Not the Girls You're Looking For

by Aminah Mae Safi

  Lulu barked a laugh. “Of course you’d ask that.”

  James narrowed his eyes. Good. Then she wouldn’t be distracted by them and their naturally helpless expression. Though they crinkled rather adorably in their new position.

  “Please, then, Oh Magnificent Queen of the Universe, tell me what else I should have asked?”

  Lulu nodded, like she took his epithet at face value. “You could ask what I’m listening to right now. I mean, it’s still obviously a line to be judgmental, but at least it doesn’t require the same kind of ponderous pretension of picking a favorite.”

  Lulu watched, waiting. She enjoyed testing people’s mettle. It gave her a lay of the land. Not that she wanted to survey James’s land. At all. Not even a little bit. James’s face fell into that trapped expression she’d seen however many nights ago by the pool, when he couldn’t unstick the lawn chair.

  “Are you always this aggressive?”

  “Is asshole your default setting?”

  “What? No,” James said, his voice considerably more quiet.

  Lulu read his lips more than she heard the words. “No? Because, honestly, it seems that way.”

  He opened his mouth. Lulu raised her eyebrows, challenging. She expected a frown. Instead, he smiled and Lulu mistrusted herself, watching his mouth move like that.

  “You’re right.” And with a light shrug, he made his exit. “See you around. Maybe.”

  Lulu let out a high-pitched grunt followed by a stomp, which only served to alarm the bartender. The bartender, finally having gotten all the other drink orders together, tossed Lulu a bottle of water. Lulu paid and stalked away, back to her friends in the crowd. How dare James take the last word. How dare he. Lulu joined her friends in the crowd again, but she could not muster her earlier enthusiasm. The poor performing bands would suffer the price in her review.

  And when Lulu got home, she had more good news delivered to her.

  “We’re going to the Alkati house this weekend, habibti,” said Ahmed, still sitting in his same chair, but now reading a book instead of a newspaper.

  “Why?” asked Lulu.

  Ahmed looked up. “Ramadan is Sunday.”

  Lulu closed her eyes. “Wonderful.” She trudged upstairs, desirous of the oblivion of sleep.

  4

  Tolerable, We Suppose

  Try as she might, Lulu couldn’t drown out all the noise of her surroundings—a house filled with people and music and food and an endless flow of sugared tea. The Alkatis had a curated kind of home, including a collection of rugs that had been in the family for more than four generations, a Damascene desk set, a large wall of inlaid imported tile, and several old silver coffeepots. Here was a party that had all the necessary fanfare to accompany the observance of Ramadan, which had begun at sundown.

  Lulu thought she heard a phrase that sounded suspiciously descriptive of her dress coming from the direction of Auntie Salwa. But it was in Arabic, and just because she’d heard the word red and her dress was red, that didn’t mean anything. She could be imagining the comment. If she was only imagining the comment, she didn’t need to do anything in response. She’d heard the word tight, too, but her dress wasn’t that tight. Snug, more than anything. She could sit in it comfortably and everything.

  Besides, Lulu wouldn’t risk drawing notice to herself; she kept her eyes steady, focused on the full plate of food in front of her. Beautiful desserts, piled high and with great care. Grape leaves stuffed with rice and meat. Rice that had been purposefully burned to the bottom of the pan—so it was golden brown and deliciously chewy. Lamb and beef and chicken and fish all accompanied by grilled onions and tomatoes. Hot pink pickled radishes, and some blessed guest had actually brought the crisp, sour plums that made Lulu’s mouth water. If nothing else, Lulu would not go hungry on this night. She took a bite of the plum.

  Lulu ought to have developed some kind of equanimity around these kinds of parties. But she hadn’t. A wave of nausea flashed, then was gone. Social discomfort was not something that came naturally to Lulu. She picked at her blue nail polish—the same shade of blue of the evil eye guarding the door to this house. Lulu suspected she was more likely a thing to be warded off rather than a person worthy of its protection. At least here.

  Her mother sat surrounded by women chattering in Arabic. Lulu knew her mother didn’t speak a word. The women, too, shared in this knowledge. As they were putting forward their most proper efforts to snub Mrs. Saad, they continued. Spiteful of their intentions, her mother maintained a placid expression on her face. She gave off the air of one who would not care for the conversation, could she understand it. She was the face of Southern equanimity, and underneath lay a frozen tundra of disdain.

