A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  They kept talking, Fatima asking questions and Arash answering, and Rez felt nauseated from the emotions, the new chemistry roiling through him vaporous and cold. The sun felt good, the traffic sounded familiar, and he craved the beach and a joint and a moment to forget and return to the knowing solid form he was this morning as he tried to convince Fatima to put the scarf on and take all the rest of her clothes off. Please. Just for a minute. Arash will never know! Nudity wasn’t a rule! He felt eyes on him and saw Arash and Fatima staring, saying his name again and again.

  Dude, you ok?

  Yeah. Just hungry is all. That was so cool. Thanks, man!

  Rez smiled like a loon.

  Anyone up for lunch? Smoke? Beach?

  His friends stared back at him and Rez felt his teeth start to chatter. He lunged forward and hugged Arash, the thin body slumped in its skin.

  What do you say, birthday boy? In-N-Out? Newport? A puff?

  Arash shook out of the embrace and stepped back from him.

  No thanks, man. Another time.

  Arash turned around and walked away, and Rez knew Arash was upset but didn’t care. Rez’s whole body was freezing and his mind jumpy and his teeth chattered in the cage of his mouth. He might care later, when he could get himself together a little bit, but right now he need to leave, warm himself with Fatima or smoke or the beach. They walked to her car and she wouldn’t fuck him near the mosque or in the parking lot of the burger stand or behind the rocks at the beach. And eventually Rez let it go and they sat in the sand, a new silence between them, and stared out ahead at the horizon, the dead flat line of the ocean that gave no hint of the life forces beneath.

  19

  … Every turning brought the lights of the town more and more completely into view, spreading a great luminous vapor about the dim houses. Emma knelt on the cushions, and her eyes wandered over the dazzling light. She sobbed, called on Leon, sent him tender words and kisses lost in the wind. There was a poor vagabond wretch who wandered the hillside with his stick … a mass of rags covered his shoulders … in the place of eyelids empty and bloody orbits. The flesh hung in red shreds, and there flowed from it liquids that congealed into green scale down to the nose … to speak to you he threw his head back with an idiotic laugh … he sang … Maids in the warmth of a summer day, dream of love and love always …

  Rez fell asleep and the words came to him in shorter and shorter bits. For long stretches the world of the classroom turned black and his mind, gone elsewhere, saw all Emma Bovary saw, the cobblestones, the lush brocade of her dress, the horses and the steam of their breaths. His consciousness gave up, and up and up until he shook himself awake at the sight of the blind man and the bloody orbs of his eyes. No one in the class noticed he had fallen asleep. No one cared. Twenty-four days before graduation, AP English, it surprised Rez anyone was awake at all.

  Mr. Josephs front-perched on his desk, one leg on the floor, book at crotch level, and listened as Meegan, the girl reading the passage out loud, went on and on, in love with the sound of her voice, with the wanting of the woman in the story. Only Fatima, in the seat next to Rez, seemed totally awake, awake and angry. He watched her for a few seconds. Her knees pulsed up and down and she shook her head in the angry way girls did right before they were about to get into a fight. Rez thought to tap her shoulder and say What’s up? but he was too drowsy to get the words together and it didn’t matter much, she was pissy now most of the time anyway.

  She raised her hand and Mr. Josephs put a finger up in the air to signal one minute or hold on or you know where the bathroom is and wait and Rez wondered if he should follow her when she left and then they could make out in the empty girls’ room like they had twice this week when classes were in session and no one was in the halls. Since their visit to the mosque she was insatiable. Her desire to be fucked like a hunger he’d never known in a girl before. Everything up until then had been good and fun and exciting, and when it was awesome, it had been awesome, but he’d always lose himself in his own experience, glad the girl was there but also glad that he was there too, doing it. Now it was different. Now he woke completely awake to Fatima, to her body and its appetite and to the ways in which he could feed it. For the first time in his life he’d gone down, a thing he’d avoided because the talk was always that it turned you into a pussy, that it tasted like shit, but that is not the way it felt to him. He got between her legs, took his time, tried to avoid it but couldn’t help but let his mouth go to all the dark places and lock into her, her pleasure deep, infinite in a way that was totally unlike anything he’d ever experienced. The giving just kept going and the taste stayed with him for hours afterward, Rez passing on the smokes and the drinks at the party they were at, to keep that new intoxication at the front of his tongue. Meegan finished reading and Mr. Josephs, blond crew cut, blond eyebrows and eyelashes, looked at Fatima.

