Crescent

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  He looks over his shoulder as if this is a new discovery, then shakes his head. “It’s not very comfortable, is it? It’s just—it hadn’t really occurred to me—I mean, that I would need things like chairs and bookcases. I’ve moved around so much between schools and teaching posts and about a million different apartments. I haven’t had much incentive to buy furniture. I suppose in some way I had the sense that it would be like a commitment—to a place, I mean.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “But then you never get to really live anywhere that way—you’d always be thinking about where you’re going to. You’d never just be somewhere.”

  “That’s true,” he says, a tilted grin on his face as if she’d caught him at something.

  “So…” She touches the lip of the wineglass. “Do you think you could live here?”

  “I think so.” He looks at her for a moment. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  Her gaze slips then and she is looking at his hand, its smooth palm so much lighter than the skin on back, the crosshatching of dark creases. She comments again on the food and then on the music. She watches his hand as he pours them each more wine. The singer’s voice vibrates and seems to translate things loose in the air between them into her intricate song.

  Han nods and pours her more wine. “This song is called ‘Andaloussiya.’ It was a place where the Muslims and Jews lived together and devised miraculous works of philosophy and architecture. All the sorts of things that people get up to when you leave them in the sun for a while.”

  “Really, the Muslims and the Jews creating things together?” Sirine says; she closes her eyes and sips the wine, tasting cherry and oak and—echo-soft—raisin and tar. “Think of that.”

  “Oh yes, they were smart,” Han says, his voice confidential, as if he were telling secrets. “Have you seen the Alhambra—the climbing spirals and arches? Very smart. It’s an extraordinary place—I’ve visited it several times.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “The Andaloussians? Oh, scattered, chased away, conquered. They were too much for their time.”

  “It’s wonderful, all the places you’ve seen.”

  He lifts one shoulder, lets it fall. “I’m not sure it’s any more wonderful than just staying home, sometimes, really.” Han looks at the crumbs on her plate and then at Sirine. “Did you eat enough? Are you still hungry?” His voice hums along her breastbone like fingertips.

  She laughs. She puts down her glass of wine and it wobbles once before she stills it. “I’m fine, really. Stuffed.”

  He slices off a sliver from the meat loaf in the pan and picks it up with his fingertips. He holds it to her lips. “Come on,” he says. “Min eedi.” From my hand. The thing intimate friends say to express the greatest of care. She opens her mouth and remembers her father feeding her a bite of bread, min eedi, he said. And Han places the food in her mouth.

  They carry dishes in to to his smooth white sink, his little kitchen, and they argue briefly over who will wash and then they end up washing the dishes together, bumping their shoulders then their elbows then their hips.

  After the dishes and another glass of wine, Han answers Sirine’s questions about Islam—she’s curious, not having been raised with formal religion. He describes what the interior of a mosque looks like, its clean, open prayer hall, and—after much coaxing—he recites the athan, the call to prayers, to Sirine outside on the floor of his balcony. It sounds like singing to Sirine, but he says no—this is praying, which is pure. He hesitates a moment, as if he can’t quite remember, then demonstrates the postures and genuflections for praying—bowing from waist to knees to head. She loves the motion of it and tries to imitate him but her head swims a bit and she has to sit back down on the balcony floor. “It’s so nice,” she says quietly. “It reminds me of the way I feel sometimes when I’m working, like when I stir a pot of soup, or when I knead the bread dough.” She stops and wonders if what she’s saying makes any sense.

  He sits cross-legged beside her on the floor and rubs the back of his neck. “Haven’t prayed in some time. I’m out of practice.”

  Sirine has always felt comforted by the cool slip of her uncle’s prayer beads in her hand, but she has never actually tried to pray before. She doesn’t want to tell him this. It’s like not knowing how to play an instrument or how to speak a foreign language—something she feels she should know. She watches Han closely, tries to memorize his expression, the way he places his hands on his knees.

  Suddenly he stops and looks at her in dismay. “Oh my God, dessert,” he says.

  “There’s dessert?”

  “In the freezer.”

  The moon comes out and turns red. They’re back sitting side by side on the tiny balcony, eating frozen chocolate layer cake straight from the box and spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream from the carton, and drinking from one cup of Lipton’s tea, which Han says is the great colonial tea bag: “A brown tea bag upon which great white empires are built.” Sirine is laughing at Han’s stories about places where he’s taught, and difficult students and difficult colleagues. He tells her about studying in England, about the house where he lived that was—he swears—the size, shape, and smell of a large brick chimney, in a neighborhood full of large brick chimneys, the smell of roasted lamb and curried goat all over the neighborhood. He tells about his Sudanese roommate at Georgetown who owned a prayer rug with a compass to find Mecca built right into it. “After a few weeks in America, he rolled it up and used the compass to go camping,” Han says.

  Sirine watches his eyes, then she watches his mouth. She inhales traces of a lemon cologne that reminds her of watching her father shave. “What about old girlfriends?” she asks.

  “Who?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve had a few big relationships.”

