by Hala Alyan
“Don’t chew your hair,” Riham says automatically. Souad has always chewed on pens and toys and her fingernails. For a while, her mother dipped Souad’s fingers in hot sauce, but Souad stubbornly learned to like the taste.
Souad lets the curl fall out of her mouth. She clamps her lips around the fashioned cigarette, pretending to inhale. “Wooooo.” She exhales, tilting her head back like an actress.
Riham laughs in spite of herself. Her sister is a foreign, beguiling creature. Last year they’d all gone to an aquarium, and one of the rooms had an enormous tank lit from within. Inside there was a jellyfish and several other fish rippled by. One fish was purple, veined with brilliant, iridescent scales. Watching it dart through the water, Riham thought: Souad.
“I’m making smoke rings,” Souad says, oblivious to tanks or burned villages, oblivious to her mother and grandmother deep in conversation about war, to anything but her lips releasing invisible coils of smoke.
The car ride takes hours and by the time they reach Aqaba, Riham is already tired and vaguely nauseous. At the beach, families have laid out bed sheets and towels, fruit and sandwiches spread between them. Groups of boys kick around a ball, the air punctuated with their cheers and groans. A flock of veiled women have pulled up their skirts and ventured into the water up to their calves. Riham’s stomach knots at the sight of so many slender bodies.
“There.” Alia points. They follow her toward a trio of colorful towels, Khalto Mimi and the girls lying on them.
“The water is incredible,” Lara calls out as they approach. She has rubbed oil all over, her skin shimmering. Between the towels are an assortment of oils and lotions, a large bottle of water.
“Honey and labneh sandwiches,” Salma says, setting the basket down.
“Bless your hands, Auntie,” Khalto Mimi says. “I’ll be starving soon.” Her mascara is clumpy and the roll of flab around her midsection, bulging against her Lycra bathing suit, reminds Riham uncomfortably of her own.
They roll out their own towels, and Khalto Mimi rummages through her bag for a pack of cigarettes. “Did you hear about Beirut?”
“I was telling Mama, this is exactly what the Israelis want,” Alia says.
Souad kneels and picks up a bottle of lotion. There is a smiling coconut tree on the front.
“You want some, ma belle?” Lara asks. One hand shields her face from the sun. Mira and Lara’s nickname for Souad—“my beautiful.”
“Yes,” Souad says. “I want a lot.”
“Off,” Mira says, smiling, and Souad lifts her dress over her head and tosses it on the sand. Her bathing suit is green, faded.
There is a tightness in Riham’s chest as she watches her sister flop down onto Lara’s towel, brown limbs everywhere, then lifts her hair with both hands so Lara can rub oil on her shoulders. Souad has fit in easily with the older girls; they seem entranced by her. Riham lies down on her towel, careful not to let her dress rise up.
“Gimme,” Alia says, turning toward Khalto Mimi with her arm out. Riham notices the tightness of her mother’s thighs, only the slightest puckering when she turns, her compact torso beneath the bathing suit.
“Your lungs are turning black, girls,” her grandmother chides as Alia lights a cigarette.
“I know, Auntie,” Khalto Mimi says with mock shame. “We’re terrible.”
“Only in Amman, Mama,” Alia says, blowing out a ribbon of smoke.
“They’re leaving,” Khalto Mimi says as her daughters get up. “They can’t sit with their poor, overheated mother for more than a half hour.”
Mira rolls her eyes and turns to Riham, the tiny divot in her collarbone beautiful, collecting a pool of oil. “We’re going to get some lunch. You want to come?”
The question has an artificial lilt to it and Riham knows Khalto Mimi instructed her to ask.
“I need to get some reading done,” she says, gesturing uselessly at her bag.
“That’s too bad.” Riham hears the relief in Lara’s voice.
“Riham,” Alia begins pointedly, but Salma interrupts her.
“It’s hot,” Salma says, rising. “I need some water from the shop. Riham, will you help me?”