  This attitude did not help endear her to the other women.

  Auntie Salwa was the heart of the group. Their ringleader and their champion. She had two sisters—one recently emigrated and another who had citizenship while her children did not. The Nasser sisters had been famous Baghdadi beauties. Farrah Nasser—the middle one—still clung to the vestiges of her glory days, with her dark hair curled into the large, fashionable waves of her youth. Auntie Farrah was an expensive relic who sat dutifully beside her eldest sister.

  Whatever nature had given Salwa Nasser in terms of hair color, Lulu was fairly sure it wasn’t the champagne blond she now wore. Auntie Salwa smoothed and waved her hair in the current style. Her looks were an exercise in self-preservation—she had the skin of a woman who had, throughout her life, assiduously avoided the sun. Auntie Salwa was proof that with diligent work, beauty did not have to fade fully.

  The third sister was younger than the other two, but her face had the weathering of the eldest. She had emigrated from Iraq a few years prior, and she had only been in the States a few months. Her English was as stilted as Lulu could ever hope her own Arabic to be. She wore a hijab and jet black kohl. It was a fierce kind of makeup that Lulu often emulated and admired, though she had trouble remembering the third sister’s name. She had a quiet, steady presence, much like Emma. The third sister sat four seats away from Auntie Salwa, her expression thoughtful.

  Iraqi women did not change their surnames at marriage. So they were the Nasser Sisters—through war and marriage, through immigration and resettlement—and they belonged to one another as much as they belonged to anyone. And Aimee Saad, who could win many a courtroom battle, would not let them get the best of her.

  Lulu picked at her nails again, accidentally flinging a peeling of polish across the dark wood of the table. She looked up; no one had noticed. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Still, she kept her face like a death mask, taking a cue from her mother and refusing to let slip her personal turmoil.

  “Lulu!” a voice shrieked.

  Lulu looked up. Dina Alkati had positioned herself beside Lulu’s chair—her arms wide open. Lulu leaped up immediately, embracing her as the unlikely white knight she was. But the movement drew attention from the rest of the table. Dina’s mother stared Lulu down with hawkish eyes, not unlike her French teacher, Madame Perault. Auntie Salwa—Dina’s paternal aunt by marriage—offered a tight smile.

  Lulu couldn’t mistake their meaning. She was an intruder in their midst and only half of what was considered respectable. Lulu ought to have been glad of any toleration at all, a magnanimity which her mother clearly did not receive. But Lulu could never be grateful for hardly restrained resentment. Lulu bared her teeth at them in response—a pretty smile that would not touch her eyes. They returned the expression, their eyes as alert as her own.

  “Dina!” Lulu’s voice went overly bright, matching Dina’s tone, as though they were competing for the most sincerely executed deceit. And maybe they were.

  “How are you?” Dina asked.

  Lulu marveled at the way Dina could draw out her r’s so they conveyed such false feeling. Lulu didn’t only dismiss Dina’s sincerity; she dismissed Dina on the whole. Yet Lulu was awed by that girl’s ability to fake
emotion so painstakingly. Lulu, herself incapable of doing anything halfway, couldn’t help but admire Dina’s level of commitment. Even if Lulu did have visions of throttling her by the beautiful gold chain hanging around Dina’s neck.

  “So good. How are you?” Lulu raised her eyebrows, a knowing smirk playing across her face.

  “So good. My cousin is engaged! To Ali Hassan—his family owns that large building downtown, you know. He told me he’s going to get her a Jag as a wedding present, instead of jewelry. Alhamdulillah, we’re so happy. You remember Tanya, don’t you? Oh my gosh, I love your shoes.” Dina pulled Lulu along to the upstairs hallway where the rest of her generation had congregated.

  “Mashallah!” Lulu wrapped her arm around Dina’s waist, not unlike the first slithering moves of a python. “And thank you! I love yours!”

  “Mashallah—look at you! So sweet of you, I’ll have to tell her you said so. But your shoes have bows. I super love bows. Don’t you love bows?” Dina flicked her beautiful carpet of hair.

