Amreekiya

by Lena Mahmoud

  He came over, pulled me in close to his chest, and kissed my forehead.

  Though everything was all right except for the miscarriage, I wasn’t discharged until after 6 p.m.—after spending more than eight hours sitting under fluorescent lighting and suffering intermittent exams from Yusef—with orders to meet with my gynecologist in a week. I still felt exhausted, but the cramps had lessened, and I could walk upright again. Yusef kept his arm around my waist in case I felt dizzy or anything.

  Once we got home, I sat in one of our new chairs while Yusef changed our bedsheets. It seemed like an eternity. All I wanted was to sleep and for this day to be over, forget it ever happened, though I knew everyone would be talking about it and sending me condolences, reminding me over and over of what I had been through. If I had to have pain, I’d prefer it to be private, so it wouldn’t be subject to the opinions of others.

  “The bed’s ready, Isreenie.” I could get up myself, but he insisted on helping me, holding out his hand. “Yeah, I didn’t know where the sheets were. I guess that makes me a pretty bad husband.” He laughed a few short bursts.

  I lay down on my back, and he slipped the heating pad up my shirt and pressed it against my belly. “Is that how you want it?”

  “I just want to sleep.” I was awake the whole time in the hospital. The only thing that terrified me more than going to a hospital was falling asleep in one, making myself a home there.

  “Well, Isreenie, I have to call my mother and tell her we won’t be coming over tonight, but I won’t say anything about today.”

  How could I have forgotten about visiting his family? I closed my eyes hard. “Look, tell her the truth. We’re going to have to get it out there sooner or later, ’cause everyone’s expecting a baby. Please ask her not to come over, not tonight at least. Please. I know she’s family and whatever …” My voice broke and tears ran down my cheeks. “I want to be alone, for right now, because I don’t want everyone seeing me like this, and I always feel like I have to impress her or she’ll judge me. I can’t take that right now, okay? She can come over tomorrow, but I need to be alone now.”

  He wiped the tears from my cheeks and promised he would ask her to leave me alone, let me rest. It was no problem. “I can stay home with you tomorrow. She can come over and help, because you can see I’m kind of domestically retarded.” He attempted to chuckle.

  “No, you don’t have to miss work. I’ll ask Hanan. She’s still on summer vacation.”

  “It’s no problem, Isra. I want to be here, and I’m pretty sure that my mother would be okay with helping out.”

  “I’m more comfortable with Hanan doing it.” I took a breath and pressed the heating pad against my belly harder. “She needs an excuse to get away from her mother anyway.”

  He squeezed my hand and kissed each fingertip. “Let me know if anything goes wrong. If things are going well, I want to know, too. Hanan can call, you can call. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He sniffled again. “I’m so sorry. I’d heard about these things before. I think Lubna had one, but, you know, I found out about those after it happened, after all this worry and grief and everything. I’m a dumbass, and now I’m crying like a fuckin’ wimp every five seconds.”

  It would be cruel to agree with him. I told him to come and lie down next to me. The whites of his eyes were veined red, the tears making them a darker green. He did come to lie behind me. He reached over to hold my hand, and I felt his spurts of breath on my neck.

  My boss gave me a week off from work, and I spent most of it watching TV, reading, and eating big bars of dark chocolate Hanan brought to the apartment. She spent the entire day with me. When evening came, I would put something frozen in the oven for dinner. She ate with me and Yusef and went home. Imm Yusef didn’t come over much in the middle of the day; she hardly ever left the store or her house now that Abu Yusef’s health was deteriorating, but she came over during dinnertime and kept on insisting that she could make something instead of us having to eat frozen American food.

  I stepped on the scale before I left for work. My pants felt a little snug. I had gained seven pounds in addition to the five I put on during my short pregnancy. Twelve pounds heavier. Soon I would be a whale and have no children to blame it on.

