Wasted Salt

by Sarah Houssayni

  “Well, aren’t you just fancy!” Diane said.

  “It’s our holiday, Eid-al-Fitr, the festival of breaking Ramadan fast,” Noor said.

  “Good thing you two broke fast all along! If you will excuse me, I got some crocodile hunting to catch up on!” Diane said in a laugh that ended in a staccato cough. Diane got up and went to her room where she usually lit a cigarette and watched TV.

  “We got some partying to do girls! Let’s hustle!” Iris said.

  Zahra put on her shoes and they headed to Town West Mall. Iris told them that first they had to get some makeup on Zahra, “So people don’t think you been kidnapped before you got a chance to get ready!” Zahra insisted that she didn’t like makeup and had never worn it.

  “Just as well!” Iris said, and kept heading towards the makeup counter in one of the department stores. “My friend Linda gone fix you up, doll! You just sit on the chair and stay still!”

  Noor nodded, excited about the idea, and Zahra went along with it for her friend’s sake.

  Linda worked on Zahra’s face for some time, Noor suggested the colors and the makeup style. Zahra saw a side of Noor she had not encountered before, a Noor that was focused and self-assured. When Linda was done, she handed Zahra a mirror.

  Zahra didn’t look like herself. She could pass for someone with a perfect life and a perfect past. Her face with makeup made her baggy T-shirt and black sweats look like someone else’s clothes.

  The three women were grinning as they watched Zahra look at her reflection.

  “See what I tell you! I know that pretty face of yours could use some putting together,” Iris said.

  Zahra asked Linda how much money she owed.

  “Zero dollars and zero cents! Iris is my childhood friend. It’s my pleasure, especially because Iris says it’s a holiday where you guys come from,” Linda declared.

  Linda then asked them where they were working, and Zahra told her that she was waiting to hear back from Wal-Mart because their house cleaning job was not going as well as they thought it would.

  “What about your young lady?” Linda asked Noor.

  “I was cleaning houses with Zahra,” Noor replied.

  “Forget about housekeeping! You should come work for me. You got good makeup skills, look at that pretty face of yours. You are an artist! I bet you are a good salesperson too,” Linda added.

  “Girl she can sell ice cubes to the Eskimos! Don’t let that shy smile of hers fool you!” Iris said.

  She had never met Noor until the day that she walked into Hussein’s apartment and rescued her with Zahra.

  Linda took Noor’s number after they agreed to meet after Eid was over.

  People were staring at Zahra more than they ever had, it made her feel awkward no matter how beautiful Iris and Noor told her she was. She excused herself to go to the bathroom and washed the makeup off. When she got back to the food court, Iris and Noor were standing in line in front of the pizza place. Iris insisted on paying. Noor picked a slice of cheese pizza and Zahra got breadsticks. Iris got two slices of pepperoni pizza, “in case somebody wanted to share.”

  “We cannot eat pepperoni, it is made of pork meat, haram in our religion, against the rules,” Noor said.

  Zahra’s face turned red. She didn’t want Noor to hurt Iris’s feelings, not after everything Iris had done for them.

  “Ah, well then, the more pizza for me!” Iris said and laughed. Noor smiled to her and they started talking about Noor working at the makeup counter. Noor’s spirits seemed to be returning to her, she still moved slow and winced every once in a while when she moved.

  After the food court, the three women looked at clothes and shoes for a couple hours. Zahra hated being around clothes that she could not wear, she was more than willing to look at clothes that day, because Noor and Iris seemed to enjoy looking at and talking about fashion. Noor suggested they go to a movie at the Palace since it was so close, and it was too hot to do anything outside. Iris agreed, and they decided to watch a comedy titled Bad Moms, about moms who decide to take a break from their families. The movie made Iris and Noor laugh quite a bit. Zahra was happy because Noor seemed to be recovering.

