Love Comes Later

by Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar

  “I’ve been at the door calling you,” she says reproachfully. Then, plunking hard on the highest notes, “Aren’t you going to take me out to practice?”

  “Assif, habibti,” he apologizes, since he would if she were really his younger sister and not his dead wife’s. “I don’t think I have time for a driving lesson today.”

  She narrows her eyes at him. He plays on.

  “It’s only once a week,” she says.

  He grits his teeth at how sad she sounds, but the thought of her on the roads, in a country where fatalities from accidents are the number one cause of death, does nothing for his mood most weeks. He can’t bring himself to tell her this, however, as the anniversary of Fatima’s death is only weeks away.

  Since she has come to live on the family compound, he has seen the same sleepless nights in the circles under the translucent skin around her eyes that fails to show on his own darker skin. She is a child still to him, her skinny arms and legs reminding him of the young goats on the family farm near the desert.

  “Don’t you even want to know what our cousin, the prospective bride, said when we saw her?” Luluwa’s arms are akimbo, but this time she stamps her foot like their nanny Anita used to when the boys were scattering in all directions at City Center Mall.

  Abdulla turns back to the keyboard, ready to put the discarded earphones back on.

  “Why were you there?” he murmurs. “Traitor.”

  “Somebody had to go see if she was at all willing,” she says, flipping the piano lid closed to stop him from playing.

  He snatches his hands away just in time. And takes the earphones off again.

  “Was she?” he asks, swiveling around to face her.

  “You should get Anita in here to clean this,” Luluwa says, wrinkling her nose at the grease-stained pizza boxes piled up in the corner. “Is that what you eat?”

  She protests when he takes her by the elbow, escorting her to the door.

  “I want you to be happy,” she says. “It isn’t good for you to be alone like this.”

  Without meaning to, he pinches her shoulder. She flails back at him ineffectually, thumbs tucked inside her fingers.

  “That’s the way to get your thumbs broken,” he says at the threshold, taking her fist in his and forcing her thumb across her knuckles.

  “Noor and I agree. Hind’s not right for you,” Luluwa says, as he throws some mock punches at her. “She’s too –”

  “Luluwa! Your trainer is here.” Khalid, his youngest brother, goes shooting by to the garden on his scooter.

  “Slow down,” they yell at him simultaneously, but Khalid is already off to the passageway between their house and their grandfather’s.

  “You have a trainer?” Abdulla says, forgetting Luluwa had been about to share an oracular prediction with him. “What kind?”

  She makes a muscle with her biceps. “They think I’m too skinny. If I lift weights with her, then I may put on some muscle.” She makes another face.

  He tries to feel sympathy but can manage only relief: at least the family is meddling in other people’s lives as well, not just his own. Maybe this will distract them.

  “Luluwa!”

  She pounds him on the arm one last time, squinting up at him.

  “She’s not the one,” Luluwa says, putting her fingers on the scar tissue just below his watch. She presses the scar. When he doesn’t respond, she whispers: “My sister would want you to be happy.”

  Abdulla pretends not to hear, and turns away. He looks at his wrist and remembers. Just after the funeral, before the visiting hours began, Luluwa was the only person who noticed blood running in a red streak down his sleeve. She and Anita bound up his wrist and then tucked the bandage back under the sleeve of a fresh thobe.

  “I’m not going to marry her anyway,” Abdulla mutters, as though they were kids and she was trying to interest him in a toy but he didn’t want to play. “I’m never marrying again.”

  He sits back on the bench and starts practicing again on the Bach, the theme he had been learning to play for Fatima’s birthday.

  “She wouldn’t make you laugh,” Luluwa says, chewing on the ends of a piece of hair.

  Abdulla grunts. He knows what she means. The lines around his mouth that used to bracket his broad smile are now more often than not turned downward.

  For a moment, they hear the sound of their grandfather’s cough.

  “He’s dying,” Luluwa says softly, all traces of their childish shenanigans gone.

