacent and featuring free UHF reception. We always seemed to be at the margins of places: the driveway of the Fontainebleau Hilton, or the glassed-in elevator leading to a rooftop restaurant where we could momentarily peek over the “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign at the endless ocean below, the Old World we had left behind so far and yet deceptively near. To my parents and their friends, the Yugoslav motel was an unquestioned paradise, a lucky coda to a set of difficult lives. My father lay magnificently beneath the sun in his red-and-black striped imitation Speedo while I stalked down the beach, past baking Midwestern girls. “Oh, hi there.” The words, perfectly American, not a birthright but an acquisition, perched between my lips, but to walk up to one of those girls and say something so casual required a deep rootedness to the hot sand beneath me, a historical presence thicker than the green card embossed with my thumbprint and freckled face. Back at the motel, the “Star Trek” reruns looped endlessly on Channel 73 or 31 or some other prime number, the washed-out Technicolor planets more familiar to me than our own. On the drive back to New York, I plugged myself firmly into my Walkman, hoping to forget our vacation. Sometime after the palm trees ran out, somewhere in southern Georgia, we stopped at a McDonald’s. I could already taste it: The sixty-nine-cent hamburger. The ketchup, red and decadent, embedded with little flecks of grated onion. The uplift of the pickle slices; the obliterating rush of fresh Coca-Cola; the soda tingle at the back of the throat signifying that the act was complete. I ran into the meat-fumigated coldness of the magical place, the larger Russians following behind me, lugging something big and red. It was a cooler, packed, before we left the motel, by the other mother, the kindly, round-faced equivalent of my own mother. She had prepared a full Russian lunch for us. Soft-boiled eggs wrapped in tinfoil; vinigret, the Russian beet salad, overflowing a reused container of sour cream; cold chicken served between crisp white furrows of a bulka. “But it’s not allowed,” I pleaded. “We have to buy the food here.” MORE FROM THIS ISSUE JOE BAGE ANT -f Valley of the Gun THE FAMILY IN DIFFERENT CULTURES 31 Joe Bageant Recommended Films on This Theme Ordinary People (United States, 1980) The story of a wealthy fam­ ily devastated by the death of their olddst son; Fanny and Alexander “(Sweden, 1983) an engaging tale of a Swedish family as seen through the eyes of their two yoime children; , . ° The Joy Luck Club (United States/China, 1*993) a film based on Amy Tan's novel^that explores the relationships of four Chinese mothers and theif American-bom daughters; Kolya (Czech Republic, 1996) fire story of a womanizing cellist who marries for money and is left to raise his wife's five-vearoldson. ^ Valley of the Gun — ^ ^ ------------- Joe Bageant was born in 1946 in Virginia, served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, and has developed a unique voice as an iconoclastic cur­ mudgeon speaking out on many social issues. He has written for many newspapers and magazines and has been a senior editor for Primedia Magazine Corporation and for the Weider History Group. He currently spends half the year in Belize where he sponsors a development project with the Black Carib families of Hopkins Village. In this essay originally published in Deer Himting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (2007), he reveals the important role that the gun culture played in forging enduring family connections when he was growing up in Winchester, Virginia, neat the West Virginia border. Before You Read How might growing up in a gun culture provide important life lessons that might seem strange to outsiders? ------------- ♦-----------1 ,2 3 * "Take 'em, Joe!" cried-Grandpap as the three deer, a buck and two does, stretched out at a lope across the ridgeline above us, swift dark silhouettes against tbe tan buckwheat stubble of what we called^ the ridgefield. My father, "Big Joe," leaned into the frost-tinged air. k a KRAK, KA-KRAK, JCA-KRAK, KA-KRAK— the sound of each shot was fol­ lowed by that rattling echo through the chilled gray woods that every meat hunter knows and can hear in his sleep. The first deer, the buck, was thrown sideways by the impact and went down at a runrung roll. The two does did approximately the same thing; the second one would later be foimd after an hour of tracking the blood on fences and grass. We had just witnessed an amazing feat still talked about in the Bageant family all these years after my father's death. That was in the late fall of 1957.1 had been allowed to go with the deer hunters for the first time, and already I had seen family history made. Dad had stepped into family folklore, become one of those to be talked about for generations in a family of hunters, mentioned in the same breath with old Jim Bageant, who shot a whole washtub full of squirrels one November morning just before World War II. These men—Daddy, Grandpap, and two of my uncles. Uncle Toad and Uncle Nelson—were meat hunters who trudged the fields and woods together right up xintil the day they got too crippled up to do it 32 THE FAMILY IN DIFFERENT CULTURES or died. Arid it was because they were meat hunters that they let my dad take the three deer, one each on their tags, on the last legal day of hunting season. Everyone knew that my dad, the best shot in the fam• ily, had the most likelihood of getting more than one of th6 deer. 4 Later in the day, after dressing the deer and hanging them on the rack porch to chill', we sat around the living-room woodstove, cleaned the guns, and talked about the day's hunt. To an eleven-year-old boy, the smell of gun oil and the stove's searing raw heat on the face, the polishing of blued steel and walnut, the clean raspy feel of the checked gim grip^, the warm laughter of the men, w ell. . . that's primal afterthe-himt stuff so deep you can feel the sparks from Celtic yew log fires and the brush of bearskin leggings on your knees. It has been going on m this place and on this land for 250 years. 