  I wouldn’t let myself stop by the store to pick up chocolate, and I made dinner that day instead of warming it up. My meals didn’t have as many carbs and calories as the frozen ones. I used chicken breast instead of cubed beef in the bamiya stew I made; I cooked brown rice instead of white to go along with it. The brown had no flavor, no matter how much salt, cumin, and olive oil I put on it. Yusef said he liked it, but I noticed him mostly eating the bamiya from the top of his rice instead of eating the rice itself.

  I cleaned up the kitchen and let the food settle in my stomach. Yusef filled the coffee table with his thick textbooks, his laptop, and a hard copy of his thesis. I changed into a T-shirt and leggings in the bedroom. “I’m going to take a walk, Yusef,” I said on my way out.. “I’ll be back in half an hour or so.”

  He looked up and frowned. “Really? It’s almost seven.”

  “It’ll be light out for another hour.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  We ended up walking on the track field across from the apartment, hand in hand, silent. I looked up at the pink light coming out and felt certain that Yusef must be pondering my failings as a cook and as a wife. Maybe he would consider moving back in with his parents so he could have a good meal if he was not going to have a child. He might as well return to his own childhood. I rolled my eyes and bit the inside of my lip hard enough to draw a little blood.

  He interrupted my thoughts and my walking to kiss my forehead, my nose, and my lips. I giggled and hugged him, getting a faint whiff of his musk. I pulled away. I needed to actually do some walking. He caught up to me and wrapped his arm around my waist. “How’re you feeling? What’d your doctor say?” he asked.

  I stared down at my worn tennis shoes and the white chalk marks on the grass. “She said everything’s fine. I haven’t been bleeding.”

  “That’s good.” He pulled me closer. “So why’d you start the walking?”

  My cheeks got warm. “Because I’m getting fat,” I said.

  He laughed. “That’s why you’re eating that brown rice bullshit?”

  I playfully slapped his chest and grinned. “I knew you didn’t like the brown rice!”

  “You can’t blame me. I got taste buds.”

  I gave up the brown rice, but I made myself exercise a few times a week, wore makeup every day, and had my hair cut and straightened. I liked my hair curly and felt more like myself with it, but I looked too young and informal. I had not only let my weight creep up since my teens, but I had let womanhood creep up on me at the same time. I shouldn’t dress like a nonchalant teenager anymore. I was a college graduate and married. I had almost become a mother.

  I spent the entire day filling out job applications and emailing resumes to any print or online publication. I figured that was better than working as a part-time receptionist at a doctor’s office and especially better than being unemployed, only a wife and maybe potentially a mother. I had worked my ass off finding ways to pay for my education so as not to become that, getting scholarships because Amu wasn’t going to pay to educate his not-daughter. I liked working at the office, but I was meant for more than answering phones and sending out appointment reminders to rich people. I needed to move on and become a real woman with career prospects.

  Sana had been calling once in a while for the past few months, but we hadn’t had much time to talk. We talked for an hour and a half this time. I invited her over for lunch that weekend. Seeing someone without having to cook a big meal or worrying about their judgment, proving my worth or qualifications, was an enormous relief. Hanan was only an intermittent guest, because her mother had decided that since the miscarriage was now in the past, there was no reason f
or her to be over here so much.

  She came over soon after Yusef went to see his parents. Abu Yusef was feeling lightheaded and was bedridden. I felt cruel, but I didn’t offer to come with him. I didn’t want to see Imm Yusef or his sisters, hear their condolences, or answer their questions.

  I gave Sana a condensed explanation of where Yusef went while we were sitting on the balcony, drinking soda and eating chips. “Is there something wrong? Well, besides …”

  I shrugged, watching the bubbles dissipate in my drink.

  “Most guys are vultures. They use you and leave you.”

  I covered my face with my hands. “It’s just pressure, pressure, pressure. When I lived with Amu and Amtu, I hated them; they made my life hell, but I didn’t give a shit about what they thought, just as long as they wouldn’t kick me out. Now I’ve always got to worry about what his mother and sisters think of me, and all the other women. Nobody thinks I’m good enough for him. He’s perfect, and I don’t know how to be a ‘good woman.’”

