by Hala Alyan
Once she asked her, “Do you want to go outside with me? We can find a nice café, get some tea.”
For a moment, it seemed possible. Walking on the street, people and cars around her. She would go with her. This girl with sturdy bones. But then she was afraid again.
“I want to stay here,” Alia said in a small voice. “I want to stay here.”
“Okay,” the girl—Linah—said, “okay. We’ll stay here. Let’s sit for a little longer. Look, this one’s starting to bloom.”
The girl pulled up a blossom, her hand spilling purple and gold.
Even when she doesn’t remember—and this is more difficult to put into words, those moments of inundation when she scrambles to piece herself together—she knows something is wrong. They are all faces to her, kind, alien mouths and eyes. They want to give her water, tea, bread. They bring her blankets and ask what she thinks of the weather. They want to know if she is hungry, if there is anything she wants.
The television is always on. Waking and sleeping and eating, Alia can hear its sounds. Occasionally they watch a movie or music video, bursts of color and girls dancing to the thump-thump-thump of a drumbeat. But usually it is the news channel, solemn newscasters speaking of solemn things. Even when the living room is empty, the newscasters continue to talk.
What they say never changes. There is a war, Alia knows. She understands this intuitively; in fact, it seems to her the only truth she holds immutable. There is a war. It is being fought and people are losing, though she is uncertain who exactly.
A young girl wears nothing but dirt. An explosion has dismantled a city. People gather the entrails of their families. A man sets himself on fire. A man burns a flag. A man holds a woman underwater. A man hangs from a tree. A man is eaten by flies.
They talk about it.
“I don’t think she should be listening to this.”
“What can we do? I need to know what’s happening. Besides, she doesn’t—”
“She shouldn’t be seeing these things!”
The newscaster says dictator and there is a photograph of a man with pale skin and a mustache. Remembering flickers within Alia; she once found the man attractive. The man is sending wolves to eat his people, the newscaster says, and Alia pictures a snowy hillside atop which the man stands, his aquamarine eyes narrowed. He whistles and dozens of creatures snarl. Strike. Their gray bodies streak the hillside as they rush the villages, pounce on children and men. Instead of paw tracks, they trail bones.
“Turn it off.”
“She’s not even watching.”
It isn’t wolves. Alia knows that. It is men. Regular men, with their own mustaches and beards and slender wrists. They are taking these cities by fire, upending the houses and eating all the bread. They are lining children up and taking their dresses, shooting them in the mouths. A wolf can be killed. Trapped, skinned. But Alia knows that certain men—she remembers them, with their flags and their teeth—have skin like steel, are reborn into other men in the morning, grow more terrible, more powerful, with each sun.
“Look. She’s sleeping.”
There is a knock at the bedroom door. Alia keeps her face against the pillow.
“Mama.” The door opens. “Mama, remember, we’re going out today. Remember? What would you like to wear?”
Alia hates the shake in her voice when she says, “I’m tired.”
“It’s time to wake up.” The voice is firmer now. Footsteps, a swishing sound. Sunlight fills the room. Alia scrunches her eyes shut. The woman sighs. “Mama, open your eyes.”
A moment passes. Alia peeks. The woman stands above the bed. She wears a gauzy dress, her hair cropped short as a boy’s. She looks anxious as she scans Alia’s face.
“Atef . . .”
The woman’s eyes light up. “Baba’s in the living room. Come and see him.”
Alia leans on her daughter’s arm, padding heavily down the hall. Her hip is excruciating if she steps the wrong way. She fell in the bathroom months ago and something shattered. There was a hospital room for a long time after that, a television playing the same Turkish soap opera on repeat.
They reach the entryway and Alia pauses.
“It’s okay, Mama. Baba’s here.”
Atef. Alia takes a step, and the room is full of people watching television and talking. There is a platter of manakish on the coffee table, mugs of tea. The baby is in her mother’s arms, kicking her feet. Atef sits on the armchair. He smiles at the sight of Alia. They all speak at once.
“How’s the pretty mama?”
