by Tahereh Mafi
He wouldn’t stop laughing.
“My dear sister in Islam,” he said, affecting horror. “Astaghfirullah. This is shameful.”
Mortification was a powerful chemical. It had dissolved my organs, evaporated my bones. I was loose flesh splayed on concrete.
He did not seem to notice.
He placed a hand on his chest, continued the show. “A young sister in hijab,” he said, tsking as he towered over me. “Alone, late at night. Smoking. What would your parents—” He hesitated. “Wait. Are you bleeding?”
He was staring at my knee, at the tear in my jeans. A dark stain had been spreading slowly across the denim.
I dropped my face in my hands.
An arm reached for my arm, waited for my cooperation. I did not cooperate. He retreated.
“Hey, are you okay?” he said, his voice appreciably gentler. “Did something happen?”
I lifted my head. “I fell.”
He frowned as he studied me; I averted my eyes. We were now positioned under the same shaft of light, his face so close to mine it scared me.
“Jesus,” he said softly. “My sister is such an asshole.”
I met his gaze.
He took a sharp breath. “All right, I’m taking you home.”
That rattled my brain into action. “No, thank you,” I said quickly.
“You’re going to die of pneumonia,” he said. “Or lung cancer. Or”—he shook his head, made a disapproving noise—“depression. Are you seriously reading the newspaper?”
“It helps me de-stress.”
He laughed.
My body tensed at the sound. Ancient history wrenched open the ground beneath me, unearthing old caskets, corpses of emotion. I hadn’t talked to him in over a year—hadn’t been this close to him in over a year—and I wasn’t sure my heart could handle being alone with him now.
“I already have a ride home,” I lied, staggering upright. I stumbled, gasped. My injured knee was screaming.
“You do?”
I closed my eyes. Tried to breathe normally. I felt the weight of my dead cell phone in my pocket. The weight of the entire day, balanced between my shoulder blades. I was freezing. Bleeding. Exhausted.
I knew no one was coming for me.
My shoulders sagged as I opened my eyes. I sighed as I looked him over, sighed because I already knew what he looked like. Thick brown hair so dark it was basically black. Deep brown eyes. Strong chin. Sharp nose. Excellent bone structure. Eyelashes, eyelashes, eyelashes.
Classically Persian.
He rolled his eyes at my indecision. “I’m Ali, by the way. I’m not sure if you remember me.”
I felt a flash of anger. “That’s not funny.”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking away. “It’s a little funny.” But his smile had vanished.
Ali was my ex–best friend’s older brother. He and his sister, Zahra, were the two people I did not want to think about. My memories of them both were so saturated in emotion I could hardly breathe around the thoughts, and barreling face-first into my past wasn’t helping matters in my chest. Even now, I was barely holding it together, so assaulted were my senses by the mere sight of him.
It was almost cruel.
Ali was, among other things, the kind of handsome that transcended the insular social circles frequented by most members of Middle Eastern communities. He was the kind of good-looking that made white people forget he was terrorist-adjacent. He was the kind of brown guy who charmed PTA moms, dazzled otherwise racist teachers, inspired people to learn a thing or two about Ramadan.
I’d once hated Ali. Hated him for so effortlessly straddling the line between two worlds. Hated that he seemed to pay no price for his happiness. But then, for a very long time, I didn’t.
Didn’t hate him at all.
I sighed. My tired body needed to lean against something or else start moving and never stop, but I could presently do neither. Instead, I sat back down, folding myself onto the concrete with all the grace of a newborn calf. I picked up the forgotten lighter off the ground, ran my thumb over the top. Ali had gone solid in the last thirty seconds. Silent.
So I spoke. “Do you go to school here now?”
He was quiet a moment longer before he exhaled, seemed to come back to himself. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”
Ali was a year older than me, and I’d thought for sure he’d go out of state for college. Zahra rarely fed me details on her brother’s life, and I’d never dared to ask; I just assumed. The Ali I’d known had been effortlessly smart and had big plans for his future. Then again, I knew how quickly things could change. My own life was unrecognizable from what it was a year ago. I knew this, and yet I couldn’t seem to help it when I said—
“I thought you got into Yale?”
Ali turned. Surprise brightened his eyes for only a second before they faded back to black. He looked away again and the harsh lamplight rewarded him, casting his features in stark, beautiful lines. He swallowed, the slight, near-imperceptible movement sending a bolt of feeling through my chest.
“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”
“Then why are y—”
“Listen, I don’t really want to talk about last year, okay?”
“Oh.” My heart was suddenly racing. “Okay.”
He took a deep breath, exhaled a degree of tension. “When did you start smoking?”
I put down the lighter. “I don’t really want to talk about last year, either.”
He looked at me then, looked for so long I thought it might kill me. Quietly, he said, “What are you doing here?”
“I take a class here.”
“I know that. I meant what are you doing here”—he nodded at the ground—“soaking wet and smoking cigarettes?”
“Wait, how do you know I take a class here?”
Ali looked away, ran a hand through his hair. “Shadi, come on.”
My mind went blank. I felt suddenly stupid. “What?”
