by Hala Alyan
Hours pass. The men continue their talk; Séraphine braids the tassels of her scarf. Turkish blue, Souad thinks. She drinks one, two glasses of wine, stealing glances at Elie. He has fallen strangely silent. She needs to get back to Mimi’s. It is nearly two. Her aunt and uncle will be worried, and she is suddenly tired of it, tired of going back, always going back. She wishes she could have, just once, an entire night for herself, a blank stretch of road. The way the men do, the way Séraphine does.
Amman darts into her mind. Her drunken head throbs. A life with her sister and parents, without Karam, the endless arguments about curfew and college classes. She thinks of Riham and her quiet garden, little Abdullah with his anxious eyes, Riham’s boring husband. It makes her want to scream.
The television shows another scene, a new one. A park, blazing.
“Vous êtes certain? Je peux le changer. C’est trop triste.” Ivan speaks to Elie, his brow furrowed in concern.
“Non, non, c’est bien.” Elie keeps his eyes fixed on the television screen.
They fall silent watching the fire. A sentence moves across the bottom of the screen: Le parc a été dans les premières heures de ce matin.
“Bastards,” Sami says in Arabic.
Séraphine drains her glass. She frowns as she stares at the screen. “It is sad, of course,” she says in accented English. “But what is a children’s park when homes are being destroyed?”
Souad is suddenly angry. She remembers an afternoon during Eid, when she was six or seven, when her father took her to the zoo, as he always did—she loved to feed the giraffes, thrilled at the sandpaper tongues on her hand as she fed them crackers and seeds—and then afterward to the park.
“There are these little statues in the park,” she says, and then fumbles in French. “Comme des anges. Avec des petits chapeaux.” Everyone is watching her and for once she doesn’t care about her meager French. The eyes of the Libanais men are afraid, she realizes, like children’s. Dwarfed in the face of this. “Je les aimais.”
“Des figurines,” Elie adds, then switches to Arabic, speaking only to Souad. He looks grateful. “We used to go as children as well. You remember the entrance? That little gate.”
“The latch always stuck.” Souad feels his sorrow. “My father would have to jiggle it loose.” She has something that Séraphine doesn’t. Only she knows what is being burned, what is being taken in Kuwait. Elie shares this with her alone.
“My father too.” Elie smiles at her. “I’d forgotten, all these years.”
They spill onto the streets. The men roll hash cigarettes, the air pungent with the scent. Séraphine takes a puff and in the ethereal light of the streetlamps, she looks like something mythical. It is late. Far too late. Khalto Mimi will know she stayed out later than Lara; there will be questions in the morning. And they might smell the whiskey on her.
She lights one of Elie’s cigarettes, leaning into the flame in his hand, and smokes as they walk down the narrow, fairylike streets. Kuwait is burning; her mother is packing their house right now, as Souad walks.
Séraphine does a little skip, loops her arm through Sami’s. The tassels of her scarf sway back and forth, her hips moving like water. It reminds Souad of Khalto Widad, how she plaits her hair into one long braid after showering, the tip like a serpent’s tongue. They will go to Amman as well, Khalto Widad and Ammo Ghazi, everyone. Except Karam, who will go to some faraway city. Souad sniffs. It is too much.
They reach the Quartier Latin courtyard, where a woman is playing the violin next to the fountain, and two other women are singing. In her tipsiness, Souad first mistakes them for the women she saw hours ago, but, of course, they are different. Different beautiful women in this city of beautiful women.
“Let’s sit,” Séraphine suggests and they do, sprawling on the stone steps across the courtyard. The stone is cold, and Souad lifts her knees to her chest, Elie at her side. He puts his arm around her shoulders.
The women are singing Pink Floyd, their French accents shaping the English lyrics into an elegy.
“Your heroes for ghosts,” they croon. Souad thinks of the map on her wall at home. For the first time, she realizes sharply that it isn’t her wall anymore. The house is gone.
The music dips and rises, their little group swaying to the rhythm. One of the singing women wears a loose dress and she twirls, the skirt flaring, during the chorus. “Wish you were here.” They finish with a flourish, and the men whistle, their applause echoing down the street. The women curtsy.
