by Holly Rayner
“What is it you do for a living, dear?” my mother asked, leaning her head forward.
“I’m a teacher at an English school,” Angie said. “They’re second-graders. Absolutely fascinating. They’re so interested in everything, and ask about a million questions every single day.
“The children of Al-Jarra are a bit different, in my eyes, from the ones back in America. They yearn to become more intelligent, not for their parents’ sakes, but for their own. There’s a playfulness, a charm to them. Something I can’t quite put into words.”
Angie’s smile quivered. She made fleeting eye contact with me, then lurched her eyes away—as if she couldn’t bear to be so honest in front of me.
But as I watched her, my heart felt tight with the pleasure of it. The pleasure of knowing this girl. She looked at the children of my country with a joy and a curiosity and a zest for life.
I could tell my parents were impressed. My mother was smiling at the words and seemed genuinely interested in what Angie had to say. My father nodded his approval, sliding a piece of bread into his mouth. “Rami has never brought home an intellectual before,” he said, turning his attention toward me.
“Intellectual?” Angie laughed. “I wouldn’t call myself that. Just always seeking out new information, new relationships, new ways of seeing the world. It’s how my parents raised me. And it’s how I hope to raise my children, someday.”
This was Angie’s first mention of ever wanting children. I watched as it affected my mother wholly, nearly melting her heart. She slid her fingers through her greying strands, making eye contact with my father. After a long moment, she lifted the wine bottle and refilled Angie’s glass, doing so with a sense of goodwill, of wanting to learn more.
“Angie, tell me more about where you’re from. I have to say, it could be on my bucket list to go there, if what you’re saying about it is true. And if there are more people there like you.”
A half hour after dinner, Angie and I were revving back to my penthouse in the Lamborghini, both of us silent. Angie shifted in her seat, staring straight ahead. She looked uncomfortable, her mouth downturned. I wondered what she was thinking.
“That went well,” I finally said.
“Do you think?” she asked, sounding as if she were a million miles away.
“Do you want to stay at my place tonight?” I asked her, coughing slightly. “The guest bedroom has been made up for you, if you want it. You said that mattress was one of the most comfortable of your life.”
“That’s true,” she said. She emitted a long yawn, then nodded her head slowly. “I suppose so. I’d be up for a nightcap, as well. If you’re willing.”
“Always willing,” I told her, my voice sounding more jocular than I actually felt. Inside, I was unsure, feeling myself plunging into a new era, a new time that I couldn’t entirely control.
I stopped the car outside the apartment, hopping out and passing the keys to the valet. I led Angie into the night air. Her dress glittered, emphasizing her figure and making her look almost magical. She gave me a soft smile.
But moments later, I heard a jeer from the side of the parking area. Turning around, I watched as two men who also lived in the building escorted their dates down the sidewalk. One of them—a woman with long, dyed blond hair—was whispering in a loud, rasping voice.
“Can’t believe he’d go for an American—and a schoolteacher, at that,” she sighed. “I mean, all that wealth, all those good looks—going to someone like that? He’s the laughing stock of the entire city…”
“I know, right?” her date jeered, speaking clearly, and knowing he was heard.
I’d known these men for five years, since I’d first moved into the building. Trying to rise above their petty teasing, I raised my hand as they passed, nodding my head. But they just ignored me, clearing their throats awkwardly.
I felt irritated, knowing they were ignoring me because of Angie. I eyed her, this gorgeous woman beside me, and nodded my head toward the foyer, saying, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
But after that night, I noticed it: the entire country had seemingly turned its back on me. They spoke behind my back in whispers. No one gave me a wave or a friendly gaze. It was as if, suddenly, I was invisible.
I was being shunned by my people, and I didn’t like it one bit.
A few nights after meeting my parents for dinner, I went with Alim to a nearby bar—one where I’d previously racked up dates. But that night, the girls flocked to Alim, flirting with him and rubbing at his back, buying him drinks. Alim was in his element, drowning in a sea of perfume and curled hair.
