Sirine’s never known any other kind of place. She’s seen snowstorms on the TV, read descriptions of biting cold. The buildings she knows usually have an open door, rustling screens and trellises. She knows the smell of jasmine in the air, the silver lick of sprinklers, the gardeners tidying lawn clippings, sweeping leaf blowers through the dust and deep heat.
It’s barely the start of September and the afternoon is sultry and still as she and her uncle walk to campus. But when they reach the building door a hot little wind blows down from the mountains; bits of debris are lifted into tiny dust devils, a plastic bag flaps in the air like wings. She came to the reading because her uncle said she worked too much and that, in his opinion, we could all do with more culture. But as soon as they find the seminar room where the reading is taking place, he waves to her and drifts down the hall to his friends in the Turkish Studies Department.
Sighing, she sinks onto one of the metal folding chairs. After a few minutes, a man in a silk tie and a polished cotton jacket comes to the podium. He looks like a suave version of her uncle’s academic cronies—graceful, athletic, and sophisticated. His clothes seem European. His dark hair spills forward over his forehead. He pushes it back but it just falls back forward, and Sirine feels a sliver of tenderness toward the man. His paper trembles slightly in his hand as he launches into an introduction of the poet, neglecting to introduce himself. “Aziz Abdo is a wonderful, wonderful writer,” he says, his voice taut. He lifts his head so Sirine can see a fine pearly sheen on his forehead. He pushes back his hair again, seems to lose his place on his paper, then reads, “Abdo transforms Arabic, he understands its deepest, hidden nature, its possibilities, he forces the language, as one might force a spring planting into its richest, most vital profusion and budding. He tends to this deep, powerful language, nudging seedlings to light. To quote the historian Jaroslav Stetkevych on Arabic, ‘Venus-like, it was born in a perfect state of beauty, and it has preserved that beauty in spite of all the hazards of history…. It has known austerity, holy ecstasy and voluptuousness, boom and decadence. It exuberated in times of splendor and persisted through times of adversity in a state of near-hibernation. But when it awoke again, it was the same language.’ The same description might be applied to tonight’s author. Abdo has manipulated and dreamed this rich language-flesh. He is an erotic poet, a scholarly poet, a holy poet of mind and body, one who understands how to bear us, unconscious, through language, into our purest dreams.”
He breaks off and stares at the page in his hands. He looks up as if just remembering the audience, slightly breathless. And Sirine realizes that she too is a little breathless, caught up in his rapturous speaking. She has never heard anyone speak so eloquently and longingly of Arabic before. Suddenly she misses her father. And the speaker looks at her and her mouth opens a little; she has been listening to her uncle’s friend Hanif.
He only blinks, however, as if he were slightly nearsighted, and then blinks back down at his paper and she releases her breath. Then Hanif holds out his hand and says, “Please welcome Aziz Abdo.”
She lowers her head and tries to listen to the poetry. There is a sound like a murmur somewhere inside the sound of her breath, as if someone were whispering to her. She tries to be casual, inspects her nails, smells traces of butter left over from cooking lunch, an incense of oil and grass. But her mind still veers between the poetry and Hanif. Sirine never reads poetry and can’t imagine why Hanif’s odd introduction should have moved her so. She pulls her uncle’s topaz prayer beads out of her pocket and settles herself by thinking of braised squab: a sauce for wild game with motes of cinnamon and smoke.
The poet, the visiting writer named Aziz, leans into the podium; he switches between Arabic and English like someone wandering along a crooked path. Sirine speaks only a few words of Arabic but the sound of it soothes her. She floats in her seat, sifting through the beads, letting herself drowse to the poetry, the audience breathing, watching the carpet glow and glitter as if it were sprinkled with mica. Occasionally she steals glances across the room, attempting to spot Hanif.
She tries to perk up whenever the poet glances in her direction. His voice ticks like a whisk in a copper bowl. His poems conjure up the image of an old man sweeping the streets in Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Damascus. Sirine sees trees filled with birdcages, sparkling with colored songbirds. She sees sinewy sands, palm trees bending in the sky. These sound like places she might like to visit. She wonders if this is good writing.
