by Eman Quotah
Uncle Fareed kissed Muneer on both cheeks.
“’Uqbalak,” he said.
May you be next. Muneer never quite knew how to respond. The sentiment was especially awkward coming from Saeedah’s father.
“God willing, Uncle.” He hoped he didn’t sound eager. Then, an invisible thread drew Muneer’s chin upward, as though a fisherman had hooked him. Saeedah’s face popped out over the ledge of a second-floor window, and her hennaed hand waved. Perhaps someone was calling her, because she disappeared, thank God, as Uncle Fareed looked up to see what had caught Muneer’s attention.
Uncle Fareed seemed to guess it had been someone. “Young man, keep your gaze down, like the Prophet says.” He chucked Muneer under the chin, as though he were greeting a little boy, and noticed the folded-up newspaper Muneer carried under one arm.
“Is that my paper?” He grabbed it and pretended to read the headline. Uncle Fareed had studied in Cairo and apprenticed at its famous newspapers.
It was not his paper and Muneer felt a bit embarrassed by that.
Uncle Fareed tapped Muneer’s arm with the rolled-up newspaper and handed it back. “How are your studies?”
Muneer kept his eyes on his hands to avoid seeking a glimpse of Saeedah. He imagined himself inside the house, following her from duty to duty as she wrapped ribbons around the candles for the zaffah, curled her sisters’ hair, and brushed her face with powder.
“I should have gone to Egypt. English is too much for me.”
“You’re blessed to learn anything you can. You should have written for me while you were here—why didn’t I think of it?”
Muneer knew his mother never would have let him go off and write stories while there was so much to do after his father’s death.
“In the future, God willing,” he said, and left it at that.
There were no other young men in the courtyard—it was a bunch of uncles gossiping. Muneer wandered back to the gate and read the paper.
When the door to the villa swung open to reveal Saeedah, bareheaded and smiling, he knew he would have been disappointed if she hadn’t come down. She was framed in the entryway in a calf-length, pleated opal-white dress that was cinched at the waist like an Egyptian film star’s dress. Her face was round as a moon, the kind of face poets loved, well-fed with honey-colored eyes. Her hair was flipped from her shoulders to her ears, teased up in the back. Her lips shone with rouge. Almost as tall as he was, she stared straight into his face.
He pulled the ends of his shimagh under his chin and turned his eyes down. He was being disingenuous, and she knew it. “Go round the back,” she said.
As though she had nothing to fear.
If her father found out, Muneer’s chances of an apprenticeship might evaporate. But he couldn’t say no. He left the gate intending to go home and leave her disappointed. But his feet were connected to his heart more directly than his head, and they did as she said. He leaned against the villa’s back wall and had nearly reached the paper’s back cover when she appeared.
He never learned how she slipped from the villa, around the back of the yard, and out the back gate. But there she was, swooshing her skirts with her hands, seeming pleased that his eyes stayed on her. He folded the paper three times again and tried to stuff it in his pocket, but it was too big, so he tossed it into the street—what other option did he have?—the whole time studying her.
“Anyone famous die today?”
“That’s not why a person reads the paper. It’s not a film magazine.”
She swished the hem of her dress dramatically. “Do you want to kiss me, like in an Egyptian film?”
“Wow,” he said, the American word feeling like carbonation in his mouth. “You’ve never seen an Egyptian film.”
A laugh gurgled in her throat and her fingers fluttered mothlike to his cheek. “Yes, I have. Last summer, in Cairo. And once at the American compound here.”
He shrank from her, eyes on his sandals, blood pumping.
She kissed his cheek, her lips cool despite the heat around them. His torso twisted and his knees buckled. When she moved away, he straightened and touched his cheek despite himself.
She punched his arm, an almost sisterly gesture, as though she were trying to erase what had happened. Or maybe not. Maybe she was underlining the kiss, claiming him a second way.
“Want to go for a ride?” he said. He leaned against the wall to appear steady.
She walked to the car, which he’d parked at the curb, opened the passenger door for herself, and hopped in.
