Aziz’s eyes go round and innocent. “Is who what student? I have no students, only assassins.” He drags a handkerchief out of his pocket and mops his face, then pulls his damp blue silk shirt away from his chest. Then he scans the room once more and says, “No, really, I’m just experiencing a little technical difficulty. A complication, as they say. Having more fun than one Aziz can handle.” He smiles his gigantic smile and takes Sirine’s hand again. “It’s good as can be to see you again, my dear. Look at how lovely you are without an apron on.”
Sirine ducks her face. “Oh, now.”
“Where are you spending your free time? Is that Han monopolizing your life? You know, he doesn’t write poetry.”
She sinks her hands into her pockets, tries to think of something that she’s done with herself. “Well. I’ve been working on things,” she says defensively.
He raises his black eyebrows. “You sound like my students, they’re forever working on things. Why don’t you come to my office and I’ll teach you how to write poetry? I can tutor you.” He leans over her, brings his face close, and she can smell something like licorice on his breath.
“Well…” She wraps her arms around herself, grabs her elbows. “English was my worst subject.”
“We’ll write everything in classical Arabic,” Aziz says.
“I don’t know if Han would appreciate you giving me private lessons.”
“Han?” He sounds as if he’s never heard the name before. “Why?”
“Sirine of my dreams!” A voice bursts in echoes over the white tiles of the shop. All the old ladies stop their arguing and turn. Odah emerges from his side office. “Sirine of the trees!” Odah is about five-foot-three, built with thick wide shoulders, no neck, and a big head covered with woolly black hair. His big soft nose looks squashed against his face and his eyes are huge and dolorous. The happier Odah is, the sadder he looks. “Sirine, come in back here! I want you to see!” He grabs her hand and they hurry behind the counter, Aziz following. They go down a hallway and through a door into the refrigerated room behind the store. Their breaths turn to steam. Long, uncarved sides of beef hang from the ceiling. Odah leads her to a small silver cooler, the size of a footlocker; they lean over it and their breaths make pale spirals. Aziz says, “Open sesame!”
Odah looks at him. “Who are you supposed to be?”
“That’s just Aziz,” Sirine says.
He sticks out his hand. “I’m Aziz the poet,” Aziz says.
“Oh, a poet.” Odah doesn’t seem to notice Aziz’s hand. “Never mind about that.” He squats over the cooler and it opens with a gasp. He tilts it, showing off a row of bright pink lamb legs. “You get first choice. The very best spring lamb.”
“But it’s October,” Aziz says.
“In New Zealand it’s spring!” Odah’s voice ricochets off the shining gray walls. He puts his hand delicately to his chest, then recovers and bends back over the meat. “And this,” he says, tenderly cradling a few cuts propped in butcher paper, “is for my rose, Um-Nadia. You tell her, yes? Special from Odah.”
After Sirine has selected the lamb and gone back to the front of the shop, Odah presents her with Um-Nadia’s package of cuts, wrapped in gold foil with a single pink ribbon. He taps it, then taps his chest, saying, “Remember, from me.”
“Now, there is a true romantic,” Aziz says, watching as Odah disappears back into his office. “He must be married.”
“No, he’s divorced. A bunch of times.”
“Ah, no wonder. A chronic romantic. But romance is one of the fundaments of life, a crucial element, like bread and water, wouldn’t you say?” He looks at her closely, his smile easy and soft, and Sirine notices for a moment how smooth his tan skin is and the brightness of his dark brown eyes. Then she realizes he is holding her hand again. She releases herself and plunges her hand back into her pockets. She feels her blush starting all the way at the center of her sternum. “I guess. I never thought about it that way before,” she says.
“Perhaps you’re not meeting your minimum daily requirements,” he says. “You look a bit pale to me. A bit anemic. Dr. Aziz thinks you might be needing more poetry, more music, more kisses, more laughter, and also more dancing in your life. And he is prepared to write the prescription.”
She’s trying to think of a response when the white-haired woman who’d stood behind Sirine in line—now on her way out—taps Sirine’s shoulder with a white-papered packet of meat, raises one finger, and shakes it at them vigorously, saying in broken English, “Monkey business!”
