by Tahereh Mafi
“Whatever.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s sort of like that. Sort of.” I frowned again. Turned to face him, again. “You’ve really never heard of khastegari?”
“Why on earth would I know what that means?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It’s a pretty common thing.”
“You mean this is normal? This happens all the time? More than one guy will ask the same girl to marry him and then just stand around waiting until she chooses?”
I laughed. “No.”
“Thank God.”
“But, I mean, sometimes.” I took a sharp breath. I was beginning to feel self-conscious. “Sometimes that happens.”
“That sounds insane.”
“It’s not completely insane,” I said, no longer smiling.
Ali turned in his seat without warning, one of his arms bracing the back of the bench. He was studying my face from an uncomfortably close distance when he said:
“Holy shit. Are these assholes kasigaring you, too?”
“It’s khastegari.”
“Whatever.”
“They’re not assholes.”
“Oh my God.” He sat back against the bench, stared at me, slack-jawed. “Who would propose to you? You’re seventeen. How is that not illegal?”
I bristled.
Who would propose to you? was possibly the most offensive question I’d ever been asked, and I’d been asked a great deal of offensive questions.
“First of all, I’ll be eighteen in like a month.”
“Still illegal!”
“Listen,” I said, irritated. “You’ve clearly been away from the mosque for too long, because you don’t seem to understand how this works. You don’t just get married. Proposing is a formality, a custom. A khastegari is basically just a request to date, to get to know each other with the specific intention of possibly, one day—maybe even years into the future—getting married. It’s considered a courtesy. Dating done properly, respectfully, with honorable intentions.”
He wasn’t listening to me. “How many guys kassgaried you?”
“Khastegari.”
“How many?”
I hesitated.
“Two?” His eyes widened. “Three?”
I looked away.
“More than three?”
“Five.”
“Holy fucking hell.” He stiffened and stared at me, stared at me out of the corner of his eye like he’d never seen me before. Like I’d contracted leprosy.
None of this was flattering.
“You’re telling me that there are five dudes just waiting around to see if you’ll choose one of them?”
I sighed.
“There are five dudes just sitting at home, staring at the wall, waiting for you to decide which one of them gets to marry you?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Wait.” He laughed. “Do these guys even know you smoke? Do they know you wander around abandoned playgrounds at night, stalking innocent men?”
I shot him a hard look. “Okay, I think I should go.”
I stood up and he stopped me, his hand curving around my forearm. I stared, surprised by the scene sketched poorly in the uneven light, surprised by the weight of such a simple touch.
“Wait,” he said. He was no longer smiling. “Wait a second.”
I sat back down, tugged at my beanie.
“What?” I said, still irritated.
“You’re not actually going to marry one of these guys, right?”
I looked up at that, at the horror on his face. I was angry with him, suddenly. Angry with him for making me feel small, for shattering what little was left of my vanity. “I thought you said I shouldn’t need anyone else’s permission to live my own life.”
He flinched at that. Hesitated.
“This is different,” he said. “This just seems wrong.”
“Why is it wrong? What if I actually like one of them? What if it’s actually something I want?”
His eyebrows flew up. He seemed suddenly unmoored. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you—I mean—do you actually like one of them?”
I almost laughed.
“Why would I tell you, even if I did? You’ve just spent this entire conversation horrified by the idea that anyone would even consider marrying me, and now you want me to dissect the inner workings of my heart for you?”
His eyes widened. “Shadi, I just—I care about you. You’re like— I mean, I’d be upset if this were happening to my sister, too, you know?” He straightened. “Wait, there aren’t dudes kargarying my sister, are there?”
I went still. “No.”
“No one at all?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t talked to Zahra in a long time.”
“But, like, to the best of your knowledge?”
“No.”
“Huh.” He looked out into the night. “I think I’m offended.”
“Yeah.” I tried to laugh.
I sighed, instead.
The first time someone’s mother proposed to my mother the whole thing struck me as unbelievably funny, and I shared the story with Zahra, shared it so we could analyze this strange situation and laugh about it together. The second khastegari, too. But after the third one, Zahra threw up a wall. She started making fun of me, started wondering aloud why any of these guys would ever be interested in me. And I, because I did not want to fight with Zahra, would laugh along with her, insist she was right. I’d always agree that it didn’t make sense that anyone would be interested in me.
“Well, it’s because you have green eyes,” she’d said to me once. Everyone is obsessed with your eyes. It’s so dumb.
It was true.
People were obsessed with my eyes, and it was dumb. Still, I should’ve known then. I should’ve seen it then, that our friendship was fast approaching its expiration date. My problem was that I didn’t know friendships could have an expiration date at all.
“Hey,” Ali said quietly, the sound of his voice startling me back to the present. “I didn’t mean to insult you. Honestly. That wasn’t my intention.”
“Yeah,” I said, whispered the word into the darkness.
I couldn’t look at him anymore. I was tired. I was growing weary of jokes made at my expense, growing weary of carrying untold weight. I felt so heavy some days that I could hardly get out of bed, and I found it increasingly difficult to take so many different hits on a daily basis. My body had worn thin, lacked refuge. I no longer knew where I might fall apart in peace.
