by Hala Alyan
But her voice felt ghosted and so she said nothing at all.
There is the sound of footsteps in the hallway, and, a moment later, the door opens and her mother appears.
“Lunchtime.” Her hair looks greasy; dark circles smudge her eyes.
“Is it more chicken?” Zain makes a face.
“I’m not hungry,” Linah says.
“I think there’s some rice too. Linah, you haven’t eaten since the morning. Come on.”
In the kitchen, Tika stands over the sink, rinsing a pot. Budur pulls out two dishes and sets them on the table, slightly too hard. “Tika, please, can you fix them something to eat?”
“Chicken?” Tika wipes her hands on her apron. “There’s some underneath that foil. I’ll heat it up.”
Linah peels back the foil, eyes the cold, greasy chicken. She gestures to Zain and they grimace.
“Can we have pizza?” Linah asks as her mother turns to leave.
“No, Linah, you can’t.” Her voice is tense. She takes a breath; Linah watches the guilt travel across her face. Her mother brushes several strands of Linah’s hair from her eyes. “Maybe tomorrow, monkey.”
Tika heats up two plates, places the food in front of them. Linah and Zain peel the crispy skin off the chicken and eat glumly. “It tastes like rubber,” Zain says.
Tika laughs. Zain turns to her and asks, “Can you make us potatoes and eggs?”
“Yes!” Linah slips out of her chair, rushes to her. Tika is tiny, barely Linah’s height even with the small stool she uses to reach the sink. “Please. Please, please, please.” She ducks her head and bites Tika’s arm lightly, a gesture from when Linah was younger. Linah loves Tika, sometimes dreams about her in Boston. “Please,” she says through her open mouth. Tika’s skin tastes like soap and sweat.
Tika yelps, shakes her arm. “Get off of me, savage child.” She grins. “You want mild or spicy?” Linah and Zain look at each other.
“Spicy,” they say in unison.
Sometimes, if Linah begs enough, Tika will show her photographs of her home. Her town is named Matara and Tika once wrote it for her using Tamil letters and then gave Linah the slip of paper. It looked like dancing lines, a curlicue of beetles, not an alphabet.
In the photographs there are rows of huts with moss-covered rooftops and gardens of leafy plants. There are palm trees, some bent over so far the leaves graze the houses, as though they are kissing their cheeks. A group of people stand in front of the huts, all dark and tiny like Tika, the men with thin mustaches, the women wearing stacks of bracelets all the way up to their elbows. Last summer, after Tika went home to visit, she returned with boxes of rainbow-colored bracelets for Linah and Manar, made of glass and metal, dotted with rhinestones and small mirrors.
Because this is my job, not my home, Tika told Linah when she asked why Tika never wore any bracelets herself. She said it gently, but the words still stung Linah. She knows there is a boy, Manar’s age, back in Matara, reedy-looking, wearing glasses in the photographs—Tika’s son.
Manar never wears the bracelets, always dressing in flannel shirts and jeans, even in the summer, so Linah took hers, stacks them all on both arms. Linah loves the sound they make, like an orchestra, whenever she moves. The colors, watermelon pink, lemon yellow, vibrant purples, make her mouth water.
Tika sets the plates of bright red potatoes and eggs on the table, then two glasses of milk.
“For the spice,” she says, smiling.
The eggs are delicious and peppery, a welcome change from the chicken and bread they’ve eaten all week. Linah’s eyes water and Zain’s face mottles.
“God,” he sputters, gulping the milk.
“It’s not that bad,” she says, shrugging. Her throat is on fire. She sips the milk nonchalantly.
“Liar.” He coughs. “You’re crying.”
“I’m not crying, it’s just a little hot.” She waits until Tika walks into the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen. “Okay, so the balcony. I was thinking we could do the blue apartment, your mom’s room. She smokes out there sometimes, right? There would already be old butts around.”
Zain spears a forkful of eggs. “She stopped doing that after the natour spoke with her. The ashes were falling into Mr. Azar’s plants.”
“What about Manar’s balcony?”