They drove north, sea to the left of them. He leaned on the open window. Between them, the bench seat was as wide as the Red Sea.
“Where shall we go?” he asked.
“Drive.” She unrolled her tinted window.
“Someone might see you.” He motioned as though he were rolling the window back up. “You’re not wearing a scarf.”
“I’m not?” She patted herself on the head. “Oh, I’m not!”
She was funny, but also infuriating. He rotated his hand until she rolled her window up, but not without complaint. “You’re the one who let me into your car.”
He regretted displeasing her, but he wasn’t sure how to reverse things, to please her. He took off his shimagh and handed it to her. “Wear this and roll the window back down if you want.”
She let the cloth fall in her lap. “I love the sea,” she said. “I don’t know if I could live without it.”
“In Ohio, there’s a lake,” he said, immediately wanting to take the words back because they implied he wanted her to go to Ohio with him.
She must have felt a little less annoyed with him, because she opened the window and draped the cloth over her head. She looked like a boy.
“Is Ohio like California?” She wrapped the shimagh across her mouth, like a Bedouin or a bandit. The answer was easily no, but she didn’t give him a chance to respond. “I’d rather go to Cairo,” she said through the cloth.
He lay his arm along the back of the seat, his fingers just shy of her head. Time stretched out like an expanse of shoreline. She reached over and tapped his fingers. He squeezed her fingers and let go.
They parked at a small, empty park near the edge of the sea. She leaned an arm on her open window. The minutes since they left seemed like a beautiful eternity.
“We’d better head back,” Saeedah said. “The wedding.”
He sighed, long and low like the sea. “May you be next,” he said in a falsetto meant to mimic an annoying auntie or uncle.
“Do you want me to marry next?” She pulled the shimagh from her lips, leaned in, and kissed him. He tasted sweetness, like candied almonds. “God forgive you,” she said. Her sly smile a crescent moon.
“God forgive me.”
He steered the car back toward her house. The sea was on her side, and he felt as though the night had wrapped itself around them.
Without thinking, he drove to the front of the house. Guests were arriving in sedan after sedan. The cars dropped off the women, whose sequined hems peeked out from under their black abayahs. The men, in their formal camel’s wool mishlahs with gold borders, parked and headed for the courtyard.
Beside him, she’d hidden below the dashboard, the top of her head close to his thigh.
“What are you doing?” she said. “Drive around the back.”
He licked his upper lip; it tasted like sweat. She widened her eyes: What are you waiting for? He let his hand float to the top of her head, and with one hand on the steering wheel, returned the car to their meeting place. Leaving his shimagh behind on the passenger seat, she got out of the car and stepped up onto the high sidewalk. She looked at him once before slipping through the back gate, and his heart flew out to her.
He saw none of what happened after she left him. But later, when they were married, she told him somehow she had convinced herself she was home free, and as she skipped upstairs, she hummed the sweet chorus of an Abdel Halim song. Already, he can’t re
member which one. She opened the door to her parents’ room without knocking. Her aunts had taken the room over for the bridal preparations. Her older sister Randah, the bride, sat on the bed, a floor-length prayer scarf wrapped around her.
“You missed Isha prayer,” Randah had said.
“I prayed alone.”
“Big liar.”
“Bitch.”
“Riham saw you. Getting into a car with a boy,” her sister said. “She told all of us.”
When Saeedah told him what had happened next, he swallowed hard and tried to imagine it: she’d slapped her sister straight across the face. Randah hadn’t fought back because there was their mother, a man’s thick black iqal in her hand like a weapon. Behind her, Muneer’s mother, united with her sister.
“Give her what she wants,” his mother had said. “And she won’t be your problem anymore. She’ll be my son’s problem, God help them.”
They were married in August, on a plane to America less than a week later.
MENTOR HEADLANDS
On a snowy February Friday, Muneer awakens into darkness. He twists the lamp switch: bright, brighter, brightest, back to darkness, back to least bright. He closes his eyes and opens them until his pupils adjust. He feels this way in his marriage, in his life here—as though his eyes are constantly trying to accustom themselves to a too-intense light.
