Behind them the curtains shuffle. Leila and Taymour emerge onto the balcony and look over the crowd. There is a gasp among the guests, followed by a satisfied sigh.
“She’s beautiful,” Mimi whispers into my ear.
The bride and groom scan the crowd from above. Leila’s hair is woven through a crown of white gardenias and arranged in a large bun. She bites the insides of her cheeks as she pats her hair nervously. Beside her Taymour has a tight-lipped smile on his face. He holds on to Leila’s arm with one hand, and clenches and unclenches the other hand.
“You know the good thing about not fitting into society?” I whisper into Basma’s ear. “I’ll never be put in such a silly situation.”
“Don’t you want to wear a crown of white flowers someday?” Basma teases with a smile.
Leila and Taymour descend the white stairs as the dancing men begin to sing. Family and friends walk behind them, trailing them like a snake. Some of the women put their fingers to their lips and let out a chorus of zaghareet.
“Lililililililililililililililiiii” — the trilling sends a chill down my spine. The procession moves toward the dance floor, where the guests converge around Leila and Taymour in a tight circle.
“Let’s go clap,” Basma says. I begin to protest but she stops me. “Come on. I have to clap. Leila danced at my brother’s wedding.”
She drags me into the circle on the main floor. Everywhere there are smiling faces, white teeth, squinting eyes, hands clapping furiously to the music. Dazzling circles of red, gold, and white lights race across the walls and floor and faces of the guests. The crowd stomps to the beat of the drums so that the ground begins to tremble. With the music and the lights and the drums and the shaking ground I feel as if I am in the middle of an earthquake.
Somehow, as the stomping intensifies, the trilling zaghareet turn into chants of support for the president. “The people and the president are one hand!” the crowd chants in unison. Someone begins to pass out sparklers and they are waved in the air like sizzling sticks of dynamite about to explode. The crowd presses against me and with every breath I gulp in the sickly-sweet taste of perfume and cigarettes. I feel I am going to collapse, but even if I do the celebrations would not stop. The crowd would simply tread on me, oblivious to the sick man being trampled to death under their celebrations. They would stomp until all that is left of me would be a few specks of dust.
Leila catches my eye. She looks concerned when she catches a glimpse of my face. I give her a smile so wide and full of teeth I feel as if I am a crazy person. When she turns around I stop smiling, but then she glances at me again, so I give her another big smile and this time, like a maniac, I keep the smile plastered across my face as I clap and chant the president’s name.
Finally the drumming ends and the ground stops shaking. The crowd begins to move away. The air feels cooler and I can breathe easier now. The lights go out and in the darkness my smile quickly fades. A white spotlight shines on Leila and Taymour. They move close, hesitant at first, until they settle into each other. Taymour wraps his arms around Leila’s waist as she rests her head on his chest. Their silhouette appears as one.
The opening guitar riff to Roxy Music’s “More Than This” begins. Already I can hear Mimi bawling behind me.
“I love this song,” Basma says. I take her hand and lead her to the dance floor. She rests her chin in the crook of my neck as we sway to the music. From over her head I observe Taymour dancing with Leila. I try to catch his eye but he doesn’t look at me. Perhaps he cannot afford to see me. He leans down and whispers into Leila’s ear, and I realize he is singing the words of the song to her.
Did he forget his promise to sing only to me?
When the demonstrations first started we spent an evening at Guapa: Basma, Taymour, Maj, Leila, and I. We drank beer and discussed the merits of different transitional justice processes as I wrote down the names of powerful regime figures who should be tried for corruption. Leila took out a large map and, with a red marker, circled all the villages we would need to visit as part of a symbolic tour that would bring the country together. We talked for hours, over one another and hurriedly, as if there was not a moment to spare. There was so much to do. We were young and on the verge of changing our country. More than that, we were going to change the world.
Later that night, after Taymour had dropped Leila home, he came to see me. I took him into my room and we cuddled and kissed and laughed, and suddenly it didn’t matter that he would marry Leila, because everything was about to collapse and soon anything would be possible. And for the first time I let Taymour enter me. We used Teta’s hand cream for lubrication. The radio was broadcasting announcements from the reform process, which we all knew was just a performance put on by the government to distract the people from demanding the truth. He came inside of me, his body shuddering in my arms, and I couldn’t help but feel that in a strange way Taymour’s gasps and Teta’s hand cream were intimately connected to the future of the revolution.
What we felt that night, was it youthful idealism? Reckless naïveté? Whatever it was, seeing Taymour and Leila dance, I realize that feeling is now dead. I am sad and angry and also, in an odd way, relieved. The last bit of hope is gone. And perhaps this is a good thing.
Suddenly Taymour looks up. His eyes scan the room until they find me. Over the shoulders of Leila and Basma we look at each other. Then Leila whispers something in his ear and Taymour looks away. I close my eyes and press my cheek into Basma’s, and imagine I am dancing with Taymour.
The night begins to flow more smoothly. Conversations take place in fits and bursts, often starting in Arabic before eventually making their way to English, the language like an abusive boyfriend none of us are able to tear ourselves away from. Basma keeps the stream of alcohol coming my way through hand gestures with waiters who loiter around our table. The more I drink the more the conversations merge into one another, and I descend deeper into a pit of drunkenness that is both reckless and satisfying.