  The day ended with ice cream from McDonalds and a car ride down the highway with the windows down and Nancy Ajram’s music up. The music came from Noor’s playlist, which Iris connected to her car with a special cable. The music was Iris’s idea. She wanted to have an Eid the way “y’all would,” and Noor told her that music was the missing piece.

  Noor sang whole songs one after another, and Iris shook her head to the rhythm with her fingers spreading out then clinching back onto the beige stirring wheel. When the car stopped in front of Diane’s house with the music blasting out of the windows, Zahra realized she was clapping her hands and smiling so hard her face hurt. It was the best Eid she had ever had.

  “Let’s do this again next Eid!” Iris said with her customary laughter.

  When Noor and Zahra walked into the house, Diane told them that a detective stopped by the house, she handed them his card.

  “If you are getting in trouble, I want you out of my house. Both of you.”

  “Diane, we are not in any trouble, somebody attacked me, and he wants to talk about it. I am going to start a job at the mall, corporate, I am hoping to pay five more dollars per week to help with utilities like you wanted me to.”

  “What are you going to do when she works at the mall?” Diane asked Zahra. Her tone was skeptical of the story Noor told.

  “She is going to work in retail too, not sure when she starts. It may take her more time to get through the process,” Noor answered.

  Zahra nodded to Diane’s verifying looks.

  Before she got in bed, Noor washed off her makeup. Her bruises looked darker but her spirits remained light. The bounce in her step assured Zahra that her friend’s spirit escaped the abuse her body had endured.

  “Zahra inti oukhti! I have never had a sister,” Noor said, she was crying.

  “Inti oukhti Kaman,” Zahra responded. She had sisters, unlike Noor, but she felt closer to Noor than she did to any of them.

  “Tomorrow we will go get jobs and the dirty Arabs can clean their own houses. We are too good to be stuck in this basement. When Allah wants His worshiper’s dream to come true, no man can stop us,” Noor exclaimed.

  Zahra cried under her covers. She hoped Noor’s God was done with the torturous phase and that indeed He had a break in store for her friend. Noor’s soft, rhythmic sleep, with the stars illuminating the ceiling seemed the closest thing to hope that Zahra had experienced in a while.

  She felt sleep slip under her eyelids. Her thoughts seemed so clear that they felt like a letter someone was reading to her.

  America made the bomb that took Zahra’s insides and kept her in the hospital for a year. When she was ready to go home, Zahra had no home to go to. Nadim became her family. America took him from her when she left Lebanon five weeks ago. As the stars lulled her to sleep, Zahra wondered if America was really to blame for her suffering. In her half-asleep mind, she considered if it was not a combination of coincidence and bad luck that took her life from her until now. The same America she blamed for so long was going to give Zahra her life back. She was going to write her own story and create the ending she wanted.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Summer heat broke in a storm that lasted a week. When the sun finally came back on Saturday, it seemed penitent and transformed into a source of pleasant warmth. In front of a yellow bungalow, Iris kneeled in her yard pulling weeds from an opulent lawn. A car pulled into her driveway, she waved expectantly at a dressed-up Noor in high heels. Noor walked hurriedly towards the house.

  “Zahra is coming over for dinner, just push that oven back on, I still got the rolls to bake, you know how she loves some fresh-baked bread,” Iris said.

  Noor mumbled something as she entered the house. She was tired after her day of work at the makeup counter, her feet hurt from standin
g long hours. She was very excited to see Zahra.

  Noor set up the table with the pink ceramic dishes and cups she bought with her employee discount at the mall. Noor took a step back from the table and smiled, pleased with her work. She would prepare koshary to serve with Iris’ pot roast and bread rolls, but first she needed to change so that her nice work clothes didn’t pick up the scent of fried onions. Noor walked into her bedroom and carefully took her suit off, put it on a wooden hanger, and set it back in her closet. She stood in front of the mirror and checked her profile. Her spandex underwear was restricting her, so she slipped it off and pulled a loose cotton pair from the drawer.

