I did, I had, and Mona knew it. She looked at me like I was terribly naive, and I dropped my eyes back to the duvet cover. Ariel’s upraised hand peeked out from the hem of my shorts; it was smudged now.
‘Nothing is perfect,’ she continued. ‘My marriage isn’t perfect and neither is hers.’
‘She wouldn’t cheat on Mish’al though.’
There was a beat of silence, but she had no choice but to admit it. ‘No … no, she wouldn’t.’ She came and sat across from me. ‘Look, I know how awful it is, okay? I’m not denying I did an awful thing. But it’s over.’ She looked sincere and I wanted very much to believe her. Her hand with its myriad rings played with the hem of her dress. ‘I hate that you know this about me. I was going to end it before anyone found out. And now you know and you hate me.’
‘I don’t hate you,’ I replied. ‘I’m just shocked and … hurt, I suppose. I always thought you were better than this.’
She winced and I wished I could snatch the words back, but they were out there and she accepted them with a nod. ‘I’ll be better. I’ll do better. I don’t want things to be over with Rashid, I do love him.’
I still found it hard to believe but I nodded all the same. There was another silence. I wanted to ask for details, for her to tell me what was wrong in her marriage, but she’d already deflected the question once, and I could not tolerate the idea that she might blow me off again. Finally she leaned in and wrapped her arms around me.
I returned the embrace, chin propped on her shoulder. I clung to her the way I used to with guys at parties when we were younger, the way I had with Hamad in his green jeep, with Bu Faisal in the back of a black town car in Berlin. I clung because I needed the contact, the verification that I was more than loosely bound mud. I needed to feel the heartbeat of another thumping against my skin, the rise and fall of their breathing, the illusion that I was not terribly, terribly alone.
Too soon she let go and stood. She wandered over to the Goyas with a frown, taking them in one by one: the lunatics in the yard; the mad and frightened crowds; the beasts and flames and stakes.
‘These are … dark,’ she said, tilting her head and leaning closer to the prints.
‘I know,’ I replied, pulling at a thread in my shorts.
‘Darker than the Dorés,’ she added, glancing at the opposite wall with its black and white prints I’d picked up at museums in London and Paris and anywhere else I could find them.
‘Yeah.’
She moved back down the line, pausing every so often. ‘Your mother must love them.’
I chuckled. ‘She hardly comes in here anymore.’
‘Mission accomplished then.’ She stood back, arms crossed, and surveyed the whole collection. I must have had twenty or thirty of them up on the wall. ‘They’re cool.’
I laughed again. ‘I don’t know if anyone’s ever called Goya cool, but …’ I shrugged. ‘I like them. I don’t know why.’
She turned to me, eyes dark and serious. ‘You’re okay.’ It was not a question. Unlike everyone else, she never asked it as a question. It was always a statement, an opinion, a conclusion, as much then as it had been when we were younger. You’re fine, because I decree it to be so. The world tended to bow down to Mona, so if she said it, it must have been true.
‘Of course.’
She turned in a circle, taking in my illustrations that I’d squeezed into gaps between the masters’ prints. She hadn’t seen my sketches for ages. ‘Did you do this one?’ she asked, pointing at a replica of Doré’s Charity, Hope, and Faith. The sisters were bedecked in black djilabiyas instead of Greco-Roman robes, their heads adorned with glinting jeweled headpieces rather than leafy wreaths, and they stood in an oasis racked by a raging sandstorm rather than the spheres of Dante’s Paradise.
‘Yeah.’
She turned to me. ‘You’re really good.’
I lowered my head, uncomfortable with praise. ‘Thanks.’
‘You should’ve become an artist.’
‘Here?’ I replied with a scoff.
She propped her hands on her hips and shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘Art is a hobby, not a career,’ I replied, mimicking Baba’s voice.
She smiled at the impression. ‘People are doing all sorts of things now that didn’t used to be acceptable jobs – chefs, baristas, event planners. People never used to do stuff like that. Besides, it doesn’t have to be art-art,’ she added, pointing at the sketches. ‘It could be something related, like graphic design or something.’
