“Not a word.”
On her way to find the most beautiful girl in her school, she peeked out the window and noted the license plate on the sports car parked in front. Ah . . . Saad. She even knew the family. So much the better. She hurried down the corridor in search of Nijmeh.
“You! Oh!” She put a hand to her lips and he was afraid she might scream, so he put his hand over her mouth and wrapped his arms around her in a warm hug. “Don’t say anything just now,” he whispered in her ear. “I told the directrice I am your cousin from abroad. I’m sure you have many questions, which I will answer in due time. I’ve had great difficulty finding you. My God, wait till you hear! I didn’t know your name—that was stupid! So I had to bluff my way through every private school in the area. This country’s crawling with private schools. The directrice says I may take you out to tea, so let’s get out of here before she changes her mind. I have so much to say to you. I’m going to remove my hand now but you must promise not to scream. Promise?” She nodded and he removed his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
He guided her out with his hand under her arm and opened the door to the car. “Act friendly—she may be watching out the window. If I had been in her position, I wouldn’t have done what she did. I would have called the police.”
“How do I act friendly?”
“Just keep smiling and look happy to see me. That would be the normal thing.”
“I am happy to see you.”
He put the car in gear and roared out the driveway, scattering pebbles. She kept her eyes fixed on his profile while he drove out on the road that led north.
“No,” she squealed, grabbing his arm. “Don’t go this way. It’s the way to my house.”
He nodded, executed a sloppy U-turn, and drove in the opposite direction. He picked up the Street of the Prophets and sped past the developed neighborhoods until he reached a lonely stretch of road. “Did you say you were happy to see me?”
She hadn’t taken her eyes off his face. “Oh, yes.”
He grinned in private appreciation of his success. “That’s a relief . . .” His voice wound down and he spoke slowly, tracing the line of her jaw with his finger.
“Since I left you . . . God, it seems like such a long time ago—I’ve thought mostly of you. I thought I probably wouldn’t see you again because the chances you would survive that adventure seemed minimal. But you did.” He waited for a look of contempt, but her eyes were wide—a green so unusual he stopped talking a moment to appreciate them. “I didn’t know your name or what school you attended. I figured out that it had to be a secondary school and one that taught French, so I didn’t try the German or Italian schools. That only left about fifty others.”
“But how did you know who to ask for?”
He put the car in gear. “That was my least favorite part of the charade, I can tell you. I had to assume an oily, man-of-the-world look and ask for—now don’t be disgusted . . . remember I had everything against me—‘the most beautiful girl in the school. The one with the green eyes.’ Two of the principals became very agitated and thought they had an imbecile or worse on their hands. One chased me out of her office with a broom and ran after me all the way to the car.” Nijmeh began to laugh and he joined her. They were laughing so hard he stopped the car again.
“But what about Madame? She knew it was me?”
“Right away. I had to control myself and keep from picking her up and throwing her in the air out of sheer gratitude. She said, ‘Ah . . . you could only mean one girl, Nijmeh.’ Your name is Nijmeh . . . star.” His eyes sparkled with satisfaction. “Remarkable. I’m going to call you Star.”
“And you? I still don’t know your name.”
“I’m James.” He turned in his seat and put his arms around her. He kissed her gently, pulled away, then kissed her again, a deeper, hungry kiss that she returned with such intensity that he became uneasy. She wasn’t some English popsy, eager to be felt up. Her open response to him was innocent. What girl in her right mind would wind herself around his arm without any coyness? “We don’t have much time. It’s already five and I need twenty minutes to get you back. I wouldn’t let Madame down by being late. I owe her a lot.”
She tightened the stranglehold on his arm, as if it were keeping her from spilling out onto the road. “I wanted to run after you when you left me that morning. It’s all such a mystery. But I had never felt so happy in someone else’s company. I wanted to sleep in the crook of your arm. Is this too bold? I don’t care. Remember, you sat up in the middle of the night and yelled at me for not making you put your hands up?” She rubbed her cheek against his arm. “You were so matter-of-fact. As if we’d known each other for years.”
“And I was right, too,” he said indignantly. “How could your father have let you do such a thing?”
“Hasn’t your father wanted you to carry on the family tradition?”
“Not my father. He went to school in Massachusetts. In the United States. He’s not a nationalist.”
She scrunched up her brow. “Mine’s the opposite. He wouldn’t approve of my seeing you, so we’ve got to be very careful.”
“I’m not so bad.” He smiled. “I’m about to enter law school. He’d like that, wouldn’t he?”
“I don’t know.”
“I told Madame I would only be here for two days, so I can’t show my face again. How will I see you?”
“You can call. We receive calls between five and six in the evening. And I’ll find a way to meet you. Don’t you have to go back to school?”
“Not until late January. We have three months . . .” He kissed her again and then started the car. “We’d better start back.”
They were returning with the sun in front of them and it cast the famous golden glow over the bare reddish mountains and buildings. “I’ll find some way to see you.” The windows of the car were closed to keep out the dust and in that space his deep voice droned soothingly and then rose in righteousness. “After all, we’re not criminals. We can see each other. We’re grown people.”