  Lulu squinted, resenting the movement. Lulu might be vain about her hair but, she was sure, her own vanity was hardly like that. Her pride led her to believe her displays were more founded, less showboating. Lulu would have been horrified to learn that her own hair flicks looked exactly the same as Dina’s—she performed the move with equal finesse and panache. It was a movement passed down from one Arab girl to another, until it seemed, to outsiders, like an innate trick of these women. That it was a practiced art that they taught one another, both in social warfare and intimate preening, was unfortunately lost on a casual observer.

  “I do love bows. That’s why I bought these shoes.” The feigned brightness in Lulu’s voice faded. Her plastered-on smile wavered.

  Dina laughed, all charm. “Lulu, you’re so funny.”

  Not having meant comedy of any sort, Lulu could only politely hold on to her smile. She caught sight of the conglomeration of those her age, above the landing on the stairs. Eyes flickered toward her. They were segregated by gender as they stood, though no more segregated by gender than the cafeteria at Sealy Hall and definitely less rigidly. Lulu couldn’t have said when she’d noticed that people segregated themselves that way. Only that once she had, she couldn’t stop seeing it everywhere she went. She didn’t dare air these ideas aloud. She already felt enough like the living embodiment of contraband. No need to prove everyone correct.

  Lulu scanned the crowd for Tanya, but she wasn’t there. A pity, since Lulu enjoyed Tanya’s company. Miriam was nowhere to be seen, either. Ali and Thabit and Omar were all listening to a story told by Mustafa. He gave her a smile over their heads. Lulu pretended not to notice it. She was used to pretending not to notice Mustafa.

  Mustafa was handsome. Or, more to the point, he was “that handsome Mustafa.” He had a crinkle in his eyes when he flashed his matinee idol smile. With his close-cropped hair, he’d never be mistaken for a boy. No, despite being Lulu’s age, he was what mothers and aunties liked to call a “young man.” Or, more specifically, “that handsome young man.” Even her own mother called him that. They were trying to make a point, those mothers and aunties.

  Lulu politely ignored it.

  Were he not the sort to be regularly pulled aside for random TSA security checks, Lulu would have called his looks all-American—such was the intensity of his fresh-faced, amiable appearance. Lulu could rarely look at him without receiving the sudden impulse to lick him. She did her best to keep a lid on these feelings.

  The expats and immigrants had brought to this country their sense of communal parenting. Lulu couldn’t risk an encounter with Mustafa; she wouldn’t risk it. She valued her privacy too much to throw it away on a pair of fine eyes and a stunning jawline. People died for her to have such independence. People in her own family. Her father had given up his homeland so she could be free to shut the door to her own room. So that there was a space that was hers and no one else’s. Perhaps when she wasn’t looking, Mustafa regarded her with her same brand of curious lust. Who knows. Lulu wouldn’t be the one to wait around and find out.

  “Look, here’s Tamra!” said Dina as another girl approached.

  This new girl enveloped both Dina and Lulu in a hug and a proper three kisses on the cheek. Tamra Alkati was Dina’s paternal cousin and Salwa Nasser’s youngest daughter. Between the two girls, Lulu would always pick Dina, who was more of an adoptive, distant cousin and less of an acquaintance. Tamra had little of this familiarity with Lulu and none of the friendliness of her older sister, Tanya.

  Also, Tamra was beautiful in the same way Lo was beautiful. In the way, Lulu assumed, her mother, Auntie Salwa, had been beautiful. Except, Lulu didn’t know enough of Tamra to humanize her. In a friend, uncommon looks were a mere fact, like dark hair or a loud laugh or an allergy to the local oak trees. In an acquaintance, such looks were insufferable.

  “Did you hear my sister is getting married? We’re all so excited!” Tamra beamed.

  It finally sunk in then—why Tanya wasn’t socializing here, upstairs. She’d moved on to adulthood. She was in her midtwenties now, after all. She’d been flitting between the older children and the adults for years. This cemented it.

  “Mabrook!” Lulu pulled on her most winning smile.

  She and Tamra stood like that, smiling at each other as they sized each other up again.

  “It’s been soooo long since we’ve seen you. You never come out anymore!” Tamra reached out and pinched one of Lulu’s cheeks. Tamra had nine months more on this planet than Lulu, and she’d never let Lulu forget it.

