Ailsa and Rawah

I lay on the cold lush grass. It was in this body indentation that I lay as a young girl, summoning imaginary treasures in my family home. It’s familiar and safe, both of which sensations I have found difficulty finding in my adult years. The afternoon rays of light break through the grove of trees while the sound of birds softly sipping on hanging fruit creates a soothing hum. The grass is long enough for me to fade away from sight to watch my own private slideshow of morphing clouds. I feel the damp earth beneath my feet, breathe in the fresh air that flows freely into my lungs. The nostalgia for a simpler time of making up storylines of dancing bears and fire breathing dragons high up in the sky, is what I yearn for now – a place of uninterrupted peace. Somehow this is more than memory, it is home.

I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths when I feel my body become enveloped by a sudden pressure. Is it my anxiety ruining any moment of restfulness I get – or is it my mind sifting through a collection of unwanted thoughts and memories?

No wait …

It can’t be. For just a microsecond, I’ve slipped into a daydream, which in my household means breaking Rule # 3 Never let your guard down and expose any form of vulnerability, and that only results in the following;

• Texta marks drawn all over your face,

• Unflattering footage of your double chin and saliva dribbling down the side of your mouth, sent to every WhatsApp group known to mankind,

• or in this case, be wrapped in a hasira (straw mat) by your four brothers until you feel suffocated and yell for your parents to come to the rescue.

I tumble out on a pile of raked leaves, still in a daze, trying to figure out what dead insect taste is now in my mouth.

‘You know the rules sis,’ they say, walking away high-fiving each other as if they’d just wrapped up a hard day’s work.

How could I forget the rules I put in place in my very own Introvert’s Guide to Surviving a Family of Extroverts? Oh, and the extroverts are a loud Lebanese clan – all twenty-five of them, living in Punchbowl in South Western Sydney, in three houses, side by side, roaming freely with detached fences and clearly no boundaries.

‘You should’ve seen your face,’ my twelve-year-old niece says hanging upside down from a tree with her mother’s phone. ‘I made a TikTok out of it.’

She’s one of the fifteen nieces and nephews that are the human form of 24hr surveillance on our property, using any device they can get their hands on to record us when we least expect it. Whether that be accidentally leaving the bathroom door open or tripping over random objects, which I’m sure they have strategically placed to add to their electronic files of family embarrassment.

I hear my mother calling my name in the distance. I know by now that ethnic parents never tell you what they want the first time. You have to trek and make that journey across the house, which is usually for some WhatsApp errand. It’s either reexplaining the process of adding a new number to her much longer list of friends than me or a video of some Egyptian doctor listing all the health benefits of cabbage.

‘Yes mama,’ I say pulling out the last bits of twig from my hair. ‘You showed me this last week.’

‘No, that was about lettuce.’

Rule #2 Parents are always right.

The video finishes playing and I’m once again reminded how unhealthy I am just as my dad calls for a family meeting. We sit under our vine leaf pergola and await the list of Sunday duties my parents have prepared for us, including the olives that need picking from our trees.

‘Don’t pick and throw on each other,’ dad says followed by him staring blankly at his four grown sons, as they argue about who ‘started it first’ for the next twenty minutes. My two older sisters also chime in, spreading the blame, and my uncle for whatever reason is making rice pudding in our garage kitchen. My nieces and nephews each try to sneak away from their responsibilities and before I know it, the few brain cells I have left wander off to the vines up above, intertwining with the leaves.

Rule #5 Don’t involve yourself in conversations that don’t concern you.

It doesn’t take long for my mum to turn on the hose and threaten to soak everyone and to wash away their attitude if we don’t get to work.

We lay out the straw mat beneath the row of olive trees and pick enough to last us through to the next year. My brothers are responsible for picking the olives which is done in one of three ways: shake the trees till the olives fall and land on the mat; use a rake to collect the top olives; or climb the trees and hand-pick them – which isn’t always the best idea since it turns into a ‘who can pelt each other the hardest without getting caught by my dad’ contest. The kids run around and find the olives that have rolled off the mat and then deliver the boxes to my sisters and I, who are stationed at the cracking and packing tables. Each olive needs to be carefully hit and then placed in buckets, then my mother brines and stores them in the garage kitchen.

Our family circus is always interrupted by a few neighbours who pop in and help out. I can sense what they’re going to ask me. I turn to my sisters, who are both a decade older than me, both married with children, and whisper a countdown.

‘And in three, two, one …’

‘So, you still haven’t found Mr. Right yet?’ one lady asks.