“No way. She’d kill us.”
“Yeah.” Linah slumps against the chair. “Anyway, Manar would tell if she saw us.”
“Would tell what?” They turn. Manar strolls into the kitchen, her book dangling from her hands. The pages flutter as she walks. Her T-shirt has a shamrock on it, a dancing leprechaun on either side.
“What are you reading?” Linah asks, trying to distract her.
“Faulkner.” Manar cocks her head. “Would tell what?”
“None of your business.”
“It’s personal,” Zain says.
Manar laughs. “Personal?” She opens the fridge, pulls out a Coke. “Like the bad-word club?”
“Go away!” Linah says, embarrassed. They’d made the fatal mistake of telling Manar about the bad-word club they’d started a couple of years ago. When Linah and Zain got into fights with the adults or were just bored, they would sneak off to one of the balconies and say bad words aloud, words they’d heard from television or their parents or the older kids at school. They delighted in them, like little knives in their mouths. When they told Manar, she laughed, called them juvenile.
“You’re a jerk,” Linah says to Manar’s receding back. “I can’t stand her,” she informs Zain.
He nods. “She thinks she’s a grownup.” It is a betrayal, Manar who used to play with them, write and orchestrate plays for the three of them to put on for the adults during school vacations.
“Are you guys finished?”
Linah jumps. Her father and Souad walk into the kitchen. Like Linah’s mother, they look worn out, exhausted. Souad is tossing a pack of Marlboros from one hand to another. Her shorts are frayed and there is a stain on her T-shirt.
“Hi, kiddos.” She smacks the pack against her palm, pulls one out. “Tika made you eggs? Karam, did you talk to the natour?”
“Not yet.” Linah’s father runs his fingers through his hair. “Yesterday he said the generator is broken. And the electricity is failing throughout the city. He thinks they must’ve hit some electrical plant last night. Pretty soon we’re going to run on a few hours.”
“Motherfuckers.” She perches herself on the kitchen counter, near the open window, and lights a cigarette.
“Souad! The children.”
Souad wrinkles her nose, takes a drag. “Go to the blue apartment, kids.”
They both protest at once.
“That’s not fair.”
“You’re the one who told us to come down earlier!”
“Jesus.” Souad slaps her palm on the counter, a thwacking sound. The gesture startles them, and they all fall silent, even her father. Of all the adults, Souad is the most relaxed, the one most like a child. When they build forts, she helps them make flags out of newspapers. In the plays they used to put on, she would always be the evil witch, making shrill, cackling noises.
“Enough. No more nagging, no more complaining. Linah, if I hear you bring up the beach one more time, I’m going to scream. And Zain, enough with the puppy eyes.” Souad’s voice breaks and she clears it, taking another drag. “Please,” she says. “Please. For me. No drama today. Just go upstairs, watch a movie. Didn’t you just get a new one, about that group of lawyers or something?”
“They solve crimes,” Zain says quietly.
“Okay.” Her voice gentles. “The group that solves crimes. Please, just go upstairs and watch it. Please.” She smiles. “I’ll run to the dikaneh later and buy you a tub of ice cream if you just don’t argue.”
Linah and Zain glance at each other, silently conferring. Zain nods, and they rise from the table. “Chocolate swirl,” Linah reminds her aunt. Souad sticks her tongue out at her.
>
Her father laughs, his voice carrying as they walk away. “They’re little masterminds, those two.”
“Little mobsters, more like.”
Linah waits until after they’ve walked through the living room, Khalto Riham and her mother barely glancing up from the television, until they are outside the green apartment, free in the hallway, before she nudges Zain.
“Now?”
He looks at her, hesitant. Then he nods. “Let’s go.”
They sneak down the stairs like the spies in their favorite movie, tiptoeing down each step. At the front entrance of the building, they peek around for Hassan, the doorman, but he is nowhere in sight. Linah steps out first, stands for a moment on the pavement, marveling at how easily they did it.
“We’re actually outside. What?” she asks, noticing Zain’s frown.
