She disappears out the door and Sirine sits there, hands in her lap, her heart booming.
That evening in bed, Sirine pulls back from Han. Shadows from turning headlights crawl through the bedroom, making low, black furrows, the white foam of waves.
“What is it?” he says, pushing a dangling lock of her hair behind her ear.
“I think I want to go to that meeting,” she says. She’s aware that she’s testing him, but not sure what his response should be. “The Women in Islam meeting your student told me about.”
He hesitates, looks amused. The black of his eyes blends into the black of his lashes like melted chocolate, dark slants under folds of skin. A soft wing of stubble covers his lower face. “Well, sure, if you like.”
“You don’t have an opinion?”
He doesn’t respond right away: the longer he is quiet, the more she thinks she wants to attend. He lays back in the bed and she slides over him. His lips are pale and soft, his hands unfold. “Well, it’s fine either way.” He fills his hands with her hair. “That’s what I like about this country,” he says. “You can do whatever. A meeting is only a meeting. There doesn’t have to be anything more to it than that.”
The meeting is in a big hotel downtown. Sirine turns a corner, following the concierge’s directions along an endless, winding corridor. Each of the rooms along the corridor have gold plates inscribed with their names: the Santa Ana, the San Gabriel, the Sierra. She finds the Shasta Room at the end of the corridor and when she pushes through the heavy door, it’s a burst of white-paneled walls and ornate crystal chandeliers. The walls and carpet are all the same creamy white and seem to fade away from the center of the room. There’s a podium with a spray of yellow roses, and huddled at the center of the big room, a loose ring of chairs and perhaps seventeen or eighteen women. A handful of the women are fully cloaked in veils and floor-length black dress; the rest are dressed in pants and cardigans, jeans and blouses.
The carpet feels spongy beneath Sirine’s feet and the voices of the women are absorbed into the walls, so it’s hard to hear anything clearly until she’s actually sitting inside the ring of chairs. Only her pulse amplifies, filling her ears. Sirine is regretting not having brought Mireille along for support, but when she invited her, Mireille said she was “against religion, period.” Sirine came thinking that there might be something important here she could learn about Han—the pieces of things he didn’t seem able to tell her about. But the longer she stands in the room, the more uncomfortable she feels. This reminds her of a conference meeting she once catered: a small, aggressively officious group called Women Mean Business. She wonders if she turned and tried to tiptoe out, if anyone would notice. But every face is turned toward her now. The student who invited her doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight and she freezes for a moment, wondering if it’s a sort of secret society. Then one of the women in black beckons her in and says, “It’s okay. We don’t bite.”
Sirine perches at the edge of the seat, as if she might need to spring to her feet at any moment. The women resume chatting with each other. One woman is working on a crossword puzzle; another, whose hair is covered with a black head scarf, is plaiting the hair of a woman in a fuzzy pink sweater. A number of them smile at Sirine.
A woman in a knitted gray cardigan and a pair of bifocals on a pearl chain stands and welcomes them. She asks for everyone to introduce themselves briefly—Sirine wonders if this is being done for her benefit—and some of the women just shyly murmur their names and their nationality. One woman says, “I’m married to Hassan Almirah and my children’s names are Tonia and Tamim,” before someone reminds her to give her own first name. But many of them offer some sort of testimonial or request: “I used drugs to try and clear my soul, but then I found Islam.” Or: “I am praying to get a job and get back on my feet.” As it gets closer to Sirine’s turn, her heart begins hammering and her mind goes blank. Then everyone is looking at her. “Sirine,” she manages to say. “I cook.” A covered woman sitting behind her touches her shoulder and leans over. “I didn’t think you’d really come,” she whispers.
Sirine turns—the woman’s face is covered except for her eyes, which are hooded black marbles, the sort of eyes Um-Nadia would call Cleopatra eyes. She removes the veiling covering her mouth and nose and Sirine realizes it’s the pretty student from Han’s class. “I’m Rana,” the woman says to the group. “As most of you know. From Saudi Arabia. And I don’t have a husband and I don’t have any kids, all right?”
