Crescent

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  For the second half of the program, a young man sweeps onto the stage, receiving a thunderous ovation. The conductor introduces him as a well-known singer of maqaams—a traditional Iraqi song style. Han leans over and whispers, “I know his work—he’s from Baghdad.” The singer folds his hands in front of him, lifts his chin, the musicians wait, and then his song rises from him and shimmers over the audience, iridescent and longing. The young singers’ topaz-colored, half-closed eyes seem to float with some inexpressible emotion. The song travels into Sirine, murmuring, blurring the sensations inside her.

  As the songs continue they seem to stir up Aziz and Nathan as well. Aziz’s knee travels a bit and bumps into Sirine’s knee; she shifts both knees in Han’s direction. Then there’s some rumbling between Aziz and Nathan, their arms and shoulders pulling up; they fidget in their seats. At a quiet moment between songs, Nathan hisses, “Excuse me!” Someone in the row behind them shushes them.

  When it’s time for the last song, the singer steps forward to the front of the stage; he raises his hands as if cupping them to a candle and his voice rises, lambent, flickering, as if there were more than one voice inside him, as if it were originating from the earth or sky and merely moving through him, his body a flame delivering heat and light. The song is in Arabic, but Sirine closes her eyes and it takes her to a place where the sky is transparent, the trees have branches like black bones and canopies of pointed leaves. And in the distance of the song her imagination is released: she sees colors and shapes, imagines darkened figures emerging from a bend, their faces obscured, golden lanterns hanging from staffs, fireflies swirling over the earth.

  When it is finished, she applauds hard, shaken and satisfied. But just as she is about to turn and search out her jacket and purse, the conductor returns to the microphone and says, “And now we will open the dance floor!”

  The three men on tablah—hand-played drums—begin their tattoos, the violinists sweep their bows in unison, and the music speeds up. Now the singer sounds jaunty, almost American. Instantly people from the audience are out on the dance floor, their hands and arms twirling over their heads, hips tipping back and forth. One woman brandishes a white handkerchief over her head.

  “This is fabulous!” Aziz says. “We’ve got to go up there. Come on, Han; if you don’t take Sirine, I’m claiming her for myself.”

  “Why don’t you leave her alone?” Nathan says.

  A young man from Han’s Arabic class leans over their row and interrupts, saying, “Professor, see? It’s rock ’n’ rai music.” Han laughs and turns to him.

  “Oh-ho,” Aziz says to Nathan. “So she’s bewitched you as well, I might’ve known.”

  “What’s with you?” Nathan asks. “Don’t you have any respect for anything?”

  “Now we’re on to respect all of a sudden? Please don’t go getting religious on me, my friend. I believe you’re the one who specializes in covert agent photography.”

  Nathan’s face hardens. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Why? What secret files have you opened on me?” Aziz says. “Get any good dirty pictures lately?”

  Han veers back into the conversation. “What’s all this?” he says.

  Sirine swivels toward him and blocks his view of the two men, grabs his arms. “They’re just being silly. Come on, do you want to dance?”

  But as soon as they’re on the floor she regrets it. The lights are sweltering and the audience rises in towering rows all around them. She tries twirling her hands over her head like the other women but feels self-conscious and wooden. Han smiles and claps with the other men; he circles her and doesn’t look away. She tries to follow him, watching his feet and his eyes. And after a while she begins to feel easier, her body softer; she begins to think that she can dance. It feels a bit like the movements in her kitchen, flowing from the big stove to the sink to the counter, sidestepping Victor, passing plates to Mireille. She smiles and her anxieties start to subside. Men and women move around them in couples and she sees this is the way the world works—in close partnerships—something she’s never really tried to attain, but it has found her anyway. A memory comes to her from far away—of sitting at a weather-beaten picnic table with her uncle, watching her parents dancing on the grass. Her mother’s hair and full skirt ballooned around her knees and her father moved back a few steps—just as Han does now—watching and admiring.

