Against the Loveless World

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Against the Loveless World Page 6

by Susan Abulhawa


  “Take this too.” Um Buraq handed me a sparkly little purse to match my dress.

  I applied heavy makeup for Almas, creating an alluring and sophisticated version of myself. I liked this woman in thick kohl, mascara, and red lipstick staring back at me in the mirror.

  “Do you prefer Red Label or Black Label?” Susu asked.

  I thought she was talking about my dress, wondering why she’d say the words in English. “I don’t know. No one can see the tag,” I said, twisting to see the dress label in the mirror. They all laughed. Susu almost spit out her soda.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Here.” Susu held out her soda. “This is Red Label.”

  I recognized the smell. “It’s alcohol! I thought you were drinking cola.” Still laughing, Fifi said, “Just drink it. Don’t pretend here. We know all you Palestinians drink alcohol.”

  I remembered Mhammad. And my father. I could almost hear Mama yelling that he reeked of khamr and sin. That he should go back to whatever whorehouse he had been to. I took the glass from Susu, sniffed the fumes, and swallowed a large gulp. This alcohol wasn’t like the stuff Mhammad had introduced me to. It wasn’t even the same color. Fire spread through me. I thought I would vomit. I coughed it up, my eyes watered, and snot shot out my nose. They all laughed.

  I ran to the bathroom. The makeup I had admired moments before was smeared, kohl and black mascara running down my face.

  “You look like a cat that just ate her kittens,” Um Buraq said, standing at the bathroom door. Deepa was smiling next to her. “I’ll fix it for you, darling.” She seemed almost maternal.

  “Do you drink that terrible stuff?” I asked Um Buraq.

  “Not me. But I don’t judge. I’ll show you how to drink it,” she said, and Deepa added in broken Arabic, “Not drink like water, Almas. Drink slow.”

  Deepa fetched a damp towel and handed it to Um Buraq, who dabbed it gently on my face. My head was already spinning.

  “Just let go. Trust me. You will have the time of your life. We women deserve to have fun in this world,” Um Buraq said softly, even lovingly, as she reapplied my makeup. “God didn’t make us just to have babies and serve the needs of men while they run around and do whatever they want.” I thought about Mhammad again, and the sting of abandonment shot through me. She went on, “They’re vampires who leave when they’ve sucked your last drop of blood.”

  “Mama, Ajay needs me,” Deepa interrupted.

  Um Buraq waved her hand. “Make him wait. Let’s get this girl together.”

  I would learn over time that Um Buraq tolerated Ajay for Deepa’s sake, even though she took half his earnings every month. Um Buraq would have taken all of it were it not for Deepa. Ajay could do nothing about it. He had been disgraced in India and had nowhere to go but Kuwait with Deepa. His work permit was held in Um Buraq’s name. She owned him and was making him pay for leaving Deepa, a kind of proxy punishment of her own husband, who had taken a second wife and abandoned her. Um Buraq’s husband had told her to be grateful to him for sparing her the shame of divorce. But Um Buraq knew that it was simply cheaper for him to keep her as a first wife than to pay her mo’akhar, the divorce dowry, which is intentionally exorbitant in some marriages to prevent divorce.

  Until I met Um Buraq, it had never occurred to me that patriarchy was anything but the natural order of life. She was the first woman I met who truly hated men. She said it openly and without apology. I found her persuasive.

  Deepa brought me a bottle of sparkling water. I gulped it down and let out a satisfying burp that made us all laugh. Then Deepa handed me a glass. “Scotch with fizzy water,” she said, bobbing her head in the way of South Asians, smiling. “Sip, sip only. No drink.”

  I sipped. It was awful. Then it wasn’t that bad. We joined Fifi and Susu in the living room, grabbed our purses, and walked out together.

  “Wait.” Um Buraq took the little red purse from my hand, looked inside, then handed it back. “Good girl. You don’t want to take any ID with you,” she said.

