Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

father’s Suzuki Patrol while his barely teenaged brothers and sisters drove around in the dark, or
he missed being a child. Most of all, he knew it was what Jasem would like to hear.
“Yeah.”
“You never took us, though.”
“I don’t know how to drive on the sand that much,” Hamza admitted.
“Who drove you then?”
“Whoever.”
Jasem laughed. “Qasim, right?”
Hamza nodded his head. “Sometimes him. He doesn’t come to the house a lot, right?”
Jasem shrugged. “No one really does.”
“Well, he called me to ask if you arrived.”
“Who told him I was coming to New York?”
Hamza grinned a bit. “Being with the police told him.”
Jasem made a face. He picked at the meat on the plate, pulling it apart.
“You know when I was small, we only had one car.”
“Which one?”
“Suzuki, white patrol car.”
His son grinned at the thought, teasing. “That’s what made mama fall in love, for sure.”
“I was eight, maybe, from where will your mother come and fall in love?” Hamza couldn’t
help but laugh anyway.
“Okay, okay.”
“We never had anything to do in the day time other than stay outside and play with the
other kids. Unless our grandmother came, we weren’t allowed to come inside the house until
sunset,” Hamza said. He was unsure why it mattered to say this. “Can you believe it? I
sometimes would pray to be a grownup just to sit inside and watch TV.”
“Hard times,” his son said.
“It was.”
“Then what?”
“Then, what? Then, my father. Sometimes it seemed like he just wanted to be strict for
the sake of being strict. Age meant everything to him. Only my mother would sit on the balcony
and watch us, or come in pants and walk with us to the centers.”
“Like Sahara?”
“Even older.”
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