“Mama, you should let her—”
“Are you okay with that, dear?” Salma speaks over Alia, looking at Riham. She can see her grandmother understands. The way her father would if he were here. Riham nods.
The shop is at the corner of the parking lot, a hut with a metal roof and a man selling drinks and falafel sandwiches.
“This weather,” her grandmother says as they walk across the sand. Riham can feel the heat, like fire, between her toes.
“Thank you.” Riham keeps her eyes on her toes. She sees her grandmother glance toward her. Salma clears her throat and speaks gently.
“Are they mean to you?”
Riham shakes her head, tries to think of the right words to describe it. “It’s like we speak different languages.”
Salma laughs. “When I was your age, I knew girls like that. They would call me names and I’d cry and cry. Sometimes they pulled the ribbons from my hair and threw them in the trash.”
“Really?” Riham loves being alone with her grandmother, the snippets of her life that are revealed. She loves to imagine the life her grandmother had, a peasant girl by the sea, before everything changed.
“It was because I was different. They knew it. I didn’t, not until later.”
“Different how?” They reach the shop and her grandmother gestures to the man behind the counter.
“Dear, a large bottle of water, please.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
“Ice cold, please.”
While they wait, her grandmother has a distant look in her eyes, remembering. “I cared about different things. I prayed a lot. I spent time alone.”
“Like me.”
Salma smiles. “Have you been reading the suras the imam told you about?”
“Yes.” Riham hesitates. There is something she wants to ask her grandmother, about whether she prayed after her own son was killed. The adults rarely talk about him, but Riham gathers details about him like a magpie, snatched from overheard conversations: his name was Mustafa; he was five years older than her mother; he died in Palestine and no one—not her mother, not Teta—got to say goodbye. “All those deaths, the bloodshed. And then I think about what’s happening in the world now. Sometimes it seems—” Riham falters.
“That Allah is cruel.”
Riham nods. Her grandmother leans down and, unexpectedly, kisses Riham on her forehead. She speaks lightly.
“There’s nothing wrong with having questions for Allah. It means you’re taking Him seriously.”
Since Riham can remember, her grandmother has been her favorite part of the Amman trips. She is like Khalto Widad, warm and loving, always cooking Riham her favorite meals. When Riham was younger, her grandmother would bathe her, sprinkling scented oils into the water, and braid her hair afterward. At the end of every school year, Riham tucks her report card in the sleeve of her suitcase to show her grandmother.
“You brilliant girl,” Salma says every year, hanging the report card on the refrigerator. When people come over to visit, she introduces Riham as “my smart one.”
Salma’s faith lends her a dignified air, authentic and stately in a way other veiled women are not. During Ramadan, her grandmother breaks fast not with mouthfuls of meat but rather a single olive and a sip of water, a restraint that Riham marvels at.
Sometimes she takes Riham to the mosque near her apartment, a domed edifice with a marbled courtyard. There is an imperial archway of grape leaves and vines, an inscription reading There is no Allah but Allah. Riham knows the phrase from school and is always happy to see something she recognizes.
Her grandmother gives her a scarf to knot around her head, and a long robe, white with red embroidery. Although it’s too large, the sleeves past her fingers, the hem tripping her, Riham always feels strangely beautiful following h
er grandmother up the stairs, into the suddenly cool, dark entrance. They step out of their sandals before entering the mosque, place them alongside the others. The carpet is scratchy beneath her bare feet.
Inside the mosque, women speak with her grandmother eagerly, and Riham understands that Salma is loved.
“Pretty scarf, Khalto.”
“How are the tomatoes this summer, Khalto?”
“Fine, fine. Strong and red. You should come by and pick some for your children.”
“Inshallah.” Last week, an elderly man approached them. “Dear Salma, is this your granddaughter?”
“It is.” A smile unfolded across her grandmother’s face. “This is the lovely Riham. Riham, this is Imam Zuhair.”
“Riham.” The imam smiled, thousands of wrinkles crinkling his eyes. Riham instantly liked him, the way he inclined his head slightly to her. “It’s an honor.”