I huffed out a breath. ‘With my relationship with computers?’
‘You could go to school for that.’
Could I leave? Just quit my job and go to some art program somewhere? Would that stop my mother from pressuring me into marriage? The idea seemed ludicrous, so out of the blue for me, something I would never have the courage to do. I imagined how my parents would react to my wanting to leave, imagined the fight they would put up, the guilt they would instill in me.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Think about it.’ She smiled, winked, and added, ‘Come on, I owe you a fro-yo.’
When I was twenty-one Mama invited the first suitor over to see me. It was the Greater Eid, the Eid of the Slaughter.
That’s not hyperbole. It was the festival of sacrifices, where sheep are slaughtered in the yard to commemorate Ibrahim’s willingness to make a sacrifice of his son. It was a day that saw butchers in blood-soaked T-shirts walking the streets, stepping through gates as needed. It was a day for families to gather in the patriarch’s home to watch the event: boys’ sandaled feet slipping in the blood; the girls, past puberty, uninvited and left to hang out of windows or over balconies with their mothers to watch; the loud ‘Allahu Akbar’ of the butcher; the helpless bleating of the sheep, or its terrible innocence if the butcher was good and kept the blade out of sight.
I recall being always on the brink of panic that week. Cheeks and lips numb. Heart in throat. A doom nimbus following me everywhere.
He wanted to be an architect, the first man she brought around. His name was Rashid. I’ve spoken of him.
He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life up to that point: thick hair the color of India ink; skin like tea splashed with milk; massive, dark brown eyes under thick brows. He had a nose like a falcon’s, dominant and proud. He was broad with shoulders like rolling desert dunes.
We hardly spoke. His fleeting glances skipped over to me every few minutes and I kicked them away, letting them scatter like marbles – to the gold and brown tapestry on the wall above our heads, to the garden beyond the window, to the collection of ouds displayed in the corner, standing upright, strings gleaming against the dark wood of the pear-shaped instruments.
‘No, I don’t play.’
‘Her father used to a long time ago.’ Mama’s hand squeezed then patted my thigh. A silent reminder to smile.
I had to serve the tea. A show of domestication. I cursed the delicate glass istikans and their delicate glass saucers. Gold spoon and sugar cube fighting the cup for space. It started to shake as soon as I lifted it. Istikana on saucer, spoon on saucer, sugar against spoon against istikana. This punishing jingle jangle. One or more of the items was going to fall, I was sure of it. It would all go crashing down, glass shattering on marble, the white of his dishdasha splattered in Lipton tea and saffron flakes.
The pass-off was almost complete, he nearly had control, I nearly relinquished my hold, when the sugar cube somersaulted off the lip of the saucer. It could have taken everything with it in some terrible domino effect. But he caught it, white cube in his beach-colored palm.
He smiled, I smiled, but still the terror flopped in my belly like a dying fish.
Later the four of us went outside; Mama showed his mother the garden while we stood on the front steps. Baba had the yard done up in lights: twinkling strings of white and icy blue hung from tree branches, so it looked like they were dripping lights; recessed spotligh
ts were embedded in the floor of the pathway leading up to the house; and tall lamps cast a warm glow over the grass and flowers and vines climbing the boundary walls.
‘That’s Baba’s radish plant,’ I explained as our mothers bent at the waist to look at something.
‘Do you garden?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I.’ He shook his head. ‘It seems … unnatural in some crazy way, like we’re trying to make this land something it’s not.’
It was an articulation of my thoughts, that eloquent little statement. I looked at him with new eyes then, possibilities unfurling in my mind like hesitant flowers, but his dark eyes were scanning the yard. Our mothers made their way patiently around the greens. And so slowly, to give us some phony semblance of privacy.
‘I hate this,’ he said.
‘Me too.’
The show went on. ‘I’m just going to let Um Hamad see the other end of the yard,’ Mama called out, leading the other woman around the bend of our house towards the back.