5 I quit hunting years ago, yet this remembered room and the longdead men who inhabited it that day in the fall of '57 remain for me one of the truest and fmest places and events on this earthTGuns can have a place mside aTnan, even rem em jj^d guns in the soul of an arthritic sixty-year-old old socialist -writenirhe crack of a distant rifle or the wild meat smell of a deer hanging under a porch lightbulb on a snowy night still bewitches me with the same mountain-folk animism it did when I was a boy. And though I have not himted since 1986, the sight of a fine old shotgun still rouses my heart. 6 In families like mine, men are born smelling of gim oil amid a forest o hrearms. The family home, a huge old clapboard farmhouse, was stuffed with guns, maybe thirty in all. There were 10-, 12-, 14-, and 20gauge shotguns, pump guns, over-and-unders, and deer rifles of every imaginable sort from classic Winchester 94 models to 30-ought-sixes, an old cap and ball "horse pistol" dating back to the mid-1800s, and even a set of dueling pistols that had been in my family since the 1700s. No hillbffly ever threw a gun away, even when it could no longer be repaired. And until they stopped working completely, gtms were endlessly cared for and patched back together. Otherwise they -vveren't to be parted with except under the direst circumstances, either on your deathbed or because you were so broke your cash bounced. For example, there is one ancestral family gun that my brother Mike did not inherit—my father's prized old Ivers and Johnson double-barrel shotgun, which had been in the family since the turn of the twentieth century. An out-of-work trucker at Christmastime, Daddy sold it to buy us kids the standard assortment of Christmas junk so We would not feel disappointed. I remember a Robert the Robot for me, a tin stove for my sister, a little red wheelbarrow for my brother, and, of course, toy guns and holsters. That was in 1952. We still have the photographs, and we shll lament the loss of that fine old Ivers and Johnson., 7 Through our early years we boys could not hunt, but we were allowed to beat rabbits out of the bush for the dogs to chase back JOE BAGEANT -f Valley of the Gun 33 around to the hunters. With clothes torn in the blackberry thickets and feet frozen in the winter creeks, faces pricked and bleeding, we rustled the brush piles. This would be considered child abuse today, but so would a lot of things we once did. Besides, there ure far fewer boys hunting nowadays, thanks to computer games and television. Any­ way, surviving the brush torture test of manhood earned us the right to sit aroimd with the men-folk when they told hunting stories—so long as we kept our mouths shut unless spoken to. It was then we learned the family lore, who did what back when and with which gxm.- This imbued each gim with a sense of ancestry, made us feel part of a long and unbroken chain of men, a history we would cpntemplate over decades of seasons during that long patient waiting game that makes up most of successful hunting—or getting skunked. After a couple more years came a day when they let us help clean the guns, running oil-soaked patches down the barrels and polishing the istocks and metalwork self-consciously under the eyes of grand­ fathers, fathers, and uncles, our mouths set serious and every move as careful as if each gun were made4)f dynamite, trying to demonstrate that we respected their .destructive capability enough to be trusted with one. Then the mighty time came when Pap would pull the small 22-caliber "cat rifle" down from the bedroom wall to begin real target practice, along with what would today be called gun-safety training, though it was more instinct and common sense for farm boys back then. We had observed gun-carrying practices for years, absorbing such lessons as these: Never'crawl through a fence with a loaded gun. Never point a gun at anyone, even accidentally while walking together. Never kill anything you are not going to eat, unless it is a varmint like a groundhog or a pest such as a copperhead snake under the front porch. Never shoot in the known direction of a house, no matter how distant. In 251 years of hunting these hills, no one in the Bageant clan was ever accidentally shot while hunting, which testifies to the practical responsibility native to the three-century-old gun cul­ ture of the southern uplands; Half a dozen years after the Christmas Daddy sold the Ivers and Johnson, I turned thirteen, grown up enough to start hunting with an old'family 12-gauge, the entire barrel and forestock of which was held ■together with black fabric "tar tape," as electrical tape was then called. And when I looked down at that 12-gauge shotgun cradled in my arm under a bright cold October sky; I knew that my grandfather had walked the same fields with it when it was brand-new from the Sears catalog, and had delivered mountains of meat to the smoky old farm­ house kitchen with it. I ,knew that my father had contemplated all this too under the same kind of sky, carrying the same gim, and that my younger brother would too. Ritual and clan. My family has hogbutchering kiuv-es that have been passed along for generations. I've 34 THE FAMILY IN DIFFERENT CULTURES heard that Norwegian carpenters do the'same with tools. And perhaps there is the same ritual passing of male family .heritage and custom when upper-class sons of, say, the Bush family go off to the alma mater prep school and are handed the keys to the Lincoln. I wouldn't know. My symbol of passage was an old shotgun with black tape along the barrel. 