Someone settles into the chair beside her. His shoulder brushes hers and a deep warmth races from her shoulder to the top of her head and the bottoms of her feet. And for the rest of the reading, she holds very still, squeezing her prayer beads.
The poet rocks up and down on his toes, pink-faced, lightly glazed with sweat. He places one hand over his heart, holds the other one up oratorically, and closes with a line that he says comes from a famous poet whom he refers to as his spiritual mentor: “‘Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’”
Afterward everyone stands up. Sirine peeks from the corner of her eye and confirms that it is Hanif who has been sitting next to her. She nervously stands and walks out of the row, trying to look nonchalant. The conference room opens to a small veranda where there is a long table covered with wine bottles and cheeses, and a small gathering of women with black hair that rolls around their shoulders like thunderclouds, men with blond beards, an elderly woman wearing a silk cape. Hanif stretches and wanders after Sirine to the table, and she tries to observe him without being obvious. His black hair is shot through with glints of gray and there is something pure and regal about the cast of his forehead; it seems like the distinctive, beautifully formed sort of brow that is bred within royal houses for generations. He raises his eyebrows—a question—then pours two glasses. The air is humid, and the little plastic cups of cold white wine mist up as they’re poured. Hanif glances at her. His eyes have a vaguely Asian cast to them, the irises smudged, slightly burnt. It is the injured quality of his eyes that sticks with her. She thinks of the heroes in her uncle’s stories with the dramatic black eyes.
“Would you like some?” He offers her a glass. Startled, she nods and then lifts it to her cheek a moment. A few students hover around Hanif but he doesn’t look at them. “I saw that you had some prayer beads—” He holds out one hand as if imitating her. “The way you held them was very delightful—very American.”
“Oh.” She feels embarrassed and somehow dismayed. “My uncle gave them to me,” she says, as if in self-defense.
“What a wonderful uncle, then,” he says.
Then there’s a silence that goes on a little too long, both of them frowning at their wine cups. Hanif looks up as if remembering something and says, “Did you enjoy the reading?”
“I really loved your introduction,” she says, but then this seems too intimate, so she adds, “I thought it was really wise. I don’t even know why.” She notices the tips of his ears turning pink and panics. “I mean—oh, I don’t know what I’m saying, it always comes out wrong—I always feel like such a fake smart person at these things,” she blurts. “Oh—I mean like a spy, not like I think smart people are fakes—”
“Yes, yes, so do I exactly!” he says.
“But how could you? I mean, you actually work here, I mean—you’re one of the smart ones.”
He looks blank. She hugs her elbow and sips her wine without tasting it. They both stare hard at the ground. Neither of them speaks.
“Well. Then. I suppose—should I let you go?” he says.
“Or—well—” she says. “Um.” She bites her lip, swirls her wine.
“Hello, Professor.” A woman’s voice drifts over Sirine’s shoulder. Sirine turns to see a young woman standing there; her head is covered with a black veil, only her face showing.
Hanif looks startled, then frowns; he seems to be trying to remember the woman’s name. “Hello there,” he says. “How ar
e you—uh—Rana?”
“That was some lecture the other day in class.” The woman doesn’t acknowledge Sirine; instead she moves up and edges one shoulder in front of her. “The connections you were drawing between the different classical periods were so helpful. You explain things in a way that I can finally understand—unlike some of these people.”
“Oh well…” He glances over her shoulder to Sirine. “I’m told I’m one of the smart ones,” he says with a smile.
The woman turns, following Hanif’s gaze, and finally seems to notice Sirine. She nods at her, then turns back to Hanif. “Well, I just wanted to let you know,” she says. “I can’t wait till the next class.” She waves at him so the tips of her fingers—painted crimson—glitter under the edges of her long black sleeves, then moves away.
Sirine inhales. The breeze is picking up a bit and bougainvillea buds like tiny purple lanterns skid across the floor. She tries to think of something to say to reclaim the conversation.
“Ah, there you are, good, good.” Her uncle saunters over, spots the cheese and crackers, and snaps off a branch of grapes. “I was looking absolutely everywhere.”
Sirine crosses her arms. “Did you try looking in here?” she asks.