“My mother-in-law is driving me crazy,” Mimi whispers in my right ear. “The woman is over all the time, judging my cooking, what I feed the baby. I tried speaking to my husband about it, but he says she’s not doing anything wrong. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Two gin and tonics,” I whisper to a waiter, discreetly passing him a fifty-dollar bill.
“And you know, I’ve been having such horrendous trouble with the new maid. You know how my mom insisted on sending our old maid back to Sri Lanka after the tsunami to help out with the situation? I understand it’s my mother’s way of giving back but it really was the worst decision. Ever since, we have had zero luck with maids. We just got a new maid who has been absolutely useless. Indonesian. I know, don’t get me started. Anyway, I had enough, so last week finally I sent her back and got someone new.”
I smile and nod but I’m distracted by Mimi’s nose. She used to have a very hooked nose. Her nose used to be the pièce de résistance of her face. Just before graduation she shaved half of it off, and what is left is a comical upward arch that defies the laws of gravity and has given her a permanently pinched expression. Tonight the upward tip seems even more pronounced.
“Hey, is it true about Maj?” Mimi snaps me back into focus.
“What about him?” I ask, slurring my words.
“I heard he was arrested last night, that he was with the men in the cinema.”
“Of course not. Maj isn’t like those men,” I hear myself saying.
“Hamdullah, I was worried for a second. Those places are dirty.”
“I sometimes feel like I look like a koala bear,” I hear Lulu say. I look at the foundation caked around her eyes.
“Maybe, but not in a bad way,” Basma replies.
“They’re not dirty, they’re just human,” I find myself saying, still staring at Lulu’s eyes.
“So what are you doing with yourself these days, Rasa?” Hamza asks from across the table as the waiters br
ing us plates of lamb stew and grilled meat.
“Basma and I’ve started a translation company.”
“A translation company? That doesn’t pay much, does it?” he says.
“They probably have a lot of foreign clients,” Mimi jumps in. “Don’t you Rasa?”
I nod and ask Hamza what he does for a living.
“I work at the Ministry of Interior,” he says. “Good job, free lunches.”
I laugh at Hamza’s joke, a knee-jerk reaction to stroke his ego. After all, men like Hamza respond well to admiring doormats, so the role becomes a survival mechanism for those of us who choose not to fight such brutes. But really, I’m terrified. My high-school bully is a regime thug.
“Your voice changes when you to talk to men,” Mimi says to me.
“How so?”
“It becomes more manly, more zalameh.”
I down my drink. There is a beautiful floral arrangement at the center of the table. Leila makes her way over to us and we all stand to congratulate her.
“You look stunning,” I tell her as I kiss her on the cheek, and I mean it. She does look stunning. I have never seen Leila with makeup and an expensive hairdo. Her fingernails, which in college she would chew until they were raw stubs, were now long and immaculately groomed.
“Thanks,” she says. “I feel kind of awful. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever been this stressed out. I kind of just want it all to end.”
“Everything looks great, relax.” I take a sip of my drink. “Are you happy?”
“Right now I’m just in excruciating pain. I’ve, like, literally got pins stuck in my skull to keep this hairstyle in place. Seriously my skull is kind of bleeding right now. I’m kind of pissed off that it ended up being a dry wedding. It feels so démodé. And I’ve just found out the caterers have used Lurpak butter in the wedding cake and I’m boycotting Denmark so that’s kind of a disaster. And then the attacks this morning made some people kind of scared of coming, which is ridiculous really because, look around, everything’s fine.”
At university Leila’s words were firm and decisive. She used to pride herself on giving committed answers, on delving into her thoughts and feelings and trying to put them into clear words. These days her language is peppered with “like”s and “kind of”s, as if she is uncertain of what is true and what isn’t, so assumes everything is all performative anyway.
“Stop problematizing everything,” I say, and Leila smiles and gives me a hug.
“How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been better. You never come to Guapa anymore.”
“I’ve been so busy with this,” she says, waving her arms around the room. “Taymour’s mother wanted everything to be perfect and, like, suddenly it just got out of control.”
“I can see that,” I say, pointing to the heart-shaped sculpture with their initials.
Leila laughs.
“So apart from the hair, you’re happy? Is this what you wanted?”
Leila smiles a sad smile. “Life is hard for a single woman, and I’m not getting any younger. You know … this will be good. It’ll get my parents off my back at least, which will make me happy.”
“Do you love him?”
“I suppose so, whatever love is.” She lets out a laugh, which is more like a snort, and grabs my arm. “Did Taymour tell you? We’re thinking of moving to the Gulf.”
I swallow hard. “No, he didn’t mention it.” Of course he wouldn’t mention the possibility of leaving. Or was that what his conversation was about last night, about wanting to get away? What would their life be like in the Gulf? Perhaps they would be happy on the beaches littered with cranes and construction equipment. They would buy their milk and bread from the dazzling shopping malls and fall asleep every night in front of a box set of DVDs.
“Taymour only just brought the idea up for the first time today, really.”