“‘Je ne regrette rien,’” Séraphine calls out and when the violinist plays it, they all begin to sing along. “Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait.”
Even Souad, with her deep, graceless voice. She watches the musician, the singers, the fountain burbling water in the streetlamp light. Kuwait is a planet, a lifetime, away.
“Je me fous du passé.” Elie’s voice, baritone, by her side.
She glances at him through her eyelashes. His eyes are shut, and a pure, boyish delight fills his face as the music drifts around them.
And she feels not love but detachment, an odd calmness as she watches him, as if she’s appraising a house she’s not sure she wants to live in. I wouldn’t have to leave, she thinks. The realization settles over her, imagining tomorrow, her mother’s fingers dialing the phone, a lifetime of Souad, Souad, where were you, when will you be home.
After the song is over, she decides. After the violinist bows and smiles, and the applause scatters, she will walk him over to the fountain, will slip her body against his and lean into his ear. Will whisper, Yes.
Riham
* * *
Amman
October 1999
Riham stands straight and leans over, grazing her toes with her forefingers. She straightens and mutters, “Six,” before repeating the stretch. Once she reaches ten, she stands and begins to do lunges. Farida and the other women recommended them for the twinges in her lower back.
“And they won’t hurt your behind either,” Farida quipped, too refined to say ass. Riham knows that the other women do these exercises for the results, the tightening of calves and elongated spines. But she likes the process itself, hearing her joints pop, feeling the tendons and muscles stretch and tense, the quiet of her bedroom as she counts aloud.
After the lunges come the sit-ups, then the long, pointy-toed stretches with each leg propped on the windowsill. She likes to pretend she is a ballerina warming up before a performance, though she is over thirty and corpulent, to put it nicely. Still, she tells herself—in defiance of the body she was given, the tepid Amman morning outside the window—for these few minutes she is transformed, a Russian soloist prepping for the stage, her hair sweeping against her knees as she bends, as far as she can, an audience of well-dressed people waiting for her to walk into the spotlight.
Her favorite part of the day is this—late morning, after breakfast, the men out of the house, Abdullah at university, Latif already at the hospital. Last May, he was promoted to medical director, and Riham had invited all their friends over, cooked a feast of chicken and lamb and rice with the maid, Rosie, to celebrate. People milled around until midnight; afterward, Latif kissed Riham and said he felt like a celebrity.
Next to the windowsill is a notebook with a blue pen. Half the pages have already been used, and Riham opens to today’s list. Latif likes to tease her. “A to-do list for the president,” he says. The mockery stings but Riham just smiles. “A clear mind is a clear heart,” she tells him, and she loves to examine the day before her, still not begun.
Today, the list is short: Breakfast, exercise, hemming her dress, the garden, basting the chicken, tea at Farida’s, dinner. With satisfaction, she crosses off breakfast and exercise with tidy swipes. She wraps her veil around her hair as she makes her way to the living room. Walking past the kitchen, she can hear Rosie’s voice, the young girl singing songs about flowers and men in her language.
The house is a large one. It has the high ceilings and
tiled floors of a space that seems to multiply itself, giving the impression of something vast and swelling. When Riham and Latif first moved in after their wedding, it had been smaller, with three bedrooms and the living room, which opened to a garden. The other bedrooms, the study, the veranda, came later, as the years went on.
Riham thrilled at each addition, finding a certain magic in the renovation of the house, the weeks and weeks of construction, laborers scurrying around, the thin coat of dust that layered everything, everything, until she couldn’t take it anymore, would be on the verge of telling everyone to leave when, finally, the workers would step back and reveal another room, gleaming and white, belonging to her.
It reminded her of gardening, the crop of new spaces, walls and floors blossoming, the way the house—and in this she took matriarchal pride—grew.