  That moment, too, stands out in my memory. Putting a wallet and my ID in the new purse would have been the natural thing to do. Was there some part of me that knew I should not have anything on me that could reveal my identity? Had I imagined, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that we could be stopped by the police? Or was I just drunk?

  My body was relaxed in the car, my heart open to the world, warm and full of love. I felt affection for Um Buraq and Deepa. Maybe even Fifi and Susu, whatever their real names were. The three of us were wrapped in black abayas over our little dresses in the backseat of Um Buraq’s Lincoln Continental. She sat in the front, next to Ajay, who kept his hands on the steering wheel, occasionally looking at us in the rearview mirror.

  I liked the dress hugging my waist, squeezing my tits together like they were going to burst. It wasn’t really me, but Almas. I put the window down to let the cool wind of the desert winter blow against my face.

  “Girl! Close it! The heat is on!” Um Buraq yelled, and the girls giggled. “Deepa gave you too much to drink,” she said, warning, “Do not forget that your name is Almas. Try to sober up. Understand?”

  “How?” I asked.

  “How what?”

  “How do I sober up?”

  She thought about it and said, “Do arithmetic in your head.

  Count things. Count everything around you. It’ll help you focus.”

  It was nearly eleven when we arrived at the seaside chalet. My head was light. I wobbled in the ill-fitting high heels Um Buraq had given me as we approached a grand, ornately carved wooden door. It opened before we reached it. Out came a middle-aged Kuwaiti man, welcoming us with exaggerated delight. He wore a traditional dishdasha, but without a ghutra-o-egal on his head. Inside, we were met by the cheers of a small group of men in a vast diwaniya room. “Ahlan ahlan ahlan! Welcome, all you beauties. Now the party can start!”

  We were the only women there. “You kept us waiting, ladies! But you are well worth it. Come, have a seat. What can I get you to drink?”

  Count things to sober up, I reminded myself.

  I counted ten men, then four bottles of Black Label scotch and six bottles of Red Label scotch, three of them empty, two partly consumed, and five still sealed. Ten packs of cigarettes, three argilehs. One piece of mirror glass with two lines of a white powder. Ten ashtrays full of smashed cigarette butts, six bowls of nuts, two fancy silver buckets of ice, three bottles of Pepsi, two bottles of ginger ale.

  “Welcome, beautiful. Have a seat,” someone said, and I realized I was the only one still standing. The men introduced themselves as Abu this or that, and soon they were showing photos of their kids.

  As the music grew louder, Fifi and Susu got up to dance with the men, then pulled me up to join them. I lifted my arms and my hips twisted and curled around the air. The music rushed into me, eclipsed though by a growing unease.

  Count, Nahr, I said to myself. Two pictures on the wall, one of the emir, the other of his successor. One inscribed sword resting below the photos. Six Persian rugs lining the long diwaniya; three hanging chandeliers, one large, two smaller, all dimmed. I closed my eyes. My body danced. Three men began raining many banknotes over me. When my father was away all those nights, is this the sort of place where he went, doing what these men are doing? What are they doing? What am I doing? Just dance, Nahr. Dance, Yaqoot. Dance, Almas. Almas. Almas. My name is Almas.

  One. Two. Three names. Four: Nanu. Jehad. Drink a little more Red Label. Sip, sip. No, drink. Count.

  I don’t know how long I was dancing, but at some point the middle chandelier had been turned off and the others dimmed even more. Fifi had gone off with one of the men. Susu was snuggled on the sofa between two men. Um Buraq was playing backgammon at a large table in the corner with the eldest man at the party, while the rest watched and bet on who would win. The room was clouded with smoke, and I suddenly felt nauseated. One of the men who had been dancing showed me to a bathroom
. There I came face-to-face with Almas in a large mirror. I was barefoot, my skin glistening with sweat, hair limp and makeup slightly dissolved but not smeared. The toilet, bidet, gold faucets, marble tile, Jacuzzi tub, and glass shower floated around me as I rushed to the toilet, vomiting the acid of scotch and mixed nuts. I heaved until there was nothing in me but bile. The same man was crouching next to me, holding my hair. I thought I locked the door. He handed me a warm, wet towel, then a cold glass of water, then guided me to the sink, gave me a toothbrush and toothpaste, stroked my hair. “Salamtik, alf salamah,” he kept saying, soothing me.

