Bu Faisal was married to an old friend of my mother. Despite how close they used to be, I only saw his wife every once in a while, at a wedding or reception of some sort. She looked how most Kuwaiti women of her generation would like to look: hair long and thick, with highlights that looked natural; a face kept young with regular injections of Botox and collagen; a body that didn’t bear witness to the four children she’d had. She would get up and dance with the younger girls at weddings, tying a scarf around her hips when the belly-dancing numbers came on. She wore the outrageous jewels and big-name brands that she told you were from Paris or Milan, even though they all had branches at the local mall.
When I was younger, when our families used to spend time together, Mama would bring up their marriage a lot. ‘Look at how Bu Faisal treats her,’ she would say, pointing at him serving his wife tea, so unlike my father and uncles, who expected their wives to do that sort of thing. Or when his wife would show off a ring or necklace he’d bought her, and Mama would turn to me and my sister and say, ‘That’s the sort of man we want for you,’ as though lavishing someone with gifts made for a perfect marriage. She painted him as the ideal man, and my sister gobbled it up, but I wasn’t so easily convinced. At an early age I’d learned about men and the masks they wore.
Evening fell and with it the temperature. There was a definite chill in the air: on the tip of your nose; in the soles of your feet; across your shoulders. I sat in the garden, giving in to my desire to sketch Ariel from the film I’d seen with Yousef. I was attempting to duplicate those delicate features and lithe form, but my sprite was looking nothing like the actor.
It was something I often did, try and replicate things I’d seen in films or famous paintings in galleries I visited on vacation. Usually I would alter the paintings in some way, twist them into something relevant to my own time and place; I’d add Bedouin tents to a background or turn an English nose into one more reminiscent of a Saluki. Less often an image would come to me, fresh and original, and I would rush to transfer it to a sketchbook, but I was, for the most part, powerless to execute these things my mind conjured. I found more success with paintings and illustrations that were already created. When I was younger, I’d dreamed of going to art school, of becoming an artist, but Baba maintained that art was a hobby and not a career and besides, copying work rather than creating it probably wasn’t what art schools looked for. I’d done business at university because I was ‘meant to’, and I subsequently took a job in the finance industry because I was ‘meant to’. It was expected of me, like it’s expected of most of us.
I abandoned Ariel and started doodling my namesake in a halo around his head, petals curling around his pointy ears. I’d been drawing dahlias since I found out my name was a flower. My father had come back from a business trip once and brought me a coloring book of different flowers. When I’d colored them all, I tried drawing them from scratch. He bought tracing paper and taught me how to secure it with paper clips, then, his hand over mine, he showed me how much pressure to put on the pencil as I followed the lines and curves. Over and over, until I could do it with my eyes closed.
My dahlias were everywhere: on old schoolbooks; on the knees of the faded jeans I ran around in; along the borders of other illustrations I attempted; on steamed-up car windows, notepads at work and paper place mats at restaurants.
Raju, the houseboy, startled me, wheeling out the duwa – the tea trolley with built-in charcoal pit. It was brass and silver with shiny black wheels. A tea set was loaded on the bottom shelf: little glass cups; sturdy metal teapot from the old souq; mini-cans of condensed, tooth-rotting milk. He set it before me like I’d asked for it and went about lighting the charcoal cubes. Baba stepped out the front door with a ‘Ha!’ when he saw me curled up in the wicker chair. He swung his arms to the front and side, an akimbo Macarena, a bastardized version of the routine we’d all done during morning assemblies at school.
He stepped off the porch and into the yard, surveying the grass for bald spots and inspecting the date trees. It’s a barren land, but you wouldn’t know it looking at our garden. The proper names of trees and vegetation aren’t common knowledge in Kuwait, at least not among the younger generations. If pressed I could possibly have identified an orange tree, but only if it were blossoming. Baba wandered over to his herb corner as Raju finally got a proper fire going and left the duwa in my care. My father squatted down on his chicken legs to check the nets protecting his rosemary and mint. He was happy, enormously happy, his only concern whether the street cats were messing with the herbs again. There was a particularly fierce tom, a wall-prowling howler with a personal vendetta against mint, who tore through the nets Baba set up and gnawed at the baby stems and leaflings. This infuriated him. I’d suggested, more than once, that he move his herbs inside, but he said they would taste different if they were grown through glass.
