Crescent

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  Nathan’s exhibit is being held in an orange brick box of a church that no one remembers noticing before. The tall, plastic-lettered marquee out front says: “Dynamo Church!” on one side and “The problem with taking mental notes is that the ink dries so quickly” on the other. It is located on one of the busiest stretches of Santa Monica Boulevard, without any sort of nearby parking, so Han and Sirine and her uncle and Um-Nadia zoom past it in Han’s big car several times before finding a space on the street. They have to walk seven blocks from the parking space to the church, Um-Nadia in a teetering pair of high heels that she insists were not made for walking in. When they get there, they see a xeroxed sheet of paper announcing the photography exhibit nailed to the front door. “Look,” says Sirine’s uncle, “Martin Luther was here.”

  Inside it smells of glue and drywall, as if the building had been constructed that morning. The decor is spartan: a teal-colored linoleum floor, several wooden folding chairs scattered around, and a blackboard up front haunted by the ghosts of erased words: “Success! How to be the CEO of your SOUL!”

  There’s a series of matted black and white photographs on the walls. A few graduate students linger in front of the wine table clutching plastic cups. Nathan stands at the center of the room holding a plastic cup of Lambrusco and talking to an elderly woman in a magenta wool coat and a mink stole with a hinge-jawed head biting its flank. “Hello!” she says to Sirine’s uncle cheerfully. “I’m Dewey. I just came in to see what these young church people had gotten up to today. Every day it’s different. Always something. Take a look at these lovely photographs. They’re very, very different. Very unusual and artistic-looking. My granddaughter is a photographer too, you know, for the LaBrea High student paper.”

  Sirine’s uncle confers with Dewey while Sirine and Han and Um-Nadia go over to look at the photos. Um-Nadia just glances at one or two before whispering to Sirine, “This is bad news. No improvement at all! I don’t know what can be done.”

  But Sirine finds that she likes the images very much, they’re perverse and revealing and even a little pretty. The first shots seem to be of food—rows of crinkling onions at a stand, some people holding up a massive watermelon, and the back of a woman’s head and shoulders as she bends over a bushel of walnuts at what looks like a street fair or a farmer’s market. Sirine is trying to get a closer look when she hears Han make a muffled sound beside her. He’s gazing at a shot of children running in the street. The camera seems to hover twenty feet above them; their hands are outstretched, the silk of their hair flying, and one boy is looking straight up, a fierce accusatory expression on his face.

  “How odd,” Han murmurs, tilting his head. “Look at how he looks at you.” He moves on but Sirine lingers over this and then several more photographs of children—a boy holding a surprised rooster, two little girls in front of two cats. The images aren’t at all charming: the animals look matted and filthy, one cat seems to be missing an ear. There are many photographs of adults as well: a woman with bruised-looking eyes leans intently toward the camera; an elderly woman lifts one hand. There are no horns, mysterious fish tails, or floating smiles—but there is something disturbing in the mood of the shots, an ingrained murkiness, rolls of smoke on the horizon, descending from the sky. The faces look wan and starved, the cheeks sunken, eyes like black marbles. All of them peering out as if gazing through the print at the world. As if knowing the onlooker, in some more comfortable place, could sense her complicity as she stared back.

  A few more visitors file into the small church, clutching their invitations uncertainly.

  “Hello, everyone?” Nathan says in a loud, crowd-gathering voice, though there are only ten people in the room. He stands on a chair. “Yes. I’d like to make a speech? This won’t take long.” He blushes suddenly and intensely; he looks down as if regretting the decision to stand on the chair. “Um. Maybe speech isn’t exactly the right word here. Okay, a confession. More of a confession-speech.”

  “All right, go ahead and say it,” Sirine’s uncle says from the side.

  “Well, first I’d like to thank the Dynamo Church for their progressive vision and support of my project. Um. I’d like to thank Pink Dot for their donation of thirty-five plastic cups—”

  Sirine’s uncle makes a funnel with his hands and says into it, “Where’s the speech?”

