Then a small voice called out: “Can I have more cocoa, Papa?”
“If you have more now,” said Abbas, “there won’t be more for later. And
we don’t want to bust your tummy.”
Daniel peeked around the doorframe. Osh and Mina had taken over the
sofa: Osh lay on his stomach at one end, working in a coloring book; Mina sat
at the other end, reading a picture book, her long legs in pink tights just
reaching the floor.
Daniel stepped back, surprised and embarrassed.
Abbas heard him and looked up. “Daniel! My good friend Daniel! What
a surprise!” He straightened up, grinning—the fakest grin imaginable. He
sounded like the host on a TV show for kids. “Look, children. It’s our good
friend Daniel Wexler. What brings you here today? Did you just drop by your
office?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Daniel. “Hi, kids.”
“Hi.” “Hi.” Their greetings were simultaneous and mechanical, like a jan-
gly piano chord.
Abbas came toward Daniel, shifting the lone brush from his right hand
into the hand full of brushes. He lowered his voice. “Elena has a terrible cold.
She needs her sleep and asked me to look after them. It was easier for me to
bring them here, where I can work, than to look after them at home.”
“Didn’t you take care of them yesterday?”
“Yes, but her germs pay no attention to our deal. I am sorry. There was
nothing else I could do.”
You could have said no, thought Daniel. You didn’t have to give in to her.
“So did you want me to go?”
E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a
2 0 7
“Oh no. Not immediately.” He glanced over his shoulder at his son and
daughter. “I still want your eye. But we will have to wait for later for us. You
understand?”
“No problem. I get it.” Right in the neck, he got it. “You guys having fun
visiting your daddy today?”
“Fun fun fun,” chanted Osh, looking for a fresh crayon. “It stinks in here.”
He curled his lips out, delighting in the new word.
“It does not!” said Mina.
“It stinks nice, ” he explained.
They looked so small and innocent sitting on the big sofa where their
daddy and Daniel liked to get naked. Daniel hated thinking that, but he
couldn’t help it. In front of the sofa stood the electric radiator that he’d
brought from home. The studio got cold on weekends, when the college
turned the heat down; sex was less sexy when you had to do it tangled up in
blankets and sweatshirts. Now the radiator was keeping two children warm.
“They are fine,” said Abbas. “They amuse themselves. Let me show you
the work. Mina, will you turn off the boom box?”
“I like the music,” said Daniel.
“No, I would rather you look in silence. Music gives too much informa-
tion.”
Mina shut off the CD player and turned her back on the men, facing the
corner of the sofa to concentrate on her book.
Daniel followed Abbas to three stretched canvases that lay flat on the
floor. They were good-size paintings, four by six—Abbas had been very busy
since he got back. Two were nearly finished, the third solidly started. They
looked like shiny Oriental carpets, the wet paint luminous. Abbas had been
right about the music: it hung in the air even after it was turned off, making
the pictures look Indian if not Persian.
Daniel half expected a Picasso influence—he remembered their night at
the Met and how aggravated Abbas had been by old Pablo—but no, the new
work was a continuation of Abbas’s previous work, except plainer, more ab-
stract. The alphabet men and ideogram figures were gone, and these paintings
were all about color, with dark, twisty lines like the bones of paisley forming
skeletons in each picture. Color fields hung on the bones like skin, each can-
2 0 8
C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
vas dominated by a different color: one was apple green, the other Vermeer
yellow, the newest work Pompeii red. The colors were gorgeous—Abbas had
made excellent use of the new paints he’d bought in New York. It took Daniel
several minutes before he understood the bones.
“This is Arabic lettering?”
“These two are Arabic. From the Koran. That one is Farsi.”
Abbas had used text before but only the idea of text, the suggestion of
writing. These were real letters magnified, so one saw only pieces of letters,
portions of words.
Abbas pointed at the green painting. “This has a piece of ‘In the name of
God, the compassionate, the merciful.’ ” He pointed at the yellow canvas.
“This one includes ‘Anyone male or female who does what is good will enter