The secretary reads minutes, announcements, then opens the floor to a group discussion over whether they’ll participate in a campus sit-in to protest the occupation of the West Bank, whether they’ll donate baked goods to the Lutheran fund-raiser, and whether they’ll appear on a local TV news show to discuss the negative portrayal of Arabs in Hollywood films.
Sirine watches the faces of the women around her: about half of the group have fair skin and light eyes, including some of the covered women. Some are in white head scarves and some in black, and each scarf seems to be knotted or fastened in a slightly different way: the ends tucked in at the side of the face or elaborately swept around the neck or pinned under the chin. A number of the older women there have darkened their eyes with scrolls of eyeliner and dramatic red lipstick.
Suddenly Rana leans forward, elbows on her knees, and says she has something important to say. She is wearing a gold ring on her thumb inscribed with what appear to be Roman numerals and Sirine watches her twist it around as she speaks about the war in the Persian Gulf, her voice gathering intensity: “Nine full years after the war—it’s the total destruction of Iraq’s economy and people…targeting women and children…the American embargoes…biological weapons, rocket launchers, nerve gas….” Sirine’s concentration flickers—she takes in snatches of Rana’s words, but she is distracted by her transported expression and voice: “American Muslims must do everything they can to show support for their Iraqi brothers and sisters. We can demonstrate, write to Congress….”
The girl in the pink sweater snaps her gum and bobs her foot. A number of the women light cigarettes while Rana is speaking and the group leader looks nervous and waves her hand at the smoke. “Whoever sets off the next smoke alarm,” she interrupts, “has to find the next meeting room.”
Rana pulls up indignantly and sends a scathing look across the group. One of the older women sighs and folds her arms over her chest, rocking her body back in her chair. “Rana, I’m sorry, but do you always have to be at the top of your lungs all the time? People like you make the Amerkees think Muslims are always angry.” She adds something in Arabic so a number of the other women shout, “English, English!”
Rana looks dazed. “How can you talk like that, Suha?” she demands. “Do you know the effect of an American rocket on an Iraqi tank?” She lifts her hand. “The Americans were firing after the Iraqis had already surrendered, they were retreating.”
Suha sniffs. “I don’t even know why you expect us to know about all these political things,” she says. “We just want to be Americans like everyone else.”
Rana points at Suha. “Do you see? This is exactly the attitude that’s the problem! You want to know where terrorists come from? They come from passivity—from well-meaning people! Americans want big cars, big houses—they don’t care what their government does to put cheap gasoline in their cars, to make all these big, expensive things happen. Fine, but don’t be surprised when the terrorism ends up right back here.”
“How can you say such a thing about your own country?” Suha asks, her face darkening with indignation; a number of the other women nod. “You were even born here.”
“How can you be so indifferent to human lives? These are your brothers and sisters we’re talking about!”
Suha holds up one hand and says, “My brothers and sisters are in Orange County where they belong.”
After the meeting, Rana turns to Sirine, gripping her hands. Rana’s palms are warm—her whole body r
adiates heat and the bright lighting seems to sap away the pink of her skin. Her eyes look enormous and unblinking. “Sister,” Rana says, and even her voice is hot. “You’re a natural Muslim, I can see it.”
Sirine stands still, letting Rana hold her hands in her fiery grip. She is a little afraid of Rana and inspired by her and she feels a sudden reckless impulse to confide in her, to ask some of the questions that have been worrying her. “I was wondering…” Sirine begins tentatively, then shies away, startled by the way Rana’s eyes widen. “I mean—well, just, thank you for inviting me.”
Sirine smiles but now Rana’s eyes seem to be ticking over her, a faintly ironic expression on her face. “I hope you got something out of it. Sometimes I’m not even sure if there’s a way for a Christian to comprehend a Muslim,” she says speculatively. “May I ask what faith you belong to?”
Sirine looks down at her hands and notices a fine crease of flour between her fingers and under her nails. She stuffs them into her pockets. “I suppose I don’t actually have one,” she ventures. “I mean, my parents didn’t, so…” She trails off. But she’s afraid Rana will be disappointed by this, so she adds, “Well, I believe in lots of things.”