I pretend to suddenly lose the ability to speak Arabic and continue to bang the olives, only this time it’s louder and more aggressive. She gets the point and moves on to her next target: my three single brothers who are now running around shirtless in the yard.

We don’t have one of those picturesque backyards from a Better Homes and Gardens magazine with flat lawns and tools kept safely in a shed. Everything can kill you in my home. The axe left lying beside the stack of fragile logs near the spiky green plants that my mum can’t seem to get enough of, ankle-breaking grass pits alongside the dented fence, and the bucket of pegs hanging on our clothes line that my brothers swing in my direction, aiming for my head.

Our family arrangement is broken up into three houses: House A, the family headquarters, is where we eat, where we grow our vegetables and where we meet to discuss any agenda on the family’s list of ‘your business is now my business’. It’s also the place where our selection of fruit trees grow: fig, mulberry, mango, loquats, orange, lemon, plums, mandarin and almonds. These attract people from all over the neighbourhood, each with their own bag, ready to raid the fruit.

House B is mostly for recreational purposes, either the children playing on the outdoor equipment or our very own weekly tournaments of table tennis. There’s also a basketball ring where we shoot some hoops in games of Around the World or Twenty-one that always ends up in an argument about someone cheating. We have an outdoor gym where my family work out and for some reason it always sounds like someone is dying with grunting death noises that can be heard from the end of the street.

House C is our own mini supermarket that stocks up endless number of snacks and junk as well as a place to store most of our unnecessary items we hoard from the Sunday Markets.

*

To the regular human or the creepy neighbour hiding behind the towels in the flats, our family might look like a little cult, hidden in plain sight from the rest of the world.

I stumbled across this realisation that I could be in a modern-day cult whilst watching a YouTube video about the best and worst of X Factor auditions. One of the contestants grew up in a strict cult-like family where she described her freedom as ‘something her parents controlled’ and that ‘her choices always had to be family approved.’ She wasn’t allowed to come and go as she pleased and had to ask for permission to have friends over.

Wait, what? If that’s the criteria of being in a cult, then every single Arab on Earth is raised in one. We sign over our rights to things like choices and freedom when we’re born. If I was on X Factor, my audition tape would go something like this: ‘Hi, my name is Rawah and these are my parents Matt and Lucy.’ (I thought it’d be funny to use white names.) ‘I’ve brought all 25 of my family members, including my uncle and his two wives, the three neighbours and their dog Clifford.’

I grew up with a big family and we did everything together. I thought this was normal until I went to university and found out that most people visit family over the holidays and move out of their home when they turn eighteen. I was still climbing trees and figuring out how to offer tea without burning our guests. Our home was our own secluded Wonderland and I didn’t feel the need to leave the house to be entertained. My parents encouraged freedom of expression. Most Arab parents would lose it to see their children spray paint the garage with the name Malcolm X in bold black letters or use a roll of plastic sheets for a slip ‘n’ slide with Morning Fresh detergent, or use a Frisbee to throw between the houses – but mine sat back and cheered us on. We had everything we needed. Why would we ever leave the house? Oh … I just got it. Well played, mum and dad. So, it looks like I was in a cult after all.

Rule #6 If you can’t beat them, join them.

It’s human nature to want a place to belong, a place that’s yours, a place you can be yourself. My life moves between ever-changing worlds, that of my village home life in Punchbowl, something that’s close to a traditional Arab life, and the outside reality of Western Sydney. I can’t help but think about the African Proverb about needing a whole village to raise a child.

My mind scrambles through a reel of childhood memories, all along I was receiving valuable lessons if I just paid attention instead of being focused on the negativity people were hurling towards my community. The supermarket men, who helped my mum with the groceries, taught me how lending a helping hand can go a long way. The pharmacy made me see the importance of remembering someone’s name and how special that can make someone feel. The baker taught me what a smile can do to defuse a bad situation and a customer’s bad manners. The owner of the chicken shop taught me what a small gesture like remembering a person’s order can do, especially after a hard day’s work. But perhaps the biggest lesson was from the coffee drinking men who told me stories of my father. There was his charity work to support struggling families. Or the fact that he was one of the first Muslims to enter politics, though not elected, still an achievement for someone that came to Australia with just his dreams.

Generosity and hospitality come with the territory. I now understand that place isn’t about what other people think or feel about my home, rather it’s about what I believe and how I see myself.

I lay back on the cold lush grass, the familiarity lingers. I take in the fresh air. The clouds morph back to fit my imagination. All is good in the world.

Rule #1 Take a deep breath and pray.