  Yes, Fatima?

  Why is this book still important? I mean why are we still reading it?

  Excuse me?

  Emma Bovary is a selfish woman who only cares about pretty clothes and having affairs. She makes women seem vain and shallow. Not all women are like that. I mean, this woman has not one moment of generosity. Not one second when it isn’t about her. It kind of sucks, to have to read this Real Housewives of Rural France stuff …

  I like her.

  Meegan, her book still in front of her, held up a hand of immaculate navy-painted fingernails and spoke, and the whole class looked up from their doodles and cell phones and daydreams about summer, college, smoking, and fucking.

  I think she’s a strong woman. Just because she wants more than what Charles, who is pretty pathetic, can give her doesn’t mean she’s a bad person. I mean, women have been told to grin and bear it since the beginning of time, and here is Emma, finally, who wants something more beautiful, more passionate, than her stupid muddy life. I like her for it. I think she is a great main character.

  That brings us to a good question, Mr. Josephs began, about who exactly is the main character in this book. One the one hand Emma transforms, but so too does Charles—

  Emma Bovary leaves her two children to go sleep with some guy who gives her nothing. She has absolutely no honor. Not as a mother and not as a woman.

  Fatima was not shouting but her normal even-toned voice, the one she used every time she spoke in class, the one that always had the right answer but didn’t brag, was gone now. She sounded older. A slight but desperate edge ended each word and Rez thought she might cry. Meegan raised her own voice to match.

  Just because she wants more than she has doesn’t make her a bad person. She’s a dreamer. And I think she’s brave.

  The class turned their heads, all chins pointed at Fatima. Girl fight. Rez wished it were with another girl so that he could enjoy it instead of worrying about Fatima, who had become so quiet with her mind these last few weeks and so loud with her body. All the time they spent together had to do with sex and he missed their talks about their parents, or being together in the Bay next year, or even the fight between Drake and Jay Z. But he let it go. Girls were weird, he knew this from his mother and the few friends he had in middle school who were girls, and if they sank a little, it was best to be nice to them and leave it alone. He didn’t want to fuck up the sex. Across the room Meegan sat, her face pink now in the center of a million blond curls. Meegan the prom queen. Meegan who dated Johnson for a while in ninth grade but wouldn’t give it up and Johnson dropped her and she said whatever. Meegan who was going to Princeton next year because that is where her mom went and her dad went and they said she could bring her horse.

  Fatima laughed.

  There is a difference between being a slut and being brave.

  The room made some small shocked noises. Mr. Josephs put down the book he was holding and crossed his arms but said nothing. Rez watched Fatima’s smile get bigger and bigger across her face, almost reaching out into her hair. How could she say this? She had put him in her mouth just yester
day. She liked sex. Was this about sex? What was this honor she was talking about? He was not her first. Wait, was he her first? She had been with other guys. He tried to remember who but didn’t get the chance because Meegan, of the debate team, of the SUPPORT HILLARY 2008 sticker, already had her own smile on.

  I forgot, Fatima. Your culture believes women are most honorable when they are invisible. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

  The shocked noises again, this time louder and this time Mr. Josephs spoke up.

  Ok. Now we have brought up some worthwhile issues here. Let’s try to talk about them through the lens of Flaubert’s work—

  Wait. Wait. Let me just point out that in your culture, Meegan, a woman can’t say anything until she shows her tits and legs. Unless she’s something to stare at, a woman has no voice here. That’s real honorable … Fuck this.