10 For millions of families in my class, the first question asked after the death of a father is "Who gets Daddy's guns?" That sounds strange only if you did not grow up in a deeply rooted hunting culture. My brother Mike uses the same guns our daddy-used. If there is a hunting gene, he's got it, so he inherited the family guns. True to form, Mike is a meat hunter who puts a couple of bucks and a doe in the freezer every year and probably could bring them home given only a bag of rocks with which to hunt. 11 If you were raised up himting, you know that it is a ritual of death and plenitude, .an animistic rite wherein a man blows the living heart ■out of one of God's creatures and then, if he deserves to be called a hunter, feels deep, honest gratitude for the creator's bounty. The meat on our tables links us to the days of black powder and buckskin. I can see why millions of urban citizens whose families came from, teeming European cities through Ellis Island don't understand the links between Cdtic and Germanic settler roots, guns, survival, and patriotism. Gun­ powder is scarcely a part of their lives. Unfortunately, utter lack of knowledge and experience doesn't keep nonhunting urban liberals from believing they know what's best for everybody else—or simply laughing at what they do not understand. 12 To nonhimters, the image conjured by the title of this book [Deer Hunting with Jesus] might seem absurd, rather like a n u k e t h e w h a l e s bumper sticker. But the title also captures something that moves me about * e people I grew up with—the intersection between hunting and religion irt their lives. The link between protestant fundamentalism and deer hunting goes back to colonial times, when the restless Presby­ terian Scots, along with English and German Protestant reformers, pushed across America, developing the umque himting and farmingbased frontier cultures that sustained them over most of America's his­ tory. Two hundred years later, they have settled down, but they have not quit hunting and they have not-quit praying. Consequently, today we find organizations such as the Christian Deer Hunters Association (christiandeerhunters.org), which offers convenient pocket-size books of meditations, such as Devotions for Deer Hunters, to help occupy the time during those long waits for game. Like their ancestors, deer hunters today understand how standing quietly and alone in the natu­ ral world leads to contemplation of God's gifts to man. And so, when a book like Meditations for the Deer Stand is seen in historical context, it is no joke. For those fortunate enough to spend whole days quietly •JOE BAGEANT -f Valley of the Gun 35 standing in the November woods just watching the Creator's world, there is no irony at all in the notion that his son might be watching too, and maybe even willing to summon a couple pf nice fat does within shooting range. Evaluating the Text 1. What role did the gun culture play in Bageant's family and how did it provide him with important values? 2. Why is the question, "Who gets Daddy's guns?" not considered strange in the environment in which Bageant grew up? 3. How would you characterize the tone of Bageant's essay and his attitude toward the events he describes? -V- Exploring Different Perspectives 1. How does the theme of self-reliance play an important role in the accounts by Bageant and Firoozeh Dumas? 2. Compare the lessons that both Bageant and Fritz Peters learned in unusual circumstances. Extending Viexvpoints through Writing and Research 1. Would the experience of hunting as described by Bageant be appealing to you? Why or why not? 2. How important are hunting seasons to different regions in Amer­ ica, especially where you live? 3. To what extent has the gun control controversy impinged on the everyday activities that Bageant describes? What are your views on tliis issue? “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur In her room at the prow of the house Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, My daughter is writing a story. I pause in the stairwell, hearing From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. Young as she is, the stuff Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: I wish her a lucky passage. But now it is she who pauses, As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. A stillness greatens, in which The whole house seems to be thinking, And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor Of strokes, and again is silent. I remember the dazed starling Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; How we stole in, lifted a sash And retreated, not to affright it; And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top, And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure, It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world. It is always a matter, my darling, Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish What I wished you before, but harder. “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur In her room at the prow of the house Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, My daughter is writing a story. I pause in the stairwell, hearing From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. Young as she is, the stuff Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: I wish her a lucky passage. But now it is she who pauses, As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. A stillness greatens, in which The whole house seems to be thinking, And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor Of strokes, and again is silent. I remember the dazed