  Nathan glances at him. “Yes. Okay, then.” He takes a deep breath. “So, when I was twenty-one, I didn’t know about the world at all. But I had this idea about cowboys and Indians and submarine commanders and Russian spies. I used to be unhappy because I thought that all the bad guys were already caught and there wasn’t much excitement left in the world. And then one day I went to see Black Sunday. You know—the one with Bruce Dern where the terrorists take over the Goodyear Blimp? But I came home thinking, oh, good, there’s still terrorists!

  “So I thought of that as my mission. I mean, don’t we all want to have missions? I started dreaming of going to someplace like Lebanon or Iraq and hunting down terrorists.” He hangs his head a moment and laughs sheepishly. Everyone remains silent. He lifts his head again and looks around. “You know, like James Bond?” He looks around. “I mean, doesn’t everyone want to be like James Bond?” He pauses a moment and Sirine’s uncle sighs. “Okay, well, anyway. I had this thought about going over to the Middle East and uncovering terrorist spies. I would take their photos and send them to the C.I.A. or someplace. Long story short, I graduated from college, got over that whole idea, and instead I just decided to travel and take photographs of what I saw.

  “And when I finally got there, you know, to the Middle East, I traveled through all these different countries, and this amazing thing happened—the people there were really nice to me. They didn’t drive around in huge cars talking to each other on phones. They invited me right into their homes. We sipped tea and talked all day long. Maybe to you that sounds boring, but to me, I felt like I’d finally found something real. Like I’d regained my senses. I ended up taking pictures of a really beautiful world. A very, very lovely and complete place. There were terrible sights to see—starving children and poverty and broken buildings—but today’s exhibit is meant to be a celebration of the beauties I found and my own process of education. I never found my terrorist, though, unless”—he hitches one eyebrow, lowers his voice ominously—“it was me.”

  “Okay, nice speech! Nice speech!” Sirine’s uncle says, clapping. “Now it’s over.”

  Everyone scatters quickly and goes to look at the photos. Nathan stands there a moment, then climbs down, saying, “I wasn’t done.”

  Sirine returns to the photographs, looking for clues in the clothing or landmarks to tell her where these shots were taken. They’re gray dreams, full of accusation and a lingering sense of emptiness. Sirine notices that the other people in the room seem to bend and look closely at the images, then quickly step back. The murmuring gets louder; people look unsettled.

  Nathan drifts into place beside Sirine. She’s studying a photo of a young woman in an orchard of silver leaves incandescent with light and rainwater. Smoke roils over the treetops. “Well?” he asks.

  Her uncle pulls up on her other side. “This is a celebration?” he asks.

  Nathan’s knuckles brush the back of her hand and he quickly tucks his own hands up into his armpits. “They’re wild,” Sirine says. “They’re hard to look at.”

  “Yes,” Nathan says fiercely, ardently. “That’s it, isn’t it? This is exactly what Americans don’t want to look at. They don’t want to be made to see. They don’t want to know what is happening out there.” He gestures toward the door and several people look over. “What is done to others, in our name, for our sake, so we might live like this.” He rolls his hands out to the sides as if he were surrounded by splendor.

  Han is standing in front of another photograph of a young woman; she has a shawl that lifts from her shoulders like raven wings and the sky above her is the color of bone. He turns from the photo and sa
ys quietly, “Where did you get these?”

  “Well, I—I want them to be universal, you see, not just limited to—”

  “None of these people gave you permission, did they?” There’s an edge in his voice. “Just like all your photographs—you just shot them without asking, didn’t you?”

  Sirine takes a short breath. “Han?”

  “These people would never have agreed to let you do this!”

  “But…you can see—” Nathan holds one hand toward the photos. “None of them is turning away from me or hiding or—”

  “This is my cousin Lamia!” Han says, tapping the frame. “This woman, right here. She lived on our road. She was the daughter of my mother’s youngest sister.”

  Nathan nods, puts one hand on his chest like a pledge. “Han—I was going to tell you—I thought you would like it—”

  Sirine stares at the photograph, startled by this unexpected thing.