“It’s . . . empty,” he says, looking at the street around them, many of the stores shuttered, parking spots bare. The road is usually bustling with university students and older couples, men on mopeds zipping between gridlocked traffic. But now there is a lone car driving along, hurriedly, as though not wanting to be caught here. Linah thinks of the girl in the plane-crash movie.
“It’s like something from a zombie film,” Zain says.
Where the world has already ended, Linah thinks. She swallows. “We’ll go to Abu Rafi’s real quick and come back. He’s always open.” As she turns left, walking toward the ribbon of shuttered storefronts, she can feel Zain’s pause, his eventual capitulation, then hears his footsteps behind her.
They walk along the sidewalks, past the fancy hotel with lushly flowering plants flanking its entrance. The bellman catches her eye, tilts his head quizzically. What are these children doing out here? She looks away, quickens her pace. The air is queasy, a tarlike tension in the warm dusk. The few people that cross their path are men, scruffy-looking, as though coming from a day in a mine somewhere, their hair rumpled, clothes dirty.
When they reach the enclave of delis and bakeries, she thinks for a moment she was mistaken, everything’s closed, but then sees the door—a cracked white sign above announcing Abu Rafi’s—slightly ajar, the usual display of flowers and fruits outside missing.
Inside is an unkempt brown woman standing in front of the cheese aisle. Somehow, unmistakably, Linah knows she is a maid, Sri Lankan, although she is dressed oddly, in neither a uniform nor one of the pretty saris Linah has seen clusters of maids wear on their days off. This woman wears an ill-fitting dress, falling past her knees, the shoulders and bust too large for her. It is as though she just tried it on to see what it would look like. Her dark hair spiders past her waist, a handful of liras in her fist.
The store is empty save for the woman and Abu Rafi, looking grim and cheerless behind the cash register. Many of the shelves are bare. Sometimes, when she and Zain come here, running errands for their parents, Abu Rafi slips them a Snickers or a Fanta, but now he looks at them blankly.
“What is it? Tell your parents we’re out of meat. Milk too. Sold the last of it this morning. Those idiots at the port promised a new shipment, but the bastards have blocked the ships.”
Linah finds she cannot speak. Their adventure suddenly seems so stupid. To her astonishment, Zain clears his throat, steps forward.
“A pack of Marlboros. The green ones. For my mom,” he adds when Abu Rafi hesitates. The man shrugs, pulls out a pack.
“One fifty,” he says.
Zain offers him a trickle of coins. Linah watches with amazement as Abu Rafi slides the cigarette pack across the counter and into her cousin’s hands.
“Now, run along. This isn’t a babysitting service. Hey!” Linah and Zain jump. They follow Abu Rafi’s glare to the dark-skinned woman fingering a packet of peanuts. “No more wait-wait, you understand?” he says in broken English. “You pick something, you leave.”
Linah has never seen an expression like the woman’s: frantic, vehement. They watch her grab a motley of items—spicy nuts, a bag of pita, a wheel of soft cheese—with a brisk nervousness, an animal foraging during drought.
Something keeps Linah frozen in the doorway, Zain by her side now, the pack of cigarettes in his grip; something keeps them watching as Abu Rafi piles the groceries in front of him, punches numbers into a large calculator. The woman stares at a spot on the floor.
“Fifteen, twenty-three—forty-eight thousand lira,” he concludes. Then, in condescending English: “Now you pay.”
The woman drops the crumpled bills on the counter, her eyes still downcast.
“What is this? A joke? This is just ten.”
The woman remains silent.
“Speak up, girl. You think this is a charity? You go tell your madame that she has to—”
“No madame!” the woman suddenly explodes. Her hair shudders around her as she snaps her head up. “No madame, no sir. They leave.”
“Well, that’s none of my business,” Abu Rafi grumbles in Arabic.