starling Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; How we stole in, lifted a sash And retreated, not to affright it; And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top, And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure, It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world. It is always a matter, my darling, Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish What I wished you before, but harder. English 120A Paper #2 - Due October 30, 2019 Write a 2-3 page composition on the best way to teach a child to be moral. Your task is to discuss how best to learn and or teach morals. Create your own thesis statement based on your opinion. Use the readings from the syllabus to find three quotations to back up your position ("Ethics," "Sixty-Nine Cents," "Valley of the Gun," The Wedding Banquet, "The Writer," "The Persian Carpet"). You might choose parents, peers, society, or culture. Perhaps it is a combination. What is most important? On the due date provide a paper copy of your work and upload the file to turnitin via blackboard. No paper will be counted, if it is not electronically cleared. You will be judged according to the following rubric. Main idea including the depth of your analysis and a clear statement of opinion 30% 30% Organization of thoughts, support for them including 3 quotations Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence and relate to the thesis . 40% . Mechanics of words and sentences Is there subject/verb agreement? Have you avoided fragments and/or run- on sentences? 414 HANAN AL-SHAYKH The Persian Carpet 415 The Persian Carpet When Maryam had finished plaiting my hair into two pigtails, she put her finger to her mouth and licked it, then passed it over my eyebrows, moaning: "Ah, what eyebrows you have—they're all over the place!" She turned quickly to my sister and said: "Go and see if your father's still praying." Before I knew it my sister had returned and was whispering "He's still at it," and she stretched out her hands and raised them skywards in imitation of him. I didn't laugh as usual, nor did Maryam; instead, she took up the scarf from the chair, put it over her hair and tied it hurriedly at the neck. Then, opening the wardrobe carefully, she took out her handbag, placed it under her arm and stretched out her hands to us. I grasped one and my sister the other. We understood that we should, like her, pro- ceed on tiptoe, holding our breath as we made our way out through the open front door. As we went down the steps, we turned back to wards the door, then towards the window. Reaching the last step, we began to run, only stopping when the lane had disappeared out of sight and we had crossed the road and Maryam had stopped a taxi. Our behaviour was induced by fear, for today we would be see- ing my mother for the first time since her separation by divorce from my father. He had sworn he would not let her see us, for, only hours after the divorce, the news had spread that she was going to marry a man she had been in love with before her family had forced her into marrying my father. My heart was pounding. This was not from fear or from running but was due to anxiety and a feeling of embarrassment about the meeting that lay ahead. Though in control of myself and my shy- ness, I knew that I would be incapable-however much I tried-of showing my emotions, even to my mother; I would be unable to throw myself into her arms and smother her with kisses and clasp her head as my sister would do with such spontaneity. I had thought long and hard about this ever since Maryam had whispered in my ear-and in my sister's—that my mother had come from the south and that we were to visit her secretly the following day. I began to imagine that I would make myself act exactly as my sister did, that I would stand behind her and imitate her blindly. Yet I know myself: I have committed myself to myself by heart. However much I tried to force myself, however much I thought in advance about what I should and shouldn't do, once I was actually faced by the situation and was standing looking down at the floor, my fore- head puckered into an even deeper frown, I would find I had for- gotten what I had resolved to do. Even then, though, I would not give up hope but would implore my mouth to break into a smile; it would none the less be to no avail. When the taxi came to a stop at the entrance to a house, where two lions stood on columns of red sandstone, I was filled with de- light and immediately forgot my apprehension. I was overcome with happiness at the thought that my mother was living in a house where two lions stood at the entrance. I heard my sister imitate the roar of a lion and I turned to her in envy. I saw her stretching up her hands in an attempt to clutch the lions. I thought to myself: She's always uncomplicated and jolly, her gaiety never leaves her, even at the most critical moments and here she was, not a bit worried about this meeting. But when my mother opened the door and I saw her, I found myself unable to wait and rushed forward in front of my sister and threw myself into her arms. I had closed my eyes and all the joints of my body had grown numb after having been unable to be at rest for so long. I took in the unchanged smell of her hair, and I discov- ered for the first time how much I had missed her and wished that she would come back and live with us, despite the tender care shown to us by my father and Maryam. I couldn't rid my mind of that smile of hers when my father agreed to divorce her, after the religious sheikh had intervened following her threats to pour kerosene over her body and set fire to herself if my father wouldn't divorce her. All my senses were numbed by that smell of her, so well preserved in my memory. I realized how