Except the Fixture. She avoids the wooden shed near the garden, entering it only if she must. Over the years, they took to calling it that—the Fixture—as though it were temporary. She never told Latif that part of her joy last year—part of the extravagance of the dinner party—was in his retiring the Fixture, the plain space with five cots and drawers full of medical instruments that he’d used less and less frequently as time went by. There had been spikes, of course, after wars, invasions, when it seemed the Fixture was swarming with people, the desperate and moneyless coming to Latif’s door, sent by family in other countries. Latif would suture wounds, clean out gunshots, without taking a single dinar.
“Please, the doctor,” they would say when she opened the door at their knocking, sometimes in the middle of the night. “We were told to come here. They said he would help. They said he helps everyone.”
Certainly it was something to be proud of—the distinguished doctor husband who felt so keenly for the fallen, he tried to heal them all. And for the first few years, Riham was proud, making soup and tea for the men, offering them fruit when they got strong again and walked around her gardens.
But eventually another side of her shone through, a side she was ashamed of and so never shared with Latif—the irritation, the utter boredom of it. Selfishly, she wanted her house, her husband to herself. She watched the lives of her friends, wives of other doctors, with envy—the men home for dinner, no stink of unwashed bodies in their yards.
She never spoke of it. It was a stain, she recognized, an unclean part of herself, what Latif would call a faltering. So she did what she always did in those moments. She prayed. The men came less and less often, going instead to government clinics as Latif grew older. But Riham kept praying, exhausted, wishing she could stop the resentment. And when Latif accepted the position at the hospital, announcing he would end the home practice, she felt a full, rushing relief: if she couldn’t change the faltering in herself, at least she wouldn’t be reminded of it anymore.
In the living room, she catches sight of one of Abdullah’s dishdashas on the couch, spilling over the arm. He has worn them more frequently over the past year, the European T-shirts and jeans unused in his closet. Riham folds the garment, smells the metallic scent of him. Every hour, it seems, the boy finds a way to enter her mind, some reminder, and then it starts up again, like a faithful Ferris wheel: her worry for him, her fear.
She glances at her watch and starts. Past eleven. She rushes toward the garden. Each morning, like clockwork, her father walks the mile from his house to his favorite café, where he and the other neighborhood men meet for coffee and talk. Since retiring, it is the one thing he does religiously, saying it helps him stay fit. At precisely eleven o’clock, he passes by Riham’s garden, and if she is there, they sit and drink tea. It is Riham’s time with her father, the only gatherings without her mother or Latif or Abdullah.
“Damn,” she curses softly as she stumbles on the lip of the rug. She kicks it loose, then hurries out of the door and down to the garden. Riham smiles at the figure walking along the fence around her yard.
“I thought I’d missed you,” her father calls, unlatching the gate. They meet at the clearing between patches of wildflowers and black irises. There are several chairs and her father chooses one next to the jasmine shrub.
“I was daydreaming in the house.” She smiles at him. “Tea?”
Her father shakes his head. “Already had some?” she asks. She doesn’t mind it, Atef’s reticence. It comforts her, her father’s ability to stay quiet, reflective, when it seems like everywhere—the news, the marketplace, the streets—is one endless soundtrack of prattling.
He examines the jasmine plant, a sapling, by his side. He touches a browning leaf.
“You were right,” she says. “I should’ve just planted acacias.”
“They’ll be fine.”
“They’re drooping. It was the heat this year. It killed everything. The poor darlings dying of thirst.” She gazes at the shrub ruefully. She hates summer.
“Prune them anyway,” he says. “Who knows, winter might be late. It’s still warm out.”
“Dinner tonight, yes?” They do it twice a week, her parents coming over for dinner, Rosie cooking koussa or maqlouba, her mother’s favorite.
He hesitates. “Perhaps later in the week.”
“What happened?” Riham catches his pause. “Mama?”
“Well.” He sighs. “There was a bit of an incident yesterday.”
“Incident?” Riham knew that incident could refer to any of the assorted episodes over the past few years—her mother’s arguments with a maid or neighbor, a misunderstanding with her husband, or something with Riham’s siblings. Riham guesses it’s the last one, for her mother’s favorite topic is her two wayward children, living in a cold city across the world. Karam had moved to Boston, and after Souad moved to Boston as well, their alliance was sealed: Karam and Souad got each other. Riham has never visited them in America, never gone with her parents on their trips for children’s births, Souad’s son, Zain, and Karam’s daughter, Linah, born months apart. “Karam or Souad?”
