by Laila Lalami
Amal opened it to find an exquisite ruby-encrusted platinum khamsa. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.” She did not get up to kiss him—it felt odd to be affectionate with him now. She had dreamed about the moment when they would see each other again, hoping that somehow things between them would return to normal, that they could talk the way they had before, that he would love her again the way he had before. But one look at him that morning, and she had known, in her heart, that things had changed. A part of him—the part that for years had made Amal the very center of his universe—was gone. And if it was gone, then why was he here? Why was she here?
The food arrived. Still, neither of Amal’s parents broached the topic. “So what’s the big news?” she prodded.
Malika sat back in her chair and turned to look at her husband, an expression of disgust on her face. Nabil cleared his throat. “Amal, my child,” he said, his voice unusually low. “Many years ago,” he continued, “I made a mistake.” He refilled his glass of champagne. He cleared his throat. He pushed his fork to the side of his plate.
An exasperated Malika finally turned to Amal and said, “What your father is trying to say is that he seduced one of the maids and got her pregnant. He has a son. Younger than you.”
“What?” Amal dropped her fork and turned to look at her father.
Nabil clicked his tongue. “There’s no need for that tone, Malika. I didn’t even know about his existence.”
“So you say.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” His voice rose, making a couple of heads turn at the next table.
“Wait,” Amal said. Both her parents turned to look at her, and she had the strange feeling of being the referee at a match between two teenagers. “Just wait a second. You have a son? I have a brother?”
Nabil nodded. “His name is Youssef. His mother used to work for your grandmother Lalla Fatema, up in Fès. And I swear to you I didn’t know she had kept the baby. She was working in the house one day, and the next she was gone. Your grandmother said she’d fired her, and I never heard from her again,” he said. “I still haven’t,” he added as an afterthought.
“Il ne manquerai plus que ça,” Malika said. “We have enough problems with the son. We don’t need the mother.”
Amal was still trying to comprehend what was going on. She had a brother! And all these years of thinking she was an only child—at times loving the attention it granted, and at others resenting it deeply, but always wondering: What if? What if I had a brother or a sister? Would my father have kept up all the comparisons with Uncle Othman’s children and Uncle Tahar’s children? Would he have gotten so upset over Fernando? Maybe he would have turned a blind eye, maybe he would have been too busy with another child to worry so much about controlling everything in her life.
“How old is he?” she asked
“Twenty-one,” Nabil said. “Six months younger than you.”
“Six months?” Amal repeated. Her father was cheating on her mother while she was pregnant with her.
Malika poured herself another glass of champagne.
“What does he look like?” Amal asked.
“He looks like me,” Nabil said, suppressing a smile. “Dark hair. Blue eyes.”
He looks more like my father than I do, Amal thought, surprised by her sudden jealousy of someone she had not even met. “What does he do?”
“Right now he’s working for me, learning the hotel business. He’s finishing an English degree, so with some training, the hotel trade might be a good fit for him. He seems to enjoy it.”
Enjoy it? When it came to her career choices, he had never seemed to care whether she enjoyed what she did. “But how did you find him?”
“He found me,” Nabil said, looking suddenly delighted. “Can you believe it?”
Amal nodded, looked down at her plate. The sauce around the scallops was already turning thick. She took another sip of champagne. She had eaten very little and now the alcohol was starting to go to her head. “And when did he find you?” she asked.
“Let’s see. We’re in May. So just about two years ago.”
So this was why he had remained silent for so long. He finally had the son he’d always wanted. She was the first draft of his book of love, and when it had not turned out the way he wanted, he had started over with Youssef. She would never compare to this son, who would listen to him, who would live up to his expectations.
“Why are you telling me about this now?” she asked.
Malika turned to her and said, “Amal, I just found out a little while ago myself. Your father was keeping this from me.”
Nabil heaved a sigh, turned the stem of his glass around in his fingers. “I was waiting for the right moment. I wanted to get to know him.”
“I take it you must have hit it off,” Amal said. She put her napkin on the table and looked at her watch.
Malika reached for her daughter’s hand across the table. “Wait, don’t go.”
“I told Fernando to pick me up at ten. I should be going.”
“You didn’t eat,” Nabil said, raising an eyebrow.
“Didn’t you hear me the first time, Papa? I said I wasn’t hungry.” She stood up.
Malika turned to her husband and said between her teeth, “See what you’re doing to your family?”
Nabil took out his pack of Dunhills and lit a cigarette. Almost immediately the waiter rushed up to the table. “There’s no smoking in the restaurant, sir.” Nabil put his cigarette out on his filet mignon. The diners around them had stopped speaking, all of them far too interested in the scene unfolding before them.
“Wait for me,” Malika called. In the lobby, she put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and walked with her to the causeuse, where they sat, sharing one seat. “I know it’s a shock, my daughter. It was the same for me when I found out. At least you heard about it from us. Me, I found out because of rumors at the beach club. He’s making a fool of me.”
