Salt Houses

by Hala Alyan

  “Wake him up.”

  “I’m happy,” Alia shouts. The childishness shames her.

  “No.” Souad speaks slowly, picking up her purse. “You’re not. You’re a liar, and you’re always lying. And you’re just angry because I can see it.”

  Souad walks out of the room. She switches off the light as she exits—a final insult—leaving Alia in the dark, with a slack mouth and anger pulsing through her rib cage.

  It takes Alia a while—ten, fifteen minutes—to calm herself down. She fights the urge to follow Souad into her room, to yank her by the shoulders and demand, if not an apology, then more fight. The urge to scream, to say terrible things, lances her. Her entire life, she has been denied a good fight; Widad too mild, Salma too good, Atef too kind, Karam gentle, and Riham withdrawn.

  Only Souad has the ferocity. And her daughter is a smart girl—funny, how bitterly one could think such a thing about one’s child—who knows perfectly well the potency of walking away.

  There are times when Alia cannot bear to look at her daughter. Not only out of anger, but also out of the peculiarity of recognition. No one had warned her of this, that she would see herself so brazenly in her child. It is alarming, watching Souad filch her gestures, the scowls and hair flicking and lopsided smile. Alia can see her own spitefulness in the girl.

  There is, of course, the other likeness, the shiver of someone darting across her daughter’s face. Mustafa in the dark limbs. Mustafa in the twitch of her mouth, the lips pulled downward when she is impatient or afraid.

  Watching a news report years ago, a newly adolescent Souad cursed at the television, her brows drawn in a glower. Salma had shaken her head, marveling. She spoke so quietly Alia barely heard her:

  “Allah have mercy, she has your brother’s blood in her.”

  Across the room Alia winced, watching her daughter, all those likenesses, those hurts—scrawled plainly on her pretty face. Mustafa, whose name they go entire years at a time without speaking. It became a tacit rule between her and Atef: If it hurts, leave it. Their marriage had a glove compartment, a hollow, cluttered space where emotional debris went—Mustafa, those first months in Kuwait, Nablus. Palestine tossed in there like an illegible receipt, keys that no longer opened any door. Why would we, Atef seemed to beg her silently in those early years after the war, his face tightening with pain when she spoke of Nablus, when she cursed Meir and Rabin and the day they’d been born. So she spoke of it less and less, everything they’d left behind, her dreams of walking into her childhood bedroom, the way her entire body drummed when she thought of the place that was, suddenly, not hers anymore. She folded it away.

  Souad’s Amman remark was a punch in the face. So Souad knew.

  If Alia put her discontent away, it wouldn’t stay. Her wanting disobeyed her, needling over the years, nudging her awake. If not Palestine, then Amman, it whispered. Anywhere but this hot, unwelcome country. Alia’s one wicked secret, the one she thought she’d hidden from the family—that on each of those summer trips, finding herself surrounded by friends and family, the same thought pinched her.

  I could stay.

  It was not in and of itself a betrayal, but the implications were. Stay here and what? Be with my mother, my cousins. And my children? So it would go, the silent argument, back and forth in her mind until she loathed the sight of herself in the mirror. What kind of mother, or wife, would consider such a fate—living apart from her children, moving to Amman.

  “Atef wants you to be happy,” Mimi argued with her once. Only she knew everything; Alia had broken down one summer and told her. Late into the night they’d talked, the children asleep in their rooms; Mimi thought Alia should stay even if Atef kept the children. “He must know how miserable you are there.”

  “But he would hate me.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. He’d forgive you.”

  She was right. The simple truth was that Atef would’ve forgiven her if she remained, the same way he would’ve forgiven her if she divorced him or fell in love with someone else. Because his love for her—and her understanding of this was tenuous, the way one snatches at the wisps of a memory—had always been straightforward. Uncomplicated.

  That summer, she’d spent long hours with Mimi smoking cigarettes and crying, nearly telling her mother about it. While Alia fed the children, while she combed their hair after baths, her mind churned with plans.