I stepped back from the scene, recognizing that the winds of change had spurned me out, taking me from the highest pinnacle, all the way to this horror. To this…nothingness.
“Do you think marrying Angie is a bad idea?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he replied. His eyes were filled with laughter. He was half-drunk, and half in love with everyone around us. I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him. Tell him to focus on what was at stake for me. My arrogance was bleeding through again.
“It’s just… No one will look at me. It’s like the entire world has turned its back on me.”
“Come off it, Rami. Maybe they’re just sore because they didn’t snag you first?” he asked with a wink.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go,” I told him. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Just keep drinking, my man!”
And with that, Alim was off to the dance floor, swaying his hips as he sidled up against yet another woman. She laughed and danced along.
I felt, in that moment, that someone had ripped a hole in my stomach. Everything I had ever known was slipping away from me.
Chapter 13
Angie
A few days after meeting Rami’s parents, I stood waiting for him at the edge of the schoolyard. Wind gusted around my ankles, whipping through my skirt.
In the distance, Rita peered out her classroom window at me. Since the engagement, she hadn’t spoken to me much—looking at me as someone she couldn’t understand or judge any longer. In some ways, this was good. In others, I realized I’d lost one of the only links back to my “real” world. My American existence.
Rami appeared on the other side of the gate, a sour look on his face. I walked up to him, trying to analyze his expression. He reached down and kissed my cheek coolly. He turned toward the road again, and after a pause, I fell into step beside him, feeling my heart beat in my throat. Had I done something wrong?
“How are you?” I finally asked him, keeping my eyes on the horizon.
“Oh, uh. Fine,” Rami answered, sounding anything but. I wanted to tell him that it had been his idea to walk me home that night. That he had offered.
But as we walked down the road, I paid attention to the vendors, the workers, the people. Whereas before, Rami’s appearance had brought warm smiles, hellos, and welcoming—almost alluring—gazes, now, people looked at him scornfully.
“Maybe we should stop at the market,” Rami said, darting toward it and leading me toward his favorite vendor. I remembered the first time we’d gone there, how the vendor had grinned and even told Rami about his children, how all three of them looked up to the Sheikh. How they wanted to be “just like him.”
But this time, the vendor looked at Rami coldly, delivering him a lackluster piece of meat in a pita bread and scoffing at me when I asked for a serving of hummus. After paying, Rami darted to the side of the market and tossed his food in the trash, looking hurt. Feeling a wave of sympathy, I reached up and touched his shoulder. He fidgeted, twitching, but turned his attention back toward me.
“Your people will come around,” I told him, my voice low. “They just need some time to think about you as a husband, rather than the eligible bachelor they always knew.”
“Ha.” He scoffed, as if this hadn’t been what he’d been thinking about. But of course, it was. He ran his fingers through his
hair, stuttering. “I’m just not used to not being the most important man in the room,” he sighed. “The one everyone is looking at.”
I grinned at his rare display of honesty. “You just have to keep up your old habits,” I told him. “Keep going through town, enchanting them. Giving them that charming smile. They’ll come around. And then, once they warm up to you as a husband, they’ll come around to me, too. You saw how I convinced your parents. I’ll do the same for the people of Al-Jarra.”
Just when I felt Rami was coming around to my words, he glared at me and spoke in a harsh tone.
“I just think maybe this entire engagement was a mistake,” Rami said, his voice low but wild.
I was stunned. I took a step back, crossing my arms. After a long, slow release of breath, I murmured, “Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you proposed.”
I felt a wave of tension fall between us. He glared at me. I had never seen him so angry; he was normally so bright-eyed, so flirtatious. Even with me, a woman he had more or less already “won,” for lack of a better word.
Rami stuttered, hunting for the right words to say in response. But I thought of mine first, knowing that I suddenly had the upper hand and that I had to use it.