Suddenly there’s a wild clattering, a juddering noise that fills the tight space like roaring water in a drum, and a vivid blue blur spins around them: a bird has somehow flown into the shop and it batters itself against the plate-glass window trying to escape. The old ladies scream in twenty different languages, dropping their packages and straw baskets and wheeled carriers, and run out of the shop, as do Odah and his sons. Aziz drags Sirine out as well, laughing. “Oh no, oh dear!” he cries, laughing and shaking his head. “They think it’s the Evil Eye.”
“It is the Evil Eye, you idiot poet!” Odah rumbles at him as they shove through the door. “Do you realize what this means for me? All new charms!”
Sirine’s heart is speeded up and she’s out of breath. She presses one hand down against her chest as if she could slow herself down, and she peers into the window. The poor bird is still spinning its wings against the window, a crazy, round blueness. Odah turns to her, bows, and then takes the pink-ribboned package from her. “I am terribly sorry,” he says, his wide eyes shining. “But it is impossible now. I can not allow Um-Nadia to have this under the current circumstances.”
“Why not? We left the shop—it’s okay.”
Odah shakes his head ominously. “Something—or someone—” he eyes Aziz—“has allowed the Evil Eye to enter my shop. Everything is tainted. Believe me, if I find out who is responsible—”
“Time to go check on my poetry class,” Aziz says, and begins walking backward away from Sirine and Odah. “I left them writing something. It’s been lovely, you two.” He turns and strides up the hill toward campus.
Sighing, Odah puts the meat on top of the mailbox like it’s a special delivery package. “Fine,” he says and crosses his arms.
While Sirine and all the customers are still gathered on the sidewalk, two young officers pull up in a cruiser. Odah tells them that the Evil Eye is inside his store. One of the officers puts his hand on his gun and the other says, “I think we should call the fire department.” Then everyone stands there awhile watching the bird pinwheeling through the shop, and Odah sighs heavily several times, occasionally crying out, “Oh, the bad omen!” Finally, Sami—the smart son—thinks to prop open the door. And just as suddenly as it came in, the bird flies out the door, then rises calm as a sigh into the trees. And watching it go, Sirine feels some tension slip out of her body as well. She walks back from the butcher shop feeling oddly peaceful. When she turns the corner, she thinks she sees a flash of blue in one of the bushes and she moves closer, wondering if it might be the escaped bird. But then she hears Mireille call her name from up the street. And she backs up, thinking perhaps it’s best to leave the Evil Eye alone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The story that you are not going to believe goes like this: There was once an Arab empire that dominated the world. The glorious Abbasid Empire reigned from the eighth until the thirteenth centuries—five hundred years. And Baghdad was its celestial capital. Now you blink: it is seven or eight centuries later and the world has turned upside down in its usual way. The Abbasid Empire dissolved. But a few Arabs have a long, long memory and like to believe that someday the world and everything in it will be returned to them. Most other Arabs would settle for a little bit of peace, less fighting in the backyard, getting to keep the backyard, et cetera. And then there are the Arabs who feel that no matter what it is they want—the world or a little peace and quiet—America seems to be dedicated to
keeping it from them.
So Aunt Camille was waiting on the banks of Tanganyika, hoping for an audience with the Mother of All Fish. Was she thinking about the end of the Abbasid Empire? Possible. Not likely. Like most Arabs, she assumed that the late morning in 1258 when the Mongol hordes came to the doors of Baghdad was when the party was pretty much over. Or perhaps she felt that the day in 1492 when the Moorish prince of Granada handed over the keys to the city to King Ferdinand, well, that was the end of that!
Aunt Camille had just heard a rich bell-like voice ask if she was looking for her—a singular, unearthly voice that she joyously took to be the voice of the Mother of All Fish. Imagine her surprise, then, when the vines swayed and the bushes trembled and the branches crackled and not the Mother of All Fish, but a great jinn with garnet-colored eyes and skin the color of powdered cocoa bean stepped forward and cried out, “Halt! I am the Lost Secret King of the Abbasid Empire and I demand to know your business.”