  She closes her eyes and knows she will not tell Han anything about her night with Aziz, because nothing at all happened. It’s over and done. It was a folly, a last fling—before Han there had never been anything but flings. Now, she tells herself, she will learn a new way of being in love. She thinks: everything is going to be just fine.

  But when she opens her eyes again, a veiled form approaches just behind Han’s left shoulder.

  “Hi, Sirine!” Rana calls out. “Hello, Professor! I never thought you guys would be here. Mind if I cut in?”

  Sirine feels a thin sheath of sweat turn icy all along the inside of her forearms and down her spine. Han smiles, tilts his head, and looks at Sirine as if to say, well, what choice do we have?

  Sirine swallows and backs up; she bumps into a couple of dancers and stops to apologize. When she looks around, Han and Rana have gotten pulled deeper into the dancing crowd, but she has no wish to return to Nathan and Aziz. She moves off the dance floor and watches from the side as Rana grabs Han’s hands, interlaces her fingers with his, arches her back, and swivels her hips. Her scarf flies around her shoulders and Sirine notices, as Rana turns her head, that her scarf has an embroidered red border.

  More dancers crowd onto the floor and it’s harder to see. Sirine squints and lowers her head, peering between the arms and shoulders. A black silk scarf, embroidered with red berries. Her breath speeds up. She frowns, not sure if she’s remembering exactly what her scarf looked like. She looks from one side to the other, and walks back onto the dance floor.

  She sneaks between dancers, head down, urgent, as if going to meet someone. She catches glimpses of the scarf between the moving bodies, loses sight of it, catches it again. She turns and thinks she sees Nathan and Aziz moving out onto the dance floor. She gets closer, keeps Rana’s head between her face and Han, until she is almost directly behind Rana, seeing clearly that it is her scarf, the one she thought she’d lost, draped over the young woman’s head, Rana flaunting the beautiful embroidered silk for everyone in the world to see.

  And before she can even imagine what she should do or what she might say, Sirine is reaching out—Han spots her then, his face glowing with sweat, a great smile—and she snatches the scarf right off of Rana’s head.

  Rana wheels around and her uncovered hair fans out, spills over her shoulders. And Sirine realizes, in a moment that seems to go on and on, that this is not her silk scarf at all, that this one is stiff and starchy, a cheap cotton fabric, the elegant embroidered berries just a clumsy print border. She stares at it. And then she drops the scarf on the floor.

  And she turns and runs.

  She runs out one of the side exit doors, the heavy metal bar sliding beneath her hands, and she doesn’t stop until she’s outside in a narrow alley, a drizzly space with damp brick walls and a concrete floor. She can hear the music and the dancing thumping through the walls of the building, echoing in the alleyway. Breathless, she leans against the brick wall, rubs her palms against the rough bricks. Someone walking by might think she was praying. She feels her heart pounding in her throat. She smells diesel and mud and wet bark. The misty rain fills her hair, lifts it into a frizz all around her head. “Oh God,” she says over and over. “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh my God.”

  She hears a click then and freezes. She hopes whoever it is won’t notice her there. Perhaps they’ll think she’s just some sort of crazy woman or street person and keep going. She hears footsteps coming closer and holds her breath.

  “I gave Han the slip,” Rana says. “He doesn’t know where we are.”

  Sir
ine doesn’t respond. She closes her eyes.

  “You’re wrong about me,” she says. “I’m not interested in him. If that’s what this is about.”

  Sirine presses her head in harder, presses her palms against the brick so she can feel the cold all the way up her wrists. “I don’t believe you,” she says. But then she looks at Rana. “I saw the two of you kissing one night.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Rana says matter-of-factly. “No, you didn’t.”

  “I followed you.”

  She shrugs. “That doesn’t matter. For one thing, I’m married.”

  Sirine drops her hands. “You’re married?”

  “When I was thirteen. My parents arranged it. And my mother’s an American. Married me to my rich second cousin Fareed. They thought he would help curb my wild streak.”