He turned to face me.
He met my eyes with brazen defiance, almost daring me to look away. I felt the heat of that look in my blood. Felt it in my cheeks, the pit of my stomach.
“I asked,” he said.
It was both a confession and a condemnation; I felt the weight of it at once. It was suddenly clear that he’d asked Zahra about me, about my life—even now, after everything.
I had not. I’d tried instead to forget him entirely, and I’d not succeeded.
“Listen,” he said, but his voice had gone cold. “If you already have a ride, I’ll leave you alone. But if you don’t, let me drive you home. You’re bleeding. You’re shivering. You look terrible.”
My eyes widened at the insult before the rational part of my brain even had a chance to process the context, but Ali registered his mistake immediately. Spoke in a rush.
“I didn’t— You know what I mean. You don’t look terrible. You look—” He hesitated, his eyes fixed on my face. “The same.”
I felt death bloom bright in my chest. I’d always been the kind of coward who couldn’t survive even the vaguest suggestion of a compliment.
“No. You’re right.” I gestured to myself. “I look like a drowned cat.”
He didn’t laugh.
I’d learned, recently, that some people thought I was beautiful. Moms, mostly. The moms at the mosque loved me. They thought I was beautiful because I had green eyes and white skin and because a huge swath of Middle Eastern people were racist. They were blithely unaware of the fact; had no idea that their unabashed preference for European features was shameful. I, too, had once been flattered by this kind of praise, just until I learned how to read a history book. Beyond this select group of undiscerning moms, only one person had ever told me I was beautiful—and he was standing right in front of me.
With some difficulty, I got to my feet. The pain in my knee had begun to ebb, but my body had stiffened in the aftermath. Carefully, I bent my joints. Rubbed my elbows.
; “Okay,” I said finally. “I would appreciate the ride.”
“Good call.”
Ali stalked off; I followed.
He led me straight to his car without so much as a backward glance, and suddenly it was right there, right in front of me: the silver Honda Civic I’d seen before.
The one that nearly killed me.
Last Year
Part II
My concerns over the hoodie had been mostly forgotten. The steadily plummeting temperatures forced me to abandon my reservations and focus, instead, on my gratitude for the extra layer.
I shivered when the lunch bell rang.
I stood up, gathered my things, pulled on my backpack. It was much warmer inside the school than outside it, but even with artificial heating I remained on the edge of uncomfortable, huddling deeper into the soft material. I pushed into the crowded hallway and tugged the too-long sleeves over my hands, crossed my arms against my chest. It seemed unlikely that the sweatshirt belonged to anyone but Mehdi, but even if it didn’t—who would know? It was the most ubiquitous variety of black hoodie. I was definitely overthinking this.
Still, I couldn’t deny the frisson of feeling that moved through me at the thought of the alternative: that the sweatshirt belonged to someone else, to someone I knew, to someone strictly off-limits to me.
I took an unsteady breath.
Zahra and I had only one class together this semester, and since I’d been running late this morning, we hadn’t yet crossed paths. Our parents still carpooled a couple days a week, but our previously braided schedules had begun, slowly, to part, and I wasn’t sure what that meant for us. More than anything else, I felt uncertainty.
Every day it seemed like she and I were teetering on the edge of something—something that wasn’t necessarily good—and it made me nervous. I often felt like I was walking on eggshells around Zahra, never certain what I might do to upset her, never certain what kind of emotional turbulence she might introduce to my day. It made everything feel like an ordeal.
I didn’t know how to fix it.
I didn’t know how to say something about the tension between us without sounding accusatory. Worse, I worried she might leverage any perceived slight into an excuse to shut me out. There was a great deal of history between us—layers and layers of sediment I dearly treasured—and I didn’t want to lose what we had. I wanted only for us to evolve backward, into the versions of ourselves that never caught fire when we collided.
I cried out.
Someone had slammed into me, knocking the air from my lungs and the thoughts from my head. The stranger muttered an insincere Sorry before shoving past, and I shook my head, deciding then to stop fighting the tide. I needed to drop off some books at my locker before I joined Zahra in our usual spot, but it felt like the whole school had a similar idea. We were all of us heading to the locker bays.
I was still moving at a glacial pace when I became aware of a gentle pressure at the base of my spine. I felt the heat of his hand even through the hoodie, his fingers grazing my waist as they drew away. The simple contact struck a match against my skin.
“Hey,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was smiling into the crowd, watching where he was going.
“Hi.” I could no longer remember feeling cold.
Ali glanced in my direction. His hand had abandoned me but he leaned in when he said—without meeting my eyes—
“Are you wearing my hoodie?”
I nearly stopped in place. Twin gusts (pleasure, mortification) blew through me, and then, dominating all else—
Panic.
Eventually, the bottleneck broke. We’d arrived at my locker. I dropped my backpack to the floor, spun around to face him, felt the metal frame press against my shoulder blades. Ali was staring at me with the strangest look on his face, something close to delight.
“I didn’t know this was yours,” I said quietly. “My mom found it in her car.”
He touched one of the bright-blue drawstrings, wound it around his finger.