Saeedah sleeps with her back straightened against the wall, her mouth ajar, the corners of her lips glistening. He goes to the bathroom and pees, washes up, prays, dresses, eats breakfast, wrestles his comically enormous down coat out of the closet and off a hanger.
He hears her moving around upstairs, the old wooden floorboards of the house creaking. He places Saeedah’s gloves, scarf, and hat on the folding chair. He feels optimistic for no reason whatsoever—other than his faith that God is looking out for him. Moved by this good feeling, he decides not to go upstairs and say goodbye, for fear she might ruin his mood. He knows it’s wrong to feel that way, but he wants to go on with his day. Outside, he sticks his tongue out to catch the snow floating in the slanted orange-yellow light of street lamps. Snow still amazes him. He doesn’t need Saeedah by his side to enjoy the snow.
He slides into the dark green Beetle’s cold white vinyl seat and takes the car down the driveway in neutral before turning the key. The engine sputters. He steers widely around corners with his puffy ski gloves slipping on the steering wheel, keeps the engine in high gear, and avoids stops.
He feels oddly free.
The snow-covered pizzeria parking lot, not much bigger than a pizza pie, is nearly empty, too, except for a white Datsun delivery car. As Muneer drives into the lot, the VW skids suddenly and swings around 180 degrees. Muneer’s heart thumps in his throat and his right leg shakes uncontrollably, yet he keeps his foot on the brake. The optimistic feeling dissipates. When the car stops, he is confronted by the silent side street, the shadowy porches of the houses on the other side, their windows’ white curtains like starched ghutrahs. He gets out and trudges through the snow to where Jameel stands outside the back door, which is wide open to the cold and lets the shop’s lurid neon light out onto the stoop.
Muneer isn’t sure whether Jameel saw the one-eighty or not. If he did, other issues outweigh his concern for Muneer’s safety.
“Roaches,” Jameel says. “The health department is shutting us down.”
“For how long? Is Tony going to pay us for showing up?”
“Tony! Muneer wants to know if he’s getting paid,” Jameel shouts in English through a tear in the screen door. He says it with an edge of sarcasm, like he already knows the answer. A ruckus from inside and some cussing, then Tony yells, “Shut the frigging door.”
“Ya Allah,” Jameel says.
Muneer digs his hands into his pockets, as though searching them for cash. His Saudi government stipend won’t be enough once the baby comes, if he wants to keep sending money to his mother. But Jameel seems unworried. He’s happy, smiling his blizzard-bright smile. With time to kill, they drive the Beetle to the Jewish greasy spoon on Lee Road, where they don’t have to worry about whether or not they’re ordering pork.
Muneer gives the cashier girl fifteen cents for the Plain Dealer, and he and Jameel sit at a table in the corner and order beef sausages, sunny-side-up eggs, and rye toast. Muneer pokes a yellow half globe with the blunt corner of his toast and watches the bright liquid seep out. Maneuvering his thumb and two fingers, he tears off a bit of bread and twists it to grab some egg and sausage. He holds the newspaper in his other hand, eating and reading at the same time. Juggling the two activities calms him, keeps him from obsessing about the pizzeria and the money he’s losing.
“Get your nose out of the paper,” Jameel says. They speak English to avoid curious, sometimes mildly concerned looks. “No wonder your wife’s depressed.”
Muneer jabs his other egg with another bit of toast. Jameel always thinks he knows something other people don’t.
“She’s fine, thank God.”
Jameel folds his paper napkin into a small, fat square. “Ya shaykh.” He takes a breath, as though putting mental effort into returning to English. “She’s not fine. Something’s gone wrong with her. And with you. You jump when she’s near.”
Muneer wants to deny it. But arguing is tiresome. “I’ll stop reading if you stop talking about my wife like she’s a bad piece of fruit.”
“OK, habibi,” Jameel says. He pulls a small velvet box out of his pocket with a twist of the wrist that reminds Muneer of the magician they saw last summer at Cedar Point. With one thumb, Jameel pops the box open. A diamond ring.