  Sirine turns sideways against the wall to look at her. “They did? When you were thirteen?”

  Rana leans back against the wall as well. “Yup. He was an industrial engineer, twenty-one years older. He worked in the oil fields in Saudi. He was gone for six months at a time, sometimes more. Fareed was a total control freak. He had closed-circuit cameras installed in all the rooms, including the bathroom, so he could keep an eye on me even when he was away.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Oh.” She flops one hand at Sirine. “That’s just the start. He had locked iron gates around the house and iron bars on the windows—so no one could climb in, he said. But of course then I couldn’t get out. There was even a lock on the telephone. Servants had to bring me my food by sliding the plates in under the bars. He didn’t trust anyone with a key besides himself.”

  “How absolutely horrible.” Sirine feels like a fool. She looks at the veil in Rana’s hand and wishes she could just disappear.

  Rana gestures toward the cement steps and they sit down next to each other. “You want to hear all this?” she asks skeptically. Sirine nods. “I don’t like to tell my American friends, it just feeds all the usual stereotypes—you know, the sheikh with the twenty virgins, all that stuff.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t think that,” Sirine says.

  “Well, I’ll give you the short version.” Rana folds her arms over her chest. “The whole thing was miserable from beginning to end. But one thing being locked up did was give me a lot of time, you know, to think. So I made a plan. Fareed only came for a few days once or twice a year. He would bring his engineer friends from the fields and entertain them. And he unlocked the gates and opened the windows so they wouldn’t know what he was up to. The servants would cook and they would eat and drink and pass out on the living room floor. All except Fareed. He never drank. He would take me into the bedroom then and demand that I perform what he called my ‘duties.’ So gross. I hated it. Over the years, though, I got smarter. One day I waited till he came home and told him I wanted to make him a special dinner myself this time. He was all excited, thinking that I’d actually come around to caring for him, ‘like a real wife,’ he said. I made him a plate of lamb and rice and soaked the dish in araq.”

  “The liquor? That’s so strong. Didn’t he taste it?”

  She shrugs. “I just told him it was my first try at cooking and I suppose he wanted to show me his approval. He ate the whole thing and got drunk on the food and then I poured it into his coffee as well. It was a special kind of araq that he kept for his friends. Supposedly it was made with the venom of a kind of snake that increased its potency or something. And makes the man stronger too—if you know what I mean. Some horseshit like that. I poured it into his ice cream and his tea—everything I could think of,” she says, laughing. “Then I just poured him a straight glass of the stuff and told him it was fizzy water from France. He barely swallowed a sip before he passed out. His friends were drinking and passed out all over the front rooms and main entrance, so I decided to squeeze my way out the bathroom window, which was the only one big enough to fit through. I was fifteen and a half years old at the time. I knew if I waited one more year I wouldn’t be able to fit.”

  “My God.”

  “But I did it.” She turns to Sirine. Her eyes and hair look like enamel in the dark. “I got away and he didn’t come looking. Too embarrassed, I think. The only time I’m interested in men anymore is for the game of it. I’ll sleep with one just because I can and then I’ll never see him again. Like my poetry teacher.”

  “You and Aziz!”

  She half-shrugs. “He’s not so bad, really. Once you get used to him.”

  Sirine sits with her elbows tucked on to her knees and stares at Rana’s scarf. She shakes her head. “Wow.”

  “Although I’m not sure he counts as a very good game. Some men are too easy. I like a challenge.”

  “Of course,” Sirine says. She wants to laugh but instead she looks straight up then and lets the mist fall onto her face.

  They sit like that a moment but the step is getting cold and wet. “Well,” Rana says.

  They stand, then Sirine thinks for a moment and says, “But, after all that—well, why do you still wear…” Sirine looks at the scarf Rana holds crumpled in one hand.

  “This?” She shakes it out and drapes it over her head. “This reminds me that I belong to myself. And to God. I still have faith, you know.” She smiles. “My dad wants me to get divorced, but I’ve found that having a missing husband is useful.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sirine says. “I mean—you know—about all of it.”