  He shrugs, looks as blank as if he’d turned his pockets inside out. “I’ve spent my life studying like a madman. Then I spent my life teaching and writing like a madman. Honestly. I’m very good at just being inside myself.”

  “Oh, now…”

  “There’ve been maybe three women whom you might could barely call a sort of girlfriend, English girls—there was Miriam and Julietta, and one—it seems I can’t remember her name…” His face is bright pink. “I can barely remember any of them, when I think of it.”

  She realizes that her question might have been more personal than she’d meant it to be. She asks quickly, “What about Iraq? Tell me what Iraq is like.”

  He eases back into himself. Leans against the wall and gazes at the big red moon. The air stirs around them, so mild it’s almost without temperature. “Iraq is endless. As a child, I thought it held the whole world,” he says. “There’s the Euphrates River going one way, the Tigris in another. In Baghdad the Tigris is like a reflecting mirror under all the tall buildings. The gold and turquoise mosques with their big courtyards, all the libraries and museums, the great wooden doors and massive gates. But it’s more than buildings—there is a special quality to the air in Iraq. A feeling.”

  “What feeling?”

  He purses his lips. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding crazy.”

  “That’s okay—go ahead and sound crazy.”

  He tips his head back again, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. “It’s like sometimes I feel like I can sense the ghosts of all sorts of invisible cities and places that used to be there, on that land—the Chaldean Empire and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and—I know I’m not telling this very well. The night there seems to start two thousand years ago, it’s so light and dry—a bit like this night, I think.” He looks off the balcony toward an invisible place; Sirine looks in the same direction. “And then there’s my parents’ house.”

  He tells her about the whitewashed stone of their small home, his father’s olive orchards, the salty, grassy smell of the olives roasting in the sun; he describes the finesse of his mother’s embroidery, the precise delicacy of the stitches; he talks about the Iraq
i guard—the soldiers with their automatic weapons, the crisp uniforms and slanted berets that he’d seen in the city streets, how he’d been afraid of them when he was a child. He talks about trying to sleep when he could hear gunfire and soldiers in the street, never feeling entirely safe, always wanting to run far away.

  She leans forward into her listening and he leans forward into his telling and once again their knees are touching. She would very much like to take his hand. But they are sitting so close that she doesn’t know what to do. She wonders if she seems too available. If Han is merely attracted to her silvery blond hair, the bluish translucence of her skin. The Arab men she knows can be giddy and talkative when they’re out in public, but then subdued and somber when they come into the café. They kiss Um-Nadia’s hand as if she were their mother, and then tease Mireille and threaten to marry her off to their brothers. They sit and watch Sirine surreptitiously or their eyes follow the American girls through the café window. Occasionally one of them will appear with an American girlfriend and all the other students will observe them. But never an Arab girl. Sirine is used to their sweet, mild advances—the way they’ll bring her little presents, chocolates, and flowers—but never try to touch her.

  “I’d love to see Baghdad,” she says tentatively, and as she says it she realizes it’s true, though she’s never liked to travel.

  Han’s head stays lowered but he looks up at her carefully. “Have you ever been to the Middle East at all?”

  The tips of her fingers tingle as if she were cold and she curls them into her palms. “I’ve hardly been anywhere,” she says. Then she smiles slightly and says, “And here you’ve been everywhere.”

  She stays too late, drunk on Han’s stories and with laughing. At times he seems to lure her forward, as if he would take her arms and pull her into a kiss, and at times she panics a little and pulls back, overexcited and startled by the way he stirs her up. She’s conscious of the darkened bedroom just on the other side of the balcony door, so she looks in another direction and watches the trees lined up along the sidewalk, silver-limbed, the hand-shaped leaves swimming through the moonlight. The evening looks mysterious and enticing, beckoning her.

  But eventually the curry-colored moon disappears and Han is shaking the wine bottle, trying to pour out the last drops of wine—the goblets are gone and they seem to be drinking from the teacup. The smattering of wine looks inky in the bottom of the cup. She makes herself check her watch. “Oh no. Oh no, it’s so late. I have to get home. I get up very early.” She unfolds her legs and pulls herself up by the balcony rail.

  “Oh, but…” He stands. He looks startled. “It doesn’t seem late.” He looks around at the city-lit sky. “It doesn’t really seem much like night at all here. I can barely see the stars with all these lights. In Baghdad, the moon and stars were so clear, like ice.” His eyes are black and his skin sleek and African. The crescent-shaped scar near his eye gleams faintly.

  Her bike is still propped against the wall by Han’s door. But he’s appalled by the thought of her bicycling home in the dark. “This city is full of every kind of lunatic there is, and every one of them has gotten a car from somewhere,” he says. “Or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Oh no, it’s fine. I do this all the time. I can practically bicycle with my eyes closed,” she says and flicks on the light mounted to her handlebars; it casts a greenish glow through the gloomy corridor. “Actually, sometimes I think it’s easier to ride without the light.” She switches it off.

  “I’ll drive you,” Han says, grabbing his keys.

  They argue over it in the elevator, sweetly, Sirine tapping on his chest. Han catches Sirine’s hand and doesn’t let go and then the door creaks open and he has to let go so she can push her bike.