I took him on our own tour then, pointing out all the silly things my father was desperate to grow – the carrots and cherry tomatoes, even a baby olive tree (it would die within a month.) Rashid had a thing for cars so I drifted with him to the open garage, letting him tell me things about the Mercedes parked there. The hand that had caught the sugar cube ran over the metal, tracing the lines of the car, fingers dipping in and out of grooves, and I tried to imagine how those hands would feel on me. The dishdasha glowed in the glare of the neon lights, making him look darker than he was. His mouth was relaxed, smiles frequent and easy, and I wondered if there was anything in the world he feared.
Headlights swept the gate, and a car pulled up sideways to the garage door. Mona leaned over and stuck her face out of the passenger side window with a drawn-out ‘Hi!’ Zaina gave me a don’t-blame-me shrug.
‘These are my friends,’ I said. He offered a small wave, but said nothing. ‘What are you doing here?’
Mona rolled her eyes up into her thick black bangs. ‘We’re here to rescue you, obviously.’ My face flamed in some combination of mortification and irritation, compounded when she scowled at him and added, ‘She’s not for sale.’
He took it with an easy smile and a laugh. ‘Good to know.’
Mona slapped her hands on the steering wheel. ‘Come on, let’s go!’
I glanced sideways at him, but he was watching her with a smile, all white teeth and stretched full lips under the crisp folds of his ghutra.
‘I told you not before nine,’ I hissed at her, looking over my shoulder for signs of Mama.
She glanced at the console. ‘It’s fifteen till; what difference does it make?’
‘Mona!’ Zaina yelped, smacking her on the shoulder.
‘What?’ she asked. I gestured to Rashid, but she only shrugged and fiddled with the radio, clearly content to sit and wait.
‘Go on.’
I turned to him with a frown, still listening for sounds of our mothers.
‘Go on, it’s fine.’
‘Mama will kill me.’
‘No, she won’t,’ he replied, waving away my comment. ‘We’re about to leave anyway, so it’s fine.’
‘It’s rude is what it is,’ I said, ignoring Mona’s snort.
‘Look,’ he began, eyes drifting back to me, ‘I’m leaving for graduate school in a few months and I’m not looking to get married now. I only came to shut my mother up. And she said my opinion was the only one that mattered tonight, and I’m not offended, so …’ He petered out with another shrug.
I glanced over my shoulder one more time.
‘Listen to the man,’ Mona chimed.
‘I’m going to kill you.’
‘You’ve been saying that since we were five, now get in.’
Mama didn’t speak to me for two weeks. Nadia was mortified. Baba thought it was hilarious.
Rashid told the story for years afterwards, saying he fell in love with Mona’s scowl before anything else.
6
Snow Globes
‘There’s another theory that says Prospero is like a child who matures throughout the course of the play,’ Yousef said as we settled into uncomfortable leather chairs. ‘And that by being on the island, he’s separated from society so he can mature.’
We had left work to drop in at one of the many coffee places sprouting up downtown. The place was an ode to steampunk-industrial, with concrete floors and walls and exposed piping. Brass and copper presses lined the counter, with glass beakers and high-tech milk frothers. Some nondescript World music dripped from the speakers. A newer place had just opened up next door, and their line stretched down the street.
‘Hmm.’ I leaned my head back against the fake leather and sighed. Yousef was going ahead with plans for his movie club. That Tempest film was the first one up, and it seemed he’d chosen me to hone his talking points for the discussion he had planned to follow the screening. Unfortunately, it meant I had to hear it all for the second time. I tried to contribute nevertheless. ‘What does that mean for Caliban and Ariel then? Are they still parts of his psyche?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ he replied, sipping at his espresso.
‘Caliban being his child-self,’ I said, ‘and Ariel the more responsible, adult side.’
‘Ooh, that’s good,’ he said, pulling out his phone and making a note on it. He nodded and added, ‘So, the whole play becomes a musing on individualism and becoming an adult?’
I slurped my iced coffee. ‘It can be about more than one thing.’