“Your mosque is beautiful.” The words came out stammered, and Riham blushed. She sounded stupid to her own ears, childish.
He looked around at the rows of Qur’ans lining the walls, the green carpet, people sitting in the corners, praying. Light poured in through the large windows.
“Why, yes.” He spoke as though startled. “It is beautiful.” He turned to Salma. “Your granddaughter sees beauty even in the well worn. This is a gift.”
Later that day, when they were praying, and Riham touched her forehead on the carpet, kneeling and rising with the other bodies; she shut her eyes and let herself be carried by the sounds of the mosque, the rustle of feet on the floor, the fragrance of incense, carried and then returned gently to the earth.
Alia and Khalto Mimi smoke one cigarette after the other as they talk, the smell thick in the air. Riham watches their mouths, every few minutes looking up from her book.
“I can’t believe the summer’s almost over.”
“I know, back to Kuwait.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to return for Eid?”
“Probably not. The children’s school—”
“I hate school,” Souad says.
“Sous, your turn.”
Souad returns her attention to the game of chess with her grandmother, the pieces streaked from wear, weeks of salt water and sun eroding them.
“I’m roasting.” Khalto Mimi sighs, inspecting her shoulders. “Remember how awful returning to school was? The girls are positively depressed about it.”
“Not Riham,” Alia says. She eyes Riham thoughtfully. “Are you looking forward to starting school?”
Riham thinks about her school, the air-conditioned classrooms, the way the teachers love her, especially Madame Haddad, the librarian who saves the new books for Riham to read first. She thinks about her friends, who are quiet and awkward, never telling her to straighten her hair.
“I can’t wait,” Riham says softly.
“Bravo.” Khalto Mimi blows a stream of smoke. “Teach my lazy girls.”
“Exactly,” Salma says. “That’s what will last. A good brain, hard work.”
“Yes,” Alia says with an uncertain smile, and Riham knows her mother is thinking of Mira and Lara, off somewhere getting lunch in their sundresses, giggling about boys. “Yes.”
Alia and Khalto Mimi begin unwrapping sandwiches. Souad, bored of the chess game, wanders over to the water and comes back with handfuls of shells.
“Look!” she calls, standing over the towels. Sand scatters over them. “I found a bunch of big ones.”
“Goddamn it, Souad.” Alia shakes sand off the sandwiches as Souad sits.
“I’m trying to keep myself busy. That’s what you said to do.” Souad imitates their mother’s voice perfectly. “‘Souad, Mimi and I are talking. No, you can’t go play with Mira and Lara. Keep yourself busy.’”
The tops of Khalto Mimi’s large, greasy breasts jiggle. “That’s pretty good, Aloush. She should be an actress.”
Alia pulls her sunglasses off and slits her eyes toward Souad, but Riham can hear the laughter in her voice. “Mannerless! I need to raise you all over again.”
“You can raise her after you feed me,” Khalto Mimi says. Alia unwraps a foiled sandwich.
“Honey or cheese?”
“Cheese.”
“Mama?”
“Half of each, please.”
“Those boys are getting louder and louder.” They all turn to watch the group of boys kicking a football near the shore. One kicks the ball straight up and uses his head to jounce it, sends it soaring in the direction of their towels.
“I can kick better than that,” Souad says, scrambling to her feet.
“Don’t,” Alia warns, and Souad sits again.
Two of the boys chase after the ball, laughing as they run. Their figures get closer to the group, one tall and lean, the other small and stout, their features slowly visible.
Bassam and Rafic.
Riham shimmies her body up, ducks her head, mortified, as they jog past. Her mind spins: Bassam isn’t supposed to be here, so far from Amman. She is excruciatingly aware of her body, the dampness under her arms, her smell.
“Ya Riham.” Her mother waves something silver in the sun. “Your sandwich.”
Riham’s face burns; she’s horrified at the thought of Bassam watching her eat, especially something so huge. “I’m not hungry,” she mumbles.
“What?”
Lower your voice, Riham wants to scream. From the corner of her eye she sees Rafic reach the ball, then the two of them running back to the group. “I’m not hungry,” she says louder.