  Han’s car is parked on the street in front of his building. It’s a big, squared-off rectangle with a hood ornament in the shape of an anchor. The white orb of the streetlight hangs over it and beams a sapphire gleam on the car hood. The car interior is so spacious they can practically roll the bike in back without tilting it. Sirine goes around to the passenger side and sinks into the plush seat. “It’s amazing,” she says, running her hands over the upholstery.

  “It belonged to Lon, the department chair,” Han says. “His wife gave it to me when I got here. I don’t know if she asked him first or not, though.”

  They pull away from the curb and lights from the street slink over the windshield and through the car as they drive. It’s only about ten blocks from Han’s apartment to Sirine’s house and Han looks startled and disappointed when they arrive. “We’re there?” he says. “I didn’t realize you lived so close.”

  “Like neighbors,” Sirine says.

  He parallel parks in front of the house, moving the car in slow arcs. Its length extends so far over its wheelbase that Sirine thinks she can feel the front and back ends wafting up and down. Han clunks it into park, then sits back and runs his hands over the steering wheel. The streetlights burn through the night with a mellow amber glow.

  “I really don’t get the geography of this town,” he says. “It seems like things keep swimming around me. I think I know where something is, then it’s gone.”

  “It’s not so hard,” Sirine says. “See, right over there—” She taps the windshield, “That’s where the ocean is, and—”

  “Show me.” He looks at her, his eyes darker than the air. “If you draw me a map I think I’ll understand better.”

  “Do you have paper?” She looks over the empty sweep of the car’s interior. “I don’t have anything to write with.”

  He holds up his hands, side to side as if they were hinged. “That’s okay. You can just use my hands.”

  She smiles, a little confused. He leans forward and the streetlight gives him yellow-brown cat eyes. A car rolling down the street toward them fills the interior with light, then an aftermath of prickling black waves. “All right.” She takes his hands, runs her finger along one edge. “Is this what you mean? Like, if the ocean was here on the side and these knuckles are mountains and here on the back it’s Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West L.A., West Hollywood, and X marks the spot.” She traces her fingertips over the backs of his hands, her other hand pressing into the soft pads of his palm. “This is where we are—X.”

  “Right now? In this car?” He leans back; his eyes are black marble, dark lamps. She holds his gaze a moment, hears a rush of pulse in her ears like ocean surf. Her breath goes high and tight and shallow; she hopes he can’t see her clearly in the car—her translucent skin so vulnerable to the slightest emotion. He turns her hands over, palms up, and says, “Now you.” He draws one finger down one side of her palm and says, “This is the Tigris River Valley. In this section there’s the desert and in this point it’s plains. The Euphrates runs along there. This is Baghdad here. And here is Tahrir Square.” He touches the center of her palm. “At the foot of the Jumhurriya Bridge. The center of everything. All the main streets run out from this spot. In this direction and that direction, there are wide busy sidewalks and apartments piled up on top of shops, men in business suits, women with strollers, street vendors selling kabobs, eggs, fruit drinks. There’s the man with his cart who sold me rolls sprinkled with thyme and sesame every morning and then saluted me like a soldier. And there’s this one street….” He holds her palm cradled in one hand and traces his finger up along the inside of her arm to the inner crease of her elbow, then up to her shoulder. Everywhere he touches her it feels like it must be glowing, as if he were drawing warm butter all over her skin. “It just goes and goes, all the way from Baghdad to Paris.” He circles her shoulder. “And here”—he touches the inner crease of her elbow—“is the home of the Nile crocodile with the beautiful speaking voice. And here”—his fingers return to her shoulder, dip along her clavicle—“is the dangerous singing forest.”

  “The dangerous singing forest?” she whispers.

  He frowns and looks thoughtful. “Or is that in Madagascar?” His hand slip
s behind her neck and he inches toward her on the seat. “There’s a savanna. Chameleons like emeralds and limes and saffron and rubies. Red cinnamon trees filled with lemurs.”

  “I’ve always wanted to see Madagascar,” she murmurs: his breath is on her face. Their foreheads touch.

  His hand rises to her face and she can feel that he’s trembling and she realizes that she’s trembling too. “I’ll take you,” he whispers.

  When he kisses her, the backs of her thighs go soft and her breath dissolves and her eyelids float over her eyes. She wants to press one hand against her sternum. Instead, her hands slip over his shoulders and she moves even closer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Are you paying attention? The moralless story requires, of course, greater care and general alertness than your run-of-the-mill, everyday story with a moral, which basically gives you the Cliffs Notes version of itself in the end anyway. A moralless story is deep yet takes no longer to tell than it takes to steep a cup of mint tea.

  So: tippling and toppling on the blue boat, our poor cousin Abdelrahman Salahadin brushes the salt from his temples and tries to focus on the Covered Man, who blurs and ripples in the transparent sea light as he tells the story of his beloved. The air rises up from the West, runs over the boat, and chills his skin. He looks toward the vanished horizon, paces a bit, then sits back down beside the Covered Man.