“We’re going out today, remember?”
“Teta, would you like some manakish?”
“Alia, sit.” Atef’s dark, serene eyes. Her daughter leads her to the sofa, and Alia smiles and nods as everyone speaks to her, talking of a seafood restaurant and music. Atef cuts a triangle of the manakish for her. The bread is thick and good. The baby begins to fuss, and the young man stands.
“Come here. Let’s fly.” He makes whirring sounds, the baby waving her fists and gurgling. Alia has heard talk of the baby, in hushed tones, away from the mother. They click their tongues. I can’t believe she married an American, they say.
“Teta, you want some tea?”
“We’ll have the cake afterward.”
Alia watches the young man. “Zain.” Her voice causes the others to still. The television blithely chatters on. They turn to her, smile.
“That’s right, Teta.” The man shifts the baby onto his hip. “I’m Zain.”
The baby smacks her lips and laughs.
“Give Teta a kiss.”
The child smiles flirtatiously at her. “Teta, up. Up!” Her pale eyes are dauntless. Her honeyed hair floats around her in a cloud, light but frizzy. Alia remembers a game she played with Riham and Souad and Karam, swooping their little bodies in a circle, making a whistling sound as she lands them on the floor.
She looks down at the bread. The cheer on their faces is tiring. How can she explain this fatigue to one not in her body? Decades of tired, her mother used to say.
“Mama, what would you like to wear for your special day? Umm Najwa said perhaps the gray dress.”
“Umm Najwa said she’ll do your hair, Mama. A nice braid.”
“I’m going to wear a green skirt,” the girl with kind eyes says. She sits on the arm of the couch, her shaggy hair disheveled. “Your favorite color.”
Alia tries to smile, but her throat catches. She remembers green, a wisp of fabric floating on a clothesline, her mother’s arm reaching for it. She starts to rise.
“Mama!” The tone is scolding. “You need to be careful, remember. You need to tell us when you want to get up.”
“Take me to my room.” Alia hears the tremor in her voice.
“Okay,” the woman says. Her tone turns beseeching now. “We’ll get you in a nice dress, yes? The brocade.”
“She’ll look so beautiful.”
“Like a queen.”
Behind her, the child calls out, “Up, up!”
In the bedroom Alia asks the woman to leave, and, reluctantly, she does. Being alone is intoxicating. Alia sits at the edge of the bed. There is no view of trees and flowers outside the window. Instead, there are more telephone wires, the balcony of another building. Someone has opened the window and a breeze ruffles the curtains, filling the room with salted air.
“Ya Allah,” she says aloud. Her voice is glassy to her ears.
It is Nablus and she is eighteen. Outside the window, fig trees are beginning to sprout their olive-green leaves. The air is light and delicious. Beyond the window is the day, vast and unfolding, a banquet hall filled with people awaiting her. I’ve asked for candles surrounded by flowers, her mother has told her. A dozen for each table. I want the air to be sweet as sugar.
The anticipation is thrilling. Mustafa will walk her to the car, they will do a zaffeh and she will spin in her white dress. And Atef. He is waiting. She imagines him nervous, his habit of popping a peppermint can
dy into his mouth, and smiles.
She must do her hair. She squints in front of the mirror, her curls messy and frizzed. She should’ve listened to Salma and soaked them in olive oil, but it is too late. There is a brush on the armoire and she yanks it through her hair. She frowns at the creams and perfume atop the dresser. Where is the kohl, the vermilion lipstick? She finally finds a pot of rouge in one of the drawers and rubs it onto her lips, then her cheeks. There is a crumbling eyeliner pen and she makes circles around her eyes.
She is beautiful. The reflection brings tears to her eyes. She admonishes herself not to ruin the makeup.
You’ll be bright as the moon tonight, her mother has told her. Suddenly she is filled with longing, missing her mother powerfully, though she is in the next room, dressing and picking out a veil. A thought nags at her, like a moving creature in her peripheral vision. But she shakes her head, returns to the reflection.