“This is all for the sake of a silly bet,” I told him defensively. “You’re letting a stupid bet change your entire life. If you want to, you can call it off whenever you want. It’s in your power.”
Even as I spoke, I realized that Rami was revealing the very “colors” that I hadn’t wanted to speak to my mother about. This was the arrogance I hadn’t wanted to marry into. This was the horrible truth of a man with too much power, and far too much money.
“We’ve come too far now, and you know it,” Rami said, his voice growing deeper. “We’ve already talked to my parents, announced it to the papers. We had a stupid fake proposal at a fancy restaurant, for God’s sake.”
“So? People break up all the time,” I said. If I was going to get fake dumped, then I wanted to get out in front of it. I wanted it to be my idea.
“It would bring shame to me, to my parents, to my entire country if I called it off now,” Rami blared. “You don’t understand, because you’re not from this culture. You’ll never really understand it, will you?”
With a huff, I turned away, anger quivering through me. With no one to call, no one to run to, I began to walk home, leaving Rami still pacing in that small corner of the market. Rage fueled me all the way home, turning my walk into a jog, making my eyes fill with tears.
I was feeling wild, manic. Rami and I hadn’t really gotten into a fight since our “agreement.” I wondered if this was what married life would be like. One bratty Rami moment after another. Could I really hack it?
I reached my apartment in no time at all and raced up the steps, feeling tears quiver down my cheeks. When I reached my kitchen, I lifted my phone, ready to call my mother, to tell her that I wasn’t going to marry this scoundrel after all.
But I realized, with a sudden jolt, that my mother probably wasn’t awake yet. She was living out a different dimension, a different plane. And my father had recently told me that we needed to give her as much time to rest as we could.
Exhausted, I collapsed in my reading chair, gazing up at my collection of poetry. In college, I’d been obsessed with it, holed up in my dorm room finding reason to live between the pages of old poems, old emotions of people who were long gone. Reaching for one of them, a book that was near worn-out, I leaned back in my chair, preparing to dive into another world.
But that’s when I heard the knock at the door.
Shooting up from the chair, I blinked toward the door, seeing the familiar form of Rami behind the window. Rolling my eyes slightly, wishing he would have just waited to call me the next day, I walked across the hardwood and opened the door. Rami stood, his head low and his posture off-kilter. He looked nothing of the confident man who’d told me our engagement meant nothing to him.
I stood in the doorway, looking at him with heavy eyes. Waiting. What could he have possibly come all the way to say to me, except to grovel and explain that he really did want to keep up the bet?
“Well?” I asked him, unable to conceal the unhappiness in my voice. This was a charade I hadn’t bargained for.
“It’s just…” he began, shaking his head. “I’m… I wanted to say I’m sorry.” He looked defeated, worn out. For a moment, I pitied him. I saw the boyish gleam behind his eyes. The very life I’d felt myself begin to fall for—if ever so slightly—a few days before.
“Are you sure?” I asked him, tilting my head. “Because we can definitely throw this out the window, if you want to. It’s in your hands.”
“I know. I know. And I really do want this. I want to marry you,” he said, and for once he sounded sincere.
After a long moment, I nodded firmly, giving him a shrug. “Just a few pre-wedding jitters,” I joked. “Happens to everyone.”
“Right.” After a moment, he murmured, “And I’d really like to walk you home tomorrow, if you’re up for it. I really do enjoy our walks.”
“That’s fine,” I told him, softening. I watched as he peered into the apartment behind me. I hadn’t yet spent much time with him there—didn’t see the point when his penthouse apartment had more than enough space for us both. Gesturing inside, I asked, “Do you want to come in for a coffee or something?”
“Um… Sure.” Rami nodded, sounding very much less than sure. But he stepped inside, following me into the kitchen, assessing the small living room and the tiny bedroom tucked to the side. It was clean, well-lit, with simple furniture. I hadn’t lived there long enough to make it into anything personal. I supposed I never would.