“Ah…aha! Funny. Oh—did you meet my buddy Hanif Al Eyad, our new hire in Near Eastern Studies? This is my adorable niece, Sirine. Sirine, Hanif. Look at him—look at that face. What a face. Like Ulysses, right? Look at that expression. He’s an Iraqi classic just like your old uncle.”
Hanif shakes his head and smiles a big, squared-off smile, teeth bright against his toast-brown skin. He looks down, then up again, and she notices for the first time a pale scar that flicks from the outer edge of one eye onto his cheekbone. “Please, just call me Han,” he says to Sirine.
“We have met,” Sirine says to her uncle. “You’ve introduced us before.”
Han’s eyes flicker at her as if checking to see if she’s teasing. His hand slides over the back of his neck. Then his head jerks up. “My God,” he murmurs. “You’re Sirine. From the café. We have met.”
Sirine laughs. “You didn’t recognize me,” she says. “All this time we were talking!”
His eyes are wide and round. “I’m—you—you just—you looked so different outside the café—”
Sirine fingers a few loose spirals of hair that have fallen over one shoulder. She isn’t wearing her hair pulled back or her jacket and apron. She smiles at him. “I didn’t recognize you at first either.”
“You didn’t?” He looks at her, then shades his eyes in mock embarrassment.
“You two are having a smiling war,” her uncle says.
Sirine scowls at her uncle.
“So anyways,” her uncle says, looking around. “Oh, lovely, lovely, look here now is our new star student, Nathan.” He signals to him. A young man wearing rimless oval glasses and a square black camera slung around his neck slips through the crowd and joins them.
“I was just about to tell my niece how wonderful our Hanif is,” Sirine’s uncle says.
Nathan removes the glasses and wipes the ovals with the hem of his shirt, then carefully hooks them back around his ears. His narrow features are melancholy. He picks up a plate and turns back to Sirine. “I’m honored to meet you. You make the famous lentils and onions dish.” He is slight and wiry, but up closer, Sirine can see that he’s older than he seems. His smile is slightly off-kilter, as if unevenly weighted, his hair shaved down to black stubble. He points his thumb at Han in a jaunty, offhanded way. “He went to Cambridge, did a postdoc at Yale. He’s a linguist. He’s been everywhere. He had his pick of schools and didn’t have to come here at all.”
“What’s wrong with here?” her uncle asks.
“And he’s published extensively on American transcendentalism and has translated Whitman, Poe, Dickinson, and now Hemingway into Arabic!”
“If you can imagine such a thing,” her uncle says.
“Nathan—” Han is laughing. He shakes his head. “Nathan here is a wonder—he knows something about everything.”
Nathan shrugs. “No. Maybe a little music and photography. That’s it. I don’t really know anything.”
“You’ve got to see his exhibit next door,” Han says. “He’s so talented, it’s a little frightening to have him in class.”
“I’ll bet,” her uncle says.
“I’m—enthusiastic,” Nathan admits with an embarrassed smile, then offers his hand to Sirine. “Nathan Green.”
She takes it cautiously. “Well, hi.”
Aziz the poet makes his way toward them. He is stopping to speak to everyone, hugging women and men both. Sirine picks up a lilt of spicy cologne as he comes closer.
Finally he emerges; he throws his arms around Sirine’s uncle and then Han. Nathan backs up a step but then he too is enveloped. “Excellent,” Aziz says ardently. “Excellent, excellent.”
He turns to Sirine. Sirine thinks that he looks like a poet. His skin is the color of coffee and milk and his deep-set eyes are satiny. His sky-blue dress shirt sticks to his chest with long swatches of sweat. He wears his hair swept back from his face so it rises a few inches from his head. “Ahh,” he says, a long release of breath. “Yes, yes, excellent!”
“Aziz, this is my unattainable niece Sirine,” her uncle says to him.
“Oh, wonderful. How marvelous. I love a niece. And this is clearly a niece among nieces.” His hand folds around hers and then his other goes on top of that. He seems to be holding her in place. “Enchanté,” he says. “Seriously.”
She smiles and nods but her gaze briefly ticks over his right shoulder to Han, who is watching them.