In the closet, dresses hang. The colors are polite and subdued. They have moved her clothes, she remembers, much of her things already in the small house two streets down. The house she will enter as Atef’s wife.
She rummages in the closet until her fingertips dart against something satiny. She pulls it out, a dusky dress without sleeves. A different dress, she thinks, a new one.
It fits around her hips but catches halfway up and she tugs, finally fishing her breasts out, fitting them in the dress. She gives her hair a pat, sniffs at her armpits. There is the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Farida, Alia thinks, or her mother. A knock, then a male voice saying her name.
Atef!
Alia feels herself blush, her hands instinctively at her exposed collarbones. Before she can call out to him, the door opens. She turns slowly, exposing herself like a flower, her eyes shyly on the floor.
“You can’t see the bride yet,” she teases. “Mama will be furious.”
There is silence. Alia hears it as awe. After a moment, she lifts her eyes to his. He is still. His face has changed, she sees. His hair is gray. Perhaps it is chalk or dust. He must bathe. She suddenly has the urge to lean in, though she has never kissed before, not with anyone. She steps toward him, stops only when he bows his head. When he lifts it, she is stunned to see tears mottling his cheeks.
“Alia,” he says, and she hates her name, abruptly, for being able to carry such sorrow, such unbearable weight. “Alia.”
She knows if she hears her name once more from this man—for she sees that he isn’t Atef but a stranger—suddenly she knows that she will not wed, that Nablus and the party, the candles, the white dress, all of it will be ruined. She will be ill, will begin to shriek, will throw every last one of the beautiful perfume bottles against the wall. And so she turns and, ignoring the agony in her hip, rushes to the bathroom and locks the door. She stands for a moment, breathing heavily. Her reflection does the same. She sees and cannot remember and weeps.
It takes a long time for them to convince her to open the bathroom door. Even then she refuses to let in Umm Najwa or Atef. It is Linah who finally murmurs her way inside. She helps Alia change into a nightgown. Alia sits on the closed toilet seat while Linah wets a towel, wipes the makeup off her face. Linah rinses the towel in the sink; the water runs red and black.
“Close your eyes, lovely,” Linah says, her breath warm against Alia’s face. “Just a couple more swipes.”
“You smell of cigarettes.”
Linah looks startled. She winks at Alia. “Our little secret, then.”
“Where’s the baby?”
“June? Manar’s with her. She’s putting her down for a nap.”
“I want to go home.” Her eyes spring hot.
“Oh, Teta.” Linah stops, the filthy towel dangling from her hand. She looks at her sadly. “I know.”
Linah eases her onto the bed. The door shuts quietly behind her. The air in the room is heavy, the sound of traffic audible. Alia watches the sun make tribal patterns on the ceiling until she falls asleep.
In her dreams a man is pouring tea into glasses, then methodically pouring the tea out onto a beautiful Persian rug. The room is cavernous, white everywhere. Alia watches him with horror, the burgundy and cobalt rug soaked with tea.
You’re ruining it, she tells him.
He looks at her with amused eyes, turns over another glass deliberately. The tea spills.
It’s better than fire, he says.
Alia wakes breathless, her heart thumping. The room is dim and gray and for an awful moment she thinks she has lost her sight. But it is just the setting sun, the light being leeched. She has slept for hours.
Something about that spoiled rug makes her ache. She hates dreaming, hates the people that populate her dreams, arriving for brief slivers before vanishing, leaving her with bits and pieces out of which a whole can never be made.
Alia walks carefully to the living room, leaning on the wood-tipped cane they brought her. It is a sign of acquiescence. At the doorway, she stands unseen for a moment before rapping the cane against the wall. She walks into the room.
Flowers. Dozens of them, clouds of purple and blue. Hibiscus and jasmine and several long stems of yellow roses. A bouquet of balloons is tied to the chair where Karam sits. They are all there, Manar and her baby, Zain and Linah and Abdullah on the sofa. The names come to her instinctively. Effortlessly. Riham is carrying a cake into the room; Souad and Atef talk to each other in lowered tones. Their voices are merry.