This jinn was no dumb-dumb; he was aiming to upset the emotions of each and every Arab he met by saying this. The Arab Abbasid Empire had enjoyed the same sort of glory as that of the Roman Empire and had achieved the depth of the Greek; it had spanned continents and hemispheres, produced libraries, inventions, and celestial insights—and then it was gone and the Arabs had to go back to being regular people. Except here was this jinn with crackling gold sandals and gleaming emerald rings on his middle toes; his chest was covered and clankling with medals from all the kings and generals he’d eaten, his nostrils were opened wide and his eyes were opened wide, and his hair and beard were standing up in every direction, take your pick. The Lost Secret King of the Abbasid Empire! He was offering them the bitter brazen hopes of renewed glories and a nibble of nostalgia besides. The lost king come to reclaim the Arab throne! It was like coming face-to-face with Charlemagne or the white ghost of Elvis.
But Aunt Camille was a cool customer; she took him in from head to toe, and finally she said, “I’ve never heard of any lost Abbasid king.”
“Well,” hissed the jinn—and his breath smelled of just-struck matches and boiling oil and the last cried wishes of a thousand dying creatures—“that’s why I’m the Lost Secret King of the Abbasid Empire, now, isn’t it? When my disappointing father the Moorish prince gave away the Muslim city of Granada, my grandmother sent me into hiding—which, as everyone knows, has a way of stopping time. I stayed in a cave for a hundred years and when the floods came, I was forced to roam the world like a nameless wild man with only a wild donkey for a companion, letting my hair flow down my back and my beard flow down my front and my mind fill with electrical thoughts. This went on, along with all sorts of mayhem and adventures, until I was found and adopted by the Mother of All Fish, who taught me how to pray and who set me on the path of life again.”
At the mention of the fish-mother, Aunt Camille perked up and cried, “That’s exactly who I came to see!”
The jinn rolled himself out to his full seven feet two inches so his hair shimmered and his toes glimmered and he said in a voice that carried the low rumbling notes of the roaming Nile and the silky crisscrossings of the braiding Euphrates: “HAVE YOU GOT AN APPOINTMENT?”
That evening, just before Sirine leaves to go home, Mireille stands by the window and whispers, “Look at the moon, it looks like a baby.”
Um-Nadia frowns, turns, and says to Sirine, “Something happened at the butcher shop!”
Sirine, who’d forgotten all about the bird, looks up, startled. “Did Odah call you?”
Um-Nadia squints at her. “It’s all over your eyes—they’re like this.” She waves her fingertips in a fringy, sliding motion. “And you didn’t bring home any lamb.”
“Well, there was one thing,” Sirine ventures. Um-Nadia’s eyes sharpen. Sirine tells her the story of the trapped bird in the market and Um-Nadia slaps her hand to her chest. Then she has Sirine slowly turn her head to either side, checking her face, and she examines Sirine’s hands closely, turning them over. “Okay, all right,” she says at last, apparently reassured. “You be extra careful tonight—things are in the air,” she says, pointing at Sirine.
But Sirine feels calm and clear, light and fearless. After she closes up the café, she bicycles to Han’s through a night rich and warm as cashmere. The bougainvillea crazy-woman plants shake their papery buds. Clouds foam in the sky, the moon is low and almost vermilion, and the stars sail along in their private orbits. Sirine feels the thought of Han as if it circulated within her own body, as if he were the fundamental element that Aziz spoke of—as purely necessary as air and bread. She feels drawn to Han as if she were under the sweetest spell.
He is waiting for her in the front of his building, standing still under the long, violet shadows. He smiles and takes her bike. He kisses her neck in the elevator. Then he steps back and looks at her, his expression blurred in the fuzzy light. “Here you are,” he says. “Let me see you. Are you really here?”
“Well,” she says, “are you really here?”
“Sometimes I’m not sure,” he says gravely. “Have I dreamed all this or is it real?”
They walk, arms scooped around each other’s backs, into his apartment and go right into his bedroom. A plate of chopped fruit is positioned on the bed. They eat and sip some wine and then they make love; a recording of the Lebanese singer plays in the background, faint as a hand drifting over her hair.