  She snorted. “Yusef is a nice guy, but you are good to him. Look at how you fixed up this dump he lived in. Look at him now.”

  I laughed, something I hadn’t done for a while. I shook my head. “Things are getting better between us, but it’s been bad for a little while.”

  Yusef came back while Sana and I were still out on the balcony. He stopped by to say hi to Sana and give me a kiss. “I’m just going to work on my thesis or take a nap or something,” he said. He went back inside and headed for the refrigerator. I couldn’t believe Yusef came from his parents’ house hungry. Abu Yusef must have been worse than I thought.

  Sana mouthed “Should I go?” I nodded. He seemed upset. I saw Sana out and went to Yusef and rubbed his back. I should have gone to his parents’ house with him. “I can make dinner early if you want.”

  I moved away when he closed the refrigerator and grabbed a bag of chips from the cupboard. “So how are your parents?”

  His shoulders sunk, and he leaned over on the counter. “Baba’s been in bed for days. The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him. Well, he does have heart disease, and he still smokes. The only reason he hasn’t these few days is because he can’t get away from Mama to hide his smoking from her.”

  “How old is he now?”

  He sighed. “Seventy-one. It’s old, but I wish that he had more time. Good time.”

  I pulled him in for a hug.

  “I just wish he wanted to be around for longer,” he managed to say before his tears spilled from his eyes.

  I weighed myself before I went to bed: I had lost five pounds! I kept the news from Yusef. The last thing he needed to hear about was weight loss when he was worrying about his father. I felt ashamed for caring so much about something like this at such a time.

  But Yusef must have noticed. He practically pounced on me when I got into bed, burying his face in my breasts and telling me how much he missed my body. “This isn’t too soon, is it? Your doctor said everything’s all right?”

  I pulled his face up and my shirt down. “Um, she said we should wait three months before I try to get pregnant. Only four weeks have passed.” It had been over five, pushing six weeks.

  He cupped my breast and caressed my covered nipple with his forefinger. “I could get condoms at the store. This would be purely for pleasure.”

  I hesitated and looked away.

  “You’re not ready?” he asked, pained.

  “Just a little while longer.” I turned over on my stomach and closed my legs as tight as I could, and he cupped my butt the same way he did my breast, his fingers kneading the fat. “I can think of other ways to make love without running the risk of pregnancy,” he said.

  I skipped a few breaths when I realized what he wanted me to do with him. “That’s so disgusting, Yusef!” I got off the bed so fast that I almost tripped and banged my arm against the side of the doorway.

  Eventually he convinced me to come back to bed. He claimed I was overreacting, that he was not going to do it if I didn’t want to. I only came back because I didn’t know how to argue with him; I didn’t know what to say at all.

  But I couldn’t sleep. I thought about when one of my friends in my junior year of high school told us she had anal sex with her boyfriend because he said he was bored in bed and could find a million other girls to do it for him. My other friend and I were horrified, me especially. I thought anal was something only gay men did. Both my friends were surprised at my innocence: everyone my age knew that straight men liked anal. But now I learned that women knew straight men liked anal—and straight men liking it was okay—but only the sluts would give them the pleasure. No one said the last part, but I could tell by my non-sodomized friend’s reaction that that was what she thought about my sodomized friend. The sodomized one seemed to feel my judgment more, though, and told me, “Not everyone can string a guy along for a year without even kissing him like you did, Isra.”

  Because Sana was in college and knew a lot more about sex than me but didn’t look down on me for my ignorance, I took the information to her in the most inappropriate place: the outdoor celebration of Eid while we were sitting on a bench, watching some kids hit a piñata. Sana was as disgusted as me but not surprised. “If a man wants to do that to you, he should have you put on a strap-on and let you do it to him.” She made the humping motion with her hips and arms before I told her to stop, that we’d be in deep shit if we got caught talking about this, here of all places.