“Sometimes,” I said softly, “I wish I could just leave.”
“Leave where? Your parents’ house?”
“Just leave,” I said, staring up at the night sky. “Start walking and never, ever stop.”
Ali was quiet for a long time. I’d begun to deeply regret my entire conversation with him when he said, softly:
“Why?”
I turned to face him and realized he was sitting close to me, much closer than before. I nearly jumped out of my skin. We locked eyes and he made as if to speak, his lips parting for the briefest moment before they froze like that, a breath apart. He was just staring at me now, looking into my eyes with a startling intensity. I felt fear skitter through my blood.
His voice was different—almost unrecognizable—when he said, “Were you crying?”
Too fast, I turned away.
“Is that what you were doing out here?” A little louder now, a little sharper. “Shadi?”
I felt it then, felt the awful, burning threat, felt it building inside me again. I swallowed it down, tried to regain my composure.
Ali touched my arm, gently, and I stilled at the sensation. Could not meet his eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on? What happened?”
The heat would not abate. It was ravenous again, hungry and terrible, pooling in my gut, my throat, behind my eyes. I’d tried for months to keep everything inside, to say nothing, speak to
no one, soldier through. For nearly a year I’d held my breath, stitched closed my lips, devoured myself until I could not manage another bite. I’d not known the limits of my own body at the onset, had not known how long it would take to digest pain, had not realized I might not be able to contain it or that it might continue to multiply. I spent every day standing at the edge of a terrifying precipice, peering into the abyss, wanting, not wanting to plummet.
When his fingers grazed my cheek, I stopped breathing.
“Shadi,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
He took my face in his hands, pinned me in place with his eyes and I, I was so desperate to exhale this pain that I could not bring myself to break away. I was shaking, my heart trembling in my chest. Even now I was trying to push it all back, pretend it away, pull myself together, but there was something about his skin against my skin, the heat radiating from his body—that broke the last of my self-control.
When I started sobbing, he froze.
And then, before I could take another breath, he pulled me into his arms.
I was crying so hard I couldn’t speak, could hardly drag air into my lungs. I collapsed against him, bones shuddering, and was surprised to feel his skin against my face. His jersey was a V-neck, exposing a triangle of his chest to the night, to my cheek. I pressed my face against that heat, wet eyelashes fluttering against his throat, listened to his heart pound recklessly. My hands were caught between us, the thin jersey doing little to conceal his body from mine. He was warm and solid and strong and he was holding me in his arms like he needed me there, like he’d hold me forever if I wanted.
It all felt like a strange dream.
I might’ve never let go if it hadn’t been for my brain, for my stuttering brain, for my slowly dawning embarrassment. Only after, after my tears slowed, after untold minutes had elapsed, after I’d spent the heat in my heart on a single purchase did I realize I’d just fallen apart on a guy I had no right to touch, no right to burden with my tears or my pain.
I tore away suddenly, gasping a hundred apologies.
I wiped at my eyes, scrubbed at my face. I was suddenly mortified, afraid to look at him. Silence descended, expanded in the darkness, grew thick with tension. And when I finally dared to look up, I was surprised.
Ali looked shaken.
He was breathing so hard I could see it, could see his chest move up and down, up and down. He stared at me like he’d seen a ghost, witnessed a murder. He was still staring at me when he touched my elbow, traced a line down my arm, took my hand, tugged me forward.
Kissed me.
Heat, soft, silk. His hand was under my chin, tilting me up, breaking me open. I didn’t understand, didn’t know what to do with my hands. I had never been touched like this, had never felt anything like this, was defenseless in the face of it. He dragged his fingers down the side of my neck, my shoulder, grabbed at my waist, my sweater pulling, bunching in his fist. My heart was pounding dangerously in my chest, harder and faster than I’d ever felt it and I gasped as he moved against me, gasped as I drowned, went boneless as he broke away, kissed my throat, tasted the salt of my skin. A whisper, a whisper of my name and a hand behind my head and then a sudden, desperate explosion in my chest. He kissed me with a fire I’d never, never, I’d never, I’d gone limp, trembling everywhere, my brain failing to spark a thought.
I pulled back, backed away, fell off the earth.
I braced my liquid body against the bench, unable to breathe, certain I would never again be able to stand. I did not understand what had just happened, did not know how it happened. I only knew that it was probably bad. Probably very bad. Almost certainly, maybe, probably a mistake.
Ali looked at me, looked at me and then looked away, stood up too quickly, pushed both hands through his hair. He looked panicked.
“Oh my God,” he said, shaking his head. “Oh my God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t—”
He couldn’t catch his breath, I could see it from here, even in this half-light. He looked as shaken as I felt, and his disorder comforted me, made me feel less adrift. Less insane.
I stumbled to my feet, unsteady.