“Did you love the reading?” Aziz asks. “Be honest.”
Han joins them then, puts a hand on Aziz’s back. “This guy,” he says. “I’ve moved all around the world, read all sorts of stuff. I thought I’d given up on poetry. I come to Los Angeles, of all places on earth, and I find the Walt Whitman of Syria in the office next door to me.”
“An essential poet,” Sirine’s uncle says, nodding.
Aziz is still holding her hand. Slightly flustered, Sirine says, “Oh, are you famous?”
“She’s used to Hollywood poets,” her uncle says to Aziz.
Nathan turns toward Sirine in a confiding half-crouch. “He’s just got one book out, Half Moor, but he has a minor reputation among Arab intellectuals,” he says. “Nothing like Mahmoud Darwish, of course, or even Abdelkebir Khatibi.”
“Of course,” her uncle says, plucking more grapes.
Aziz seems to enjoy the discussion about himself. She can’t tell if he’s overheard Nathan or not. “Yes, my little book and I do get around,” he says. “We were escorted out of Damascus abruptly and for a while we were teaching somewhere on Cape Cod—no one ever told me the name of the town. Then we were living in someplace like Mobile, Alabama, where I was teaching in a private girls’ school with lots of intelligent, poetry-loving girls. Then the big school here called and said come. So what do you know, I came.”
“I think if you talked to anyone in Syria, even a regular person like a cobbler or a butcher, they’ve probably heard of him,” Nathan adds.
“A cobbler maybe, but a butcher? I’m not that famous.”
Nathan glances at Aziz’s hand on Sirine’s and says, “You could let go of her now, you know.”
“Maybe yes…maybe no,” Aziz says with a tremendous smile.
Sirine resists the urge to tug. “Hm,” she says.
“No, really,” Han says to Aziz, also with a smile. He puts his hand on Aziz’s shoulder. “Why don’t you make an attempt?”
Aziz squeezes once, then releases her. “Open sesame,” he says, “the spell is broken.”
She feels cool sweat on the back of her hand.
Han pats Aziz lightly on the shoulder. “Better that way.”
As Sirine and her uncle are leaving, Sirine notices the smaller room off to one side. It’s empty except for some matted black and white photos
on the walls. At first they all appear to be out of focus, but as she moves closer, Sirine realizes that these are portraits of people in varying states of distress or agitation: blurred heads turning away, hands fluttering up in evasion, some appear to be outright shouting or laughing. The images are disturbing yet graceful, filled with languid shadows, as if the photographer were shooting through surfaces. There are small tags beneath the portraits, listing titles and modest prices: Emily, Omar, Ian. Sirine is captivated by the faces.
“Well. Some exciting things to look at,” her uncle says.
“What is all this?” She stops in front of one image that looks a little like a drowning man trapped beneath the camera lens, his mouth smeared and open, his eyes streaks.
“Nathan? Nate? That American boy? He’s a kind of photographer. He won a graduate student fellowship and the School of Arts invited him to do his own exhibit. But when he heard that Aziz was giving this reading, he wanted to show his pictures at the same time. I think he was making a statement. I don’t know what.” He points to a sign by the door that says “Photography Against Art: Real Seens by Nathan Green.”
“These are his?” During the reception she’d noticed Nathan taking some photographs of people bent over their plates, his fingers circling the lens of his camera. He hunched a little before each shot as if bowing in apology.
Her uncle stops by the drowning-man portrait for a moment and smiles as if recognizing a friend. He nods and turns away. “Well, he is an unusual fellow,” he says.
The photos bother Sirine: they remind her of times she’s known she was dreaming and couldn’t wake herself up. She gazes at one particularly dark image: something that looks like a well of light, a person at its center, head tilted back, staring straight up at the camera. The image slips inside her, cold, like swallowed tears.
When Sirine and her uncle leave the building, the moon has come out and she sees her uncle’s face in the hard lights that illuminate the front of the building. She notices the tracery of lines covering his skin, radiating from the corners of his eyes and crossing his cheeks. She sees the way his chin has softened and melts into his neck and the way his scalp shows through his hair.
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