  Lulu gritted her teeth, still holding the smile. She had been invited out with these girls regularly for a time, usually through her parents. And they had spent most of these evenings smiling and chiding her, welcoming her into the fold, only to increase Lulu’s discomfort. They didn’t like her. Or, at least, they didn’t trust her. Lulu didn’t mind—she didn’t trust them, either. But they were all too bound together to air any of these grievances aloud. They all talked around what they could not talk about. Lulu had taken to avoiding them. Except for Miriam, who Lulu didn’t see.

  “Will you come out with us the next time?”

  “Of course I will, inshallah. I’ve missed it. It’s been so busy! I’ve been so busy!” Lulu’s face hurt from the effort of smiling. “You know I love dancing.”

  “I’m sure. You’re always busy. I was just telling Dina how much fun we had last time. You know Mustafa? I was telling Dina how he said the funniest thing. And do you know what it was? He was saying that he wasn’t going to fast this year on account of basketball. Isn’t he funny?” Tamra, who had been facing her cousin during the entirety of this speech, trained her gaze directly onto Lulu. “Oh, but you don’t fast, do you, Lulu? Inshallah next year, habibti.”

  Lulu took a sharper-than-necessary inhale. “I do, actually. Excuse me.”

  Tamra hummed a tiny noise, then turned her attention back to Dina. Lulu headed to the bathroom, choosing to wade through the crowd of people downstairs rather than use the closer one upstairs. Everything upstairs had been like a carnival fun house. Lulu didn’t appreciate the reflections she saw, even if they might have been distorted. That any of it could belong to a likeness of her made her irritable.

  She was waylaid a handful of times by adults as she passed until she ran into Sheikh Fadi. He ruffled Lulu’s hair and kissed her hand like her own grandfather would. He had the air of a man who had once been quite something in his prime, but his prime was now sixty years behind him.

  “Ey, habibti,” he said. “Wenu Baba?”

  “My dad’s talking with Amu,” she said. “How are you, Sheikh?”

  “Sheikh, sheikh.” He shook his head. “And what is sheikh without tribe?”

  Lulu clucked her tongue. “We are your tribe, Sheikh, you know this.”

  And it was the truth. Sheikh Fadi had spent his twilight years in the States, issuing fatwas to help settle community disputes in the city. He gave advice on anything as
petty as a car wreck to issues as large as business partnerships going awry. He was the head of their amalgamated tribe, and he used his honorific to keep the peace.

  “Ey.” Sheikh Fadi waved Lulu off. “Miriam is outside, yallah habibti.”

  Lulu nodded as he shooed her farther out of the house. Sheikh Fadi understood people on a level that Lulu found nearly auspicious. She made it through the sliding doors at the back of the house. It was still too warm for there to be any refreshment from the outside air, but she charged farther into the backyard in any case.

  * * *

  A light breeze played through the humid air. Lulu teetered on a swing in the backyard, far from the crowd that maddened her so, balancing her seated form on the tip of her sneaker. She heaved a great sigh, slumping her shoulders up against the chains of the swing in the process. She watched the way her arms dangled at her sides. They almost looked like part of someone else’s body, someone else’s life.

  “It’s insane in there, isn’t it?” said a muffled voice.

  Miriam Razi was trying to furtively light a cigarette while she spoke. She and Lulu had grown up together. Though they had never been the best of friends, they were comrades-in-arms in these situations, and they bonded together over their war stories and battle wounds. They were both half-Arab, and they clung to each other for support. Miriam successfully lit the cigarette and took a deep inhale.

  “Seriously. Aren’t you afraid Ame Nadia is going to walk out here and find you? Or someone will report on you to her?” Lulu stole a few glances around them. This corner of the backyard remained empty and obscured from anyone’s view.

  With the reference to her mother, Miriam snorted, then exhaled a stream of smoke. The way Miriam’s features relaxed made Lulu glad she didn’t smoke. She didn’t want to become dependent on that kind of catharsis. Though at the moment, it did look wonderfully freeing.

  “Nah. They never come out back here, and anyways, the men have started up with the nargileh, so if I stand by my dad for a bit, I’ll smell like smoke anyway.”