I had to leave. I knew that much, knew I had to go home, get there somehow, but my heart would not calm down. My head was spinning. No one had ever kissed me before. No one had ever touched me before, not like that, not like this, not like this, here, he was here again, his hands around my face again, his mouth soft and hot and tasting faintly of cigarettes. My knees nearly gave out as he held me, parted my lips with his, kissed me so deeply I cried out, made a sound I didn’t even know existed. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I felt certain I was dreaming, my mind failing me. He kissed my cheek, my chin, his teeth grazed my jaw, his arms drawing me tighter, closer. I felt every inch of him under my hands, felt him move, felt his body harden into a solid weight, a wall of lean muscle. The scent of him, his skin, hit me, confused me. I breathed him in like something essential, the resulting sensation so heady it shattered something vital inside of me, startled my consciousness back to life.
This was too much.
I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea what I’d done, what I’d just undone. I needed space, needed time, needed, needed to breathe.
I broke away desperately, gasping for air.
My hands were shaking. Ali was breathing hard. He looked unsteady as he stood there, closed his eyes. Opened them.
“Shadi,” he said. “Shadi.”
I shook my head. Shook my head over and over and over again.
“I’m sorry,” he was saying. “I’m—I didn’t mean—”
I ran home.
Sixteen
I was a corpse lying in bed, face pointed up at the ceiling, my body frozen and unwilling to warm. I watched, as if from outside of myself, as the moon stole through the slats of my poorly designed blinds, scattering light across my popcorn ceiling, creating uncanny constellations.
My father was coming home tomorrow.
I discovered this upon arrival, my brain mostly soup. I got caught in a sudden, torrential rain as I ran home, the resulting effects of which were nothing short of a miracle. I was soaked through, sopping wet and pathetic, and my mother was too busy berating me for my thoughtlessness to notice the evidence of my recent tears or worse, infinitely worse: the proof of someone else’s mouth on my lips, my cheeks, my chin, my throat. Hands, hands all over my body.
I was burning up under the wet, feeling feverish. I was hurried into the shower, hurried into warm clothes, forced to sit on the couch with a hot cup of tea. I sank into the unexpected comfort, savored the attentions I’d long been terrified to extract from my mother. She and my sister didn’t even seem to remember the awful scene from earlier, the two of them too distracted by good news, good news I nearly choked on, hot tea scalding my throat.
My father was coming home tomorrow.
I couldn’t stop staring at my mother, at the smile on her face. I’d thought she and I had a tacit understanding of the situation. I’d thought we were on the same page. But she seemed happy about the news, seemed grateful.
I’d frozen as she shared it, chiseled a smile onto my face.
Et tu, Brute? I thought.
I’d been so certain he would die. His most recent stint in the hospital had lasted two weeks; everyone expected the worst. I’d made plans for his death, had imagined my future in the wake of his absence. It had seemed to me like a foregone conclusion that my father would die. His first heart attack had seemed to me a kind of poetic justice, the kind meted out by the Most Just, made possible by Providence.
Dear God, I thought. Am I being punished for kissing a boy?
I’d been listening, of course, had always been listening to the details my mother and sister provided about my father’s situation. After his first heart attack they’d done something called a coronary angiography, which helped them determine where, exactly, the blockage had occurred. After that they placed a stent in his heart, a relatively straightfo
rward procedure that involved inserting a piece of metal inside a blocked artery to help open the valve and increase blood flow to the heart. It seemed, at the time, like a scary procedure, but he was discharged a few days later, and after a couple of nights at home, was cleared to go back to work. Everyone thought he’d be all right.
When the second heart attack hit, things got complicated.
This one was worse. More aggressive.
A blood clot developed where the stent had been placed, shutting everything down. There was real fear now, even in the doctors’ voices, about how such an occurrence was extremely rare, how my father might be at greater risk than they suspected. Suddenly there was talk of open-heart surgery. Suddenly he was being examined for more than a heart attack—he was being examined for heart disease.
It was confusing.
My father was a healthy man who didn’t smoke or drink or eat a great deal of red meat. He exercised regularly and looked pretty fit for his age. But his cholesterol levels had suddenly skyrocketed, something his doctor determined was a result of crushing external stress. Emotional stress.
The doctors really wanted to avoid open-heart surgery. It was an extreme surgery, with crippling side effects and a long recovery, so they wanted first to try an alternate route. More stents, beta blockers, statins—these were the words I’d heard thrown around over and over again. The doctors performed a couple more procedures on him, but each one left him lower, more lethargic, needing longer and longer to recover. The angioplasty—the surgical procedure that precedes the placement of a stent—required cutting opening a vein in his thigh, and the last time I’d seen him he’d been lying there with a sandbag on his lap, a necessary precaution to keep the wound from reopening. They’d been monitoring him for longer than was usual, keeping him in the hospital until his levels dropped below a certain number. His cholesterol was so high they were worried he’d have another heart attack.
This one, they said, might kill him.
I’d not doubted it would. I’d been waiting for that call, for the moment that would redefine my life, make sense of my brother’s death, establish some kind of existential equilibrium. I’d been waiting for it, praying for it—