“What about your work with the women in the camps?”
“The situation is not good here, Rasa,” Leila says. “We need to just kind of get away for a while and ride it out.”
I say nothing. What can I say? I had known from the moment Taymour decided to live among society that I would be cementing my own position as one of society’s dirty secrets. I am nothing more than an empty shell in public. I suppose it was my choice, but the alternative would be to banish our love and I could not do that. I’d rather live in the world where our love is sacred, within the comfort of the dirty secret. I can at least be with our love and keep it company. Down here, in the underbelly, I can see the magician’s trapdoor that reveals society’s tricks.
No sooner have I settled into this thought than I am overcome by a sudden urge to grab Taymour by his collar and yell and scream and demand the truth. I want to burst the bubble, reveal the trapdoor. I would grab the microphone and tell the world that Taymour is mine, that he can never be happily married. I’ll bring our love into the glare of the spotlights and chandeliers and force the men and women to stare at this ugly baby they’ve hidden in the basement. Maybe then they will leave us alone and we can live together, happily, without society trying to tear us apart.
“I need to say hi to the others,” Leila says interrupting my thoughts. “Listen. Let’s grab a drink at Guapa sometime. It’s been ages.” Even as she says this I can see in her eyes that we both know it will probably not happen. She squeezes my arm and walks away.
The waiter arrives with my drinks and I take a big gulp of mine and hand the other to Basma. As the waiter leaves I remember I had given him a fifty-dollar bill and didn’t get any change back. Two drinks should cost no more than fifteen each, so I would need at least twenty after ordering two. Or maybe twenty-five, but definitely at least twenty, and that is certainly too high of a tip, even in this hotel.
“Hey,” I call out, but the waiter is already halfway across the room, serving another table.
“People don’t appreciate barbecues here,” Dodi is telling the table as he chews on a shish taouk. “There is sun every day, that’s the problem. When I was in London people appreciated the sun, they appreciated a good barbecue. They didn’t take the sun for granted.”
“It’s the same with children here,” Hamza says. “Go to a village and a woman has ten kids and so, yalla, it’s okay if one of them goes and blows himself up.”
Oh I loathe weddings. I loathe sitting down and participating in inane conversations with proud parents and smug couples who all look like they might secretly hate each other. Makeup applied to women’s faces with the precision of a classical painting, foundation caked to lighten skin tones, hair large and flowing and put together like an intricately constructed bouquet of flowers. And the men with their roaring laughter and crude jokes and boasts about profits and markets. They’re all wearing masks so elaborate you can’t see what’s inside anymore. I loathe it all and I am piss drunk and need to get the rest of my change back.
I look around for the waiter. There are two of them hovering near our table. I can’t remember whether it was the short fat waiter or the tall skinny waiter who had taken my money. The guy I recall was both short and skinny. Perhaps they have morphed into one thief to steal my change. I catch the eye of the fat waiter and motion him over.
“I gave you or your friend a fifty-dollar bill for two drinks. I need the change back.”
“It wasn’t me,” the man says. “Let me check with the other guy and get back to you.”
“How many of you are there anyway?” I ask.
“For your table it’s just him and me, unless there’s someone else. Do you remember what he looked like?”
I shake my head and he walks off with a promise to return.
“Keep this to yourself,” Mimi whispers in my ear, her breath smelling sour of gin and tonic. “Sometimes I wonder whether I made the right decisions in life. I ended up coming back after university because that’s what my parents wanted. I got married because that’s what they expected of me. I don’t think I’ve ever done what I want to do.
Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Did I tell you I’m opening a cake shop downtown?” Lulu says, grasping Dodi’s arm and leaning into the table. “I’m going to call it Muffin Top.”
I look around for the fat waiter but he is nowhere to be seen. I call the tall skinny waiter instead.
“Where’s the other guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need my change. I gave you guys a fifty. I think. I don’t know. Listen, I need my change back.”
“Okay, let me check and come back to you.”
“What’s going on?” Basma asks from behind her drink.
“I gave them a fifty-dollar bill. I need my change back.”
“A few of us are going to Sage after this,” Lulu says with a cigarette in her mouth, clapping her hands lazily to the music. “It’s a new club that opened on the rooftop. We’re on the list.”
“Siege?” Mimi asks.
“Sage, not siege. Like the herb, not like the war. Sage.”
The fat waiter darts past our table. I call out to him but he passes us in a rush.
“Isn’t it cute how we’re all couples now?” Lulu remarks, looking around.
Mimi sighs. “That’s just the way it is. I had to marry because how else was I going to hang out with people.”
“When do you think you’ll get married, Rasa?” Lulu asks.
“What is it with these waiters?” I snap. “Honestly, the service is terrible. They’re thieves.”
“You ought to settle down and find yourself someone,” Lulu says. She turns to Dodi. “Things just get better when you are married, don’t you think, babe?”
Dodi halfheartedly agrees that there is “nothing like it, beeb,” and that it is “actually really great, ya zalameh.”
First the conspiracy of the waiters and now Lulu’s questions. They’re all conspiring against me.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Mimi asks. “You can tell us, we won’t tell anyone.”
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