  It might have happened differently. She might have returned to Kuwait and told Atef everything: How she hated the heat and dreaded the summer, had nightmares of being buried in hot sand, how she found the city oppressive, always felt numb, as though moving in swamp water. But then they’d gone to the beach one afternoon, and Riham had almost drowned. Nearly died. And Alia, clasping her shivering daughter as she heaved, holding her so tightly the girl had tugged for air, as she wept and grabbed at her daughter—as the drowning lunge for wood or flesh or tire—for the rest of the day, Alia understood that she’d very nearly been punished.

  It is not that she believes Allah is vengeful or cruel. The opposite. When she thinks of Allah, she imagines only love, magnified and multiplied into a room of marble, blinding white and then traveling with synaptic speed onto the earth, into her mother’s voice as she prayed, into the breath of those around her. And it was this love that made Allah so dangerous, so terrifying. Because the sin, the real sin, she’d learned that summer, was to forget it or take it for granted. No, Allah hadn’t punished her out of spite or malice. He’d been warning her not to forget.

  Alia flips through the television channels in the dark, the screen a kaleidoscope of newscasters, music videos, soap operas. She finally settles on a program about elephants and lowers the volume. The couch cushions are soft beneath her as she sits, adjusting a pillow between her knees. She feels the anger quiet into a briny resentment. The bitterness floats like an inkblot in her mind’s eye.

  Suddenly exhausted, she drops her head back onto the couch arm. The steps to her bedroom seem impossible. Screw them all anyway. Let them wake and find her. Let it be her final protest on this night.

  Bastards, she thinks and sleeps.

  She dreams of a foreign city. A marshland and some women walking throughout it. Someone is speaking in another language. French, or Spanish. Somehow Alia can understand it. The person is telling her to turn around, that it is about to rain. She follows the voice. There is hail. Someone is dying.

  It is morning when Alia wakes, her consciousness still pulling at the marshland, the foreign language. Sunlight pours into the living room. Alia’s head is angled uncomfortably against the cushions. The television screen is blank; someone—Atef, Priya—has turned it off. She sits up, flooded with déjà vu, the sensation of waking on this couch—then recalls the night before, Souad’s words, the fight. Not déjà vu, then. Memory.

  She walks into the kitchen. Atef is drinking coffee at the table. Alia can hear Priya’s humming in the laundry room, the whir of the washing machine.

  “Good morning,” she says.

  Atef sips his coffee, suppressing a smile. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “That couch is a nightmare.”

  “We’ll have to buy better furniture. For nights you stand guard.” His voice is mischievous, and Alia laughs, feeling the tension break. She cracks her neck with the heel of her hand, a satisfying pop.

  “My back’s killing me,” Alia admits. A mess of papers are scattered in front of Atef, his briefcase open. “What’s all this? Are you finally divorcing me?”

  He glances at the clock above the oven. “The staff meeting’s today.” He starts piling the papers up. Alia remembers vague talk of changes in the department.

  “The British professor?”

  “Professor Roberts.” Atef says the name with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “The liberal. Coming in to change everything. Those British, they still think Arabs are impressionable. Starving to be saved. We’re having a meeting on his proposal today, some referendum vote. He even wants to take
out smoking in the classrooms. Says it gives people asthma.”

  “He sounds awful. Maybe they’ll have him oversee the construction projects.”

  Atef grins. “We’ll just give him Souad to deal with. He’ll trip over himself rushing back to England.” He finishes the coffee and sets the cup on the counter. “Au revoir.” It is their little joke, begun when the children started taking French in school.

  “Au revoir.”

  On his way out, he places a hand on her shoulder and grazes her temple with his chin. Another ancient gesture of his, from the days when they first wed. She watches him from the window above the sink, walking down the driveway, his familiar silhouette dark in the bright sun.

  Priya makes her some tea and boils an egg. When the water froths, Priya cracks the egg with a spoon and carefully peels it. Two pinches of salt, a sliced tomato.

  “Thank you,” Alia says. She eats absently, her mind still on her daughter.

  “Chicken today?” Priya asks as she wipes the counters. Her hair is pulled back into a gray-streaked braid.

  “I was thinking lamb. With a nice stew.”