  Rana tilts her head; her lips look full and dark as blackberries. She touches Sirine’s face with her fingertips. “Actually, I’m pretty sorry for you,” she says. “Trying to be with someone like Han.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rana’s eyes are lowered. She seems to be considering something. She ties the scarf beneath her chin and strands of her hair escape. She starts at the top of her hairline and meticulously runs her fingers along the edges of the scarf until every bit of hair is tucked under. Then she says to Sirine, “I think it’s better if you try asking him yourself.”

  Rana offers to drive her home, but Sirine prefers to walk. She wants the slow rhythms of her own movement. Cars whistle past her down the boulevard and a slick moony reflection shines on the street. She passes unlit corners and side streets and a few cars seem to slow down beside her, but no one bothers her. When she arrives home an hour later, the mist has soaked her clothes and she is shivering.

  That night Nathan, Aziz, and Han each call her uncle’s house, asking to speak to Sirine. Every time her uncle comes to her closed bedroom door, he just stands outside and sighs and she says, “I’m not at home.” Sirine stays curled up in bed with the comforter wrapped around her. She’s not at all used to making scenes. The experience has left her feeling so embarrassed and exhausted that she feels like she will have to sleep for a long time before she can speak to anyone.

  Deep in the night Sirine thinks she hears bursts of rain against the wall. She turns over groggily. She dreams that she goes to her window and Han is standing outside under the long, tangling strands of the palm trees, calling to her. She doesn’t answer him because if she says anything she will tell him about Aziz. She opens her mouth but no sound comes out. Her spine is stiff and cool, her neck straight. The palms fronds are floating in the wind, the strands flickering. In the dream, she asks him if it’s not Rana, then who is it?

  King Babar moans and presses against her. The photograph in her nightstand drawer whispers in her ear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  After having his ears filled with stories by Crazyman al-Rashid and getting kicked out of the mermaids’ prison, Abdelrahman caught a camel, a boat, a jeep, and a bus, and slowly but surely made his way to Hal’Awud. Once in America, he learned that the city of Hollywood, or Hal’Awud, was nicknamed Babylon, and he realized as soon as he got there that the place was indeed somehow ancient and cursed. He heard the streams of languages and voices in the streets rippling up like the hot air over a traffic jam. There were monuments and sculptu
res and symbols everywhere, the name of the town written in great and terrible letters on the side of the hill like the Sumerian Ziggurat of Ur. He saw the movie stars in their fur coats, the reporters with their flash bulbs, and Grauman’s Chinese Theater where he saw his very first movies. And those colors, those spires, those flashes of light and sound led him to believe that he’d discovered the forbidden Mahram Bilqis—the moon temple of the Queen of Sheba. In a way he had—even though it’s hard to think of it that way now. Poor Hollywood with its dirty sidewalks, where you’re walking on stars and don’t even notice until you drop your gum wrapper by accident and bend down and realize you’re stepping on Robert Mitchum—or worse, someone you never heard of, with a name like Martha Gastower…. In the olden days, the neighborhood was beautiful and devilish as a woman in a yellow dress. And even with all that he’d seen and done, Abdelrahman Salahadin was still just a Bedouin yokel at heart.

  But Bedouin yokels definitely have their place in things: they happen to know, for example, that there is something lunar and eternal about oases—no matter how much people mess around with them. Abdelrahman recognized the way the wind played over the Pacific, just as it did over his Red Sea, and he recognized the healing, astringent scent of the desert as he walked in the city streets. And he took one look at the moon temple of the stars—also known as the Chinese Theater—and he went nearly insane. For the beauty of the Queen of Sheba and her handmaidens was reputedly enough to make someone crazy. He stood in the lobby of the theater, too afraid of the flashing lights to actually go and sit down in the presence of the gods. He watched the movie through a crack in the concession stand door and there he was smitten with the acting bug.

  Bitten.