A smile dances on her father’s lips. “Not Sousi this time.”
“Surprising.” Of all Alia’s topics, Souad’s behavior is her favorite rant: her reckless marriage, her wasted youth, the impulsive move to Boston a few years ago. The girl lives a vagrant life with a husband and two young children, barely ever visiting us, spending her days getting that thankless degree in design like some adolescent. When Souad wed, only their father had gone. Their mother refused, saying she wouldn’t show her face at such an abomination.
“What happened with Karam?”
“Ay.” Atef sits back in the chair, stretching his legs out. Riham settles back as well. She loves these moments, loves being the only child near her parents. The one who never left. She feels a camaraderie when her father brings news of her siblings, those mysterious, unfathomable creatures living lives she cannot imagine. She was planning to go for Karam’s wedding, but they wound up having it in Amman, a brief affair. Riham was not completely over the shock of seeing the elegant, dark-haired woman who was Budur—Budur, the skinny girl from Kuwait, flying to visit Souad in Boston and tumbling into romance with Karam—by her brother’s side, kissing him full on the mouth, both of them so happy that the aunts had whispered about decorum between two young adults.
“They can’t do the December trip anymore,” her father says. “Budur has her thesis defense scheduled then, and Karam can’t take time off in January, so they’re putting the trip off till the summer.”
“Akh.” Riham lifts a hand to her head. It is a sensitive topic to her mother, how infrequently her other two children visit, the rare times she gets to see her grandchildren. All my cousins live with their grandchildren; I’m lucky if I see mine once a year. Riham is torn. She knows her mother is demanding. But she feels her siblings are feckless, wayward, not considerate enough. “Did it get bad?”
He grimaces. “I came in too late. I could hear her yelling from the kitchen.” A sigh. “She brought up the land.”
“Oh, Mama.” Riham groans. The land is a ten
se topic. Two years ago, Budur’s uncle passed away and left her a plot of land near Erbil. Through relatives still living in Iraq, the land was sold, raking in a tidy sum. The matter of the money was one that Alia spoke about constantly. She could’ve bought stocks or saved for her children’s tuition or helped Karam with the mortgage. Instead, Budur had signed up for courses at Tufts.
“Which led to the topic of Beirut . . .”
“Oh no.”
The Beirut apartments were another point of contention. The money for the apartments came from childless Khalto Widad, who’d died several years ago, quietly, Ammo Ghazi having passed a decade earlier. It had shocked them all, the amount of money she left, equally divided among Karam and Riham and Souad, kept in a Swiss bank, no less. Through a Lebanese lawyer, Riham bought one apartment, Karam the other. Souad used the money for her mortgage in Boston. But Alia was furious with them for buying the Beirut apartments, since the chaotic, lively city was more alluring to her children—and therefore more likely for them to visit—than Amman. Now I have to spend my summers in that land of whores instead of my home just to get a glimpse of my grandchildren.
“Then she told him Budur was wasting money on a hippie degree, studying literature.”
Riham shakes her head. “Did Karam get mad?”
“He was polite. I spoke with him afterward. He seemed worried about her. He said he might try to come by himself, or perhaps with Linah. I told him not to worry, that your mother was just disappointed. He sends his love.”
“Allah keep him,” Riham murmurs automatically. They lapse into silence, the only sound insects buzzing and, far off, cars rushing along the main road.
Riham thinks of her brother, how his knuckles must have whitened on the telephone, hearing his mother speak that way about Budur. He wouldn’t have said a word, she knows; she and Karam are alike that way. Only Souad ever speaks up, yells back. Karam would have listened, then gotten off the phone and smiled at Budur, pretended all was fine. Poor gentle Karam, mild-mannered like their father. Years ago, when he’d announced he was going to marry Budur—they’d gotten engaged quickly, within weeks—her mother had been inexplicably furious.