  I cleaned myself up and asked him to please give me some privacy. He turned to walk out, and when I heard the door close, I sat to pee. As I washed and dried myself in the bidet, I realized, to my horror, that he was still in the bathroom, his back turned, but staring at me in the mirror. He smiled when I saw him. A rush of fear added to my confusion, and now I could barely walk.

  “Let me help you,” he said. “Maybe some fresh air will do you good.” He guided me through a separate entrance that opened to the beach. I could hear the ocean, but it was too dark to see much except a slice of moon and the glory of endless stars. He pulled me down to sit with him. I hadn’t noticed that he had already spread a blanket on the sand next to an outdoor gas fireplace. “You’re beautiful,” he said, fondling my breasts, pushing me onto my back. “All the others wanted you the minute you started dancing. I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

  The stars were thick in the sky, a web of eternity. I had only ever seen the sky like this when Jehad and I were young and our father would take the family for weeks to camp in the desert. The whole country would set up tents for the winter. How did I forget those days? How many times did we do that as a family? Such wonderful memories of my father, even better than the Windex rainbow on glass and Fattooma song. No. This isn’t the sort of place my father went on his long nights away. Not possible.

  The Persian Gulf air moving in and out of my lungs was salty, dry, and cold. The same air in and out of his lungs as he moved in and out of me. Something sharp, maybe a rock or a shell, dug into my back under the blanket with every thrust he made. I had to pee again. The stars were watching me, daring me to move. But I didn’t. I endured and waited, because that’s what girls do. Even bad girls like me. We endure and wait, and cater to the whims of men, because sometimes our lives are at stake … until we get even.

  I peed where I lay on the blanket and felt the warm wetness between my thighs. “You’re worth every penny,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”

  He nudged me. “Are you okay?” Exhaustion pressed on my chest and held me down. He nudged me again, and I closed my eyes to the stars.

  When I opened them again, I was on my stomach, lying on a hard surface, the voices of men and women talking around me. I saw the bare legs of a woman whose painted blue toes I recognized as Fifi’s. The lights were bright in the room and I tried to turn over, but someone held me down. Fifi crouched to meet my face. “It’s okay, a big shard of glass was stuck in your back from the beach. There’s a doctor here fixing you up,” she said. Then she whispered, “Didn’t you feel it? Anyway, we couldn’t take you to a hospital because … you know.”

  I slept at Um Buraq’s house. Sharp pain would shoot through me when I tried to move my arm on the side where muscles in my back had been sliced by the glass. In the morning I cleaned myself up in the bathtub as best as I could with one arm. Deepa helped me wash my hair without getting the bandage wet. The other girls had left, and it was just Um Buraq and me.

  “You caused quite a ruckus last night. You should be more careful next time,” she said, pushing a tray of fried eggs and labneh in front of me while she pawed leftover matchboos. The traditional Kuwaiti dish of saffron rice cooked with raisins and nuts, topped with golden chicken and spicy tomato sauce, was typically an afternoon or evening meal, but she would eat it at any time of the day or night.

  “No thank you. I’m not hungry.”

  “Here, Deepa squeezed some fresh orange and ginger for you. Drink it. And take these two Panadols for your headache.”

  I sipped the juice, my hair still wet.

  “It all worked out better than I expected,” Um Buraq said, scooping up a fistful of golden rice. “Fetch me that over there.” She pointed at a fat blue envelope bound with a rubber band.

  “I don’t work for you. Get your own envelope,” I said.

  “Well, it’s for you. But I’m happy to keep it if you want,” she said without looking up from her food.

  I reached slightly with my functional arm, but even that movement was painful.

  “Open it,” she said.

  I winced, barely able to move.

  “I’ll do it.” She took the envelope, licked the rice from her fingers, pulled out a stack of notes and counted two thousand dinars with her greasy fingers, then put it all back and gave it to me.

