Bride of the Sea

by Eman Quotah

  Jameel gushes, and though he means to show love, solidarity, understanding, Muneer wants to hang up the phone and not have to be grateful. Jameel says, “Since Hanadi disappeared, whenever I come to the States, a sliver of my brain wonders if I’ll finally see her.”

  He’d never expected to actually see her—especially not in Cleveland. Why would the girl and her mother come back here?

  “Keep on with the story,” Muneer says, though he wonders the same thing. Wonders if this is another apparition, a doppelganger jinn sent to confuse him.

  On his desk is a photo of his two older boys dressed in feminine ruffles to ward off the evil eye, when Fouad was an infant and Fadi was one, and another more recent snapshot, with the boys at two and three years old. He doesn’t yet have a picture of the new baby, Hatim. Muneer keeps the pictures slightly behind his typewriter. Lamees is superstitious. She would worry about the eye if she knew the photos were out in the open for people to see.

  His photos of Hanadi are safely stashed at home.

  “So, we chased after the car,” Jameel says. “You should’ve been with us.”

  He tells how they followed the Corolla down an avenue lined with old, oversize colonials, and around a wooded pond. Muneer knows this family so well, he almost feels he was there with them. Saw how the girls looked out their windows expectantly, their hands slightly lifted, as though they were eating popcorn and watching a movie. Heard how Diane worried: “What are we going to do if it’s her?” Witnessed her knuckles whiten as she tightly gripped at ten and two.

  The Corolla pulled into a driveway, and they drove past. Jameel says he needed another glimpse of Hanadi. “To make sure. Because I don’t want you to come here on a wild duck chase.” He says the idiom in English.

  “Goose?” says Muneer.

  But Jameel didn’t see. Diane hit the gas, rather than the brakes, and the car squealed down the street.

  “What the hell?” Jameel said.

  “She would have seen us. Duh, Dad.”

  “Turn around.”

  “What are you going to do, Meel, go inside?”

  “3555 Woodland,” said Lulu, because she’s the smart one in the family, Jameel says. She memorized the car’s license plate, too.

  They drove out of the neighborhood. Muneer knows that place. He imagines billowy summer oaks and maples giving way to low blond-brick strip malls and cement-colored synagogues. They passed the shopping mall, nearly home. In the silence, Jameel says, he almost heard his wife and daughters, like he was, repeating the address over and over so they wouldn’t forget.

  Their four minds churning together, Muneer thinks, and his throat aches. He swallows painfully. His years of sorrow, held back by a gate inside his esophagus, are threatening to burst through.

  After work, he finds Lamees in the kitchen, showing Mary, their nanny and maid, how to stuff zucchini. Somehow the boys are napping. Lamees senses his presence, looks up, and catches his eye. She starts to smile, but her mouth straightens when she sees his face. She knows better than anyone that Muneer has become jaded; time has eroded his hope of finding his daughter and built a wall around the section of his heart that belongs to Hanadi. His love for his wife stands strong, though. She saw him cry after she gave birth to Fouad, their oldest, who is four. Though Muneer never said it out loud, he thinks she knows that the rush of joy he felt welcoming his first boy into the world was followed by a sharp pain, a knife severing the umbilical that connected him to his first child. When Lamees leaves the kitchen to check on the boys, he kisses her discreetly on the cheek as she passes, so Mary won’t see. His wife touches her cheek where his lips brushed, then touches her heart.

  TRESPASS

  Muneer can’t grab a flight for five days. He is determined to find his daughter. He despairs he ever will. For years he’s had these feelings in his liver. Now they lurk beneath the surface of his skin. He’s on edge with Fadi and Lamees, who keeps saying, “God willing, God willing, God protect you and guide you,” and so on. He starts praying extra Sunnah prayers throughout the day, and Lamees prays with him. He can hear her muttering du’aa behind him at the end of prayer. She is asking God to guide Hanadi back to him—to them.

  They are between drivers. Lamees, the boys, and Mary go to stay with Muneer’s in-laws so Lamees will have someone to drive her to work.

  Before he leaves, Muneer plays a finger game with Fadi and chants the little chant that goes with it. Nicknames for the five fingers: small mind, wearer of rings, big crazy, scooper of stews, crusher of lice.