“I see.” Rana looks less than impressed. “That’s interesting.”
Sirine thinks she sees a dart of wickedness reflected behind the surface of Rana’s eyes. It ripples through her slender frame like suppressed laughter. And still, Sirine can’t help admiring Rana, her intense beauty and her fierce mind. In her presence, Sirine feels as if her own mind is a small, dimly lit place.
It seems the air-conditioning has kicked on in the room. Sirine runs her palms over her prickling arms. “Are you cold?” Rana takes the wide cotton scarf from her own shoulders and wraps it around Sirine. It reminds Sirine of the one Han gave her. This one is black with a blue embroidered border in the shape of petals. And for an instant Sirine wonders if Han has given them each a scarf. But Rana is bending over her, saying, “Please. Please keep it. I insist.”
Through the window Sirine can see the hot mountain wind stirring sand and dust into the air. “Oh no, no, I couldn’t possibly,” she says.
Rana embraces her, holding Sirine inside the scarf and kissing both her cheeks, then she whispers in her ear, “My sister.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It’s a lesser-known fact about jinns that, while they do not have living rooms or dining rooms or studies or bathrooms or even very comfortable beds, they do like a nice kitchen, to satisfy their sweet tooth, maybe bake a little knaffea, brew a little coffee, have a few people over—that sort of thing. The river jinn’s mutbakh was situated behind a crack in a great stone wall along the bank of the lake and Napoleon-Was-Here and Aunt Camille had to squeeze themselves through the crack one by one to get in. The kitchen wasn’t much more than a seven-sided marble room with a twelve-foot-high domed ceiling, a stolen Roman mosaic floor of a winged antelope, a mossy boulder for a table, four chairs of twigs, a teensy fire-hold in the rock with a permanent fire, a cold corner and a pantry, and a very large pile of bones—which Camille preferred to ignore, but which intrigued Napoleon-Was-Here. She checked the cold corner and found seven mice, two squirrels, one crocodile toe, and a few gray wut-wut, or bats. In the pantry she found a jug of olive oil, several bulbs of garlic and onion, some ripe tomatoes, half a lemon, several dates, a big cabbage, some rice, jars of cardamom, tea, pepper, green wheat, sugar, turmeric, salt, nutmeg, fenugreek, dried mint, saffron, cinnamon, oregano, sumac, lentils, and powdered coffee. And behind all this, glowing and sweating, smooth and satiny, black as onyx and fat as a baby, she found an eggplant.
Aunt Camille held it up high in the air with both hands like a midwife holds the newly caught infant and announced, “The answer to our prayers!”
Thus ensued some scooping and scraping, some slicing and dicing, some stuffing and some baking. She found a few raisins here, a few pine nuts there, did some frying in aliya—the fat of the lamb’s tail. She had to experiment a bit with the heat in that fire-hold—and before you knew it, there was a magnificent dish of stuffed eggplant presented on a cobalt-blue glass platter.
The fragrance of the dish filled the kitchen and wafted around them as she carried the platter through the forest to the jinn. He hadn’t stopped his prayers once in all this time, but as Aunt Camille drew closer, the rich, garlicky, buttery, nuttery, eggplanty flavor swirled around his head until he felt his senses would be lifted right out of his body. He rocked back on his heels, spied Aunt Camille with her dish, and promptly thundered, “I COMMAND YOU TO GIVE ME THE EGGPLANT!”
“Not so fast,” said Aunt Camille, holding the dish behind her back. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt a pious jinn in his prayers.”
“Hmmm, yes,” said the jinn, looking hungry and trapped.
Suddenly she looked distracted. “That is…unless…”
“Unless…?”
“Of course, unless you’re one of those who believe that honoring the body and pleasing its senses is one of the best ways to give thanks to God.”
The jinn leapt up in relief. “Why, that’s it! That’s it exactly!” he cried, and his tongue unrolled and his fingers stretched out toward the eggplant.
“And you know what they say about such sorts of holy men?” she continued, still clinging to the dish.
“Well, no, no, not exactly,” said the jinn, his eyes not moving from the eggplant.