  “This is an absolute violation,” Han says loudly enough so several people look up. Sirine wants to touch his shoulder but she’s also afraid. “It’s a violation of her privacy and it’s a violation of my family’s privacy. I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish by doing this. I don’t know if you thought this was clever—some sort of practical joke—”

  “No, please, Han!” Nathan pleads. “You don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I wish to. It’s not bad enough that your country is bent on systematically destroying mine? Must you also use my family for your personal amusement as well? Or is this strictly about advancing your career?” And then Han sidesteps through the group and leaves the church in six paces, its big front door dropping shut with a bang. Nathan’s face is shocked red, his arms loose at his sides. All the air seems to have left his body. “I was going to tell him,” he says. “I meant this to honor them.” His voice is gray and toneless.

  “My, my,” says Dewey, the old woman. “There’s a temper on that one.”

  “Arabs,” Um-Nadia says, rolling her eyes.

  Sirine glances once more at the photo of the woman in the field and scans the other images, wondering who else might be in these photographs. Then she goes outside.

  The sky has grown overcast and the light looks satiny behind the clouds, flat and photographic. Han is walking down the street away from the church, away from their parked car. “Han!” she cries. “Han?”

  He walks for another few paces. Finally he stops and pauses for a moment before turning around. A wily wind is kicking dust into the air and blowing his hair into his face. Sirine holds hers back with one hand. She walks closer to him and he stands there and waits for her, hard-eyed and still.

  She tries to be casual, to not sound alarmed. “Han? Are you okay?”

  He continues to stare at her, not speaking, traffic rippling around them, exhaust and soot blowing into the sky. His skin flashes, a metallic glint in his eyes. “Where is it?” he says.

  She has trouble hearing him and moves closer. “Where is what?”

  He looks at her, still waiting, then says, “The scarf. What did you do with the scarf I gave you? Why don’t you ever wear it?”

  Her mouth opens but she stammers, her voice rattling in her throat. “I guess—I just—I haven’t had—”

  “I want to know something,” he cuts her off. “And I want you to tell me the truth. Can you do that much for me?”

  She closes her mouth. Nods.

  “Did you lose my scarf?”

  She doesn’t speak.

  “I trusted you with that one thing. Just that one small thing, Sirine.” He looks away from her. “How could I have been such a fool?” His eyes return to her and now they are flat, sharp stone. “How could I have trusted something so precious with someone like you?”

  Stunned, she opens her mouth again, trying to think of what to say—something, anything—but nothing comes. She can feel the traffic rumbling in the pavement and concrete beneath her feet. She stands silently for a moment, looking back at him. And then he walks away.

  That evening, after she’s had time to imagine a dozen different responses, Sirine calls Han’s apartment, but there’s no answer. She tries twice more before she goes to bed and barely sleeps that night, imagining Rana comforting Han in his book-lined office. She sees Rana’s hand covering Han’s, remembers the way the couple’s faces seemed to flicker toward each other under the streetlights. Sirine replays the conversation she had with Han afterward and it seems that he had never explicitly denied being with Rana. She turns over and over in her bed and hears the laughter rising from the drawer in her nightstand.

  The next day at the café everyone is talking about the way Han stormed out of Nathan’s opening. All sorts of opinions and rumors move between the tables.

  “He was puffed like a bull,” says Um-Nadia. “Hair standing up like this. Eyes steaming. Everything.”

  “I heard he pushed over a table of wineglasses,” one of the police officers says. “They said there was broken glass everywhere. And that he tore up some of the pictures.”

  “That could well be,” Um-Nadia muses.

  “Ma!” Mireille says. “They had plastic cups.”

  “What happened to Nathan?” The police officer asks.

  Um-Nadia moves her hands, fingers spread, as if clearing away mist. “Gone. The poor thing melted away from shame.”

