It’s intoxicating.
I want to test my power further. I’m tilting my head up toward his, my eyes daring him and my mouth slightly open, breathless in a whole new way, when someone grabs my arm and whirls me around roughly. I turn with a smile on my face, eager to discover my next conquest.
It’s no dance partner, though. It’s Amir.
My spell is broken, and my stranger melts back into the crowd with a shrug. I was just a body; he’ll find another. Amir doesn’t let go of my arm, so I step closer to him, still moving with the music. I want to dance more. Amir will do.
“Stop it!” he hisses. “You’re acting disgusting.” He pulls me toward the exit, moving so fast that I stumble and almost fall. As I catch myself, yanking my arm out of Amir’s grip, I see Ian looking at me from a few feet away.
Are you okay? he mouths, since the music is too loud to talk.
I look back at Amir, whose face is twisted and tense with anger. For a second I hesitate, but then I nod at Ian. I’m fine, I mouth back to him. After all, Amir is nothing but a displaced peasant—his rage is no threat to me. But I haven’t forgotten Mr. Gansler’s threat. I need to appease Amir for my family’s sake. I will allow him his anger as a peace offering.
Ian’s face stays neutral, but he keeps watching until I let the gymnasium doors slam behind me. I’m still charged from the dancing, emboldened by the music I can still hear pounding against the doors and windows. I turn to Amir and smile. Let him rage. I am in control.
STEPS
“What the hell were you doing in there?” Amir’s voice is a controlled shout close to my ear, so quiet that the smokers leaning against a car in the parking lot barely look up. He is skilled at not drawing attention to himself. “Are you trying to shame your family?”
“New place, new rules.” Emmy’s phrase doesn’t sound as tidy in my native tongue, but the meaning is still clear. “I’m just fitting in,” I say more gently. I can’t forget that I need him. “What are you doing here?”
Amir’s face flushes, and he looks away. He’s embarrassed.
I laugh. “I think that maybe you came for the same reason I did? Just to see for yourself?”
He scowls, but it’s an embarrassed scowl, and there’s humor twitching underneath. He kicks at a cigarette butt on the ground and hides his smile. He also tries to hide his small peeks at me. This sparkly, satin version of me is new to him, too.
I need to encourage this. To make Amir my ally—in curiosity, if in nothing else. “It’s certainly different here, isn’t it?” I keep my voice light, teasing. “Can you imagine that happening back home?”
Finally, he’s willing to show me his smile. It’s crooked—interrupted by a scar that traces from his sharp cheekbone down to the corner of his mouth. It’s not unattractive. He’s not unattractive, I realize.
Focus, Laila.
“The people here are children,” he says. “All of them. Even the grown-ups.”
I wonder how many people not from his own country he has actually spoken to since moving here. “They’re not so bad,” I say.
“Yeah, I could see in there that you think quite highly of them. One of them in particular.”
He’s still trying to shame me, but I don’t react. I have been shamed by men far more powerful than Amir. Besides, why should I feel shame? It wasn’t me in there. I was just acting a part, trying on someone else’s skin.
“Do you want to sit down?” I nod toward a graffiti-scarred bench close by. “It’s a beautiful night.”
Amir tilts his head and squints—without his anger, he lacks direction. He shrugs his agreement.
He sits, but I have to tug down my short skirt so that I can join him without exposing too much of myself. Once I do sit, he scoots away several inches. I pinch my lips together to keep from laughing. Perhaps I’m adapting to my new American home better than I thought—I’m already making other foreigners uncomfortable.
“I haven’t seen you in a while.” I direct the conversation before he can.
He shrugs again and I can see that I’m still making him uncomfortable, that he finds my words as forward as my dancing. What does she know? How much can I say? I can practically hear the questions he’s asking himself in the silence of his hesitation.
Finally, he speaks. “Your mother is trying to insert herself into something she has no business being a part of.”
His tone is gruff, final, but I can’t let him finish there. I know better than to blurt out my questions the way my new American friends would, though. Instead, I sit demurely, my hands folded in my lap and my ankles crossed and tucked out of sight under the bench. I ask him to continue with my eyes, not my voice. But for my moonstruck shoulders and three inches of bare thigh, I could almost pass for the girl I was raised to be.
He was also raised with certain expectations, and my silence makes him fidget. Has he ever sat like this with a girl? I wonder. He gives in first. “Perhaps if she weren’t so impatient. Or if her expectations were more realistic. She wants us to trust her, but she’s done nothing to prove herself.”
I tease apart the information contained both in and between Amir’s words. Impatient. Expectations. Trust. My mother is scheming, that much is clear. To what end, though, I can’t even guess. But at least Amir has given me an opening.
“It’s hard for her, you know? She doesn’t know how to act here. Everything has changed so much, but she’s trying to do what’s right.” I hope Amir doesn’t hear how vague my statements are. “She wants to start over. She knows she needs to earn your trust.” I’m fairly certain my mother does not actually think any such thing, but I say what he needs to hear.
Amir stares at me for a long minute, his dark eyes narrowed. Finally, he sighs. “I’ll discuss it with my cousins,” he says. “We’ll have to think about it.”
