That summer might have been the final time Mama held Bu Faisal up as the ideal husband, but it was also the first time I saw something heroic in him – something more ideal than his generosity towards his wife or his unusual tea etiquette.
I never knew what exactly the fight had been about. It was a sunny day, and the families were all in the park – the younger kids running around like manic chickens, crying over kites that wouldn’t fly and skinning their knees and falling off bikes. Us older ones sunned ourselves on the sloping grounds and watched the people go by. The mothers were huddled up on blankets beneath the trees, gossiping and laying out food and tea and coffee for a picnic while the men wandered around and around the lake.
The commotion started far away from us, down at the bend in the lake with the restaurant and the horses lined up for rides. We heard shouting; the harsh, Arab sounds that Westerners find so threatening. Hyde Park in the summer is full of Arabs, and so, at first, we paid it little attention. Nadia and I turned our faces back to the sun, but then one of our cousins said, ‘Isn’t that Uncle Omar?’ We turned to see him being whipped around and pushed to the ground, identifiable only by the tight jeans he wore and the black leather jacket with the Tommy Hilfiger stripe, like he was eighteen and not pushing forty.
It was Bu Faisal who had him on the ground. I could tell it was him by the salmon pink shirt he wore, which all us girls had giggled about that morning. He was straddling Omar, punching him repeatedly in the face while my father and others tried to pry him off. It took all four of them to do it, only managing to get him off by the time we’d all rushed over to join the crowd growing around them.
Omar’s face was red and wet with blood. Mama kneeled beside him, wailing and dabbing at his face with the fabric of her long tunic. He was groaning in pain, clutching his bleeding nose then his side then his arm as though the pain were slithering around beneath his skin. It reminded me of the nervous energy I was suffering under more and more – the days where it felt like my heart was wandering around my body looking for something to do, like it was a little jumping bean that flicked at my throat or jangled in its cavity or tap-danced across my ribs then down to tickle my fingers.
The men were still physically restraining Bu Faisal. I looked up at him; he was like some furious Bedouin warrior, glorious in his wrath. Lips pulled back in a sneer, eyes like twin burning bits of coal, he spat curse after curse at Omar. He broke loose once, lunging forward to kick him in the ribs. Uncle Omar wailed and gripped his side, and Mama screamed at Baba to stop him. My father went to pull Bu Faisal back, but it was unnecessary. He was backing away, calling his wife and kids to join him. He sneered down once more. I looked down as well, at the tears leaking from his slimy eyes to meet the blood coming from his nose and mouth, and I smiled. When I lifted my eyes, they met Bu Faisal’s. His eyes narrowed, face falling into a frown, but his wife pulled on his arm and he allowed himself to be turned around towards the park gate.
I didn’t see them for the rest of the holiday, and I spent less time with my family. I would cajole my older cousins into taking us away from the adults, to the Trocadero or Madame Tussauds or London Zoo, though I felt too old for all of them. More and more, Nadia and I would abandon the family to go to art galleries and museums.
I discovered Fuseli, with his contortions and exaggerations and perfect colors, on a gloomy day trip to the Tate. I pored over his work – the biblical, the literary, the mythological. And when I found The Nightmare, I felt, for the first time, the unbroken thread of history. For the first time, I felt like I was more than a collection of matter floating in empty space. I felt part of something larger, my experiences no longer my own, but shared with others. I remember staring at it for hours: the woman stretched out on her back, in that position which the yathoom finds so inviting; the wide-eyed incubus, that demon, mounted on her ribs; her hand droops, lifeless, to the floor. He’s killing her. Every night, he kills her.
8
The Sleep of Reason …
The party was nearly over when Yousef and I arrived. You could tell because the soul-eradicating noise that was popular at those things had been replaced with something slower and moodier. Atmospheric, new wave strumming in lieu of bombastic 808s. There was a guy in a white vest and low-slung jeans talking about a show he’d seen in London – all I heard was ‘show’ and ‘London’ and then he stomped onto the wooden trunk-cum-coffee table, gripped the brass chandelier over his head and swung. Back and forth he went, kicking his Docs out with every go-around as girls screamed with laughter.