much I had missed her, de- 416 HANAN AL-SHAYKH The Persian Carpet 417 spite the fact that after she'd hurried off behind her brother to get into the car, having kissed us and started to cry, we had continued with the games we were playing in the lane outside our house. As night came, and for the first time in a long while we did not hear her squabbling with my father, peace and quiet descended upon the house-except that is for the weeping of Maryam, who was related to my father and had been living with us in the house ever since I was born. Smiling, my mother moved me away from her so that she could hug and kiss my sister, and hug Maryam again, who had begun to cry. I heard my mother, who was in tears, say to her "Thank you." and she wiped her tears with her sleeve and looked me and my sis- ter up and down, saying: "God keep them safe, how they've sprung up!" She put both arms round me, while my sister buried her head in my mother's waist, and we all began to laugh when we found that it was difficult for us to walk like that. Reaching the inner room, I was convinced her new husband was inside because my mother said, smiling: "Mahmoud loves you very much and he would like it if your father would give you to me so that you can live with us and become his children too." My sister laughed and answered: "Like that we'd have two fathers." I was still in a benumbed state, my hand placed over my mother's arm, proud at the way I was behav- ing, at having been able without any effort to be liberated from my- self, from my shackled hands, from the prison of my shyness, as I recalled to mind the picture of my meeting with my mother, how I had spontaneously thrown myself at her, something I had thought wholly impossible, and my kissing her so hard I had closed my eyes. Her husband was not there. As I stared down at the floor I froze. In confusion I looked at the Persian carpet spread on the floor, then gave my mother a long look. Not understanding the significance of my look, she turned and opened a cupboard from which she threw me an embroidered blouse, and moving across to a drawer in the dressing-table, she took out an ivory comb with red hearts painted on it and gave it to my sister. I stared down at the Persian carpet, trembling with burning rage. Again I looked at my mother and she interpreted my gaze as being one of tender longing, so she put her arms round me, saying: "You must come every other day, you must spend the whole of Friday at my place." I remained motionless, wishing that I could remove her arms from around me and sink my teeth into that white forearm. I wished that the moment of meeting could be undone and re-enacted, that she could again open the door and I could stand there-as I should have done with my eyes staring down at the floor and my forehead in a frown. The lines and colours of the Persian carpet were imprinted on my memory. I used to lie on it as I did my lessons; I'd be so close to it that I'd gaze at its pattern and find it looking like slices of red water-melon repeated over and over again. But when I sat down on the couch, I would see that each slice of melon had changed into a comb with thin teeth. The clusters of flowers surrounding its four sides were purple-coloured. At the beginning of summer my mother would put mothballs on it and on the other ordinary car- pets and would roll them up and place them on top of the cup- board. The room would look stark and depressing until autumn came, when she would take them up to the roof and spread them out. She would gather up the mothballs, most of which had dis- solved from the summer's heat and humidity, then, having brushed them with a small broom, she'd leave them there. In the evening she'd bring them down and lay them out where they belonged. I would be filled with happiness as their bright colours once again brought the room back to life. This particular carpet, though, had disappeared several months before my mother was divorced. It had been spread out on the roof in the sun and in the afternoon my mother had gone up to get it and hadn't found it. She had called my father and for the first time I had seen his face flushed with anger. When they came down from the roof, my mother was in a state of fury and bewilderment. She got in touch with the neighbours, all of whom swore they hadn't seen it. Suddenly my mother exclaimed: "Ilya!" Everyone stood speechless: not a word from my father or from my sister or from our neighbours Umm Fouad and Abu Salman. I found myself crying out: "Ilya? Don't say such a thing, it's not possible." Ilya was an almost blind man who used to go round the houses English 120A Paper #2 - Due October 30, 2019 Write a 2-3 page composition on the best way to teach a child to be moral. Your task is to discuss how best to learn and or teach morals. Create your own thesis statement based on your opinion. Use the readings from the syllabus to find three quotations to back up your position ("Ethics," "Sixty-Nine Cents," "Valley of the Gun," The Wedding Banquet, "The Writer," "The Persian Carpet"). You might choose parents, peers, society, or culture. Perhaps it is a combination. What is most important? On the due date provide a paper copy of your work and upload the file to turnitin via blackboard. No paper will be counted, if it is not electronically cleared. You will be judged according to the following rubric. Main idea including the depth of your analysis and a clear statement of opinion 30% 30% Organization of thoughts, support for them including 3 quotations Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence and relate to the thesis . 40% . Mechanics of words and sentences Is there subject/verb agreement? Have you avoided fragments and/or run- on sentences?
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