Amal stared straight ahead. “I hate him.”
“No, no,” Malika said, shaking her head. “You don’t. All of this will pass, I promise.”
Amal chuckled. “You promise?”
“We’re a family. We have to endure the good and the bad together.”
“That’s a good one. And where was he the past two years?”
“I was there for you.”
Amal nodded.
“You have to come home to Casablanca with me.”
“He has the son he’s always wanted. What does he need me for?”
“I need you, child. I can’t handle this by myself. I need you there.”
“But I can’t just drop everything and go.”
Malika stared at her daughter. “You love him.” It was a statement that needed no confirmation. She seemed disappointed with Amal and shook her head slowly. “You have to break it off with him before it gets serious.”
“What?” Amal said. In their correspondence and weekly phone calls, Malika had never said that she disapproved of Fernando. Perhaps she had assumed that it would not last.
“This relationship,” Malika said, sighing, “it has no future.” She said it in a tone that suggested her daughter should have realized this long ago.
“How would you know?” Amal asked, her voice raised. She got up and walked through the lobby to the street. She craned her neck, trying to spot Fernando’s car.
“Look,” Malika said, catching up with her. “Don’t be so upset. Just think about what I said. Think about your family. Think about your future.”
Amal remained quiet. Long minutes passed, and still the words cut through her as though they had just been spoken. What was she supposed to do? Give up Fernando and go back home? Was she to pretend they had never met?
Looking down, Amal noticed a few stubborn blades of grass growing between the curb and the sidewalk. When she was a little girl, her father had pointed out a beautiful daisy that had grown between two slabs of marble stone on the terrace. He had marveled at how even the most
fragile of creatures can move a crushing object by the sheer force of its will to live. She had looked up at him, squinting at the light that surrounded him as he spoke, and he had patted her shoulder, the way he usually did when he told her a story. The memory made her miss her father.
Amal spotted Fernando’s car up the street and stepped off the curb to wave. He parked his old Honda and climbed out. “Hi there,” he said to Malika. “Nice to see you again.”
He slipped his arm around Amal’s shoulder and kissed her temple.
The display of affection seemed to irritate Malika. “I will call you tomorrow, OK?” She started walking back toward the hotel.
“Good night,” Fernando called out to her back. Then, turning to Amal, he asked, “How’d it go?” He released her hair from its bun, and the weight of it on her shoulders made her feel at once like her usual self.
“Let’s see,” she said. “My father cheated on my mother while she was pregnant with me. And it turns out I have a younger brother.”
Fernando’s eyes opened wide. “That’s bigger news than I thought! I thought they were going to ask you to go back.”
“That, too.”
“Oh.”
They got into the car. On the radio, Dave Gahan was singing an old Depeche Mode song, reminding Amal of the night she and Fernando had met up at a club in Hollywood to go dancing, their first time together. A ball formed in her throat. “Let’s go somewhere,” she said.
They ended up at a coffee shop not far from the apartment, a little place they often went to late at night. Amal recounted her dinner with her parents. It was the kind of moment, she told him, when one knows that nothing will be the same again, when life suddenly splits into Before and After. She had long suspected that her father had been unfaithful (she had heard her parents fighting when she was twelve or thirteen) but she did not know his infidelities were as old as her—older, in fact.
“What did your mother say?”
“Not much, I don’t think. I’ve never seen her so broken.” Amal was angrier on her mother’s behalf than on her own. She wished there was something she could do. She wanted, of course, to go back home and be with her mother, but the finality of what her mother was asking was a sacrifice she was not prepared to make. Giving up one love for the sake of another—who made bargains like this? Then it dawned on her that her father was precisely the sort of person to do that. She drew her breath, suddenly remembering a particular moment at dinner. “You should have seen the look on my father’s face when he was talking about Youssef—like he was the best thing that ever happened to him.” She rubbed her eyes.
“But your brother—can you imagine?” Fernando said. “Growing up all this time, never knowing his father, or his sister. Poor guy.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Amal said. She was far too wrapped up in her own pain to think of the pain of others. “What about you? What were you doing while I was with my parents?”
“Working on my résumé,” he said. He finished his coffee and, noticing that she had finished her tea, asked, “Ready to go home?”
Amal smiled at the word he used, and put her hand on his arm. Whenever she was with him, she found it hard not to touch him, as though she were making up for hours of not being with him. They arrived at Amal’s apartment to find three messages on the answering machine, all from her mother, a woman who clearly took special pleasure in using the redial button. “Amal, c’est Maman,” she said in a singsong voice. She asked Amal to call back immediately. They were still listening to the third message when the phone rang again. Fernando looked at Amal. “Do you want to pick it up?” he asked. She shook her head and unplugged the cord. Then she put her arms around him and asked if he was feeling sleepy.