The coffee table was wet with glass rings; bits of dry leaves and thin paper said that most of the fun had already been had. The lights were dim, blue and white, and the word ‘Hallelujah’ blinked in pink neon from the corner. Through the sliding glass door there were people who’d decided that swimming in March was a good idea. The bottles and glasses around the pool should keep them warm, and if not, well, the human body was a pretty good conductor of heat.
‘I thought he was doing Phantom,’ Yousef said as the guy was pulled back to the ground. ‘You know, the bit in Phantom of the Opera when the chandelier swings over the audience.’
‘Never saw it.’
‘Uncultured swine.’ He sniffed at me. He wrapped an arm around my neck and led me further into the room. There were eight or nine of us in there, and Yousef and I ended up squashed into a large, black armchair.
He dragged me to one of those parties every few months. I was the reason we were so late. Showing up when it was in full swing or, God forbid, at the start was unthinkable. It was difficult for me to be in crowds. I ended up clinging to Yousef like he was a pacifier. I didn’t know what to say to people, how to connect with them, and our conversations were stilted and disappointing for all involved. The start of a party was the worst, before a rhythm was established, when couples and groups were unbalanced and still coming together. It was the easiest time to spot those that didn’t belong, and even Yousef couldn’t shield me then. So, we arrived later, when you could almost pretend you’d been there the whole time.
Chandelier Boy came to sit on the couch. I now recognized him as Zacharia-Don’t-call-me-Zach, the curator at an art gallery by the airport. I saw him every once in a while – at parties, farmers’ markets and exhibits – and we rarely spoke, which I suppose meant we were friendly enough. I was always surprised by how thin he was, like rakishly, unhealthily thin. Whenever I saw him I got the sense it might be for the last time.
He bummed a cigarette from Yousef, who passed me one in the same round, and they started chatting, elbows to knees, heads together like co-conspirators. There was a blonde at the far end of the couch, leaning back, eyes to the ceiling, having a very poor trip by the looks of it. Her eyes, lashes like moths, blinked rapidly; her chest, in low-cut, tight velvet, just heaved and heaved; and her hands pressed against her belly like she was holding something in. I hoped she wasn’t about to be sick. She flinched when Yousef flicked on his lighter, looking around with big, horse eyes like she didn’t understand how we had come to be there. Her knees were bare and pale, ghost knees, and they jiggled incessantly as she returned to blinking at the ceiling.
‘Is she okay?’ I asked, breaking into the guys’ conversation.
Zacharia turned to her for a moment, his dark eyes flicking up and down like she was a canvas he was appraising and said, ‘She’s fine. Go to sleep, Kim.’ She obeyed, shutting her eyes as Zacharia turned his attention back to Yousef.
I recognized her now. Kim. She was an American who taught English at one of the private colleges. She’d become a regular at these parties. We’d spoken a few times, but had never found much in common. I hadn’t seen her in months, and it surprised me to find that she was still in the country. I would have expected the strangeness of life here to have scared her off by now. Americans and Brits came over to teach, usually only for a couple of years, just long enough to make a buttload of money before heading off to their next posting.
Furthe
r down the sofa were TT and whichever boys were fawning over her that month. Everyone called her TT; I didn’t know her real name, though we’d hung out a dozen times or so. She was just back from some course in Paris – diamond grading or something – and she was all in black. A tight black top. Black leather pants clung to her long legs, ending in gold-tipped stilettos. A teardrop pendant hung above her cleavage; a big, shiny yellow diamond, probably real, but you never ask such questions. She sucked on a long, slim cigarette, white with green trim, blowing smoke right in the guys’ faces, but they didn’t seem to mind. I’d never met them, but they looked like brothers, both with bland features and mouths that talked and talked. The words ‘photo shoot’ and ‘model’ were bandied about, and TT threw her head back at the absurdity of modeling her own designs. ‘Who better to represent your brand?’ Thing 1 asked. ‘A professional,’ she replied, the smoke crawling up her feline features as she released it. She could be a model; she had a face that made one think of a Turkish harem – all angles, high cheekbones, and sculpted jawline. Her eyes were big and dark and heavily lined, eyebrows thick and perfectly arched. Her lips were Parisian red that night, ruby and wide and looking for trouble.