  Sirine is so tired she works in an almost hallucinatory state. The bottles and containers in the kitchen hum as if there are insects inside them, the empty bushes in the garden of birds seem to twitch, and she feels the customers stare until she looks back and then they glance away. By the end of her day, when she senses someone is standing in the courtyard staring at her through the dark kitchen window—she has to look twice before she realizes he’s actually there.

  It’s Aziz. He is waving, carrying a basket of apples that glimmer bronze in the porch light. She tugs open the window over the sink and Aziz holds up his basket. “I come bearing fruit!”

  Sirine looks again despite herself: the apples are so lustrous they look like something from a fairy tale. She goes out and sits on the back porch where the moon is twice as big as usual and Aziz sits beside her, the basket of apples on his lap. She hasn’t seen him since the night of the dervishes. And the kiss. She holds one of the apples in both hands and studies it to avoid looking at his eyes.

  “How have you been, my dear?” he asks. “I have the sneaky feeling that you’ve been avoiding poor Aziz—you don’t have to answer. You can just say yes or no.”

  She bites her lips. “I’m in trouble with Han,” she blurts out.

  “What? You are? That’s not right! How could that be?”

  “Did you see him on campus today?”

  He thinks for a moment. “No. Which is unusual. No matter how I might hide and seek at that big overgrown school, Han always finds me. I suppose he would say I always find him. Even when I don’t know that I’m looking.”

  “Was Rana around?”

  “Ra—” His eyes widen. “My student? How do you know Rana?” He scrutinizes her more closely. “Wait a second. What are you asking me here? What is going around in your mind?” He reaches for Sirine’s apple but she holds it away.

  “I thought these were for me,” she says.

  “Yes, but this one is the sweetest. Look.” He slips it out of her hand and bites into it. “I’m just taking one bite all the way on this side here. It’s like the other side of the planet. That way our lips will never touch.” He returns it to her.

  She looks at the apple a moment, then looks back. “So was she?”

  “In class?” He shrugs. “Come to think of it, nobody threw anything at me today. So no, I don’t believe Rana was in today.”

  Sirine bites into the apple, then Aziz takes another bite on his side. She gazes into the bushes across from them, wagging in the wind.

  “So—you think that means exactly…what? Han isn’t around, Rana is out, hence and so they’re having an affair?” he asks.

  His
eyes reflect windowpanes of moonlight. He looks patient, even kind. Sirine takes a deep breath and says, “I think Han is really mad at me. Because I lost something he gave me. And…maybe because of some pictures he saw—and now I don’t know where he is—and all of a sudden everything is awful and it’s just getting more and more and more awful!”

  Mireille pokes her head out the door. “Sirine—is everything all right? Oh.” She stops short at the sight of Aziz.

  Aziz waves her back inside. “We’ve got the entire situation under control.”

  Mireille scowls at him. “You have exactly nothing under control, my friend,” she says archly, and waits until Sirine waves and nods to her before she goes back in.

  “All right.” He stands briskly. “You’ve been working too much and this place is boiling your brains. Come.” He pats his pockets and fishes out some car keys. “We need a scenery vacation.”

  Sirine stands and peeks through the lit square of the back door window: Mireille is phoning in orders; Victor and the cleaning man are mopping floors. The café is closed for the night; she should go back in and prepare for tomorrow, mix the dressings and sauces and marinate the kabobs. But she also feels as if none of it really matters at all, the work will all get done—tonight or tomorrow or the next day. No one notices. She can work for hours on a dish that will be eaten in minutes. She feels she could walk away right then and there and never return and no one would even notice.

  She stands.

  They leave the basket of apples on the back porch. And one apple core.

  The ocean is so bright under the glimmerglass moon that Sirine can see everything. There are scatterings of young Mexican couples curled together on the beach, listening to radios or watching the water; a webbing of taut moonlit fishing lines radiates from all along the pier. It’s been years since Sirine has been to the beach at night and seen its transformation. It makes her sentimental, thinking of night excursions with her parents to the beach, the foam white as curd against the black waves. And it reminds her of the night in the pool this past autumn, when she went swimming with Han.