  Noor looked at the mirror again; her penis hung soft, its tip reaching just below her testicles. She put her hand over it, pushed it inside the sac the way she had done many times to pretend it was not there. The skin folds that she made with the pressure would be her vagina someday. She could see how a surgery was possible and would put an end to the years she lived in the wrong body. She released her hand and looked down again once more. Her shaft was hard. Noor smiled at the pleasurable fullness she felt between her legs.

  “You will lose the ability to orgasm from what used to be a penis. Right now, the hormones you are on affect that anyway,” Dr. Meineke had said.

  He was the plastic surgeon she drove three days to see in New York City. At that time, Noor told the surgeon that she wanted a vagina, even if it meant she never climaxed again. She would use her mermaid body as long as she needed to and, after it made thirty thousand dollars, she would be able to transform into a princess Hussein could marry. Her transformation would be more for Hussein’s family than for him—nobody should find out about her past. Hussein loved her body the way he found it, he was bewitched by her sorceress parts, and spent hours at her altar earning her love.

  Hussein killed himself the day he hurt Noor, the neighbor found him hanging from a rope tied to a pipe in the basement.

  Noor put on the rest of her clothes and left the room.

  Iris picked some roses from her garden for the dining table. Pink and red roses stood in the vase adding more color to the table. Iris took her apron off, washed her hands, and got busy finishing up the meal. Next to her stood Noor by the stove.

  She heated some oil in a saucepan, then added a chopped onion and stirred it. She kept moving the onions around the pan until they turned a light brown and filled the kitchen with aroma. Noor then added the rice and lentils and walked away from the stove after covering her now bubbling pan. When the lentils and rice softened, Noor added pasta and cubed, homegrown tomatoes that Iris had prepared on top of the dish. She then placed on the table. Zahra was always on time, she would be walking down the block from the bus stop and turning into their street any minute.

  “Remind me to send some garden vegetables with her,” Iris said.

  “She can’t eat a lot of vegetables, she hardly eats at all,” confided Noor.

  “It shows, she is a sack of bones! I can’t wait until that poor thing gets her surgery.”

  Iris saw Zahra from her kitchen window and she hurried outside to meet her. “Well look what the cat dragged in!”

  Zahra smiled and hugged Iris, who showed Zahra all the strawberries and tomatoes in the garden before they came inside.

  “The food is getting cold!” Noor proclaimed. She hugged Zahra too, and gestured both of them to the table.

  At the table, Noor talked about her day at work. She had been living with Iris for two months and working at the mall for six weeks. Diane kicked her out after police and a social worker showed up to the house to talk to Noor about Hussein’s suicide.

  The move was good for Noor, and it turned out to be just as good for Iris. A little over a year before Zahra and Noor met Iris, her daughter Dawn was sent to prison. Iris didn’t say much about Dawn, but Noor told Zahra whatever story she put together from the bits and pieces she heard from Iris and the people who came to visit her. Noor drove Iris’ car because Iris got nervous driving long distances, and they went to visit Dawn every other Monday. Both Noor and Iris were off on Mondays, so they drove three hours each way to go to the Oklahoma City Prison, where Dawn was sentenced to ten years for selling and using drugs.

  Iris always cried when she talked about her daughter. She said she was glad “her baby” didn’t die and that she trusted Jesus would fix everything. Zahra thought it was a big mess to fix, but she loved Iris and agreed with her that Jesus indeed could help. At least Jesus helped Iris wait for the ten years to pass, Zahra thought.

  Iris blamed herself for working all the time and missing the “signs,” but that was all ten years ago because Dawn ran away from home when she was seventeen. Iris didn’t hear from her except when she got in trouble with the law.

  “I kept bailing her out, until one day her crime was too big for me to fix. She had gotten herself into a mess with a man who used Dawn for prostitution and selling drugs.”

  Noor told Zahra that Dawn was a nice girl, tall, but otherwise looked nothing like Iris. She always asked her mom for Twinkies, Cheetos, and phone minutes. Dawn never called Iris with the phone money.

  “I think she calls that drug dealer boyfriend who landed her in jail,” Noor said. She told Zahra that Allah sent Iris to her and her to Iris.