“There she is!”
“Lovely as the moon!”
“Oh, Mama, thank you for using the cane.”
“Zain, help her sit.”
“Teta, take my arm,” Zain says. “We brought the party to you.” He seats her next to Atef. “Since you weren’t”—he clears his throat—“since you weren’t feeling well, we wanted to celebrate here.”
“Do you remember what today is, Mama?” Riham asks her.
“My birthday,” Alia says.
The smiles are authentic now. There is a relief that ripples through the room, like a gust of wind. The voices relax.
“We got a cake with raspberry icing.”
“And cherries!”
“And cherries. Coconut too, I think.”
The cake is a spongy pink, strawberries and cherries arranged in a circle around the border. Her name is written in the center.
Karam flips the light switch off, plunging the room into darkness. Alia feels the same panic of waking. As though sensing this, Atef finds her hand and Alia squeezes. They sing and she watches the flames, mesmerizing licks of orange and red. First they sing in Arabic, then English, then Manar and Zain and Linah sing in French. The baby wriggles in Manar’s arms as she sings. In the candlelight the grandchildren are beautiful, tanned and animated. Everyone applauds when they finish, even Alia.
“Happy birthday,” they all cry out. When Souad leans down to kiss her cheek, she whispers something about love and her eyes glitter with tears. Her daughter. She once stayed out all night and Alia slapped her face. Alia remembers that like a dream, like a story that happened to a neighbor.
“Here’s to a hundred years,” Riham calls out as she and Umm Najwa cut the cake, an oozy pinkness appearing as they slice into it.
A hundred years. The baby would be an adult, perhaps wed. Alia finds the thought oppressive.
There is laughter and talking. The grandchildren tell stories and the adults act dismayed, shaking their heads. Zain and Linah sit cross-legged on the rug. Abdullah and Atef wave their hands around, amiably arguing about politics. Abdullah calls some politician a megalomaniac, and the other grandchildren agree. Everyone talks about how delicious the cake is. They agree to try the cheesecake next time. Alia smiles and opens a parade of beautifully wrapped gifts—scarves, jewelry, a photo album—and holds the baby when Manar hands her over.
“She loves her teta,” Manar says, smiling.
Finally Karam catches her eye from across the room. “Mama, you’re tired, right?” he asks softly and she nods. Her darling boy.
Umm Najwa stands above her bed with a glass of water, her palm cupping a rainbow of pills. She hands them to Alia one by one. When Alia has taken them all—blue, red, orange—Umm Najwa sets the cup down and turns the light off. There is a sliver of light from the streetlamps.
“Good night,” Umm Najwa says. “Happy birthday.”
Alia feels the familiar relief at being alone. Beneath it, throbbing; some discontent closer to grief than anger. She thinks of her mother—the wishing hollows her, for her mother to appear—what she might tell Alia if she were here. Sleep now. The morning will heal.
It’s better than fire.
Her mother knew something on the eve of her wedding day. Alia remembers the tightening of her lips, the downward glance. But she, self-involved and joyful, had said nothing, making a note to ask later. But later was elusive; there was the dancing and lights, her wedding night, then the whirlwind years of being a wife, then the war, Kuwait, Mustafa—the thought of him empties her lungs of air, nearly fifty years later. Mustafa. She is decades older than he ever was. And life, life has swept her along like a tiny seashell onto sand, has washed over her and now, suddenly, she is old. Her mother is dead. There is no one to ask the questions she needs to ask.
Alia wakes to the sound of someone moving in the bedroom. Atef. She listens to him getting ready for bed, clothes folded and put away, the dishdasha he still wears to sleep. He goes to the bathroom, a strip of light visible below the door. She hears the sound of running water, the toilet flushing.
When he lies down next to her, he is careful, thinking her asleep. The delicacy of his movement is heartbreaking.
“Atef,” she says.
He turns to her, his face barely visible in the dark. There is a honk outside, the city fitfully settling into sleep.
“Atef, I liked the flowers. The yellow ones.”