The front gate opened, and Nadia and her brood spilled into the yard. First came the twin boys, tearing across the grass to the trampoline Baba had set up for them in the corner. ‘Shoes off!’ I called as they hoisted themselves over the bar, a directive that was ignored until their grandfather sent over a quelling look.
Then came the little one, Sarah, tiny hand clutched by Nadia as she had a distressing tendency to sprint towards the street. She tugged and tugged, but only when the gate was firmly shut behind them was she released and allowed to fly through the yard and jump in my lap. Nadia couldn’t get so much as a greeting in until Sarah was done telling me about her day: there was the spring show rehearsal and the girl next to her who didn’t know any of the words; there was the PE class where she wasn’t chosen in Duck, Duck, Goose; there was the teacher who was having a baby, and why couldn’t Mommy have one too?
I laughed over at Nadia, who had a horrified expression on her face. ‘Maybe in a few years, baby,’ I consoled Sarah, running my hand over her curly hair, so much like mine when I was her age.
‘But I want one now,’ she whined into my neck.
‘I’d sooner shoot myself,’ Nadia mumbled, jerking her chin towards the boys, who were half jumping, half wrestling on the trampoline.
I cuddled the little one tighter in my lap. ‘It’d be okay if you had another girl.’
‘Can I get a guarantee?’
Mama came out to join us, and Nadia rose to greet her. Sarah wanted to stay put, but I nudged her to her feet and over to her grandma.
‘Hayati!’ Mama lifted a wriggling Sarah up into her arms for a hug and a smattering of kisses. When she put her down, she scurried back and climbed into my lap. ‘Go play with your brothers.’
‘La Yumma,’ Nadia said with a shake of her head. ‘They’re too rough with her on there.’
Sarah didn’t seem inclined to move anyway, snuggling up to me while we talked over her head. Eventually Baba abandoned his garden to come get her; he pushed her on the swing set, trying to teach her to propel herself. I’d forgotten about the duwa, but Nadia always had impeccable manners, and she got up to serve Mama. The tea might have been too strong at that point, but she tipped the pot over a cup so it came out in a steaming, perfect arc. She filled the cup almost to the brim, knowing how our mother liked it, then cracked open a can of condensed milk and filled the remaining space with the white, syrupy liquid before handing it over.
I was a mistake. Various members of my family, at various times, have said it. Always with a smile or a wink, but the words don’t change. My parents, though they married young, had problems conceiving. Mistrustful of Western medicine, my mother watched the moon instead, counting her cycles, frequenting the lesser pilgrimage, and drinking teas of sage and fenugreek and anise. After six years, when the dismay was so entrenched that Mama had broached the topic of my father taking a second wife to give him children, she finally conceived. Nadia was received like an heir to something greater than what my parents had to offer. They took their miracle baby and wished for nothing more. Eight years later, I announced myself when Mama vomited at a table
laden with four types of fish.
‘Oh,’ my sister said, turning to me, ‘I forgot to ask how it went the other night.’
I winced. Mama frowned, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of the topic or because the tea was too hot. ‘No effort from this one, as usual.’
‘Yumma, don’t start,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘What? She should know what I go through with you. I set out a beautiful dara’a, blue and silver and bright, and she wears black like she’s going to a funeral. He’s a wonderful man. Tall, smart, lovely eyes, and she stares at her knees all evening.’
‘I was being demure.’
‘Ekh!’ Mama said, flicking her hand at me like I was a fly that required swatting. ‘Allah forgive me, it’s almost like you don’t want to get married.’ She shook her head, giving off an impression that was equal parts martyrdom and disappointment. If she were Catholic, she’d have been crossing herself. Turning to Nadia, she added, ‘Talk to your sister before she becomes a spinster and—’
‘Dies,’ I finished, making Ariel’s wiry hair a bit too dark.