“They leave five days ago.” Now that she has begun talking, it is like a levee breaking, crests spilling from the woman’s lips, her hands moving wildly. “I wake up, they gone. I wait. Wait for lunch, then dinner, then sun goes down. I stay awake one night, two nights. I wait. I take the laundry down, soak the rice. But they no come back. They hear the war and they go. They go—” Here, her voice falters. “They leave me behind. Here. I look everywhere for passport, no find. I try to call embassy, they say no one can help. They say stay inside, away from windows. I cannot call my children. I cannot go home. The food is finishing. There is no electricity.”
“We should go,” Zain whispers. But Linah is rooted in the doorway, her flip-flops glued to the linoleum. Abu Rafi and the woman stare at each other.
“There is no money,” the woman says simply. “They left.”
The man’s face darkens with anger, disgust, exhaustion—exhaustion at his store being the only grocery open, at another long day of telling people there is no more flour, cursing the Israelis every time the rumbles begin from the south.
“Forty-eight,” he repeats. Linah wants to punch him. “Or get out.”
“But madame and sir—”
“Forty-eight! You think I don’t have children?” He lets outs a long string of Arabic curses. “You want help, you find it somewhere else. Not here. Look around.” He gestures at the paltry supplies on the shelves. “Someone wants bread, they pay. Eggs! Apples! Cheese! They pay. They pay!” Spittle dots his lips. “I help one Sri Lankan, ten more at my door tomorrow.”
The woman flinches. She stares at the crumpled bills. With one hand, she smoothes her wiry, bristling hair from her face. Her profile could be on a coin, the nose straight, the forehead uninterrupted.
“The bread,” she finally says. “Only the bread.” Her voice could cool molten glass. This is who you are, she seems to be saying to the man, look at this wrinkled bill on the counter, my unwashed hair. For the rest of your life, you will remember this moment.
It is not until the woman has paid, swung by Linah and Zain with her bag of pita—she smells of sandalwood, perspiration—as though they are invisible, and left, the door slamming shut behind her, that Abu Rafi finally notices the two of them. He looks at them for a long moment.
“Go,” he says. “Run along home.”
They rush down the streets, the pockmarked asphalt and snarl of telephone wires overhead suddenly unfamiliar. What an ugly place, Linah suddenly thinks. She longs for Boston, the manicured lawns that light up during December, the community pool with an ice cream stand, her classrooms’ perfume of chalk. At the hotel, the same bellman catches Linah’s eye. This time she doesn’t look away.
At the building entrance, the natour is carrying a jug of water. “What are you two doing?” Zain crosses his arms to hide the pack of cigarettes.
“Errands,” Zain manages, then ushers Linah into the entrance and up the stairs. She has the vaguest sense of vertigo.
“Blue apartment,” she reminds him. This whole time, they w
ere supposed to be watching a movie.
The apartment is empty and dark. “Quick,” Zain says. “Make it look like we’re watching something.” They draw the curtains shut and turn on the television, put the detective movie on. They toss the cushions on the floor, arrange them between small piles of unwashed clothes—Souad is a dreadful homemaker—but there is a funereal quality to their movements, like children playing children.
Zain is still holding the cigarette pack. “Gimme,” Linah says, taking it and stuffing it in her shorts pocket.
The room is gloomy and hot. The movie begins, but Linah’s attention wanders; the image of the woman’s downturned mouth, her dirty hair. Halfway through the movie, the electricity cuts off abruptly. The television hums off. Neither of them speak for a moment. Linah can feel Zain’s eyes on her, his concern.
“We could set off the sparklers.”
Linah looks at him with respect. When he wants, Zain can get interesting. They’d bought the sparklers last summer. Her father and Souad lit them on the rooftop. Stand back, they’d called, and the sticks made a shh-shh sound, dissolving in a shower of embers. Yes, she thinks. The sparklers would change things.
“They’d freak out.”
Zain shrugs. Linah wants to hug him. “You still have them?”
“I think my mom put them away somewhere. Maybe in the kitchen cupboards.”
But the cupboards are filled with cans and coffee tins, stale boxes of crackers. The sparklers aren’t under the bathroom sinks or in the cluttered bedrooms. They open every last drawer. Now that they finally have an idea, they both seem spurred by it. Suddenly, Zain snaps.