  Fadi barely smiles when Muneer tickles his armpit at the end of the song. Muneer can’t remember if he ever played this game with Hanadi.

  Lamees asks, “Will she know Arabic?”

  Being in Ohio brings back an ice-cold feeling in his limbs, although it’s a rainy summer afternoon when he arrives. The clean-shaven, jowly, balding taxi driver who takes him to the Cleveland Heights townhouse appears Egyptian—the name on his ID placard pasted on the back of the passenger seat is Hani Abdul Qadir—but Muneer does not attempt to speak to him in Arabic. He doesn’t want to have to talk about why he’s here.

  In a fabric pocket inside his suitcase, Muneer has stashed a small white envelope into which he’s slid a crisp stack of hundred-dollar bills. Next to the envelope is an open-ended ticket to Jidda with Hanadi’s name on it.

  Jameel is frantic, his hair a curly mop, not the usual wavy pomade. He starts talking before he’s done kissing Muneer’s cheeks. “We have to go look at the house. If they saw us, they’re long gone.”

  It feels as though he’s stolen Muneer’s right to fret. Muneer sits on a white leather couch and says, “God forgive me,” to himself.

  Diane asks Muneer if he’s hungry, if he wants to lie down. No, he says, but water would be nice. She gives him a weird thumbs-up as she disappears into the kitchen. For the water request? For the potential of finding his daughter?

  “That house in Shaker isn’t going to vanish into thin air,” she calls.

  “We’ve got to go back before they disappear,” Jameel says. “They’ve vanished a million times, right, Muneer? Slippery as a worm, that woman.”

  “Worms are slimy, Dad,” Lulu says, appearing in the living room. “Who are you talking about?”

  Muneer gives her a hug and kisses her cheeks. She and Summer are as fair as their mother, with nearly blond hair. Muneer knows the story of how once, in a Jidda corner store, three-year-old Lulu toddled among the aisles of Kit Kats and chips, and the shopkeeper thought she belonged to a white British woman who was leaving the store.

  It’s never been clear to Muneer whether Jameel wanted him to laugh at the shopkeeper’s ignorance or take the situation as a cautionary tale of what could happen if you married a blond American: foreigners could take your daughter.

  Like Jameel, he doesn’t want to dally, but he wants to pray first.

  “Get ’Ammu a prayer rug,” Jameel tells Lulu.

  “We have prayer rugs?” Lulu says. “Where are you going?”

  Diane hands Muneer a glass of water.

  “Where’s Summer?” he asks.

  She straightens already straight magazines on the glass coffee table. “She’s at a friend’s. Lulu and I are getting her after we go to the mall.”

  Muneer senses something held back; he’s not sure what.

  Jameel says of course they have prayer rugs, and goes to find one. Muneer wishes he’d brought one in his suitcase. He tries to determine which way he should face when he prays. Where was the sun when he was in the cab?

  No one answers Lulu’s question about where they’re going.

  When Jameel shows up with two prayer rugs, Diane says, “You’re praying?”

  “Five times a day!” he says.

  After Diane and Lulu leave, the men pray with Muneer leading because he is a few months older, and afterward Jameel makes Turkish coffee in the French country kitchen.

  “If Diane hadn’t made me quit, I’d want a cigarette,” Jameel sa
ys. “Because I’m nervous for you, friend.”

  He tells Muneer he hasn’t smoked this summer, but Diane will be pissed if she finds out Summer spent June and July sleeping and watching videos while Jameel was at work. He knew his daughter was lying when she said she’d studied, because Roseanna, their maid, told him what she was up to. In the evenings, he drilled Summer on the Hadeeths she had to memorize, and she stumbled through them. Afterward, he took her out for shawarmas and strawberry juice and long sessions watching Egyptian soap operas and professional wrestling at his parents’ house.

  Summer begged not to have to go to her grandparents’.

  “‘You’re home all day. You have to get out,’ I told her.” But if he had to sit around while she moped, he’d rather do it with company, he says. And the way he sees it, making her sit with her grandparents was as big a part of her punishment as having to stay in Jidda most of the summer and review her religion textbook.

  “Girls!” Jameel says, in Arabic. And in English, “Teenagers!”