Their meetings were necessarily short—an hour or two robbed from her ordinary activities. On Friday nights she usually took the three o’clock jitney home but now she waited until five. “I stayed to use the library,” she’d tell her mother, and her father didn’t get home until six so he didn’t know at all. She took a new interest in her clothes and once or twice asked Delal to go shopping with her. Delal was immediately suspicious. She sniffed out a difference in Nijmeh’s attitude. Her usual wide-eyed stare was gone. For once she looked like she had something up her sleeve. What could it be?
James and Nijmeh had become bolder and instead of skulking off in the car to some deserted vacant lot they sometimes went to a museum or to a movie. Once he took her to his home while his parents were out—she was shocked at how wealthy he was—and up to his room. She had lain on his bed with him on top of her, humming with happiness, kissing her mouth and her throat and—after she willingly opened her blouse—her breasts. When she realized how frenzied he was and how hard he had become, she moved her hand down. “Don’t touch me now,” he warned. “I’m . . . too excited.”
“James,” she whispered, “please. Do whatever you want to.”
“Are you crazy? Your father would kill us both. Look . . . just hearing you say that has cooled me off. Nijmeh”—he looked at her sternly—“you can’t be so trusting and willing.”
“Why not? I love you.”
“Is that it? Is it your wild love for me?”
He said it in a joking way, but she nodded and made no attempt to cover herself. She was lying on her back; her pupils were so dilated that the green was just a slim halo for the black center. Her breasts were jutting out enticingly and he closed his lips around them gently and allowed them to pop out before he enclosed them again. His hands went under her and he eased the fingers of both hands be
tween her thighs while he still held onto her buttocks. She stirred and tried to pull her legs apart, but he kept them closed. She struggled to open her legs wider and started moving with him, butting herself against him rhythmically until he allowed her to open herself to him. “Oh, God . . . I’m going to come. Wait!” He pressed himself against her and buried his face in her breasts. Her legs went around him and she made so much noise he put his hand over her mouth just before he came all over his bedspread.
“I love you,” he said tenderly while buttoning up her blouse. “I was sure I wouldn’t fall in love like this, but I was wrong. I love you,” he said again and kissed each of her palms. “We’re going to go to your father.”
She jumped off the bed so fast the springs shuddered. “James, don’t say that. We’re not going to my father. You can’t even say that in jest. It’s not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. I want to marry you. What’s wrong with that? I’m twenty-four years old. I’m not a criminal or destitute. This may come as a surprise to you, but I’ve been called . . . well”—he looked sheepish—“eligible.”
“It has nothing to do with you. It’s me. He’d never approve of anyone that he didn’t choose himself.”
“How do you know? Has he said so?”
“No, but I know.”
“We’ll have to tell him sometime.”
She slumped down on the bed again. “Why? You’ll be leaving in a few weeks. I’ll prepare him while you’re away.”
“Nijmeh, I think I could convince him. I don’t like you taking the brunt of it. Let’s tell him together.”
“James, no. You don’t know my father. I’ll prepare him during the spring and we can go to him when you come home in July.”
He dropped the subject, but the very next time they met it was on his mind. “I’m going to telephone your father and go to see him. ‘Hello, Mr. Saleh, you don’t know me but I’m in love with your daughter. Now wait, before you shoot that gun, hear me out . . .’ ”
“No,” she screamed, and he saw that she was terrified.
“Hey, I’m sorry. Relax. If you’re that upset, I take it back.” Her face was still tense. “Here,” he said, “have an apple.” She shook her head. “All right. I’ll eat it myself.” He took an enormous bite and made such a loud crack that she turned to look at him and then screamed.
“James, no! Wait! You’ve eaten part of a worm.”
He looked at his apple. “So I have,” he grinned. “Oh, well, I’ll just take the other half. Maybe the poor thing will connect inside. I seem to remember they regenerate.
“James, no!” She grabbed the apple. “Don’t eat it.” She screamed again as the worm fell into her lap. “I’ll have to find it.”
“Hey, here it is.” He held it up and she screamed again and put a hand over her eyes. “It’s all right. It’s not real. It was a joke.”
She didn’t hear him. “You ate it. Oh, my God.”
“No, no. It was a joke. See? It’s rubber. It’s painted rubber. I put it in the apple.”
“You . . .” She pressed her lips with her hand as if letting go would make her hysterical. “It’s painted? Oh!” She began to laugh. “I thought you ate it!” She laughed so hard tears formed in her eyes.
“You’re laughing.” He beamed. “That’s wonderful.”
She fell in love like an unsophisticated girl. With her mind, her heart, and her body. He made her laugh and held her hand and kissed her. He was so handsome. “I am desperately in love,” she would whisper to herself. Desperation was the accurate word for what she felt. An overwhelming physical greediness. An insistent desire to be touched. She would twirl her hair around her fingers and dream of his kisses and caresses. She would begin to perspire and become soaked lying in her bed and recreating his arousal, her own response—legs wide, skin flushed and burning, lips bruised, the feathery feel of fingertips, a breathless anxiety. My beloved wants only me! This is what I was made for: to be a woman for him! Finally, life made sense. How could she have lived before? How could she have been satisfied?