“It’s nice,” he offered, sounding tentative. He slid into the chair near the bookshelf, blinking up at the books. I busied myself making coffee, spooning the grounds into a filter and popping it into the machine. After a long moment of silence, Rami spoke again. But this time, his voice was filled with warmth. It was inviting.
“I didn’t know you read poetry,” he said. He lifted himself from the chair, sliding his finger across the books’ spines. “God, you’ve got a great collection here. I read almost all of this in university. And some of it—some of it has stuck with me. This poem in particular, by Keats…” He trailed off. “I have it memorized, actually.”
I nearly dropped my coffee mug. Nothing about Rami had ever given me the illusion that he liked poetry, that he was attracted to words or language. In my eyes, he’d been only an arrogant flirt. A man with too much money, ready to whip it across the world in an attempt to prove someone else wrong. But now, he spoke of something as beautiful as poetry with a light in his eyes.
“I have so much of that memorized, as well,” I told him, my voice soft. Beside me, the coffee machine began to whirr, interrupting the moment. The rich, comforting smell filled my nostrils.
“Actually, do you want to switch to wine?” I asked him suddenly, giving him a sneaky smile. “Coffee will probably keep me up the entire night. And I’ll be a complete wreck tomorrow morning if that happens. I’ll never match the kids.”
Rami was distracted, reading through a page in one of my books. But after a pause, he said, “Absolutely. I could sit here, drink wine, and talk about poetry the entire night.”
I poured us each a glass of wine, setting them down on the coffee table between the two chairs. I cozied up across from him, watching his furrowed brow as he read. He seemed to delight in the words, and I felt a sudden tension in the room, one that had nothing to do with our fight. One that made me want to sit a bit closer to him.
“What is it you like about poetry?” I asked him, my voice low and soft. “What keeps you coming back to it?”
“It’s such a precise way of processing grand feelings,” Rami said, his eyes wide. “Whenever I feel overwhelmed by some emotion, I know that poetry can pinpoint where it comes from. It can fight it, or make it stronger, or just complement it in a way t
hat makes living, well, more interesting.”
My heart felt warmed. I hadn’t imagined Rami to be a very emotional person. He seemed the type to skate from moment to moment, unfazed.
I tilted my head, whispering, “It’s gotten me through so much of my mother’s illness,” I told him. “Whenever I feel so helpless over here, I turn to poetry. And it always gives me something new to latch onto. Something that I never really thought about before…”
“Do you ever write your own?” he asked me, his eyes dark, penetrating.
“I do,” I whispered. “But I would never share it with anyone. It’s a bit too private.”
“Me neither,” he murmured. “But God, wouldn’t I love to read what you’d written. I’ve always known, since I met you, that there was a lot going on up there.” He pointed at his own head, referring to my own. I felt a blush spring up over my cheeks. I had no idea he thought of me at all.
Suddenly, we found ourselves deep in conversation, diving from one poem to the next. I hadn’t had an in-depth conversation about poetry in years, not since university, and I found that Rami had a good sense for it, for what the writers wanted to say and what they left unsaid.
Soon, I found myself pouring us a second glass of wine and bringing my chair closer to his. Outside, the sun had already dripped below the horizon line, leaving us alone together, in the darkness. Reading in the grey haze, I turned on the lamp beside us, brushing Rami’s elbow with my hand.
He didn’t flinch. Instead, he gave me a meaningful gaze, his eyes dark and filled with desire. I turned my eyes away at first, my head spinning.
Readjusting myself, I flipped the page to another poem and began to read, enjoying the hum of my voice. Still, Rami kept his eyes upon me, taking me in. And when the poem was over, the air was heavy with passion between us. Still, we didn’t touch.
“Do you want some more wine?” I finally asked him, swallowing hard.
He didn’t answer. Not at first. Instead, he leaned closer, bringing his nose against mine. I could feel the hotness of his breath, far different than the fake kisses we’d shared before—the ones for show, when we’d known people were watching or cameras were clicking. This time, we were completely alone. Completely us.