‘Of course,’ he replied, still looking down at his phone. Finishing the note, he looked up at me and chuckled. ‘Remember when you said all kids when they’re born should be dumped to be raised in orphanages without parents? Or on islands even, like in Lord of the Flies? It’s sort of like that with Prospero; he’s dumped on this island to mature into a king.’
‘When did I say that?’
‘When we were in Germany a few months ago for that conference.’
I swirled my drink. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Of course you don’t. You were high as a blazing sun at the time.’
‘Shhh!’ I hissed, glancing around us.
‘There’s no one here,’ he said, gesturing around the cold, empty café.
‘Regardless. It never happened.’
He made that sound again. ‘Yeah, you tell yourself that, sweetie.’ He chuckled at my continued frowning and returned to his drink. ‘Do you remember any of that night?’
I sighed. ‘Parts of it.’ I clawed through memories of cold November nights, of dancefloors cloudy with smoke and lights and sweat, bodies bumping bodies then pausing to test, to invite. ‘I remember fluffy white angel wings. I was a bird, and we danced for a long time.’
There was a look of nostalgia on his face as he started shaking his head. ‘I don’t remember ever seeing you so happy.’ I didn’t say anything to that. ‘God, do you remember that awkward breakfast meeting with Bu Faisal? I think I was still a little hammered.’ He finished the rest of his espresso, and then his fingers wandered to the cookie sitting on a plate between us. I’d ordered it for us to share, but I could practically see him counting the calories and how many hours he’d have to put in to work it off. I reached over and broke off a piece of the oatmeal raisin goodness. He watched me chew and swallow, and yes, maybe I made a little hum, because he sneered at me then broke off a piece of his own.
We chewed in silence for a while, and I thought about Ariel. My replicas of him were multiplying; they were in sketchbooks, my monthly planner and notepads at work, and still on my skin. Beneath my work clothes – my nice trousers and blouse and blazer – that sprite was inked all over my body: I’d blackened the outline on my thigh; I’d drawn him trapped in a tree on my other thigh; he was crawling up my left forearm, looking up at me with eyes that yearned for freedom. I was sliding into obsession, I knew. Between The Tempest and the Goyas on my wall, all my sketches lately ha
d been of monsters and sprites. There was something about Ariel that comforted me even while rendering me unbearably sad. The illustrations felt more real to me than my life, more real than my daily routine, more real than the circus and play-acting my mother put me through.
‘I want to get a tattoo.’
No reaction. Yousef’s eyes were on a group of guys that had walked in, all fancy suits and stiffly gelled hair. He studied them with an intensity he didn’t seem aware of, and the last piece of cookie in his hand was returned to the plate.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘What?’ He turned to me, seemed surprised and a blush crawled into his olive cheeks. He shook his head as though to clear it. ‘Say again.’
‘I want a tattoo.’
He cocked an eyebrow and wrinkled his nose. ‘So not you.’
I fiddled with my straw. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘A tattoo is permanent,’ he said, like it was a sufficient explanation.
‘So?’
‘So …’ He shrugged like he wished he hadn’t said anything and glanced again at the guys getting their drinks. A blast of air hit us as the door was pulled open again. ‘You don’t really do permanent, do you?’
‘Where’d you get that idea?’
He shrugged again. ‘More a feeling than anything, I suppose.’
I looked out the door at the cars whipping up and down the street and the stock exchange with its scroll of symbols and colors. Though it was a pleasant enough day, men in suits and dishdashas hurried across the road, trying to get to their destinations before they started to sweat. I wondered how many of them were happy, how many were resigned, how many were as bored as I was, how many wished for something more and if any were in the process of attaining it. I wondered how many of them had no idea how miserable they were.
‘Besides, your parents would flip out,’ he said.
‘My parents would have an aneurysm,’ I replied. I could just imagine it: my father too shocked to say anything, Mama going on about religion and hellfire and Allah’s punishment for scarring your body. ‘They’d lose their minds.’
The Pact We Made Page 6