Afterward, Sirine lies with her cheek against his chest, the sound of his heart thrumming in her ear, and behind that the sound of the music. She sinks into the vibrations of his body, the liquid quality of his voice stirring inside his lungs. The long stroke of his caress repeats, warm and hypnotic, and she drifts to sleep.
But they swim apart during the night. Her sleep is fragmented, sprinkled with odd dream-sounds: a baby’s laugh, musical notes, a low vibrating moan. She bobs near the surface of unsettled sleep, frequently waking. There is no moon and the night through the window is plush and pincushioned and too dark, squeezing out everything, even the stars.
And she has the sense again of being watched, so real it is like an actual presence in the room. She feels she could simply open her eyes and see the staring figure bent over their bed. She struggles to wake herself several times, dreaming that her mind is awake but her body sleeps. Finally she manages to open her eyes in the dark—just a sliver—but no one is there. Just Han asleep, his breathing soft and regular. She turns on her side, watching him. He looks different in his sleep, his features swept clean. She slides her knees toward the edge of the bed and then pauses and looks back at him, wondering if it is possible that she already loves him.
She lifts her feet out of bed soundlessly, rising, drawn again to the dresser across the room. There are the same objects, but somehow they seem altered: the bottle with colored sand looks poisonous, the letter opener looks like a dagger. She searches for the photograph of Han and the boy and girl, but it’s gone. She is looking for something like a clue, some small key. She needs to know more about him, to know if it is safe to feel this way about him. Her hands go carefully, carefully, to the top drawer in his dresser. It hisses open, revealing the soft, bundled shapes of clothes. She slips her hands between them, glancing back once over her shoulder. At the bottom of the drawer she feels something and pulls it out carefully: a letter.
Trembling, she takes it into the bathroom and eases the door shut. She has never snooped around a boyfriend’s room like this before and she is amazed at herself—where did she get the nerve to do this? What if he wakes up? Yet she cannot seem to stop. The letter is addressed to Han at a school address in England, forwarded several times, the outside covered in scrawls and corrections. Inside, it’s dated April 1999, six months ago. There are a few sentences in Arabic, then the rest is written in a cramped, tilting English:
So now I switch to this language, in hopes of evading censors and prying eyes, you understand. Thank heavens for my time in the Aaliyyah Girls’ School—at least it taught me something useful.
Still, the mail service here is undependable, and who knows if you’ve actually received a single one of my letters. At least half the reason why I write anymore is to hear myself think, since no one else will listen. We are a nation of thinking-out-louders, and Baghdad is the city of the dead.
I hope you received the veil I sent last year.
I frequently wonder what your life is like there in such a cold, distant place. I cannot quite manage to imagine it. And most probably you can no longer imagine ours either.
As of today, here is what we have: the air over the city is electrical, stirring with chemical dust and ashes. A gray soup, land laid to waste. Life progresses in fits and starts. The vegetable seller opens his stalls but there isn’t enough milk for the children, and the children are everywhere, all over the streets, their eyes too big and their knees and ankles and wrists all knobs. If you give one a banana, he will run just out of range in case you change your mind, and then eat it peel and all. The carousel in the amusement park next to the Baghdad Zoo is still crowded with children. They run and climb over the painted horses, and their laughter is something that freezes in the air, already an echo when you hear it. Our young women, like our men, march in formation through the streets wearing their veils and carrying long, black guns. Our fine, beautiful country is gone. We can’t get away from the smell of burning. Terrible chemical fallout, starvation, no medicine, the usual catastrophe—so dull being a victim. There are many diseases, cholera, malaria, typhus, and rickets. How ridiculous to be struggling with outdated diseases! Our ancient night flashes with bombs. The Americans still bomb Iraq on nearly a daily basis. I’m told that during the Persian Gulf crisis these displays were compared to fireworks on American television.
Your mother talks about you all the time, as if you’d just stepped into the other room for a moment and will be right back. I’m writing to you now to tell you, very simply and very sadly, that your mother is not well. She has of course been sick in the past, but now it is something different. I don’t know if it is possible to die from sadness—living here among such loss and grief—but I have started to think that it may well be. Your mother eats less and less. She doesn’t like to get up from her bed and she no longer sits with the other women. I see a kind of darkness rising inside her like the darkness rising from the bottom of a well.
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