‘Allah forgive you,’ she hissed, smacking my thigh. ‘Don’t say such things.’
‘You’re the one talking about spinsters,’ Nadia retorted in my defense.
‘Well, we’re getting there.’ She sighed like she was carrying an impossible burden and folded her arms over her stomach.
I dropped the sketchpad and pencil on the floor and went to join the kids. The boys were running screaming circles around Baba. They would never have to concern themselves with this. Their lives would be so easy. They would have freedoms my sister and I never contemplated: the freedom to study anywhere in the world; the freedom to live their lives without constant scrutiny, where society responded to their mistakes with ‘boys will be boys’ instead of ‘you bear the family’s honor’; and, perhaps most meaningful of all, the freedom to not marry without shame or guilt. My heart slumped at what was in store for Sarah. She was still in the swing, whining about not being strong enough to propel herself yet, so I obliged her. Nadia and Mama continued to talk, my sister tossing out gentle reprimands that my mother deflected like a ninja.
Let them talk. It was all just words.
3
A Grotesque Pandemonium
Did I have a happy childhood? It’s hard to say. I suspect many of my memories are compiled from the stories of others. That if I peeled back Nadia’s hand gestures, tossed out Mama’s commentary, and blacked out Baba’s impressions, I would be left with no memory at all save for perhaps some flashes of light or lingering scents. As a result, I put very little faith in my recollections. I’m unattached to them, can go over them with all the emotional connection of someone flicking through a waiting-room magazine. Mona and Zaina would argue about things in our past, each passionately denying or affirming what had or hadn’t happened and in what sequence. And when my vote was sought, they’d huff when I insisted I didn’t remember.
I was rarely lying when I said that.
There are flashes, though; scenes I remember with eye-watering clarity. One vacation in London where Baba took us to a museum because, ‘You need culture. Not just games and fun and shopping.’ I was twelve, and Nadia and I rolled our eyes all the way to Bloomsbury; even Mama huffed when the taxi drove down Oxford Street. Once there, Baba hustled us through the courtyard, not allowing us to pose for the obligatory gate shot: ‘Later, when the rain stops.’ It was before the renovation, before that geometric-patterned, glass monstrosity was installed overhead. He pushed us past Ancient Egypt, past the idols and the hybrid gods with their perfect posture. He allowed no more than a pause before the hieroglyphs. On through to the Assyrians, to something we could claim, as though our family roots were in Iraq and not central Saudi Arabia. We stood before reliefs of military campaigns, of hunting with chariots, of demons and human-headed bulls, while Baba talked about what he knew of Mesopotamia. Nadia got into it; she had wanted to study history at university, and she started arguing with him about the city of Ur, only for him to spin it into a discussion of Ibrahim and Nimrod and a fire that didn’t burn.
Mama and I left them there and meandered through Greece and Rome, past the amputated statues and more white reliefs showing battles and processions. Mama admired the drapes and folds wrapped around the sculptures, the way they looked like real fabric, and I stood over the shoulder of a girl as she sketched what she saw before her – hands and arms, tilting heads, and warrior poses. I watched her hand, the deft and sure movements, and the way she looked up, then down, then up again – drawing as she watched, and watching as she drew. It was mesmerizing, like a pendulum swinging back and forth. Mama took my hand and we stepped into the Parthenon, our footsteps loud in an otherwise hushed room. We went down the line quickly, hardly stopping to look at the chariots or centaurs or horses. ‘They all look the same,’ she said. I allowed her to pull me along; those headless figures didn’t interest me. And then we reached the end of the room and came face-to-groin with a statue of a man, his privates on display, hanging there like forgotten fruit. My eyes went wide, and my mouth fell open at the sight. Mama gasped, this choked sound that seemed to bounce off the marble and multiply. She clapped her hand over my eyes as she urged me to the door, but my hearing was heightened and all the way back to Baba and Nadia, I heard her stifling her laughter.
For the remainder of the day, every time I caught her eye or she mine, we would giggle behind our palms like schoolgirls.