Her mother frowns, waves the sandwich again. “You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“I want to swim first.” As soon as she speaks the words, Riham regrets them—what is she thinking?—but surprise crosses her mother’s face. She looks relieved, and Riham suddenly puts together the sharp, furtive looks her mother has been giving her all summer, that scrutiny—concern.
“Oh.” She lowers the sandwich. “Good. Swim first, then come eat.” Riham catches her grandmother’s quizzical eye. Alia gestures toward the sea. “Go, go.”
Riham rises reluctantly. She eyes the water, dread knotting her stomach. In her peripheral vision, she sees Bassam and Rafic with the group of boys, kicking the ball toward each other. She can’t walk to the water without crossing their path, she realizes with a jolt.
“I’m going swimming too.” Souad stands up, all leg, sand sticking to her skin. She looks like a dirty, beautiful urchin in a Victorian novel. “I’ll be back soon,” she informs their mother.
Without looking up, Alia clicks her tongue and points to the empty spot on the towel where Souad had just been sitting.
Immediately, Souad begins to whine. “That’s not fair, you’re letting Riham go. I want to swim too.”
“You,” Alia says to Souad, “sit your little butt down. You can go after you finish your sandwich.”
“I can just stay,” Riham offers desperately. “I’ll take her after.”
“You go have fun, habibti. She’ll be fine.”
Souad eyes her mother, hands clamped on her hips. For a moment they glare at each other. Finally, she kicks at the edge of the towel and sits down, pouting.
Riham begins to walk toward the water. Her heart pounds and she is painfully, overwhelmingly, aware that she is on display. It feels like a thousand eyes watching her. She feels an impossible hush settle over the beach, every single person—families, all of the boys, Bassam—stopping and turning to her.
She takes one step and then another, sand hot beneath her feet, suddenly conscious of her arms, how they swing unnaturally against her hips, how her knees knock together as she walks. All of them, she knows, are holding their breath, watching this agonizingly slow walk, this walk that is taking forever, years, really, because the water, even though it seemed so close from the towels, is far, far away. Sweat trickles between her breasts and that spongy scent is stronger.
And then, at last, she is there: at the edge of the water. She takes a quic
k look behind her and is stunned to find that no one is watching her. All the people are eating and talking. The boys are still kicking the ball around, jogging as they call out to one another. Bassam kicks the ball neatly through the air.
She watches him for a second, so lovely as his leg arches midkick, and, as if charged by her gaze, he turns and looks directly at her. The air leaves her lungs. He lifts his hand in greeting, his face brightening into a half smile.
She moves rapidly, taking off the dress and throwing it on the sand, then scrambling, mortified at the sight of her own naked arms and legs, toward the water quickly, quickly, before he can reach her, before any of them can see her in this awful bareness.
The only place away from the boys’ laughter is the water, and so she propels herself in. For the first few seconds she is so charged with adrenaline, her heart pounding at Bassam’s eyes, his smile, that she doesn’t even notice the water as she wades in. But then it hits her, the water freezing against her sunburned skin, so icy and unexpected that she gasps. She keeps her back to the shoreline—is he still watching?—and moves, her feet catching and slipping on mounds of seashells and tiny rocks and something slimy that makes her shiver.
She used to love the water when she was younger, would swim for hours during the summer, she and Karam racing each other to the little red buoys. She’d loved the way her hair still tasted of salt even after her grandmother scrubbed it with shampoo. Alone in the water, she was something magical, her limbs suddenly graceful as she pirouetted, pretending to be a mermaid floating in the sea.
But now she is filled with hatred toward it—at the water unfurling and undulating like some enormous tongue, aquamarine and gleaming with malice. Even though it terrifies her, she keeps her eyes on the sea ahead. To turn around would be disastrous, she thinks; to turn around would be to see him, and she imagines his gaze burning across the beach, skipping over the water to find her. She continues to wade deeper, moving messily in the water, aware that her skin is visible to those on the coast until she—quickly—blankets herself with water.