Sara M Saleh’s summer: ‘Our afternoon is spent in a smog of smoke, kebabs and kafta rolls’
I call the exterminator for the third time. He said he would be here an hour ago.
“Reliable. Affordable. Pet and environmentally friendly.”
Roach season – otherwise known as summer – is upon us. I’m not one for killing animals, even insects, but I reached my tether when my cat dragged a dead, winged thing into the bedroom a few days ago. This was a particular trauma after a mutant roach the size of my fist nosedived towards my face at my in-laws’ garage in Auburn last summer. It had it in for me.
Despite the delay, I still get a head start on my Sunday errands, which involves me zigzagging across my suburb and surrounds. We are throwing my mother a farewell picnic before she goes to Lebanon for two months. Our place in Beverly Hills is too cramped and too hot and the cats are not fond of parties, and now that we are free of winter demands to stay cosy under blankets or by the fire in our back yard … down the road to Oatley Park it is.
I like Beverly Hills as it warms. I like walking over to our dingy local cinema with the stale popcorn, and even staler carpet, for our ritual Monday night movie, which makes the start of the working week more tolerable. I like that Beverly Hills is a “gateway”; it’s not quite the destination but a suburb you have to go through to get somewhere else, the more imposing suburbs: Hurstville on one side, and Roselands on the other, with their morgue-cold malls and aquatic and leisure centres. Ten minutes and 100 traffic lights down the roasting slab of concrete known as the M5 is Lakemba and its mosque, and eight minutes the other way is Oatley, with “our” castle (which the internet tells me was built during the Great Depression and used to be a kiosk) nestled between mangroves, bushland and bay access to Georges River.
Saturdays my partner, Tarek, is at Flemington markets helping with the family’s fruit stall. He has done his heavy lifting for the weekend so I’m running point on this party. At least he remembered to tuck away a few crates of leftover fruit for today. Before I leave, I make sure to refill Cappy and Chai’s water bowls. Our house is always 5C hotter in the summer (and 5C colder in winter). Once I grab my coffee from our local run by a father and son duo, I pick up coal for the barbecue (which at some point will be co-opted for the sheeshas), a couple of kilos of skewers and chops from the halal butcher at the bottom of Roselands, two-dozen spinach pies from Naji’s (I call ahead to avoid their Sunday morning rush!) and oversized bags of ice from the local servo. My in-laws will bring mountains of bread from their shop in Lakemba and one of my sisters-in-law will make some sort of salad mixed with seasonal fruit – enough for seconds and thirds – while the other will bring racks of fold-up chairs and balls for the kids. Everyone knows their role by now – these extended family gatherings are a summer staple.
I assume the TikTok crowd hasn’t discovered Oatley yet, it’s not featured in any “trendy secret spots” reels, but I have sent Tarek ahead of time anyway because there’s one castle and we can take no risks. Undercover picnic real estate is fiercely competitive and, as a western Sydneysider, Tarek understands this. His family used to drop off his Jiddo at 9am, newspaper in hand, to stand sentry for three hours by the coveted picnic table until the rest of the family arrived at noon.
I finish errands and arrive early, face like a pufferfish and hands tangled in bags, to set up camp at the castle. Actually, it’s hardly a castle but people love feeling like they’re elsewhere. The water gently pulls up into the shore. We don’t swim but there are few here swimming and, from a distance, some teenagers in caps and shorts kayaking. Our afternoon is spent in a smog of smoke, kebabs and kafta rolls drizzled with a battalion of sauces, cans of fizzies sweating and the portable speaker humming low with Arabic classics as we talk over it and over each other.
We remind Mama that this party is in her honour. To many people, summer is about gatherings but for me it is usually tinged with an emptying. As our homes and streets come alive with heat and longer hours of daylight, in some ways it can be quieter as our families fly wholesale from home to our various homelands.
The sun slips out for the evening and a few roaches start to congregate by the bins. I read somewhere that roaches may be the answer to saving the planet. In the interim of their uprising, I am ready to pack up and go to my freshly sprayed home.
Sara M Saleh is the author of Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm Press) and The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat (UQP).