  An image of their grandfather Jassim almost flashes in the air between them, his face from behind the wrought iron of the upstairs railing. He has barely come downstairs in more than a week. Abdulla searches his memory for the last time he saw his grandfather outside his house. It was that night in the majlis nearly a month ago now, when the fateful decision was made regarding Abdulla’s future. The old man didn’t seem ailing then, just fragile. He didn’t get up to say hello, but that was his right: it was the younger men’s duty to come and greet him. Abdulla feels a twist, low in his gut. His grandfather has been the silent pillar of their family. He was Luluwa’s champion and immediately ordered the transfer of her belongings from Uncle Ahmed’s empty house into his own on the day of the accident. The body had to be buried at the next prayer; wild with grief, Ahmed dissolved his marriage and revealed his intent to marry another. Hessa, racked with shame, stayed with her eldest brother. Luluwa, rejected by both, was cast aside. But she couldn’t be left alone, even for an evening. Jassim knew it, and acted without hesitation.

  This is the role his grandfather has played in the community as well: in the old days he would sit and listen to the complaints of the servants, the disputes of neighbors. He made loans when necessary, and sent food when the need was urgent. He had fought for Abdulla’s right to go to Sandhurst at a young age and then stay on in England for university. Father to three sons, Jassim had yet to see his immortality tumble around the carpet at his feet.

  “He won’t be with us long,” she says.

  “I’ve heard all this before,” Abdulla says, swallowing hard. He knows she is right.

  With a shake of her head, and a pained look, Luluwa turns away. Part teenager, the slope of her back is that of a maturing young woman. He knows marriage would help ease the devotion he sees shining in her eyes, prevent it from turning into a type of love that he not only fears but dreads because he will have to deny her, this fragile girl who has come to represent everything good in his life since Fatima’s death. His heart will never feel the reverberations of love again.

  Abdulla returns his attention to the keyboard and tries to drown out the sound of his cousin’s voice and her ominous predictions. If she is right, and Jassim is dying, there is no force that can possibly keep him single. After three years, the right to grieve has lost its force, and lack of interest won’t be tolerated. Now the family will prevail on the undeniable premise that Jassim should see his first grandchild before leaving this world.

  Let one of the girls from the other houses have the honor, with one of my brothers, Abdulla thinks bitterly, pounding on the keys the way his youngest brother Khalid does when he thinks no one is looking.

  Luluwa may not like Hind, but her opinion is not the one that carries the most weight. That right belongs to his mother, Maryam, the woman responsible for training her daughter-in-law to manage the household and care for her husband’s aging parents until they die. Fatima got off easy in this regard because everyone was in such a rush. When she asked for her own house as part of the contract the family instantly agreed, not wanting to scare her away with the idea of living on the family compound.

  This time, the family will likely try to keep them close to keep an eye on things. His next wife, Hind or whoever they decide on in the end will not be so lucky. The month is crawling by, even with the shortened work hours for fasting. Abdulla is relishing the season in a way he hasn’t done for several years. As long as it’s Ramadan, no one can talk in earnest about
arranging the engagement or wedding. He welcomes any excuse for the delay.

  Chapter Four

  Abdulla suppresses a yawn, though no one is likely to notice, since most of the others at the table are on their mobile phones. People are returning to their desks after the week off for Eid. He can see jet lag in the bleary eyes and stooped shoulders of many of his counterparts. The ad hoc nature of conducting business at home never ceases to amuse him: texting, surfing the internet or chatting to a neighbor are all acceptable behaviors at most meetings.

  “Al salaam alaikum,” Uncle Ahmed says, striding into the room. Those assembled return the greeting as Ahmed takes his seat at the head, leaning forward onto the massive conference table. Around the table, the several members of the Marketing Subcommittee Taskforce, minor trade officials, glance at each other then back at Ahmed, the chairman of the taskforce. Those otherwise occupied finish their other business quickly.

  Ahmed thumps the table once and resumes his former position. “Sports,” he says, nodding, “are how we can make ourselves distinctive from the rest.”