‘You have the look,’ Thing 2 protested. ‘You should use it.’ TT tossed her head and tapped her cigarette in the direction of the full ashtray on the table. ‘I’m a serious designer with a serious business. I’m not going to model my own stuff like some singer hawking perfume.’
Someone stopped the music. A guy, dripping wet from the pool and clad in gray boxer briefs, crouched by the sound system. Was this his house? Was he the DJ, or just some random guy deciding to take control? After some shuffling, opening and closing of cabinets, the warm pop and crackle of a record about to start filled the air. ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ spun out and now there was dancing. Our DJ moved in on a girl in a purple tank top, matching underwear showing through the soaked white fabric of her skirt.
TT was still shaking her head, tossing her long black hair from one shoulder to the other like an agitated cat flicking its tail. I noticed she’d shaved the right side of her head so that there was a buzz-cut strip under the hair there. The sight left me in slightly nauseated confusion. It made me feel very old all of a sudden, like I should turn down the music and ask everyone whether they wouldn’t like to go on home to bed.
I was too sober to dance, so I finished off another cigarette while everyone but me, TT, her boys, and Kim got up. Yousef had left his man-bag with me, a little black leather bag like the kind you use to hold toiletries when you’re traveling. I rummaged inside and found a little bottle of pills. They were prescription, but Yousef had said you could get a pretty good buzz off them. They were only little and white, and though I knew better than most the dangers of little white pills, I popped one in my mouth anyway, washing it down with the remnants of the glass Yousef had left on the table before me. The swimmers had all come in and as they danced they flicked drops of chlorinated water our way. There was one girl with long, soaking wet hair who was a particular nuisance, and it wasn’t long before someone threw a towel on her head. Zacharia and Yousef were dancing very close together, the kind of closeness that would be fine for two girls, but was not for them.
After the Motown medley came one side of a jazz record that hurt my head, then it was back to screaming guitars, bass that hit you low, and lyrics that a five-year-old could have written. The party was getting a second wind. They danced and danced; even TT got up to join, trailing Things 1 and 2 behind her. I stayed where I was and went through the rest of Yousef’s pack, one cigarette after the other, until I reeked of smoke and tar and whatever else was moving through the dark air.
If our behavior is nurture rather than nature led, then how come I couldn’t envision a ‘me’ that was up there dancing? Maybe hopping onto the table and taking a swing from the chandelier. It seemed impossible in a way that it shouldn’t have. Perhaps I should have had another drink or two, or rustled up something else to inhale, maybe then I’d have learned how to navigate those things.
Sometime later I ended up by the pool. It was late and nearly empty inside, and I wondered when Yousef would want to leave. I couldn’t see him in the living room anymore. The air was dead, empty and cold, raising goosebumps on my bare arms. One or two bright stars blinked down, or maybe those were airplanes flying very far away. The moon was a silver coin on black velvet, hazy and weak. I sat at the edge of the pool, dangling my legs in the cold water until they went a little numb, and then it was like they were someone else’s feet kicking in the shimmering blue. I tipped the drippy remains of glasses and bottles into the water, dark browns and caramels and crystal clear swallowed up by the chlorine scent.
‘How long was I out?’
Kim, our sleeping blonde, was squeezing through the crack in the sliding door. She rubbed her brow, her hair long and messy around her shoulders. When she looked at me, I saw raccoon eyes, the mascara and eyeliner bruising her lids. Her skirt looked made of taffeta and was very wrinkled, the creases and folds glimmering in the pool lights as she walked out to me.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, ‘a couple of hours.’