Cousins. Not father, not uncles. Now I at least know something small about him. I know that his family has holes in it, too. I suspect that Amir plays a very small role in his cousins’ decisions—he is the boy among men. But I allow him the charade. “You’re welcome in our home anytime. I hope it will be soon.” I resort to formalities in the hopes of cementing our discussion.
Amir just nods, and the silence between us grows awkward. He sits back and looks up at the sky, giving me a moment to study him unnoticed. His face is angular and lean, and his jaw is shadowed with the faint beginnings of stubble. I realize that I don’t know how old he is. I had assumed he was the same age as me, but there’s a hardness about him that makes him seem older.
I should be angry with him for pulling me out of the dance. What business was it of his?
But I’m not angry. In my culture his action would be considered protective. Caring, even. He cared enough about me to guard my honor. Just as the sultan cared enough about his daughter’s honor to kill for it.
The thought twists my stomach. Everything has been turned upside down since we came here—my family, my head, and my heart. At this point I can’t even recognize what caring is anymore. Is it the hands gliding over my body, owning me with touches, or is it the hand pulling me away from temptation before I do something I might regret?
I jump as the gym doors bang open. Amir flinches, too.
“Laila? Ian said you were out here. My dad’ll be here soon to pick us up. You still want a ride, right?” Emmy’s voice is tight and she looks annoyed.
Amir looks away, not even acknowledging her presence. He knows he has no part in this conversation.
I nod and stand up. Amir won’t meet my eyes, so I can only hope that we have an agreement. “I’ll see you soon?”
He turns back to face me but doesn’t say a word. It’s as close to an answer as I’m going to get. Our liars’ tango has come to an end, and I’m left wondering which one of us was leading.
Emmy holds the door open until I walk through, then links arms with me as we head back into the thumping music—one more set of hands touching me, caring and possessive.
“I just want t
o sit down somewhere until your dad comes. I have an awful headache.” Finally, one thing I don’t have to pretend.
Emmy pouts. “Are you sure? There’s still time to dance to another couple of songs.”
“Yes,” I say, and it’s just about the only thing I am sure of at the moment.
WINKS
At first I can’t open my eyes. I panic at the sensation and paw at my face before I realize it’s just the mascara I forgot to wash off making my eyelashes stick together. It’s a surprisingly claustrophobic feeling.
I want to shower, but Bastien is already in the bathroom. I pound on the door and he yells at me to go away.
“Is the king sitting on the throne?” I tease him in English.
“Shut up, Laila!” His English is even better than mine now—Bastien is a sponge for all things American.
I pull on a bathrobe and go out to the living room. As usual, Mother is sitting on the couch drinking tea. She’s as constant a fixture as the floor lamp in the corner lately.
“Good morning,” she says. “You looked beautiful last night.”
I squint at her through my clumpy eyelashes. “How do you know? You were already in bed when I came home.”
She smiles. “I was watching out my window for you. There are very few advantages to having a bedroom that faces a busy parking lot, but I seem to have found at least one.”
For my mother to acknowledge her new circumstances, much less joke about them, is a new thing. I hope that it means she’s in a good mood—she’ll be less likely to tell me no if she is.
“It felt strange to be so bare. Can you imagine if I had dressed like that back home?” We rarely talk like this, my mother and I. I find that I want to enjoy it first, to savor the moment of lightness, before I turn back to darker subjects.
“Bah.” She wrinkles her nose. “You looked exactly the way a girl your age should look. Your father always listened to his brothers too much. Their beliefs got in the way of their senses, and they forgot how to appreciate a beautiful woman, the poor fools. I wanted to take you shopping with me in Paris more often, but they convinced your father that you’d be completely ruined by the experience. I suppose they were trying to protect you from terrible things like short skirts or winks from handsome French boys.”
Her sarcasm sounds strange to my ears, like she’s letting her composed façade slip. I giggle—something that probably sounds equally strange to her.
“So, this is hardly Paris,” she continues, “but did you get any winks from handsome American boys at your dance last night?”
I debate how much to tell her. She may be liberated as far as clothing and curfews go, but I can’t imagine that even she would approve of the groping and grinding that passes for dancing here. I decide not to say anything at all. Instead, I give her a flamboyant, exaggerated wink.
“Ah, I’m glad. This is what I hoped for you, Laila. For you to wear what you want and maybe even kiss a few boys you choose for yourself. Back home things are just getting worse and worse. Ever since—” She stops abruptly and takes a deep breath before continuing. “Ever since your uncle took over, he has been enforcing the religious laws more strictly than ever. It’s no place for women there.”
She surprises me more and more these days, my widowed mother. That she wanted something different for me—a sentiment she’s never expressed before. That she knows anything at all about how things were going back home. That she doesn’t think that home—her home—is a place for women.
Could this mean …?
It’s a question I haven’t dared to ask, not even of myself. I’ve been too focused on just surviving. “Do you want—” I stop to rephrase. Want has very little to do with reality. This is a fact I know too well. “Do you think we’ll ever go home? I mean, not now, obviously, but ever?”
“Of course we will.” She says it quickly, firmly, not even needing a moment to consider the question.