  The assembled group is supposed to advise higher-ups on key messages for international media. Most of them are from Abdulla’s department, and there are a few other men he knows only by sight, up-and-coming deputy ministers. Wall-to-wall thobes, Abdulla thinks. He can’t keep up with the new appointments. He can’t keep his mind on anything but the end of his freedom, which is about to be signed into reality. He looks at his watch. Perhaps time could just stop.

  “Keep your phone on,” Uncle Ahmed had told him before the meeting. “Watch for the message.”

  It is in front of him now, alongside the bottles of sparkling and still water, notepads, pencils and built-in microphones that crowd the table. Sooner or later it will vibrate, and Abdulla will have to read the commencement of his sentence. Sweating, he takes a bottle from the empty place next to him, guzzling more mineral water.

  “Let us keep our eyes on London and the Olympics this summer,” someone pipes up. There is a nodding of heads and a murmur of agreement. After all, since the stunning award of the World Cup to Qatar, who can argue the power of the sports world to catapult a small nation to instant headlines?

  “We’ll send a delegation to learn from them,” Uncle Ahmed says. He’s rubbing his chin, which shows only the slightest shadow of a beard. Gone is the full, curly one he sported for most of Abdulla’s life. Missing in the close shave is his distinctive white patch. Now, his exposed chin reveals a younger, more virile-looking Ahmed. Marriage, or remarriage, seems to be agreeing with someone.

  “We’ll learn what they know, then put our brand of desert hospitality on it. We can be even better than London.”

  Another round of murmurs. A popular trip for sure, Abdulla knows, given how much people still love “Londoning” even though the colonial era is supposed to be long over. Were it not for the impending milcha, Abdulla might have considered volunteering, at least to put him out of his father’s reach for a few weeks. But the time frame is so far in the future, next summer, months and months away, and by then, who knows? He will be married by then. London? He wonders, half-whimsically, if he’ll ever see London again.

  “We need to bring up our own teams in advance of the Cup,” someone is saying, echoing Chairman Ahmed, who wags his head up and down with such enthusiasm his ghutra wobbles.

  Abdulla swallows, his breath constricted by his starched collar. He drinks more and more water as the discussion swirls around him. The world’s fattest nation, planning to integrate sports into society? he thinks. Why not get rid of some of the McDonald’s first?

  “You want to say something?” Uncle Ahmed’s eyebrows draw together, a ripple of creases rising on his forehead.

  In the growing silence, all eyes turn in the direction of the chairman’s gaze. Abdulla raises his shoulders to shrug but the glowing red at the base of the microphone in front of him makes him realize he has spoken his criticism out loud. He clears his throat. A few of the young dignitaries near him – why hadn’t he bothered to learn their names? – look as though they might agree, though they avoid making eye contact when he sweeps the table in search of a reply.

  “Eating habits,” he manages. “If we are serious about sports, we need to do something about eating more healthily.”

  Not a perfect recovery, but it manages. Ahmed nods, the lines around his eyebrows and forehead relaxing. The conversation addresses this unexpected vein as people debate the feasibility of making non-fast food attractive to teenagers.

  “No one wants to eat traditionally,” one of the other managers says.

  Abdulla knows everyone is thinking the same thing: the speaker’s girth is evidence that poor eating habits are not a problem that plagues only the young.

  “But if you’re at Whole Foods in South Kensington, it’s packed with people shopping for fresh edibles,” Abdulla says, drawn into the conversation despite himself.

  Ahmed and a few others are nodding again in agreement. Abdulla can’t remember a meeting when they’ve been able to speak so frankly.

  “Realistically, we’d have to bring something like that here to compete against Carrefour’s produce,” the portly manager says, bringing up the contrasting point of view.

  “I’ll look into it.” Abdulla surprises himself, and his uncle, by volunteering.

  Ahmed looks down the table, his gaze lingering on his nephew, and Abdulla resists the urge to take the offer back. The eyebrows on his uncle’s furrowed brow are shapelier than Abdulla remembers. Is the new wife making his fifty-something uncle into a metrosexual? The conversation swirls around him, this time on how to go about creating incentives for young people to get involved in team sports. In the ensuing discussion no one mentions girls, even though there are plans for the women. Abdulla rearranges his ghutra and thinks of Luluwa. How much she loves playing football in the league at her international school. But he’s already introduced enough controversy into a meeting that, like an increasing number of the ones that fill his diary, are perfunctory rather than purposeful.