Mona’s husband, Rashid, joined us at the mall for lunch on Saturday. Architect by day, sculptor by night, I liked him from the first time I met him. I hid it well, my affection for him. Even Mona, with all the years she’d known me, with the very way in which they’d met, had never realized it. And on the occasions when he joined our outings, or nights in, or the odd time – like that Saturday, when I became a third wheel – I was careful to remain distant so as not to sound any alarms.
After lunch we went our separate ways, Rashid to the furniture stores while Mona dragged me around the shops. She tried on outfits while I oohed and aahed on cue. I tried on shoes while she thumbed-up or thumbed-down. I endured a makeover at the makeup counter, docilely accepting lipstick and mascara while trying not to think about communicable diseases and whether there was such a thing as eye herpes.
The mall was a series of shop-lined walkways that fed into wide, octagonal spaces where you could pretend it wasn’t as claustrophobic as it seemed. You could imagine you didn’t feel the need to curl into yourself, smaller and tighter, until you were a ball of no consequence. On weekends the malls were packed: high school and college kids in their designer clothes loping from one end to the other; girls in their sky-high heels pouting their lips and flipping their hair; the brunch groups taking pictures of their food and asking the waiter to take one more shot of them. For each group like these you’d find one of the more traditional sort, women in full niqab with their little girls covered up in the hijab and their husbands with the long beards and short robes moving from one end of the mall to the other like it was another kind of pilgrimage.
There was so much there, stimulants bombarding you from all sides: bright lights bouncing off gleaming floors; neon in all the windows, on the people; shouting and laughing and music and shopkeepers asking ‘Can I help you?’ over and over. Try the new fragrance from so-and-so, the new moisturizer from this-and-that. Buy, buy, buy. Maybe if you consume enough, you can fill all those holes in your heart and head and soul.
Too much. It was too much. It attacked me from all angles until a circuit tripped in my brain. And then, a fog would descend and I could pretend, for just a moment, that I was like all the others. Normal and in desperate need of an edible food basket for a friend’s birthday.
They didn’t often believe me, on those rare occasions when I divulged my anxiety; people sought justification, saying it was impossible to feel panic on, say, a lazy Saturday at the mall. ‘Besides, you don’t look like you’re having any kind of attack,
’ they’d say, gesturing at how still I was when inside I was malfunctioning. They didn’t understand how, at those times, it wasn’t so much that the panic was taking over as that the calm was evaporating. And I had to reach and grab for it like the string of an escaping balloon. Sometimes I’d catch it; I could bring it back down and hug it to my chest. Other times, it just floated away.
In any case, I had a firm grip on it that day as we walked through the crowds. Past the perfume corridors and café eyes, we wound up at a fro-yo place. Mona took a seat, giving her shopping bags over to the empty chair beside her, and turned to face the people walking by. She liked to be prepared. We’d already run into two former colleagues of hers and a girl we’d gone to university with. Saturday at the mall, it was unavoidable, and Mona liked to see before she was seen.
It was my turn to choose, so I stood in line, looking over the options, while she scanned the faces in the crowd. By the time I’d picked our toppings, she was on the phone. I shoved two spoons in the swirled yoghurt and fruit and headed back to the table. As I slid into the seat on her other side, she mouthed ‘Rashid’ while pointing at the phone and rolling her eyes. I smirked, imagining he was trying to convince her they needed a new coffee table or corner piece. She listened mainly, saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but not much more.
And then it happened. Just like in the movies. My spoon even froze halfway to my mouth and my brain stuttered like it had hit a speed bump. Rashid walked by, with that purposeful New York City stride he’d never lost, head down and eyes on the store catalog in his hands. Mona turned to see what I was looking at, her mouth dropping open then sucking her bottom lip between her perfect white teeth. I could still hear a male voice, tinny and far away, yammering into her ear. But it was not him.
It was not him.
Rashid didn’t see us and kept walking. I returned my spoon to the bowl and stared into the crowd. Mona hissed and snapped into the phone before hanging up and dropping it into her open purse. She steepled her fingers, a ring on every one so you could hardly see the wedding band, and met my eye.
The Pact We Made Page 3