“That they are the sorts of holy men who never stand on ceremony and who never insist on an appointment.”
At this, the jinn’s hunger got the best of him—and if you’re ever in a standoff with a jinn or any other sort of bully or gatekeeper, it’s best to remember this: their hunger will always get the best of them. He jumped up and cried out, “Forgive me, Mother of All Fish!” and, grabbing the dish, the Lost Secret King of the Abbasid Empire and the Holy Man of Eggplant spirited off into the black forest with his new religion.
Sirine watches the early morning news from Qatar on the TV mounted over the counter. A serious-looking man and woman sit at a desk reading from a sheath of papers. Behind them are small, boxed images: burning oil fields, a starving baby, U.N. trucks crossing muddy rutted streets. Sirine wonders how someone like Rana manages to make sense of this, these stories that seem to have no beginning or end, no boundaries, sliding—as the news does on the screen—from Iraq to Bosnia to Ireland to Palestine. The dire broadcasts fill her with free-floating anxiety, a dread of the world beyond Westwood Boulevard.
The students filter into the café, go to the same chairs at the same tables. They come so early—and the sun is rising later—that there are still long clouds scraped across the sky with a pink scrim beneath them. The air smells of fire and chocolate, black tea and a brassy scent of earth. All of them have stacks of textbooks but they unfold newspapers from home, printed on pale green and yellow newsprint. They rattle these open, poring over the columns, the yellow paper flickering like small flames. News from Algeria, Bethlehem, Baghdad. Sometimes she’s seen them in the campus library, studying Internet news on the terminals. She knows that the news is at the center of their lives, reports of the home places they had to leave, the frightening things that may have happened to their families and friends.
One young student sitting at the counter is holding his paper open and upright so that Sirine can see a photograph on the front page. It is grainy, a bit smeared, like something from a half-forgotten nightmare: a group of figures with sacks over their heads. Necks yanked. Toes pointed. Their feet don’t touch the ground. She stands, staring at the photo, her hands pressed flat against her apron, not moving. A cold feeling passes through the middle of her chest, an iron spoon clanging in an empty iron pot. It is almost the same as the way she felt when she read the letter in Han’s room. Finally the student lowers the paper slightly and looks up. High, delicate cheekbones. His glasses flare white against his skin. He looks vaguely familiar—she’s seen him in the café before—he seems too young to be in college. He looks a
t her.
“What is that?” she asks tentatively, pointing to the photograph. “What’s happening there?”
The student half-shrugs, so skinny she can see the knob of his shoulder through his thin shirt. “Just Saddam Hussein. Making an example. He says these people were in collusion with the Americans to overthrow the government.” His voice is ironic and mournful for such a youthful face.
“Were they?”
The student pushes up his glasses with one finger. She can’t quite see his eyes. And she doesn’t know what country he’s from. “It’s possible. Or it might have been something else. He has all kinds of reasons, they come to him or he can make them up at will.” He glances at the photograph again and shrugs. “This is nothing special.”
“Nothing special?”
He pushes up his glasses once again, but this time looks at her very carefully and closely. “What do you care?” he says finally.
She’s taken aback; without thinking, she moves one hand to her chest. “Of course I care. Why do you say that?”
He reopens the newspaper, folding over the front page so she can’t see it. “You’re American,” he says.
Later, on break, she searches the front sections of the American papers at the newsstand up the street: the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post. There is no photograph; today, no mention of Iraq. Nothing at all.
That evening Sirine leaves work early, right after the busiest part of the dinner rush, just as the sky is starting to darken. She bicycles across Westwood Village, along the edge of the campus with just a hastily jotted address on a scrap of paper, into a warren of student housing, fraternities, and condos. She has to ask several people for help along the way. The full night seems to fall as soon as she moves away from the banks of streetlights, the darkness so dense that the stars pop right out at her. The sky is complicated with glowing planets and recognizable constellations—the bull, the Pleiades—that her uncle used to show her from the roof of his house while they waited for her parents to come home. She stops now and she can almost see a freckled light behind the stars—no moon, just a deep dimension of stars behind stars, adding layers like chambers opening in a black room.
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