  His phone buzzes. Ahmed stops in mid-sentence and looks sharply at him.

  Abdulla unlocks it to find exactly what he is expecting: The sheikh is coming tonight for your milcha. Be home by maghreb.

  Summoned home before the sunset prayer to see the mulla who will marry him. So it begins. Again.

  Abdulla pinches the bridge of his nose in what he hopes the rest of the table thinks is a gesture of concentration. As the meeting breaks up he rises quickly and heads for the door. Ahmed tries to catch his eye, but several attendees engage him in post-meeting talk, allowing Abdulla to make a quick exit.

  There is no need to stay, Abdulla thinks, striding down the hall. But there is something unsettling in Ahmed’s look, urgency in his eyes. Abdulla has not seen that look since the day of Fatima’s death. It’s almost as if Ahmed wants a last look at the man who is his son-in-law. The last living vestige of the life Fatima lived, however briefly, and might be living still. If only she had lived. If only. Abdulla shakes the thought out of his head. After all, Ahmed will see him again in just a few hours. But it will be after the ceremony that seals Abdulla’s fate as a re-married man. Maybe that’s it: the next Abdulla Ahmed will see will be a new Abdulla. Maybe Ahmed knows he will never see this Abdulla again and wishes to say goodbye, in a look at least.

  The thought doesn’t slow Abdulla a step. If anything, it speeds him up. He makes a mental list of all the tasks he should do in an initial exploration of setting up a food chain franchise. In recent years starting a business has become all the rage – cupcakes among the women, and restaurants among the men. He had barely gotten settled into married life before the accident ruptured his sense of order. A sense of the unknown – accompanied, he admits, by the first stirrings of excitement he has felt in years – balances the dread he feels at the task he knows awaits him at home.

  Chapter Five

  “Insha’Allah kheir,” the sheikh says as he hands over t
he contract bearing Hind’s signature.

  Abdulla takes it with his right hand, trying to show deference to the man as is his due. But it’s all so familiar: the lined face chanting suras from the Qur‘an, his uncles looking on, his father wiping sweat from his forehead in what Abdulla can only read as relief. He is led by Hind’s father, Uncle Saoud, from the majlis through their shared courtyard towards the room where he will have dinner with Hind on this night that they are engaged, legally married in the eyes of God – his cousin, who is more or less a stranger.

  Neither he nor Saoud speaks, as if by tacit agreement that in their silence they are resolved to see this night through. They enter the house by the main door. There are screens shielding the hallway and beyond, the rest of the house where the women are gathering for their feast to celebrate the marriage of the first daughter. He follows Saoud into the formal sitting room, the rectangular space lined with brass-armed cream sofas. There is a table with two chairs, like in the movies, placed in one corner, a flower arrangement that looks like an explosion of multicolored roses in the center. It’s tall enough that they might hide behind it rather than talk to each other, he thinks, over the dinner that will be served to them here, away from the rest of the celebrating women, the men eating in the majlis. Simple, he had requested, for this second engagement.

  “Your mother sent this over,” Saoud is saying. There is a square red leather box with a brass clasp and a smaller red box on top with identical gold patterning on the edges. The necklace and ring, gifts from the groom to the bride. Gifts he had chosen himself the first time. For Fatima.

  “Abdulla, I know you won’t mind but there’s something you should know. Hind – ”

  “Yes, Baba?” Hind answers from the foyer.

  At that moment the voice materializes, belonging to a woman who bears no resemblance to the girl Abdulla remembers. She is almost as tall as he is, although that could be because of heels, and, unlike many girls her age, thin. Wearing a long-sleeved white dress, a silver embellishment at the waist, as she moves towards them her right leg keeps appearing in a slit several inches long. The direct gaze is so different from the blush that warmed Fatima’s cheeks the entire two hours he spent with her.