The room is steamy and overheated, the smell of grease cloying. They’ve both removed their sweaters and draped them over their coats on the backs of their chairs. Muneer waves the newspaper like a fan.
Jameel sets the box on the table, in front of the salt and pepper.
“For Diane.”
“I know,” Muneer says, as though he anticipated this, which he did not. There are many things Muneer could ask: Has Jameel spoken to his father? Has Diane agreed to convert?
“What will you do with her dog?” he says.
“She’s giving the dog to her sister.” Jameel opens his palms as though he might slap Muneer on both sides of his face. Muneer flinches. Jameel brings one palm to his heart. “Come to the ceremony.”
“At the mosque?”
“City hall.”
“What if she doesn’t want to leave Cleveland?”
“We’ve talked about it.”
“She won’t be able to drive, or wear that cross.”
“It’s halal to marry a Christian, Muneer.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about will your wife be depressed if you take her to Jidda.”
Jameel snaps the box shut and returns the ring to his pocket. “Let’s go.”
“Where you guys from?” the girl says when they pay.
“We’re Spanish,” says Jameel, laughing a little at his own lie.
“Beirut,” says Muneer.
“My father-in-law’s Moroccan,” the girl says.
“Merhebeh,” says Muneer, putting on a Lebanese accent, which is lost on the cashier. But Jameel laughs.
Free from work, they drive to the West Side to attend Friday prayer at a modest storefront mosque they’ve gone to once or twice before. The imam is an Indian South African, tall with broomstick limbs and a wispy-curly beard. Today’s sermon rouses Muneer from the everyday and reminds him there are people out to get him and all other Muslims. People, the imam says, who want to steer them from God and tie them to Satan: Zionists and Hollywood producers and starlets and congressmen and regular Americans who offer Believers bacon bits on their baked potatoes and wine with dinner and Oreos that harbor lard in them. Judging by the rigid faces of the other men in the room, Jameel included, they also feel the sermon beating against their insides like a drum. They nod and murmur at the imam’s aphorisms. Muneer leaves homesick an
d discontented and determined not to return to the mosque anytime soon.
Back at the house, he writes a ten-page letter to his father. He composes these letters weekly, folds them up and shoves them into envelopes. He addresses them before slipping the fat envelopes into a brown accordion folder he keeps on the top shelf of the bedroom closet.
Today, Muneer writes about the weather, Jameel’s engagement, God, preparations for the baby’s arrival (a classmate of his has offered them a crib, a stroller, boxes of baby clothes). He says Saeedah is in good health. He doesn’t mention how his world seems to shift daily under his feet, like sand. His professors decry any sort of censorship—that of the state, the editor, the journalist himself. But he knows self-editing is sometimes a survival tool when writing to the dead. Why worry his dead father who, in an imaginary aerogram delivered to Muneer’s mind, welcomed the news of Saeedah’s pregnancy with these words: “Daily, I ask God to keep the three of you safe. Remember to observe your five daily prayers.” Why admit to himself the five daily prayers have become 2.3 on average? That he can’t keep Saeedah warm, let alone safe. That this marriage is more difficult than anyone could have warned.
Jameel and Diane are married in early March in the basement of the mosque—not a courthouse—and her uncle throws a small celebration in his living room. Diane wears a white lace minidress and a veil grazes her ankles. About two dozen people sit at card tables set up in the living room: Diane’s aunt and uncle and cousins and a few close friends, Jameel’s buddies from school, Muneer and Saeedah. Neither the bride’s nor the groom’s parents attend. Her mother and father will take several years—until the first grandchild’s birth—to accept her marriage to a Muslim. His family will learn about the wedding in a letter accompanied by a green-tinged Polaroid of Jameel in his suit and tie and Diane in her minidress. For the intimate group assembled on this day, there is roast chicken and wine and the entertainment of Jameel getting a little sloppy. The bride’s uncle makes a toast, and people clink their glasses, and Diane whispers loudly to Jameel that this means they are supposed to kiss. The clinking recurs half a dozen times, and Muneer is convinced there is one person at the other table responsible for instigating. He and Saeedah alone have water in their wineglasses.