  “We finished the lamb yesterday. I can walk to the store?”

  “No, no. The chicken’s fine. Priya?” Alia says impulsively. The other woman turns, the dishrag in midair.

  “Souad . . . she never listens. I talk, I yell. Nothing works. Do you know how she—why she . . . does the things she does?” she finishes lamely.

  Priya’s gaze is sympathetic but resentful, as though she was hoping she’d never be asked. “Madame, children are not easy to know.” She pauses for a moment before resuming the wide, swooping circles on the counters. Alia feels ashamed for asking, as if she has admitted some shortcoming in her maternal abilities.

  Alia sops up the remaining yolk with bread, places the plate in the sink. She begins walking to her bedroom but hesitates in front of Souad’s closed door. The urge to pull it open and yell is fierce, but she forces herself to walk on.

  In her bedroom, Alia restlessly trails her fingers along the cosmetics atop her dresser. Much of them are old and unused, dust filming the covers. Her favorite is the burgundy jar, a cream that smells of lavender. She dabs it onto her face, rubs circles on her forehead and cheeks.

  She is still attractive, somewhat. At dinner parties she catches glimpses—from the men, an aloof appreciation; from the women, scrutiny. She can feel them scanning her neck, the flesh of her arms, with hawkish eyes.

  “What a tiny waist!” they exclaim. Or, “Your skin is so smooth.”

  And Alia—capriciously superstitious—finds herself fumbling for some wood to rap her knuckles against. She remembers her mother in such moments, how Salma used to recite Qur’an whenever anyone paid her children a compliment.

  Alia likes her body in the same way she likes her bedroom, or her car, or the lovely green curtains in the living room—as a commodity, something she can smooth over with her hands, a working machinery. Nice legs, firm abdomen, even after the children, though she’d held her breath at each pregnancy, dismayed as her body stretched and flared.

  The irony is that the features she loathed twenty years ago have become her assets. The dark skin that remains unblemished. The square jaw and broad shoulders that now give her a certain stateliness. And her height, which has become suddenly fashionable, women in magazines and films teetering in impossibly high heels.

  We never want it when we have it, Mimi likes to say.

  The restlessness grows. Souad’s words return to her. You’re a liar, and you’re always lying.

  Alia showers and chooses slacks and a T-shirt. The bed looks warm and inviting, and she flops onto it, feeling like she did as a child on rainy days.

  But the sun streams ferociously into the room, and she is a grown woman, she reminds herself. The house ticks with the unexploded arguments of this afternoon.

  “Goddamn it.”

  She kicks the covers, suddenly hungry again. The kitchen is empty save for the scent of baking chicken, a cutting board of chopped vegetables. Abruptly, Alia envies Priya her daily tasks, the constant motion of dusting and folding laundry. Priya rarely sits still for more than a few minutes; she certainly doesn’t mope in bed past noon.

  Alia filches a chopped carrot, feeling once more like a child. A memory floats to her, unasked, of her mother’s kitchen in Nablus: sunlight streaming through the windows, tangling in the coriander and mint plants on the windowsill. The image hurts, and she shakes her head to clear it.

  Alia rustles around in the cupboards. She craves, irritatingly, something. A precise, elusive wanting. This has been happening to her since her first pregnancy. Her mother told her to expect curious cravings: pickles with dried dates or yogurt milk and cinnamon. But what happened instead was haunting, daylong cravings for something unknown. Alia would hunt in the supermarket for hours, trying to locate the source of her longing, until, magically, like a remembered word, it would appear and she’d want to weep from gratitude—watermelon with cheese! Falafel mashed and topped with hot sauce!

  Alia places a teabag into a mug, then leaves it unused on the counter. She gnaws on a wedge of bread, scoops apricot jam with her fingertip and licks it. No, no. She peers into the refrigerator, debating whether to eat leftover lentil soup, when she is struck by inspiration. Figs. She wants figs and cheese, the sheep’s-milk cheese with rosemary.

  In the refrigerator, she finds a wedge of the cheese wrapped in wax paper but no figs. Apples, grapes, cantaloupe . . . but no. It must be figs. This is how her mind is at times, something she could never explain to easygoing Atef—the stubbornness like a lock, once bolted, impossible to move.