“Yeah,” he said, meeting my gaze. “This is mine.”
A wash of heat colored my cheeks and I closed my eyes as if it made any difference, as if I could stop us both from seeing it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“Hey, don’t apologize, I don’t—”
Carefully, without disturbing my scarf, I pulled the hoodie over my head and handed it to him, practically shoved it at him.
“Shadi.” He frowned, tried to give it back. “I don’t care if you wear it. You can have it.”
I was shaking my head. I didn’t know how to say even a little bit without saying everything. “I can’t.”
“Shadi. Come on.”
I turned around, turned the combination on my locker. Wordlessly, I unzipped my backpack, swapped out my books.
Ali moved closer, bent his head over my shoulder. “Keep it,” he said, his breath touching my cheek. “I want you to keep it.”
I felt my body tense with a familiar ache, a familiar fear. I couldn’t move.
“Hey.”
I straightened at the sound of Zahra’s voice.
“Hi,” I said, forcing myself to speak. My heart was now racing for entirely new reasons.
Zahra stepped closer. “What are you guys doing?” Then, to me, with an approximation of a laugh: “Why did you just give my brother your sweater?”
“Oh. My mom actually found it in her car this morning.”
Zahra frowned. My answer was not an answer.
“I, um, thought it belonged to Mehdi,” I amended. “But it belongs to Ali. I was just giving it back to him.”
Zahra looked at Ali—whose face had shuttered closed. He glanced at me before he shoved a hand through his hair, balled the sweatshirt under his arm.
“I’ll see you later,” he said to no one, and disappeared into the crowd.
Zahra and I stood in silence, watching him go. My heart would not cease racing. I felt as if I were standing, in real time, in front of a ticking bomb.
Boom.
“What the fuck, Shadi?”
I tried to explain: “I didn’t know it was his. I was running late and I’d forgotten my jacket and—”
“Bullshit.”
“Zahra.” My heart was pounding. “I’m not lying.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“What? Doing what?”
“This, Shadi, this. Hooking up with my brother.”
“Hooking up with . . .” I blinked, my head was spinning. “I’m not . . .”
“Was that what you were doing last night? Were you out with my brother?”
I was shaking my head, certain this was some kind of nightmare. “I was doing my physics homework.”
“God, you’re unbelievable,” she said. “Fucking unbelievable.”
A few heads turned for the second time, passersby always surprised to hear a girl in hijab swearing loudly in the hall.
I lowered my voice a few octaves in an effort to compensate. “There is literally nothing going on between me and Ali. I swear to God. I swear on my life.”
Zahra was still livid, her jaw tensed as she stared at me. But she’d at least stopped yelling, which gave me hope.
“I swear,” I said, trying again. “I had no idea the hoodie was his. It was a crazy morning, and I was rushing around so much I forgot to grab my jacket, and my mom found his sweatshirt in her car. Ali must’ve forgotten it at some point. We all thought it was Mehdi’s.”
Zahra looked at me for a long time, and though I was the one holding my breath, she was the one who finally exhaled.
Slowly—very slowly—the tension left her body.
When her anger broke, she looked suddenly close to tears. “You’re really not hooking up with my brother?”
“Zahra, come on. Can you even imagine? Listen to yourself.”
“I know. I know.” She sniffed, wiped her eyes. “Ugh, I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry. He’d
never even be interested in someone like you.”
“Exactly.” What?
“I mean, no offense or anything.” She shot me a look. “But you’re definitely not his type.”
I tried to smile. “I’m no one’s type. Most people take one look at me and run screaming in the opposite direction.”
She laughed.
I was only half kidding.
Suddenly, Zahra dropped her face in her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m just—” She sighed. Shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey,” I said, squeezing her shoulder. “Can we just forget this whole thing? Please? Let’s get some lunch.”
She took a deep breath. Let it go.
We left.
I only realized later that she’d never answered my question.
December
2003
Six
I couldn’t believe it.
I gave the silver car a wide berth, wouldn’t move any closer. The wind was pushing against my legs, shoving cold up my sleeves, but I was frozen in place, looking from him to the Honda.
Finally, finally, Ali turned to face me.
“That was you?” I asked.
He had the decency to look ashamed. “My sister takes a chem class here a couple nights a week.”
I already knew that.
“My mom makes me drive her.”
This was now obvious.
“I saw you drowning in the rain,” he said, finally getting to the point. “I wanted to offer you a ride.”
“But you didn’t.”
He inhaled deep. “Zahra wouldn’t let me.”
I was staring at my shoes now, at the shattered remains of a leaf trapped in my laces.
I was stunned.
“You didn’t even have an umbrella,” Ali was saying. “But she just—I don’t know. I didn’t understand. I still don’t get what happened between you guys.”
This was so much. Too much to unpack.
Several months ago, when we officially declared war on Iraq, most of my friends started crying. I was devastated, too, but I kept my head down. I didn’t argue with people who didn’t seem to understand that Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and Iraq were all very different countries. I said nothing when my history teacher’s army reserve unit got called up, said nothing when he stared at me while making the announcement.