  The words carry everything Muneer has lost.

  Jameel seems to have forgotten his earlier urgency. But though Muneer has come across the world to find Hanadi, he doesn’t want to be rude. He drinks the coffee down to the sludge.

  This is Diane’s mother’s place. She lends it to Diane and Jameel in summer when her student tenants leave. The living room is furnished with white leather couches and glass coffee tables.

  “Diane says this stuff is terribly impractical for a rental, but I love it,” Jameel says. “When I crank the central air the leather gets cool, and my mother-in-law complains about the bill.”

  To offer someone your generosity and then be stingy about it is foreign to the two men. It’s very American, but neither of them says so out loud.

  Jameel says, “We should go?”

  Muneer wants nothing more than to leave this living room, but staying here delays disappointment. He uses the sofa’s armrest to push himself up slowly.

  “We should go.”

  Jameel drives the second car, his mother-in-law’s white Chevy, to the neighborhood the Corolla had led his family to the week before. On the way, Muneer asks about Jameel’s father, though he’s too distracted to listen to his friend talk.

  “My brother is telling him to lease a shop in that big new shopping center. I told my father to do whatever Fahmi says. How is your mother?”

  “I didn’t tell her I’m here.”

  “God protect her. When you tell her you’ve found Hanadi, God willing, she’ll forgive you for everything you’ve ever done to her.”

  When they reach the Tudors of Shaker Heights, they immerse themselves in silent concentration. Muneer feels like he’s at the start of a roller coaster, not knowing what to expect. The green of the trees is calming, a mosaic of light and leaves. But soon it’s clear Jameel can’t quite remember the route. He turns down a street that leads into a park, past a picnic shelter and a duck pond. He grumbles after they’ve gone around the pond twice. This isn’t the same pond. They spend half an hour turning onto cul-de-sacs, and Jameel never apologizes or admits to being lost. Muneer offers to look at the street atlas, but Jameel says, “I forgot the address. But I know I can find it.”

  Muneer begins to lose hope they’ll ever find the house. If he grabbed the wheel, could some homing instinct, some biological connection, or God’s will take him to Hanadi? What if he recited the Fatihah?

  “Al-hamdu lillahi rabul ‘alameen,” he intones hastily.

  “Don’t worry, brother, we’ll be there soon.” Jameel’s voice is level, like he’s calming a patient before drilling a tooth.

  Around and around Jameel goes. The houses are so open to the world, their lawns expansive and green despite the heat, and yet they also seem closed off, as though hiding valuables and family secrets from the eyes of the street.

  “I don’t know where the hell it is,” Jameel says.

  “What the fuck, Jameel. God forgive you. We’ve been in the car an hour.”

  “I’ve got to call Diane. Lulu will know the address.”

  “Where are we going to find a pay phone?”

  “This is it!”

  The house is medium-size, with one or two additions. It is smaller than a Shaker Heights mansion and larger than those ubiquitous postwar boxes, and it looks as if it popped out of the ground but didn’t want to rise too tall, like a colony of mushrooms. A thick oak with a broken swing hanging from it leans toward the house. A fence goes halfway round the yard, as though someone had run out of money to finish it.

  “Are you sure? Keep on driving. I don’t want Saeedah to see me.”

  “Look, no cars in the driveway. She’s probably not here.”

  The beige garage doors are closed. It is summer, but it is the middle of the week, the middle of the day. Everyone must be at work. Most likely the garage is empty.

  “How do we know this is the place?”

  “This is it. I remember. I want you to stay in the car until I know the mother is not there.”

  Jameel parks three houses down and gets out. Muneer watches him walk over to the swing. The bumpy oak roots, thick as biceps, nearly trip him. Jameel touches the frayed end of the swing-rope, the busted wooden seat. Scrapes the flaky red paint with his fingernail.

  He approaches a window at the side of the house closest to Muneer. He cups his hands against the window, presses his face to his hands, and peeks inside.

  Muneer rolls down the car window when he sees a neighbor watching shrewdly from across the fence, an older woman in green Bermuda shorts with short gray hair. A phone rings inside the house, inside where his daughter might be. It stops. Muneer calls to Jameel, “Ya sheikh, hurry back here.”