  Fatima stood and grabbed her bag and walked out of the room with a strong, straight back. The class erupted with Oh, shits and It’s ons. Rez grabbed his bag and stood up and then sat back down and then stood up again and followed her out. Behind him the class erupted and Mr. Josephs’s voice tried to reach through it, tried to reach above and over it and tap it down, but there were shouts and the sound of girls’ voices, three or four saying, It’s going to be ok, Meegan. It’s all right. Fatima is weird, she’s always been weird. She doesn’t know what she was talking about …

  20

  It only took less than one minute to get out of the classroom. He spent a few seconds watching Meegan and then a few seconds to tell his arms and legs, Get up, get up, go, go find her. Backpack. By then she was gone. The waxed linoleum floors of the hallways shone under the orange afternoon light and Rez walked past empty lockers and closed classroom doors to the exit that took him to the parking lot, where he could find her, jump in her car, make her feel better. Maybe she’d be crying and they’d fool around a little bit because she looked hot when she cried and then she’d start the engine and let him put his hands between her thighs. The parking lot spread out around him, completely still. Her car not there. Now committed to this exit, Rez started to walk and thought about the bus and the few dollars in his pocket and why not, it was sixth period and this was a good reason to skip the rest of the day. He got on the one bus that went up and down Highway 1, paid his fare, and sat as far away from the other three passengers as possible. It was only two or three miles to her house and he looked out the window at the small waves and enjoyed the view from the big windows.

  He got off at the gates of her neighborhood, said What’s up? to the guard that watched the monitors, and walked up the steep streets that took him to Fatima’s house. The gates to the driveway were closed and he looked in and didn’t see her car, or many of the cars normally lined up in front of the two-story mahogany doors, and then pulled out his phone.

  Where are you?

  Javad’s.

  And the sickness started in his gut. He put the phone in his pocket and walked down the hill back to the bus stop to ride up to Newport. The wait was longer this time and he watched the cars blow by him and the light turn from orange to a dirty color without a name that led to dusk. A car full of old women all turned their heads and stared at him. Another car, a gardener’s beat-up truck, slowed at the sight of him and then stopped and the passenger, a young man just a few years older than Rez, rolled down the window.

  A donde vas?

  Rez shook his head.

  No. Thanks. I’m good. Todo bien. Gracias.

  Bueno.

  She wasn’t crying when she opened the door but her face seemed washed clean, no eyelash stuff or shadow, just the white skin and dark eyes and pink lips. She looked up at him and her eyes said come in, but her body, so alive to him these last weeks, stood back and stayed cold.

  Whatsup?

  Nothing. I wanted to be with Arash.

  That’s cool with me.

  From behind her Rez heard the low sound of the new Kanye record and then the louder sound of something on the TV, someone with a British accent speaking in flat, evenly paced sentences. Then he heard Javad.

  Rez? Come in. Come in. Close the door behind you.

  She moved out of the way and Rez took a step toward her and waited for her to meet him and reach up and wrap her arms around his neck so that he’d know everything was all right, but she turned and walked into the living room, where she sat on the couch next to Arash, who watched TV without saying Hey or Whatsup.

  It was not the regular TV. Not a channel from cable. The resolution was strange and the words at a lag and he saw a computer hooked up to the TV screen, a website image small and then large. An imam in a turban, the same imam who’d spoken at the mosque on Arash’s birthday, stood in a different little gazebo and spoke passionately. Arash finally looked up at Rez, a thin smile on his face.

  Glad you came. Fatima told us what happened. Pretty crazy stuff.

  Yeah.

  So much for diversity of opinion at Laguna Preparatory Academy.

  I guess.

  Rez turned his face to the television and tried to block out the imam’s words and listen to the thin threads of Kanye coming from Javad’s bedroom. Another imam took the place of the first and spoke with a thick British accent, which always reminded Rez of the professors in the Harry Potter boarding schools, full of wisdom and magic. They filmed this imam in close-up and Rez saw that he was young, not much older than Javad, and that his hairline had sweat on it and his throat occasionally trembled when he spoke.

