A Sky So Close to Us

Question

by Shahla Ujayli

Our house soon had two wings. The Eastern wing was antique, built out of old-style bricks and restored as if it were a building from the eighteenth century that had only yesterday dusted itself off. Its ceilings were dotted with Abbasid-style domes and vaults. It had an office, a reception hall, and a vast dining room that opened onto an inner courtyard blooming with flowers and lemon and citron trees planted around a large swimming pool with a blue granite bottom. The West wing was modern. The bed-rooms were divided between two floors, with a little inner staircase connecting them. It went from the attic all the way down to the main door of the house, which opened onto a simple outer garden planted with jasmine, white jasmine, basil, and red roses. There were straw chairs whose seats transformed over time into ones made of colorful plastic wire, one of them blue, the other red, the third green.

All of our household belongings were precious and carefully selected. Each had its own specific memory. The reception halls were decorated in the Louis XV style, the living rooms copied Harrods, and everything was crafted by the best-known furniture maker in Aleppo, Leon Massabki. The chandeliers in the reception halls were made from pure crystal that Baba had brought with him from Austria. The lamps in the other rooms were bronze—three were antique oil lamps, dating back to my great-grandfather’s day, that Mama had found cast aside in the house’s basement. She took them to the Hamawi shop in Aleppo and had them turned into electric lamps. All the carpets were Persian, of course—our family wasn’t open to Chinese or German rugs, no matter how antique they were. We had two very large Persian carpets, three a bit smaller, and five more from Kashan. My father inherited his rugs from my grandfather, who in turn inherited them from his father and grandfather, and so on. The vases, cups, and ashtrays made of silver, white, or colored crystal were carefully arranged on the sideboards and tables and in the windows. My parents brought these things back from their many travels—to Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. The paintings on the walls were also hung with obvious care, originals by Syrian and Arab artists, most of whom were friends whose paintings Baba loved to acquire from exhibitions held in Damascus, Aleppo, and Beirut: Louay Kayali, Fateh Moudarres, Saad Yakan, Waheed Mugharaba, Sharif Muharram, Tammam al-Akhal, and Fawaz Younis, who was from Raqqa.

Though our house never was lacking in maids, there was one type of housework that my sister and I always took it upon ourselves to do, something we were very good at: polishing the antiques and cleaning the rugs. The maids each had their own different fates—Rahima the Kurdish woman who was later murdered, Jamila from Nouriya who used to say that her brother had given his kidney to the singer Samira Tewfik. There was also Sabah who was an Alawi and later married an army officer. But their fates were never tied to polishing the antiques. Mama used to say that was our work, that it was no work for servants, that we should ponder the spiritual importance of what we held in our hands, that these objects should carry our fingerprints. A little bit of water on the crystal and then wipe it with a dry cloth; wipe the bronze and silver down with a cotton cloth moistened with a special liquid from Beirut. The oil paintings had to be dusted with a feather duster to preserve the integrity of their colors.

The most expensive piece decorating the large re-ception room in the antique wing was the National Bloc walnut-wood wardrobe, which was a meter and a half tall, a meter wide, and a half-meter deep. It had two shutters on the bottom and six drawers on the top—three on each side. My grandfather had stored his political documents related to the National Bloc in it when he was the regional represen-tative, making my father a witness to the political history of his family. When he came back from America, he thought it looked like junk because my auntie Layla had put old newspapers and dust rags in it. Leon Massabki restored it, first staining it a dark brown color. He re-drew its designs in gold, put new bronze handles on its drawers and an expen-sive piece of gray- and black-veined white marble on its top. He also installed old brass locks in the shapes of animals—a turtle, a bear, and a snake—which Baba had bought in the old souq in Muscat, Oman. An original red velvet box was placed as a centerpiece. It impressed everyone who saw it, for it held pure 24-carat gold jewelry with the name Suhayl Badran engraved on it. It was a memento of his having received first prize from the Arab Cities Association for his restoration of Raqqa’s ancient city walls in 1984.

Interlink Publishing Group Inc.

Question
Use the passage to answer the question.

In paragraph 3, what is the significance of the walnut-wood wardrobe appearing like “junk” to the grandfather?

(1 point)
Responses

It represents his potentially changing views as a result of being in America.
It represents his potentially changing views as a result of being in America.

It represents the speaker’s confusion over her grandfather’s politics.
It represents the speaker’s confusion over her grandfather’s politics.

It represents the grandfather’s neglect of the family.
It represents the grandfather’s neglect of the family.

It represents the damaging political climate in Raqqa.

Answer 1

The correct response is:

It represents his potentially changing views as a result of being in America.

This interpretation is supported by the context in the passage, which suggests that the grandfather's perception of the wardrobe changes after returning from America, indicating a shift in his values or aesthetic sensibilities.