  After dinner, the three women sat on the front porch on blue plastic chairs. Kids played on the street. Some of them were on bicycles, and others chased after each other. Iris had lived in that house since Dawn was five years old.

  “When does your summer class end, Zahra?” Iris asked.

  “One more week,” Noor answered for Zahra. Although Noor was a year younger than Zahra, she acted like her big sister and felt compelled to answer any question on her behalf. Zahra nodded to Noor’s answer.

  “How you liking it so far, love?” Iris continued.

  “It is very good, I registered for the next semester too,” Zahra answered.

  When Noor left Diane’s basement, Zahra wanted to leave with her, but Beth insisted that First Baptist had a contract with Diane that she expected Zahra to honor. Iris’ house was on the opposite side of town and would have put Zahra much farther from school and work, so moving there was out of the question.

  The first days without Noor were the hardest, especially since Zahra didn’t have her phone yet. It was not until a week later that Beth showed up with “double good news,” Zahra could register for a summer classes, and Wal-Mart called for her to start anytime. The weeks were a blur that started with an alarm waking her up at four in the morning and ended with falling asleep reading her class assignments.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A month after she started working, Zahra got a phone and called Mustafa with her WhatsApp, which Noor helped her install. Mustafa cried the whole time they talked.

  “Shoo shtatilik ya, Zahra!” He repeated how he missed her.

  Zahra giggled and teased him about how his love life must not be very good, for him to miss her that much. He told her that he was renting his own space and using his own tools with the money she left for him. His salon was named “Roses.” Mustafa named it after a flower, because Zahra meant “flower.”

  Mustafa had been dating a married man for the past month, and he seemed happy and in love.

  “Victor is wonderful, he treats me like a prince!” Mustafa gushed. His boyfriend was Christian, he added, which, according to Mustafa, was a good thing because Victor was more liberated and fun.

  Zahra reminded him about the heartache that came after Aziz, the last married man he dated, but Mustafa had forgotten the pain already. When he was in love, reason had to wait. He promised to text and call Zahra every day now that she had her own phone.

  Zahra’s calls and texts to Lebanon were free as long as she found a way to connect to the internet. Zahra figured out that standing outside McDonalds would allow her to use the internet. Wichita State, where she took her summer class, had internet too, but Zahra was usually running out of the class to catch the bus be
fore it got too dark.

  The busier Zahra got, the less she thought about going back to Lebanon. Her love for Nadim no longer felt like solitary confinement. Her heart seemed to be trading the solitary cell for a ball and chain, the chain grew a little longer every passing day. She had still not called him.

  Every day she thought she was ready, and every day she stopped before she dialed his number. She rehearsed the conversation about her job, the summer classes, her new friends, and Hajji. She would tell him about Noor getting hurt but leave out some details. She would tell him about Iris but not about her daughter. Zahra hoped he would tell her about his life too, perhaps they could even talk about him visiting Wichita next summer.

  When an unfamiliar number rang on Zahra’s number she hoped it was Nadim. It turned out to be the surgeon’s office in Kansas City confirming her appointment for the following Monday at quarter past eleven. Zahra had gone online at the student library, researched surgeons in the area, and requested an appointment on the website.

  It was Beth’s idea to “start looking for a doctor who could help.” She asked Zahra about it every time they met. When Zahra finally ran out of excuses and looked, she realized that getting an appointment was not as impossible as she expected.

  “I can take you to Kansas City. We can stop by our church and say hello to some of our friends!” Beth said that Friday afternoon, when she stopped by Diane’s house. It was the day to give Diane the fifty dollars of rent from First Baptist office, to match the fifty Zahra paid. Beth seemed more interested in visiting Zahra after Noor left.

  “I want to ask Noor if she can take me,” Zahra said.

  Beth’s smile instantly disappeared and she nodded. Monday was Noor’s day off and Zahra hoped Noor and Iris would take her to Kansas University for her consultation.