  Brothers, the Prophet would implore you. Defend yourself. All around the world our men, women, and children are slaughtered for their devotions. Muslim men. Muslim women. Muslim children. If we sit aside, our sons will become usurers and our daughters prostitutes, our caliphate a lost dream.

  The beach outside the windows of Javad’s house was empty and clean and Rez knew if he slid open the glass doors, the wind that came in would be warm and salty and he listened to the imam and wanted to make a joke about his marshmallow turban or his unibrow or something to break the spell in the room and get Arash and Fatima to laugh and follow him outside. Before something funny came to mind, the screen split in four, the imam’s face in one quadrant and the other three filled with pictures of women in head scarves on their knees, prostrated over a dead body; dead families in rubble; children’s toys spread across a blast site; a father carrying a wounded, bloody head. A group of men in fatigues and turbans being barked at and bitten by dogs. The photos from Abu Ghraib. A mosque with the minaret demolished. The images changed every few seconds and the names of the cities beneath changed too. Grozny. Mosul. West Bank. Kabul. The imam kept talking. Everywhere there are Muslims, there is sorrow. The screen went dark and then filled with a field of sunflowers blowing gently in an invisible breeze. For an eternity of peace, we must fight this last fight. Fatima started to cry. Rez stood up.

  Comeeeeeoooooonn.

  He waited for the room to unbuckle, to open up and agree with him, but they all just looked at him, with near identical expressions, Fatima and Arash and Javad, their sad open faces, on the verge of rage.

  Really? You are going to buy into all of this?

  No one said anything.

  Rez grabbed his backpack and looked at his friends on the couch. Fatima wiped her eyes and Arash stood up. Rez had had enough.

  I gotta go.

  Whatever you need.

  Arash gestured toward the door.

  I don’t need this bullshit, that’s for sure, Rez wanted to say, but kept his mouth shut, afraid the anger would spill out until it turned into what he really felt, which was sorrow. He wanted the old Arash back. The fun life. He didn’t want to beg his friend Why can’t you just chill. Like we did? Like it was? So he kept his mouth closed, but his eyes must have said something because Fatima rose too now and stepped toward him.

  I’ll walk you out.

  She stood behind him and neither of them said anything until they were just outside on the gravel path to the street.
/>   Fatima, what’s going on?

  You won’t understand, you don’t get it. I just can’t be this way. Not anymore.

  What way?

  This way. This stupid American way. It has no honor. No kindness. I don’t know who I am.

  I know who—

  Just go. Please.

  Fine.

  He turned on his heel and kept himself from calling her a name and swallowed a few times, but when the tears came, there was no more blinking, no more wiping them away, and he let his eyes drip and his face stay wet until he was at the bus stop, where he cupped his palms over his eyes and cried.

  The bus came and he got on and the driver saw his transfer and Rez went to the back. The only other person was an old lady, elaborate jewels and puffy gold hair and a large black Lab. The dog wore a vest that said SERVICE ANIMAL and the woman wore the dark glasses of the blind. For all of Rez’s low whistles and tongue clicks the dog did not move from his curled position and Rez turned his face to the window to stare at the faint outline of his reflection and then through that, to the just dark sea that told him, by its color, that it was early evening. Where to go? There was nothing at home but thinking and television and his computer, and all of that would remind him of Fatima, so fuck it. He checked his phone. A picture of Mavericks during a swell went bright and then dim. He rode the bus until Laguna and the shops and people walking around, and got off, walking the mile between where he was and Matthews’s house, where he would go, smoke a bowl, and kick it until it got dark.

  He skipped the front house, skipped Matthews’s sulking sisters and his nosy mom, and walked around to the pool house, where the same Kanye record he heard at Javad’s now pounded out loudly through the glass of the windows and Rez heard the sound of people laughing. He listened to the song and picked up his pace, around the pool and the gazebo, to the closed French doors of the little house, where he saw two heads on the couch in front of the television and Matthews walking up and down reciting the lyrics of the song, a bong in one hand, a lighter in the other, enjoying the music, performing for no one.