  “You know, I have a theory.” That didn’t surprise me. Sana always had theories about those kinds of things. She liked to say that she’d grow up and write a book titled Sana’s Laws of Sexuality. She’d be on the cover in a stylish pants suit with a knowing smile, and the book would cause a sensation in America and the Middle East. Her parents would probably disown her and even change their names, but who cared what old people thought? Besides, they let her brothers run around and stay out all night like sharmootas. “So this is my theory: straight guys like anal because it’s sort of gay but not quite if you do it with a girl.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw her father marching toward us, his face scrunched in anger. He could spot Sana’s unladylike behavior a mile away. When she saw him, her slight smile vanished. He barked her name. “Sana, what is this you are doing?”

  The color drained from her face in an instant, and she incriminated us more when she tried to explain. I felt sick to my stomach when she used the word anal in front of her father, and she said we were only discussing a movie we both saw. It angered him more that we were watching filth, and he didn’t seem to believe her. He stormed off, and I felt relieved that we’d gotten off easy; he didn’t threaten to tell Amu or punish Sana.

  But Sana was only more freaked out. “God, Isra, he’s going to get my mom! I know he is. If he’s really mad, he always brings her in on the punishment so they can gang up on me.” She tried to breathe evenly but was unsuccessful. “Damn it, you’re always getting me in trouble.”

  “Shut up! You didn’t have to sodomize the air and talk so loudly.” We saw Sana’s father heading back not with her mother but with Amu, and both walked with an angry, self-righteous confidence. Amu instantly berated me for talking about shameful things, and once he was done verbally abusing me, I told him Sana and I were discussing a former friend I had at school and how outraged I was by her behavior. I needed a girl my age to sympathize with that outrage, so I went to Sana. Who else was there who would agree with my views? I wouldn’t talk about such things with Hanan. She was too young.

  Sana’s father’s face softened, and he praised me for being a good girl. “You must not be taken in by these bad women,” he said. “America is full of them, and you should not emulate their ways.”

  Amu was more hesitant in his acceptance of my explanation, but he only said, “You must never see this girl again. If you hang around such girls, people will think you are like her. I forbid you from ever seeing her.”

  Now I wanted
to be that Isra again, the Isra who only heard about men’s strange desires that weren’t so strange and didn’t have to worry about them, didn’t feel compared to all the invisible other women in her husband’s past, didn’t feel boring and inadequate.

  Though we missed our opportunity for the three-bedroom Abu Yusef told us about, one of Yusef’s cousins who was in real estate let us know a two-bedroom house in town was available. It was late in the semester, and Yusef was teaching three classes and researching and finishing his thesis. He had little time to check it out, so Amer, the cousin, dropped the key off with me. “Only bring back to me if you don’t like,” he said. “If you like, you can keep. I have copy.”

  Yusef had Saturday night free to look at the house. He drove us there in his car, and the heater couldn’t warm the car up enough, so I ended up cuddling with the passenger door for warmth. “I need to replace this piece of junk, too,” he said.

  He was always tired and cranky now. He was gone all the time or grading tests or putting the finishing touches on his beloved thesis, but I suppose his paychecks and recognition were worth it: he made almost double what he was making in the summer, and some of his findings might be featured at a conference in the spring.

  The house was almost as cold as the car, but it had a good-size kitchen with lots of counter space and even a real area to put a dinner table. While Yusef went off to look at the bedrooms, I checked the cupboards. There was a big hall closet where we could put the spare bedsheets and towels. All this space. I missed living in a house.

  “The master bedroom’s big.”

  I passed by him to verify and noticed the window that looked out into the backyard. “I like this house. If it’s a good price, I don’t see why not.” I smiled and put a lock of hair behind my ear.

  He smiled back. “It’s about nine a month. Pretty good for a house.” He took my hand and led me through the hall to the patio.