  “They felt bad and gave us some money for the trouble that boy caused,” she said. Those men had paid her five hundred dinars for me, then gave her five thousand for the damage the nephew did. I wanted to give the money back and never see this woman again. But I made three hundred dinars a month working full-time, and here she was offering me two thousand.

  “Where’s the rest?” I asked.

  She almost choked on her food.

  “Why are you keeping three thousand five hundred dinars?” I persisted, faking courage.

  “That’s the deal,” she said, taking another bite without looking at me.

  “There’s no deal,” I said, trying to harden my voice and stifle the pain.

  She smiled, her large lips stretching nearly to the ends of her face, a piece of parsley stuck to her teeth and the vulgar gap between them mocking me. “I like you,” she said, and reaching her greasy hands into her bosom, pulled out a cloth purse full of large banknotes. She counted one thousand dinars and pushed them to me. I didn’t pick them up, continuing to stare at her, at that gap. The smile faded. She counted another five hundred, and that was it. “Fair is fair. I have to eat too. Now go get dressed. Ajay will drive you home.”

  I took the money and left, hoping never to see her again.

  I made up a tale about twisting my arm, until I needed Mama’s help getting dressed for work one morning and she saw my bandage. She insisted I show the wound and tell her what had really happened.

  “Mama. It’s not a big deal,” I tried to dissuade her. But she wouldn’t let up. “I fell down the steps at Um Buraq’s house and landed on a piece of the glass that had been in my hand. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you worrying.”

  “You should be more careful. Lucky you didn’t break your neck,” she sighed. Sitti Wasfiyeh added, “That’s what happens when you don’t watch where you’re going. I keep telling you to watch where you’re going. No one listens to me. You’re clumsy and don’t listen to your elders.”

  My arm slowly recovered as the wound in my back healed. I didn’t know what to do with the thirty-five hundred dinars I had tucked away in my safe, where I kept the gold shabka from my wedding, ten gold ingots remaining from the twenty Mama had bought in secret when Baba was alive, and a one-thousand-dinar college fund for Jehad, from the money Mhammad’s family gave me after he left, and which we kept dipping into to pay bills. It would not be enough to get Jehad through the door of most universities, but with this new stack of bills, I began to imagine that one day I could pay for him to have a good university education and become a rich doctor who would support us in turn. There was still a year and a half to come up with the rest.

  Um Buraq left several messages at the house over the next two months, but I didn’t return her calls. Sabah thought I was still mad about whatever stupid argument we’d had, which I didn’t even remember. I didn’t answer or return her calls either. By sheer luck, my grandmother was having coffee with a neighbor one flight up when Um Buraq showed up at our apartment. I saw her through the peephole, pretended no one was home, and
let her knock until she gave up and left. But I worried she’d return and provoke a scandal.

  I got a second job as a retail clerk at a clothing store. My routine was: school clerk job, evening retail job, home, repeat. On weekends and free hours here and there, I took in customers for eyebrow threading. I was robotic, impervious to the memory of that terrible party. I liked being busy, exhausted, and numb. I didn’t want to think or feel until I had something worthwhile to show—maybe a savings account to help send my brother to college, or a good job that would bring me respect and social standing. In the quiet, hidden parts of me, I even dared to imagine getting a degree myself, or reciting poetry in public. But my exhausting determination alarmed my mother. “Look at you. What do you mean, you’re fine? You look like you’ve lost at least ten kilos,” she said.

  I didn’t hear from Um Buraq again until she showed up at work, insisting I accept her invitation to talk before heading to my second job. At Juice King in Salmiya, we ordered two tall glasses of freshly squeezed juice cocktails delivered to her car, where I sat looking straight ahead.

  “I should have told you more about the party. I’m sorry that I didn’t. I was only trying to help,” she said.

  “I didn’t ask for your help. Why are you harassing me at my job?”

  “I want to make you an offer.”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  She sighed. “Look, just hear me out. I’m not a bad person. Women like us—”

  “I’m not like you.”

 

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