  He wants to barrel forward, but if Saeedah takes Hanadi again, God knows if he will have a second chance to find her.

  “What are you doing?” A teenager comes down the front steps in blue plaid pajama pants and a baggy white T-shirt with the words Howard Jones on it.

  Hanadi. Muneer is out of the car, standing on the front lawn, in the middle of a flower bed, saying her name.

  “What?” she says. The side of her head is shaved close, but the rest of her hair hangs to the middle of her back. If only he could see through her skull into her thoughts.

  “Hannah, go back inside,” the neighbor says. “Arnie and I will call the police.”

  Hanadi’s jaw moves side to side, and she looks straight into Muneer’s eyes. “What do you want?” she says.

  He’s bowled over by the shock of recognition and burst of love, like looking into a newborn’s eyes. Jameel is by Muneer’s side, an arm around his shoulder, holding him up. He whispers into Muneer’s ear in Arabic: “Tell her you’re her father. Tell her.’”

  “I am your father.” The words come out in Arabic, and she doesn’t understand. He says them again in English.

  “No.” The girl touches her ear, as though not wanting to hear. “No. You’re supposed to be dead.”

  The neighbor shouts at them. “No trespassing. Scram. Leave. Her. Alone.”

  “Don’t call the police,” the girl says to the neighbor. “Don’t call my mom.”

  She steers her gaze between Muneer, Jameel, the neighbor. He wishes she’d let her eyes land on his again, so he can see the dark brown he’s missed.

  “Wait,” she says, her face turned up to the sun, like a flower. He takes it in. Her cheekbones, her earlobes, her widow’s peak, her lips, her chin, the curves of her nose. Muneer feels another surge of love, a happiness he hasn’t felt since he lost her. She goes inside, and they wait. The wave of goodness stays with him.

  The neighbor pretends to pull weeds out of her lawn, and Jameel rocks on his feet.

  “Should we knock? Should we ring the doorbell?”

  “She’s here,” Muneer says, and it’s what he’s wanted, to know where she is. But of course it’s not enough. Worry creeps in. He prays she’s not escaping through a back window.

  The screen door creaks op
en, a sound like heaven. She comes out with a palm-size sketch pad and a charcoal pencil and asks him to write a number. Muneer doesn’t have a number to write. He holds the pencil till it tumbles out of his trembling fingers and onto the grass. Jameel picks it up and writes his mother-in-law’s phone number on the pad while she holds it.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says.

  “What’s your number?”

  “You can’t call here.”

  Clouds appear when she goes inside. The neighbor slams a door.

  Jameel steers Muneer to the car, practically pushes him along the sidewalk, opens the passenger-side door for him, and settles him into the seat. Muneer’s a shell. His organs, his spirit, the blood that pumps through him are left behind, with her.

  LA SAMAH ALLAH

  At the townhouse, Lulu is tucked into the corner of the white leather couch, her hair spread over the arm and a white coverlet pulled up to her chin. Her shoes lie haphazardly on the carpet. Remote in hand, she watches music videos with the sound off.

  Jameel takes the remote and switches the channel to CNN. There was a hijacking over the weekend, and the crisis has not yet ended, but there’s nothing to see but an unmoving airplane on tarmac.

  Lulu holds her palm out, waiting for her father to return the remote. He does, and she goes back to MTV.

  Diane hovers in the kitchen doorway, drying a plate.

  “Well?”

  “We found her.”

  “That’s amazing,” Diane says. Her eyes are wet and shiny. She wipes them with the dish towel. “That’s my idea of hell, what you went through, Muneer, and now it’s over.”

  “Alhamdulillah,” Muneer says. But is it over? He hasn’t found Hanadi. He is finding her.

  The long flight and time change are catching up to him. It’s three o’clock here—a good time for a nap. They’ve got a pullout sofa for him in the basement. First he asks if he can use the phone to call Lamees. He promises to use his phone card to pay for it, but Jameel insists it’s no problem to use their long distance.

  Diane tells him to use the phone downstairs, “for privacy.” He sits on the sofa, which has a set of folded sheets and a towel neatly laid on one end. He holds the phone on his lap. It’s heavy against his thighs. When he picks up the handset, he hears two voices: a deep young man’s and Summer’s.