Crescent

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  Sirine looks at the photo again and now she sees a blurry deer-like animal in the background—it looks rough, and wild, with a pair of great carved horns.

  The student brings the paper close to his face and examines the photo for a moment. Another student gets up from his table to peer over the first one’s shoulder. He points at the image: “See, that’s—that’s a gazelle.”

  “That’s no gazelle,” says the seated student. “That’s a—what do they call them in English? Elks?”

  “It might be a mountain goat.”

  “That’s not a mountain goat, you idiot,” says a fourth student.

  “It’s an oryx.” Everyone falls silent for a moment and turns to look at the speaker—it’s Khoorosh, who is looking at a copy of the same newspaper and eating a plate of eggs and lentils. “Oryx.” He goes back to his eggs.

  She looks at the student. He’s tightly wound and wiry, his eyes glimmering with humor. She stares hard at the paper. “What’s the man’s name?” she asks, pointing now. “Does it say?”

  The student turns back to the paper, studies it a moment. “Here it is.” Then he looks back at her. “Abdelrahman Salahadin.”

  She feels a blast of cold wind like a shout of laughter. A wild wind like the wind off the ocean’s back. Her knees go weak and her mouth dries up. She lifts her hands but there is nothing to grab.

  “Chef?” the seated student says. “Are you all right?”

  The young men scramble to get her a chair but Sirine shakes her head, takes a rocky step back. “I’m—I’m okay. Can I just…” she reaches weakly toward the paper. The student hands it to her. Sirine lifts it and says, “Just need a little air.”

  She walks out back to the courtyard. Then she stands there, trembling, and takes a deep breath before she looks at the newspaper. Sirine lifts it to her face and studies the photo closely, first the details of the animal, its splendid horns and almond eyes, delaying another look at the man. And then finally she lets herself look—slowly, gradually—at the man. His clothes are in tatters, his face is covered with about a week’s worth of stubble; he stands in an open field as if he’d just washed up there. She tries to focus on his face. The photograph is composed of tiny ink dots and Sirine’s eyes burn as she stares at the newsprint. She closes her eyes again and tells herself, relax, and she opens her eyes.

  Han.

  It cannot be, but of course it is, it undeniably, certainly is.

  She stares and stares and stares, the photo filling her up—the soft shape of his eyes, the sweep of his hair, and the crescent-shaped scar at the corner of his eye.

  And then things are shivering loose inside of her, large plates of ice shifting and breaking. She drops the paper on the stairs and walks across the courtyard to the mejnoona tree and grabs hold of its flaming, blooming branches; it sways all around her, a conflagration; she holds on as if it were the only thing anchoring her to the ground. Han is alive. Han is alive in the world.

  “My God.” She looks up to see Mireille standing on the back porch, staring at the newspaper Sirine had dropped. She holds it up. Her voice shakes. “Is it?”

  Sirine remains in the courtyard after Mireille has gone in to tell her mother. She can hear the life of the kitchen and the café through the walls. She sees reflections swimming in the back window.

  She feels it again. Swift and sharp as physical pain, like the blood returning after frostbite: the thought—Han is alive. After so many months of waiting and mourning. She is almost calm among the papery bougainvillea—the madwoman tree and all its finery, once again, inside the courtyard, this mosaic of light and plants and wind.

  She thinks of the story of Abdelrahman Salahadin. Sometimes, in the months after Han left, when she was falling asleep she got confused and couldn’t quite remember if it was Han or Abdelrahman who loved her, if it was Han or Abdelrahman who dove into the black page of the open sea. Was it Abdelrahman who had to leave her, to return to his old home, or Han who was compelled to drown himself, over and over again.

  She imagines him, tangling in the water, in the long, black-tongued weeds that grow up for miles from the bottom of the sea floor. Was he afraid at that moment or had he long ago given himself over to the seaweed and fish? Had he already dreamed of such a death so many times that, in the end, it was as natural as going home? He returned to Iraq knowing that they would certainly kill him. Somehow they have not. For some reason—she thinks—they’ve been granted a reprieve.

  In a single moment, it’s as if all the months and months of separation that have gone by have disintegrated; years collapse.

  Um-Nadia appears in the doorway and looks around as if she were shy. She is holding the paper. She smiles, brushes the hair from her face, and closes her eyes.

  The wind picks up and the two tall palms make the shivering sound of rain. From all the way down the street, Sirine can hear the impassioned bark of a little dog at the limit of a short leash. The trees and the bushes all start to sway and Sirine notices the pomegranate tree has finally borne the starts of a few fruits.

  Inside the kitchen, the phone starts to ring.

  Sirine waits, buttons her jacket a little higher, and then someone is calling her name. She runs inside. Victor Hernandez is on the phone, saying Han’s name and looking at her. He stands beside the front stove stirring the silver cauldron of leben, the big spoon tilted in his hand, the burners flickering with blue flames. She presses her hand against her mouth and takes the phone.

  PERMISSIONS

  Extract from “A Dream for Any Man” in The Pages of Day and Night by Adonis, English translation copyright © 1994 by Samuel Hazo. Northwestern University Press paperback published 2000. All rights reserved.

  Extract from Love, Death, and Exile by Abdul Wahab Al-Bayati, copyright © 1991 by Bassam Frangieh.

  Extracts from “Leavetaking” by Ibn Jakh and “Mourning In Andalusia” by Abu il-Hasan al-Husri in Poems of Arab Andalusia, copyright © 1989 by Cola Franzen. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.

  Extracts from Open Secret: Versions of Rumi by John Moyne and Coleman Barks, copyright © 1984 by John Moyne and Coleman Barks. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, www.shambhala.com.

  Extract from Jaroslav Stekevych, The Modern Arabic Literacy Language, copyright © 1970 University of Chicago Press.

  Extracts from “The Ode of Tarafah” by Ibn al-Abd from Anthology of Islamic Literature, edited by James Kritzeck. Copyright © 1964 by James Kritzeck. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.