I’m caught off guard by her answer. How? Why? When? What about what I want? I don’t ask any of the questions that race through my mind. Not yet. It’s too soon.
First I need to figure out exactly what it is that I want. Besides, I already have an entire mountain of questions that I can’t even begin to climb until I take care of our more immediate needs.
“Oh.” I try to sound casual as I change the subject. “I ran into Amir. At the dance.” I stop for her reaction.
She raises an eyebrow, and her teacup pauses halfway to her lips.
“He said his cousins feel bad about the way things went the last time they were here. They want to talk again, but they feel awkward initiating it. Amir said they’d definitely come if you just make the first move by inviting them.” I make a show of retying the knot of my robe as I say this so she can’t see from my face that I’m lying. “You should call them.”
She huffs into her tea, dismissive and proud.
“Mother.” Gansler’s threat floats through my thoughts. Even if she’s right that we will go back eventually, we can’t go back now. Too many things need to change before we can even hope to survive there. “You need to call them.”
I see that she still wants to dismiss me, so I push harder. “How much money do we have left?”
She sets her cup down with a clatter. I’ve struck a nerve. I strike again. “Is there enough left for another month? A week? A day? Or is it gone already?”
She glares at me, and I know that it’s gone. Our survival money spent on a handful of luxuries.
“Call them. Tomorrow.” I stand up and snatch her cup from the table. I can only stomp off a few meters in this cubbyhole that is our apartment, but my point is made nonetheless. She’ll call. She has to.
ESCAPE
I have to leave the apartment after the conversation with my mother—we both need space. But I only make it as far as the bottom of the stairs before it occurs to me that I have nowhere to go.
I’ve been hiding out at the school library when I want to avoid going home during the week, but today is Sunday, so it’s not open. How unlucky for me that in this land of 24-7, my one refuge seems to be the only place that ever closes. That I’ve managed to survive over two months’ worth of weekends trapped in the apartment now strikes me as a monumental accomplishment—one that can’t be repeated. I’ll surely go mad if I don’t escape, even for just a few hours.
It’s warm out, but I pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head anyway. It’s the closest I’ve come to wearing a veil since I got here, and it feels unexpectedly comforting. Where to go? I pace in the parking lot in front of our building, doing indecisive laps until I notice a white-haired woman standing by her car, glaring at me. She clutches her purse to her chest, letting go only long enough to press the Lock button on her keychain. Three times. Beep. Beep. Beep. She seems to be doing it for my benefit, so I raise a hand in greeting. My gesture sends her scurrying across the lot, shooting glances back at me every few feet until she’s inside.
She thought I was waiting around to steal something! The thought makes me laugh out loud even as it stings. How far I’ve fallen. From princess to thief.
The dizzying descent that is my life threatens to overwhelm me, and even with nowhere to go, I start to run.
It’s a means of escape, but it only serves to make me feel more foreign and more vulnerable. Where I’m from, girls are not encouraged to be athletic. Our cloaks and veils keep us sedate, and there is no track practice for us—there are no jogs through the park. I feel the consequence of this passive life now, and even the brief sprint leaves me gasping. My flight is short-lived.
My only memory of running is as a child, racing down long corridors and clambering up back staircases to avoid my uncle when he visited. Even then I hated him, hated his constant lectures and his mean slaps and pinches.
“You shouldn’t let her run wild like this,” he used to say to my father, talking above me, about me, as if I weren’t even in the room. “She needs to learn her place. It’s just going to be more difficult the o
lder she gets.” I could never be as invisible as he wanted.
Sometimes my father defended me. “Laila is fine. She’s just a spirited child.” But more often, especially as I grew older, he just frowned and waved me out of the room. It was better for all of us when I ran away at the first hint of my uncle’s arrival in our home—his visits becoming louder and more frequent toward the end. That way I wasn’t forced to hear either his tirades or my father’s silence.
I bend over, hands on my knees, and try to catch my breath. I’ve made it only a pathetic few blocks—not nearly far enough to escape anything. Where to go? I regret not bringing my laptop with me when I stormed out—I could at least find somewhere with free wifi to pass the time. I’m too proud to go back for it, though; my exit was too haughty to repeat.
I finally settle on the county library. I have only a vague idea of where it is, and it takes me nearly an hour and three wrong turns to get there. I might have tried taking a bus, but I have no money and I still find the cryptic schedules daunting. As I walk, I watch from the sidewalk as deserted buses zoom past me. They’re empty this early on a Sunday, but they still have no room for the likes of me.
Today, I don’t mind feeling lost. Today, for the first time in my lifetime of minders, maids, and protectors, I feel a sense of relief in being alone and adrift.
But even so, I’m sweaty and irritable when I finally make it to the library. The arctic blast of the air-conditioning feels almost painful as I walk into the building. Why must everything be kept at such temperature extremes here? Americans never seem to be at peace with their surroundings—they’re always heating or cooling or just constantly changing everything to meet their whims. Watching their industriousness exhausts me, and sometimes I want to shout out, to tell them to just be. But I know I have no right to criticize. Everyone needs to feel some degree of control over their universe, and supercooling a room is a relatively benign way of achieving that, I suppose.
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