  Outside, the short walk to her car fills her mouth with humid air. It is only April, but the sun is already overpowering, stark in the clear sky. Atef bought the second car several years ago, a blue thing with a powerful engine. Even now, after so long, Alia thrills at the engine revving, the humming life she orchestrates with a flick of her wrist.

  Sometimes she thinks of Ajit, Widad’s old chauffeur, who returned to his country in the early seventies. Alia had become fascinated by India for a while, watching reports on the fighting, the men rushing the streets, dropping like dolls when gunshots rang out. There was a wild-eyed man who’d speak, his robes falling to his elbows when he lifted his arms. Alia would try to imagine Ajit there, among the crowds or throwing flaming bottles, but it was impossible; for her, he existed solely in the front seat of the sedan.

  She’d felt sadness at Ajit’s departure, but also relief. He’d always seemed like an ally of hers, the one who would watch her in the rearview mirror. He was the one who’d seen her lapse, the only person in this country who knew she was capable of fleeing.

  The supermarket is flanked by a row of restaurants and shops, directly facing benches and the marina. Atef hates when she shops at the supermarket. He says fruits from the marketplace taste fresher, but Alia prefers the efficiency, the rush of air conditioning that hits her now as she strides through the sliding doors. No one calls out to her here as they do in the marketplace, no one asks if she wants mangoes or spices as she walks the aisles. The employees, Pakistani, Filipino, work quietly, not even glancing her way as they stack cans and arrange the fruit. She can come and go unnoticed.

  She finds the figs easily, packaged in plastic boxes next to a pyramid of oranges. Over the speakers a Fairuz song is playing, the one about love and summer. Alia sings along to it under her breath as she walks to the cashier. Her mood has lifted, and she curves her fingers against the box in anticipation.

  Ya Mama, her mother used to say, everything in its place. There is a time for anger, a time for sorrow. You have to learn to distinguish. A lesson Alia never learned. Emotions swirl within her like the complex dish of maqlouba the aunts used to make in Nablus, the raisins impossible to pick from the rice.

  Halfway across the parking lot, Alia changes her mind about going home and walks instead toward the sea. The marina is mostly empty, a couple of people s
itting on the benches, a man walking along the railing. Alia chooses a bench fringed by palm trees. The water roils in front of her, several boats bobbing in the distance. Over the years, such things have become acceptable, little freedoms that would’ve been impossible a decade ago. An Arab woman alone, sitting on a bench and unwrapping a parcel of figs.

  Years ago, when she’d flung her body into the sea as Ajit watched, Alia had felt outrageous, the most defiant woman in the world. The sheer audacity of the act had subdued her for months. But such an act would be laughable to these new girls, the ones in skintight leggings, girls like Souad and Budur who smoked cigarettes during harbor parties with foreigners—she has heard whispers about these parties, whiskey and dancing on yachts—let boys touch their bodies in the dark. In the face of such girls, a woman swimming at night is a small, trifling thing.

  Alia bites into the flesh of a fig and shuts her eyes. Even without the cheese, the taste is perfect, her favorite fruit. She eats contentedly, the sun hot on her face. For the first time since she saw the crumbs fall from her daughter’s mouth yesterday, she feels calm.

  In the distance, a girl walks on the sand toward the marina. She is dressed simply in a black dress falling below her knees, the neckline low, revealing the tops of her shoulders. She walks past the other benches and sits on Alia’s. The girl—not a child, Alia now sees, but probably Riham’s age, though small and thin—hooks one leg over the other and glances over at Alia. They exchange the quick, shy smile of strangers.

  Though the calm feels broken, Alia is curious. She glances at the girl, the sharp edges of her cheeks and jaw. Thin earrings dangle from her earlobes. The girl looks decent, but there is something feral about her. An unwashed odor rises from her.

  The girl speaks first. “Morocco or Beirut?”

  “Pardon?” Alia is startled by her voice, gruff and low.

  “The figs.”

  “Oh.” Alia lifts the basket. “Casablanca,” she says.