‘Fucking Mohi,’ she growled. Another nickname for another person I didn’t know. She pulled her hair back, twisting it around and around into a smooth bun, then released it, so that she really hadn’t done anything at all. Her face and chest and legs were shiny, and I couldn’t tell if it was lotion or sweat or something else. Her bare feet took her to the edge of the pool and she talked the whole time. She told me about how she didn’t usually behave like this and that yeah, she may be blonde and she may have gone to college in Miami, but that didn’t mean she was some hard-partying whore and why didn’t Mohi understand that. In the middle of this rant, the top was peeled up and off, the taffeta skirt was dragged down curves and hips, and she slipped into the water like some mermaid. And then the long hair was soaked and moved like a yellow silk cape, and I thought she must have been a siren. Her voice dropped lower, like she was talking to herself, like I wasn’t even here; she said that this was the last time she’d go to a party with him, how he always bailed at some point and went God-knows-where to do God-knows-what.
I decided that maybe she would rather be alone and stood to go.
‘Why don’t you get in?’
I shuffled my feet.
‘It’s nice,’ she said, moving her pale arms through the water, her aqua eyes fixed and lucid. ‘Cold, but nice.’ I looked through the glass door. It was still empty inside; the music had played itself out. ‘Most of the guys have gone,’ she reassured me. ‘Just TT and her fags in the kitchen.’
Before I could talk myself out of it, I removed the black dress in quick, efficient movements. No zipper, no buttons, just slid it up over my head and let it fall to the ground in a puddle of cotton. I was no mermaid, and there would be no dainty sliding into the water for me. I took three steps back, then lurched forward into a run and cannonballed into the deep end.
When I broke the surface, Kim was laughing hard, water dripping down her face and off the tip of her ski-jump nose. I apologized, but she just waved it away and dove down. From where I was treading I watched her white torso and yellow hair, with those bands of blue across her bottom and back, wiggle and shimmy as she swam underwater to the shallow end. She splashed about over there, doing handstands and forward rolls, while I stayed by the edge floating on my back. At some point she settled for just standing there, twirling around and around.
‘It’s so strange,’ she said, her voice high across the water. ‘I was talking to this girl in there earlier.’ She nodded towards the glass doors. ‘And she was telling me how she lied to her parents about where she was going tonight, telling them she was “hanging with the girls”.’ Her fingers, trailing water, came up for the air quotes. ‘Can you imagine? The girl has to be thirty-five or so, and she’s lying to her parents like that, like she’s a high school kid or something.’
I tapped my palm
s on the surface of the water, making wet slapping sounds. ‘Maybe they wouldn’t approve.’
She furrowed her brows. ‘It’s a party. Parents never approve of that, but I mean, she’s an adult.’
I had no response, and she turned away to spin more circles and send little waves across the pool. How could I explain to her that in our culture a daughter is not thought an adult until she’s married and no longer in her father’s care? That until then we just played at being adults – going to work, hitting the gym, watching our money – but remained impotent when it came to making any real decisions about our lives. I bet Kim had difficulty fathoming that a thirty-year-old had to ask permission to leave the country, or that she had to hide her male friends from her parents because ‘good girls’ didn’t socialize with men. My parents had no idea who Yousef was; in the ten years I’d known him, as a friend, then as a colleague, they’d never met him nor heard me so much as mention his name. How could I make her see the myriad paradoxes in our culture? That while a few families were like Mona’s, who’d actually encouraged her to get a degree abroad and had been disappointed that she’d chosen to stay with us, most of them were like mine and Zaina’s, who thought we shouldn’t do anything without considering what society might think of it first.
Our lives were these elaborate plays, and we all wore masks. There was a life that people saw, where you were respectable and did all the right things, a life where people thought highly of you and you were firmly set on a predictable trajectory. But there was another life as well, one inside you, a life where you thought things you were too ashamed to say out loud, where you lied to people and you lied to yourself. It sometimes felt like I had put my past in a hole and spent my time shoveling dirt into it, but like some cheap horror movie, it kept trying to claw its way out.
The Pact We Made Page 8