Salt Houses
Page 33
She can see his teeth as he smiles. His hand travels the landscape of the blanket and finds hers. He loves me, she thinks. Atef in the garden, glancing up at her. It has been a lifetime. They are teenagers. Atef, always, loving her. She moves toward him, her body heavy and graceless. She puts her hand against the side of his face. She wants him with a ferocity. I’m young, she thinks, and she is. Their lives are beginning.
“Alia,” he says, but she cannot bear his voice. She tells him to be quiet. She pulls him toward her, dreamlike, her lips finding his, the air sour between them—her breath? His? She is embarrassed by the stale odor of her body—as they kiss. Her hip cramps but she ignores it; she tugs and tugs until finally he yields, his weight atop her, his hands skimming her thighs and stomach. She gasps and touches her own breasts, so withered and papery, but she will not think of it now, will not think of anything.
“God.” The word falls like water from his mouth.
She clasps between his legs until he grows hard and she pulls him into her, the sensation painful at first, bodies remembering their dance. They heave and arch until, finally, a wetness erupts inside her and Atef gasps like the wounded.
They lie silently afterward. Eventually, the silence gives way to the steady breathing of Atef’s slumber. Alia turns to her side, feeling the wetness between her legs. She doesn’t want to wash. She wants this fragment of Atef to remain.
Alia thinks of the cake, the voices singing for her. She half dreams of canvases, someone plucking her eyebrows bare. A boat capsizes and she imagines the sound of a baby crying, faraway. The sound is replaced by the whooshing of a car outside. Alia wakes and blinks. The baby cries again, louder this time, and Alia realizes the sound is real.
She rises from the bed. The baby is alone, she thinks. She will feed her.
She takes cautious steps, steadying herself on the hallway wall. The living room is dark, though the balcony door is open, and the light of streetlamps bathes the sofas and table, the television’s blank screen. The crying is louder, coming from the balcony. Alia feels indignant—how could they have left the baby alone?
But when she steps onto the balcony, she sees the mother is out there, rocking back and forth on the swing. She whispers to the child cradled in her arms. The swing makes a creaking sound each time the mother pushes back. She is guiding the baby’s mouth to her breast. Her dark hair has fallen, covering her face, and she doesn’t see Alia. The mother’s naked breast is visible and the sight of it, of the moist nipple, is startling. She steps back quickly into the living room.
She sits on the armchair near the balcony door, the nighttime air cool. She should bring the baby a blanket, sit with them outside, but suddenly she is too tired to move. There is a mewling sound and then silence, and Alia knows the baby has latched onto the breast, feels the phantom sensation in her own nipples, remembers strikingly that relief.
The woman begins to sing, her voice husky.
“Yalla tnam, yalla tnam.”
The words are familiar as water, as Alia’s own hands, which lift now to her face, against her cheeks.
“Yalla tnam, yalla tnam.”
The song alights within Alia, a remembering akin to joy. Her mother’s garden, a courtyard somewhere in Kuwait, as she sang to a baby at her own breast. She sits in the dark, listening to the ancient, salvaged music.
Acknowledgments
To my first reader and editor, Gina Heiserman, who shared her time and love and expertise with incomparable generosity and in return asked only that I keep writing; I will always be grateful. I am enormously indebted to Michelle Tessler, my wonderful and dauntless agent, who took a chance on a sprawling beast of a manuscript. A huge thank you to my editor Lauren Wein for her alert, thoughtful dedication and for continually assuring me that this was a story worth telling. Thank you to Pilar Garcia-Brown, Hannah Harlow, Taryn Roeder, Ayesha Mirza, Tracy Roe, Lisa Glover, Lori Glazer, and all the incredible, welcoming people at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for being such a pleasure to work with. I’m grateful to Victoria Hobbs at AM Heath for finding the book a home across the ocean, and to the lovely Jocasta Hamilton and the team at Hutchinson.
Thank you to Madeline Stevens, for being kind enough not to say I told you so when her editing advice was echoed by literally everyone. I am hugely grateful to the poetry community, from my attentive editors and publishers to the incredible people I’ve encountered at open mics around the world. Without the poetry I would never have found the prose. Thank you to my brilliant and darling friends, scattered across the globe; you know who you are and why I love you. Thank you to Lisa and Kip, and the delightful Heiserman and Perkins clan. I couldn’t have finished this book without the support and sarcasm of Atheer Yacoub and Michael Page. Thank you to Dalea, Kiki, Sarah, Andre, Karam, and Alexis, who all, at one point or another, told me to keep going. Writing can be a lonely and thankless undertaking at times, and I’m immeasurably lucky to have so many compassionate, quirky, inspiring people to love.
Thank you to my love, Johnny, whom I met when I was halfway through the manuscript and without whom the book simply would never have been finished. You’re the wildest thing that’s ever happened to me and I thank God for that cold night in Brooklyn. To Mama: Thank you for teaching me how to be reckless and stubborn enough to dream. To Baba: Thank you for making me write during the darkest days of the year. I couldn’t have written this without your stories. There isn’t enough gratitude in the world to show you, Talal, how much you’ve taught me about bravery and art and kindness. May the bad-word club live on. To my wise and extraordinary little sister, Miriam, thank you for always reminding me that telling stories—especially about mermaids—is a noble act. Thank you to my beloved grandparents Salim Salem and Fatima Adib, to Jiddo Alyan, Teta, and my wonderful aunts and uncles. To Layal and Omar and Talal: I share my history with you and no one else.
About the Author
HALA ALYAN was born in 1986. After living in various parts of the Middle East, she completed a doctorate in psychology and now divides her time between private practice and teaching at New York University. She has been published in Guernica and other literary journals, and is the award-winning author of three poetry collections. Alyan is also a seasoned performer, and her TEDx talk and appearances can be viewed at the link below. She lives in New York City.
Learn more at www.halaalyan.com
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