Her openness made James shake his head, as if something that would have been very dangerous with anyone else was safe with him. Still, it overwhelmed him and he would wince and look around for someone to share the novelty of finding a girl who was so breathtakingly, foolishly honest.
“You’re lucky it’s me you’re offering your body to,” he’d admonish. “At least I have the sense to save you from your wanton behavior. You’re supposed to play hard to get.”
“I love you. Why should I play hard to get?” she’d ask logically.
“There, you see! What sane girl would make such an incriminating statement? It sends a man running for cover.”
“Will you run?”
“That’s the other thing.” He looked perplexed. “I find it not threatening at all. I’m honor-bound to protect you from some other lout who would take advantage of your . . . I’ll call it generosity.”
She didn’t care what he called it. For her, it was the unexpected familiarity that made life exciting. She liked his proprietary arm thrown around her shoulders. He pushed back her hair and adjusted her sweater or yanked her across a street of traffic. She was his. “You want to make me happy,” she reminded him.
“That shouldn’t be such a novelty. Didn’t Mama and Papa want you to be happy?”
“My father wants me to be happy as long as I’m doing something he approves of. Loyalty is the word I hear most often.” She had never spoken or thought of her father in such harsh terms. The freedom of it made her overstate the case. “If I do exactly as he says, he smiles. If I don’t he becomes distant. And when my father’s distant, the people around him might as well be in Siberia. My mother . . . well, she’s another case altogether. She’s never recovered from having me, I guess. There were several miscarriages before and after me. She looks at me sometimes as if I’m going to disappear. She’s not a very relaxed person unless she’s out of doors or on a horse. Then she looks magnificent. I love to see her ride.”
James sighed. “That sounds about par for the course for mothers and fathers. Don’t feel you did any worse than the rest of us. My mum’s whole existence is playing bridge and making crepe paper roses for all her charity balls.”
Perhaps James was right. Perhaps her parents were no more strict or idiosyncratic than anyone else’s, but she felt differently about them. It was no longer her father’s smile and her mother’s eyes that danced before her prior to sleep. They were fuzzy figures compared to the clear visceral reaction to closeness with a man. She was drenched in the sweetness of it. Love swept her clean and broke the old connections. Her connection to her father snapped like a dry brittle twig.
32.
HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU CAN TRUST ME?
Delal knew something was up. Nijmeh wasn’t Nijmeh. She was twitchy. Her mouth was drooping and she played distractedly with a ring on her finger while she spoke. Where was that old placid goody girl? “You look as if your dog died.” It was titillating to watch that face all crumpled. “What’s wrong?”
“Why do you think there’s something wrong?”
“Are you kidding? You look glum. I’ve never seen this dark side of you,” Delal said sarcastically. “This may sound rotten, but I’m surprised that you can be emotional.”
“I wanted to go to the films,” said Nijmeh. “Hamlet is showing with Laurence Olivier.”
“That’s why you’re upset? Incredible! I didn’t know you were interested in films. You could probably be in films.” Delal enjoyed pointing out the larger picture in people’s lives.
“Don’t say that in front of my father. He’d have a heart attack.”
“Yeah, I know. So why can’t you go to the films?”
“There’s a meet and I’m supposed to participate. My mother’s counting on it.”
“You mean a horse thing?�
�� She never understood all the passion over horses. She knew it was chic for girls to love horses. It was supposedly a sign of good breeding to go gaga over the beasts, but she didn’t like them at all. She didn’t like the smell and she was frightened of falling off. She was more than a little respectful of Nijmeh’s ability.
Nijmeh smiled briefly. “That ‘horse thing,’ as you call it, is the King’s Meet for the Art of Dressage.”
“Ugh. You go in for that sort of thing? Do you actually crave it?”
“No. I like the horses but I hate the silly posturing. My mother has this thing about it. It’s the only demand she makes of me so it’s hard to tell her it doesn’t appeal to me.”
It’s the only demand she makes because your father makes all the others, dummy. “Why don’t you go to the flick anyway?”
“The what?”
“The flick, the film. So you’ll miss one lousy meet. Your mother will forget about it. Two hours later she’ll be her old self. Take it from me, mine is never as heated up as I predict she’ll be over anything. My father’s even worse. He hits the roof over something and then is so contrite he goes out and buys me a present. Parents are crazy. You just have to know how to manage them.”
“You make everything sound so simple, Delal. Your mind is very clear-cut and you don’t agonize over every move.”
“Well, some of us are like that. What do you say? Are you going to defy Mama and emancipate yourself? Take my advice. Don’t tell her in person. If you leave a message, she can’t argue with a piece of paper. You really like Shakespeare?”
Her eyes lowered until just the lashes were visible, splayed out—two near tears still clinging—like little stalactites against those pale contoured cheeks. “It isn’t only the film. I want to meet someone.”
“The plot thickens! Holy Moses, who is it? Wait. Don’t tell me. It’s a male, right?” This was unexpected and it made Delal uncomfortable. Nijmeh was holding out on her. This explained the sudden interest in clothes. Good God, if her father found out! She wished he would find out.
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