THE PHONE RANG almost immediately after Fernando plugged the cord back in on Sunday morning. Amal was brushing her hair when he handed her the receiver. Malika, sounding disturbingly cheerful, asked if Amal would like to go to the county museum. Amal said she had to study for her last final, but her mother sighed and complained about having to come halfway around the world just to be turned down by one’s only daughter. Amal felt a mixture of guilt and irritation, and guilt won out. (Is it not always so with mothers?)
She turned off the phone. “I have to go meet my mother.”
“All right,” Fernando said. “I guess I’ll go look at the apartments alone, then.”
“I’m sorry,” Amal said. “Maybe we can go when I get back? Or do you want to come with me to the museum?”
“I don’t think so, sweets. Your mother can barely stand to look at me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Fernando shook his head. “Not your fault. I’ll call or e-mail if the apartments are any good.”
WHEN AMAL ARRIVED at LACMA, the esplanade was packed with tourists. Her mother waved at her from outside the box office. “How did you get here?” her mother asked as she kissed her cheeks.
“By bus.”
“I thought Fernando would drop you off.”
“I didn’t ask him.”
“You should have told me. I could have picked you up or sent a cab for you.”
“Where’s Papa?” Amal asked, wanting to change the subject.
“He didn’t come.”
“Why not?”
“I just didn’t feel like spending such a beautiful morning with him. It’s just us two,” Malika said. Amal smiled; she felt a touch of their lost complicity returning. Her mother linked arms with her, and they walked through the double doors of the museum. As they strolled through the galleries, stopping occasionally in front of one or another painting, Malika shared all the gossip from back home: her driver’s son had managed to get into engineering school; the maid had decided to wear a hijab and refused to serve alcohol when there were guests; there was a journalist who kept hounding Uncle Othman for an interview; Aunt Khadija had taken a secret trip to Paris to get a face-lift; Cousin Jaafar had been caught with drugs at the airport and his father had to call in favors to prevent his arrest.
They stopped in front of a small Delacroix, an 1833 water-color of Moroccan street musicians. Strolling Players was the kind of Orientalist painting that must have been in high demand in the salons of Europe at the time. It looked nothing like Amal’s memories of home, and yet it made her miss it. Her mother squeezed her hand. “You have to come back with us.”
Amal did not reply, as if silence could make the demand go away.
Malika drew her breath. “I know you love each other,” she said. “But someday you will learn that love is not enough. People in America are not like us. They are different. They live together without being married, they don’t think about what families they’re getting into, they break off relationships as easily as they start them. That’s not how we are.”
Amal pulled her hand away and turned to look at her mother. “Are you saying that Fernando’s going to break up with me?”
“Amal, you don’t understand. A relationship is difficult enough without all the other complications you’re adding to it. I only want what is best for you. And this young man may be nice, and you’ve had fun with him, but now you’ve finished your degree and it’s time to think about the future, to think about what you’ll do next. You belong in your own country, with your people, with us, your family.”
“I can’t go back for good. Not after what Papa did.”
“Your father loves you. He is just too proud to admit he made a mistake. But look what happened to him. He’s learned his lesson, I think, and I know he wants you back, too. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here.”
“I can’t go back, Maman.”
“Of course you can. You can come back with us after graduation. We’ll spend a couple of weeks in Spain, and when fall comes, you can start work. You don’t have to work with your father; you can find work anywhere you like.”
Amal shook her head.
“If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. Do you know what I’ve gone through? Everyone is talking abou
t how crazy your father has been acting, and your uncles are upset about the appearance of this boy—this Youssef. They’re worried what your father will do with his share of the company, whether he’ll give him something. They told me they won’t let it happen. I need you back home. If you come home with me, I’m sure your father will come to his senses, and everything can go back to the way it was before. Please, Amal.”
Amal looked at her mother’s pleading face, at the despair so clearly painted upon it. Amal had made a tacit promise of love, and she had been happy, but now she was being asked to be loyal to another bond, one that did not ask just for love; it demanded duty as well, and it rewarded with approval, with ridat el-walidin. A part of her crumbled right then, and as they walked through the galleries, she became aware of an emptiness inside her that widened slowly and steadily.
They went to lunch at a restaurant nearby, and as they waited for their orders, Nabil appeared and pulled up a chair. “How was the museum?” he asked.
Amal looked at her mother, who hid behind her menu. How carefully they had planned the meeting; Amal had not suspected anything.
“Fine,” Amal replied.
“It was wonderful,” Malika said. “We had a good time.” She started to talk about what she wanted to do during her stay in Los Angeles, and complained that there was not enough time to go to San Francisco for a few days. “We were supposed to get here on Thursday night, but we missed our connecting flight from New York,” Malika said. “We had to wait for an early morning flight on Friday.”
“It took us three hours to go through immigration,” Nabil explained. “It was bad enough that they fingerprinted me, like a common criminal, but then they took me to another room for a full search, and then after that, we still had to wait an hour and answer more questions.”
“Every time we come to this country,” Malika said, “we see it getting worse.”
“Your mother told me you wanted to stay here,” Nabil said. “Why? They hate us.”